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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Trespasser
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: October 6, 2003 [eBook #9498]
+[Most recently updated: October 14, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+The Trespasser
+
+by D. H. Lawrence
+
+1912
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+“Take off that mute, do!” cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
+piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+
+“My dear Louisa,” she replied, “it would be simply unendurable.” She
+stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
+forbearance.
+
+“But I can’t understand it,” cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
+the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. “It is only
+lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
+would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.”
+
+“I have only lately submitted to many things,” replied Helena, who
+seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
+her bristling defiance.
+
+“At any rate,” she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don’t
+like it.”
+
+“Go on from _Allegro_,” said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
+on Louisa’s score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
+chords, and the music continued.
+
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
+turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
+with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
+in the room.
+
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
+of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
+again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
+the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena’s room, for which she
+was responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August
+foliage; the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like
+a square of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and
+fireplace were smooth white. There was no other colouring.
+
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
+wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
+wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
+recess—all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
+room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
+skirting-board, serene.
+
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha
+from China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these,
+two tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and
+blood, and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
+rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.
+
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
+of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
+unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
+that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
+with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom
+of the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.
+
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
+on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
+She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
+hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
+turned again to the players.
+
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress,
+high-waisted, swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to
+the time as if her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made
+the young man frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a
+very strong, vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength
+from the fine hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The
+long white lace of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.
+
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
+watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
+soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
+and glisten over her forehead.
+
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+
+“Why,” she cried, “wasn’t it all right?”
+
+Helena laughed wearily.
+
+“It was all wrong,” she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
+rest.
+
+“Oh, I’m sorry I did so badly,” said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+
+“You didn’t do badly at all,” replied her friend, in the same tired,
+apathetic tone. “It was I.”
+
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
+moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
+like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
+response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
+friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
+affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
+were coaxing a child:
+
+“Play some Chopin, Louisa.”
+
+“I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,” said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena’s friend for
+years.
+
+“Play the mazurkas,” repeated Helena calmly.
+
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
+came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
+began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+
+“They are inflamed still” said the young man.
+
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
+lighting up with a small smile.
+
+“Yes,” she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
+strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
+like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
+smarting soft flesh caressively.
+
+“It is quite hot,” she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+
+“Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,” he replied, frowning.
+“I can’t think why it should last all these months. Don’t you ever put
+anything on to heal it?”
+
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
+the burn.
+
+“It comes out every evening like this,” she said softly, with curious
+joy.
+
+“And that was August, and now it’s February!” he exclaimed. “It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come—the smart; you invoke it.”
+
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+
+“I! I never think of it,” she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+
+The young man’s blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
+mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently—”
+
+“Never?” he re-echoed.
+
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa
+continued to play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+
+“Drat it,” she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+
+The two looked up at her.
+
+“Ye did run well—what hath hindered you?” laughed Byrne.
+
+“You!” cried Louisa. “Oh, I can’t play any more,” she added, dropping
+her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+
+“Oh I can’t, Helen!” pleaded Louisa.
+
+“My dear,” said Helena, laughing briefly, “you are really under _no_
+obligation _whatever_.”
+
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and
+her head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no
+sign, but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of
+the hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
+the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
+vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena’s room, that remained
+indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
+glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
+flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
+glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no one
+spoke.
+
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change
+her position. She sat motionless.
+
+“Will you make coffee, Louisa?” she asked. Louisa lifted herself,
+looked at her friend, and stretched slightly.
+
+“Oh!” she groaned voluptuously. “This is so comfortable!”
+
+“Don’t trouble then, I’ll go. No, don’t get up,” said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena’s wrists.
+
+“I will go,” she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
+appealing love.
+
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
+slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+
+“Where is the coffee?” she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
+She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+
+“I think, my dear,” replied Helena, “it is in its usual place.”
+
+“Oh—o-o-oh!” yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
+played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to an
+end.
+
+“After all,” said Byrne, when the door was closed, “if you’re alive
+you’ve got to live.”
+
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+
+“Wherefore?” she asked indulgently.
+
+“Because there’s no such thing as passive existence,” he replied,
+grinning.
+
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+
+“I don’t see it at all,” she said.
+
+“You can’t, he protested, “any more than a tree can help budding in
+April—it can’t help itself, if it’s alive; same with you.”
+
+“Well, then”—and again there was the touch of a sneer—“if I can’t help
+myself, why trouble, my friend?”
+
+“Because—because I suppose _I_ can’t help myself—if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I”—he smiled brilliantly—“am April.”
+
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
+metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+
+“But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me—and—and
+go through a kind of _danse macabre_—”
+
+“But you bud underneath—like beech,” he said quickly.
+
+“Really, my friend,” she said coldly, “I am too tired to bud.”
+
+“No,” he pleaded, “no!” With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
+stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
+looked in the fire, forgetting him.
+
+“You want March,” he said—he worried endlessly over her—“to rip off
+your old leaves. I s’ll have to be March,” he laughed.
+
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile,
+then broke out once more.
+
+“You must start again—you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
+blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you’re not.
+Even if it’s a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are not
+dead….”
+
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to
+gaze at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
+handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
+if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
+out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
+regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
+from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
+cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
+look became distressed and helpless.
+
+“You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,” he cried brutally. She
+shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
+fire. “You are not dead with Siegmund,” he persisted, “so you can’t say
+you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
+and his memory is not he—himself,” He made a fierce gesture of
+impatience. “Siegmund now—he is not a memory—he is not your dead red
+leaves—he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
+alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.”
+
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
+him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
+steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+
+“You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No,
+you never touch the thing,” he cried.
+
+“I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,” came her voice, like
+the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must
+relieve an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a
+revulsion from life. She was very sick after the tragedy.
+
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+
+“Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
+You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down
+the road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom—”
+
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
+passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
+moving from her torpor was painful. At last—
+
+“You are merciless, you know, Cecil,” she said.
+
+“And I will be,” protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
+softly, wearily.
+
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
+over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
+being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
+the simplest—that of love—because he was even more faithful than she to
+the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
+
+“I do wish I had Siegmund’s violin,” she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt.
+He, also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant
+with her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for
+the arrival of Louisa with the coffee.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Siegmund’s violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund’s
+lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
+was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to
+sell it; she kept the black case out of sight.
+
+Siegmund’s violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
+the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud.
+After two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking
+the sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
+Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
+lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
+soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish
+of breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
+himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
+odour of must.
+
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his
+life, till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping
+his violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart
+and of the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his
+being and turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an
+odour of must remained of him in his violin.
+
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
+longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund’s
+fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund’s passion, and joy, and
+fear had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
+sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
+had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his
+impatience, wild in anticipation.
+
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
+savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
+anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
+with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
+
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
+opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling
+their weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
+suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other
+years Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
+associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
+with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades’
+hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
+flame stretched level on the wind.
+
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
+pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
+For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
+moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
+watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
+to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
+on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
+face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
+shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
+garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as
+living flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight,
+he took his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was
+in a kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train
+slid out amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless
+movement, fascinated.
+
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
+soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
+rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he
+was going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely
+for his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of
+bonds, a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement
+of this last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at
+the carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
+Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
+fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
+all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
+watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
+
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
+Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
+anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
+cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The
+world was changing.
+
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
+night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
+he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its
+brilliance amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness.
+It would front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and
+Helena, looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands
+with sudden joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside,
+through the black masses of the trees.
+
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
+his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his
+face. As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the
+hall, the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to
+go to bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room.
+There the moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena.
+He held his breath and stiffened, then breathed again. “Tomorrow,” he
+thought, as he laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair.
+But he had a physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his
+shoulders he seemed to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms,
+he turned to the moonshine. “Tomorrow!” he exclaimed quietly; and he
+left the room stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
+turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He
+was tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his
+arm-chair, he looked round with disgust.
+
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
+betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
+plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
+wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
+even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
+cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
+gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
+He fetched a glass of water.
+
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
+the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
+floor, while the sofa was littered with children’s clothing. In the
+black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
+newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
+bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
+sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
+slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
+ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
+wishing he had no tomorrow.
+
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
+was the summary of his domestic life—a broken, coarse comb, a child
+crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
+now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then
+the teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
+absurd arms to him.
+
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want
+the silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came
+over him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and
+gradually his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness
+and trouble, staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused
+him. Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed
+again. After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to
+bed.
+
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
+It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
+uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
+hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
+snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the two
+girls.
+
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
+Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
+they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
+and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
+mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
+and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
+eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache,
+was full of youth.
+
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
+room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
+the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
+same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
+curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
+rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
+She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to
+be with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of
+things. He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water
+and manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her
+love of beautiful things and of dreams.
+
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+
+“I must get to sleep,” he said.
+
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
+When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
+final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+
+“I am fearfully tired,” he said.
+
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas
+for some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+
+“Thirty-eight years old,” he said to himself, “and disconsolate as a
+child!” He began to muse of the morrow.
+
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
+labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
+thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
+take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
+he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
+torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
+which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
+her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
+wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
+realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty;
+and he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
+girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
+piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
+a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
+not been in the room.
+
+Helena stood fingering the score of _Pelléas_. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+
+“Why do you consider the music of _Pelléas_ cold?”
+
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off,
+without mention, after Helena’s fashion, ignoring all that might be
+humiliating; and to her much was humiliating.
+
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
+theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
+the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
+her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
+walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.
+
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
+He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
+he had lost himself to her.
+
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
+insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking
+at him all the while with heavy blue eyes: “I think, Siegmund, I cannot
+come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.” He had
+writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
+and for a long time, she said: “I will write to you.” Then she left
+him.
+
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later,
+when he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+
+“You are so tired, Siegmund.” She stroked his face, and kissed him
+softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
+is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
+ugly for Siegmund.
+
+“You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
+week in August.”
+
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
+no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
+Isle of Wight, tomorrow.
+
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
+like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
+white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
+small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
+along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
+flooded him….
+
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
+and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark
+eyes, and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she
+had been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:
+
+“I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days’ holiday.”
+
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
+inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
+contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
+hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
+from his children.
+
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
+been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
+evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
+children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
+degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.
+
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
+door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
+the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object,
+she lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.
+
+“I am nothing, I am nothing,” she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
+for a time.
+
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
+through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
+hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
+train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
+“chuff-chuff-chuff” of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
+on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
+rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+
+“God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!” she said aloud,
+in a low tone. She hated Helena.
+
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund’s shadows, his children,
+Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a
+young man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
+everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
+he looked out of the carriage window.
+
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
+floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and
+glitter of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond
+the park. People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be
+Sunday! It was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.
+
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved
+gaily. Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form
+danced lightly in the sunshine.
+
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
+It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
+white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
+shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
+glistened on her uncovered hair.
+
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
+impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
+and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
+shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on,
+drawing near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was
+so like Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.
+
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed
+out, and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
+looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
+and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
+Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
+feeling like one of the ruddy sails—as if he were part of it all. All
+his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece of
+colour.
+
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of
+a bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
+the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
+of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
+look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
+laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt
+the blue sea gathering round.
+
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
+alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
+crimson-winged boats.
+
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful
+women in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed
+impossible. Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On
+either hand the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp
+noses. Beneath him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it
+were laughing. In front, Sieglinde’s island drew near and nearer,
+creeping towards him, bringing him Helena.
+
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
+him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
+But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under
+the fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As
+he watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of
+cloud cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
+chill wind.
+
+His travelling was very slow. The sky’s dark shipping pressed closer
+and closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat
+lands near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many
+violoncellos. All the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport
+station, where the wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station
+and the island were desolate, having lost their purposes.
+
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning’s blaze of
+elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
+only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now
+the intoxication was dying out.
+
+At three o’clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
+carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the
+blurred dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs
+and the reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a
+chilly torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart
+was thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
+felt dead.
+
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
+watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey
+under the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund’s
+heart leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught
+hold of Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her
+into the carriage.
+
+“You _here!_” he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund’s
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
+his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in to
+him.
+
+“Is it a dream now, dear?” he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
+shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through
+her.
+
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+
+“Here we are, then!” exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
+cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
+his luggage.
+
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
+tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
+stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
+body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
+astonished cries of delight.
+
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naïve
+look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
+fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
+mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
+feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
+hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
+small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
+that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
+his knees.
+
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
+his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
+only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
+lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
+Siegmund’s eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
+
+“What is it?” he asked, listening uneasily.
+
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
+look of distress amused her.
+
+“The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear—not Wotan’s wrath, nor
+Siegfried’s dragon….”
+
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
+the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
+alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
+second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
+Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
+big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
+amused her. But he was tired.
+
+“I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,” she laughed.
+
+“Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.”
+
+“Is it?” she said curiously. “Why? Well—yes—I think I can understand
+its being so to some people. It’s something like the call of the horn
+across the sea to Tristan.”
+
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
+with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist.
+The boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
+fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
+horn-call.
+
+“Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,” she said, curiously
+interested.
+
+“This time next week, Helena!” he said.
+
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
+lay upon the table.
+
+“I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,” she said.
+
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
+alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
+wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
+leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
+
+“There is _no_ next week,” she declared, with great cheerfulness.
+“There is only the present.”
+
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
+round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
+close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were
+crushed against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the
+faint, intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned
+heavily to himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self
+urged with gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed
+his face upon her.
+
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
+her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss
+his forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
+future in a passion worth years of living.
+
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the
+delightful things she had found. She had a woman’s curious passion for
+details, a woman’s peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He
+listened, smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself.
+She soothed him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he
+hardly attended to her words.
+
+“Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired—you are very
+tired,” said Helena.
+
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+
+“No,” he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
+handsome limbs in relief—“no, not at all tired now.”
+
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
+she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+
+“You must go to bed early tonight,” she said, turning aside her face,
+ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
+arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
+thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap
+herself up against the fog.
+
+“You are sure you’re not too tired?” she reiterated.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
+was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
+overcoat, while they walked together.
+
+“I like the mist,” he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+
+“I don’t dislike it,” she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+
+“It puts us together by ourselves,” he said. She plodded alongside,
+bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+
+“It couldn’t have happened better for us than this mist,” he said.
+
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+
+“Why?” she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+
+“There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
+me—look!”
+
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
+quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
+sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
+what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
+
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
+their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
+They turned from it.
+
+“What is the pitch?” asked Helena.
+
+“Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,” said
+Siegmund.
+
+“Yes, but the settled pitch—is it about E?”
+
+“E!” exclaimed Siegmund. “More like F.”
+
+“Nay, listen!” said Helena.
+
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
+fog-horn.
+
+“There!” exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. “That is not E.” He
+repeated the sound. “It is F.”
+
+“Surely it is E,” persisted Helena.
+
+“Even F sharp,” he rejoined, humming the note.
+
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+
+“But you agree?” he said.
+
+“I do not,” she replied.
+
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+
+“What is the note in _Tristan_?” Helena made an effort to ask.
+
+“That is not the same,” he replied.
+
+“No, dear, that is not the same,” she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
+footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
+down the fog.
+
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
+haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
+was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely to
+itself.
+
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
+slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
+unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
+into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
+
+“Shall we walk over, then?” said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena’s
+heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
+play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
+afraid of him just then.
+
+“Come away, dear,” she pleaded.
+
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
+to think so.
+
+“Come away, dear!” she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+
+“You are not afraid?” he asked.
+
+“Not afraid, no….” Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
+that made him shiver.
+
+“It is too easy a way,” he said satirically.
+
+She did not take in his meaning.
+
+“And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!” she scolded. “The mist
+is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.”
+
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of
+forgetfulness.
+
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist
+went flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the
+western sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over
+the golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to
+Helena that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted
+chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of
+fog, the sun was departing with pomp.
+
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid,
+flaming bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to
+express it; how other men had borne this same glory.
+
+“What is the music of it?” he asked.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
+open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
+
+“Of what, dear?”
+
+“What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?”
+
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
+moment.
+
+“I do not know,” she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+
+“A Beethoven symphony—the one—” and he explained to her.
+
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
+sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+
+“The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,” she decided.
+
+“Yes,” said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
+to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
+for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
+almost put her two hands over his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
+closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
+wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took
+her in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely,
+he bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold
+with fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered
+again. He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her.
+Thinking it was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her
+close on his breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared
+him at that moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he
+hid his face on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew
+hot, buried against her soft strong throat.
+
+“You are so big I can’t hold you,” she whispered plaintively, catching
+her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
+shoulders ineffectually.
+
+“You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,” he whispered.
+
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm
+breast with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her
+hands meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+
+“See! I can’t,” she whispered.
+
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
+her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
+figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
+under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
+again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
+one great ache.
+
+He crushed her to him—crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
+muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
+body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
+towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena,
+conscious of nothing.
+
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
+marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
+steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
+herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
+mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
+lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
+strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
+and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
+through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
+his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
+her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
+together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have
+one being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
+
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
+class of “dreaming women” with whom passion exhausts itself at the
+mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
+flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
+sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man’s brightness
+and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
+it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
+bed. She lay still on Siegmund’s breast, listening to his heavily
+beating heart.
+
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
+Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
+her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was very
+cruel.
+
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
+bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were
+more detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has
+been rejecting the “animal” in humanity, till now her dreams are
+abstract, and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her
+kindness is full of cruelty.
+
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
+and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
+his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
+sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
+yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
+withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
+some time.
+
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
+grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
+child whom she must correct and lead:
+
+“I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.” He made a small sound, that
+might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
+however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out of
+it.
+
+“It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,” she coaxed determinedly.
+
+“Soon,” he said thickly.
+
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were
+loath to take him from his pleasure:
+
+“Siegmund, I am cold.”
+
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+
+“Cold!” he exclaimed. “But you are warm with me—”
+
+“But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet
+pebbles.”
+
+“Oh dear!” he said. “Why didn’t you give them me to warm?” He leaned
+forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
+
+“They are very cold,” he said. “We must hurry and make them warm.”
+
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
+clung to Siegmund, laughing.
+
+“I wish you had told me before,” he said. “I ought to have known….”
+
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
+person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
+charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
+the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
+
+Helena introduced Siegmund as “My friend”. The old lady smiled upon
+him. He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son
+years back…. And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her
+house for their honeymoon.
+
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
+attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
+him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
+bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
+scarcely adjust the wicks.
+
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+
+“I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
+Nietzsche I brought—”
+
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his
+arms along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all
+his being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts
+came up in his brain like bubbles—random, hissing out aimlessly. Once,
+in the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and he
+smiled.
+
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
+lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
+His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent, so
+strange.
+
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way—she was only twenty-six
+to his thirty-eight—she stood before him, holding both his hands and
+looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
+dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid
+foam to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing
+clear through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her
+breasts. But her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness
+that he dared not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look
+at her. He strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he
+could not put out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them
+in appeal for her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned
+away. She waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He
+would not look at her.
+
+“You would like supper now, dear?” she asked, looking where the dark
+hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
+setting of his shoulders.
+
+“Just as you will,” he replied.
+
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something
+troubled him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
+
+“I will spread the cloth, then,” she said, in deep tones of
+resignation. She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took
+no notice, but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the
+fire.
+
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
+lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
+her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the
+lace, and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight
+rise and fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were
+scalded. It was a physical pain to him.
+
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
+enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
+was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
+aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was
+evident to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
+restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+
+“Will you want anything else?” asked the smiling old landlady.
+
+“Nothing at all, thanks,” said Helena, with decision.
+
+“Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I’ve washed the dishes. You
+will put the lamp out, dear?”
+
+“I am well used to a lamp,” smiled Helena. “We use them always at
+home.”
+
+She had had a day before Siegmund’s coming, in which to win Mrs
+Curtiss’ heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the
+tray.
+
+“Good-night, dear—good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
+long, dear?”
+
+“No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.”
+
+“Yes—yes. It is very tiring, London.”
+
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
+Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and
+looking in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he
+happened to glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
+disappointed eyes.
+
+“Shall I read to you?” she asked bitterly.
+
+“If you will,” he replied.
+
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
+went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+
+“What is it, dear?” she said.
+
+“You,” he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+
+“Why me?”
+
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
+arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
+like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
+not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
+after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
+ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
+of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
+still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
+love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
+the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose
+and went to the door.
+
+“Shall I let her out?” said Siegmund.
+
+“Do!” said Helena, slipping from his knee. “She goes out when the
+nights are fine.”
+
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
+Curtiss called from upstairs: “Is that you, dear?”
+
+“I have just let Kitty out,” said Siegmund.
+
+“Ah, thank you. Good night!” They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
+door.
+
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door,
+then waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+
+“Shall we sit by firelight?” he asked tentatively.
+
+“Yes—If you wish,” she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
+was burning and surging with desire.
+
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
+knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
+stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
+advanced out of the shadows.
+
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
+two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she
+knelt on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and
+spread towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated,
+scarcely able to move.
+
+“Come,” he pleaded softly.
+
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
+him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
+Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between
+her uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
+
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
+abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+
+
+It was eleven o’clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund’s arms, and
+rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
+feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
+still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
+seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
+tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+
+“Am I not uneasy?” she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
+gently.
+
+“It is wonderful to be as still as this,” he said. She had lain
+tranquil with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something
+sacred in his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so
+different from an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like
+the sea, blue and hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was
+burning, volcanic, as if he would destroy her.
+
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
+strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
+of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
+would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
+seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to produce
+him.
+
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations,
+of involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the
+time Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so
+incomprehensible in his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more
+breathless and unbearable to herself.
+
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
+looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
+forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
+her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
+to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
+pushed back the curtain.
+
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
+the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the
+sea, and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of
+absolution on her brow.
+
+“Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?” she asked fretfully.
+
+“Ay, if you wish to,” he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
+with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
+the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at
+the casement of the land seductively.
+
+“It’s the finest night I have seen,” said Siegmund. Helena’s eyes
+suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+
+“I like the moon on the water,” she said.
+
+“I can hardly tell the one from the other,” he replied simply. “The sea
+seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
+coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
+are all you.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
+she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
+now, and did not need her.
+
+“I feel at home here,” he said; “as if I had come home where I was
+bred.”
+
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+
+“We go an awful long way round, Helena,” he said, “just to find we’re
+all right.” He laughed pleasantly. “I have thought myself such an
+outcast! How can one be outcast in one’s own night, and the moon always
+naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?”
+
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
+something of the harmony.
+
+“Whatever I have or haven’t from now,” he continued, “the darkness is a
+sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
+sometimes the sea is a brother: and there’s a family in one house, you
+see.”
+
+“And I, Siegmund?” she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
+looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the
+moonlit ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he
+laughed, then bent to kiss her.
+
+“The key of the castle,” he said. He put his face against hers, and
+felt on his cheek the smart of her tears.
+
+“It’s all very grandiose,” he said comfortably, “but it does for
+tonight, all this that I say.”
+
+“It is true for ever,” she declared.
+
+“In so far as tonight is eternal,” he said.
+
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking
+from under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the
+moon. They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. “It is like the magic tales,”
+he thought, as he realized where he was; “and I am transported to a new
+life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.”
+
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
+delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his
+hand, he felt for his watch. It was seven o’clock. The dew of a
+sleep-drenched night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and
+forgot the night.
+
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
+sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
+morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate.
+Sparrows in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the
+sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright
+sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
+
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
+red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
+sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
+window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
+blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
+hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
+
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
+spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field
+and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from
+the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme.
+He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
+grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
+breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
+tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
+out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down,
+and pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
+the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
+far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
+thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
+travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
+swinging birds.
+
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
+stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
+square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
+delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
+and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
+to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
+heavy green water.
+
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
+watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
+glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear green
+water.
+
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
+and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
+stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
+even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
+across, taking a seal’s view of the cliffs as they confronted the
+morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
+liked to see the birds come down.
+
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
+swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at
+the pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of
+it, but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his
+play.
+
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
+in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
+sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
+palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered
+against him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea’s
+passion. The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders
+like warm breath. He delighted in himself.
+
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
+clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+
+“She would make so much of this little pool,” he thought. And as he
+smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
+conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
+his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
+creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
+slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
+itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+
+“That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
+I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
+a person. What makes me myself, among all these?”
+
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+
+“I am at my best, at my strongest,” he said proudly to himself. “She
+ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
+a baboon under my clothing.”
+
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
+breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
+marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+
+“If I was giving her myself, I wouldn’t want that blemish on me,” he
+thought.
+
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+
+“She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
+pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I’d rather
+see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
+could show…. Why doesn’t she like me?” he thought as he dressed. It was
+his physical self thinking.
+
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
+the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at
+him rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at
+her ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man,
+strange and insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
+
+“You have bathed?” she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
+black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+
+“You have not bathed!” he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
+brine in his hair.
+
+“No; I bathe later,” she replied. “But what—”
+
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+
+“It _is_ blood?” she said.
+
+“I grazed my thigh—nothing at all,” he replied.
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+He laughed.
+
+“The towel looks bad enough,” she said.
+
+“It’s an alarmist,” he laughed.
+
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+
+“Breakfast is quite ready,” she said.
+
+“And I for breakfast—but shall I do?”
+
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
+above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
+his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+
+“I would not trouble,” she said almost sarcastically.
+
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+
+“How did you sleep?” she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
+eat.
+
+“Like the dead—solid,” he replied”. “And you?”
+
+“Oh, pretty well, thanks,” she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
+deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
+sleeplessness.
+
+“I haven’t slept like that for years,” he said enthusiastically. Helena
+smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
+her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
+the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
+him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
+winking a golden eye at her.
+
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
+dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things—on the barbaric
+yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
+and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
+lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
+than imagination.
+
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity’s
+previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower’s name,
+nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
+adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
+florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
+everything in fancy.
+
+“That yellow flower hadn’t time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
+before dawn came. It is tousled …” so she thought to herself. The pink
+convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
+night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
+spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
+thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
+not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
+sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
+out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
+round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
+water-shadowed reefs.
+
+“This is very good,” she said to herself. “This is eternally cool, and
+clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.”
+
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear
+away the soiling of the last night’s passion.
+
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
+like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
+its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
+self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
+
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
+shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
+backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
+warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
+watched the water playing.
+
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him
+with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he
+received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon
+and the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through
+her. It is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful
+little flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad
+seabirds. In these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache
+outwards towards something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But
+with Helena, in this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the
+day.
+
+“Will it be fine all day?” he asked, when a cloud came over.
+
+“I don’t know,” she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if
+she did not care at all. “I think it will be a mixed day—cloud and
+sun—more sun than cloud.”
+
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at
+the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+
+“I like a bare blue sky,” he said; “sunshine that you seem to stir
+about as you walk.”
+
+“It is warm enough here, even for you,” she smiled.
+
+“Ah, here!” he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation
+from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena’s. She
+laughed, and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For
+nearly an hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the
+sea-wall, till Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little
+breeze that wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth
+as from cold. Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything
+extreme. But psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
+
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point
+of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read
+the inscription.
+
+“That’s all right—but a vilely ugly railing!” exclaimed Siegmund.
+
+“Oh, they’d have to fence in Lord Tennyson’s white marble,” said
+Helena, rather indefinitely.
+
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+
+“Yes, he did belittle great things, didn’t he?” said Siegmund.
+
+“Tennyson!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.”
+
+“I shouldn’t say so,” she declared.
+
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed
+the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the
+sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below
+the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose
+over the cliff’s edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path
+dipped in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of
+the birds passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
+
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
+They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and
+nearer the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes
+of white above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back,
+anxiously. He would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a
+sense of death to risk it.
+
+“Come back, dear. Don’t go so near,” he pleaded, following as close as
+he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
+and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
+symbols, the death of which the sagas talk—something grand, and
+sweeping, and dark.
+
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
+foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
+froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
+
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and
+she thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+
+“They look so fine down there.”
+
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was
+filled with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She
+laughed as he gripped her.
+
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
+the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
+“Path of the Hundred Steps”.
+
+“When is a hundred not a hundred?” he said sceptically, as they
+descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps.
+Helena laughed at his exactitude.
+
+“It must be a love of round numbers,” he said.
+
+“No doubt,” she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+
+“Or of exaggeration,” he added.
+
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
+A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
+chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
+confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
+Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
+resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
+above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
+cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
+route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
+flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
+two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment side
+by side.
+
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
+lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
+boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
+insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
+of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
+looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.
+
+“Now, that one with the greyish sails—” Siegmund was saying.
+
+“Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster—yes?”
+interrupted Helena.
+
+“That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and—”
+
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
+wicked laughter of Helena.
+
+“That is right, I am sure,” he protested.
+
+“I won’t contradict you,” she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
+knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+
+“So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?”
+he said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and
+looked at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach
+wavers in the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
+slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
+startled them up.
+
+“The clouds are coming,” he said regretfully.
+
+“Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,” she answered,
+
+“Look at the shadows—like blots floating away. Don’t they devour the
+sunshine?”
+
+“It is quite warm enough here,” she said, nestling in to him.
+
+“Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.”
+
+“No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.”
+
+“I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
+like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
+sunshine.”
+
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
+water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund’s face. He lay, with
+half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
+she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him,
+with her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather
+arched. He lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
+
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching
+the sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and
+deep. It seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon,
+and it fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of
+life. Had the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great
+God thudding out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It
+frightened her. This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this
+Siegmund. It was so different from the half-shut eyes with black
+lashes, and the winsome, shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as
+she heard it, could not be the same as the curling splash of retreat of
+the little sleepy waves. She listened for Siegmund’s soul, but his
+heart overbeat all other sound, thudding powerfully.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked
+across at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+
+“I suppose,” he said, “they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!”
+
+“I was afraid they would wake you,” she smiled.
+
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across
+the water and the downs.
+
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
+bay.
+
+“The tide is coming in,” said Helena.
+
+“But this broad strip of sand hasn’t been wet for months. It’s as soft
+as pepper,” he replied.
+
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
+shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
+the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
+overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in,
+and fell, overcome at the end of the race.
+
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house,
+its base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the
+green sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss
+of withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders,
+that glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves
+were almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the
+other headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must
+hurry, or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still
+remaining between the great wall and the water.
+
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him—made him feel trapped and helpless.
+He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
+for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him,
+blinded by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.
+
+“I think I will rest awhile,” she said.
+
+“No, come along,” he begged.
+
+“My dear,” she laughed, “there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
+from the sea.”
+
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
+It would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+
+“Look at this black wood,” she said. “Does the sea really char it?”
+
+“Let us get round the corner,” he begged.
+
+“Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,” she said
+ironically.
+
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
+jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
+This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
+shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
+massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
+was delighted.
+
+“This is fine, Siegmund!” she said, halting and facing west.
+
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
+this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
+would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from their
+feet.
+
+“Would you really like to travel beyond the end?” he asked.
+
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+
+“This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.”
+
+“And then where?”
+
+“Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.”
+
+“Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.”
+
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
+near their bases.
+
+“I suppose it _is_ rather risky,” she said; and she turned, began
+silently to clamber forwards.
+
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+
+“I have no doubt there’s plenty of room, really,” he said. “The sea
+only looks near.”
+
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
+against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
+swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
+curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
+slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
+laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
+her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
+had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
+and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
+sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were
+cut off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
+his face.
+
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
+it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
+ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
+furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
+She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
+rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
+on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena
+of a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
+damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
+rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
+the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not
+bear. She had no weapon against brute force.
+
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
+was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
+face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
+just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
+populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
+careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.
+
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
+savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
+action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
+whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
+here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
+week—well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.
+
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
+figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the
+keenest tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and
+fancy. Why was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter
+wisdom of experience? She was young and naïve, and should he be angry
+with her for that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would
+have to suffer also, because of him.
+
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
+mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
+her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.
+
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
+he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
+close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
+lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
+pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
+on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
+heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
+face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
+satisfaction.
+
+“It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,” she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness
+like a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why
+she said it. He pressed his mouth on hers. “Not for you,” he thought,
+by reflex. “You can’t go that way yet.” But he said nothing, strained
+her very tightly, and kept her lips.
+
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
+at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
+stooped, and from among the water’s combings picked up an
+electric-light bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held
+it in his hand to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She
+took the thing delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite
+softness.
+
+“Isn’t it remarkable!” she exclaimed joyously. “The sea must be very,
+very gentle—and very kind.”
+
+“Sometimes,” smiled Siegmund.
+
+“But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,” she said. She
+breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
+inhaled its fine savour.
+
+“It would not have treated _you_ so well,” he said. She looked at him
+with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
+small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
+a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off
+the glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
+waited upon her words and movements attentively.
+
+“It is a graceful act on the sea’s part,” she said. “Wotan is so
+clumsy—he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
+fishes, _pizzicato_!—but the sea—”
+
+Helena’s speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
+not lucid.
+
+“But life’s so full of anti-climax,” she concluded. Siegmund smiled
+softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
+her words.
+
+“There’s no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The
+only way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
+float,” he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
+forget he had spoken.
+
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+
+“I will give it to the children,” he said.
+
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
+publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
+girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
+the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
+approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
+
+“Would you like this? I found it down there,” said Siegmund, offering
+her the bulb.
+
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
+she was not going to say anything.
+
+“The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,”
+said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+
+The girl looked at her.
+
+“The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers—”
+
+The child’s eyes brightened.
+
+“The tide-line is full of treasures,” said Helena, smiling.
+
+The child answered her smile a little.
+
+Siegmund had walked away.
+
+“What beautiful eyes she had!” said Helena.
+
+“Yes,” he replied.
+
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
+But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
+knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
+late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
+rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken and
+trees.
+
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
+carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
+under the coverlet. Helena’s heart was swelling with emotion. All the
+yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
+
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
+the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
+walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
+admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
+this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
+
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
+kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
+away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
+if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a
+family assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to
+the light swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the
+swing of their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying
+bough.
+
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
+They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily,
+through a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups,
+once more dismayed by evening, Helena’s pride battled with her new
+subjugation to Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also
+was silent, but his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance
+a band was playing “The Watch on the Rhine”.
+
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
+and to strike a last blow for her pride:
+
+“I wonder what next Monday will bring us.”
+
+“Quick curtain,” he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
+at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was
+wonderful to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him
+that evaded her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning
+altar to him, and she wanted to possess him.
+
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
+wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
+that he should have all—everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
+restored in him the full “will to live”. But she felt it destroyed her.
+Her soul seemed blasted.
+
+At seven o’clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
+water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
+continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night’s
+passion. Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool
+water running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All
+things, it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The
+cliffs rose out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine
+texture, and rocks along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn.
+The coarseness was fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in
+the veins of the morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with
+sunshine, as we are full of blood, and plants are tissued from
+green-gold, glistening sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that
+the morning cast round itself to make itself tangible: as she herself
+was a shadow, cast by that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its
+inefficiency.
+
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool
+at sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers,
+as they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of
+tissued flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to
+her.
+
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
+dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised
+against the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world
+itself was flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she
+fancied it a heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a
+vast air of sunshine.
+
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made
+the waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like
+cowslips. Her feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came
+out bright as the breast of a white bird.
+
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
+and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
+restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling
+along with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of
+wild, large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
+
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
+full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
+water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
+like pale flowers trembling upward.
+
+“The water,” said Siegmund, “is as full of life as I am,” and he
+pressed forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning;
+he had more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with
+his arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
+recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
+through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
+ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
+emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
+
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
+land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
+the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
+sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with
+its cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand
+that was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting,
+swelling with glad pride at having conquered also this small,
+inaccessible sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white
+virgin blossom that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
+like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
+under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
+laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
+him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
+it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
+
+“Surely,” he said to himself, “it is like Helena;” and he laid his
+hands again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander,
+discovering, gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder
+of smooth warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his
+hand encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the
+end he found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He
+pushed in his hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the
+dark, heavy coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were
+breathing and kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave,
+like a bee in a flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and
+flowing like the warmth of her breath in his hair came the sunshine,
+breathing near and lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of
+cold, that the softness and warmth merely floated upon.
+
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
+him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
+laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
+below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair—it was not fair he
+should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
+free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth.
+He tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
+child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry
+and warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
+smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
+though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch
+of himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his
+hair, even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he
+found himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and
+shook his head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself
+with his hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and
+free—fresh, as if he had washed away all the years of soilure in this
+morning’s sea and sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund
+became again a happy priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of
+misery were soaked out of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment
+in the sea, and bleach it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet
+and tissue-clean he felt—full of lightness and grace.
+
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,
+was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to
+the door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the
+garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat
+sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little
+laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very
+still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant
+little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood
+cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green
+twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There
+was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the
+shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,
+leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.
+She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she
+discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next
+mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.
+She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine
+at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+
+“You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.”
+
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
+glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+
+“And you,” she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
+sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
+
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
+moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+
+“I found a little white bay, just like you—a virgin bay. I had to swim
+there.”
+
+“Oh!” she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+
+“It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,” he said.
+
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
+came into her voice.
+
+“I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,” she said.
+
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
+still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes,
+that would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things
+all swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
+himself saying:
+
+“You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like
+Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.”
+
+“I saw the sunshine in you,” repeated Helena quietly, looking at him
+with her eyes heavy with meaning.
+
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+
+“No, but you have altered everything,” he said.
+
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
+it. He became suddenly grave.
+
+“I feel as if it were right—you and me, Helena—so, even righteous. It
+is so, isn’t it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
+you think so?”
+
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed
+her, and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
+across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
+white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
+bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
+of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
+and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
+blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson’s poems,
+which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
+been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+
+“Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,” she announced.
+
+“Think of Wagner,” said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
+heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
+meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
+them—dimly, drowsily, without pain.
+
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a
+path down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow
+with ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the
+bay. The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the
+rocks of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered.
+Helena sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot,
+glistening sand till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly
+scorched. Then she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she
+paddled in the light water, pensively watching the haste of the
+ripples, like crystal beetles, running over the white outline of their
+feet; looking out on the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them
+by its far reach.
+
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water’s edge. Then there
+settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
+the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
+wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat
+down together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone,
+Siegmund with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to
+him, in his shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound
+as they go. The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches
+two birds asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to
+look at them with its bright eyes.
+
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies
+fall at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them.
+Dreams came like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the
+seed-dust of beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize
+the souls of others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had
+mingled and bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the
+seed of such blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God,
+who held it in His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce
+new splendid blooms of beauty.
+
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
+their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
+shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
+Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
+revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy
+flung into water. She shivered lightly and rose.
+
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life
+again. She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden
+wet in the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it,
+shook it free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that
+opens itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers
+the tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and
+took its kisses on her face and throat.
+
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
+like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
+fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+
+“You look now as if you belonged to the sea.”
+
+“I do; and some day I shall go back to it,” she replied.
+
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
+more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
+rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
+smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
+
+“Come!” said Helena, holding out her hand.
+
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
+sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
+with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena
+laughed suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund’s
+heart was leaping like a child’s with excitement as he stretched
+forward, himself very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled
+slowly. Often she called to him to come and look in the lovely little
+rock-pools, dusky with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that
+seemed nothing but shadows, and curtained with green of finest
+sea-silk. Siegmund loved to poke the white pebbles, and startle the
+little ghosts of crabs in a shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would
+tease the expectant anemones, causing them to close suddenly over his
+finger. But Helena liked to watch without touching things. Meanwhile
+the sun was slanting behind the cross far away to the west, and the
+light was swimming in silver and gold upon the lacquered water. At last
+Siegmund looked doubtfully at two miles more of glistening, gilded
+boulders. Helena was seated on a stone, dabbling her feet in a warm
+pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet of the weeds.
+
+“Don’t you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?” he said.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
+the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
+childishly happy.
+
+“Why should we?” she asked lightly.
+
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
+with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
+the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
+relentless mass of cold beneath—the mass of life which has no sympathy
+with the individual, no cognizance of him.
+
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of
+things. She would not own life to be relentless. It was either
+beautiful, fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and
+vulgar, below consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a
+sympathetic knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was
+satisfied. To Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in
+her kaleidoscope.
+
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of
+his gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+
+“Come,” he said very gently. “You are only six years old today.”
+
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him,
+smiling in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the
+father in him sadly alive.
+
+“Now put your stockings on,” he said.
+
+“But my feet are wet.” She laughed.
+
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
+tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and more
+golden.
+
+“I envy the savages their free feet,” she said.
+
+“There is no broken glass in the wilderness—or there used not to be,”
+he replied.
+
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
+track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
+boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
+Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The
+boys emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after
+them. The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:
+
+“Tiss can’t fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?”
+
+“Ay, let her have a run,” said the father.
+
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
+her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
+pathetically.
+
+“Go on, Tissie; you’re all right,” said the child. “Go on; have a run
+on the sand.”
+
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
+distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
+the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few
+steps, turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously.
+It looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring
+away from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of
+waves.
+
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+
+“Crying because things are too big, and it can’t take them in,” he
+said.
+
+“But look how frightened it is,” she said.
+
+“So am I.” He laughed. “And if there are any gods looking on and
+laughing at me, at least they won’t be kind enough to put me in their
+pinafores….”
+
+She laughed very quickly.
+
+“But why?” she exclaimed. “Why should you want putting in a pinafore?”
+
+“I don’t,” he laughed.
+
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
+water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
+Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
+glowing. He was watching earnestly.
+
+“I want to absorb it all,” he said.
+
+When at last they turned away:
+
+“Yes,” said Helena slowly; “one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.”
+
+He pondered a moment.
+
+“How strange!” he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the
+detail. It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the
+picture was in me, not out there.”
+
+Without troubling to understand—she was inclined to think it
+verbiage—she made a small sound of assent.
+
+“That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don’t care so much,
+because I have it with me,” he concluded.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
+keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the
+moon-path broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late.
+Twilight, however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The
+lane twisted among meadows and wild lands and copses—a wilful little
+lane, quite incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the
+white cross.
+
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
+signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
+withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
+
+“We must go to the left,” said Helena.
+
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
+black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
+shoulders.
+
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
+they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having
+passed a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down,
+where was a sense of space and freedom.
+
+“We can steer by the night,” said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
+pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in
+that large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to
+the shaggy cloak of furze.
+
+“There will be a path through it,” said Siegmund.
+
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a
+tall, impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+
+“Stay here,” said he, “while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
+will be tired.”
+
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
+into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
+down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
+far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
+specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
+the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
+west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
+everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
+The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
+the condition of intense waiting.
+
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+
+“No good,” he said, “no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.”
+
+“Then we will sit down awhile,” said she calmly.
+
+“‘Here on this mole-hill,’” he quoted mockingly.
+
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very
+soft, and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all
+fragrance, cool odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs,
+touched with honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
+
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+
+“What day is it, Siegmund?” she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
+laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
+
+“But really,” she insisted, “I would not have believed the labels could
+have fallen off everything like this.”
+
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+
+“The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
+order and costume, going endlessly round.” She laughed, amused at the
+idea.
+
+“It is very strange,” she continued, “to have the days and nights
+smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
+lifetime.”
+
+“That is how it is,” he admitted, touched by her eloquence. “You have
+torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This
+morning! It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I
+be parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made
+up of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
+cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take no
+notice.”
+
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in
+his leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath
+from pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to
+cheek, looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy,
+a keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+
+“You know,” he said, repeating himself, “it is true. You seem to have
+knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are
+all in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
+everything.”
+
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+
+“You must write a symphony of this—of us,” she said, prompted by a
+disciple’s vanity.
+
+“Some time,” he answered. “Later, when I have time.”
+
+“Later,” she murmured—“later than what?”
+
+“I don’t know,” he replied. “This is so bright we can’t see beyond.” He
+turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
+that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He
+lay, with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the
+stars.
+
+“I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,” he said,
+always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+
+“Haven’t all women?” she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
+a brass reed was again in her voice.
+
+“I don’t know,” he said, quite untouched. “But you are scented like
+nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium….” He remained
+abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+
+“You are so strange,” she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
+voice to speak.
+
+“I believe,” he said slowly, “I can see the stars moving through your
+hair. No, keep still, _you_ can’t see them.” Helena lay obediently very
+still. “I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
+flies on the ceiling,” he continued in a slow sing-song. “But now you
+make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.” Then, as a new
+thought struck him: “Have you noticed that you can’t recognize the
+constellations lying back like this. I can’t see one. Where is the
+north, even?”
+
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
+She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations,
+as of the wayside plants. “Why should I want to label them?” she would
+say. “I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.” So she
+laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
+
+“How full the sky is!” Siegmund dreamed on—“like a crowded street. Down
+here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We’ve found a place far quieter
+and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn’t it fine to be up here,
+with the sky for nearest neighbour?”
+
+“I did well to ask you to come?” she inquired wistfully. He turned to
+her.
+
+“As wise as God for the minute,” he replied softly. “I think a few
+furtive angels brought us here—smuggled us in.”
+
+“And you are glad?” she asked. He laughed.
+
+“_Carpe diem_,” he said. “We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.”
+
+“Why hell, Siegmund?” she asked in displeasure.
+
+“I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I’m a failure,
+Helena. But,” he laughed, “this day of ours is a rose not many men have
+plucked.”
+
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
+fashion.
+
+“What does it matter, Helena?” he murmured. “What does it matter? We
+are here yet.”
+
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
+felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
+uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
+her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
+hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
+face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
+his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
+ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.
+
+“What is it, Helena?” he asked at last. “Why should you cry?”
+
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
+unrecognizable voice:
+
+“You won’t leave me, will you, Siegmund?”
+
+“How could I? How should I?” he murmured soothingly. She lifted her
+face suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+
+“How could I leave you?” he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
+the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
+the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
+Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
+heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
+thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
+with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
+so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
+become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
+thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
+and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
+urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
+incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
+her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
+wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart
+lifted slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was
+so incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
+flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
+soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
+decided, was supreme, transcendental.
+
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow
+specks of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the
+black sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a
+silver-greyness of stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night
+and the sea. Helena found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry,
+as she saw the sea, when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily
+with a reflection of stars.
+
+Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
+Ohne Regung ruht das Meer …
+
+
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
+she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
+her language.
+
+Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,
+Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein.
+
+
+She liked Heine best of all:
+
+Wie Träume der Kindheit seh’ ich es flimmern
+Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
+Und alte Erinnerung erzählt mir auf’s Neue
+Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
+Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben….
+
+
+As she lay in Siegmund’s arms again, and he was very still, dreaming
+she knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone,
+like the gleam of a falling star over water. The night moved on
+imperceptibly across the sky. Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave
+no sign, but passed unseen, unfelt, over them. Till the moon was ready
+to step forth. Then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small
+gathering of clouds round the opening gates:
+
+Aus alten Märchen winket es
+Hervor mit weisser Hand,
+Da singt es und da klingt es
+Von einem Zauberland.
+
+
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the
+clouds. She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful
+singsong, as children do.
+
+“What is it?” said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her
+singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having
+forgotten that he had asked her a question.
+
+“Turn your head,” she told him, when she had finished the verse, “and
+look at the moon.”
+
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his
+chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his
+nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+
+“‘_Die grossen Blumen schmachten_,’” she said to herself, curiously
+awake and joyous. “The big flowers open with black petals and silvery
+ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the
+bridegroom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled
+flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the _Zauberland_, Siegmund—this is
+the magic land.”
+
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on
+the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay
+still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange
+ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him
+sharp, breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her
+mouth and her cheeks and her forehead.
+
+“‘_Und Liebesweisen tönen_’-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing,
+Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the
+trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up
+their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven’t you-and it all
+centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in
+them all Siegmund—Siegmund!”
+
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow
+heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay
+prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the
+beautiful strong motion of his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength,
+she swooned lightly into unconsciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite
+heaving of his life beneath her.
+
+“I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!” she
+said to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon
+it. That she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness
+astonished her.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the
+life of Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath
+and the next. Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on
+her hands, she kissed him—a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse
+her soul into his for ever. Then she rose, sighing, sighing again
+deeply. She put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. “No
+more,” said her heart, almost as if it sighed too-“no more!”
+
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He
+lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at
+his side, looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as
+he lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him
+murmured; “Hawwa—Eve—Mother!” She stood compassionate over him. Without
+touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother. Her
+compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little Helena.
+This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her
+compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a
+personification of the great motherhood of women.
+
+“I am her child, too,” he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in
+sleep. He had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when
+he looked only into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and
+gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+
+“Come,” she said gently, when she knew he was restored. “Shall we go?”
+
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The
+hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into
+shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some
+distance, very great, it seemed.
+
+“I can’t get hold of them,” he said distractedly to himself. He felt
+detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things;
+as if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and
+unsupported, somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He
+wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of
+supporting and controlling his body. If he could lie down again
+perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter
+of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the
+moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly,
+joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support.
+Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked
+with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious.
+This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
+
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the
+hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in
+his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not
+notice it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
+
+“What is it?” he asked himself in wonder.
+
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke
+verbally to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
+insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
+from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
+of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
+stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
+securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became conscious
+of it.
+
+“Good Lord!” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is.”
+
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
+body—his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
+wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
+into another detached phrase. “There is nothing the matter with me,” he
+said.
+
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of
+wretched sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the
+times when he had fallen ill.
+
+“But I am not like that,” he said, “because I don’t feel tremulous. I
+am sure my hand is steady.”
+
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
+him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+
+“Yes, I think this is the right way,” said Helena, and they set off
+again, as if gaily.
+
+“It certainly feels rather deathly,” said Siegmund to himself. He
+remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
+stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was—and here
+he chose the French word—“_l’agonie_”. But his mother had seen and had
+cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
+spare her her suffering.
+
+“Certainly it is like that,” he said. “Certainly it is rather deathly.
+I wonder how it is.”
+
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+
+“I believe we are lost!” Helena interrupted him.
+
+“Lost! What matter!” he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
+tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. “But did we not come this
+way?” he added.
+
+“No. See”—her voice was reeded with restrained emotion—“we have
+certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.”
+
+“Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
+well, as much as we can,” said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
+where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
+clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
+the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
+left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
+
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
+happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
+beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
+been wandering in another—a glamorous, primordial world.
+
+“I suppose,” he said to himself, “I have lived too intensely, I seem to
+have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
+they’ve gone my house is weak.”
+
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
+reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
+
+“Surely,” he told himself, “I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
+my cup. My soul seems to leak out—I am half here, half gone away.
+That’s why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.”
+
+Then he came to the hour of Helena’s strange ecstasy over him. That,
+somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
+concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid
+wine was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which
+had been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
+vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
+his sickness, soothing him.
+
+“I suppose,” he said to himself for the last time, “I suppose living
+too intensely kills you, more or less.”
+
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
+The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
+veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
+lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
+seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as
+if Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
+horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them.
+They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder
+and a little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully,
+and they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching
+under the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of
+the moonlight.
+
+“We certainly did not come this way before,” she said triumphantly. The
+idea of being lost delighted her.
+
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
+glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was
+walking along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to
+belong to some state beyond ordinary experience—some place in romance,
+perhaps, or among the hills where Brünhild lay sleeping in her large
+bright halo of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two
+children of London wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He
+sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was
+condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him
+of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists
+of Arabian deserts.
+
+“We may be on the road to Newport,” said Helena presently, “and the
+distance is ten miles.”
+
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in
+this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening
+wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund
+looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he
+sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of
+which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her
+nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her,
+and grew heavy with responsibility.
+
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the
+night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled
+together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from
+the supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened.
+Helena walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night,
+actively searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they
+approached, listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside,
+in the darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces
+at the windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens,
+and went running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena
+laughed to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams
+playing with weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping
+cattle. This was the first time, she told herself, that she had ever
+been out among the grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She
+imagined herself lying asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid
+out down the moonbeams. She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room,
+while his dreams, dark-eyed, their blue eyes very dark and yearning at
+night-time, came wandering over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
+
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
+fain to remember that it was a long way—a long way. Siegmund’s arm was
+about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
+stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
+Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
+envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
+The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
+looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
+bowed his head.
+
+“Thirty years of earnest love; three years’ life like a passionate
+ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
+very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same;
+love, the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all
+the white beauty in the world.”
+
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
+the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
+treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though
+his compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund
+stepped softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
+
+“Let me get under cover,” he thought. “Let me hide in it; it is good,
+the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small, futile
+tragedy!”
+
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the
+silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her
+closer, leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His
+heart was heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his
+small, brave Helena.
+
+“Are you sure this is the right way?” he whispered to her.
+
+“Quite, quite sure,” she whispered confidently in reply. And presently
+they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the
+steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go
+with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping
+cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena’s heart was
+beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they
+wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this
+night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road
+not far from home.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a
+kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged,
+dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of
+morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before
+him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve
+and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
+
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice
+beside him say:
+
+“Where have they come from; do you know, sir?”
+
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing
+beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+
+“The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,” said Siegmund.
+
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+
+“They look rather incongruous, don’t you think? We left the sea empty
+and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping
+their eye on us!”
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+“You are not an Anarchist, I hope?” he said jestingly.
+
+“A Nihilist, perhaps,” laughed the other. “But I am quite fond of the
+Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can’t turn round without
+finding some policeman or other at your elbow—look at them, abominable
+ironmongery!—ready to put his hand on your shoulder.”
+
+The speaker’s grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced
+from the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The
+latter felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran
+so quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
+
+“I suppose we are in the hands of—God,” something moved Siegmund to
+say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the
+speaker.
+
+“Ah!” he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair,
+the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they
+returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. “Does the Czar sail
+this way?” he asked at last.
+
+“I do not know,” replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other’s
+penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+
+“I suppose the newspaper will tell us?” said the man.
+
+Sure to,” said Siegmund.
+
+“You haven’t seen it this morning?”
+
+“Not since Saturday.”
+
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at
+Siegmund.
+
+“You are not alone on your holiday?”
+
+“No.” Siegmund did not like this—he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+
+“I live here—at least for the present—name, Hampson—”
+
+“Why, weren’t you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years
+back?” asked Siegmund.
+
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
+fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused
+himself for having addressed Siegmund:
+
+“I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,” he said, “and
+as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
+re-acquainted.”
+
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+
+“I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It’s a pity to
+try and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don’t you think?”
+
+“Stare beyond it, you mean?” asked Siegmund.
+
+“Exactly!” replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. “I call a
+day like this ‘the blue room’. It’s the least draughty apartment in all
+the confoundedly draughty House of Life.”
+
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
+something in his own soul.
+
+“I mean,” the man explained, “that after all, the great mass of life
+that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
+blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can’t
+stop it, once we’ve begun to leak.”
+
+“What do you mean by ‘leak’?” asked Siegmund.
+
+“Goodness knows—I talk through my hat. But once you’ve got a bit tired
+of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
+dark—as you were doing.”
+
+“But, to use your metaphor, I’m not tired of the House—if you mean
+Life,” said Siegmund.
+
+“Praise God! I’ve met a poet who’s not afraid of having his pocket
+picked—or his soul, or his brain!” said the stranger, throwing his head
+back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+
+“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
+strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+
+“You’re not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
+suite of rooms—”
+
+“Tomorrow I am turned out of this ‘blue room’,” said Siegmund with a
+wry smile. The other looked at him seriously.
+
+“Dear Lord!” exclaimed Hampson; then: “Do you remember Flaubert’s
+saint, who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.”
+
+“Nor I,” shuddered Siegmund.
+
+“But you’ve got to-or something near it!”
+
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+
+“What of yourself?” he said, resentfully.
+
+“I’ve funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out,
+and staring from the window at the dark.”
+
+“But can’t you _do_ something?” said Siegmund.
+
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and
+showing his teeth.
+
+“I won’t ask you what _your_ intentions are,” he said, with delicate
+irony in his tone. “You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five
+hundred a year by hard work; but it’s no good. If you have acquired a
+liking for intensity in life, you can’t do without it. I mean vivid
+soul experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and
+physical excitement.”
+
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+
+“Well, and what then?” he said.
+
+“What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a _concentré_, you feed your normal flame with
+oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are
+always semi-transparent.”
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+“At least, I am quite opaque,” he said.
+
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+
+“Not altogether,” said Hampson. “And you, I should think, are one whose
+flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.”
+
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+
+“You haven’t much reserve. You’re like a tree that’ll flower till it
+kills itself,” the man continued. “You’ll run till you drop, and then
+you won’t get up again. You’ve no dispassionate intellect to control
+you and economize.”
+
+“You’re telling me very plainly what I am and am not,” said Siegmund,
+laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+
+“Oh, it’s only what I think,” replied Hampson. “We’re a good deal
+alike, you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn’t;
+but women have always done as they liked with me.”
+
+“That’s hardly so in my case,” said Siegmund.
+
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+
+“Say one woman; it’s enough,” he replied.
+
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+
+“The best sort of women—the most interesting—are the worst for us,”
+Hampson resumed. “By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
+animal in us. Then they are supersensitive—refined a bit beyond
+humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
+instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
+and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
+warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source
+of life. In us her force becomes evident.
+
+“She can’t live without us, but she destroys us. These deep,
+interesting women don’t want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit
+they can gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading
+to them and to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man
+in us—that is, us altogether.”
+
+“You’re a bit downright are you not?” asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
+did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such
+statements were arbitrary.
+
+“That’s according to my intensity,” laughed Hampson. “I can open the
+blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
+see—God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
+perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!”
+
+“Don’t you think it’s wrong to get like it?” asked Siegmund.
+
+“Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
+end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them;
+and the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.”
+
+Siegmund pondered a little….
+
+“You make me feel—as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,”
+he said slowly.
+
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands
+lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+
+“I can scarcely believe they are me,” he said. “If they rose up and
+refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren’t they beautiful?”
+
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger’s to his own hands, which lay curved
+on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature,
+but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
+Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over his
+thumbs.
+
+“I wonder,” said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, “that she
+can’t see it; I wonder she doesn’t cherish you. You are full and
+beautiful enough in the flesh—why will she help to destroy you, when
+she loved you to such extremity?”
+
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man,
+with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+
+“Fools—the fools, these women!” he said. “Either they smash their own
+crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands.
+Look at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick
+with compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold
+up by itself. I am very sorry.”
+
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of
+a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some
+weeks. Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it
+off.
+
+“I wish I didn’t go on like this,” said Hampson piteously. “I wish I
+could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is
+really hot.” He pulled open his flannel shirt.
+
+“I like the heat,” said Siegmund.
+
+“So do I.”
+
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some
+sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely
+to the village.
+
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful
+dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to
+find Helena.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again
+waiting. It was past nine o’clock, so she was growing impatient. To
+herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of
+verses she had bought in St Martin’s Lane for twopence.
+
+A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,
+As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew….
+
+
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself
+that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road for
+Siegmund.
+
+And now she takes the scissors on her thumb …
+Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+
+
+“H’m!” she said, “I really don’t know whether I like that or not.”
+
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+
+“He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned;
+but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose
+on the water!”
+
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+
+“But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them
+as I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch
+the flutter of a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting
+way to read this poet.”
+
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure
+enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his
+throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+
+“I have kept you waiting,” said Siegmund.
+
+“Well, I was reading, you see.”
+
+She would not admit her impatience.
+
+“I have been talking,” he said.
+
+“Talking!” she exclaimed in slight displeasure. “Have you found an
+acquaintance even here?”
+
+“A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel
+queer-sort of _Doppelgänger_, he was.”
+
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+
+“In what way?” she said.
+
+“He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
+The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the
+bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have
+you made the plans for today?”
+
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself
+to the scarlet and green salad.
+
+“Mrs Curtiss,” she said, in rather reedy tone, “has been very motherly
+to me this morning; oh, very motherly!”
+
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+
+“What, has she been saying something about last night?” he asked.
+
+“She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,” continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which
+showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+
+“Because we weren’t in till about eleven?” said Siegmund, also with
+sarcasm.
+
+“I mustn’t do it again. Oh no, I mustn’t do it again, really.”
+
+“For fear of alarming the old lady?” he asked.
+
+“‘You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal … but if I were your
+_mother_, I don’t know _how_ I should feel,’” she quoted.
+
+“When one engages rooms one doesn’t usually stipulate for a stepmother
+to nourish one’s conscience,” said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest
+of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed
+within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth
+were on edge.
+
+“I don’t _mind_ in the least,” she said. “The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.”
+
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+
+“I know I’m a moral coward,” he said bitterly.
+
+“Nonsense” she replied. Then, with a little heat: “But you _do_
+continue to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you
+needed justification.”
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+“I tell you—a little thing like this—it remains tied tight round
+something inside me, reminding me for hours—well, what everybody else’s
+opinion of me is.”
+
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+
+“I thought you were so sure we were right,” she said.
+
+He winced again.
+
+“In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world—”
+
+“If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?” she said brutally.
+
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+
+“What is myself?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing very definite,” she said, with a bitter laugh.
+
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him,
+and put her arms round his neck.
+
+“This is our last clear day, dear,” she said.
+
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her
+in his arms….
+
+“It will be hot today,” said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+
+“I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,” he replied.
+
+“I shall wear a hat—you had better do so too.”
+
+“No,” he said. “I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall
+get one.”
+
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to
+choose for himself.
+
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their
+remaining day.
+
+“I think, dear,” she said, “we ought to find the little path that
+escaped us last night.”
+
+“We were lucky to miss it,” he answered. “You don’t get a walk like
+that twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.”
+
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a
+loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was—a Londoner on holiday. He
+had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of
+a gentleman. He had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as
+he walked he looked unseeing in front of him.
+
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or
+a worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+_concentrée_ than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something
+she always seemed coiled within herself.
+
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her
+breasts, and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was
+a large, simple hat of burnt straw.
+
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun
+bite vigorously.
+
+“I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,” she said.
+
+“Why?” he laughed. “My hair is like a hood,” He ruffled it back with
+his hand. The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the
+butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the
+sky. The lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in
+the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. There was a
+ragged noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard.
+Two red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood
+in the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath,
+whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. The white
+legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the
+yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a
+faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The
+farmer’s wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if
+necessary.
+
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+
+“That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,” she said. “It
+is cruder than Theocritus.”
+
+“In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,” he laughed. “I think
+every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It
+would be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of
+one’s nose, and to own cattle and land.”
+
+“Would it?” asked Helena sceptically.
+
+“If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I
+should love it,”he said.
+
+“It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,” she replied.
+
+“To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the
+desideratum.”
+
+“Is it?” she asked ironically.
+
+“I would give anything to be like that,” he said.
+
+“That is, not to be yourself,” she said pointedly.
+
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+
+“Don’t they seem a long way off?” he said, staring at the bucolic
+scene. “They are farther than Theocritus—down there is farther than
+Sicily, and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren’t.”
+
+“Why do you?” she cried, with curious impatience.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly
+opposite the path through the furze.
+
+“There it is!” she cried, “How could we miss it?”
+
+“Ascribe it to the fairies,” he replied, whistling the bird music out
+of _Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.
+
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the
+cliff’s edge, she said:
+
+“This shall be our house today.”
+
+“Welcome home!” said Siegmund.
+
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out
+to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind
+was slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they
+could hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the
+water below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay
+with his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put
+her page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began
+to read.
+
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring
+with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually
+drawing her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her
+eyes wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam
+in “Adam Cast Forth”. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure
+strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive
+wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with
+struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the
+face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen
+with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.
+Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,
+abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss
+him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her
+position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on
+his hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under
+a sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+
+“It will make him ill,” she whispered to herself, and she bent over to
+smell the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his
+forehead. She felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow
+becoming inflamed with the sun-scalding.
+
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea
+was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses
+of Freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley.
+Green Farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat
+and sleep. In the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless.
+Helena was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water.
+
+“‘And there shall be no more sea,’” she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+
+“No more sea, no more anything,” she thought dazedly, as she sat in the
+midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the
+lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this
+tremendous furnace, leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag
+seamed with metal. She tried to imagine herself resuming the old
+activities, the old manner of living.
+
+“It is impossible,” she said; “it is impossible! What shall I be when I
+come out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in
+another shape. No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What
+will become of us—what will happen?”
+
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun
+furnace by Siegmund’s waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath,
+and looked smiling at Helena.
+
+“It is worth while to sleep,” said he, “for the sake of waking like
+this. I was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.”
+
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She
+smiled upon him almost in condescension.
+
+“I should like to realize your dream,” she said. “This is terrible!”
+
+They went to the cliff’s edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from
+the water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face,
+and put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+
+“It is really a very fine sun,” said Siegmund lightly. “I feel as if I
+were almost satisfied with heat.”
+
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived,
+while she affects a light interest in another’s pleasure. This time,
+when Siegmund “failed to follow her”, as she put it, she felt she must
+follow him.
+
+“You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,” she said,
+smiling; “even a sufficiency of me.”
+
+“Ay!” said Siegmund drowsily. “I think I am. I think this is about
+perfect, don’t you?”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“I want nothing more and nothing different,” he continued; “and that’s
+the extreme of a decent time, I should think.”
+
+“The extreme of a decent time!” she repeated.
+
+But he drawled on lazily:
+
+“I’ve only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I’ve got
+all the cheese—which is you, my dear.”
+
+“I certainly feel eaten up,” she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him
+lying in a royal ease, his eyes naïve as a boy’s, his whole being
+careless. Although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she
+felt very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a
+sense of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy,
+his fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his
+buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or
+spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the
+path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them.
+Slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid’s chair,
+wheeling silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man,
+was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his
+pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted
+body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken
+eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half
+obscure to him. Siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he
+should see. Helena looked intently for two seconds. She thought of the
+torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide—“the life
+tide,” she said to herself. The pain of the invalid overshadowed her
+own distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+
+“Come!” she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the
+completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+
+“We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow—so
+quiet,” she said to herself.
+
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her
+own state, after her own fashion.
+
+“The Mist Spirit,” she said to herself. “The Mist Spirit draws a
+curtain round us—it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a
+thin, torn curtain sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the
+curtain again, I do not want to think of the outside. I am afraid of
+the outside, and I am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. I
+want to be in our own fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.”
+
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+
+“Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next
+year, and stay for a whole month?”
+
+“If there be any next year,” said she.
+
+Siegmund did not reply.
+
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were
+mocking fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards their
+lodging.
+
+“There will be an end to this,” said Helena, communing with herself.
+“And when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No
+matter—let come what will. All along Fate has been resolving, from the
+very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar
+progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous
+harmonies with our lives. Really, the working out has been wondrous, is
+wondrous now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to suffer an
+anti-climax. I am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to
+allow a bathetic anti-climax.”
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
+on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
+perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
+with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
+without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
+clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
+of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
+waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
+each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
+copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed,
+spell-bound, for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was
+merely aware that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her
+in the traces, like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
+
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
+that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
+time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
+Siegmund’s life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
+anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
+self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
+self-revelation took hold on him.
+
+“It is awfully funny,” he said. “I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
+army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
+Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
+through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
+the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
+
+“He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
+and was to go into father’s business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
+very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
+convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little
+while, but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles
+above me—which she was. She wasn’t bad-looking, either, and you know
+men all like her. I bet she’d marry again, in spite of the children.
+
+“At first I fluttered round her. I remember I’d got a little, silky
+moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I
+was mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert
+went off abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our
+house. The mother was an invalid.
+
+“I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened
+off the smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two
+sisters and Beatrice talking about good-looking men.
+
+“‘I consider Bertram will make a handsome man,’ said my younger sister.
+
+“‘He’s got beautiful eyes,’ said my other sister.
+
+“‘And a real darling nose and chin!’ cried Beatrice. ‘If only he was
+more _solide_! He is like a windmill, all limbs.’
+
+“‘He will fill out. Remember, he’s not quite seventeen,’ said my elder
+sister.
+
+“‘Ah, he is _doux_—he is _câlin_,’ said Beatrice.
+
+“‘I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age,’ said my elder sister.
+
+“‘But he’s a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are,’ my
+younger sister chimed in.
+
+“‘Ah, _si, si_!’ cried Beatrice.
+
+“I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+
+“‘Hello, is somebody in here?’ I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+
+“I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed
+an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I
+of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white
+hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now,
+great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green;
+and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of
+Beatrice … her great dark eyes.
+
+“It’s funny, but Beatrice is as dead—ay, far more dead—than Dante’s.
+And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
+
+“I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
+Beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always
+jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen,
+earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when
+we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it
+awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
+
+“There’s the romance. I wonder how it will all end.”
+
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before
+Helena’s day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea
+that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and
+wonderful a thing in a man’s life as birth, or adolescence, or death,
+was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of
+disillusion.
+
+“Come to think of it,” Siegmund continued, “I have always shirked.
+Whenever I’ve been in a tight corner I’ve gone to Pater.”
+
+“I think,” she said, “marriage has been a tight corner you couldn’t get
+out of to go to anybody.”
+
+“Yet I’m here,” he answered simply.
+
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+
+“And some men would have made a better job of it. When it’s come to
+sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite
+of her, I’ve always funked. I tell you I’m something of a moral
+coward.”
+
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, “So be it.”
+Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
+discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
+finally—Siegmund.
+
+“In my life,” she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, “I
+might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside—brownies
+running and fairies peeping—just beyond the common, ugly place where I
+am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
+glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.”
+
+“You are so hard to get at,” said Siegmund. “And so scornful of
+familiar things.”
+
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
+that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
+teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
+darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
+Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
+Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside
+her whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
+
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
+day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
+night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
+after moments of intense living.
+
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
+herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
+dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey
+ash, and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
+
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
+livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
+fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done
+wrong again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She
+had a destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices
+echoed back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint
+against her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to
+petty, mean conclusions.
+
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord.
+Despair grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any
+her dreary, lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no
+longer.
+
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
+was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
+Walküre_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
+really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
+that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
+the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
+soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
+whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
+radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man,
+past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly—in
+short, something of the “clothed animal on end”, like the rest of men.
+
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
+her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
+he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of
+her soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
+
+“Siegmund!” she said in despair.
+
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
+distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
+her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
+arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
+
+“What is it, dear? Is something wrong?”
+
+His voice was nothing to her—it was stupid. She felt his arms round
+her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
+beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
+He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She
+did not want his brute embrace—she was most utterly alone, gripped so
+in his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her
+free to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his
+heart, the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated,
+repulsed her. She struggled to escape.
+
+“What is it? Won’t you tell me what is the matter?” he pleaded.
+
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
+tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
+held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
+brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud,
+thud.
+
+“Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me—at any rate tell me, Helena.”
+
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to
+be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
+His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong
+working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic
+to be free.
+
+“Let me go!” she cried. “Let me go! Let me go!” He held her in
+bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed
+him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her
+suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
+
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down,
+sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a
+small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee
+beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
+
+“Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell
+me, Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!”
+
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside
+herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this
+unreasoning pleading of his voice.
+
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt
+on one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense
+silence was crackling with the sound of Helena’s dry, hissing sobs. He
+remained silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a
+while, he put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
+
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, “It is enough,” He went behind the
+small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to
+hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush
+under which he could find cover.
+
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf,
+trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul,
+he lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long
+time before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely
+bear, even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
+
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself.
+At length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she
+could have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect
+tickled her face. Was somebody coming?
+
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied
+herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like
+a thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
+She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.
+
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at
+them.
+
+“Dear!” she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to
+struggle with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have
+died than face anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+
+“Dear, someone is looking,” she pleaded.
+
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They
+walked on.
+
+“Forgive me, dear,” she said softly.
+
+“Nay, it’s not you,” he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on
+till the night seemed private. She turned to him, and “Siegmund!” she
+said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
+
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her
+face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she
+offered it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed,
+dreamy.
+
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The
+stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived
+first one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness
+over the sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he
+remembered how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would
+tremble and set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after
+point with yellow drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by
+one, delicately with his rod. The night was religious, then, with its
+proper order of worship. Day and night had their ritual, and passed in
+uncouth worship.
+
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night,
+where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the
+stars catch fire. At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might
+be. Helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which
+he touched with his lips as part of the service.
+
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he
+was quite alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her
+woman’s breast have hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching
+the unknown. But this night he did not want comfort. If he were “an
+infant crying in the night”, it was crying that a woman could not
+still. He was abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. He, in
+loneliness, must search the night for faith.
+
+“My fate is finely wrought out,” he thought to himself. “Even damnation
+may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I
+must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don’t want to
+botch and bungle even damnation.”
+
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of
+his acts. Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though
+he could not see it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing
+softly in token of submission.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
+of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That
+was insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him—she was
+afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
+little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why
+had she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had
+lost him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
+
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
+gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
+back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+
+“What are you thinking of?” she asked.
+
+“I?” he replied. “I really don’t know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.”
+
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
+speech, she asked:
+
+“Was I very cruel, dear?”
+
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
+drew her close into him.
+
+“It was pretty bad, I suppose,” he replied. “But I should think neither
+of us could help it.”
+
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
+helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
+shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
+in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
+delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to her
+Madonna.
+
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time,
+till at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss
+of healing and renewal—long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
+free, turned sharply aside, and said:
+
+“Shall we go down to the water?”
+
+“If you like,” he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
+with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the
+restless water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there
+stretched a long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and
+smeared with star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with
+lustrous stars.
+
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on
+a tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They
+lay close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large
+star which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a
+thin streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
+star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
+the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
+star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone
+home. He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What
+was behind the gate?
+
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
+populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+
+Siegmund was considering.
+
+“What _was_ the matter with you?” he asked.
+
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
+her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
+in experience:
+
+“Why, you see, dear, you won’t understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it—the crying of lives I have touched….”
+
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
+also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled with
+shame.
+
+“….A crying of lives against me, and I couldn’t silence them, nor
+escape out of the darkness. I wanted you—I saw you in front, whistling
+the Spring Song, but I couldn’t find you—it was not you—I couldn’t find
+you.”
+
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+
+“No, I don’t see it,” he said. “You would always be you. I could think
+of hating you, but you’d still be yourself.”
+
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved
+her mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt
+itself.
+
+“Sometimes,” she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, “you lose me.”
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+“I lose you!” he repeated. “You mean I lose my attraction for you, or
+my hold over you, and then you—?”
+
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+
+“It shall not be any more,” she said.
+
+“All right,” he replied, “since you decide it.”
+
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+
+“You mustn’t be bitter,” she murmured.
+
+“Four days is enough,” he said. “In a fortnight I should be intolerable
+to you. I am not masterful.”
+
+“It is not so, Siegmund,” she said sharply.
+
+“I give way always,” he repeated. “And then—tonight!”
+
+“Tonight, tonight!” she cried in wrath. “Tonight I have been a fool!”
+
+“And I?” he asked.
+
+“You—what of you?” she cried. Then she became sad. “I have little
+perverse feelings,” she lamented.
+
+“And I can’t bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I’m
+always pushed this way and that, like a fool.”
+
+“You don’t know how you hurt me, talking so,” she said.
+
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+
+“You are not like other folk. ‘_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht_.’ I thought of you when we read it.”
+
+“Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
+Which is it?”
+
+“Neither,” he said. “You are _you_.”
+
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
+faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
+in black silhouette between them and the sea.
+
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
+life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
+read with him—she loved its loose and violent romance—came back to his
+mind: “_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
+immer tiefer ins Leben._”
+
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
+home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+
+“This time tomorrow night,” he said.
+
+“Siegmund!” she implored.
+
+“Why not?” he laughed.
+
+“Don’t, dear,” she pleaded.
+
+“All right, I won’t.”
+
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
+little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
+on them now and again.
+
+“You won’t be tired when you go back?” Helena asked.
+
+“Tired!” he echoed.
+
+“You know how you were when you came,” she reminded him, in tones full
+of pity. He laughed.
+
+“Oh, that is gone,” he said.
+
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+
+“And will you be sad?” she said, hesitating.
+
+“Sad!” he repeated.
+
+“But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
+back?”
+
+“The old life will take me up, I suppose,” he said.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+“I think, dear,” she said, “I have done wrong.”
+
+“Good Lord—you have not!” he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
+look at her, for the first time.
+
+“I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies—tomorrow—as
+you are now….”
+
+“‘Take no thought for the morrow.’ Be quiet, Helena!” he exclaimed as
+the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+
+“Why?” she asked, afraid.
+
+“Why!” he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
+staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
+terrified her, and she lost courage.
+
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
+on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
+laughed, then became tender.
+
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
+half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
+sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered
+sobs, as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of
+the doctor and hides in the mother’s bosom, refusing to be touched.
+
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered
+down on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the
+subsequent days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She
+was filled with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the
+oneness and unity of their fates was gone.
+
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
+definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
+certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
+Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and
+its consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
+
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started
+to see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
+ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come
+up, resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
+waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
+looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
+the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the
+waves. It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon
+the table of the sea?
+
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
+this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
+overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
+over the sea—a libation.
+
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
+wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
+and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
+the moon looked frail and empty.
+
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
+of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. “I gather it up
+into myself,” he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees
+were watching, too. “If I have spilled my life,” he thought, “the
+unfamiliar eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.”
+
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
+moon.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven
+o’clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+
+“But it is finest of all to wake,” he said, as the bright sunshine of
+the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted
+hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.
+
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that
+his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium
+glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of
+the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,
+offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the
+brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him
+with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.
+
+“They are all extraordinarily sweet,” said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies
+fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.
+Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.
+
+“The careless little beggars!” he said.
+
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely
+dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining
+to meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_
+of diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love.
+Siegmund had never recognized before the affection that existed between
+him and everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and
+indispensable to us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave
+them, and we break our hearts.
+
+“We have been very happy together,” everything seemed to say.
+
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+
+“It is very lovely,” he said, “whatever happens.”
+
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last
+night’s experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed
+by his usual altar-stone.
+
+“How closely familiar everything is,” he thought. “It seems almost as
+if the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.”
+
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering
+fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his
+own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with
+things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and
+seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath
+his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with
+wondering pleasure.
+
+“They find no fault with me,” he said. “I suppose they are as fallible
+as I, and so don’t judge,” he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the
+water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+
+“Once more,” he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very
+quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam
+towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like
+beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see
+fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white
+peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a
+sheen of silver.
+
+“Helena is right,” he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming,
+but moving upon the bosom of the tide; “she is right, it is all
+enchanted. I have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is
+like.”
+
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round
+the terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald
+facets of the water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his
+foot; they were hard, cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made
+for the archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. There
+under water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls,
+were sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair,
+vividly green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the
+morning, their hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half afraid of
+their frantic efforts.
+
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch.
+There was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white,
+full-fleshed walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that
+danced in and out among themselves. Siegmund was carried along in an
+invisible chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. The tide swerved,
+threw him as he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow
+met the rock, and he was sick with pain. He held his breath, trying to
+get back the joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely,
+smooth side of the rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of
+muscles, could have hurt him thus. He let the water carry him till he
+might climb out on to the shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder,
+and twisted to look at his arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly,
+merely a ragged scarlet patch no bigger than a carnation petal. The
+bruise, however, was painful, especially when, a minute or two later,
+he bent his arm.
+
+“No,” said he pitiably to himself, “it is impossible it should have
+hurt me. I suppose I was careless.”
+
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
+looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
+bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
+gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of
+the sea-shore played together.
+
+“Surely,” said Siegmund, “they take no notice of me; they do not care a
+jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.”
+
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
+the cliffs.
+
+“I was mistaken,” he said. “It was an illusion.”
+
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
+windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
+another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other
+white rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own
+pursuit and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
+or comrade.
+
+“They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
+after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do I
+matter?”
+
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+
+We are not long for music and laughter,
+    Love and desire and hate;
+I think we have no portion in them after
+    We pass the gate.
+
+
+“Why should I be turned out of the game?” he asked himself, rebelling.
+He frowned, and answered: “Oh, Lord!—the old argument!”
+
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+
+“Like the puff from the steamer’s funnel, I should be gone.”
+
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
+maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
+
+“Nothing, in the place where I am,” he said. “Gone, like a puff of
+steam that melts on the sunshine.”
+
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
+a joke.
+
+“And I,” he said, lying down in the warm sand, “I am nothing. I do not
+count; I am inconsiderable.”
+
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
+was arguing with himself.
+
+“Well,” he said, “if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.”
+
+But the vulgar proverb arose—“Better a live dog than a dead lion,” to
+answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
+overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God’s earth. Surely that
+was a great ignominy.
+
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same
+sea-shore with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to
+explore, to discover small treasures. For her the world was still a
+great wonder-box which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all
+its crevices. She had bathed in many rock-pools’ tepid baths, trying
+first one, then another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms
+of the ocean lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful
+lover.
+
+“The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,” she said, as she rose panting,
+trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
+flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
+Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of
+passion.
+
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
+did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
+anemone’s fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
+laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
+trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening
+insidiously her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave
+round the bend. There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the
+large stones; the air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the
+gloom, bending, though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel
+of the seaweed beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up
+beneath the fucus as she crept along on the big stones; it returned
+with a quiet gurgle which made her shudder, though even that was not
+disagreeable. It needed, for all that, more courage than was easy to
+summon before she could step off her stone into the black pool that
+confronted her. It was festooned thick with weeds that slid under her
+feet like snakes. She scrambled hastily upwards towards the outlet.
+
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
+window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
+throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
+dragon’s hole.
+
+“How surprised they will be to see me!” said Helena, scrambling
+forward, laughing.
+
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
+white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below
+the flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it
+hung the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God.
+Helena stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment,
+when she stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself
+for a thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His
+white incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her
+lips were parted in a woman’s joy of adoration.
+
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+
+“It is good,” said Helena; “it is very good.” She looked again, and saw
+the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
+pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
+they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white
+dog.
+
+“It is really wonderful here!” said she; but the moment had gone, she
+could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
+while she turned away.
+
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
+the beach to her.
+
+“You are not gone, then?” he said.
+
+“Siegmund!” she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if
+it could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
+face was glowing with the sun’s inflaming, but Helena did not notice
+that his eyes were full of misery.
+
+“I, actually,” he said, smiling.
+
+“I did not expect you,” she said, still looking at him in radiant
+wonder. “I could easier have expected”—she hesitated, struggled, and
+continued—“Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,” she said,
+looking radiantly up into Siegmund’s face. “Isn’t it beautiful this
+morning?” she added.
+
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
+kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
+of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
+beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+
+“Isn’t the sea wonderful this morning?” asked Helena, as she wrung the
+water from her costume.
+
+“It is very fine,” he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
+said: “It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
+and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.”
+
+“Yes,” said Siegmund, “the morning is perfect.”
+
+“It is,” assented Helena warmly. “Have you noticed the waves? They are
+like a line of children chased by a white dog.”
+
+“Ay!” said Siegmund.
+
+“Didn’t you have a good time?” she asked, touching with her finger-tips
+the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+
+“I swam to my little bay again,” he replied.
+
+“Did you?” she exclaimed, pleased.
+
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
+holding them to Siegmund to dry.
+
+“I am very hungry,” she said.
+
+“And I,” he agreed.
+
+“I feel quite established here,” she said gaily, something in his
+position having reminded her of their departure.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn’t
+it?” she insisted.
+
+“I wish we might never go back,” he said.
+
+Helena sighed.
+
+“It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
+Siegmund,” she said.
+
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+
+“It has been something, dear,” she repeated.
+
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+
+“Everything,” he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress.
+He could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. “Everything!” he said.
+
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+
+“I did well, didn’t I, Siegmund?” she asked. Helena felt the
+responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
+withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
+word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
+
+“Wonderfully well, Helena,” he replied.
+
+She kissed his forehead.
+
+“You are everything,” he said.
+
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs
+Curtiss brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of
+delicate, gentle manner.
+
+“The water would be warm this morning,” she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying
+from one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of
+the amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers,
+in his capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
+
+“It was,” assented Helena. “It was as warm as new milk.”
+
+“Ay, it would be,” said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
+experience of Siegmund and his beloved. “And did ye see the ships of
+war?” she asked.
+
+“No, they had gone,” replied Helena.
+
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+
+“You’ll be coming in to dinner today?” asked the old lady.
+
+Helena arranged the matter.
+
+“I think ye both look better,” Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
+Siegmund.
+
+He smiled constrainedly.
+
+“I thought ye looked so worn when you came,” she said sympathetically.
+
+“He had been working hard,” said Helena, also glancing at him.
+
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+
+“Ay,” sympathized the little woman. “And it’s a very short time for
+you. What a pity ye can’t stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday.
+They are grand, so they say.”
+
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. “Have you never seen
+them?” she asked.
+
+“No,” replied Mrs. Curtiss. “I’ve never been able to get; but I hope to
+go yet.”
+
+“I hope you may,” said Siegmund.
+
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
+quite satisfied.
+
+“Well,” she said brightly, “the eggs must be done by now.”
+
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+
+“I’ve brought you,” she said, “some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye’ll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
+come back.”
+
+“How could we help?” laughed Helena.
+
+“We will,” smiled Siegmund.
+
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
+Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
+presence of the delightful little lady.
+
+“This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,” she
+said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+
+“One of the few places where everything is friendly,” she said. “And
+everybody.”
+
+“You have made so many enemies?” he asked, with gentle irony.
+
+“Strangers,” she replied. “I seem to make strangers of all the people I
+meet.”
+
+She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her
+intently. He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+
+“Need we go—need we leave this place of friends?” he said, as if
+ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: “One, two,
+three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,” she
+laughed.
+
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
+currants she had extricated for him.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
+which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
+a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the
+reckless little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks
+of an old yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
+
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
+them.
+
+“Who called them ‘fairies’ telephones’?” she said to herself. “They are
+tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children
+dawdling along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See
+how they take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine!
+And when they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some
+fairies in the dark will gather them away. They won’t be here in the
+morning, shrivelled and dowdy … If only we could curl up and be gone,
+after our day….”
+
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+
+“It is good when life holds no anti-climax,” she said.
+
+“Ay!” he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked
+with bent head, abstract, but happy.
+
+“What is she thinking?” he asked himself. “She is sufficient to
+herself—she doesn’t want me. She has her own private way of communing
+with things, and is friends with them.”
+
+“The dew has been very heavy,” she said, turning, and looking up at him
+from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+
+“I see it has,” he answered. Then to himself he said: “She can’t
+translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can’t
+render herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto
+herself: she only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to
+bathe in me. After a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not
+indispensable….”
+
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
+the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
+roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
+edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
+brilliant with dew.
+
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
+lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
+avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
+and looked angrily at the house—not at anything in particular.
+
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
+decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+
+“Amy! Amy!”
+
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
+indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
+calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
+he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
+
+“He is in a bad temper,” laughed Siegmund.
+
+“Breakfast is late,” said Helena with contempt.
+
+“Look!” said Siegmund.
+
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
+holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
+gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot
+with hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward,
+opened the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the
+lawn. Then the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady
+veranda.
+
+There was a quick sound of women’s low, apologetic voices, overridden
+by the resentful abuse of the man.
+
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+
+“Imagine that breakfast-table!” said Siegmund.
+
+“I feel,” said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, “as
+if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.”
+
+“There are many such roosts,” said Siegmund pertinently.
+
+Helena’s cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
+winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the
+next incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
+humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
+fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
+self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
+time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
+her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
+of his tortured self-respect.
+
+“At least,” he said, in mortification of himself—“at least, someone
+must recognize a strain of God in me—and who does? I don’t believe in
+it myself.”
+
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized
+passion, the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a
+brilliant bead, all their beauty ran together out of the common ore,
+and Siegmund saw it naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the
+shifting magic of this bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he
+would look for the beauty and find the dirt. What was he to do?
+
+“You know, Domine,” said Helena—it was his old nickname she used—“you
+look quite stern today.”
+
+“I feel anything but stern,” he laughed. “Weaker than usual, in fact.”
+
+“Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
+gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you—you seem so
+grave.”
+
+He laughed.
+
+“And shall I not be brave?” he said. “Can’t you smell _Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae_?” He turned quickly to Helena. “I wonder if that’s
+right,” he said. “It’s years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
+it had all gone.”
+
+“In the first place, what does it mean?” said Helena calmly, “for I can
+only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of such
+stuff.”
+
+“Why,” said Siegmund, rather abashed, “only ‘the row and the smoke of
+Rome’. But it is remarkable, Helena”—here the peculiar look of interest
+came on his face again—“it is really remarkable that I should have said
+that.”
+
+“Yes, you look surprised,” smiled she.
+
+“But it must be twenty”—he counted—“twenty-two or three years since I
+learned that, and I forgot it—goodness knows how long ago. Like a
+drowning man, I have these memories before….” He broke off, smiling
+mockingly, to tease her.
+
+“Before you go back to London,” said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
+ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
+let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. “No,” she said,
+with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing
+the rise to the cliff’s edge. “I can’t say that I smell the smoke of
+London. The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is”—she pointed to the
+heavy, purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the
+sloping sky and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning’s
+mist-curtain, thick and blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway
+its fringe.
+
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird’s-foot
+trefoil of the cliff’s edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
+drooped over everything.
+
+“Six hours,” thought Helena, “and we shall have passed the
+mist-curtain. Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving
+my hand. I will not wave my hand.”
+
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
+allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
+Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
+spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
+
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
+also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
+said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena’s lover, yet
+he felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast
+which neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even
+Helena, could untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
+
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
+disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
+seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
+mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
+interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
+twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
+surprising.
+
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
+the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
+white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
+softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+
+“The little fool!” said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
+the light.
+
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
+ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement
+the wild spinning of the lights.
+
+“Even if I were free,” he continued to think, “we should only grow
+apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
+laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+
+“Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love
+sufficiently to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not
+follow her or understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of
+compulsion. I cannot compel anybody to follow me.
+
+“So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
+sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no
+footing to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to
+get back. When can I set my feet on when this is gone?”
+
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
+Siegmund’s mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
+looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+
+“I feel as if it were burning into me,” thought Siegmund abstractedly.
+“It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
+ill.” Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to
+the sun.
+
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+
+“This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?”
+
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
+which to lie.
+
+“Shall we not go under the rocks?” said Helena.
+
+“Look!” he said, “the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.”
+
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
+with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was
+dreadful.
+
+“My arms, Siegmund,” said she. “They feel as if they were dipped in
+fire.”
+
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+
+“Are you sure it is not bad for you—your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?”
+
+He laughed stupidly.
+
+“That is all right,” he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
+him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain,
+he said:
+
+“I _think_ we should be able to keep together if”—he faltered—“if only
+I could have you a little longer. I have never had you …”
+
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
+of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
+savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
+beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
+would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
+
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
+lips on her cheek, he murmured:
+
+“I should be able, shouldn’t I, Helena?”
+
+“You are always able!” she cried. “It is I who play with you at
+hiding.”
+
+“I have really had you so little,” he said.
+
+“Can’t you forget it, Siegmund?” she cried. “Can’t you forget it? It
+was only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can’t
+you forget it, dear?”
+
+“You can’t do without me?” he asked.
+
+“If I lose you I am lost,” answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
+safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
+
+“I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
+us,” said Helena to herself. “They may go back to hell.”
+
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be
+reft away.
+
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
+to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
+out to sea and lost.
+
+“If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
+were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
+should get stronger and more upright.”
+
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
+two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
+leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
+his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
+great power.
+
+“If,” thought she, “the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
+and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
+Siegmund in my arms….”
+
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
+falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
+that it made silence sweet.
+
+“If now,” prayed Siegmund, “death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
+were dark….”
+
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving
+the bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
+rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
+that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the
+shadow-finger of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was,
+not to return, to let the finger travel and be gone. But then … Helena
+knew she must not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was
+too late, and travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would
+not get up. He lay in suspense, waiting.
+
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+
+“It is time, Siegmund,” she said.
+
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
+She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
+him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
+inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
+sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth.
+Still he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her
+heart crushed with grief for him.
+
+“We must go, Siegmund,” she whispered.
+
+“All right,” he said, but still he did not move.
+
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
+air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving.
+His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too
+strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the
+sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
+
+“We shall be too late,” she said in distress.
+
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She
+put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself
+together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
+
+“Why, what time is it?”
+
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his
+left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
+
+“I can’t see the figures,” he said. “Everything is dimmed, as if it
+were coming dark.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. “My eyes
+were the same. It is the strong sunlight.”
+
+“I can’t,” he repeated, and he was rather surprised—“I can’t see the
+time. Can you?”
+
+She stooped down and looked.
+
+“It is half past one,” she said.
+
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time
+to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: “I
+feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling
+in my body is dulled.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Helena, “I am afraid it will do you harm.”
+
+“At any rate,” he smiled as if sleepily, “I have had enough. If it’s
+too much—what _is_ too much?”
+
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+
+“We are going back—we are going back!” the heart of Helena seemed to
+run hot, beating these words.
+
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the
+edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over
+the sea. The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks
+bleaching in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful
+scent upon the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood
+still. Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful,
+incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund’s
+mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then
+turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he
+had enjoyed, “_Addio_!” he said.
+
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+
+“It reminds me of Traviata—an ‘_Addio_’ at every verse-end.”
+
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it
+jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve.
+“_Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o_!” he whistled between his teeth, hissing
+out the Italian’s passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her
+fists.
+
+“I suppose,” she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check
+this discord—“I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey—Thursday.”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Siegmund.
+
+“There will not be very many people,” she insisted.
+
+“I think,” he said, in a very quiet voice, “you’d better let me go by
+the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.”
+
+“But why?” she exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+“I don’t want to sit looking at you all the way,” he said.
+
+“But why should you?” she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed.
+
+“Indeed, no!” she said. “We shall go together.”
+
+“Very well,” he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the
+little post office, he said:
+
+“I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.”
+
+“You haven’t sent them any word?” she asked.
+
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood
+still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+
+“Shall I?” he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner
+was rather peculiar.
+
+“Well, I should think so,” faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and
+cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a
+telegraph form.
+
+“My God!” he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could
+not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled
+his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the
+amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her
+finger, he felt sick with irony.
+
+“That’s right,” she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form
+to the instrument. “What beautiful weather!” she continued. “It will be
+making you sorry to leave us.”
+
+“There goes my warrant,” thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of
+paper under the post-mistress’s heavy hand.
+
+“Yes—it is too bad, isn’t it,” he replied, bowing and laughing to the
+woman.
+
+“It is, sir,” she answered pleasantly. “Good morning.”
+
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face
+like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression
+told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her
+falter with dismay.
+
+“What is he thinking of?” she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back.
+“And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them at
+home?”
+
+“Well,” said Siegmund, “are there any postcards?”
+
+“None that I care to take,” she replied. “Perhaps you would like one of
+these?”
+
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary
+views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+
+“I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,” he
+said.
+
+“Or a brush,” said Helena.
+
+“She does not understand,” said Siegmund to himself. “And whatever I do
+I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.”
+
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings
+resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each
+other with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the
+houses, the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the
+railway with exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach.
+They felt as if they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to
+speak or think, they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in
+vain to keep back her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
+
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
+shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
+at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
+who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that
+here was room for all. Faces innumerable—hot, blue-eyed faces—strained
+to look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
+and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
+into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered
+himself carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund
+watched the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself
+between his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself
+against the side of the carriage. The German’s hips came down tight
+against her. She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape
+the pressure of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man
+squeezed in the opposite direction.
+
+“I am afraid I press you,” he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
+German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
+she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his
+words.
+
+“Oh no,” she answered. “You do not crush me.”
+
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
+The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
+slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
+remark in German: “Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?”
+
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
+each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
+over “Billy”—this being a nickname discovered for the German
+Emperor—and what he would be saying of the Czar’s trip; they questioned
+each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
+going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
+were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
+
+Helena’s stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
+tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the naïve type: he talked with
+face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
+spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
+Helena—who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove—struggling to
+escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
+beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+
+“I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!” He glanced round in
+perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
+her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free Helena,
+and said:
+
+“Forgive me, I am sorry.”
+
+“You are forgiven,” replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
+her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
+at this. The good humour was complete.
+
+“Thank you,” said the German gratefully.
+
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh.
+Helena rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made
+no attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German’s apologies,
+and the sight of his lover’s face had moved him more than he could
+tell.
+
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
+intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
+never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
+between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
+race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
+Siegmund’s pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
+same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
+It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
+birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
+never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him the
+mistress.
+
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining,
+like a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund’s resentment
+against her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity.
+She was very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous
+clinging made her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw
+her now, small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked
+at her. But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was
+alone, little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes
+when it has done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be
+left behind; death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with
+him from this house of strangers which she called “life”. She had to go
+on alone, like a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+
+“What will she do?” Siegmund asked himself, “when her loneliness comes
+upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
+the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
+strength is established. But what then?”
+
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would
+go on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He
+had not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she
+do when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not
+conceive. Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
+
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
+inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
+and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it
+became acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a
+boy he had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an
+hour with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great
+concentration.
+
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
+eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
+an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
+her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had
+peculiar hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they
+were cool or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but
+then they were instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a
+peculiar jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held
+her hand. Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little
+virtue were passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as
+nonsense.
+
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
+faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
+clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
+them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
+sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
+endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour’s body, the
+atmosphere of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing
+that could relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its
+hold.
+
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
+heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve
+to support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her
+out of himself whatever she wanted.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.
+It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown
+loftily together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves,
+like a concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. To
+Siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers
+crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from
+the street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay as
+snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,
+without any joy.
+
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their
+steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to
+stimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned
+slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber
+floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;
+small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the
+sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft
+stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were
+men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags
+through a sky dim with distance.
+
+“It is all very glad,” said Siegmund to himself, “but it seems to be
+fanciful.”
+
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to
+his destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that
+lies between us and our goal.
+
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
+blue afternoon.
+
+“We must leave it; we must pass out of it,” she lamented, over and over
+again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+
+“I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,” she said to
+herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
+as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
+their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
+sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over
+the swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark
+head and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending
+over some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the
+low stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer
+was sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was
+coursing straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first.
+Stretching forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm,
+making no sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming
+steamer.
+
+“Look!” cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
+watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
+with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
+veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
+lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
+the high sweeping chisel of the steamer’s bows; the husband stood
+rigid, staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of
+water under the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward
+like a dog from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two.
+Then, like a dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern
+glanced back quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark
+eyes. His face was as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he
+looked to the steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From
+the tiny boat coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense
+waiting. The launch raced out of danger towards the yacht. The
+gentleman, with a brief gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he
+himself went forward to the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in
+his movements; and she, in her bearing, was prouder still. She received
+him almost with indifference.
+
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
+whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
+the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
+noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
+moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
+They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour
+of life again.
+
+“By Jove, that was a near thing!”
+
+“Ah, that has made me feel bad!” said a woman.
+
+“A French yacht,” said somebody.
+
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
+to say. Confused, he repeated:
+
+“That was a close shave.”
+
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
+herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
+quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+
+“Ah, dear Lord!” he was saying to himself. “How bright and whole the
+day is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
+swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
+That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
+no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness
+of the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine
+white seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of
+ships, and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+
+“For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness
+through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he
+fumbles with delights like a bee.
+
+“For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the
+darkness the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself
+into life, the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning
+an invisible flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the
+fuel of death, is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue.
+For what is a life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness,
+and tapers into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs
+from the death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with
+a potent shadow, if I do not enrich life.”
+
+“Wasn’t that woman fine!” said Helena.
+
+“So perfectly still,” he answered.
+
+“The child realized nothing,” she said.
+
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+
+“I am always so sorry,” he said, “that the human race is urged
+inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.”
+
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+
+“I guess,” she said slowly, after a while, “that the man, the sailor,
+will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.”
+
+“He was careful of something else just then,” said Siegmund, who hated
+to hear her speak in cold condemnation. “He was attending to the
+machinery or something.”
+
+“That was scarcely his first business,” said she, rather sarcastic.
+
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement—very blind.
+Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
+
+“Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?” he asked.
+
+“He nearly succeeded,” she replied.
+
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the
+world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. “But, after all,” he
+thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event
+and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of
+exoneration.”
+
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of
+the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of
+life, saw it great and impersonal.
+
+“Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?”
+he asked.
+
+“I rather think not. Why?” she replied.
+
+“I hope she didn’t,” he said.
+
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very
+much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But
+to her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift
+and proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
+
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman’s
+courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the
+boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he
+himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from
+lamenting his hard fate.
+
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and
+they looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to
+flee. He yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew
+he would be carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up.
+The shore came round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand.
+The shore swept round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There
+the old _Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested,
+saved for a trophy.
+
+“It is a dreadful thing,” thought Siegmund, “to remain as a trophy when
+there is nothing more to do.” He watched the landing-stages swooping
+nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end
+of the train was London.
+
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.
+The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in
+the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released from
+her.
+
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the
+ladder, in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting
+for the crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the
+ship on to the mainland.
+
+“Won’t you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?”
+asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning’s question.
+
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+
+“No,” she replied. “Let us go together.”
+
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat
+down, facing Helena.
+
+“Now,” said he to himself, “I wish I were alone.”
+
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+
+“Shall I not go down to Cornwall?”
+
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that
+she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety
+protracted.
+
+“But you have promised Louisa, have you not?” he replied.
+
+“Oh, well!” she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she
+wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+
+“Then you must go,” he said.
+
+“But,” she began, with harsh petulance, “I do not want to go down to
+Cornwall with _Louisa and Olive_”—she accentuated the two names—“after
+_this_,” she added.
+
+“Then Louisa will have no holiday—and you have promised,” he said
+gravely.
+
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+
+“Is my promise so _very_ important?” she asked. She glanced angrily at
+the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the
+ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the
+carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved
+by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena
+in his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him
+with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
+
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through
+Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It
+seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side
+of the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before.
+The afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The
+chimneys and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant
+appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of
+light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+
+“It will go on,” thought Siegmund, “being gay of an evening, for ever.
+And I shall miss it all!”
+
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he
+began again:
+
+“Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will
+say nothing, thank God—nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there
+will be no interruptions….
+
+“But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss
+reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the
+country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of
+my money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.
+Very good.
+
+“But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want
+Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be
+damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never
+get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out
+of pity for me. I know she would.
+
+“But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me
+not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in
+endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a
+red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her
+mouth. Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any
+efforts. ‘He has brought it on us,’ she would say; ‘let him see what
+the result is.’ And things would go from bad to worse with them. It
+would be a gangrene of shame.
+
+“And Helena—I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
+asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
+creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
+I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?”
+
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
+whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
+imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
+sketched the morning—breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
+children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
+bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
+thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
+unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
+her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
+took his pleasure elsewhere.
+
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
+consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
+agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be
+only a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would
+wait for the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
+inevitable; then would begin—what? He would never have enough money to
+keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
+then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+
+“If I were rich,” said Siegmund, “all would be plain. I would give each
+of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
+nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,” Round and round
+went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
+grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
+gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on
+his knee.
+
+“If I have made things more difficult,” she said, her voice harsh with
+pain, “you will forgive me.”
+
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
+filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
+smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large
+eyes haunted with pain.
+
+“Forgive you?” he repeated. “Forgive you for five days of perfect
+happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!”
+
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging
+with painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She
+leaned back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn
+strike swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.
+
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
+rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought.
+Helena had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their
+hawking, so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small,
+pitiful prey that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the
+bringing home of the final convictions.
+
+“What will she do?” cried Siegmund, “What will she do when I am gone?
+What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
+have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
+inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?”
+
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
+never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
+backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
+great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
+with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like
+a breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
+and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
+simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he
+wondered what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing
+the vague roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
+was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
+proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
+magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
+opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
+everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
+sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
+train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
+It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
+darkened grass-lands.
+
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
+breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
+was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
+victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white
+arms uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet.
+The day died nobly, so she thought.
+
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+
+“Surely that cloud is for us,” said she, as she watched it anxiously.
+Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It
+came, unswerving, from behind the trees.
+
+“I am sure it is for us,” she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.
+Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and
+pointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little
+of her faith.
+
+“It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn’t it seem to you to be
+travelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.”
+
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from “Aylwin”.
+
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+
+Helena was almost happy.
+
+“I am right,” said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and
+Helena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand
+to confirm it.”
+
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like
+a greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was
+mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,
+his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a
+certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy
+insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courage
+to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on
+towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky,
+asking of everything, “Am I right? Am I right?” He did not mind what
+happened to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by
+“right” he did not trouble to think, but the question remained. For a
+time he had been reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his
+thoughts were stupid, and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the
+train, which stamped him deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.
+
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the
+fountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from
+the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they
+hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the
+hive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of
+purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings—a
+village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.
+
+“Ah, well!” thought Siegmund—he was tired—“if one bee dies in a swarm,
+what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold
+light, and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart
+from these rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark
+meadows of night, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the
+day will swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee,
+and humming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell
+and the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only
+happens we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether
+or not, bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life
+_are_ always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At
+least, I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is
+there in the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned
+bright; I have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere—I wonder where?
+We can never point to it; but it _is_ so—what does it matter, then!”
+
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking
+towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the
+night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their
+first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw
+the quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran
+between high embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered
+with roses of Sharon—the large golden St John’s wort of finest silk. He
+looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,
+ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:
+
+“Do you remember,” he asked, “the roses of Sharon all along here?”
+
+“I do,” replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. “Weren’t they
+pretty?”
+
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+
+“Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I
+should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.”
+
+He smiled, without answering.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+
+“But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?” she asked.
+She put the question timidly. “Would you care to?” she added.
+
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+
+“No,” he said gently; “I think we had better not.” Almost for the first
+time he did not make apologetic explanation.
+
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning
+of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near
+Sutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and
+her basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite
+ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station.
+Siegmund was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first
+time, he said to himself, “Ah, well, it must be so.”
+
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+
+“At least,” she said doubtfully, “I shall see you at the station.”
+
+“At Waterloo?” he asked.
+
+“No, at Wimbledon,” she replied, in her metallic tone.
+
+“But—” he began.
+
+“It will be the best way for us,” she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. “Much better than crossing London from Victoria to
+Waterloo.”
+
+“Very well,” he replied.
+
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+
+“You will get in Wimbledon 10.5—leave 10.40—leave Waterloo 11.30,” he
+said.
+
+“Very good,” she answered.
+
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the
+train to stop.
+
+“If only she will soon go!” thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable
+minute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,
+pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon
+the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at
+him, he could scarcely breathe. “How long will it be?” he said to
+himself, looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the
+lady who could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have
+killed her; he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors
+slammed and the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into
+motion.
+
+“Now I lose her,” said Siegmund.
+
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+
+“Good-bye, then!” she said, and she turned away.
+
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with
+sickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why
+did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what
+would she do?
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to
+Wimbledon. London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this
+peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from
+Victoria to Waterloo.
+
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
+swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
+clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
+hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
+full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating
+with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and
+stood there panting—great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always
+amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased
+with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was
+glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her
+with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the
+rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing
+along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to
+her. “Discords,” she said, “after the trees and sea.” She liked the
+glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for
+pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of
+Heaven; but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland.
+
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched
+the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself
+far before him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted
+with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in
+their movement. There was a soft vividness of life in their carriage;
+it reminded Siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised
+candle-flame. The women went blithely alongside. Occasionally, in
+passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he
+knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy;
+besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. The eyes
+of the women said, “You are comely, you are lovable,” and Siegmund
+smiled.
+
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a
+lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour
+of grey-gold light.
+
+“It is a wonderful night,” he said to himself. “There are not two such
+in a year.”
+
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his
+heart. This purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering
+flame-warmth of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights
+that clip sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him.
+
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but
+rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over
+the bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a
+hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the
+black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+
+“Ah!” said Siegmund to himself; “it is far too wonderful for me. Here,
+as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever
+happens, the world is wonderful.”
+
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night,
+the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the
+floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness,
+like an army of angels filing past on one of God’s campaigns, the
+purring haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people.
+Siegmund went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of
+life. He did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he
+walked home in the moonless dark.
+
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He
+did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: “Now
+for the beginning of Hell!”
+
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy
+murmur. The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten,
+Siegmund opened the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not
+raise her head. Frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a
+book. He did not look up. Vera had her fingers thrust in among her
+hair, and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before
+her. Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to show they were
+aware of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people
+who cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go.
+His wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were
+standing under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in
+the creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+
+“I suppose the children are in bed,” he said.
+
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily
+turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly
+interested and had known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his
+slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another.
+
+“They’ve been gone two hours,” said Frank at last, still without
+raising his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice
+was jarring, not yet having developed a man’s fullness.
+
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The
+slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag
+seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to
+speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter’s scornful
+restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat
+leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered
+with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+
+“Do you want any supper?” asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of
+her voice startled him into looking at her.
+
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund’s heart went
+down with weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+
+“Aren’t _you_ having any?” he asked.
+
+The table was not laid. Beatrice’s work-basket, a little wicker
+fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and
+reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows
+on the table.
+
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took
+out a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the
+cloth over one end of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock
+with her hand.
+
+“Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?”
+she asked.
+
+“In where?”
+
+In this month’s _Nash’s_.”
+
+“No,” replied Beatrice. “What time have I for reading, much less for
+anything else?”
+
+“You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people,
+then,” said Vera, with a sneer at the “other people”. She rose. “Let me
+do this. You sit down; you are tired, Mother,” she said.
+
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed
+her. Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his
+thin shoulders lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on
+his knees, looking into the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking
+of crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. All the time Vera was heard
+chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond
+tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail
+to her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity.
+
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a
+plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer,
+and some bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the
+leaves of her magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely
+for his father. He looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained
+himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in
+with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright.
+
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly
+clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin—in fact, it was
+just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous
+neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an
+established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong,
+impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the
+little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down.
+Her face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to sew.
+
+“What do you say, Mother?” said Vera, as if resuming a conversation.
+“Shall it be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?”
+
+“I say, as I said before,” replied Beatrice: “I cannot afford to go
+out.”
+
+“But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning.
+_Dîtes donc_!”
+
+“There are other things to think of,” said Beatrice.
+
+“Now, _maman, nous avons changé tout cela_! We are going out—a jolly
+little razzle!” Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and
+smiled at her mother gaily.
+
+“I am afraid there will be no _razzle_”—Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly—“for me. You are slangy, Vera.”
+
+“_Un doux argot, ma mère_. You look tired.”
+
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+
+“I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,” she said.
+
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking
+in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank
+looked up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+
+“There’s your supper, Father.”
+
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head
+lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+
+Siegmund was hungry.
+
+“Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!” he said to
+himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He
+seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and
+away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching
+from under his eyebrows.
+
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of
+his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it,
+despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night.
+He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat
+irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.
+
+“Good night!” he said.
+
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut
+the door and went.
+
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the
+tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically,
+catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself.
+The faces of the two children set hard with hate.
+
+“He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,” said
+Vera.
+
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing
+and her cottons.
+
+“At any rate, he’s come back red enough,” said Frank, in his grating
+tone of contempt. “He’s like boiled salmon.”
+
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back
+to the grate, in his father’s characteristic attitude.
+
+“He _would_ come slinking back in a funk!” he said, with a young man’s
+sneer.
+
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread,
+and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at
+this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched
+her with jealous eyes.
+
+“There is a little more ham, if you’d like it,” said Beatrice to him.
+“I kept you some.”
+
+“All right, Ma,” he replied. Fetch it in.”
+
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+
+“And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?” called Vera after her.
+
+“The damned coward! Ain’t he a rotten funker?” said Frank, _sotto
+voce_, while his mother was out of the room.
+
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank
+yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother,
+and, putting his hand on her arm—the feel of his mother’s round arm
+under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise—he said, more gratingly
+than ever:
+
+“Ne’er mind, Ma; we’ll be all right to you.” Then he bent and kissed
+her. “Good night, Mother,” he said awkwardly, and he went out of the
+room.
+
+Beatrice was crying.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+“I shall never re-establish myself,” said Siegmund as he closed behind
+him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. “I am a family
+criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children’s insolent
+judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house
+from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I
+come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.”
+
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave
+him a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his
+position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might
+feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after
+time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught
+him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead
+and his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He
+touched them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his
+own childish touch-and-shrink.
+
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he
+stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and
+wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously
+soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The
+night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of
+light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose
+up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an
+undergrowth of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the
+sky, like the whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer
+night occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared
+across the distance.
+
+“What a big night!” thought Siegmund. “The night gathers everything
+into a oneness. I wonder what is in it.”
+
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of
+the night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to
+grasp a hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing
+night? A star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes
+with a yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether
+he had seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
+
+“It is a good sign—a shooting star,” he said to himself. “It is a good
+sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.”
+
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was
+soon in bed.
+
+“This is a good bed,” he said. “And the sheets are very fresh.”
+
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
+his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+“What is it?” he asked, and almost without interruption answered:
+“Well, I’ve got to go through it.”
+
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
+forgot when he awoke. Only this naïve question and answer betrayed what
+had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
+knowledge vanished.
+
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
+did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
+thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
+“What would it just be like now?” said he to himself. He had to give
+his heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his
+sleep activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had
+been his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses
+and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all
+the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+
+“It is impossible it is gone!” he cried to himself. “It can’t be gone.
+I looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can’t be gone now.
+Helena is not lost to me, surely.” Then he began a long pining for the
+departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet
+by facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain,
+though it was keen, was half pleasure.
+
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
+next to his, and he heard her:
+
+“Frank, it’s a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.”
+
+“All right, Mother. Why didn’t you call me sooner?” grumbled the lad.
+
+“I didn’t wake myself. I didn’t go to sleep till morning, and then I
+slept.”
+
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
+The minutes passed.
+
+“The young donkey, why doesn’t he get out?” said Siegmund angrily to
+himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
+humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and
+keep him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
+anxiety. When the suave, velvety “Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!” of the clock was
+heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
+heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of the
+stairs:
+
+“Do you want any hot water?”
+
+“You know there isn’t time for me to shave now,” answered her son,
+lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
+second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
+same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
+girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
+suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
+
+“Mam!” She wailed. “Mam!” Still Beatrice did not hear her. “Mam!
+Mamma!” Beatrice was in the scullery. “Mamma-a!” The child was getting
+impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: “Mam? Mamma!” Still no
+answer. “Mam-mee-e!” she squealed.
+
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+
+“Why don’t you go down and ask?” Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: “What do you
+want?”
+
+“Where’s my stockings?” cried the child at the top of her voice.
+
+“Why do you ask me? Are they down here?” replied her mother. “What are
+you shouting for?”
+
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
+into Vera’s room, she grumbled: “And now they’re not mended.”
+
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling
+of the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed
+out. She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white
+rug and pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud
+of her feet as she went downstairs.
+
+“Mam,” Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, “has dad
+come?”
+
+The answer and the child’s further talk were lost in the distance of
+the kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of
+Gwen’s feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no
+more. He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was
+sensitive to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get
+up and meet them all.
+
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank’s hasty call: “Good-bye!”
+Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
+of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
+from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
+suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
+thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
+downstairs. It was nine o’clock.
+
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom—his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
+his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
+waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
+knocked loudly.
+
+“All right,” said he.
+
+Then she went downstairs.
+
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera’s
+voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+
+“You should clear away, then. We don’t want the breakfast things on the
+table for a week.”
+
+Siegmund’s heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
+to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
+the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
+Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
+pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
+bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
+which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see
+her stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
+sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her
+hair, but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the
+sponge and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
+She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
+her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
+child’s look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
+
+“Hello!” said her father. “Are you here!”
+
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
+back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
+the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
+turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
+his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to
+be trying to discover something in him.
+
+“Have you washed your ears?” he said gaily.
+
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
+slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
+continued to regard him curiously.
+
+“There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,” he said.
+
+“Where have you been to?” she asked suddenly.
+
+“To the seaside,” he answered, smiling.
+
+“To Brighton?” she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+
+“Much farther than that,” he replied.
+
+“To Worthing?” she asked.
+
+“Farther—in a steamer,” he replied.
+
+“But who did you go with?” asked the child.
+
+“Why, I went all by myself,” he answered.
+
+“Twuly?” she asked.
+
+“Weally and twuly,” he answered, laughing.
+
+“Couldn’t you take me?” she asked.
+
+“I will next time,” he replied.
+
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+
+“But what did you go for?” she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+
+“To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons—”
+
+“You _might_ have taken me,” said the child reproachfully.
+
+“Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn’t I?” he said, as if regretful.
+
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+
+“You _are_ red,” she said.
+
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+
+“That is the sun. Hasn’t it been hot?”
+
+“Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.” The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+
+“Come here,” said Siegmund. “I believe you’ve got a tooth out, haven’t
+you?”
+
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and
+she drew away from him, unwilling.
+
+“Come and let me look,” he repeated.
+
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her
+face, shy, suspicious, condemning.
+
+“Aren’t you going to get your chocolate?” he asked, as the child
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+
+“I’ve got to go to mam and have my hair done.”
+
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went
+downstairs without going into his room.
+
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.
+He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the
+bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and
+licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
+
+“A pity to wash it off,” he said.
+
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment
+exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he
+thought: “I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.”
+
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of
+forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+
+“I used to think that, when I was forty,” he said to himself, “I should
+find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my
+affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no
+more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a
+man needs a mother all his life. I don’t feel much like a lord of
+creation.”
+
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs.
+His sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When
+he was dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was
+indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to
+the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.
+He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and
+Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude
+of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt
+as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked
+nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would
+not have allowed it—on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the
+cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past
+few days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled
+slowly through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and
+beauty, and of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms
+gorgeously and madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that
+now his life struggled in a clogged and broken channel.
+
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table.
+He would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and
+sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented
+him into consciousness.
+
+“I suppose this is the result of the sun—a sort of sunstroke,” he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition in
+his head.
+
+“This is hideous!” he said. His arms were quivering with intense
+irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot
+irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair
+without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move
+about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
+
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which
+she was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to
+see what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed
+intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let
+go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently
+she had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed
+him closely.
+
+“He is sitting with his head in his hands,” she said to her mother.
+
+Beatrice replied: “I’m glad he’s nothing else to do.”
+
+“I should think he’s pitying himself,” said Vera.
+
+“He’s a good one at it,” answered Beatrice.
+
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother’s skirt, looking up
+anxiously.
+
+“What is he doing, Mam?” she asked.
+
+“Nothing,” replied her mother—“nothing; only sitting in the
+drawing-room.”
+
+“But what has he _been_ doing?” persisted the anxious child.
+
+“Nothing—nothing that I can tell _you_. He’s only spoilt all our
+lives.”
+
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+
+“But what will he do, Mam?” she asked.
+
+“Nothing. Don’t bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a
+nice plum?”
+
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.
+She was too much perplexed.
+
+“What do you say?” asked her mother.
+
+“Thank you,” replied the child, turning away.
+
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in
+his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable
+clawing irritability from his belly.
+
+“Ah, this is horrible!” he said.
+
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+
+“I’ve never been like this before. What is the matter?” he asked
+himself.
+
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening
+to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he
+could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be
+better.
+
+“What do I want?” he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find
+this out.
+
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or
+distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often
+dreamed of, farming in Canada.
+
+“I should be just the same there,” he answered himself. “Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.”
+
+“Helena!” he suggested to himself, trembling.
+
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+
+“I can’t endure this,” he said. If this is the case, I had better be
+dead. To have no want, no desire—that is death, to begin with.”
+
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed
+entertaining. Then, “Is there really nothing I could turn to?” he asked
+himself.
+
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+
+“Helena!” he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. “Ah, no!” he
+cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw
+place.
+
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.
+There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He
+merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood
+holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
+
+“Dad, Mam says dinner’s ready,” she announced.
+
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,
+before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+
+“Dinner’s ready.”
+
+“All right,” said Siegmund. “Go away.”
+
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+
+“What did he say?” asked Beatrice.
+
+“He shouted at me,” replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in
+her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+
+“Did he?” she said very tenderly. “Never mind, then, dearie—never
+mind.”
+
+The tears in her mother’s voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and
+Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and
+grew cold.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
+pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
+was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
+her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
+like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his
+box.
+
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
+ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
+which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena
+reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately
+relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, here we are!” replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+
+“So I see,” exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar
+jocular manner. “And what sort of a time have you had?”
+
+“Oh, very good,” replied Helena, still more coolly.
+
+“H’m!”
+
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
+sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
+forbore to question.
+
+“You look well,” she said.
+
+Helena smiled ironically.
+
+“And are you ready for your supper?” she asked, in the playful,
+affectionate manner she had assumed.
+
+“If the supper is ready I will have it,” replied her daughter.
+
+“Well, it’s not ready.” The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
+regarded her daughter with playful challenge. “Because,” she continued,
+“I didn’t known when you were coming.” She gave a jerk with her arm,
+like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. “But,” she added, after
+a tedious dramatic pause, “I can soon have it ready. What will you
+have?”
+
+“The full list of your capacious larder,” replied Helena.
+
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+
+“Will you have cocoa or lemonade?” she asked, coming to the point
+curtly.
+
+“Lemonade,” said Helena.
+
+Presently Mr Verden entered—a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
+voice.
+
+“Oh, so you are back, Nellie!” he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+
+“As you see, Pater,” she answered.
+
+“H’m!” he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her
+on tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father’s quiet
+“H’m!” her mother’s curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail
+which can never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a
+careless pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong,
+and will not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear
+of offence upon it.
+
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to
+the door.
+
+“Has she come?”
+
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung
+herself upon Helena and kissed her.
+
+“How long have you been in?” she asked, in a voice trembling with
+affection.
+
+“Ten minutes,” replied Helena.
+
+“Why didn’t you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and
+meet you?” Louisa reproached her.
+
+“Why?” drawled Helena.
+
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by
+this sarcasm.
+
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that
+night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their
+usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl—a
+minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made
+confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy
+which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena’s
+thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea,
+pulling forwards as far as the morrow’s meeting with Siegmund, but
+reaching no further.
+
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender
+advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,
+all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and
+avoided his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a
+dignity which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the
+repeated flagrant questionings of the mother’s eyes. But the day wore
+on. Helena pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a
+little, mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.
+
+At last the night fell.
+
+“Well,” said Helena to her mother, “I suppose I’d better pack.”
+
+“Haven’t you done it?” cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.
+“You’ll never have it done. I’d better help you. What times does the
+train go?”
+
+Helena smiled.
+
+“Ten minutes to ten.”
+
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was
+ample time for everything.
+
+“Nevertheless, you’d better look sharp,” Mrs Verden said.
+
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+
+“I’ll come with you to the station,” suggested Mrs Verden. “I’ll see
+the last of you. We shan’t see much of you just now.”
+
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+
+“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” she said, fearing to make her disapproval too
+evident.
+
+“Yes—I will—I’ll see you off.”
+
+Mrs Verden’s animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was
+curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she
+was reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she
+played the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general
+distress.
+
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
+eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced
+away swiftly as if she had been burned.
+
+“How stupid I look!” she said to herself. “And Siegmund, how is he, I
+wonder?”
+
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
+how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
+ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time
+Louisa came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank
+into a chair.
+
+“I don’t want to go, Nell,” she said, after a few moments of silence.
+
+“Why, how is that?” asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
+to a child.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know; I’m tired,” said the other petulantly.
+
+“Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?” said
+Helena.
+
+“And rushing about packing,” exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
+exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to go, dear,” repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+
+“Well, it is time we set out,” replied Helena, rising. “Will you carry
+the basket or the violin, Mater?”
+
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is
+only smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken
+day. Such was Helena’s longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In
+one corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them.
+Helena sat mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights
+of a third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her
+sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation
+in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering.
+Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur
+of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: “Two hundred and forty
+miles—two hundred and forty miles.”
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time
+Beatrice, who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an
+outburst of angry hysteria.
+
+“When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?” she had
+asked him coldly.
+
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+
+“Tomorrow—if ever,” he had answered.
+
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her
+anger flashed out like sudden lightning at his “if ever”.
+
+“What do you think you _can_ do?” she cried. “For I think you have done
+enough. We can’t do as we like altogether—indeed, indeed we cannot. You
+have had your fling, haven’t you? You have had your fling, and you want
+to keep on. But there’s more than one person in the world. Remember
+that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
+You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
+responsible for your children, do you think?”
+
+“I said nothing about shirking the engagement,” replied Siegmund, very
+coldly.
+
+“No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
+sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
+children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
+_I’ll_ stop, I tell you _I’ll_ do as I like. _I’ll_ go as well. No, I
+wouldn’t be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn’t leave
+little children—to the workhouse or anything. They’re my children; they
+mightn’t be yours.”
+
+“There is no need for this,” said Siegmund contemptuously.
+
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
+sick.
+
+Beatrice’s dark eyes flashed with rage.
+
+“Isn’t there!” she cried. “Oh, isn’t there? No, there is need for a
+great deal more. I don’t know what you think I am. How much farther do
+you think you can go? No, you don’t like reminding of us. You sit
+moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
+wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
+up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of your
+hand?”
+
+“Be quiet!” shouted Siegmund. “Don’t I know what you are? Listen to
+yourself!”
+
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot
+wrath. Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low
+and trembling.
+
+“You coward—you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
+who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
+what I am.”
+
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
+with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
+bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
+and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
+withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
+should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by
+anger, which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise.
+He trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
+Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
+found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
+Vera tackled the situation.
+
+“Is the table ready to be cleared yet?” she asked in an unpleasant
+tone.
+
+Her father’s cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
+others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made
+no reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
+Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+
+“Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
+a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.”
+
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
+looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
+
+“Mam, there was a lady had a dog—”
+
+“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera sharply.
+
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
+taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
+the tray. Gwen’s eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
+father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
+in her softest and most persuasive tones:
+
+“Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher’s shop and licked a piece of
+meat. Mam, Mam!”
+
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother’s
+knee.
+
+“Mam!” she pleaded timidly.
+
+No response.
+
+“Mam!” she whispered.
+
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
+her mother’s breast.
+
+“Mam!” she whispered shrilly.
+
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
+tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child’s shoulders, drew her
+close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
+face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
+whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
+
+“Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog—”
+
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
+nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
+she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
+tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
+gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
+muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
+rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room
+was the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without
+the trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked
+low; he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
+scullery. There came the low sound of women’s talking—an angry, ominous
+sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
+cautiously asking:
+
+“Mam, is dad cross—is he? What did he do?”
+
+“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera. “You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don’t drop it.”
+
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her
+sister. The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+
+“Go along,” she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
+unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
+afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
+slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
+the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
+the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
+small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes,
+waiting and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a
+man does who watches the surgeon’s lancet suspended over his wound.
+Would the child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands?
+He held his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What
+he should do he did not know.
+
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
+another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
+wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
+against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
+world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his
+face against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like
+a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now—his
+heart halted again in suspense—he knew not what he would do. It would
+open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
+with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+
+“Gwen!” called Vera, wondering why she did not return. “Gwen!”
+
+“Yes,” answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
+hesitate, move, then turn away.
+
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
+stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
+bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
+pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
+his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He
+lay down on the bed.
+
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
+of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
+work—an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
+jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o’clock he sat up. A cramped
+pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
+shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
+two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands again,
+smiling.
+
+“It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,” he said to
+himself.
+
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
+weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
+intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+
+“I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,” he said to himself,
+and instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere.
+“But I must be getting ready. I can’t disappoint her,” said Siegmund.
+
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
+her, “Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,” then he might
+lie down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head.
+If she could hold his head in her hands—for she had fine, silken hands
+that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
+in life—then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
+This was the one thing that remained for his restoration—that she
+should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
+it utterly—for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+
+“But it is no good,” he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
+“What time is it?”
+
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
+time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+
+“I am forgetting again,” he said. “But I do not want to go. What is the
+good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.”
+
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
+Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+
+“Goodness,” he said, “it’s getting quite dark!”
+
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
+wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
+his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual.
+It was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically
+dark, though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the
+children were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
+
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
+path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran out
+crying:
+
+“Are you going out? Where are you going?”
+
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+
+“She is frightened,” he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+
+“I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
+long.”
+
+“Wimbledon, at this time!” said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+
+“Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.”
+
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+
+“You need not keep us sitting up,” she said.
+
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
+packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
+stopped before the indicator.
+
+“The next train for Waterloo,” she announced, in her contralto voice,
+“is 10.30. It is now 10.12.”
+
+“We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,” said Helena.
+
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+
+“Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.”
+
+“You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,” cried Louisa,
+skittish.
+
+“My dear Louisa,” rang out Olive’s contralto, “don’t judge me by
+appearances. You’re sure to be taken in. With me it’s a case of
+
+“‘Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she’s sad,
+And the sadness of her sadness when she’s glad!’”
+
+
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
+something, chimed in sarcastically:
+
+“‘They are nothing to her madness—’”
+
+“When she’s going for a holiday, dear,” cried Olive.
+
+“Oh, go on being mad,” cried Louisa.
+
+“What, do you like it? I thought you’d be thanking Heaven that sanity
+was given me in large doses.”
+
+“And holidays in small,” laughed Louisa. “Good! No, I like your
+madness, if you call it such. You are always so serious.”
+
+“‘It’s ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged,’ dear,”
+boomed Olive.
+
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
+acknowledging the sarcasm.
+
+“But,” said Louisa, smiling anxiously, “I don’t quite see it. What’s
+the point?”
+
+“Well, to be explicit, dear,” replied Olive, “it is hardly safe to
+accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.”
+
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+
+“Come to think of it, it isn’t,” she said.
+
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
+thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
+made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For
+a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick
+on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered
+under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was
+already twenty-five minutes past ten.
+
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
+the platform.
+
+“Here I am!” he said. “Where is Louisa?”
+
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
+Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
+could not read him.
+
+“Olive is there, too,” she explained.
+
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
+amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made
+things more complex.
+
+“Does she—your other friend—does she know?” he asked.
+
+“She knows nothing,” replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
+forward to be introduced.
+
+“How do you do?” replied Olive in most mellow contralto. “Behold the
+dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our
+perils?”
+
+“I will, since I may not do more,” replied Siegmund, smiling,
+continuing: “And how is Sister Louisa?”
+
+“She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,” cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really good
+friends.
+
+“It is your turn now,” he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+
+“How did you find things at home?” he asked her.
+
+“Oh, as usual,” she replied indifferently. “And you?”
+
+“Just the same,” he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
+added: “The children are happier without me.”
+
+“Oh, you mustn’t say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
+“It’s not true.”
+
+“It’s all right, dear,” he answered. “So long as they are happy, it’s
+all right.” After a pause he added: “But I feel pretty bad tonight.”
+
+Helena’s hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
+platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
+haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet
+swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst
+sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps
+settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came
+thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of
+carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and
+the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the
+green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness.
+Still watching the distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+
+“Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
+on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don’t make a right.”
+
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
+eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound
+of his voice, lacking resonance—the dead, expressionless tone—made her
+lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
+
+“What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
+What has happened at home? What are you going to do?” she said sharply.
+She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
+Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken
+away her hold over him.
+
+“There is nothing fresh the matter at home,” he replied wearily. He was
+to be scourged with emotion again. “I swear it,” he added. “And I have
+not made up my mind. But I can’t think of life without you—and life
+must go on.”
+
+“And I swear,” she said wrathfully, turning at bay, “that I won’t live
+a day after you.”
+
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
+scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: “Ah, don’t speak to
+me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
+out tonight there is nothing left.”
+
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo
+train was to leave from another platform.
+
+“You’d better come,” said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards
+Louisa and Olive.
+
+“We’ve got to change platforms,” cried Louisa, running forward and
+excitedly announcing the news.
+
+“Yes,” replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+
+“I say,” cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+“look—look—both of you—look at that hat!” A lady in front was wearing
+on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. “It’s the
+sight of a lifetime. I wouldn’t have you miss it,” added Olive in
+hoarse _sotto voce_.
+
+“Indeed not!” cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. “Get
+a good view of it, Olive. Let’s have a good mental impression of it—one
+that will last.”
+
+“That’s right, dear,” said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
+ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
+animated to the calmly ironical.
+
+“After all, dear,” she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
+“it’s not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.”
+
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+
+“Just now, at any rate,” she rejoined.
+
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
+watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+
+“Perhaps it is as well,” she thought. “We needn’t talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
+make Siegmund talk.”
+
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
+Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
+then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
+two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
+She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other
+people entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
+
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
+Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
+her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
+immediately called:
+
+“You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I cannot come,” he said.
+
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
+door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
+sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
+She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+
+“Oh—go—go—go—when will she go?”
+
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+
+“Would you like to come to the window?” a man asked of Helena kindly.
+
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
+the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
+door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her
+“Hawwa” spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking
+at Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
+helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
+forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
+one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
+kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her
+because she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only
+recoil from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone.
+Yet she wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he
+could not yield.
+
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
+not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
+have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
+the guard’s whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
+flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
+The train began to move, drawing Helena’s hand from his.
+
+“Monday,” she whispered—“Monday,” meaning that on Monday she should
+receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
+turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+
+“Now, dear, we are manless,” said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt
+at a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
+of Helena’s last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists
+till they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers.
+Like a picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena’s face, white,
+rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible
+by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
+still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
+west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund
+like a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of
+him, as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the
+cloth was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on
+intensely. Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of
+Cornwall, very far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a
+mask, with heavy eyes, came between again.
+
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
+house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
+feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
+she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
+door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
+
+“You have been over an hour,” she said, still more troubled when she
+found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+
+“Ay,” returned Siegmund.
+
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head
+between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+
+“Will you have anything to eat?” she asked.
+
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole
+of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her
+breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat
+down and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved
+nor spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,
+querulous with trouble.
+
+“Aren’t you going to bed?” she asked.
+
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half
+hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+
+“Aren’t you going to bed, Father?”
+
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of
+having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
+
+“Yes, I’m going,” he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was
+not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again
+she sat waiting.
+
+“Father!” she cried at last.
+
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+
+“Yes, I’m going,” he said.
+
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+
+“If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,” she thought, but he
+did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to
+brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+
+“I’ll pick it up in the morning,” he said, continuing deliriously: “I
+must go to bed—I must go to bed—I am very tired.” He stumbled over the
+door mat into his own room.
+
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the
+sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,
+trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing
+up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again
+in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping
+sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to
+get into bed.
+
+“One must sleep,” he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He
+could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him
+pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action
+aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got
+things right at last, and was in bed.
+
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have
+called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his
+brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening
+rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of
+consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of
+consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+
+“What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any
+noise? Do I disturb them?” he wondered, and he tried to cast back to
+find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could
+remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately
+he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This
+frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the
+family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in
+silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort of
+sleep.
+
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.
+The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with
+hot vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.
+Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,
+and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing,
+a terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.
+
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite
+torture of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one
+gathering and running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of
+his neck. His every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move
+more than to stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the
+track of this drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop
+would start from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among
+the little muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the
+running of a spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not
+wipe himself he did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible
+tickling, which seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the
+effort to move, which he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead
+down his temples. Those he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they
+started again, in tiny, vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest,
+from under his armpits, down the inner sides of his thighs, till he
+seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of a myriad running insects
+over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling,
+one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He
+felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or
+suffocate and burst.
+
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff
+of hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his
+legs. He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He
+sat on the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place
+where he had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then,
+in an instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as
+ever to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was
+clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his
+sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar
+sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It
+seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and
+the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it
+he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and
+soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt
+a sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.
+
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
+and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There
+was a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
+something fresh and cool.
+
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
+was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
+clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked
+out on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was
+shining duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of
+him, in the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited
+breathlessly to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning
+jumped up into the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird
+stirring restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner,
+greyer. The lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the
+arm of day, moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself,
+flickered its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly.
+Siegmund watched it with wonder and delight.
+
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor
+moon would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the
+balcony to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a
+half-moon, crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly
+over to the western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the
+sun would laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing
+with its prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making
+its last run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing
+to itself as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however,
+leaped low off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away.
+Siegmund no longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation
+amid the disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white
+lightning gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose
+up from the mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even
+in the west they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned,
+rising higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold
+across the moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink
+butterflies had gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies
+in the fens. As a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff
+after puff filling with whiteness the space which had been the night.
+Siegmund sat watching the last morning blowing in across the mown
+darkness, till the whole field of the world was exposed, till the moon
+was like a dead mouse which floats on water.
+
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were
+astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew
+he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair
+at the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an
+ache and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.
+
+“Where is Helena?” he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow.
+Helena was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He
+alone was out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his
+shoulders as if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while
+his head seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time
+he sat with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his
+present state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind
+stirred him with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant
+company of friends, the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered
+itself to his thoughts, was met by an angry contempt, was rejected
+scornfully. As nothing could please or distract him, the only thing
+that remained was to support the discord. He felt as if he were a limb
+out of joint from the body of life: there occurred to his imagination a
+disjointed finger, swollen and discoloured, racked with pains. The
+question was, How should he reset himself into joint? The body of life
+for him meant Beatrice, his children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his
+friends of the orchestra. How could he set himself again into joint
+with these? It was impossible. Towards his family he would henceforward
+have to bear himself with humility. That was a cynicism. He would have
+to leave Helena, which he could not do. He would have to play
+strenuously, night after night, the music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_
+which was absurd. In fine, it was all absurd and impossible. Very well,
+then, that being so, what remained possible? Why, to depart. “If thine
+hand offend thee, cut it off.” He could cut himself off from life. It
+was plain and straightforward.
+
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an
+agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very
+well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,
+Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was
+insufferable—impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not
+strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and
+return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and
+go to Helena.
+
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which
+he could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round
+the room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had
+thought of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His
+portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A
+portmanteau strap would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
+
+“Very well!” said Siegmund, “it is finally settled. I had better write
+to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I’d better tell
+her.”
+
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote
+nothing. At last he gave up.
+
+“Perhaps it is just as well,” he said to himself. “She said she would
+come with me—perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When
+she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.”
+
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+
+“She will come with me,” he said to himself, and his heart rose with
+elation.
+
+“That is a cowardice,” he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+
+“It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,” he concluded.
+
+Then he sat down again.
+
+“‘But for that fear of something after-death,’” he quoted to himself.
+
+“It is not fear,” he said. “The act itself will be horrible and
+fearsome, but the after-death—it’s no more than struggling awake when
+you’re sick with a fright of dreams. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on.’”
+
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so
+wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He
+experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness
+in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though
+here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly
+held faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was
+cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness of
+his.
+
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or
+of hate.
+
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was
+no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit
+and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer
+universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from
+its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to
+bear the responsibility of the deflection?
+
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;
+otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would
+have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible
+parents weaker than himself.
+
+“I know the heart of life is kind,” said Siegmund, “because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or
+anybody. We suffer, and we don’t know why, often. Life doesn’t explain.
+But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After
+all, Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally,
+as much zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair
+of Life.”
+
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the
+atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it
+over to an imaginary god.
+
+“Well,” he said, “I can’t help it. I do not feel altogether
+self-responsible.”
+
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been
+vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into
+a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at his
+door.
+
+“There are two letters for you. Father.”
+
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,
+and he had no idea of his time or place.
+
+“Oh, all right,” he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He
+heard his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the
+throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his
+body.
+
+“What made her bring me the letters?” he asked himself. It was a very
+unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: “She
+wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.”
+
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The
+discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not
+fetch in the letters.
+
+“Is it so late?” he said. “Is there no more time for me?”
+
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked
+across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.
+He sat down on the bed.
+
+“What am I going to do?” he asked himself.
+
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his
+belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists
+into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man
+who is sick, incapable of thought or action.
+
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+
+“Here is your shaving-water,” said Beatrice in cold tones. “It’s half
+past nine.”
+
+“All right,” said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+
+“And what time shall you expect dinner?” asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+
+“Any time. I’m not going out,” he answered.
+
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for
+he was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,
+bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose.
+He was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could
+not keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor
+could he call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he
+performed his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he
+was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a
+mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with convulsive
+sickness.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Siegmund’s lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it
+became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up
+his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving
+the breakfast spread in the kitchen.
+
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner
+at two o’clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with
+her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it
+was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an
+hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still
+morning, when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was
+dusked with coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved
+rapidly and determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old
+newspapers and magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing
+the litter in the grate, which was clear, Friday having been
+charwoman’s day, passing swiftly, lightly over the front of the
+furniture with the duster. It was Saturday, when she did not spend much
+time over the work. In the afternoon she was going out with Vera. That
+was not, however, what occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work.
+She had determined to have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how
+matters should continue. She was going to have no more of the past
+three years’ life; things had come to a crisis, and there must be an
+alteration. Beatrice was going to do battle, therefore she flew at her
+work, thus stirring herself up to a proper heat of blood. All the time,
+as she thrust things out of sight, or straightened a cover, she
+listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.
+
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+
+“He can lie skulking in bed!” she said to herself. “Here I’ve been up
+since seven, broiling at it. I should think he’s pitying himself. He
+ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work
+every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too
+little work. He has had too much his own way. But it’s come to a stop
+now. I’ll servant-housekeeper him no longer.”
+
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the
+bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of
+work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her
+wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table
+and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full
+intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in
+uneasiness. She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her.
+As she was wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her
+that her hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and
+putting them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to
+make the beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was
+beating so heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to
+recover breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling
+herself, she said loudly at Siegmund’s door, her voice coldly hostile:
+
+“Aren’t you going to get up?”
+
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the
+gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+
+“It’s after half past ten—aren’t you going to get up?” she called.
+
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly
+she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of
+shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it.
+She returned and knocked swiftly at her husband’s door, not speaking.
+She waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in
+the sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was
+dull and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural
+ring, so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the
+front garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was
+open—everything seemed quiet.
+
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung
+them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply;
+some dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl.
+There was no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her
+black eyes blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin
+temples, out on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just
+pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down
+the road. She hurried to him.
+
+“Will you come and see if there’s anything wrong with my husband?” she
+asked wildly.
+
+“Why, mum?” answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly
+familiar. “Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I’ll come.”
+
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so
+loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs
+must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with a
+will.
+
+“Where is he, Mum?” he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the
+side passage.
+
+“He’s in his bedroom, and I can’t get an answer from him.”
+
+“Then I s’ll want a ladder,” said the window-cleaner, proceeding to
+lift one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which
+was Siegmund’s room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he
+was studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began,
+and afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also
+knew there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.
+
+“Is it the least of the front rooms he’s in?” asked the window-cleaner.
+
+“Yes, over the porch,” replied Beatrice.
+
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+
+“It’s easy enough,” he said. “The door’s open, and we’re soon on the
+balcony.”
+
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious
+fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously
+clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the
+ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he
+was frightened.
+
+“I say there!” he called loudly.
+
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+
+“Go in!” she cried. “Go in! Is he there?”
+
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and
+peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed
+slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to
+take flight.
+
+“Hie, hie!” he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner
+exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:
+
+“I believe ’e’s ’anged ’imself from the door-’ooks!”
+
+“No!” cried Beatrice. “No, no, no!”
+
+“I believe ’e ’as!” repeated the man.
+
+“Go in and see if he’s dead!” cried Beatrice.
+
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+
+“I believe he is,” he said doubtfully.
+
+“No—go and see!” screamed Beatrice.
+
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the
+body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried
+to lift it down. It was too heavy.
+
+“I know!” he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something
+to do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between
+himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his
+way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the
+body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the
+scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled
+the body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with
+trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran.
+It was bedded in Siegmund’s neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it
+frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead
+man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his
+sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his
+side naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite
+unnerved, ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay
+heaped on the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him,
+his face hardly recognizable.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and
+Olive lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in
+rest, in a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
+in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
+had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
+north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
+Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were
+distributed between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy
+travelling companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank
+honesty of manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out
+westward. Helena began to count the miles that separated her from
+Siegmund. The north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in
+their uncouth English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they
+furtively drank whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls.
+As much could hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned
+forward whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats
+laughing, hiding their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who
+were a trifle disconcerted by this amusement.
+
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
+the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness.
+The men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and
+went to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena
+sat weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and
+the dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor
+the women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She
+thought of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
+appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
+imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the
+under arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve
+of his lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
+and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
+There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
+dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
+flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
+came up.
+
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
+they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
+rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
+very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
+She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o’clock,
+breakfast-time, the ”dauntless three” were driving in a waggonette amid
+blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
+and harsh.
+
+“Why am I doing this?” Helena asked herself.
+
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
+rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
+in an ill humour.
+
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
+the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost
+identically the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walküre_; in the second
+place, _Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the
+flowers of a late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third
+place, it was a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning
+baths, of pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam
+which suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of
+divided lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she
+stood on the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits
+of Isolde’s love, bits of Tristan’s anguish, to Siegmund.
+
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
+disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was
+miserable because of Siegmund’s silence, but there was so much of
+enchantment in Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high
+spirits, that she forgot most whiles.
+
+On Monday night, towards two o’clock, there came a violent storm of
+thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
+waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds;
+the mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched
+her friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
+
+“There, wasn’t that lovely!” cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
+“Oo, wasn’t it magnificent!—glorious!”
+
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
+She hurried to the bed.
+
+“I say, dear!” she exclaimed, “may I come into the fold? I prefer the
+shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.”
+
+“Don’t you like it?” cried Louisa. “I think it’s _lovely_—lovely!”
+
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
+shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
+shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
+spasmodically.
+
+“There!” exclaimed the former, breathless. “That was fine! Helena, did
+you see that?”
+
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
+Helena’s answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+
+“There’s no accounting for tastes,” said Olive, taking a place in the
+bed. “I can’t say I’m struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?”
+
+“I’m not struck yet,” replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
+jest.
+
+“Thank you, dear,” said Olive; “you do me the honour of catching hold.”
+
+Helena laughed ironically.
+
+“Catching what?” asked Louisa, mystified.
+
+“Why, dear,” answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, “I
+offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
+know, it’s not that I’m afraid….”
+
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
+friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
+feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
+opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
+blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
+being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
+thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something had
+happened.
+
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
+persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+
+“What a deluge!” exclaimed Louisa.
+
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no
+mood to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window,
+nursing a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was
+awake; the storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She
+felt bruised. The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside
+represented her feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of
+disaster.
+
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
+have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued
+with grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+
+“But no,” she said to herself, “it is impossible anything should have
+happened to him—I should have known. I should have known the moment his
+spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
+dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
+impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.”
+
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund’s death, she would have
+received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
+arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
+
+“Nevertheless,” she said at last, “if I don’t hear tomorrow I will go
+and see.”
+
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
+Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
+she went to sleep.
+
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress.
+Her wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited
+upon her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming
+painful by reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part
+of the state of affairs.
+
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that
+something fatal awaited her.
+
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
+would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
+rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
+tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
+let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat
+up:
+
+“Oh, I know I’m a pig, dear, am I not?” she exclaimed. “Spoiling your
+holiday. But I couldn’t help it, dear, indeed I could not.”
+
+“My dear Lou!” cried Olive in tragic contralto. “Don’t refrain for my
+sake. The bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.”
+
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
+their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
+thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
+more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
+throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
+after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
+the time Helena’s heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
+London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
+
+“Promise me,” she had said, “if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
+would come to me.”
+
+“I would come to you from hell!” Siegmund had replied.
+
+“And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?” she had added.
+
+“I promise,” he answered.
+
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only
+could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron
+across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The
+train did what it could.
+
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there
+is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of
+suspense.
+
+Towards six o’clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
+this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
+platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
+great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
+planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
+could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
+prearranged everything minutely.
+
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+
+“The funeral took place, at two o’clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
+——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
+holiday on the South Coast….”
+
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+
+“Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
+was expressed for the widow and children.”
+
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
+Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing
+where she was going.
+
+“That was what I got,” she said, months afterwards; “and it was like a
+brick, it was like a brick.”
+
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
+lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
+side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund’s house
+standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
+stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
+at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
+anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
+destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
+in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
+over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
+looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her
+to return to Cornwall.
+
+“I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
+suspense,” said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
+a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
+eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
+wired the news:
+
+“Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.”
+
+
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
+her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
+was chaotic.
+
+“It was like a brick,” she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
+only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
+She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
+maiming her.
+
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
+mother opened to her.
+
+“What, are you alone?” cried Mrs. Verden.
+
+“Yes. Louisa did not come up,” replied Helena, passing into the
+dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
+there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
+took it. It was from one of the London papers.
+
+“Inquest was held today upon the body of ——.”
+
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse.
+Her mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+
+“How did you get to know?” she asked.
+
+“I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,” replied the daughter,
+in her muted, toneless voice.
+
+“Did you go to the house?” asked the mother sharply.
+
+“No,” replied Helena.
+
+“I was wondering whether to send you that paper,” said her mother
+hesitatingly.
+
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
+looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently to
+help her.
+
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before
+her. Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate
+her by watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her
+look. They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
+powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
+
+“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
+ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
+
+“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” he repeated.
+
+Helena shivered slightly.
+
+“Do, my dear,” her mother pleaded. “Let me take you to bed.”
+
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
+night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
+When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
+yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
+Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother’s gaze.
+
+“Shall I leave you the candle?” said Mrs Verden.
+
+“No, blow it out,” replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
+immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
+entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
+erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
+haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
+himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+
+“Will she be all right if you leave her?” he asked.
+
+“We must listen,” replied the mother abruptly.
+
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
+cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
+in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
+broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
+could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
+to his head; he was thinking and praying.
+
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
+and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
+followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter’s
+room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena’s aspect distressed
+and alarmed her. The girl’s face was masked as if in sleep, but
+occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror.
+Her wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to
+time she uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her
+hands and soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother’s
+presence, Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and
+turned out the light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put
+on the bed-rail, and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled
+down by his own bedside, and prayed.
+
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter’s delirium, and all the time, in a kind
+of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came
+to herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
+from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
+soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother’s presence,
+but she could not bear to be looked at.
+
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
+having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
+nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
+as she entered.
+
+“She is asleep,” whispered the wife hoarsely.
+
+“Is it a—a natural sleep?” hesitated the husband.
+
+“Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.”
+
+“Thank God!” whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+
+He held his wife’s hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
+She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
+quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility upon
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund’s death fall with
+full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
+the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
+When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul’s
+understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
+suspended.
+
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
+herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
+neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
+stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
+confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund’s house,
+sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
+and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
+bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
+glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
+was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
+wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
+inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
+dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
+
+“The children!” she said to herself—“the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.”
+
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness
+rose from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend
+back a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
+practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
+what ought not, ever to put herself in her father’s place and try to
+understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
+exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
+blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over
+the personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
+common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible
+after the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The
+memory of Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
+
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
+living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
+house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
+death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
+heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
+she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
+marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
+tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
+to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
+on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
+hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
+hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund’s
+father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
+further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
+Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
+come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
+was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
+doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering.
+The world was big with promise.
+
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice’s
+establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
+was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
+blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
+attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
+hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
+sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
+less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
+was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
+learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
+an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
+done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
+Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was naïve, inclined to suffer in the first
+pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
+sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
+liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
+stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
+vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to
+him. Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty
+appearance, but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of
+the superior and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him
+into shape without hurting him.
+
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
+Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with
+his elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was
+half-past seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed
+the sun was setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered
+into the room through the open window; towards the south the moon was
+budding out of the twilight.
+
+“What, you here all alone!” exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
+putting the children to bed. “I thought you had gone out.”
+
+“No—o! What’s the use,” replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
+landlady, “of going out? There’s nowhere to go.”
+
+“Oh, come! There’s the Heath, and the City—and you must join a tennis
+club. Now I know just the thing—the club to which Vera belongs.”
+
+“Ah, yes! You go down to the City—but there’s nothing there—what I mean
+to say—you want a pal—and even then—well”—he drawled the word—“we-ell,
+it’s merely escaping from yourself—killing time.”
+
+“Oh, don’t say that!” exclaimed Beatrice. “You want to enjoy life.”
+
+“Just so! Ah, just so!” exclaimed Mr Allport. “But all the same—it’s
+like this—you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
+say—what’s the good, after all? It’s merely living because you’ve got
+to.”
+
+“You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
+differently myself; yet I’ll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
+What’s the trouble now?”
+
+“We-ell—you can’t lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
+say—it’s nothing very definite. But, after all—what is there to do but
+to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That’s the best way.”
+
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+
+“You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,” she said. “You don’t think of the
+others.”
+
+“I don’t know,” he drawled. “What does it matter? Look here—who’d care?
+What I mean to say—for long?”
+
+“That’s all very easy, but it’s cowardly,” replied Beatrice gravely.
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Allport, “it’s true—isn’t it?”
+
+“It is not—and I _should_ know,” replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and
+waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You
+men, you’re all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.”
+
+“Ah, but then,” said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,
+looking at Beatrice’s black dress, “I’ve no one depending on _me_.”
+
+“No—you haven’t—but you’ve a mother and sister. The women always have
+to bear the brunt.”
+
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+
+“Yes, they do rather,” he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+
+“My husband—” began Beatrice. The young man waited. “My husband was one
+of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he’d found it—he couldn’t
+carry it off—and left it—to me.”
+
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+
+“You don’t mean it!” he exclaimed softly. “Surely he didn’t—?”
+
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “I know what it is to bear that kind of thing—and it’s
+no light thing, I can assure you.”
+
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+
+“And when was this, then—that he—?” asked Mr. Allport, almost with
+reverence.
+
+“Only last year,” replied Beatrice.
+
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by
+little Beatrice told him so much: “Her husband had got entangled with
+another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last
+she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He
+had killed himself—hanged himself—and left her penniless. Her people,
+who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow
+them. She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for
+herself; it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their
+careless youth, that her heart was heavy.”
+
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and
+sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by
+tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+
+“Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?”
+
+“I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.”
+
+“Pray do not overlook me,” said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+
+“Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting
+with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.”
+
+“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Allport, “Mrs. MacNair has been so good
+as to bear with me making a fool of myself.”
+
+“In what way?” asked Vera sharply.
+
+“Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,” said
+Beatrice playfully.
+
+“Unfortunately, I am not—or at least I am not yet aware of it,” said
+Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the
+young man’s knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped
+behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the
+richly darkening sky.
+
+“Don’t look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it’s all rind,” said Mr Allport
+in melancholy mockery. “Somebody’s bitten all the meat out of our slice
+of moon, and left us nothing but peel.”
+
+“It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell—one portion,”
+replied Vera.
+
+“Never mind, Miss MacNair,” he said, “Whoever got the slice found it
+raw, I think.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “But isn’t it a beautiful evening? I will
+just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.”
+
+“What primroses?” he exclaimed.
+
+“Evening primroses—there are some.”
+
+“Are there?” he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+
+“Yes, come and look,” she said.
+
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+
+“What, nobody in!” they heard him exclaim.
+
+“There is Holiday,” murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+
+“Ho! that’s where you are!” he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed
+Vera’s trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress
+to betray herself.
+
+“What have you got?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing in particular,” replied Mr Allport.
+
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+
+“Oh, well, if it’s nothing particular and private—” said Mr Holiday,
+and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+
+“Curst fool!” muttered Mr Allport. “I beg your pardon,” he added
+swiftly to Vera.
+
+“Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,” asked Vera, as if very friendly,
+“how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won’t open while
+you’re looking.”
+
+“No,” sniggered he, I don’t blame ’em. Why should they give themselves
+away any more than you do? You won’t open while you’re watched.” He
+nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.
+
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in
+poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his
+teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+
+“Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not
+play now,” she replied.
+
+“But you will begin again,” pleaded Mr. Allport.
+
+“No, never!” she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The
+family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He
+watched her interestedly.
+
+“Mother used to play—” she began.
+
+“Vera!” said Beatrice reproachfully.
+
+“Let us have a song,” suggested Mr. Holiday.
+
+“Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,” said Vera, going to the
+music-rack.
+
+“Nay—I—it’s not me,” Holiday began.
+
+“‘The Village Blacksmith’,” said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday
+advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.
+
+“But I have not touched the piano for—for years, I am sure,” protested
+Beatrice.
+
+“You can play beautifully,” said Vera.
+
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared
+at him. Vera remained very calm.
+
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went
+out abruptly.
+
+“Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow’s jellies are not made,”
+laughed Vera.
+
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She
+would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half
+past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was
+studying a cookery-book.
+
+“You, too, at the midnight lamp!” exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+
+“Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,” Beatrice replied.
+
+“We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,” smiled
+the young man ironically.
+
+“I must look after you,” said Beatrice.
+
+“You do—wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.”
+The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+
+“Because I scan a list of puddings?” smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+
+“For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.” He bowed to her.
+
+“Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.”
+
+“I opened the door,” said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+
+“It is not fair,” said Beatrice. “I am clumsy now—clumsy. I once could
+play.”
+
+“You play excellently. Why that ‘once could’?” said MacWhirter.
+
+“Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,” she
+replied.
+
+“We,” said MacWhirter, “are humble amateurs, and to us you are more
+than excellent.”
+
+“Good old Monsieur Fannière, how he would scold me! He said I would not
+take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament.
+I always think Scripture false in French, do not you?”
+
+“Er—my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to
+say.”
+
+“No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.”
+
+“Ah—that would be very interesting.”
+
+“Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off
+everything.”
+
+“Alas!” assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+
+“Those times were very different from these,” said Beatrice.
+
+“I should think so,” said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund’s death,
+Helena sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed
+in blue linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a
+yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air
+of the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding
+with her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the
+song. She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
+
+“I can’t get it—it’s no use. I think it’s the swinging of the car
+prevents me getting the time,” she said.
+
+“These little outside things always come a victory over you,” he
+laughed.
+
+“Do they?” she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It
+was six o’clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a
+dim, warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the
+corners of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on
+her neck by the wind.
+
+“Do you know,” she said, “it feels rather like rain.”
+
+“Then,” said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on
+the pavement, “you certainly ought not to be out.”
+
+“I ought not,” she said, “for I’m totally unprovided.”
+
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill
+off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side
+stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two
+great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy
+declivity, at some height above the road, barking and urging
+boisterously. Helena and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was
+grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the
+two pedestrians. Helena laughed at them.
+
+“They are—” she began, in her slow manner.
+
+“Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,” he continued.
+
+“No,” she said, “they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.”
+
+“Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.”
+
+“It appears so,” she laughed.
+
+“Dogs generally chum up to me,” he said.
+
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+
+“I remember,” she said, still laughing, “at Knockholt—you—a half-grown
+lamb—a dog—in procession.” She marked the position of the three with
+her finger.
+
+“What an ass I must have looked!” he said.
+
+“Sort of silent Pied Piper,” she laughed.
+
+“Dogs do follow me like that, though,” he said.
+
+“They did Siegmund,” she said.
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed.
+
+“I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed
+him home.”
+
+“Ah!” he exclaimed.
+
+“I remember, too,” she said, “a little black-and-white kitten that
+followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in—she would not. And I remember
+finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don’t think I ever
+quite forgave my mater that.”
+
+“More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,” he said.
+
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+
+“For the latter, you see,” she replied, “I am not responsible.”
+
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+
+“You know,” said Helena, “if it begins it will continue all night. Look
+at that!”
+
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+
+“Had we better go back?” he asked.
+
+“Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we
+see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.”
+
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned
+away.
+
+“It is exactly a year today,” she said, as they-walked on the round
+shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. “Exactly!”
+
+“What anniversary is it, then?” he inquired.
+
+“Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here—by the day, Thursday.
+We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the
+larch-wood?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“We will go, then,” she said.
+
+“History repeats itself,” he remarked.
+
+“How?” she asked calmly.
+
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+
+“I see no repetition,” she added.
+
+“No,” he exclaimed bitingly; “you are right!”
+
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men
+unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the
+air. Though he was angry, he spoke.
+
+“They got that hay rather damp,” he said. “Can’t you smell it—like hot
+tobacco and sandal-wood?”
+
+“What, is that the stack?” she asked.
+
+“Yes, it’s always like that when it’s picked damp.”
+
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned
+on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning
+over the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as
+butter, full of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her
+head, looking in the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers
+without speaking. She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and
+looked up at him over the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue
+eyes. He smiled gently to her.
+
+“Isn’t it nice?” he said. “Aren’t they fine bits?”
+
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her
+dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his
+place by her side.
+
+“I always like the gold-green of cut fields,” he said. “They seem to
+give off sunshine even when the sky’s greyer than a tabby cat.”
+
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing
+field on her right.
+
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into
+sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly
+whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather
+intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was
+exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried
+trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now
+and again he would look down passages between the trees—narrow pillared
+corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a
+twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood
+still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,
+causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At
+a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a
+larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of
+congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+
+“I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,” he said to
+himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+
+“Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks
+make a brown mist, a brume?”
+
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+
+“H’m? Yes, I see what you mean.”
+
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+
+“That’s the larch fog,” he laughed.
+
+“Yes,” she said, “you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.”
+
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+
+“It laughs through its teeth,” he said, smiling, playing with
+everything he touched.
+
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,
+picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if
+pleased by a coincidence.
+
+“Last year,” she said, “the larch-fingers stole both my pins—the same
+ones.”
+
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a
+ghost with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him
+swinging down the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was
+doing at the moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always
+felt a deep sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he
+hated Helena.
+
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley—one of those wide
+hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry
+held loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark
+blue dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena’s dress. They
+walked on a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for
+shelter.
+
+“Here,” said Byrne—“here is our tent—a black tartar’s—ready pitched.”
+
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood
+just back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good
+shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked
+under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was
+falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the
+monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone
+intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on
+the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the
+“tong-ting-tong” of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in
+the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each
+other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit
+better than where they stood before.
+
+“That’s like us all,” said Byrne whimsically. “We’re all penned out on
+a wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else
+is, it would be deliciously cosy.”
+
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and
+fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his
+eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without
+apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and
+unconsciously increasing the pressure.
+
+“You are cold,” he said.
+
+“Only my hands, and they usually are,” she replied gently.
+
+“And mine are generally warm.”
+
+“I know that,” she said. “It’s almost the only warmth I get now—your
+hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.”
+
+“As good as a baked potato,” he said.
+
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+
+“So many calories per week—isn’t that how we manage it?” he asked. “On
+credit?”
+
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,
+which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their
+cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+
+“Tong-tong, tong,” went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena’s home
+to read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in
+his own language.
+
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.
+He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.
+Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.
+
+“I shan’t knock it—it is all right,” he had said, protesting.
+
+This was Siegmund’s violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and
+Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.
+
+“It was all right,” he repeated.
+
+“But you were not,” she had replied gently.
+
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in
+a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his
+gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to
+Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself
+delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.
+By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He
+relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what
+he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+
+“The Babes in the Wood,” he teased.
+
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird
+began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+
+“That little beggar sees it’s a hopeless case, so he reminds us of
+heaven. But if he’s going to cover us with yew-leaves, he’s set himself
+a job.”
+
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing
+her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke for
+a while.
+
+“The rain continues,” he said.
+
+“And will do,” she added, laughing.
+
+“Quite content,” he said.
+
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+
+“‘Strew on us roses, roses,’” quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in
+wistful mockery: “‘And never a sprig of yew’—eh?”
+
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and
+weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against
+him.
+
+“Shall it not be so—no yew?” he murmured.
+
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on
+her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held them
+up.
+
+“I shall make marks on you,” he said.
+
+“They will come off,” she replied.
+
+“Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars
+off us.”
+
+“Some scars don’t seem to go,” she smiled.
+
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his
+side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from
+last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.
+
+“But it’s wearing off—even that,” he said wistfully.
+
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a
+hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and
+took off her hat.
+
+“That is better,” he said.
+
+“I was afraid of the pins,” said she.
+
+“I’ve been dodging them for the last hour,” he said, laughing, as she
+put her arms under his coat again for warmth.
+
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek
+against hers.
+
+“I want rest and warmth,” she said, in her dull tones.
+
+“All right!” he murmured.
+
+
+
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
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+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Trespasser</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: D. H. Lawrence</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: October 6, 2003 [eBook #9498]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 14, 2022]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>The Trespasser</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by D. H. Lawrence</h2>
+
+<h3>1912</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>
+“Take off that mute, do!” cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the piano
+keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Louisa,” she replied, “it would be simply unendurable.” She stood
+tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic forbearance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I can’t understand it,” cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with the
+exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. “It is only lately you
+would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you would have refused
+flatly, and no doubt about it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have only lately submitted to many things,” replied Helena, who seemed weary
+and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from her bristling
+defiance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At any rate,” she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don’t like
+it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on from <i>Allegro</i>,” said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place on
+Louisa’s score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the chords, and the
+music continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire, turned
+luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance with the music.
+He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger in the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds of
+others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and again the
+trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to the sound of the
+London traffic. It was Helena’s room, for which she was responsible. The walls
+were of the dead-green colour of August foliage; the green carpet, with its
+border of polished floor, lay like a square of grass in a setting of black
+loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace were smooth white. There was no other
+colouring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light wicker
+arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished wood, the couple
+of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the recess—all seemed uneasy, as if
+they might be tossed out to leave the room clear, with its green floor and
+walls, and its white rim of skirting-board, serene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from China,
+grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two tablets of
+translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood, and carved with
+Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes, rock-crystals, and shells and
+scraps of seaweed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces of dark
+green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his unwelcome. The only
+objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp that glowed on a stand near
+the wall, and the large, beautiful fern, with narrow fronds, which ruffled its
+cloud of green within the gloom of the window-bay. These only, with the fire,
+seemed friendly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered on, but,
+like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically. She broke the
+music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very hurting to hear. The
+young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he turned again to the players.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted, swung
+as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if her body were
+the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man frown as he watched. Yet
+he continued to watch. She had a very strong, vigorous body. Her neck, pure
+white, arched in strength from the fine hollow between her shoulders as she
+held the violin. The long white lace of her sleeve swung, floated, after the
+bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He watched
+her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the soapstone idol,
+take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front and glisten over her
+forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why,” she cried, “wasn’t it all right?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed wearily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was all wrong,” she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I’m sorry I did so badly,” said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You didn’t do badly at all,” replied her friend, in the same tired, apathetic
+tone. “It was I.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a moment as
+if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection, like a dog that did
+not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no response, she drooped over the
+piano. At length Helena looked at her friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The
+burden of this excessive affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she
+said, as if she were coaxing a child:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Play some Chopin, Louisa.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,” said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena’s friend for years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Play the mazurkas,” repeated Helena calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and came to
+sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music began. Helena
+pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are inflamed still” said the young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired, lighting up
+with a small smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine, strong
+arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist, like some
+long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the smarting soft flesh
+caressively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is quite hot,” she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,” he replied, frowning. “I
+can’t think why it should last all these months. Don’t you ever put anything on
+to heal it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on the
+burn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It comes out every evening like this,” she said softly, with curious joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And that was August, and now it’s February!” he exclaimed. “It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come—the smart; you invoke it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I! I never think of it,” she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man’s blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the mortification
+was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never?” he re-echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued to
+play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Drat it,” she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two looked up at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ye did run well—what hath hindered you?” laughed Byrne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You!” cried Louisa. “Oh, I can’t play any more,” she added, dropping her arms
+along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh I can’t, Helen!” pleaded Louisa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear,” said Helena, laughing briefly, “you are really under <i>no</i>
+obligation <i>whatever</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her head
+languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign, but continued
+to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the hearth, sprawled in his
+chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside, the
+traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this vulgar storm
+of life seemed shut out of Helena’s room, that remained indifferent, like a
+church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar, glistening yellow on the dark
+piano. The lamp was blown out, and the flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled
+in the grate, so that the yellow glow of the candles seemed to shine even on
+the embers. Still no one spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
+position. She sat motionless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you make coffee, Louisa?” she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked at her
+friend, and stretched slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she groaned voluptuously. “This is so comfortable!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t trouble then, I’ll go. No, don’t get up,” said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena’s wrists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will go,” she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and appealing
+love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up slowly,
+leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is the coffee?” she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy. She was
+full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think, my dear,” replied Helena, “it is in its usual place.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh—o-o-oh!” yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and played
+together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to an end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“After all,” said Byrne, when the door was closed, “if you’re alive you’ve got
+to live.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wherefore?” she asked indulgently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because there’s no such thing as passive existence,” he replied, grinning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t see it at all,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can’t, he protested, “any more than a tree can help budding in April—it
+can’t help itself, if it’s alive; same with you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then”—and again there was the touch of a sneer—“if I can’t help myself,
+why trouble, my friend?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because—because I suppose <i>I</i> can’t help myself—if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I”—he smiled brilliantly—“am April.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy, metallic
+tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me—and—and go
+through a kind of <i>danse macabre</i>—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you bud underneath—like beech,” he said quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, my friend,” she said coldly, “I am too tired to bud.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he pleaded, “no!” With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was stunned.
+Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She looked in the
+fire, forgetting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You want March,” he said—he worried endlessly over her—“to rip off your old
+leaves. I s’ll have to be March,” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then broke
+out once more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must start again—you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a blasted
+summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you’re not. Even if it’s a
+bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are not dead….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze at a
+photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a handsome man in
+the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as if yielding beneath a
+burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked out musingly, and there was
+no hint of rebellion in the contours of the regular features. The hair was
+brushed back, soft and thick, straight from his fine brow. His nose was small
+and shapely, his chin rounded, cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed
+also at the photo. His look became distressed and helpless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,” he cried brutally. She shuddered,
+clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the fire. “You are not
+dead with Siegmund,” he persisted, “so you can’t say you live with him. You may
+live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead, and his memory is not he—himself,”
+He made a fierce gesture of impatience. “Siegmund now—he is not a memory—he is
+not your dead red leaves—he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because
+you are alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at him under
+her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her steady, glowering
+gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you never
+touch the thing,” he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,” came her voice, like the cry
+of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve an ache. He
+saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from life. She was very
+sick after the tragedy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them. You would
+linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the road go by.
+Folks are better than a garden in full blossom—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his passionate way,
+roused her when she did not want to be roused, when moving from her torpor was
+painful. At last—
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are merciless, you know, Cecil,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I will be,” protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed softly,
+wearily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph over the
+piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time being, was busy
+hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored the simplest—that of
+love—because he was even more faithful than she to the memory of Siegmund, and
+blinder than most to his own heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do wish I had Siegmund’s violin,” she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He, also,
+felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with her own
+horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the arrival of Louisa
+with the coffee.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund’s violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund’s lean
+portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It was worth
+twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell it; she kept the
+black case out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund’s violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for the last
+time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After two dead months
+the first string had snapped, sharply striking the sensitive body of the
+instrument. The second string had broken near Christmas, but no one had heard
+the faint moan of its going. The violin lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of
+must creeping over the smooth, soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay
+crisped from the anguish of breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The
+fragrance of Siegmund himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly
+changed into an odour of must.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life, till
+its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his violin, he
+seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of the heart of
+Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and turned it into
+music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must remained of him in his
+violin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had longed for
+rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund’s fingers had pressed
+too hard, when Siegmund’s passion, and joy, and fear had hurt, too, the soft
+body of his little beloved, the violin had sickened for rest. On that last
+night of opera, without pity Siegmund had struck the closing phrases from the
+fiddle, harsh in his impatience, wild in anticipation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and savage, and
+startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with anticipation, as if
+something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly, with hands of habitual
+tenderness, he put his violin away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the opera-house.
+The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their weariness with good
+wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and suggestive advice, pressing hands
+warmly ere they disbanded. Other years Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take
+the long farewell of his associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left
+the opera-house with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his
+comrades’ hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a flame
+stretched level on the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to pity the
+flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall. For himself, the
+sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The moon was full above the
+river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction watches some clear thing; then
+he came to a standstill. It was useless to hurry to his train. The traffic
+swung past the lamplight shone warm on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had
+already left the city. His face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river,
+in its soft grey, shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell
+open like a garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as
+living flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
+his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a kind of
+trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out amongst lights
+and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement, fascinated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his soul,
+in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the rest. Then his
+soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was going to break free
+altogether, to have at least a few days purely for his own joy. This, to a man
+of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds, a severing of blood-ties, a sort
+of new birth. In the excitement of this last night his life passed out of his
+control, and he sat at the carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help. Slowly the
+body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one fashion for so many
+years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in all his being, though he knew
+not with what. All he could do now was to watch the lights go by, and to let
+the translation of himself continue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and Siegmund saw
+the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low anticipation. The elms,
+great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their cloaks across the pale fields. He
+had not seen them so before. The world was changing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The night air
+was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again he lifted his face
+to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance amid the blonde heavens
+it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would front the waves with silver as
+they slid to the shore, and Helena, looking along the coast, waiting, would
+lift her white hands with sudden joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing
+alongside, through the black masses of the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of his
+little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face. As he
+closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall, the sense of
+his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to bed. Nevertheless,
+he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the moonlight entered, and he
+thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his breath and stiffened, then
+breathed again. “Tomorrow,” he thought, as he laid his violin-case across the
+arms of a wicker chair. But he had a physical feeling of the presence of
+Helena: in his shoulders he seemed to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting
+his arms, he turned to the moonshine. “Tomorrow!” he exclaimed quietly; and he
+left the room stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly turned up
+the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was tired, excited,
+and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he looked round with
+disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains betokening
+children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small plate with a knife
+laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was wrapped in a red-bordered,
+fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which even then were crawling round, on
+the sugar, on the loaf, on the cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was
+chipped, and a stain had gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark
+of a dirty mouth. He fetched a glass of water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near the door.
+Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the floor, while the sofa
+was littered with children’s clothing. In the black stove the ash lay dead; on
+the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts
+of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he
+crushed two sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find
+his slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he ate, he
+closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half wishing he had
+no tomorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This was the
+summary of his domestic life—a broken, coarse comb, a child crying because her
+hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till now, when she had got into
+a temper to see the job through; and then the teddy-bear, pathetically cocking
+a black worsted nose, and lifting absurd arms to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the silly
+thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over him, battling
+with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually his baffled mind went
+dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble, staring blankly into the
+space. His own stifling roused him. Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep
+breath, then relaxed again. After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and
+went slowly to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room. It was
+fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite uncovered, her wilful
+head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black hair was tossed across the
+pillow: he could see the action. Marjory snuggled under the sheet. He placed
+the teddy-bear between the two girls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him. Either he
+himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or they must suffer.
+But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena, and meant to do so. As he
+turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the mirror. He looked back; he peered
+at himself. His hair still grew thick and dark from his brow: he could not see
+the grey at the temples. His eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under
+the black moustache, was full of youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small room. He
+was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made the
+farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The same pallor
+went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay curled up asleep at
+the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea rocking backwards and
+forwards till it rocked her island as she slept. She was so calm and full of
+her own assurance. It was a great rest to be with her. With her, nothing
+mattered but love and the beauty of things. He felt parched and starving. She
+had rest and love, like water and manna for him. She was so strong in her
+self-possession, in her love of beautiful things and of dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must get to sleep,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it. When at
+last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded final. He stood
+up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am fearfully tired,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for some
+time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thirty-eight years old,” he said to himself, “and disconsolate as a child!” He
+began to muse of the morrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts labouring over
+his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift thoughts, flew in and
+alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and take possession of a pond.
+Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him; he played the rhythm with all his
+blood. As he turned over in this torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement
+of the De Beriot concerto which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found
+himself watching her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience
+when she was wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow,
+he realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and he
+felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome girl of
+nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a piece of
+furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in a hard,
+insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had not been in the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena stood fingering the score of <i>Pelléas</i>. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you consider the music of <i>Pelléas</i> cold?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
+mention, after Helena’s fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating; and to
+her much was humiliating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or theatre
+had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed the habit of
+coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to her home; then the
+three friends went walks together; then the two went walks together, whilst
+Louisa sheltered them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot. He had
+felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and he had lost
+himself to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so insulted
+Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at him all the
+while with heavy blue eyes: “I think, Siegmund, I cannot come here any more.
+Your home is not open to me any longer.” He had writhed in confusion and
+humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely and for a long time, she said: “I
+will write to you.” Then she left him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when he lay
+resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are so tired, Siegmund.” She stroked his face, and kissed him softly.
+Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it is not to debase
+the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and ugly for Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first week in
+August.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having no
+money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the Isle of
+Wight, tomorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also like the
+sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick white throat, the
+strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her small hands, silken and
+light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow, along with the sea and the downs.
+He clung to the exquisite flame which flooded him….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice, and the
+children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes, and her black
+hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had been the previous day,
+flaring with temper when he said to her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days’ holiday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and inflamed,
+she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her contempt, while two
+large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund hated his wife for drawing on
+him the grave, cold looks of condemnation from his children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had been
+brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He evoked her
+old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the children away. He
+wondered if he could bear a repetition of that degradation. It bled him of his
+courage and self-respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall door.
+Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down the gravel
+path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she lay for the
+moment stiff with bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am nothing, I am nothing,” she said to herself. She lay quite rigid for a
+time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly through the
+slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing hard, her
+finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a train slowing
+down in the station, and directly the quick “chuff-chuff-chuff” of its drawing
+out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers,
+her husband and Helena, rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!” she said aloud, in a low
+tone. She hated Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund’s shadows, his children, Beatrice,
+his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young man setting
+forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town everything had vanished but
+the old gay world of romance. He laughed as he looked out of the carriage
+window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound floated
+up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter of the band,
+the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park. People were drifting
+brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It was no time; it was Romance,
+going back to Tristan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
+Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced lightly in
+the sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena. It was
+so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in white, with her
+cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face shining, smiling as she
+dipped her head because of the sun, which glistened on her uncovered hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow impatient.
+The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers, and ludicrous blue
+sailors, and all the brilliant women from church shook like a kaleidoscope down
+the street. The train crawled on, drawing near to the sea, for which Siegmund
+waited breathless. It was so like Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its
+reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out, and
+Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He looked round,
+and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold and white and blood-red
+sails lit here and there upon the blueness. Standing on the deck, he gave
+himself to the breeze and to the sea, feeling like one of the ruddy sails—as if
+he were part of it all. All his body radiated amid the large, magnificent
+sea-moon like a piece of colour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a bosom,
+the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near the inquisitive
+birds; the old <i>Victory</i> shook her myriad pointed flags of yellow and
+scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to look,
+the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund laughed at them.
+He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the blue sea gathering
+round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly alone in
+the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and crimson-winged
+boats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women in the
+myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible. Behind him, the
+white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand the grim and wicked
+battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath him the clear green water
+swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In front, Sieglinde’s island drew
+near and nearer, creeping towards him, bringing him Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet him; he
+was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it. But Helena was
+on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the fleets of cloud that
+had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he watched the end of the pier
+loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud cast over him the shadows of their
+bulk, and he shivered in the chill wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His travelling was very slow. The sky’s dark shipping pressed closer and
+closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands near
+Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All the sky was
+grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the wind swept coldly.
+It was Sunday, and the station and the island were desolate, having lost their
+purposes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning’s blaze of elation
+was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept only two hours
+of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the intoxication was
+dying out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At three o’clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class carriage,
+looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred dazzle of a
+shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the reeds that shivered
+in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly torpor. He counted the stations.
+Beneath his stupor his heart was thudding heavily with excitement, surprising
+him, for his brain felt dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund watched the
+platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under the shelter, one
+white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund’s heart leaped up, wrenching
+wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of Helena. She dilated, gave a
+palpitating cry as he dragged her into the carriage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You <i>here!</i>” he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund’s
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as his
+warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it a dream now, dear?” he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly, shuddering
+because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here we are, then!” exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional, cheerful
+manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered his luggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was tingling with
+an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare stimulant. He wondered at
+himself. It seemed that every fibre in his body was surprised with joy, as each
+tree in a forest at dawn utters astonished cries of delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naïve look of
+joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the fibrils, like a
+purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow, mysteriously, joy seemed to
+quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him, feature by feature. She liked his
+clear forehead, with its thick black hair, and his full mouth, and his chin.
+She loved his hands, that were small, but strong and nervous, and very white.
+She liked his breast, that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and
+his thighs, and his knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of his love.
+He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he only knew her blue
+eyes were rather awful to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their lodging
+was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea, Siegmund’s eyes dilated,
+and he looked frowning at Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” he asked, listening uneasily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious look of
+distress amused her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear—not Wotan’s wrath, nor
+Siegfried’s dragon….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds the
+sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal, alone, the
+last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a second or two,
+then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and Helena looked at each
+other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a big, strong man anxious-eyed as
+a child because of a strange sound amused her. But he was tired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I assure you, it <i>is</i> only a fog-horn,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it?” she said curiously. “Why? Well—yes—I think I can understand its being
+so to some people. It’s something like the call of the horn across the sea to
+Tristan.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund, with his
+face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The boom of the
+siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of fatality. Helena waited
+till the noise died down, then she repeated her horn-call.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,” she said, curiously interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This time next week, Helena!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it lay upon
+the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him alone
+with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was wrenched from its
+roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him, leaving him inwardly
+quite lonely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is <i>no</i> next week,” she declared, with great cheerfulness. “There
+is only the present.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms round
+his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it close, with her
+hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed against her breast. He
+smelled the silk of her dress and the faint, intoxicating odour of her person.
+With shut eyes he owned heavily to himself again that she was blind to him. But
+some other self urged with gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she
+pressed his face upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against her
+breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his forehead.
+He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and future in
+a passion worth years of living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful things
+she had found. She had a woman’s curious passion for details, a woman’s
+peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened, smiling, revived by
+her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed him like sunshine, and
+filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended to her words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired—you are very tired,”
+said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his handsome limbs
+in relief—“no, not at all tired now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But she
+quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must go to bed early tonight,” she said, turning aside her face, ruffling
+his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his arms, and smiled
+without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be thus alone with her and in
+her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself up against the fog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are sure you’re not too tired?” she reiterated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It was
+cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his overcoat, while
+they walked together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the mist,” he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t dislike it,” she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It puts us together by ourselves,” he said. She plodded alongside, bowing her
+head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It couldn’t have happened better for us than this mist,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but me—look!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself quite
+alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself sobbing
+against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing what it was all
+about, but happy and unafraid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in their
+ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense. They turned from
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the pitch?” asked Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but the settled pitch—is it about E?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“E!” exclaimed Siegmund. “More like F.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nay, listen!” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the fog-horn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. “That is not E.” He repeated
+the sound. “It is F.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely it is E,” persisted Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Even F sharp,” he rejoined, humming the note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you agree?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do not,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the note in <i>Tristan</i>?” Helena made an effort to ask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is not the same,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, dear, that is not the same,” she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public footpath, in
+daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps down the fog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey haze at
+the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky was fairly clear
+overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely to itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing slightly
+back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming unbearable. They
+stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope into the mist, under
+which the sea stirred noisily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we walk over, then?” said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena’s heart
+stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he play with the
+idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was afraid of him just
+then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come away, dear,” she pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her to
+think so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come away, dear!” she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not afraid?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not afraid, no….” Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality that made
+him shiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is too easy a way,” he said satirically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not take in his meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!” she scolded. “The mist is
+Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went flying
+from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western sky stood
+dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the golf-links to where
+green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena that she was tired, and would
+sit down. They faced the lighted chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn,
+dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun was departing with pomp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming bridal
+chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express it; how other
+men had borne this same glory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is the music of it?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly open, as
+if in ironic rhapsody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of what, dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do not know,” she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A Beethoven symphony—the one—” and he explained to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The sunset
+hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Grail music in <i>Lohengrin</i>,” she decided.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble to
+dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him for
+herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She almost put
+her two hands over his eyes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist closed to.
+Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense wide fog. She
+shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her in his arms, where
+she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he bent forward, straight to her
+lips. His moustache was drenched cold with fog, so that she shuddered slightly
+after his kiss, and shuddered again. He did not know why the strong tremor
+passed through her. Thinking it was with fear and with cold, he undid his
+overcoat, put her close on his breast, and covered her as best he could. That
+she feared him at that moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly
+he hid his face on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot,
+buried against her soft strong throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are so big I can’t hold you,” she whispered plaintively, catching her
+breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his shoulders
+ineffectually.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,” he whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast with a
+sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands meet in the
+warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“See! I can’t,” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid her
+hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his figure.
+Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat, under his coats,
+and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up again, with fire, till all
+Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was one great ache.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He crushed her to him—crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His muscles
+set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh,
+without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. He
+remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious of nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was marvellous
+to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like steel. She swooned
+in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found herself released, taking a
+great breath, while Siegmund was moving his mouth over her throat, something
+like a dog snuffing her, but with his lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion.
+His moustache thrilled her strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her
+throat beneath the ear, and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made
+her vibrate through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled
+beneath his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed her lips
+on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse together. It was
+the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one being, Two-in-one, the
+only Hermaphrodite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that class
+of “dreaming women” with whom passion exhausts itself at the mouth. Her desire
+was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy flames, had poured through
+her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It sank, and she felt herself flagging.
+She had not the man’s brightness and vividness of blood. She lay upon his
+breast, dreaming how beautiful it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious
+there, on that rare bed. She lay still on Siegmund’s breast, listening to his
+heavily beating heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of Siegmund
+was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than her dream, which
+is as it may be. However, to the real man she was very cruel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran bright
+for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more detached and
+inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been rejecting the “animal”
+in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract, and full of fantasy, and her
+blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is full of cruelty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely, and his
+mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from his caresses,
+passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too sensitive not to be aware
+of this, and far too much of a man not to yield to the woman. His heart sank,
+his blood grew sullen at her withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were
+motionless and silent for some time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet grass,
+were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her child whom she
+must correct and lead:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.” He made a small sound, that might mean
+anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth, however, remained
+motionless on her throat, and the caress went out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,” she coaxed determinedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Soon,” he said thickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath to
+take him from his pleasure:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siegmund, I am cold.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Cold!” he exclaimed. “But you are warm with me—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh dear!” he said. “Why didn’t you give them me to warm?” He leaned forward,
+and put his hand on her shoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are very cold,” he said. “We must hurry and make them warm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She clung to
+Siegmund, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wish you had told me before,” he said. “I ought to have known….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V</h2>
+
+<p>
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other person in
+the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a charming old lady,
+who let this sitting-room more for the change, for the sake of having visitors,
+than for gain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena introduced Siegmund as “My friend”. The old lady smiled upon him. He was
+big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years back…. And the
+two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house for their honeymoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena attended
+to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found him watching her
+with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and bewilderment. He was not
+quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could scarcely adjust the wicks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the Nietzsche
+I brought—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms along
+his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his being felt
+sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came up in his brain
+like bubbles—random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in the startling
+inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and he smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks lighting
+on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness. His look instantly
+changed. She wondered at his being so silent, so strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way—she was only twenty-six to his
+thirty-eight—she stood before him, holding both his hands and looking down on
+him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white dress that showed her
+throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam to balance her head. He
+could see the full white arms passing clear through the dripping spume of lace,
+towards the rise of her breasts. But her eyes bent down upon him with such
+gloom of tenderness that he dared not reveal the passion burning in him. He
+could not look at her. He strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender,
+but he could not put out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them
+in appeal for her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away.
+She waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not look
+at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You would like supper now, dear?” she asked, looking where the dark hair
+ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong setting of his
+shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just as you will,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled him,
+she thought. He was foreign to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will spread the cloth, then,” she said, in deep tones of resignation. She
+pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice, but, still
+with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and lavender
+sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched her moving, saw
+the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace, and the hollow of her
+shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and fall of her loins as she
+walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded. It was a physical pain to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic
+look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He was quite
+intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. He was
+tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his
+strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile, restlessly,
+she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you want anything else?” asked the smiling old landlady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing at all, thanks,” said Helena, with decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I’ve washed the dishes. You will put
+the lamp out, dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am well used to a lamp,” smiled Helena. “We use them always at home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had had a day before Siegmund’s coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss’ heart,
+and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-night, dear—good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be long,
+dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes—yes. It is very tiring, London.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at Siegmund.
+He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking in the fire. As
+she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to glance to her, with the
+same dark, curiously searching, disappointed eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I read to you?” she asked bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you will,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She went and
+stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it, dear?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You,” he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his arms with
+a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up like a heavy white
+cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did not move, but lay there
+curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time after
+time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would ravel out with
+his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness of love was like a
+soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very still, and
+seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his love-making. All was very
+quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of the sea. Presently the cat, which
+had been sleeping in a chair, rose and went to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I let her out?” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do!” said Helena, slipping from his knee. “She goes out when the nights are
+fine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs Curtiss
+called from upstairs: “Is that you, dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have just let Kitty out,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, thank you. Good night!” They heard the old lady lock her bedroom door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then waited
+a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we sit by firelight?” he asked tentatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes—If you wish,” she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body was
+burning and surging with desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she knelt, a
+bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red stripes of firelight
+leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy, advanced out of the shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like two
+scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt on the
+hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread towards her.
+It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely able to move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come,” he pleaded softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms, bare to
+the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards him. Her face was
+bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid. Lit by the firelight, in
+her white, clinging dress, cowering between her uplifted arms, she seemed to be
+offering him herself to sacrifice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder, abandoned to
+him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+It was eleven o’clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund’s arms, and rose
+from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot, feverish, and
+restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely still, with his heavy
+arms about her, making her hot. If she had not seen his eyes blue and dark, she
+would have thought him asleep. She tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Am I not uneasy?” she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is wonderful to be as still as this,” he said. She had lain tranquil with
+him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in his
+stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from an hour ago.
+How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and hazy in the
+morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic, as if he would
+destroy her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his strange
+flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced of her. He was
+so strange to her, so different from herself. What next would he ask of her,
+what new blossom would she rear in him then. He seemed to grow and flower
+involuntarily. She merely helped to produce him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
+involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
+Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in his
+base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and unbearable to
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund looked
+at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her forehead, breathed
+deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at her flushed face in the
+mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned to look at the night. The cool,
+dark, watery sea called to her. She pushed back the curtain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond the
+trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea, and the
+moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution on her brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?” she asked fretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay, if you wish to,” he answered, altogether willing. He was filled with an
+easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at the
+head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the casement
+of the land seductively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s the finest night I have seen,” said Siegmund. Helena’s eyes suddenly
+filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the moon on the water,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can hardly tell the one from the other,” he replied simply. “The sea seems
+to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the coast. They are
+all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say, are all you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and she had
+created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her now, and did not
+need her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel at home here,” he said; “as if I had come home where I was bred.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We go an awful long way round, Helena,” he said, “just to find we’re all
+right.” He laughed pleasantly. “I have thought myself such an outcast! How can
+one be outcast in one’s own night, and the moon always naked to us, and the sky
+half her time in rags? What do we want?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt something of
+the harmony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Whatever I have or haven’t from now,” he continued, “the darkness is a sort of
+mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and sometimes the sea is
+a brother: and there’s a family in one house, you see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I, Siegmund?” she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She looked
+up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit ivory of her
+face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed, then bent to kiss
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The key of the castle,” he said. He put his face against hers, and felt on his
+cheek the smart of her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all very grandiose,” he said comfortably, “but it does for tonight, all
+this that I say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is true for ever,” she declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In so far as tonight is eternal,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from under
+his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon. They stood
+folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. “It is like the magic tales,” he
+thought, as he realized where he was; “and I am transported to a new life, to
+realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with delight
+from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand, he felt for
+his watch. It was seven o’clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched night glittered
+before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the sunshine.
+Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the morning. Helena
+was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows in the creeper were
+shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud
+stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy
+shimmer of sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and red, and
+black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of sunshine between him
+and them. He leaned with his hands on the window-ledge looking out of the
+casement. The breeze ruffled his hair, blew down the neck of his
+sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed, hastily threw on his clothes, and
+went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and spinning
+his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and down a zigzag
+in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with
+sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that
+was coloured of cream and butter. The grass wetted his brown shoes and his
+flannel trousers. Again, a fresh breeze put the scent of the sea in his
+uncovered hair. The cliff was a tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies
+at the lip being blown out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively
+to look down, and pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where the
+sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the far-off
+headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the thin foam-edge
+of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent travelling; a few small
+people, dark or naked-white, moved below the swinging birds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a stretch
+of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling square altars,
+hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It delighted him to feel
+the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him and wandering timidly over his
+nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand to the sea, where he waded in,
+thrusting his legs noisily through the heavy green water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep, watching
+the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable glitter, afraid to
+plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear green water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and
+sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he stooped
+again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play, even at middle
+age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer across,
+taking a seal’s view of the cliffs as they confronted the morning. He liked to
+see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he liked to see the birds come
+down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he swam, he
+caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the pain, at the
+sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it, but ruffled his way
+back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were in a
+turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was sparkled and
+tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful palpitations of his
+flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against him. He offered his body
+to the morning, glowing with the sea’s passion. The wind nestled in to him, the
+sunshine came on his shoulders like warm breath. He delighted in himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of clear
+water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She would make so much of this little pool,” he thought. And as he smiled, he
+saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of
+himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white
+maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh,
+which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over
+the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and
+my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What
+makes me myself, among all these?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am at my best, at my strongest,” he said proudly to himself. “She ought to
+be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were a baboon under
+my clothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his breasts, the
+full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was marred by the long raw
+scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I was giving her myself, I wouldn’t want that blemish on me,” he thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of pink
+anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I’d rather see her
+shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together could show…. Why
+doesn’t she like me?” he thought as he dressed. It was his physical self
+thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in the
+dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him rather
+heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her ease. It was a
+gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and insistent. She smiled
+on him with tender dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have bathed?” she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled black
+hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have not bathed!” he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the brine in
+his hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No; I bathe later,” she replied. “But what—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It <i>is</i> blood?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I grazed my thigh—nothing at all,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you sure?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The towel looks bad enough,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s an alarmist,” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Breakfast is quite ready,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I for breakfast—but shall I do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare above the
+neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of his slovenly
+appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would not trouble,” she said almost sarcastically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you sleep?” she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to eat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Like the dead—solid,” he replied”. “And you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, pretty well, thanks,” she said, rather piqued that he had slept so deeply,
+whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of sleeplessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I haven’t slept like that for years,” he said enthusiastically. Helena smiled
+gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over her. She liked
+his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested the breast of the man
+beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with him so bright. The dark-faced
+pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily winking a golden eye at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She dwelled,
+as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things—on the barbaric yellow ragwort, and
+pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers, and dew, and snail-tracks
+drying in the sun. Her walk was one long lingering. More than the spaces, she
+loved the nooks, and fancy more than imagination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity’s previous
+vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower’s name, nor perceived any
+of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an adaptation or a modification. It
+pleased her that the lowest browny florets of the clover hung down; she cared
+no more. She clothed everything in fancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That yellow flower hadn’t time to be brushed and combed by the fairies before
+dawn came. It is tousled …” so she thought to herself. The pink convolvuli were
+fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the night fairies. The
+rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens spreading their bright hair
+to the sun. That was her favourite form of thinking. The value of all things
+was in the fancy they evoked. She did not care for people; they were vulgar,
+ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low sea-wall,
+spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic out of the simple
+morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets round the small rocks,
+the curling of the deep blue water round the water-shadowed reefs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is very good,” she said to herself. “This is eternally cool, and clean
+and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away the
+soiling of the last night’s passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take, like the
+land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends its passion upon
+itself. Helena was something like the sea, self-sufficient and careless of the
+rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes shining
+warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging backward and
+forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall, warming the four
+white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they watched the water playing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him with the
+beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he received
+intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and the darkness.
+Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It is that makes love.
+He could always sympathize with the wistful little flowers, and trees lonely in
+their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In these things he recognized the great
+yearning, the ache outwards towards something, with which he was ordinarily
+burdened. But with Helena, in this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect
+as the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will it be fine all day?” he asked, when a cloud came over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she did
+not care at all. “I think it will be a mixed day—cloud and sun—more sun than
+cloud.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at the cloud
+to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like a bare blue sky,” he said; “sunshine that you seem to stir about as you
+walk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is warm enough here, even for you,” she smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, here!” he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation from
+the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena’s. She laughed, and
+captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an hour they
+remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till Helena began to sigh,
+and to lift her face to the little breeze that wandered down from the west. She
+fled as soon from warmth as from cold. Physically, she was always so; she
+shrank from anything extreme. But psychically she was an extremist, and a
+dangerous one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point of land
+stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the inscription.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s all right—but a vilely ugly railing!” exclaimed Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, they’d have to fence in Lord Tennyson’s white marble,” said Helena, rather
+indefinitely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, he did belittle great things, didn’t he?” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tennyson!” she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shouldn’t say so,” she declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed the
+headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the sea
+brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below the cliffs.
+Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose over the cliff’s
+edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped in a hollow, they could
+see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds passing in and out of the
+cliff shelter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena. They
+fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer the edge,
+feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white above the
+weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He would not dare to
+tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death to risk it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come back, dear. Don’t go so near,” he pleaded, following as close as he
+might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her, and she
+went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her symbols, the death
+of which the sagas talk—something grand, and sweeping, and dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of foam
+broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like froth on a
+pot, screaming in chorus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
+thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They look so fine down there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled with a
+keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed as he gripped
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of the
+coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the “Path of the
+Hundred Steps”.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When is a hundred not a hundred?” he said sceptically, as they descended the
+dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena laughed at his
+exactitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It must be a love of round numbers,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No doubt,” she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or of exaggeration,” he added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet. A
+sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low chatter of
+shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the confused, shell-like
+murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs. Siegmund and Helena lay side by
+side upon the dry sand, small as two resting birds, while thousands of gulls
+whirled in a white-flaked storm above them, and the great cliffs towered
+beyond, and high up over the cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a
+vast caravan <i>en route</i>. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and
+the circling flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and
+Helena, two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment side
+by side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The lazy ships
+that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the boulders, but
+Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and insignificant,
+watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan of Day go past. They
+lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes, looking out at the sailing of
+ships across their vision of blue water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, that one with the greyish sails—” Siegmund was saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster—yes?”
+interrupted Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the wicked
+laughter of Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is right, I am sure,” he protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I won’t contradict you,” she laughed, in a tone which showed him he knew even
+less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?” he said,
+not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked at one
+another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in the heat. Then
+they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts slept like
+butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows startled them up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The clouds are coming,” he said regretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,” she answered,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look at the shadows—like blots floating away. Don’t they devour the sunshine?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is quite warm enough here,” she said, nestling in to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel like a
+seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the sunshine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the water,
+leaving a shining print on Siegmund’s face. He lay, with half-closed eyes,
+sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs, she imagined he must be
+heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with her fingers stroking his
+eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He lay perfectly still, in a
+half-dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the sea,
+and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It seemed to
+go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it fascinated her: so
+deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had the world a heart? Was
+there also deep in the world a great God thudding out waves of life, like a
+great heart, unconscious? It frightened her. This was the God she knew not, as
+she knew not this Siegmund. It was so different from the half-shut eyes with
+black lashes, and the winsome, shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she
+heard it, could not be the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little
+sleepy waves. She listened for Siegmund’s soul, but his heart overbeat all
+other sound, thudding powerfully.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across at the
+shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose,” he said, “they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was afraid they would wake you,” she smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the water
+and the downs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The tide is coming in,” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But this broad strip of sand hasn’t been wet for months. It’s as soft as
+pepper,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of shrivelled
+fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On the other side was
+the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and overshadowed by huge
+cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and fell, overcome at the end
+of the race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its base
+weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green sea broke
+amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of withdrawal. The lovers
+had to cross this desert of white boulders, that glistened in smooth skins
+uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were almost at the wall of the headland.
+Glancing back, he saw the other headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He
+and Helena must hurry, or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand
+still remaining between the great wall and the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him—made him feel trapped and helpless. He was
+caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled for him. But
+he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded by the skin-like
+glisten of the white rock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think I will rest awhile,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, come along,” he begged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear,” she laughed, “there is tons of this shingle to buttress us from the
+sea.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders. It
+would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look at this black wood,” she said. “Does the sea really char it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us get round the corner,” he begged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,” she said ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay jutted
+out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved. This bay was pure
+white at the base, from its great heaped mass of shingle. With the huge concave
+of the cliff behind, the foothold of massed white boulders, and the immense arc
+of the sea in front, Helena was delighted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is fine, Siegmund!” she said, halting and facing west.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in this
+great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide would beat
+the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from their feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you really like to travel beyond the end?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And then where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously near
+their bases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose it <i>is</i> rather risky,” she said; and she turned, began silently
+to clamber forwards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have no doubt there’s plenty of room, really,” he said. “The sea only looks
+near.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed, against
+the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been swept back.
+Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile curiously. He became aware
+of the tremendous noise of waters, of the slight shudder of the shingle when a
+wave struck it, and he always laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in
+silence; he kept just behind her. The point seemed near, but it took longer
+than they thought. They had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous
+weight of shingle, and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming
+fearfully; wind, sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped
+they were cut off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set
+on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and it was
+against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this ridge, hurried
+round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and furious; the water
+raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted. She took hold of Siegmund.
+The great, brutal wave flung itself at the rock, then drew back for another
+heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud
+of the waves reminded Helena of a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as
+her hair was blown out damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind.
+Always, against the rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart
+beating under the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could
+not bear. She had no weapon against brute force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He was
+looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her face became
+heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea, just here; he was
+not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide, populous bay.
+He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil, careless of her departure.
+He would easily catch her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his savagery, and
+was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of action. It was beyond
+him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was whittled down to only a few
+interests, only a few necessities. Even here, he had but Helena, and through
+her the rest. After this week—well, that was vague. He left it in the dark,
+dreading it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small figure
+bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest tenderness.
+She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why was he cruel to her
+because she had not his own bitter wisdom of experience? She was young and
+naïve, and should he be angry with her for that? His heart was tight at the
+thought of her. She would have to suffer also, because of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green mound,
+where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch her up. Then he
+took her hand as they walked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word, he
+folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her close, seeming
+to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body lifting into her, and
+sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new pulse, in her. Gradually, with
+a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down on him, like metal sinking on a mould.
+He was sea and sunlight mixed, heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning face, and
+relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,” she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like a star
+flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said it. He
+pressed his mouth on hers. “Not for you,” he thought, by reflex. “You can’t go
+that way yet.” But he said nothing, strained her very tightly, and kept her
+lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk at the
+fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund stooped, and from
+among the water’s combings picked up an electric-light bulb. It lay in some
+weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand to Helena. Her face lighted
+with a curious pleasure. She took the thing delicately from his hand, fingered
+it with her exquisite softness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it remarkable!” she exclaimed joyously. “The sea must be very, very
+gentle—and very kind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sometimes,” smiled Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,” she said. She breathed on
+the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she inhaled its fine
+savour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It would not have treated <i>you</i> so well,” he said. She looked at him with
+heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very small and very
+pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like a faint feel of silk.
+As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the glass, then gently stroking
+it, his blood ran hot. He watched her, waited upon her words and movements
+attentively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a graceful act on the sea’s part,” she said. “Wotan is so clumsy—he
+knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping fishes,
+<i>pizzicato</i>!—but the sea—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena’s speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was not
+lucid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But life’s so full of anti-climax,” she concluded. Siegmund smiled softly at
+her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine her words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only way to
+get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and float,” he jested.
+It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to forget he had spoken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will give it to the children,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other publicly,
+after years of conventional distance, they came to a little girl who was
+bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to the water. She stood
+up, flung back her locks to see them as they approached. In one hand she
+clasped some pebbles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you like this? I found it down there,” said Siegmund, offering her the
+bulb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently she was
+not going to say anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,” said
+Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child’s eyes brightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The tide-line is full of treasures,” said Helena, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child answered her smile a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had walked away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What beautiful eyes she had!” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes. But he
+could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it, knowing he was
+thinking of his own youngest child.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the late
+foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands, rough with gorse
+and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken and trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the carved
+Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds under the
+coverlet. Helena’s heart was swelling with emotion. All the yearning and pathos
+of Christianity filled her again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand the
+sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but walking in
+the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and admiration for him.
+It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but this evening she felt she
+must minister to him, and be submissive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she kissed
+him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned away his
+heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as if soon he would
+burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
+assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light swish
+of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of their motion;
+she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her. They went
+quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through a poultry farm
+whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more dismayed by evening,
+Helena’s pride battled with her new subjugation to Siegmund. She walked head
+down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but his heart was strong in him.
+Somewhere in the distance a band was playing “The Watch on the Rhine”.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him, and to
+strike a last blow for her pride:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wonder what next Monday will bring us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quick curtain,” he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling at her
+with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful to her. She
+loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded her. She wanted to
+sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to him, and she wanted to
+possess him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she wanted,
+actually. But she desired that he should want <i>her</i> madly, and that he
+should have all—everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It restored in him
+the full “will to live”. But she felt it destroyed her. Her soul seemed
+blasted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At seven o’clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool water, while
+small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless, continuing perfectly
+in their flicker the rhythm of the night’s passion. Nothing, she felt, had ever
+been so delightful as this cool water running over her. She lay and looked out
+on the shining sea. All things, it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less
+soiled. The cliffs rose out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine
+texture, and rocks along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The
+coarseness was fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of
+the morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we are
+full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening sap.
+Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round itself to make
+itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by that fragment of
+sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
+sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as they
+stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued flame,
+threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming dimly
+through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against the morning
+in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was flying. Sunlight
+poured on the large round world till she fancied it a heavy bee humming on its
+iridescent atmosphere across a vast air of sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the waves
+heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her feet
+fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as the breast
+of a white bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea and the
+sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid, restless speck
+of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along with him. They two
+were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild, large birds inhabiting an
+empty sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and full of
+life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the water, and soon
+Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea, like pale flowers
+trembling upward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The water,” said Siegmund, “is as full of life as I am,” and he pressed
+forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had more
+wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his arms, feeling a
+delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing recklessly in his new pride,
+he swam round the corner of the rock, through an archway, lofty and spacious,
+into a passage where the water ran like a flood of green light over the
+skin-white bottom. Suddenly he emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next
+tiny scoop of a bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the land. He
+waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as the shoulders of
+Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the sunlight, on to the
+glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its cold
+lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that was soft and
+warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling with glad pride at
+having conquered also this small, inaccessible sea-cave, creeping into it like
+a white bee into a white virgin blossom that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was like a
+great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving under him in
+its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and laughed. All the while,
+he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath him. He spread his hands upon
+the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let it run smooth, warm, delightful,
+through his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely,” he said to himself, “it is like Helena;” and he laid his hands again
+on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering, gathering all the
+warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth warm pebbles, then shrinking
+from the deep weight of cold his hand encountered as he burrowed under the
+surface wrist-deep. In the end he found the cold mystery of the deep sand also
+thrilling. He pushed in his hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of
+the dark, heavy coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were
+breathing and kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a
+bee in a flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the
+warmth of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
+lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness and
+warmth merely floated upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over him he
+was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and laughed. The
+water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles below, murmuring like
+a child that it was not fair—it was not fair he should abandon his playmate.
+Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself free of the clogging sand. He found
+himself strangely dry and smooth. He tossed more dry sand, and more, over
+himself, busy and intent like a child playing some absorbing game with itself.
+Soon his body was dry and warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was,
+however, greyed and smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with
+disapproval, though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the
+touch of himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
+even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found himself
+on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his head in the
+water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his hands assiduously.
+He must feel perfectly clean and free—fresh, as if he had washed away all the
+years of soilure in this morning’s sea and sun and sand. It was the
+purification. Siegmund became again a happy priest of the sun. He felt as if
+all the dirt of misery were soaked out of him, as he might soak clean a soiled
+garment in the sea, and bleach it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet
+and tissue-clean he felt—full of lightness and grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him, was long
+and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the door by the
+side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the garden was heavy with
+wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat sideways, with a map spread out on
+her bench under the bushy little laburnum tree, tracing the course of their
+wanderings. It was very still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out
+the brilliant little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins
+stood cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green twilight,
+a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There was a faint scent
+of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the shade, her two white arms
+for antennae stretching firmly to the bench, leaned over her map. She was busy,
+very busy, out of sheer happiness. She traced word after word, and evoked scene
+after scene. As she discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved
+to the next mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her. She
+rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine at the gate.
+They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She glanced
+up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you,” she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost sacrilegiously
+unnecessary to say it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few moments
+of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I found a little white bay, just like you—a virgin bay. I had to swim there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh!” she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration came into
+her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and still
+and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that would not
+flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all swept into a blur.
+After she had taken away her eyes he found himself saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like Adam when
+he opened the first eyes in the world.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I saw the sunshine in you,” repeated Helena quietly, looking at him with her
+eyes heavy with meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, but you have altered everything,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed it. He
+became suddenly grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel as if it were right—you and me, Helena—so, even righteous. It is so,
+isn’t it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do you think so?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her, and
+she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled across
+the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were white, quivering
+with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward bareheaded under the sunshine.
+They felt like two insects in the niche of a hot hearth as they toiled along
+the deep road. A few poppies here and there among the wild rye floated scarlet
+in sunshine like blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson’s
+poems, which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have been.
+She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,” she announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Think of Wagner,” said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright heaven,
+and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed meagre, save his
+own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied them—dimly, drowsily,
+without pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path down a
+landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with ragwort, they felt
+themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay. The living atmosphere of the
+uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks of the sand, white as if smelted,
+the heat glowed and quivered. Helena sat down and took off her shoes. She
+walked on the hot, glistening sand till her feet were delightfully, almost
+intoxicatingly scorched. Then she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and
+she paddled in the light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples,
+like crystal beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out
+on the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water’s edge. Then there settled
+down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes the doors and
+draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They wandered out across the
+beach above high-water mark, where they sat down together on the sand, leaning
+back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund with the sunshine on his forehead,
+Helena drooping close to him, in his shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed,
+making no sound as they go. The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which
+watches two birds asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to
+look at them with its bright eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall at
+noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came like a
+wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of beautiful
+experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of others withal. In
+them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and bred new blossoms of the
+torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such blossoms was shaken as they
+slept, into the hand of God, who held it in His palm preciously; then scattered
+it again, to produce new splendid blooms of beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of their
+experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a shadowed
+twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of Helena; a
+coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she revived. Quick to
+flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung into water. She shivered
+lightly and rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again. She
+felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in the early
+morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it free from sand,
+spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens itself to the sun. She let
+the wind comb through its soft fingers the tangles of her hair. Helena loved
+the wind. She turned to it, and took its kisses on her face and throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper, like
+alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a fresh type.
+He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You look now as if you belonged to the sea.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do; and some day I shall go back to it,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but more
+impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She rejoiced
+momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued smiling. His
+happiness was budded firm and secure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come!” said Helena, holding out her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the sand to
+the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling with bare feet
+over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed suddenly from fear as
+she felt herself slipping. Siegmund’s heart was leaping like a child’s with
+excitement as he stretched forward, himself very insecure, to succour her. Thus
+they travelled slowly. Often she called to him to come and look in the lovely
+little rock-pools, dusky with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that
+seemed nothing but shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk.
+Siegmund loved to poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of
+crabs in a shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant
+anemones, causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
+watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the cross
+far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and gold upon the
+lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two miles more of
+glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone, dabbling her feet in
+a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet of the weeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped the
+water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly, childishly
+happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why should we?” she asked lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him with a
+sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with the delicious
+warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the relentless mass of cold
+beneath—the mass of life which has no sympathy with the individual, no
+cognizance of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things. She
+would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful, fantastic, or
+weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below consideration. He had to
+get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic knowledge of its experience, into
+his blood, before he was satisfied. To Helena an anemone was one more fantastic
+pretty figure in her kaleidoscope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
+gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come,” he said very gently. “You are only six years old today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling in a
+brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in him sadly
+alive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now put your stockings on,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But my feet are wet.” She laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat tossing
+his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and more golden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I envy the savages their free feet,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is no broken glass in the wilderness—or there used not to be,” he
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff track.
+They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two boys, then a
+little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother. Last of all trotted the
+dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys emerged into the bay with a
+shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them. The little one waited for her
+father, calling shrilly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tiss can’t fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay, let her have a run,” said the father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to her
+bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round pathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go on, Tissie; you’re all right,” said the child. “Go on; have a run on the
+sand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some distance
+ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But the dog had
+already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps, turning its small
+face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It looked extraordinarily tiny as
+it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away from the noisy water, its thin cry
+floating over the plash of waves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Crying because things are too big, and it can’t take them in,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But look how frightened it is,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So am I.” He laughed. “And if there are any gods looking on and laughing at
+me, at least they won’t be kind enough to put me in their pinafores….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed very quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why?” she exclaimed. “Why should you want putting in a pinafore?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t,” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue water
+on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun. Siegmund seemed
+to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and glowing. He was
+watching earnestly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want to absorb it all,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last they turned away:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Helena slowly; “one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pondered a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How strange!” he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail. It is
+a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture was in me, not
+out there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without troubling to understand—she was inclined to think it verbiage—she made
+a small sound of assent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don’t care so much, because
+I have it with me,” he concluded.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then, keeping
+the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path broad on the
+water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight, however, rose more
+rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted among meadows and wild
+lands and copses—a wilful little lane, quite incomprehensible. So they lost
+their distant landmark, the white cross.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a signpost,
+it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to withdraw into the dusk
+the more they looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must go to the left,” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher black with
+gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his shoulders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing, they
+came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed a lonely
+farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a sense of space
+and freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We can steer by the night,” said Siegmund, as they trod upwards pathlessly.
+Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that large fair night
+were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the shaggy cloak of furze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There will be a path through it,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
+impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stay here,” said he, “while I look for a way through. I am afraid you will be
+tired.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered into being
+during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse down the hill glowed
+with great importance on the night, while the far-off in visible sea became
+like a roadway, large and mysterious, its specks of light moving slowly, and
+its bigger lamps stationed out amid the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness
+to be quite wiped off the west. She asked for the full black night, that would
+obliterate everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world
+meant. The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure the
+condition of intense waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No good,” he said, “no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then we will sit down awhile,” said she calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Here on this mole-hill,’” he quoted mockingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft, and
+where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool odour of
+darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with honeysuckle and gorse
+and bracken scent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What day is it, Siegmund?” she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He laughed,
+understanding, and kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But really,” she insisted, “I would not have believed the labels could have
+fallen off everything like this.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in order and
+costume, going endlessly round.” She laughed, amused at the idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is very strange,” she continued, “to have the days and nights smeared into
+one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a lifetime.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is how it is,” he admitted, touched by her eloquence. “You have torn the
+labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning! It does seem
+absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be parcelled up into mornings
+and evenings and nights? <i>I</i> am not made up of sections of time. Now,
+nights and days go racing over us like cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea,
+and all the time we take no notice.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his leg
+how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from pain. She
+was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek, looking at the
+stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a keenness of perception, a
+fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know,” he said, repeating himself, “it is true. You seem to have knit all
+things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all in a symphony.
+They go moving on and on. You are the motive in everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You must write a symphony of this—of us,” she said, prompted by a disciple’s
+vanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some time,” he answered. “Later, when I have time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Later,” she murmured—“later than what?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” he replied. “This is so bright we can’t see beyond.” He turned
+his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes that were so
+close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay, with her head on
+his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,” he said, always in
+the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Haven’t all women?” she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of a brass
+reed was again in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” he said, quite untouched. “But you are scented like nuts, new
+kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium….” He remained abstractedly
+breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are so strange,” she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her voice
+to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe,” he said slowly, “I can see the stars moving through your hair. No,
+keep still, <i>you</i> can’t see them.” Helena lay obediently very still. “I
+thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold flies on the
+ceiling,” he continued in a slow sing-song. “But now you make your hair
+tremble, and the stars rush about.” Then, as a new thought struck him: “Have
+you noticed that you can’t recognize the constellations lying back like this. I
+can’t see one. Where is the north, even?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things. She
+refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as of the
+wayside plants. “Why should I want to label them?” she would say. “I prefer to
+look at them, not to hide them under a name.” So she laughed when he asked her
+to find Vega or Arcturus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How full the sky is!” Siegmund dreamed on—“like a crowded street. Down here it
+is vastly lonely in comparison. We’ve found a place far quieter and more
+private than the stars, Helena. Isn’t it fine to be up here, with the sky for
+nearest neighbour?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I did well to ask you to come?” she inquired wistfully. He turned to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As wise as God for the minute,” he replied softly. “I think a few furtive
+angels brought us here—smuggled us in.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And you are glad?” she asked. He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Carpe diem</i>,” he said. “We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why hell, Siegmund?” she asked in displeasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose it is the <i>postero</i>. In everything else I’m a failure, Helena.
+But,” he laughed, “this day of ours is a rose not many men have plucked.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What does it matter, Helena?” he murmured. “What does it matter? We are here
+yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She felt
+she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into uncontrollable
+sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt her. He merely held
+her very close, while he looked through her shaking hair at the motionless
+stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her face with his lips, heavy with
+pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt his cheek all wet with her tears, and,
+between his cheek and hers, the ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed
+and made his face burn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it, Helena?” he asked at last. “Why should you cry?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled, unrecognizable
+voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t leave me, will you, Siegmund?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How could I? How should I?” he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
+suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How could I leave you?” he repeated, and she heard his voice waking, the grip
+coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear the
+stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what Siegmund was
+thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she heard the beating of
+his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she thought. It gave her the same
+thrill of dread and excitement, mingled with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had
+changed again, his mood was gone, so that he was no longer wandering in a night
+of thoughts, but had become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea
+what she thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something and who
+dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly urgent she could
+not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an incomprehensible obsession to her.
+Yet she was glad, and she smiled in her heart, feeling triumphant and restored.
+Yet again, dimly, she wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and
+her heart lifted slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund
+was so incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming flush
+of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a soft rosy flame
+of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she decided, was supreme,
+transcendental.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks of
+ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black sea like the
+broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of stars; below was the
+velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena found herself glimmering with
+fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea, when she looked very closely,
+glimmered dustily with a reflection of stars.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser<br/>
+Ohne Regung ruht das Meer …
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse she had
+no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak her language.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,<br/>
+Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+She liked Heine best of all:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Wie Träume der Kindheit seh’ ich es flimmern<br/>
+Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,<br/>
+Und alte Erinnerung erzählt mir auf’s Neue<br/>
+Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,<br/>
+Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben….
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+As she lay in Siegmund’s arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she knew
+not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the gleam of a
+falling star over water. The night moved on imperceptibly across the sky.
+Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but passed unseen, unfelt,
+over them. Till the moon was ready to step forth. Then the eastern sky
+blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds round the opening gates:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Aus alten Märchen winket es<br/>
+Hervor mit weisser Hand,<br/>
+Da singt es und da klingt es<br/>
+Von einem Zauberland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the clouds.
+She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful singsong, as children
+do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her singsong,
+in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having forgotten that he had
+asked her a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Turn your head,” she told him, when she had finished the verse, “and look at
+the moon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his chin and
+his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his nostrils. This
+thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘<i>Die grossen Blumen schmachten</i>,’” she said to herself, curiously awake
+and joyous. “The big flowers open with black petals and silvery ones, Siegmund.
+You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the bridegroom face, Siegmund, like
+a black and glistening flesh-petalled flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the
+<i>Zauberland</i>, Siegmund—this is the magic land.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on the
+throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay still, his
+heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange ecstasy she
+concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp, breathless phrases
+in German and English, touching him with her mouth and her cheeks and her
+forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘<i>Und Liebesweisen tönen</i>’-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing, Siegmund.
+The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the trees press together,
+and they all look up at the moon, they put up their faces in a kiss, my
+darling. But they haven’t you-and it all centres in you, my dear, all the
+wonder-love is in you, more than in them all Siegmund—Siegmund!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow heavy
+drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay prone on him,
+spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the beautiful strong motion of
+his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength, she swooned lightly into
+unconsciousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite heaving
+of his life beneath her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!” she said to her
+soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon it. That she should
+come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness astonished her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life of
+Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath and the next.
+Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on her hands, she kissed
+him—a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her soul into his for ever.
+Then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply. She put up her hands to her head
+and looked at the moon. “No more,” said her heart, almost as if it sighed
+too-“no more!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He lay
+still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his side,
+looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as he lay helplessly
+looking up at her some other consciousness inside him murmured;
+“Hawwa—Eve—Mother!” She stood compassionate over him. Without touching him she
+seemed to be yearning over him like a mother. Her compassion, her benignity,
+seemed so different from his little Helena. This woman, tall and pale, drooping
+with the strength of her compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile
+human being, but a personification of the great motherhood of women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am her child, too,” he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in sleep. He
+had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when he looked only
+into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and gathered his plaintive
+masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come,” she said gently, when she knew he was restored. “Shall we go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The hill-side,
+the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into shadowed vagueness
+about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some distance, very great, it
+seemed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t get hold of them,” he said distractedly to himself. He felt detached
+from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as if these had
+melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported, somewhere alone on
+the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself
+of the sickening effort of supporting and controlling his body. If he could lie
+down again perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome
+matter of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the moon-path. They
+must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his
+waist. Therein was his stability and warm support. Siegmund felt a keen flush
+of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him,
+clasping him so happily, all unconscious. This pity for her drew him nearer to
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the hill. He
+set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in his limbs, or even
+on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice it. Yet he shuddered
+almost in anguish internally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” he asked himself in wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally to
+himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost insupportable
+feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought from under an
+anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir of activity, such as
+one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he stepped over
+it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot securely on the step.
+The effort was so great that he became conscious of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good Lord!” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his body—his
+brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing wrong with any of
+them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself into another detached
+phrase. “There is nothing the matter with me,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
+sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when he had
+fallen ill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I am not like that,” he said, “because I don’t feel tremulous. I am sure
+my hand is steady.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before him. It
+was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I think this is the right way,” said Helena, and they set off again, as
+if gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It certainly feels rather deathly,” said Siegmund to himself. He remembered
+distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had stretched himself in
+the horrible sickness, which he felt was—and here he chose the French
+word—“<i>l’agonie</i>”. But his mother had seen and had cried aloud, which
+suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to spare her her suffering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Certainly it is like that,” he said. “Certainly it is rather deathly. I wonder
+how it is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe we are lost!” Helena interrupted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lost! What matter!” he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him tighter,
+hearer to her in a kind of triumph. “But did we not come this way?” he added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No. See”—her voice was reeded with restrained emotion—“we have certainly not
+been along this bare path which dips up and down.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty well, as
+much as we can,” said Siegmund, looking forward over the down, where the moon
+was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of clouds which hung on her
+like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at the moon he felt a sense of
+companionship. Helena, not understanding, left him so much alone; the moon was
+nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously happy.
+The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately beauty which
+he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had been wandering in
+another—a glamorous, primordial world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose,” he said to himself, “I have lived too intensely, I seem to have
+had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now they’ve gone my
+house is weak.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He reviewed his
+hour of passion with Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely,” he told himself, “I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt my cup.
+My soul seems to leak out—I am half here, half gone away. That’s why I
+understand the trees and the night so painfully.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he came to the hour of Helena’s strange ecstasy over him. That, somehow,
+had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness concentrated one drop
+too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine was like a pure poison
+scathing him. But his consciousness, which had been unnaturally active, now was
+dulling. He felt the blood flowing vigorously along the limbs again, and
+stilling has brain, sweeping away his sickness, soothing him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose,” he said to himself for the last time, “I suppose living too
+intensely kills you, more or less.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him. The moon
+had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine veil which
+glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a lustrous halo, very large
+indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever seen. When the little lane turned
+full towards the moon, it seemed as if Siegmund and Helena would walk through a
+large Moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in
+front of them. They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with
+wonder and a little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully,
+and they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under the
+hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We certainly did not come this way before,” she said triumphantly. The idea of
+being lost delighted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim glisten of
+moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking along a lane in
+the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to some state beyond
+ordinary experience—some place in romance, perhaps, or among the hills where
+Brünhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. How could it be that he
+and Helena were two children of London wandering to find their lodging in
+Freshwater? He sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was
+condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the
+way the manna must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian
+deserts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We may be on the road to Newport,” said Helena presently, “and the distance is
+ten miles.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in this
+wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening wilderness of night
+at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund looked at her. He by no means
+shared her exultation, though he sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his
+deep seriousness, of which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon,
+he drew her nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards
+her, and grew heavy with responsibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the night,
+and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled together in sleep,
+and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the supernatural white night;
+the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena walked on in triumph through this
+wondrous hinterland of night, actively searching for the spirits, watching the
+cottages they approached, listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping
+inside, in the darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces
+at the windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went
+running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed to
+herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with weak
+hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was the first
+time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the grey-frocked
+dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying asleep in her room,
+while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams. She imagined Siegmund
+sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed, their blue eyes very dark
+and yearning at night-time, came wandering over the grey grass seeking her
+dreams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was fain to
+remember that it was a long way—a long way. Siegmund’s arm was about her to
+support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a stile and recognized,
+on the right of the path, the graveyard of the Catholic chapel. The moon, which
+the days were paring smaller with envious keen knife, shone upon the white
+stones in the burial-ground. The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a
+silver-grey sky. Helena looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also
+looked, and bowed his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thirty years of earnest love; three years’ life like a passionate ecstasy-and
+it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am very insignificant,
+and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and the
+end. But mine is one rose, and His all the white beauty in the world.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of the
+Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was treating him in
+the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his compared small and
+despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped softly into the shadow of
+the pine copse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me get under cover,” he thought. “Let me hide in it; it is good, the
+sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small, futile tragedy!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the silence
+was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer, leaning over
+her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was heavy, and heavy with a
+tenderness approaching grief, for his small, brave Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you sure this is the right way?” he whispered to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite, quite sure,” she whispered confidently in reply. And presently they
+came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the steep hill. They
+were both very tired, both found it difficult to go with ease or surety this
+sudden way down. Soon they were creeping cautiously across the pasture and the
+poultry farm. Helena’s heart was beating, as she imagined what a merry noise
+there would be should they wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any
+questioning, this night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the
+high-road not far from home.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of
+reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking
+out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small,
+fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. In the bay were two
+battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed
+afar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice beside
+him say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where have they come from; do you know, sir?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing beside
+him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They look rather incongruous, don’t you think? We left the sea empty and
+shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their eye on
+us!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not an Anarchist, I hope?” he said jestingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A Nihilist, perhaps,” laughed the other. “But I am quite fond of the Czar, if
+pity is akin to love. No; but you can’t turn round without finding some
+policeman or other at your elbow—look at them, abominable ironmongery!—ready to
+put his hand on your shoulder.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The speaker’s grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from the
+battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter felt his
+heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so quickly to a
+perturbing intimacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose we are in the hands of—God,” something moved Siegmund to say. The
+stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the speaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair, the white
+brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they returned again to the
+eyes of his interlocutor. “Does the Czar sail this way?” he asked at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do not know,” replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other’s penetrating
+gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose the newspaper will tell us?” said the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sure to,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You haven’t seen it this morning?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not since Saturday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not alone on your holiday?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No.” Siegmund did not like this—he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I live here—at least for the present—name, Hampson—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, weren’t you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years back?”
+asked Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been fairly
+intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself for having
+addressed Siegmund:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,” he said, “and as I had
+mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be re-acquainted.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It’s a pity to try and
+stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don’t you think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Stare beyond it, you mean?” asked Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly!” replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. “I call a day like
+this ‘the blue room’. It’s the least draughty apartment in all the confoundedly
+draughty House of Life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express something
+in his own soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I mean,” the man explained, “that after all, the great mass of life that
+washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the blue envelope
+of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can’t stop it, once we’ve
+begun to leak.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean by ‘leak’?” asked Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Goodness knows—I talk through my hat. But once you’ve got a bit tired of the
+house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the dark—as you were
+doing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But, to use your metaphor, I’m not tired of the House—if you mean Life,” said
+Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Praise God! I’ve met a poet who’s not afraid of having his pocket picked—or
+his soul, or his brain!” said the stranger, throwing his head back in a
+brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Siegmund, very quietly, with a strong
+fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say, suite of
+rooms—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow I am turned out of this ‘blue room’,” said Siegmund with a wry smile.
+The other looked at him seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dear Lord!” exclaimed Hampson; then: “Do you remember Flaubert’s saint, who
+laid naked against a leper? I could <i>not</i> do it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nor I,” shuddered Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you’ve got to-or something near it!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What of yourself?” he said, resentfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
+staring from the window at the dark.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But can’t you <i>do</i> something?” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing his
+teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I won’t ask you what <i>your</i> intentions are,” he said, with delicate irony
+in his tone. “You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five hundred a
+year by hard work; but it’s no good. If you have acquired a liking for
+intensity in life, you can’t do without it. I mean vivid soul experience. It
+takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and physical excitement.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, and what then?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a <i>concentré</i>, you feed your normal flame with oxygen,
+and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are always
+semi-transparent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At least, I am quite opaque,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Not altogether,” said Hampson. “And you, I should think, are one whose flame
+goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You haven’t much reserve. You’re like a tree that’ll flower till it kills
+itself,” the man continued. “You’ll run till you drop, and then you won’t get
+up again. You’ve no dispassionate intellect to control you and economize.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re telling me very plainly what I am and am not,” said Siegmund, laughing
+rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, it’s only what I think,” replied Hampson. “We’re a good deal alike, you
+see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn’t; but women have
+always done as they liked with me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s hardly so in my case,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Say one woman; it’s enough,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The best sort of women—the most interesting—are the worst for us,” Hampson
+resumed. “By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and animal in us. Then
+they are supersensitive—refined a bit beyond humanity. We, who are as little
+gross as need be, become their instruments. Life is grounded in them, like
+electricity in the earth; and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it
+into light or warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of life.
+In us her force becomes evident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She can’t live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting women
+don’t want <i>us</i>; they want the flowers of the spirit they can gather of
+us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and to their love of
+us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us—that is, us altogether.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’re a bit downright are you not?” asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He did not
+disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements were
+arbitrary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s according to my intensity,” laughed Hampson. “I can open the blue
+heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and see—God knows
+what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am perfectly sane; I only
+strive beyond myself!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you think it’s wrong to get like it?” asked Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the end.
+When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and the whole
+aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund pondered a little….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You make me feel—as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,” he said
+slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands lay
+white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can scarcely believe they are me,” he said. “If they rose up and refused me,
+I should not be surprised. But aren’t they beautiful?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger’s to his own hands, which lay curved on the
+sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature, but, lying
+warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life. Instinctively, with a
+wave of self-love, he closed his fists over his thumbs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wonder,” said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, “that she can’t see
+it; I wonder she doesn’t cherish you. You are full and beautiful enough in the
+flesh—why will she help to destroy you, when she loved you to such extremity?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man, with his
+intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fools—the fools, these women!” he said. “Either they smash their own crystal,
+or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look at me, I am
+whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with compressed life; it is
+a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by itself. I am very sorry.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of a heavy
+feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks. Siegmund felt
+a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wish I didn’t go on like this,” said Hampson piteously. “I wish I could be
+normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is really hot.” He
+pulled open his flannel shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the heat,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So do I.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some sort of
+order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely to the village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful dream.
+Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to find Helena.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again waiting. It
+was past nine o’clock, so she was growing impatient. To herself, however, she
+professed a great interest in a little book of verses she had bought in St
+Martin’s Lane for twopence.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,<br/>
+As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew….
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself that
+she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road for Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+And now she takes the scissors on her thumb …<br/>
+Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“H’m!” she said, “I really don’t know whether I like that or not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned; but if
+he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on the water!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what nonsense! I like these verses <i>very</i> much. I will read them as I
+walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the flutter of
+a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way to read this
+poet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure enough, was
+Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his throat bare, and his
+face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have kept you waiting,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I was reading, you see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She would not admit her impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have been talking,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Talking!” she exclaimed in slight displeasure. “Have you found an acquaintance
+even here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel queer-sort
+of <i>Doppelgänger</i>, he was.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In what way?” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now! The sea
+is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the bay. You can
+hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have you made the plans
+for today?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself to the
+scarlet and green salad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mrs Curtiss,” she said, in rather reedy tone, “has been very motherly to me
+this morning; oh, very motherly!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, has she been saying something about last night?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,” continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which showed she
+was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because we weren’t in till about eleven?” said Siegmund, also with sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I mustn’t do it again. Oh no, I mustn’t do it again, really.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For fear of alarming the old lady?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘You know, dear, it troubles <i>me</i> a good deal … but if I were your
+<i>mother</i>, I don’t know <i>how</i> I should feel,’” she quoted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When one engages rooms one doesn’t usually stipulate for a stepmother to
+nourish one’s conscience,” said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest of the
+affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed within himself
+with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth were on edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t <i>mind</i> in the least,” she said. “The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know I’m a moral coward,” he said bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nonsense” she replied. Then, with a little heat: “But you <i>do</i> continue
+to try so hard to justify yourself, as if <i>you</i> felt you needed
+justification.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I tell you—a little thing like this—it remains tied tight round something
+inside me, reminding me for hours—well, what everybody else’s opinion of me
+is.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought you were so sure we were right,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He winced again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?” she said brutally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is myself?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing very definite,” she said, with a bitter laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and put
+her arms round his neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is our last clear day, dear,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her in his
+arms….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will be hot today,” said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall wear a hat—you had better do so too.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he said. “I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall get
+one.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to choose
+for himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their remaining
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think, dear,” she said, “we ought to find the little path that escaped us
+last night.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We were lucky to miss it,” he answered. “You don’t get a walk like that twice
+in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a loose
+canvas shirt, but he looked what he was—a Londoner on holiday. He had the
+appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a gentleman. He
+had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he walked he looked
+unseeing in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or a
+worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+<i>concentrée</i> than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something she
+always seemed coiled within herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts, and
+the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was a large, simple hat
+of burnt straw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite
+vigorously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” he laughed. “My hair is like a hood,” He ruffled it back with his hand.
+The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the butterflies
+and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the sky. The lovers stood
+for some time watching the people of the farm in the down below dip their sheep
+on this sunny morning. There was a ragged noise of bleating from the flock
+penned in a corner of the yard. Two red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to
+a large bath that stood in the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or
+less in the bath, whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body.
+The white legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape
+the yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a faint
+splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The farmer’s wife and
+children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,” she said. “It is
+cruder than Theocritus.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,” he laughed. “I think every
+man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would be fine to
+be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one’s nose, and to own
+cattle and land.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would it?” asked Helena sceptically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I should
+love it,”he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the desideratum.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it?” she asked ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would give anything to be like that,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is, not to be yourself,” she said pointedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t they seem a long way off?” he said, staring at the bucolic scene. “They
+are farther than Theocritus—down there is farther than Sicily, and more than
+twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you?” she cried, with curious impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly opposite the
+path through the furze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There it is!” she cried, “How could we miss it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ascribe it to the fairies,” he replied, whistling the bird music out of
+<i>Siegfried</i>, then pieces of <i>Tristan</i>. They talked very little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the cliff’s
+edge, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This shall be our house today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Welcome home!” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out to sea.
+Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was slackening
+more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could hear only an
+indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water below: no clapping nor
+hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with his hands beneath his head,
+looking over the sparkling sea. To put her page in the shadow, Helena propped
+her book against him and began to read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring with
+dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing her from
+her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes wearily, longing for
+shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in “Adam Cast Forth”. Her mind
+traced again the tumultuous, obscure strugglings of the two, forth from Eden
+through the primitive wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam
+blackened with struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him
+upon the face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen with
+heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion. Helena felt
+deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless, abandoned to the
+charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss him, and shed a few tears.
+She did neither, but instead, moved her position so that she shaded his head.
+Cautiously putting her hand on his hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when
+you put your hand under a sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will make him ill,” she whispered to herself, and she bent over to smell
+the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead. She felt
+very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming inflamed with the
+sun-scalding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea was
+glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses of Freshwater
+slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. Green Farringford on
+the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and sleep. In the bay below the
+hill the sea was hot and restless. Helena was sick with sunshine and the
+restless glitter of water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘And there shall be no more sea,’” she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No more sea, no more anything,” she thought dazedly, as she sat in the midst
+of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the lightness of
+her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this tremendous furnace,
+leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag seamed with metal. She tried to
+imagine herself resuming the old activities, the old manner of living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is impossible,” she said; “it is impossible! What shall I be when I come
+out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in another shape.
+No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What will become of us—what
+will happen?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace by
+Siegmund’s waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked smiling
+at Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is worth while to sleep,” said he, “for the sake of waking like this. I was
+dreaming of huge ice-crystals.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She smiled
+upon him almost in condescension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should like to realize your dream,” she said. “This is terrible!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went to the cliff’s edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from the
+water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and put
+forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is really a very fine sun,” said Siegmund lightly. “I feel as if I were
+almost satisfied with heat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived, while
+she affects a light interest in another’s pleasure. This time, when Siegmund
+“failed to follow her”, as she put it, she felt she must follow him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,” she said, smiling;
+“even a sufficiency of me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay!” said Siegmund drowsily. “I think I am. I think this is about perfect,
+don’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want nothing more and nothing different,” he continued; “and that’s the
+extreme of a decent time, I should think.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The extreme of a decent time!” she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he drawled on lazily:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I’ve got all the
+cheese—which is you, my dear.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I certainly feel eaten up,” she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him lying in
+a royal ease, his eyes naïve as a boy’s, his whole being careless. Although
+very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt very lonely. Being
+listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense of impending fate, she felt
+a great yearning for his sympathy, his fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving
+this, she had to play to his buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal
+of his flower, or spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the path
+winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them. Slowly
+approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid’s chair, wheeling
+silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man, was so much
+deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his pale sharp face, as
+if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted body to develop the fair
+bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken eyes towards the sea, whose
+meaning, like that of all things, was half obscure to him. Siegmund glanced,
+and glanced quickly away, before he should see. Helena looked intently for two
+seconds. She thought of the torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of
+the tide—“the life tide,” she said to herself. The pain of the invalid
+overshadowed her own distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come!” she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the completeness of
+his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow—so quiet,”
+she said to herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her own state,
+after her own fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Mist Spirit,” she said to herself. “The Mist Spirit draws a curtain round
+us—it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn curtain
+sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the curtain again, I do not want to
+think of the outside. I am afraid of the outside, and I am afraid when the
+curtain tears open in rags. I want to be in our own fine world inside the heavy
+gold mist-curtain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next year, and
+stay for a whole month?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If there be any next year,” said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund did not reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were mocking
+fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards their lodging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There will be an end to this,” said Helena, communing with herself. “And when
+we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No matter—let come what will.
+All along Fate has been resolving, from the very beginning, resolving obvious
+discords, gradually, by unfamiliar progression; and out of original
+combinations weaving wondrous harmonies with our lives. Really, the working out
+has been wondrous, is wondrous now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to
+suffer an anti-climax. I am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to
+allow a bathetic anti-climax.”
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>XV</h2>
+
+<p>
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together on the
+beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like perfume,
+unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised with dreams and
+with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams without shape. Helena,
+as usual, retained her consciousness much more clearly. She watched the far-off
+floating of ships, and the near wading of children through the surf. Endless
+trains of thoughts, like little waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore
+of her drowsiness. But each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged
+with copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound, for
+grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware that the
+sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces, like overthrown
+charioteers. So the hours passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so that
+Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the time preceding
+their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of Siegmund’s life up to the
+age of thirty, whilst he had never learned anything concerning her childhood.
+Somehow she did not encourage him to self-discovery. Today, however, the
+painful need of lovers for self-revelation took hold on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is awfully funny,” he said. “I was <i>so</i> gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an army
+officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake. Beatrice is
+really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran through all his money,
+and through everything else. He was too hot for the rest of the family, so they
+dropped him altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school, and was
+to go into father’s business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and very soon we were
+acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French convent school. She had
+only knocked about with the army a little while, but it had brought her out. I
+remember I thought she was miles above me—which she was. She wasn’t
+bad-looking, either, and you know men all like her. I bet she’d marry again, in
+spite of the children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At first I fluttered round her. I remember I’d got a little, silky moustache.
+They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was mad on the
+violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off abroad somewhere,
+so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house. The mother was an invalid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened off the
+smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two sisters and Beatrice
+talking about good-looking men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘I consider Bertram will make a handsome man,’ said my younger sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘He’s got beautiful eyes,’ said my other sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘And a real darling nose and chin!’ cried Beatrice. ‘If only he was more
+<i>solide</i>! He is like a windmill, all limbs.’
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘He will fill out. Remember, he’s not quite seventeen,’ said my elder sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Ah, he is <i>doux</i>—he is <i>câlin</i>,’ said Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘I think he is rather <i>too</i> spoony for his age,’ said my elder sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘But he’s a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are,’ my younger
+sister chimed in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Ah, <i>si, si</i>!’ cried Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Hello, is somebody in here?’ I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed an
+alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I of hers.
+Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white hyacinths, Roman
+hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now, great white stars, and
+tangles of little ones, among a bank of green; and I can recall the keen, fresh
+scent on the warm air; and the look of Beatrice … her great dark eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s funny, but Beatrice is as dead—ay, far more dead—than Dante’s. And I am
+not that young fool, not a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour. Beatrice
+said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always jaunting off, the
+mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen, earning half a guinea a week,
+and she was eighteen, with no money, when we ran away to Brighton and got
+married. Poor old Pater, he took it awfully well, I have been a frightful drag
+on him, you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s the romance. I wonder how it will all end.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before Helena’s
+day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea that, after all,
+love, which she chose to consider as single and wonderful a thing in a man’s
+life as birth, or adolescence, or death, was temporary, and formed only an
+episode. It was her hour of disillusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come to think of it,” Siegmund continued, “I have always shirked. Whenever
+I’ve been in a tight corner I’ve gone to Pater.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think,” she said, “marriage has been a tight corner you couldn’t get out of
+to go to anybody.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yet I’m here,” he answered simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And some men would have made a better job of it. When it’s come to sticking
+out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of her, I’ve
+always funked. I tell you I’m something of a moral coward.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, “So be it.” Instead, she
+ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty discords in contemptible
+surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies, finally—Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In my life,” she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, “I might
+say <i>always</i>, the real life has seemed just outside—brownies running and
+fairies peeping—just beyond the common, ugly place where I am. I seem to have
+been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to glimpse outside now and then,
+and see the reality.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are so hard to get at,” said Siegmund. “And so scornful of familiar
+things.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so that
+physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her teeth on edge.
+Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising darkly from
+the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her. Fate, ashen grey
+and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow. Yet Siegmund took no
+notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her whistling to himself, which
+only distressed her the more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the day
+melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the night. It was
+her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes after moments of
+intense living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In herself,
+too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold dead heap, coloured
+drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash, and she herself an upright
+mass of soft ash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her livid
+and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of fervent Wesleyan
+stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong again. Looking back, no
+one had she touched without hurting. She had a destructive force; anyone she
+embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed back from her conscience. The shadows
+were full of complaint against her. It was all true, she was a harmful force,
+dragging Fate to petty, mean conclusions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair grated
+between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary, lonely life
+had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he was
+straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from <i>Die Walküre</i>.
+She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that really Siegmund,
+that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was that the Siegmund who had
+seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings, the Siegmund whose coming had
+always changed the whole weather of her soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch
+was keen with bliss for her, whose face was a panorama of passing God? She
+looked at him again. His radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a
+stooping man, past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather
+stupidly—in short, something of the “clothed animal on end”, like the rest of
+men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and her own
+only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was he the real
+clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her soul upon this.
+There was an awful blank before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siegmund!” she said in despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and distorted
+in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted her arms to him,
+watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his arms, and asked in a
+troubled voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it, dear? Is something wrong?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was nothing to her—it was stupid. She felt his arms round her, felt
+her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the beating of his
+heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love. He was not
+understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did not want his
+brute embrace—she was most utterly alone, gripped so in his arms. If he could
+not save her from herself, he must leave her free to pant her heart out in free
+air. The secret thud, thud of his heart, the very self of that animal in him
+she feared and hated, repulsed her. She struggled to escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it? Won’t you tell me what is the matter?” he pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He tried to
+look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he held her fast,
+all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this brute, blind creature,
+whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me—at any rate tell me, Helena.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to be free.
+Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad. His coat chafed
+her face; as she struggled she could see the strong working of his throat. She
+fought against him; she struggled in panic to be free.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let me go!” she cried. “Let me go! Let me go!” He held her in bewilderment and
+terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed him apart. Her face, blind
+to him, was very much distorted by her suffering. She thrust him furiously away
+with great strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down, sobbing
+wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a small, shaken heap.
+Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee beside her, trying to take her
+hand in his, and pleading:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me,
+Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside herself,
+and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this unreasoning
+pleading of his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on one
+knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence was
+crackling with the sound of Helena’s dry, hissing sobs. He remained silenced,
+stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he put his hand on
+her. She winced convulsively away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, “It is enough,” He went behind the small
+hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to hide, to cover
+himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush under which he could
+find cover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf, trying to
+hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he lay still,
+pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time before letting it
+go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear, even by breathing, to betray
+himself. His consciousness was dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At
+length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could have
+gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her face. Was
+somebody coming?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied herself, and
+rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a thick shadow on the
+earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed. She stood in silent sorrow,
+looking at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dear!” she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to struggle
+with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have died than face
+anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dear, someone is looking,” she pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They walked on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive me, dear,” she said softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nay, it’s not you,” he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on till the
+night seemed private. She turned to him, and “Siegmund!” she said, in a voice
+of great sorrow and pleading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her face. He
+put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered it, and stood
+looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The stars, one
+after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first one, and then
+another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the sea. He stood
+perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he remembered how, in the cathedral,
+the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and set steadily to burn, opening
+the darkness point after point with yellow drops of flame, as the acolyte
+touched them, one by one, delicately with his rod. The night was religious,
+then, with its proper order of worship. Day and night had their ritual, and
+passed in uncouth worship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night, where
+the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars catch fire.
+At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might be. Helena herself, the
+bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he touched with his lips as part
+of the service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was quite
+alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman’s breast have
+hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching the unknown. But this night
+he did not want comfort. If he were “an infant crying in the night”, it was
+crying that a woman could not still. He was abroad seeking courage and faith
+for his own soul. He, in loneliness, must search the night for faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My fate is finely wrought out,” he thought to himself. “Even damnation may be
+finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I must get clarity
+and courage to follow out the theme. I don’t want to botch and bungle even
+damnation.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of his acts.
+Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though he could not see
+it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing softly in token of
+submission.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread of
+losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
+insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him—she was afraid.
+Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a little space
+before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had she, a woman,
+betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost him for good. She was
+consumed with uneasiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he gently, sadly
+kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him back, whatever else
+she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What are you thinking of?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I?” he replied. “I really don’t know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in speech,
+she asked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Was I very cruel, dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he drew her
+close into him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was pretty bad, I suppose,” he replied. “But I should think neither of us
+could help it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had helped
+it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her shoulder, covering
+her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly in the nape of the neck,
+with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while, delicately, she fondled and
+soothed him, till he was child to her Madonna.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till at
+last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of healing and
+renewal—long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself free,
+turned sharply aside, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we go down to the water?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If you like,” he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus with
+clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless water.
+Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a long pale line of
+surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with star-reflections. The
+deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a tuft
+of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay close
+together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star which hung
+straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin streamlet of light
+along the sea almost to their feet. It was a star-path fine and clear,
+trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon the water. Helena watched it with
+delight. As Siegmund looked at the star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the
+gate to light someone home. He imagined himself following the thread of the
+star-track. What was behind the gate?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed populous in
+the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was considering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What <i>was</i> the matter with you?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between her two
+hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old in experience:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, you see, dear, you won’t understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it—the crying of lives I have touched….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she also
+had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled with shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“….A crying of lives against me, and I couldn’t silence them, nor escape out of
+the darkness. I wanted you—I saw you in front, whistling the Spring Song, but I
+couldn’t find you—it was not you—I couldn’t find you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, I don’t see it,” he said. “You would always be you. I could think of
+hating you, but you’d still be yourself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her mouth
+on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sometimes,” she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, “you lose me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a brief laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I lose you!” he repeated. “You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my hold
+over you, and then you—?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It shall not be any more,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he replied, “since you decide it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You mustn’t be bitter,” she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Four days is enough,” he said. “In a fortnight I should be intolerable to you.
+I am not masterful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not so, Siegmund,” she said sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I give way always,” he repeated. “And then—tonight!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tonight, tonight!” she cried in wrath. “Tonight I have been a fool!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You—what of you?” she cried. Then she became sad. “I have little perverse
+feelings,” she lamented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I can’t bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I’m always
+pushed this way and that, like a fool.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t know how you hurt me, talking so,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not like other folk. ‘<i>Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht</i>.’ I thought of you when we read it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund? Which
+is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Neither,” he said. “You are <i>you</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the faint
+gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed in black
+silhouette between them and the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into life.
+He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she read with
+him—she loved its loose and violent romance—came back to his mind: “<i>Der Tod
+geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem immer tiefer ins
+Leben.</i>”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was home. It
+seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This time tomorrow night,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siegmund!” she implored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why not?” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t, dear,” she pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, I won’t.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a little
+as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in on them now
+and again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You won’t be tired when you go back?” Helena asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tired!” he echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know how you were when you came,” she reminded him, in tones full of pity.
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, that is gone,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And will you be sad?” she said, hesitating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sad!” he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go back?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The old life will take me up, I suppose,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think, dear,” she said, “I have done wrong.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good Lord—you have not!” he replied sharply, pressing back his head to look at
+her, for the first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies—tomorrow—as you are
+now….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Take no thought for the morrow.’ Be quiet, Helena!” he exclaimed as the
+reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” she asked, afraid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why!” he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand, staring
+intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment terrified her,
+and she lost courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard on the
+sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity, laughed, then
+became tender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay, half
+crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of sand fell
+from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs, as a child does
+when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the doctor and hides in the
+mother’s bosom, refusing to be touched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down on his
+breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent days. They
+must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled with vague terror of
+what it would be. The sense of the oneness and unity of their fates was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more definite
+knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was certain of calamity,
+which would overtake him directly. He shrank away. Wildly he beat about to find
+a means of escape from the next day and its consequences. He did not want to
+go. Anything rather than go back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to see
+the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly ceased, and he
+watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up, resolve itself. Some
+golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far waves, where it shook in ruddy
+splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher, looming before him very large, yet
+still not all discovered. By degrees the horn of gold detached itself from the
+darkness at back of the waves. It was immense and terrible. When would the tip
+be placed upon the table of the sea?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up this
+drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement overhead, letting
+stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold over the sea—a libation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread wider as
+the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther and farther the
+immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last the moon looked frail and
+empty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor of the
+sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. “I gather it up into myself,” he
+said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were watching, too. “If I
+have spilled my life,” he thought, “the unfamiliar eyes of the land and sky
+will gather it up again.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty moon.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven o’clock,
+the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But it is finest of all to wake,” he said, as the bright sunshine of the
+window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted hands of the
+leaves, challenged him into the open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that his blue
+eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium glanced up at him
+as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of the uniform it wore he
+could see the eyes of the flower, wistful, offering him love, as one sometimes
+see the eyes of a man beneath the brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled.
+Everything looked at him with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him,
+timidly, a little love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are all extraordinarily sweet,” said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies fluttered
+up and down in agitated little leaps, around him. Instinctively Siegmund put
+his hand forward to touch them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The careless little beggars!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely dressed,
+rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to meet him. The
+battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a <i>panier</i> of diamonds; the
+sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund had never recognized
+before the affection that existed between him and everything. We do not realize
+how tremendously dear and indispensable to us are the hosts of common things,
+till we must leave them, and we break our hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We have been very happy together,” everything seemed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is very lovely,” he said, “whatever happens.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last night’s
+experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed by his usual
+altar-stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How closely familiar everything is,” he thought. “It seems almost as if the
+curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering fingers,
+in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his own babies. He
+found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with things. A very soft wind,
+shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and seemed to lay its cheek against his
+chest. He placed his hands beneath his arms, where the wind was caressing him,
+and his eyes opened with wondering pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They find no fault with me,” he said. “I suppose they are as fallible as I,
+and so don’t judge,” he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the water, thrusting
+it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Once more,” he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very quietly.
+The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam towards the white
+rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like beautiful buttressed gates,
+so glistening that he half expected to see fantail pigeons puffing like white
+irises in the niches, and white peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the
+terraces, trailing a sheen of silver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Helena is right,” he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but moving
+upon the bosom of the tide; “she is right, it is all enchanted. I have got into
+her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round the
+terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets of the
+water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his foot; they were hard,
+cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made for the archway, the shadows of
+the headland chilled the water. There under water, clamouring in a throng at
+the base of the submerged walls, were sea-women with dark locks, and young
+sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly green, striving to climb up out of the
+darkness into the morning, their hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half
+afraid of their frantic efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch. There
+was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white, full-fleshed walls of the
+archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and out among themselves.
+Siegmund was carried along in an invisible chariot, beneath the jewel-stained
+walls. The tide swerved, threw him as he swam against the inward-curving white
+rock; his elbow met the rock, and he was sick with pain. He held his breath,
+trying to get back the joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely,
+smooth side of the rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could
+have hurt him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to
+the shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his arm.
+The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch no bigger
+than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful, especially when, a
+minute or two later, he bent his arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” said he pitiably to himself, “it is impossible it should have hurt me. I
+suppose I was careless.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder looking
+out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a bright
+conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay gossiped
+across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the sea-shore
+played together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely,” said Siegmund, “they take no notice of me; they do not care a jot or
+a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on the
+cliffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was mistaken,” he said. “It was an illusion.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite windows of
+an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with another. White
+rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white rocks. Everything was
+busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit and with its own comrades.
+Siegmund alone was without pursuit or comrade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena, after a
+while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do I matter?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+We are not long for music and laughter,<br/>
+    Love and desire and hate;<br/>
+I think we have no portion in them after<br/>
+    We pass the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why should I be turned out of the game?” he asked himself, rebelling. He
+frowned, and answered: “Oh, Lord!—the old argument!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Like the puff from the steamer’s funnel, I should be gone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his maturity.
+He was very beautiful to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing, in the place where I am,” he said. “Gone, like a puff of steam that
+melts on the sunshine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at a joke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I,” he said, lying down in the warm sand, “I am nothing. I do not count; I
+am inconsiderable.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he was
+arguing with himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said, “if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the vulgar proverb arose—“Better a live dog than a dead lion,” to answer
+him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be overlooked, even by the
+smallest creature of God’s earth. Surely that was a great ignominy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore with
+him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to discover small
+treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box which hid innumerable
+sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She had bathed in many
+rock-pools’ tepid baths, trying first one, then another. She had lain on the
+sand where the cold arms of the ocean lifted her and smothered her impetuously,
+like an awful lover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,” she said, as she rose panting, trying
+to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it flung over her
+filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did Siegmund when he
+sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they did not
+fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the anemone’s
+fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she laughed to think
+they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide trickled noiselessly
+among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously her little pools. Helena
+retreated towards a large cave round the bend. There the water gurgled under
+the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the air was cool and clammy. She pursued
+her way into the gloom, bending, though there was no need, shivering at the
+coarse feel of the seaweed beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up
+beneath the fucus as she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a
+quiet gurgle which made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It
+needed, for all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could
+step off her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
+thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled hastily
+upwards towards the outlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest window.
+It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a throng, excited
+with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the dragon’s hole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How surprised they will be to see me!” said Helena, scrambling forward,
+laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with white fire,
+and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the flames. The sea
+was transfused with white burning, while over it hung the blue sky in a glory,
+like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena stood still and worshipped. It
+was a moment of astonishment, when she stood breathless and blinded,
+involuntarily offering herself for a thank-offering. She felt herself
+confronting God at home in His white incandescence, His fire settling on her
+like the Holy Spirit. Her lips were parted in a woman’s joy of adoration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is good,” said Helena; “it is very good.” She looked again, and saw the
+waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight pursuing,
+catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till they fell, caught,
+with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is really wonderful here!” said she; but the moment had gone, she could not
+see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a while she turned
+away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over the beach
+to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are not gone, then?” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siegmund!” she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it could
+not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His face was glowing
+with the sun’s inflaming, but Helena did not notice that his eyes were full of
+misery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I, actually,” he said, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I did not expect you,” she said, still looking at him in radiant wonder. “I
+could easier have expected”—she hesitated, struggled, and continued—“Eros
+walking by the sea. But you are like him,” she said, looking radiantly up into
+Siegmund’s face. “Isn’t it beautiful this morning?” she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and kissed
+her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full of
+contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see, beyond the
+glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t the sea wonderful this morning?” asked Helena, as she wrung the water
+from her costume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is very fine,” he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart said:
+“It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning, and the sea is
+enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” said Siegmund, “the morning is perfect.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is,” assented Helena warmly. “Have you noticed the waves? They are like a
+line of children chased by a white dog.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay!” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Didn’t you have a good time?” she asked, touching with her finger-tips the
+nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I swam to my little bay again,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did you?” she exclaimed, pleased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand, holding
+them to Siegmund to dry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am very hungry,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I,” he agreed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel quite established here,” she said gaily, something in his position
+having reminded her of their departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn’t it?” she
+insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wish we might never go back,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It would be too much for life to give. We have had something, Siegmund,” she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It has been something, dear,” she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Everything,” he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He could
+smell her fresh and fine from the sea. “Everything!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I did well, didn’t I, Siegmund?” she asked. Helena felt the responsibility of
+this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had withdrawn, she had insisted,
+refusing to allow him to take back his word, declaring that she should pay the
+cost. He permitted her at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wonderfully well, Helena,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She kissed his forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are everything,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
+brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate, gentle
+manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The water would be warm this morning,” she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from one
+leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the amiable
+little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his capacity of
+accepted swain of Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was,” assented Helena. “It was as warm as new milk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay, it would be,” said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the experience
+of Siegmund and his beloved. “And did ye see the ships of war?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, they had gone,” replied Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’ll be coming in to dinner today?” asked the old lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena arranged the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think ye both look better,” Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled constrainedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I thought ye looked so worn when you came,” she said sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He had been working hard,” said Helena, also glancing at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay,” sympathized the little woman. “And it’s a very short time for you. What a
+pity ye can’t stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are grand, so
+they say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. “Have you never seen them?” she
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” replied Mrs. Curtiss. “I’ve never been able to get; but I hope to go
+yet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hope you may,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was quite
+satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” she said brightly, “the eggs must be done by now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve brought you,” she said, “some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye’ll have them. You must think well of the Island, and come
+back.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How could we help?” laughed Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will,” smiled Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief. Helena
+looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in presence of the
+delightful little lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,” she said.
+She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One of the few places where everything is friendly,” she said. “And
+everybody.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have made so many enemies?” he asked, with gentle irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Strangers,” she replied. “I seem to make strangers of all the people I meet.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed in amusement at this <i>mot</i>. Siegmund looked at her intently.
+He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Need we go—need we leave this place of friends?” he said, as if ironically. He
+was very much afraid of tempting her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: “One, two, three, four,
+five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of currants
+she had extricated for him.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea, which led
+them along their last walk. On either side the white path was a grassy margin
+thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless little flowers, so gay
+and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old yew tree, and were looking up
+pertly at their rough host.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Who called them ‘fairies’ telephones’?” she said to herself. “They are tiny
+children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling along the
+pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they take a wind-thrill!
+See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when they are tired, they will
+curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in the dark will gather them away.
+They won’t be here in the morning, shrivelled and dowdy … If only we could curl
+up and be gone, after our day….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is good when life holds no anti-climax,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay!” he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with bent
+head, abstract, but happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is she thinking?” he asked himself. “She is sufficient to herself—she
+doesn’t want me. She has her own private way of communing with things, and is
+friends with them.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The dew has been very heavy,” she said, turning, and looking up at him from
+under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see it has,” he answered. Then to himself he said: “She can’t translate
+herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can’t render herself to the
+intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she only wants me to
+explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After a while, when I am
+gone, she will see I was not indispensable….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on the
+left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low roof of dusky
+red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was edged and ornamented
+with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers brilliant with dew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare lawn, his
+back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to avoid the glare of
+the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper and looked angrily at the
+house—not at anything in particular.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden decision,
+glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Amy! Amy!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off indoors, his
+mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard calling curtly from the
+dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as he bumped the table leg in
+sitting down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is in a bad temper,” laughed Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Breakfast is late,” said Helena with contempt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look!” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in holland, both
+carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden gate. Their faces were
+turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with hurrying, and had no breath
+for words. The girl pressed forward, opened the gate for the lady in striped
+linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then the daughter followed, and vanished
+also under the shady veranda.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a quick sound of women’s low, apologetic voices, overridden by the
+resentful abuse of the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Imagine that breakfast-table!” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel,” said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, “as if a
+fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are many such roosts,” said Siegmund pertinently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena’s cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him winsomely
+and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next incurving of the
+coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of humiliation, which he had got
+from her the day before, and which had fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a
+wound. This haemorrhage of self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some time
+she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to her ideal
+lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side of his tortured
+self-respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At least,” he said, in mortification of himself—“at least, someone must
+recognize a strain of God in me—and who does? I don’t believe in it myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion, the
+island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead, all their
+beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it naked, saw the
+beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this bead. The island would
+be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty and find the dirt. What was he
+to do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know, Domine,” said Helena—it was his old nickname she used—“you look
+quite stern today.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel anything but stern,” he laughed. “Weaker than usual, in fact.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly gentle. But
+when you are silent, I am even afraid of you—you seem so grave.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And shall I not be brave?” he said. “Can’t you smell <i>Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae</i>?” He turned quickly to Helena. “I wonder if that’s
+right,” he said. “It’s years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought it had
+all gone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In the first place, what does it mean?” said Helena calmly, “for I can only
+half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of such stuff.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why,” said Siegmund, rather abashed, “only ‘the row and the smoke of Rome’.
+But it is remarkable, Helena”—here the peculiar look of interest came on his
+face again—“it is really remarkable that I should have said that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, you look surprised,” smiled she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But it must be twenty”—he counted—“twenty-two or three years since I learned
+that, and I forgot it—goodness knows how long ago. Like a drowning man, I have
+these memories before….” He broke off, smiling mockingly, to tease her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Before you go back to London,” said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost ironical
+tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to let any deep
+emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. “No,” she said, with calm
+distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the rise to the
+cliff’s edge. “I can’t say that I smell the smoke of London. The mist-curtain
+is thick yet. There it is”—she pointed to the heavy, purple-grey haze that hung
+like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky and the sea. She thought of
+yesterday morning’s mist-curtain, thick and blazing gold, so heavy that no wind
+could sway its fringe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird’s-foot trefoil of
+the cliff’s edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm drooped over
+everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Six hours,” thought Helena, “and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
+Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I will not
+wave my hand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to allow
+any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong. Siegmund was also
+exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in spite of himself, striving
+towards a conclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair also he
+had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and said it was
+absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena’s lover, yet he felt a physical
+sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which neither reason, nor
+dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could untie. He had failed as
+lover to Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove disastrous.
+Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known
+nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his mind and soul set to develop, as
+Beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, he naturally inclined away
+from her, so that now, after twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her.
+That was not very surprising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in the
+heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a white
+clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming softer and softer
+as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The little fool!” said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into the
+light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the ripples.
+Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the wild spinning
+of the lights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Even if I were free,” he continued to think, “we should only grow apart,
+Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the laggard. She is
+young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently to
+keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or understand her
+swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I cannot compel anybody to
+follow me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the sight
+of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing to alight
+on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back. When can I set
+my feet on when this is gone?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of Siegmund’s
+mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed, looking out to sea.
+The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I feel as if it were burning into me,” thought Siegmund abstractedly. “It is
+certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me ill.” Meanwhile,
+perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to
+lie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall we not go under the rocks?” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look!” he said, “the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a
+cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was dreadful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My arms, Siegmund,” said she. “They feel as if they were dipped in fire.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you sure it is not bad for you—your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed stupidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is all right,” he said. He knew that the sun was burning through him, and
+doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I <i>think</i> we should be able to keep together if”—he faltered—“if only I
+could have you a little longer. I have never had you …”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of
+despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little
+cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost beside herself. She could
+not lose him, she could not spare him. She would not let him go. Helena was,
+for the moment, frantic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on
+her cheek, he murmured:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should be able, shouldn’t I, Helena?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are always able!” she cried. “It is I who play with you at hiding.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have really had you so little,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Can’t you forget it, Siegmund?” she cried. “Can’t you forget it? It was only a
+shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can’t you forget it,
+dear?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can’t do without me?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I lose you I am lost,” answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her safely;
+her arms were hidden under his coat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between us,”
+said Helena to herself. “They may go back to hell.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening to the
+backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown out to sea and
+lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we were
+side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I should get
+stronger and more upright.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only two red
+blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena leaned her head
+upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under his coat, his body, which
+swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of great power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If,” thought she, “the whole clock of the world could stand still now, and
+leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of Siegmund in my
+arms….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the falling of
+the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm, that it made
+silence sweet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If now,” prayed Siegmund, “death would wipe the sweat from me, and it were
+dark….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the bare
+rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to rise
+and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew that the other
+felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger of the sundial
+travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return, to let the finger
+travel and be gone. But then … Helena knew she must not let the time cross her;
+she must rise before it was too late, and travel before the coming finger.
+Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He lay in suspense, waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is time, Siegmund,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him. She
+wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over him. He did
+not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and inflamed with the sun.
+Very gently she wiped from it the glistening sweat. He closed his eyes, and she
+wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still he did not look at her. She bent very
+close to him, feeling her heart crushed with grief for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must go, Siegmund,” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” he said, but still he did not move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of air. She
+was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving. His face
+was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too strong for
+her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the sand, and she
+tried gently to draw him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall be too late,” she said in distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She put her
+arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself together, he
+bent his head from the sea, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, what time is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his left hand,
+and had one arm round his neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t see the figures,” he said. “Everything is dimmed, as if it were coming
+dark.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. “My eyes were the
+same. It is the strong sunlight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t,” he repeated, and he was rather surprised—“I can’t see the time. Can
+you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stooped down and looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is half past one,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time to catch
+the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: “I feel almost
+stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is
+dulled.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” answered Helena, “I am afraid it will do you harm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At any rate,” he smiled as if sleepily, “I have had enough. If it’s too
+much—what <i>is</i> too much?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We are going back—we are going back!” the heart of Helena seemed to run hot,
+beating these words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge of the
+grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. The strand
+was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and
+sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. The sea crept
+smaller, farther away; the sky stood still. Siegmund and Helena looked
+hopelessly out on their beautiful, incandescent world. They looked hopelessly
+at each other, Siegmund’s mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at
+Helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the
+beauty he had enjoyed, “<i>Addio</i>!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It reminds me of Traviata—an ‘<i>Addio</i>’ at every verse-end.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it jarred
+on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve. “<i>Addi-i-i-i-o,
+Addi-i-i-o</i>!” he whistled between his teeth, hissing out the Italian’s
+passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose,” she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check this
+discord—“I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey—Thursday.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There will not be very many people,” she insisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I think,” he said, in a very quiet voice, “you’d better let me go by the
+South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why?” she exclaimed in astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to sit looking at you all the way,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But why should you?” she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Indeed, no!” she said. “We shall go together.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the little
+post office, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You haven’t sent them any word?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood still, not
+entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I?” he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was rather
+peculiar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, I should think so,” faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and cumbered
+with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a telegraph form.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My God!” he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could not sign
+the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled his surname, as he
+would have done to a stranger. As he watched the amiable, stout woman counting
+up his words carefully, pointing with her finger, he felt sick with irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s right,” she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to the
+instrument. “What beautiful weather!” she continued. “It will be making you
+sorry to leave us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There goes my warrant,” thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of paper
+under the post-mistress’s heavy hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes—it is too bad, isn’t it,” he replied, bowing and laughing to the woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is, sir,” she answered pleasantly. “Good morning.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face like a
+mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression told her
+nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her falter with dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is he thinking of?” she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back. “And
+why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them at home?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Siegmund, “are there any postcards?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“None that I care to take,” she replied. “Perhaps you would like one of these?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary views of
+Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Or a brush,” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She does not understand,” said Siegmund to himself. “And whatever I do I must
+not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings resentment
+against her. Almost he hated her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>XX</h2>
+
+<p>
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other with
+averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses, the downs
+dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with exhausted hot
+flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if they were being
+dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think, they stared out of the
+windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back her tears, Siegmund labouring
+to breathe normally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of shouting
+and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself at the carriage
+doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man who heaved a leather bag
+in front of him as he cried in German that here was room for all. Faces
+innumerable—hot, blue-eyed faces—strained to look over his shoulders at the
+shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men and
+three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank into the
+seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself carefully, like
+a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched the stout man, the one
+who had led the charge, settling himself between his large lady and the small
+Helena. The latter crushed herself against the side of the carriage. The
+German’s hips came down tight against her. She strove to lessen herself against
+the window, to escape the pressure of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to
+her. The man squeezed in the opposite direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am afraid I press you,” he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric German
+fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes, she liked the
+agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh no,” she answered. “You do not crush me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window. The man
+seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a slight rebuff,
+before he could address his lady with the good-humoured remark in German:
+“Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told each
+other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly over
+“Billy”—this being a nickname discovered for the German Emperor—and what he
+would be saying of the Czar’s trip; they questioned each other, and answered
+each other concerning the places they were going to see, with great interest,
+displaying admirable knowledge. They were pleased with everything; they
+extolled things English.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena’s stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to tell
+anecdotes. He was a <i>raconteur</i> of the naïve type: he talked with face,
+hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little spurts in his
+seat. After one of these he must have become aware of Helena—who felt as if she
+were enveloped by a soft stove—struggling to escape his compression. He stopped
+short, lifted his hat, and smiling beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!” He glanced round in perplexity,
+seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to her again, after
+having squeezed hard against his lady to free Helena, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive me, I am sorry.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are forgiven,” replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with her
+rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile at this. The
+good humour was complete.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” said the German gratefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+<i>raconteur</i> resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
+rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no attempt. He
+had watched, with the others, the German’s apologies, and the sight of his
+lover’s face had moved him more than he could tell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an intangible
+aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should never know her.
+There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement between her and all natural
+daily things, as if she were of an unknown race that never can tell its own
+story. This feeling always moved Siegmund’s pity to its deepest, leaving him
+poignantly helpless. This same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes
+made him hate her. It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce
+her foreign birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so
+that never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him the
+mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like a
+child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund’s resentment against her
+suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was very small.
+Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made her seem small; for
+she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now, small, quiet, uncomplaining,
+living for him who sat and looked at her. But what would become of her when he
+had left her, when she was alone, little foreigner as she was, in this world,
+which apologizes when it has done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena
+would be left behind; death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with
+him from this house of strangers which she called “life”. She had to go on
+alone, like a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What will she do?” Siegmund asked himself, “when her loneliness comes upon her
+like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to the memory of me
+for a while, and that will take her over till her strength is established. But
+what then?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go on,
+after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had not the
+faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do when she was
+thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive. Yet she would not
+die, of that he was certain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real inner
+life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him and to
+everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became acute, and he
+felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he had experienced the
+same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour with a problem in Euclid, for
+he was capable of great concentration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving eyes
+fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by an
+instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold her hand. He
+leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar hands, small, with
+a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool or cold; generally they
+lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were instinct with life, not inert.
+Sometimes he would feel a peculiar jerking in his pulse, very much like
+electricity, when he held her hand. Occasionally it was almost painful, and
+felt as if a little virtue were passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed
+as nonsense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their faces
+with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their clothing, which
+was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed them for some time, he
+was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she sympathized with her
+fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond endurance by the noise, the heat
+of her neighbour’s body, the atmosphere of the crowded carriage, and her own
+emotion. The only thing that could relieve her was the hand of Siegmund
+soothing her in its hold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel heavy upon
+him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to support her, and
+he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out of himself whatever she
+wanted.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde. It was
+near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily together, and
+now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a concourse of tall
+women, footing the waves with superb touch. To Siegmund they were very
+beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers crossing the window-lights are
+removed from the man who looks up from the street. He saw the Solent and the
+world of glamour flying gay as snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund,
+tired, dispirited, without any joy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their steamer,
+so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to stimulate them.
+The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned slightly and filed
+along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber floated, it seemed, without
+motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day; small boats with red and yellow
+flags fluttered quickly, trailing the sea with colour; a pleasure steamer
+coming from Cowes swung her soft stout way among the fleeting ships; high in
+the background were men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles
+of flags through a sky dim with distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is all very glad,” said Siegmund to himself, “but it seems to be fanciful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to his
+destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies between
+us and our goal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the blue
+afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must leave it; we must pass out of it,” she lamented, over and over again.
+Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,” she said to herself,
+watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena, as they
+looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across their course
+towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the sky. The eager launch,
+its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the swell like a coursing dog. A
+lady, in white, and a lad with dark head and white jersey were leaning in the
+bows; a gentleman was bending over some machinery in the middle of the boat,
+while the sailor in the low stern was also stooping forward attending to
+something. The steamer was sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a
+boat was coursing straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first.
+Stretching forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
+sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Look!” cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already watching.
+Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up, with startled,
+sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch veered. It and the
+steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The lady, still holding the
+boy, looked up with an expressionless face at the high sweeping chisel of the
+steamer’s bows; the husband stood rigid, staring ahead. No sound was to be
+heard save the rustling of water under the bows. The scissors closed, the
+launch skelped forward like a dog from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a
+yard or two. Then, like a dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the
+stern glanced back quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes.
+His face was as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
+steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat coursing
+low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch raced out of
+danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief gesture, put his man in
+charge again, whilst he himself went forward to the lady. He was a handsome
+man, very proud in his movements; and she, in her bearing, was prouder still.
+She received him almost with indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them, whilst she
+looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to the lips, and
+heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The noise of life had
+suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a moment the noiselessness
+of death. How everyone was white and gasping! They strove, on every hand, to
+fill the day with noise and the colour of life again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“By Jove, that was a near thing!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, that has made me feel bad!” said a woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A French yacht,” said somebody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what to say.
+Confused, he repeated:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That was a close shave.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from herself.
+There was something in his experience that made him different, quiet, with a
+peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, dear Lord!” he was saying to himself. “How bright and whole the day is for
+them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and swallowed us up in a
+shadow, they could not have been more startled. That man, with his fine,
+white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has no suspicion of the shadow that
+supports it all. Between the blueness of the sea and the sky he passes easy as
+a gull, close to the fine white seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags,
+and soft birds of ships, and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness through
+its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he fumbles with
+delights like a bee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness the
+same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life, the shadow
+supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible flame. The glare
+of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death, is not enough to hide
+from me the source and the issue. For what is a life but a flame that bursts
+off the surface of darkness, and tapers into the darkness again? But the death
+that issues differs from the death that was the source. At least, I shall
+enrich death with a potent shadow, if I do not enrich life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wasn’t that woman fine!” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So perfectly still,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The child realized nothing,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am always so sorry,” he said, “that the human race is urged inevitably into
+a deeper and deeper realization of life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I guess,” she said slowly, after a while, “that the man, the sailor, will have
+a bad time. He was abominably careless.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He was careful of something else just then,” said Siegmund, who hated to hear
+her speak in cold condemnation. “He was attending to the machinery or
+something.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That was scarcely his first business,” said she, rather sarcastic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement—very blind. Sometimes
+his soul surged against her in hatred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you think the man <i>wanted</i> to drown the boat?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He nearly succeeded,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the world
+sitting in judgement, and he hated it. “But, after all,” he thought, I suppose
+it is the only way to get along, to judge the event and not the person. I have
+a disease of sympathy, a vice of exoneration.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of the woman
+in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of life, saw it
+great and impersonal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I rather think not. Why?” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I hope she didn’t,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very much in
+love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to her mind he
+had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and proud as the wind.
+She never realized his helplessness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman’s courage.
+If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the boy, if she had so
+much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he himself might refrain from
+revealing his own fear of Helena, and from lamenting his hard fate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they looked
+out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He yearned to
+escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be carried on to
+London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came round. The high old
+houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept round in a sickle, reaping
+them into the harbour. There the old <i>Victory</i>, gay with myriad pointed
+pennons, was harvested, saved for a trophy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a dreadful thing,” thought Siegmund, “to remain as a trophy when there
+is nothing more to do.” He watched the landing-stages swooping nearer. There
+were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of the train was
+London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours. The
+suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in the beating
+train, would cost too much. He longed to be released from her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder, in the
+heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the crowd to pass on,
+so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to the mainland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?” asked
+Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning’s question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she replied. “Let us go together.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat down,
+facing Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now,” said he to himself, “I wish I were alone.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I not go down to Cornwall?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that she was
+dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety protracted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you have promised Louisa, have you not?” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well!” she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she wished to
+convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then you must go,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” she began, with harsh petulance, “I do not want to go down to Cornwall
+with <i>Louisa and Olive</i>”—she accentuated the two names—“after
+<i>this</i>,” she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then Louisa will have no holiday—and you have promised,” he said gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is my promise so <i>very</i> important?” she asked. She glanced angrily at the
+three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the ladies
+entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the carriage. Siegmund
+did not know whether he were displeased or relieved by their intrusion. If they
+had stayed out, he might have held Helena in his arms for still another hour.
+As it was, she could not harass him with words. He tried not to look at her,
+but to think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through Portsmouth,
+Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It seemed an indefinite age
+ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of the carriage opposite from the
+one he had occupied five days before. The afternoon of the flawless sky was
+ripening into evening. The chimneys and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth
+took on that radiant appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A
+rich bloom of light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will go on,” thought Siegmund, “being gay of an evening, for ever. And I
+shall miss it all!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he began
+again:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will say
+nothing, thank God—nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there will be no
+interruptions….
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss reasons for
+and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the country. Already I have
+spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my money, and on the rest I
+manage for myself in lodgings in London. Very good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want Helena; I
+shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be damned by the
+thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never get better. Helena says
+she would never come to me; but she would, out of pity for me. I know she
+would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me not
+looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in endless
+difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a red sore inflamed
+against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth. Besides, there would go
+all her strength. She would not make any efforts. ‘He has brought it on us,’
+she would say; ‘let him see what the result is.’ And things would go from bad
+to worse with them. It would be a gangrene of shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And Helena—I should have nothing but mortification. When she was asleep I
+could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous creature. But I
+should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if I had the power of God.
+What should I think of myself?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country whirl
+past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his imagination
+destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He sketched the
+morning—breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder children rushing off
+without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest bewildered under her swift,
+indifferent preparations for school. He thought of Beatrice in the evening,
+worried and irritable, her bills unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably
+against the cruelty of her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of
+care while he took his pleasure elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the consideration
+of his own life in town. He would go to America; the agreement was signed with
+the theatre manager. But America would be only a brief shutting of the eyes and
+closing of the mouth. He would wait for the home-coming to Helena, and she
+would wait for him. It was inevitable; then would begin—what? He would never
+have enough money to keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their
+meetings would then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I were rich,” said Siegmund, “all would be plain. I would give each of my
+children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am nearly forty; I
+have no genius; I shall never be rich,” Round and round went his thoughts like
+oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the grain. Gradually the chaff flew
+away; gradually the corn of conviction gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If I have made things more difficult,” she said, her voice harsh with pain,
+“you will forgive me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives, filling the
+eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he smiled, as he looked at
+her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes haunted with pain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Forgive you?” he repeated. “Forgive you for five days of perfect happiness;
+the only real happiness I have ever known!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
+painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned back
+in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike swiftly, in long
+rows, across her vision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the rotation of
+the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena had interrupted
+him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking, so that they struck
+here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey that was useless, conclusions
+which only hindered the bringing home of the final convictions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What will she do?” cried Siegmund, “What will she do when I am gone? What will
+become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will have no object. Is
+it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an inextricable knot this is!
+But what will she do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could never
+answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking backward,
+saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a great, broad bosom
+of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed with sudden love for the
+earth; there the great downs were, naked like a breast, leaning kindly to him.
+The earth is always kind; it loves us, and would foster us like a nurse. The
+downs were big and tender and simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a
+hollow, and he wondered what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet,
+hearing the vague roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It was
+evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes proud upon
+the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and magnificent.
+Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and opened his eyes to its
+powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot everything, amid the forging of red
+fields of gold in the smithy of the sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the
+railway-banks, a crimson train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the
+next wheat-field. It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom
+of darkened grass-lands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She breathed
+the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset was stately. The
+blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its victory and won, now mounted
+triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms uplifted took the flames, which
+leaped like blood about its feet. The day died nobly, so she thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Surely that cloud is for us,” said she, as she watched it anxiously. Dark
+trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It came,
+unswerving, from behind the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am sure it is for us,” she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes. Still
+the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and pointed out
+the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little of her faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn’t it seem to you to be travelling
+with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from “Aylwin”.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena was almost happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am right,” said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and Helena will
+manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand to confirm it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like a
+greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was mechanically
+thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride, his whole self beating
+to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a certain grandeur in this flight,
+but it hurt him with its heavy insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had
+to summon his courage to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he
+was going on towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky,
+asking of everything, “Am I right? Am I right?” He did not mind what happened
+to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by “right” he did not
+trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had been reassured;
+then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid, and he merely
+submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him deeper and deeper with
+a brand of catastrophe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the fountain
+of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from the foaming of the
+day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they hung overhead, while the
+hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the hive by the western low door.
+Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of purple, with here and there on the
+floor a bright brushing of wings—a village; then, overhead, the luminous
+star-spider began to run.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, well!” thought Siegmund—he was tired—“if one bee dies in a swarm, what is
+it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light, and the hum
+and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from these rushings out of
+the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of night, gathering God knows
+what, I was a pebble. Well, the day will swarm in golden again, with colour on
+the wings of every bee, and humming in each activity. The gold and the colour
+and sweet smell and the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it
+only happens we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or
+not, bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life <i>are</i>
+always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least, I do
+not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there in the
+darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I <i>have</i> burned bright; I have
+laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere—I wonder where? We can never point to
+it; but it <i>is</i> so—what does it matter, then!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking towards
+Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the night. Helena
+remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their first walk together.
+She would like to come again. Presently she saw the quick stilettos of stars on
+the small, baffled river; they ran between high embankments. Siegmund
+recollected that these were covered with roses of Sharon—the large golden St
+John’s wort of finest silk. He looked, and could just distinguish the
+full-blown, delicate flowers, ignored by the stars. At last he had something to
+say to Helena:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you remember,” he asked, “the roses of Sharon all along here?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I do,” replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. “Weren’t they pretty?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I should
+like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smiled, without answering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?” she asked. She put
+the question timidly. “Would you care to?” she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he said gently; “I think we had better not.” Almost for the first time he
+did not make apologetic explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning of the
+lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near Sutton. Then she
+rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and her basket. She was, in
+spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite ready to leave the train, she sat
+down to wait for the station. Siegmund was aware that she was displeased, and
+again, for the first time, he said to himself, “Ah, well, it must be so.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At least,” she said doubtfully, “I shall see you at the station.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At Waterloo?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, at Wimbledon,” she replied, in her metallic tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But—” he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It will be the best way for us,” she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. “Much better than crossing London from Victoria to Waterloo.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You will get in Wimbledon 10.5—leave 10.40—leave Waterloo 11.30,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very good,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the train to
+stop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If only she will soon go!” thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable minute. She
+rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him, pressing his hand; then
+he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon the window-frame and she stood
+below on the platform, looking up at him, he could scarcely breathe. “How long
+will it be?” he said to himself, looking at the open carriage doors. He hated
+intensely the lady who could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could
+have killed her; he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors
+slammed and the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now I lose her,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good-bye, then!” she said, and she turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with sickness.
+We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why did she fling round
+in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what would she do?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>XXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to Wimbledon.
+London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this peculiar lukewarmness
+was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from Victoria to Waterloo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor swiftly,
+soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other clumsy-footed
+traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging hansoms, then the
+excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged full-tilt heavily down the
+road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating with trepidation; they drew up with a
+sigh of relief by the kerb, and stood there panting—great, nervous, clumsy
+things. Siegmund was always amused by the headlong, floundering career of the
+buses. He was pleased with this scampering of the traffic; anything for
+distraction. He was glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have
+irritated her with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch
+the rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing along
+of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to her.
+“Discords,” she said, “after the trees and sea.” She liked the glistening of
+the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for pavement, such
+pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of Heaven; but this noise could
+not be endured near any wonderland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched the
+gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself far before
+him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted with scarlet, went
+jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in their movement. There was a
+soft vividness of life in their carriage; it reminded Siegmund of the soft
+swaying and lapping of a poised candle-flame. The women went blithely
+alongside. Occasionally, in passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of
+himself, he smiled; he knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval,
+for he was ruddy; besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair.
+The eyes of the women said, “You are comely, you are lovable,” and Siegmund
+smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a lovely deep
+purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of grey-gold light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a wonderful night,” he said to himself. “There are not two such in a
+year.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his heart. This
+purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth of soldiers and
+the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip sharply in a draught, was
+a revelation to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but rather
+increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the bridge. They
+went like great burning bees in an endless file into a hive, past those which
+were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the black, distorted water, golden
+serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” said Siegmund to himself; “it is far too wonderful for me. Here, as well
+as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever happens, the world
+is wonderful.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night, the
+swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the floating of
+many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like an army of angels
+filing past on one of God’s campaigns, the purring haste of the taxis, the
+slightly dancing shadows of people. Siegmund went on slowly, like a slow bullet
+winging into the heart of life. He did not lose this sense of wonder, not in
+the train, nor as he walked home in the moonless dark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He did not
+think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: “Now for the
+beginning of Hell!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy murmur.
+The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten, Siegmund opened
+the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not raise her head. Frank, a
+tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a book. He did not look up. Vera had
+her fingers thrust in among her hair, and continued to read the magazine that
+lay on the table before her. Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to
+show they were aware of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of
+people who cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go.
+His wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing
+under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in the creaking
+chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose the children are in bed,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily turned over
+a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly interested and had
+known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his slipper dangling from his
+hand, looking from one to another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They’ve been gone two hours,” said Frank at last, still without raising his
+eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was jarring, not yet
+having developed a man’s fullness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The slurring
+of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag seemed unnecessarily
+loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to speak, then refrained, feeling
+suddenly her daughter’s scornful restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms
+upon his knees, and sat leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace,
+which was littered with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you want any supper?” asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of her voice
+startled him into looking at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund’s heart went down with
+weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t <i>you</i> having any?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The table was not laid. Beatrice’s work-basket, a little wicker fruit-skep,
+overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and reels of cotton on
+the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took out a
+table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth over one end
+of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock with her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?” she
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In where?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this month’s <i>Nash’s</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” replied Beatrice. “What time have I for reading, much less for anything
+else?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people, then,”
+said Vera, with a sneer at the “other people”. She rose. “Let me do this. You
+sit down; you are tired, Mother,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed her.
+Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his thin shoulders
+lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on his knees, looking into
+the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking of crockery, and soon the smell
+of coffee. All the time Vera was heard chatting with affected brightness to her
+mother, addressing her in fond tones, using all her wits to recall bright
+little incidents to retail to her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with
+utmost brevity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a plate
+with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer, and some
+bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the leaves of her
+magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely for his father. He
+looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained himself, and went on reading,
+or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in with the small cruet; it was
+conspicuously bright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly clean, the
+crockery fine, the bread and butter thin—in fact, it was just as it would have
+been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous neatness, in a household so
+slovenly and easy-going, where it was an established tradition that something
+should be forgotten or wrong, impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving
+knife and fork by the little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went
+and sat down. Her face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to
+sew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you say, Mother?” said Vera, as if resuming a conversation. “Shall it
+be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say, as I said before,” replied Beatrice: “I cannot afford to go out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. <i>Dîtes
+donc</i>!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are other things to think of,” said Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, <i>maman, nous avons changé tout cela</i>! We are going out—a jolly
+little razzle!” Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and smiled at
+her mother gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am afraid there will be no <i>razzle</i>”—Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly—“for me. You are slangy, Vera.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“<i>Un doux argot, ma mère</i>. You look tired.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking in the
+grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked up at the
+table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s your supper, Father.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head lower. Vera
+resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was hungry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!” he said to himself
+before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He seemed to be
+shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and away from him as his
+chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching from under his eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of his
+family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it, despite the fact
+that he was content to receive humiliation this night. He swallowed the coffee
+with effort. When he had finished he sat irresolute for some time; then he
+arose and went to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good night!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut the
+door and went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the tap in
+the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically, catching her breath
+as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The faces of the two children
+set hard with hate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,” said Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing and her
+cottons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“At any rate, he’s come back red enough,” said Frank, in his grating tone of
+contempt. “He’s like boiled salmon.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to the
+grate, in his father’s characteristic attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He <i>would</i> come slinking back in a funk!” he said, with a young man’s
+sneer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread, and
+began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at this, and
+began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched her with jealous
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is a little more ham, if you’d like it,” said Beatrice to him. “I kept
+you some.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, Ma,” he replied. Fetch it in.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?” called Vera after her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The damned coward! Ain’t he a rotten funker?” said Frank, <i>sotto voce</i>,
+while his mother was out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank yawned. He
+fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother, and, putting his
+hand on her arm—the feel of his mother’s round arm under the black silk sleeve
+made his tears rise—he said, more gratingly than ever:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ne’er mind, Ma; we’ll be all right to you.” Then he bent and kissed her. “Good
+night, Mother,” he said awkwardly, and he went out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice was crying.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+“I shall never re-establish myself,” said Siegmund as he closed behind him the
+dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. “I am a family criminal.
+Beatrice might come round, but the children’s insolent judgement is too much.
+And I am like a dog that creeps round the house from which it escaped with joy.
+I have nowhere else to go. Why did I come back? But I am sleepy. I will not
+bother tonight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him a
+grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his position. He
+dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might feel the delight of
+it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after time, and it seemed to him
+he laughed with pleasure as the water caught him and fell away. The towel
+reminded him how sore were his forehead and his neck, blistered both to a state
+of rawness by the sun. He touched them very cautiously to dry them, wincing,
+and smiling at his own childish touch-and-shrink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he stepped
+out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and wrists. He
+pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously soft night. He
+stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The night was as yet moonless,
+but luminous with a certain atmosphere of light. The stars were small. Near at
+hand, large shapes of trees rose up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups
+shone amid an undergrowth of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling
+the sky, like the whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night
+occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across the
+distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a big night!” thought Siegmund. “The night gathers everything into a
+oneness. I wonder what is in it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the night.
+He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a hold. What
+could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A star fell. It seemed
+to burst into sight just across his eyes with a yellow flash. He looked up,
+unable to make up his mind whether he had seen it or not. There was no gap in
+the sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is a good sign—a shooting star,” he said to himself. “It is a good sign for
+me. I know I am right. That was my sign.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was soon in
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is a good bed,” he said. “And the sheets are very fresh.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from his
+pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is it?” he asked, and almost without interruption answered: “Well, I’ve
+got to go through it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he forgot
+when he awoke. Only this naïve question and answer betrayed what had taken
+place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate knowledge vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund did was
+to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second thing was to call
+to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight. “What would it just be
+like now?” said he to himself. He had to give his heart some justification for
+the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep activity, so he began poignantly to
+long for the place which had been his during the last mornings. He pictured the
+garden with roses and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore,
+and all the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is impossible it is gone!” he cried to himself. “It can’t be gone. I looked
+forward to it as if it never would come. It can’t be gone now. Helena is not
+lost to me, surely.” Then he began a long pining for the departed beauty of his
+life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by facet it wounded him with its
+brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it was keen, was half pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room next to
+his, and he heard her:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Frank, it’s a quarter to eight. You <i>will</i> be late.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right, Mother. Why didn’t you call me sooner?” grumbled the lad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I didn’t wake myself. I didn’t go to sleep till morning, and then I slept.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed. The
+minutes passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The young donkey, why doesn’t he get out?” said Siegmund angrily to himself.
+He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and humiliation, because
+now he had no authority to call to his son and keep him to his duty. Siegmund
+waited, writhing with anger, shame, and anxiety. When the suave, velvety
+“Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!” of the clock was heard striking, Frank stepped with a
+thud on to the floor. He could be heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice
+called from the bottom of the stairs:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you want any hot water?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know there isn’t time for me to shave now,” answered her son, lifting his
+voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his second
+daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the same room with
+her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder girl answered briefly.
+There was a lull in the household noises, broken suddenly by Marjory, shouting
+from the top of the stairs:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam!” She wailed. “Mam!” Still Beatrice did not hear her. “Mam! Mamma!”
+Beatrice was in the scullery. “Mamma-a!” The child was getting impatient. She
+lifted her voice and shouted: “Mam? Mamma!” Still no answer. “Mam-mee-e!” she
+squealed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why don’t you go down and ask?” Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: “What do you want?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where’s my stockings?” cried the child at the top of her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why do you ask me? Are they down here?” replied her mother. “What are you
+shouting for?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed into
+Vera’s room, she grumbled: “And now they’re not mended.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of the
+sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out. She was
+silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and pulling on her
+stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her feet as she went
+downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam,” Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, “has dad come?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The answer and the child’s further talk were lost in the distance of the
+kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen’s feet,
+made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more. He lay
+shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive to madness. He
+felt that he could not, come what might, get up and meet them all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank’s hasty call: “Good-bye!” Evidently
+the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound of the train; it
+seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water from the wash-hand bowl
+in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he suggested, was Vera, who was evidently
+not going up to town. At the thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He
+listened for her to go downstairs. It was nine o’clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom—his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to his door.
+Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and waited. Siegmund,
+startled, for the moment, could not answer. She knocked loudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she went downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera’s voice
+said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You should clear away, then. We don’t want the breakfast things on the table
+for a week.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund’s heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across to the
+bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at the bowl, her
+back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. Her hair, all blowsed
+from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her
+slender, childish neck. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced
+petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt
+slightly amused to see her stout little calves planted so firmly close
+together. She carefully sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck,
+soaping her hair, but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out
+the sponge and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his. She,
+too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at her neck,
+looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The child’s look was
+steady, calm, inscrutable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hello!” said her father. “Are you here!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her back on
+him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in the water and
+took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she turned to look again at
+Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her, his mouth shut hard, but his
+eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be trying to discover something in
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you washed your ears?” he said gaily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a slight
+constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she continued to
+regard him curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where have you been to?” she asked suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To the seaside,” he answered, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To Brighton?” she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Much farther than that,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To Worthing?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Farther—in a steamer,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But who did you go with?” asked the child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, I went all by myself,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Twuly?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Weally and twuly,” he answered, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Couldn’t you take me?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will next time,” he replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what did you go for?” she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You <i>might</i> have taken me,” said the child reproachfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn’t I?” he said, as if regretful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You <i>are</i> red,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is the sun. Hasn’t it been hot?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.” The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come here,” said Siegmund. “I believe you’ve got a tooth out, haven’t you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and she
+drew away from him, unwilling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come and let me look,” he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her face,
+shy, suspicious, condemning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t you going to get your chocolate?” he asked, as the child hesitated in
+the doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve got to go to mam and have my hair done.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went downstairs
+without going into his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart. He was a
+long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the bath, it seemed to
+him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and licked his shoulder. It tasted
+decidedly salt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“A pity to wash it off,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment exhilarated.
+He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he thought: “I look young.
+I look as young as twenty-six.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of forty,
+with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I used to think that, when I was forty,” he said to himself, “I should find
+everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my affairs as
+easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no more confidence
+than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a man needs a mother all
+his life. I don’t feel much like a lord of creation.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His
+sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was
+dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was indifferent to
+his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to the table. That was as
+he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him. He ate his breakfast alone,
+while his wife bustled about upstairs and Vera bustled about in the
+dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude of the drawing-room. As a reaction
+against his poetic activity, he felt as if he were gradually becoming more
+stupid and blind. He remarked nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses
+placed where he would not have allowed it—on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid
+cruelly on the cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few days,
+had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly through him.
+After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and of sunshine, he was
+prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and madly, he had wasted the
+tissue of his strength, so that now his life struggled in a clogged and broken
+channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He would
+have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and sickness had not an
+intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him into consciousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I suppose this is the result of the sun—a sort of sunstroke,” he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition in his
+head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“This is hideous!” he said. His arms were quivering with intense irritation. He
+exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot irritability commenced in
+his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair without changing his position. He had
+not the energy to get up and move about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned
+down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which she was
+going to copy a drawing from the <i>London Opinion</i>, really to see what her
+father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed intensely for his
+daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let go. Vera went out of the
+drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she had not even glanced at her
+father. In reality, she had observed him closely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He is sitting with his head in his hands,” she said to her mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice replied: “I’m glad he’s nothing else to do.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think he’s pitying himself,” said Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s a good one at it,” answered Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother’s skirt, looking up anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What is he doing, Mam?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing,” replied her mother—“nothing; only sitting in the drawing-room.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what has he <i>been</i> doing?” persisted the anxious child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing—nothing that I can tell <i>you</i>. He’s only spoilt all our lives.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But what will he do, Mam?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing. Don’t bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a nice
+plum?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word. She was
+too much perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you say?” asked her mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you,” replied the child, turning away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in his
+chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing
+irritability from his belly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, this is horrible!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve never been like this before. What is the matter?” he asked himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening to try
+and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he could only do
+something, or have something he wanted, it would be better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do I want?” he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste:
+the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming
+in Canada.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should be just the same there,” he answered himself. “Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Helena!” he suggested to himself, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t endure this,” he said. If this is the case, I had better be dead. To
+have no want, no desire—that is death, to begin with.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed entertaining. Then,
+“Is there really nothing I could turn to?” he asked himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Helena!” he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. “Ah, no!” he cried,
+drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea. There was a
+fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He merely pulled himself
+together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding on to the door-knob
+looking at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dad, Mam says dinner’s ready,” she announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments, before
+she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dinner’s ready.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said Siegmund. “Go away.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What did he say?” asked Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He shouted at me,” replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in her arms
+and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did he?” she said very tenderly. “Never mind, then, dearie—never mind.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tears in her mother’s voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and Marjory
+sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung
+about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house was bare and
+narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in
+matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy
+is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy
+cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks
+about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother
+drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, here we are!” replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So I see,” exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
+manner. “And what sort of a time have you had?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, very good,” replied Helena, still more coolly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“H’m!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar sulky,
+childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to
+question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You look well,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena smiled ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And are you ready for your supper?” she asked, in the playful, affectionate
+manner she had assumed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If the supper is ready I will have it,” replied her daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it’s not ready.” The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded
+her daughter with playful challenge. “Because,” she continued, “I didn’t known
+when you were coming.” She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters
+the incontrovertible. “But,” she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, “I can
+soon have it ready. What will you have?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The full list of your capacious larder,” replied Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you have cocoa or lemonade?” she asked, coming to the point curtly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Lemonade,” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Mr Verden entered—a small, white-bearded man with a gentle voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, so you are back, Nellie!” he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As you see, Pater,” she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“H’m!” he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
+tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father’s quiet “H’m!” her
+mother’s curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can never
+retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless pretence of
+eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will not be punished,
+but will be left with the humiliating smear of offence upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to the
+door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Has she come?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung herself
+upon Helena and kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How long have you been in?” she asked, in a voice trembling with affection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ten minutes,” replied Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why didn’t you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and meet
+you?” Louisa reproached her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why?” drawled Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by this
+sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that night. On
+the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their usual midsummer
+holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl—a minor friend of Louisa,
+a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made confidences
+to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy which enveloped the
+girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena’s thoughts went round and round,
+tethered amid the five days by the sea, pulling forwards as far as the morrow’s
+meeting with Siegmund, but reaching no further.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender advances and
+playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother, all of which were
+rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided his daughter with his
+eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity which made his disapproval far
+more difficult to bear than the repeated flagrant questionings of the mother’s
+eyes. But the day wore on. Helena pretended to read, and sat thinking. She
+played her violin a little, mechanically. She went out into the town, and
+wandered about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the night fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” said Helena to her mother, “I suppose I’d better pack.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Haven’t you done it?” cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise. “You’ll
+never have it done. I’d better help you. What times does the train go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ten minutes to ten.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was ample
+time for everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nevertheless, you’d better look sharp,” Mrs Verden said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll come with you to the station,” suggested Mrs Verden. “I’ll see the last
+of you. We shan’t see much of you just now.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” she said, fearing to make her disapproval too evident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes—I will—I’ll see you off.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Verden’s animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was curt and
+undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was reminded of the
+ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played the part of the
+affectionate parent, much to the general distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her eyes,
+gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away swiftly as
+if she had been burned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How stupid I look!” she said to herself. “And Siegmund, how is he, I wonder?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him, how he
+felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was ready,
+with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa came in. She
+dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t want to go, Nell,” she said, after a few moments of silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, how is that?” asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as to a
+child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t know; I’m tired,” said the other petulantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And rushing about packing,” exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an exaggerated
+manner, this time scolding playfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to go, dear,” repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, it is time we set out,” replied Helena, rising. “Will you carry the
+basket or the violin, Mater?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only smoke
+that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day. Such was
+Helena’s longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one corner Olive, the
+third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat mute, while the car
+swung through the yellow, stale lights of a third-rate street of shops. She
+heard Olive remarking on her sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the
+renewed inflammation in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice
+answering. Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow
+blur of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: “Two hundred and forty
+miles—two hundred and forty miles.”
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>XXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice, who
+had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of angry
+hysteria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?” she had asked him
+coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tomorrow—if ever,” he had answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
+flashed out like sudden lightning at his “if ever”.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you think you <i>can</i> do?” she cried. “For I think you have done
+enough. We can’t do as we like altogether—indeed, indeed we cannot. You have
+had your fling, haven’t you? You have had your fling, and you want to keep on.
+But there’s more than one person in the world. Remember that. But there are
+your children, let me remind you. Whose are they? You talk about shirking the
+engagement, but who is going to be responsible for your children, do you
+think?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I said nothing about shirking the engagement,” replied Siegmund, very coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there sulking all
+day. What do you think <i>I</i> do? I have to see to the children, I have to
+work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you <i>I’ll</i> stop, I tell
+you <i>I’ll</i> do as I like. <i>I’ll</i> go as well. No, I wouldn’t be such a
+coward, you know that. You know <i>I</i> wouldn’t leave little children—to the
+workhouse or anything. They’re my children; they mightn’t be yours.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is no need for this,” said Siegmund contemptuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely sick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice’s dark eyes flashed with rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t there!” she cried. “Oh, isn’t there? No, there is need for a great deal
+more. I don’t know what you think I am. How much farther do you think you can
+go? No, you don’t like reminding of us. You sit moping, sulking, because you
+have to come back to your own children. I wonder how much you think I shall
+stand? What do you think I am, to put up with it? What do you think I am? Am I
+a servant to eat out of your hand?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Be quiet!” shouted Siegmund. “Don’t I know what you are? Listen to yourself!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath. Even
+Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You coward—you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I who am
+to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know what I am.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him with
+dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were bloodshot and
+furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate and misery. She was
+goading him, in his darkness whither he had withdrawn himself like a sick dog,
+to die or recover as his strength should prove. She tortured him till his
+sickness was swallowed by anger, which glared redly at her as he pushed back
+his chair to rise. He trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his
+chest. Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they found
+themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested. Vera tackled
+the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is the table ready to be cleared yet?” she asked in an unpleasant tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father’s cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the others
+had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no reply,
+neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father. Gwen sidled up to
+her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked a
+sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child looked up
+at her, waited, then continued softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam, there was a lady had a dog—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was taking the
+things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on the tray. Gwen’s
+eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her father; then deliberately
+she turned again to her mother, and repeated in her softest and most persuasive
+tones:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher’s shop and licked a piece of meat.
+Mam, Mam!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother’s knee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam!” she pleaded timidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam!” she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at her
+mother’s breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam!” she whispered shrilly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of tragedy,
+and, laying her arm round the child’s shoulders, drew her close. Gwen was
+somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest face upturned to the
+impassive countenance of her mother, she began to whisper, sibilant, coaxing,
+pleading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog—”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her nerves,
+but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms, she averted her
+face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the tears run freely. Gwen
+was too much distressed to cry. The tears gathered very slowly in her eyes, and
+fell without her having moved a muscle in her face. Vera remained in the
+scullery, weeping tears of rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only
+sound in the room was the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat
+without the trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked
+low; he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the scullery.
+There came the low sound of women’s talking—an angry, ominous sound. Gwen
+followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard cautiously asking:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mam, is dad cross—is he? What did he do?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera. “You <i>are</i> a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don’t drop it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister. The
+latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go along,” she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained unmoved.
+The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was afraid. She crossed
+the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came slowly back, hesitating.
+She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round the table inch by inch, drawing
+nearer her father. At about a yard from the chair she stopped. He, from under
+his bent brows, could see her small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked
+through at the toes, waiting and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself
+together, as a man does who watches the surgeon’s lancet suspended over his
+wound. Would the child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands?
+He held his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
+do he did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to another. He
+could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He wanted, above all
+things, to take her in his arms, to have something against which to hide his
+face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the world was hostile, he had found
+her full of love, he had hidden his face against her, she had gone to sleep in
+his arms, she had been like a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should
+come to him now—his heart halted again in suspense—he knew not what he would
+do. It would open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too
+fast with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Gwen!” called Vera, wondering why she did not return. “Gwen!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted, hesitate,
+move, then turn away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned stronger,
+more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so bad that he was
+afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly, pulled himself up, and
+went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched, his fingers closed over his
+thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay down on the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end of that
+time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at work—an activity
+quite apart from his will or his consciousness, jogging and pulling him awake.
+At eight o’clock he sat up. A cramped pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He
+looked at them, and mechanically shut them again under his fingers into the
+position they sought after two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his
+hands again, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,” he said to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if weighted with
+lead. He could think only one detached sentence at intervals. Between-whiles
+there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,” he said to himself, and
+instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. “But I must
+be getting ready. I can’t disappoint her,” said Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to her, “Do
+not go away from me; come with me somewhere,” then he might lie down somewhere
+beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If she could hold his head
+in her hands—for she had fine, silken hands that adjusted themselves with a
+rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up in life—then his head would gradually
+grow healed, and he could rest. This was the one thing that remained for his
+restoration—that she should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest.
+He longed for it utterly—for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But it is no good,” he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep. “What time
+is it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was time he
+should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am forgetting again,” he said. “But I do not want to go. What is the good? I
+have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep. Suddenly he
+started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Goodness,” he said, “it’s getting quite dark!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to wash in
+cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and his face blazed
+with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It was ten minutes to
+ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark, though these bright days
+were endless. He wondered whether the children were in bed. It was too late,
+however, to wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the path when
+the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran out crying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are you going out? Where are you going?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is frightened,” he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very long.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Wimbledon, at this time!” said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You need not keep us sitting up,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little packages.
+Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive stopped before the
+indicator.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The next train for Waterloo,” she announced, in her contralto voice, “is
+10.30. It is now 10.12.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,” said Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,” cried Louisa, skittish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Louisa,” rang out Olive’s contralto, “don’t judge me by appearances.
+You’re sure to be taken in. With me it’s a case of
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+“‘Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she’s sad,<br/>
+And the sadness of her sadness when she’s glad!’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say something,
+chimed in sarcastically:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘They are nothing to her madness—’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“When she’s going for a holiday, dear,” cried Olive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, go on being mad,” cried Louisa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, do you like it? I thought you’d be thanking Heaven that sanity was given
+me in large doses.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And holidays in small,” laughed Louisa. “Good! No, I like your madness, if you
+call it such. You are always so serious.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘It’s ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged,’ dear,” boomed Olive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled, acknowledging
+the sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But,” said Louisa, smiling anxiously, “I don’t quite see it. What’s the
+point?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, to be explicit, dear,” replied Olive, “it is hardly safe to accuse me of
+sadness and seriousness in <i>this</i> trio.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Come to think of it, it isn’t,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating thickly; she
+could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they made a ceiling of
+heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a moment she beat with
+hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on a hot summer night, as if
+she must certainly go crazed, smothered under the grey, woolly blanket of heat.
+Siegmund was late. It was already twenty-five minutes past ten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to the
+platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here I am!” he said. “Where is Louisa?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at Siegmund. He
+was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she could not read him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Olive is there, too,” she explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated amidst
+pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things more complex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Does she—your other friend—does she know?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She knows nothing,” replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him forward to be
+introduced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How do you do?” replied Olive in most mellow contralto. “Behold the dauntless
+three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I will, since I may not do more,” replied Siegmund, smiling, continuing: “And
+how is Sister Louisa?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is very well, thank you. It is <i>her</i> turn now,” cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really good friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is your turn now,” he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you find things at home?” he asked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, as usual,” she replied indifferently. “And you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just the same,” he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then added: “The
+children are happier without me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, you mustn’t say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably. “It’s not
+true.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s all right, dear,” he answered. “So long as they are happy, it’s all
+right.” After a pause he added: “But I feel pretty bad tonight.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena’s hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the platform.
+There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a haze of lights. The
+high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm; farther off, like spangles
+shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and
+green signal-lamps settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of
+smoke came thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of
+carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air
+rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in
+the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
+distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go on.
+Remember, dear, two wrongs don’t make a right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his eyes.
+But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of his voice,
+lacking resonance—the dead, expressionless tone—made her lose her presence of
+mind. She stared at him blankly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you. What has
+happened at home? What are you going to do?” she said sharply. She palpitated
+with terror. For the first time she felt powerless. Siegmund was beyond her
+grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away her hold over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is nothing fresh the matter at home,” he replied wearily. He was to be
+scourged with emotion again. “I swear it,” he added. “And I have not made up my
+mind. But I can’t think of life without you—and life must go on.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And I swear,” she said wrathfully, turning at bay, “that I won’t live a day
+after you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up scalding
+hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: “Ah, don’t speak to me like that,
+dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train out tonight there is
+nothing left.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train was to
+leave from another platform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You’d better come,” said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa and
+Olive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We’ve got to change platforms,” cried Louisa, running forward and excitedly
+announcing the news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say,” cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+“look—look—both of you—look at that hat!” A lady in front was wearing on her
+hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. “It’s the sight of a
+lifetime. I wouldn’t have you miss it,” added Olive in hoarse <i>sotto
+voce</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Indeed not!” cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. “Get a good
+view of it, Olive. Let’s have a good mental impression of it—one that will
+last.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s right, dear,” said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him ahead,
+climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly animated to the
+calmly ironical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“After all, dear,” she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd, “it’s
+not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just now, at any rate,” she rejoined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena watched
+anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps it is as well,” she thought. “We needn’t talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would make
+Siegmund talk.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession. Siegmund
+followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and then quickly
+received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other two. These he put on
+the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them. She was very busy for a moment
+or two; the racks were full. Other people entered; their luggage was
+troublesome to bestow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but Siegmund was
+outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw her face move as if
+she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and immediately called:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I cannot come,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the door
+because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and sticks, which
+stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers. She was helpless.
+Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh—go—go—go—when will she go?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Would you like to come to the window?” a man asked of Helena kindly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled the
+portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the door,
+leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her “Hawwa” spirit
+evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at Siegmund. But her
+face was blank with helplessness, with misery of helplessness. She stood
+looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His forehead was scorched and swollen, she
+noticed sorrowfully, and beneath one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were
+bloodshot and glazed in a kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He
+looked up at her because she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he
+could only recoil from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark,
+alone. Yet she wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he
+could not yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did not
+speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to have strength
+to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally, the guard’s whistle
+went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm flush of love and healthy grief
+came over Siegmund for the last time. The train began to move, drawing Helena’s
+hand from his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Monday,” she whispered—“Monday,” meaning that on Monday she should receive a
+letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her, turned and walked
+away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Now, dear, we are manless,” said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at a joke
+fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>XXVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory of
+Helena’s last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till they
+trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a picture on a
+cloth before him he still saw Helena’s face, white, rounded, in feature quite
+mute and expressionless, just made terrible by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly.
+He thought of her going on and on, still at the carriage window looking out;
+all through the night rushing west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began
+to haunt Siegmund like a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in
+front of him, as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the
+cloth was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
+Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very far
+off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy eyes, came
+between again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his house. The
+door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of feet. It was Vera.
+She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively she shrank from him. He
+passed without noticing her. She stood on the door-mat, fastening the door,
+striving to find something to say to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You have been over an hour,” she said, still more troubled when she found her
+voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ay,” returned Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head between
+his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you have anything to eat?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole of the
+dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her breath with
+fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down and waited. The
+minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor spoke. At last the clock
+struck midnight. She was weary with sleep, querulous with trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t you going to bed?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half hear.
+Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t you going to bed, Father?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of having to
+move. He looked at her confusedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’m going,” he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was not
+asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again she sat
+waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Father!” she cried at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, I’m going,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,” she thought, but he did not
+fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to brush his teeth he
+dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ll pick it up in the morning,” he said, continuing deliriously: “I must go
+to bed—I must go to bed—I am very tired.” He stumbled over the door mat into
+his own room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the sneck of
+his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom, trickling with the
+mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing up her courage, she went
+and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in her own room, to be near the
+companionable breathing of her sleeping sister, listening. Siegmund undressed
+quickly. His one thought was to get into bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“One must sleep,” he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He could not
+find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him pant. Any little
+thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action aggravated his sickness
+till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got things right at last, and was in
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have called it
+sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his brain working
+ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening rapidity. This went on,
+interrupted by little flickerings of consciousness, for three or four hours.
+Each time he had a glimmer of consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any noise? Do
+I disturb them?” he wondered, and he tried to cast back to find the record of
+mechanical sense impression. He believed he could remember the sound of
+inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately he remembered, he could feel
+his throat producing the sounds. This frightened him. Above all things, he was
+afraid of disturbing the family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was
+breathing in silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort
+of sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot. The
+pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot vapour,
+whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light. Immediately he shut
+his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious, and his brain was irritably
+active, but his body was a separate thing, a terrible, heavy, hot thing over
+which he had slight control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture of the
+trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and running its
+irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His every nerve thrilled
+to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to stiffen his throat slightly.
+While yet the nerves in the track of this drop were quivering, raw with
+sensitiveness, another drop would start from off the side of his chest, and
+trickle downwards among the little muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed.
+It was like the running of a spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he
+did not wipe himself he did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible
+tickling, which seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to
+move, which he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples.
+Those he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny,
+vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits, down the
+inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of
+a myriad running insects over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. His nerves
+were trembling, one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. It became
+unbearable. He felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or
+suffocate and burst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of hot
+steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs. He rubbed
+madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on the side of the
+bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he had lain. For a moment
+he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an instant his brain seemed to click
+awake. He was still as loath as ever to move, but his brain was no longer
+clouded in hot vapour: it was clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the
+bed, his sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar sense of
+guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It seemed to him as if
+he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and the infernal trickling of
+the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it he moved his hands gratefully over
+his sides, which now were dry, and soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the
+surface perhaps, for he felt a sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact
+of his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow and the
+groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was a scent of
+sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted something fresh and
+cool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air was
+beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not clammy. It
+was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out on the night
+again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining duskily, in a hidden
+quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in the northwest, silent
+lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly to see if it were true. Then,
+again, the pale lightning jumped up into the dome of the fading night. It was
+like a white bird stirring restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching
+thinner, greyer. The lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the
+arm of day, moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself,
+flickered its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund
+watched it with wonder and delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon would
+be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony to look at
+it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon, crouching on the mound
+of its course. It would run nimbly over to the western slope, then it would be
+caught in the net, and the sun would laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it
+stalked behind playing with its prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon,
+before making its last run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth,
+laughing to itself as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however,
+leaped low off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
+longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the disturbance
+of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning gone. The brief
+pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the mown fields of
+darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west they flew in a narrow,
+rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising higher. Some, flying up, became
+golden. Some flew rosy gold across the moon, the mouse-moon motionless with
+fear. Soon the pink butterflies had gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a
+field of poppies in the fens. As a wind, the light of day blew in from the
+east, puff after puff filling with whiteness the space which had been the
+night. Siegmund sat watching the last morning blowing in across the mown
+darkness, till the whole field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like
+a dead mouse which floats on water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were astir,
+Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew he could not
+sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at the open door,
+moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache and a restlessness. He
+turned and twisted in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is Helena?” he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena was an
+actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was out of the
+piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as if they ached. His
+arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head seemed to be hissing with
+angry irritability. For a long time he sat with clenched teeth, merely holding
+himself in check. In his present state of irritability everything that occurred
+to his mind stirred him with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant
+company of friends, the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to
+his thoughts, was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing
+could please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the
+discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of life: there
+occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and discoloured,
+racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset himself into joint?
+The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his children, Helena, the Comic Opera,
+his friends of the orchestra. How could he set himself again into joint with
+these? It was impossible. Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear
+himself with humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena,
+which he could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night,
+the music of <i>The Saucy Little Switzer</i> which was absurd. In fine, it was
+all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained
+possible? Why, to depart. “If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.” He could cut
+himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an agreement
+which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very well, he must provide
+for them. And then what? Humiliation at home, Helena forsaken, musical comedy
+night after night. That was insufferable—impossible! Like a man tangled up in a
+rope, he was not strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena
+and return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go
+to Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he could
+open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the room. He could
+get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought of the two ways before.
+Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its
+straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap would do. Then it should be a
+portmanteau strap!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Very well!” said Siegmund, “it is finally settled. I had better write to
+Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I’d better tell her.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote nothing. At
+last he gave up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Perhaps it is just as well,” he said to himself. “She said she would come with
+me—perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When she knows, the
+sea will take her. She must know.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She will come with me,” he said to himself, and his heart rose with elation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is a cowardice,” he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,” he concluded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he sat down again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘But for that fear of something after-death,’” he quoted to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not fear,” he said. “The act itself will be horrible and fearsome, but
+the after-death—it’s no more than struggling awake when you’re sick with a
+fright of dreams. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so wonderfully
+comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He experienced no
+mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness in death, a kindness
+which really reached right through life, though here he could not avail himself
+of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held faith that the heart of life beat
+kindly towards him. When he was cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it
+was only a waywardness of his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or of hate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was no
+futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit and have
+faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer universe, what a
+doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from its orbit for pity, what
+terror of vacillation; and who would wish to bear the responsibility of the
+deflection?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room; otherwise, how
+could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would have felt the helpless
+disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible parents weaker than himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know the heart of life is kind,” said Siegmund, “because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or anybody. We
+suffer, and we don’t know why, often. Life doesn’t explain. But I can keep
+faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all, Life is as kind to me
+as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much zest. And my purpose towards
+my dog is good. I need not despair of Life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the atheists. He
+was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over to an imaginary
+god.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well,” he said, “I can’t help it. I do not feel altogether self-responsible.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been vaguely
+aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into a consciousness
+of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at his door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There are two letters for you. Father.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance, and he
+had no idea of his time or place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, all right,” he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard his
+daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the throbbing ache of
+his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What made her bring me the letters?” he asked himself. It was a very unusual
+attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: “She wanted to know;
+she wanted to make sure I was all right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The discord of
+his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not fetch in the
+letters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it so late?” he said. “Is there no more time for me?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked across the
+room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten. He sat down on the
+bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What am I going to do?” he asked himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his belly
+were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists into his
+abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man who is sick,
+incapable of thought or action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here is your shaving-water,” said Beatrice in cold tones. “It’s half past
+nine.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right,” said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And what time shall you expect dinner?” asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Any time. I’m not going out,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he was
+shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking, bewildered,
+disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He was hardly
+conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not keep his hands
+steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he call his mind to
+think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed his purpose methodically
+and exactly. In every particular he was thorough, as if he were the servant of
+some stern will. It was a mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled
+with convulsive sickness.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Siegmund’s lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it became, the
+more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up his shaving-water.
+Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving the breakfast spread in the
+kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner at two
+o’clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with her. The
+children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it was highly
+probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an hour or two.
+Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning, when everything
+outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with coolness and colour.
+But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and determinedly about the
+dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and magazines between the cupboard and
+the wall, throwing the litter in the grate, which was clear, Friday having been
+charwoman’s day, passing swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with
+the duster. It was Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In
+the afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what occupied
+her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to have a settlement
+with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She was going to have no more
+of the past three years’ life; things had come to a crisis, and there must be
+an alteration. Beatrice was going to do battle, therefore she flew at her work,
+thus stirring herself up to a proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust
+things out of sight, or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come
+downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He can lie skulking in bed!” she said to herself. “Here I’ve been up since
+seven, broiling at it. I should think he’s pitying himself. He ought to have
+something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work every morning, like
+another man, as his son has to do. He has had too little work. He has had too
+much his own way. But it’s come to a stop now. I’ll servant-housekeeper him no
+longer.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the bucket
+loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of work finished,
+she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her wrath was at ignition
+point. She cleared all the things from the table and washed them up. As she was
+so doing, her anger, having reached full intensity without bursting into flame,
+began to dissipate in uneasiness. She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do
+and say to her. As she was wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so
+unnerved her that her hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the
+things and putting them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was
+to make the beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so
+heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover breath.
+She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself, she said loudly
+at Siegmund’s door, her voice coldly hostile:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Aren’t you going to get up?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the gloom of
+the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s after half past ten—aren’t you going to get up?” she called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly she put
+down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of shaving-water stood
+untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She returned and knocked
+swiftly at her husband’s door, not speaking. She waited, then she knocked
+again, loudly, a long time. Something in the sound of her knocking made her
+afraid to try again. The noise was dull and thudding: it did not resound
+through the house with a natural ring, so she thought. She ran downstairs in
+terror, fled out into the front garden, and there looked up at his room. The
+window-door was open—everything seemed quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung them in
+a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some dropped dully
+in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was no response. Beatrice
+was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes blazing, and wisps of her
+black hair flying about her thin temples, out on to the road. By a mercy she
+saw the window-cleaner just pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a
+little farther down the road. She hurried to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will you come and see if there’s anything wrong with my husband?” she asked
+wildly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, mum?” answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly familiar.
+“Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I’ll come.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so loose, his
+trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs must be bone, and
+his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with a will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Where is he, Mum?” he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the side
+passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“He’s in his bedroom, and I can’t get an answer from him.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then I s’ll want a ladder,” said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift one
+off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was Siegmund’s
+room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was studying and leave
+the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and afterwards he had found
+him in the small front bedroom. He also knew there were matrimonial troubles:
+Beatrice was not reserved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it the least of the front rooms he’s in?” asked the window-cleaner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, over the porch,” replied Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It’s easy enough,” he said. “The door’s open, and we’re soon on the balcony.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious fool. He
+tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously clambered up. At the
+top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the ladder to peer into the room.
+He could see all sorts of things, for he was frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say there!” he called loudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go in!” she cried. “Go in! Is he there?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and peered
+forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed slowly with
+the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to take flight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Hie, hie!” he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner exclaimed
+weakly, as if dubious:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe ’e’s ’anged ’imself from the door-’ooks!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No!” cried Beatrice. “No, no, no!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe ’e ’as!” repeated the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Go in and see if he’s dead!” cried Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I believe he is,” he said doubtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No—go and see!” screamed Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the body as if
+fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried to lift it down. It
+was too heavy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know!” he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to do. He
+took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between himself and the
+door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his way through the leathern
+strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the body, dropping his knife.
+Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the scuffle and the clatter, began to
+scream in hysteria. The man hauled the body of Siegmund, with much difficulty,
+on to the bed, and with trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which
+the strap ran. It was bedded in Siegmund’s neck. The window-cleaner tugged at
+it frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead man
+lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his sleeping-jacket pushed
+up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side naked. Beatrice was screaming
+below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved, ran from the room and scrambled down
+the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and
+bunched up about him, his face hardly recognizable.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>XXIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive lay on
+the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in a cool,
+sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour in the
+midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they had seized an
+empty carriage, only to be followed by five north-countrymen, all of whom were
+affected by whisky. Olive, Helena, Louisa, occupied three corners of the
+carriage. The men were distributed between them. The three women were not
+alarmed. Their tipsy travelling companions promised to be tiresome, but they
+had a frank honesty of manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew
+out westward. Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund.
+The north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
+English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
+whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could hardly be
+said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward whispering one to
+another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding their laughter by
+turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle disconcerted by this
+amusement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting the quiet
+of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The men dropped into
+a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went to sleep. Louisa
+gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat weariedly and watched the
+rolling of the sleeping travellers and the dull blank of the night sheering off
+outside. Neither the men nor the women looked well asleep. They lurched and
+nodded stupidly. She thought of Bazarof in <i>Fathers and Sons</i>, endorsing
+his opinion on the appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund
+asleep? She imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the
+under arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
+lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs and
+went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window. There
+appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly dreary. A
+rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of flamingoes hovering over a
+dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun came up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there they
+must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train rushed on
+again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were very flowery, the
+morning was very bright, but what were these to her? She wanted dimness, sleep,
+forgetfulness. At eight o’clock, breakfast-time, the ”dauntless three” were
+driving in a waggonette amid blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked
+of shelter, ungracious and harsh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why am I doing this?” Helena asked herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to rest in
+the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling in an ill
+humour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In the
+first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically the same
+as the Walhalla scene in <i>Walküre</i>; in the second place, <i>Tristan</i>
+was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a late Cornish
+summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was a sea of marvellous,
+portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of pools blossomed with life, of
+terrible suave swishing of foam which suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was
+the enchanted land of divided lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of
+<i>Tristan</i>. As she stood on the rocks she sang, in her little,
+half-articulate way, bits of Isolde’s love, bits of Tristan’s anguish, to
+Siegmund.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much disquieted
+her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable because of
+Siegmund’s silence, but there was so much of enchantment in Tintagel, and Olive
+and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she forgot most whiles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Monday night, towards two o’clock, there came a violent storm of thunder and
+lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap, waking Helena. The room
+palpitated with white light for two seconds; the mirror on the dressing-table
+glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her friend. All was dark again, the
+thunder clapping directly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There, wasn’t that lovely!” cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning. “Oo,
+wasn’t it magnificent!—glorious!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown. She
+hurried to the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I say, dear!” she exclaimed, “may I come into the fold? I prefer the shelter
+of your company, dear, during this little lot.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t you like it?” cried Louisa. “I think it’s <i>lovely</i>—lovely!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and shut. It
+was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging shutters of darkness.
+Louisa and Olive clung to each other spasmodically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There!” exclaimed the former, breathless. “That was fine! Helena, did you see
+that?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down. Helena’s
+answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There’s no accounting for tastes,” said Olive, taking a place in the bed. “I
+can’t say I’m struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’m not struck yet,” replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a jest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank you, dear,” said Olive; “you do me the honour of catching hold.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Catching what?” asked Louisa, mystified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Why, dear,” answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, “I offered
+Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You know, it’s not
+that I’m afraid….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one friend and
+to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical feeling, the
+thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night opened, revealing a
+ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with blackness. Then the thunder
+crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were being disclosed too swiftly and
+violently for her to understand. The thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter.
+She was sure something had happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush, persisted with
+a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What a deluge!” exclaimed Louisa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood to
+reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing a
+grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the storm had
+left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised. The sound of the
+heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her feeling; she could not
+get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could have
+happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with grandeur,
+for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But no,” she said to herself, “it is impossible anything should have happened
+to him—I should have known. I should have known the moment his spirit left his
+body; he would have come to me. But I slept without dreams last night, and
+today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is impossible it should have
+happened to him: I should have known.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund’s death, she would have received
+intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might arise to prevent
+his writing immediately to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nevertheless,” she said at last, “if I don’t hear tomorrow I will go and see.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by Wednesday
+morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this she went to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
+wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon her,
+was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by reason of
+her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state of affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something fatal
+awaited her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she would
+return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa rushed into the
+little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed tears for sympathy and
+self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be let in for so dismal a
+holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat up:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I know I’m a pig, dear, am I not?” she exclaimed. “Spoiling your holiday.
+But I couldn’t help it, dear, indeed I could not.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My dear Lou!” cried Olive in tragic contralto. “Don’t refrain for my sake. The
+bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their
+lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a
+prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus
+sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its
+heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls
+nearer as the distance lessens. All the time Helena’s heart and her
+consciousness were with Siegmund in London, for she believed he was ill and
+needed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Promise me,” she had said, “if ever I were sick and wanted you, you would come
+to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I would come to you from hell!” Siegmund had replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?” she had added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I promise,” he answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of
+any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast,
+and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did what it could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there is no
+spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards six o’clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that this would
+be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the platform slowly, as
+if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay.
+Presently the local train came in. She had planned to buy a local paper at
+Wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to
+his house and inquire. She had prearranged everything minutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The funeral took place, at two o’clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of ——.
+Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the
+South Coast….”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy was
+expressed for the widow and children.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. Then she
+dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That was what I got,” she said, months afterwards; “and it was like a brick,
+it was like a brick.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy lane
+with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either side, beyond
+which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund’s house standing florid by
+the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she stopped, realizing where she
+had come. For some time she stood looking at the house. It was no use her going
+there; it was of no use her going anywhere; the whole wide world was opened,
+but in it she had no destination, and there was no direction for her to take.
+As if marooned in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of
+Siegmund over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena looked at
+her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to return to
+Cornwall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of suspense,”
+said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch a tramcar to
+return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to eight; there was no
+train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she wired the news:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.”
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of her
+will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind was chaotic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was like a brick,” she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the only one
+she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition. She felt as if
+something had crashed into her brain, stunning and maiming her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her mother
+opened to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, are you alone?” cried Mrs. Verden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. Louisa did not come up,” replied Helena, passing into the dining-room. As
+if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if there was a letter.
+There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and took it. It was from one of
+the London papers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Inquest was held today upon the body of ——.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her mother
+stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How did you get to know?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,” replied the daughter, in her
+muted, toneless voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did you go to the house?” asked the mother sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” replied Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was wondering whether to send you that paper,” said her mother hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically, looking
+for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently to help her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her. Her
+parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by watching
+her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look. They acknowledged
+themselves helpless; like children, they felt powerless and forlorn, and were
+very quiet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose ordinary
+attitude was one of gentle irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena shivered slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do, my dear,” her mother pleaded. “Let me take you to bed.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this night
+she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress. When she was
+in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her, yearning to beseech
+her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not. Helena moved with a wild
+impatience under her mother’s gaze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall I leave you the candle?” said Mrs Verden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, blow it out,” replied the daughter. The mother did so, and immediately
+left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she entered the dining-room
+he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall, erect woman. Her brown eyes,
+usually so swift and searching, were haggard with tears that did not fall. He
+bowed down, obliterating himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Will she be all right if you leave her?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We must listen,” replied the mother abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden cleared
+the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor in the place
+where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of broken bread under the
+loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One could see she was keenly alert
+to every sound. The father had his hand to his head; he was thinking and
+praying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece, and
+hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband followed in much
+trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter’s room. The mother
+tremblingly lit the candle. Helena’s aspect distressed and alarmed her. The
+girl’s face was masked as if in sleep, but occasionally it was crossed by a
+vivid expression of fear or horror. Her wide eyes showed the active insanity of
+her brain. From time to time she uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her
+mother held her hands and soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the
+mother’s presence, Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and
+turned out the light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the
+bed-rail, and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
+bedside, and prayed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter’s delirium, and all the time, in a kind of
+mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to herself,
+drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned from her mother,
+who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could soothe her daughter again.
+Helena was glad of her mother’s presence, but she could not bear to be looked
+at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away, having
+blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his nightshirt by the
+bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up as she entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“She is asleep,” whispered the wife hoarsely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Is it a—a natural sleep?” hesitated the husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Thank God!” whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held his wife’s hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter. She felt
+as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the quiet, obliterated
+man, held her hand, taking the responsibility upon himself.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>XXX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund’s death fall with full
+impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet the
+accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories. When the
+event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul’s understanding,
+she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally suspended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed herself
+to be taken away from her own house into the home of a neighbour. There the
+children were brought to her. There she wept, and stared wildly about, as if by
+instinct seeking to cover her mind with confusion. The good neighbour
+controlled matters in Siegmund’s house, sending for the police, helping to lay
+out the dead body. Before Vera and Frank came home, and before Beatrice
+returned to her own place, the bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift glance,
+blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She was equally
+careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts wandered towards a
+consideration of how he must have felt, what his inner life must have been,
+during the past six years, she felt herself dilate with terror, and she
+hastened to invoke protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The children!” she said to herself—“the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose from
+terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back a grief that
+would probably have broken her. Vera was too practical-minded, she had too
+severe a notion of what ought to be and what ought not, ever to put herself in
+her father’s place and try to understand him. She concerned herself with
+judging him sorrowfully, exonerating him in part because Helena, that other,
+was so much more to blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation,
+not over the personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By common
+consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after the funeral
+Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of Siegmund began to
+fade rapidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of living
+than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the house; they
+stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the death of her
+husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her heart, and take in
+boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom she had been in disgrace
+owing to her early romantic but degrading marriage with a young lad who had
+neither income nor profession. In the tragic, but also sordid, event of his
+death, the Waltons returned again to the aid of Beatrice. They came
+hesitatingly, and kept their gloves on. They inquired what she intended to do.
+She spoke highly and hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a
+couple of hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply.
+Siegmund’s father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always
+ready further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in Highgate, was
+equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to come and board in her
+house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice was delighted. Vera was
+excited and interested; Frank was excited, but doubtful and grudging; the
+children were excited, elated, wondering. The world was big with promise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice’s establishment. She
+hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan was to play hostess, and
+thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable blessing of family life. Breakfast
+was at eight-thirty, and everyone attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank
+sat on the maternal right hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was <i>superior</i>, sat on
+the left hand; next him sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were
+young men of less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and
+stoutish; he was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet
+extraordinarily learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away,
+maintaining always an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank
+would have done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to
+him. Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was naïve, inclined to suffer in the first pangs of
+disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous, sometimes wistful,
+sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera liked him, whilst Beatrice
+mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He
+had a disagreeable voice, was vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if
+appeal were made to him. Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome,
+lusty appearance, but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of
+the superior and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
+without hurting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund, Beatrice went
+into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his elbow on the
+window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past seven. The red rents
+between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was setting; a fragrance of
+evening-scented stocks filtered into the room through the open window; towards
+the south the moon was budding out of the twilight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, you here all alone!” exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from putting
+the children to bed. “I thought you had gone out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No—o! What’s the use,” replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his landlady,
+“of going out? There’s nowhere to go.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, come! There’s the Heath, and the City—and you must join a tennis club. Now
+I know just the thing—the club to which Vera belongs.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, yes! You go down to the City—but there’s nothing there—what I mean to
+say—you want a pal—and even then—well”—he drawled the word—“we-ell, it’s merely
+escaping from yourself—killing time.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, don’t say that!” exclaimed Beatrice. “You want to enjoy life.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Just so! Ah, just so!” exclaimed Mr Allport. “But all the same—it’s like
+this—you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to say—what’s the
+good, after all? It’s merely living because you’ve got to.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it differently
+myself; yet I’ll be bound I have more cause for grumbling. What’s the trouble
+now?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We-ell—you can’t lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to say—it’s
+nothing very definite. But, after all—what is there to do but to hop out of
+life as quickly as possible? That’s the best way.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,” she said. “You don’t think of the others.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I don’t know,” he drawled. “What does it matter? Look here—who’d care? What I
+mean to say—for long?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s all very easy, but it’s cowardly,” replied Beatrice gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Allport, “it’s true—isn’t it?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not—and I <i>should</i> know,” replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and waited.
+Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said, “I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You men,
+you’re all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, but then,” said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically, looking at
+Beatrice’s black dress, “I’ve no one depending on <i>me</i>.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No—you haven’t—but you’ve a mother and sister. The women always have to bear
+the brunt.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, they do rather,” he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“My husband—” began Beatrice. The young man waited. “My husband was one of your
+sort: he ran after trouble, and when he’d found it—he couldn’t carry it off—and
+left it—to me.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You don’t mean it!” he exclaimed softly. “Surely he didn’t—?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said. “I know what it is to bear that kind of thing—and it’s no
+light thing, I can assure you.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And when was this, then—that he—?” asked Mr. Allport, almost with reverence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only last year,” replied Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by little
+Beatrice told him so much: “Her husband had got entangled with another woman.
+She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last she had brought matters
+to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He had killed himself—hanged
+himself—and left her penniless. Her people, who were very wealthy, had done for
+her as much as she would allow them. She and Frank and Vera had done the rest.
+She did not mind for herself; it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now
+enjoying their careless youth, that her heart was heavy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and sat
+overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by tragedy. The
+bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Pray do not overlook me,” said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting with the
+mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Allport, “Mrs. MacNair has been so good as to
+bear with me making a fool of myself.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“In what way?” asked Vera sharply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,” said Beatrice
+playfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Unfortunately, I am not—or at least I am not yet aware of it,” said Mr.
+Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the young
+man’s knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped behind her back
+she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the richly darkening sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Don’t look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it’s all rind,” said Mr Allport in
+melancholy mockery. “Somebody’s bitten all the meat out of our slice of moon,
+and left us nothing but peel.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell—one portion,” replied Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Never mind, Miss MacNair,” he said, “Whoever got the slice found it raw, I
+think.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “But isn’t it a beautiful evening? I will just go
+and see if I can catch the primroses opening.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What primroses?” he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Evening primroses—there are some.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Are there?” he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, come and look,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, nobody in!” they heard him exclaim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“There is Holiday,” murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ho! that’s where you are!” he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed Vera’s
+trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress to betray
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What have you got?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nothing in particular,” replied Mr Allport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, well, if it’s nothing particular and private—” said Mr Holiday, and with
+that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Curst fool!” muttered Mr Allport. “I beg your pardon,” he added swiftly to
+Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,” asked Vera, as if very friendly, “how
+awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won’t open while you’re looking.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” sniggered he, I don’t blame ’em. Why should they give themselves away any
+more than you do? You won’t open while you’re watched.” He nudged Allport
+facetiously with his elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in poor
+spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his teeth; Mr.
+Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not play
+now,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you will begin again,” pleaded Mr. Allport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No, never!” she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The family
+tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He watched her
+interestedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mother used to play—” she began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Vera!” said Beatrice reproachfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Let us have a song,” suggested Mr. Holiday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,” said Vera, going to the music-rack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Nay—I—it’s not me,” Holiday began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘The Village Blacksmith’,” said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday advanced.
+Vera glanced at her mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But I have not touched the piano for—for years, I am sure,” protested
+Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You can play beautifully,” said Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared at him.
+Vera remained very calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went out
+abruptly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow’s jellies are not made,” laughed
+Vera.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She would have
+found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half past
+ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was studying a
+cookery-book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You, too, at the midnight lamp!” exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,” Beatrice replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,” smiled the
+young man ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I must look after you,” said Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You do—wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.” The
+meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Because I scan a list of puddings?” smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.” He bowed to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I opened the door,” said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is not fair,” said Beatrice. “I am clumsy now—clumsy. I once could play.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You play excellently. Why that ‘once could’?” said MacWhirter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We,” said MacWhirter, “are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than
+excellent.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Good old Monsieur Fannière, how he would scold me! He said I would not take my
+talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I always think
+Scripture false in French, do not you?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Er—my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to say.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah—that would be very interesting.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Alas!” assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Those times were very different from these,” said Beatrice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I should think so,” said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>XXXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund’s death, Helena sat on
+the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue linen, for the
+day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a yellow-backed copy of
+<i>Einsame Menschen</i>, and she was humming the air of the Russian folk-song
+printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with her head, and beating time
+with her hand to get the rhythm of the song. She turned suddenly to him, and
+shook her head, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I can’t get it—it’s no use. I think it’s the swinging of the car prevents me
+getting the time,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“These little outside things always come a victory over you,” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do they?” she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It was six
+o’clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim, warm day. The
+tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners of his eyes Byrne
+watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck by the wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Do you know,” she said, “it feels rather like rain.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Then,” said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on the
+pavement, “you certainly ought not to be out.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I ought not,” she said, “for I’m totally unprovided.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill off the
+highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side stood a few villas
+with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two great sheep-dogs rushed and
+stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity, at some height above the road,
+barking and urging boisterously. Helena and Byrne stood still to watch them.
+One dog was grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at
+the two pedestrians. Helena laughed at them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They are—” she began, in her slow manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,” he continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” she said, “they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Fasolt? They <i>are</i> like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It appears so,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dogs generally chum up to me,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I remember,” she said, still laughing, “at Knockholt—you—a half-grown lamb—a
+dog—in procession.” She marked the position of the three with her finger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What an ass I must have looked!” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Sort of silent Pied Piper,” she laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Dogs do follow me like that, though,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They did Siegmund,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed him
+home.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Ah!” he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I remember, too,” she said, “a little black-and-white kitten that followed me.
+Mater <i>would not</i> have it in—she would not. And I remember finding it, a
+few days after, dead in the road. I don’t think I ever quite forgave my mater
+that.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“For the latter, you see,” she replied, “I am not responsible.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You know,” said Helena, “if it begins it will continue all night. Look at
+that!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Had we better go back?” he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we see how
+it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It is exactly a year today,” she said, as they-walked on the round shoulder of
+the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. “Exactly!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What anniversary is it, then?” he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here—by the day, Thursday. We went
+through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the larch-wood?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“We will go, then,” she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“History repeats itself,” he remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“How?” she asked calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I see no repetition,” she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“No,” he exclaimed bitingly; “you are right!”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men unloading a
+last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the air. Though he was
+angry, he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They got that hay rather damp,” he said. “Can’t you smell it—like hot tobacco
+and sandal-wood?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“What, is that the stack?” she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, it’s always like that when it’s picked damp.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned on to a
+narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over the hedge, he
+pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full of scent; then he
+waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in the hedge-bottom. He
+presented her with the flowers without speaking. She bent forward, inhaled the
+rich fragrance, and looked up at him over the blossoms with her beautiful,
+beseeching blue eyes. He smiled gently to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Isn’t it nice?” he said. “Aren’t they fine bits?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her dress. It
+was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place by her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I always like the gold-green of cut fields,” he said. “They seem to give off
+sunshine even when the sky’s greyer than a tabby cat.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing field on
+her right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into sound. Like
+a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly whose antennae flicker
+and twitch sensitively as they gather intelligence, touching the aura, as it
+were, of the female. He was exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried trees,
+which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now and again he
+would look down passages between the trees—narrow pillared corridors, dusky as
+if webbed across with mist. All round was a twilight, thickly populous with
+slender, silent trunks. Helena stood still, gazing up at the tree-tops where
+the bow of the wind was drawn, causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne
+walked on without her. At a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the
+roundness of a larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness
+of congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,” he said to himself
+bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make a
+brown mist, a brume?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“H’m? Yes, I see what you mean.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s the larch fog,” he laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes,” she said, “you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It laughs through its teeth,” he said, smiling, playing with everything he
+touched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped, picking up
+a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if pleased by a
+coincidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Last year,” she said, “the larch-fingers stole both my pins—the same ones.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost with
+warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down the steep
+bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the moment, with Helena
+stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep sympathy and kinship with
+Siegmund; sometimes he thought he hated Helena.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley—one of those wide hollows in
+the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held loosely by four
+people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue dots rapidly appearing on
+the sleeves of Helena’s dress. They walked on a little way. The rain increased.
+Helena looked about for shelter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Here,” said Byrne—“here is our tent—a black tartar’s—ready pitched.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just back
+from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good shelter. Byrne
+sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked under the flap of the
+black branches down the valley. The grey rain was falling steadily; the dark
+hollow under the tree was immersed in the monotonous sound of it. In the open,
+where the bright young corn shone intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep.
+Exposed in a large pen on the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and
+again came the “tong-ting-tong” of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures
+huddled in the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each other in
+their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit better than where
+they stood before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That’s like us all,” said Byrne whimsically. “We’re all penned out on a wet
+evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is, it would be
+deliciously cosy.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and fretful.
+He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his eyes melancholy.
+She put her hand out to him. He took it without apparently observing it,
+folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously increasing the pressure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“You are cold,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Only my hands, and they usually are,” she replied gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And mine are generally warm.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I know that,” she said. “It’s almost the only warmth I get now—your hands.
+They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“As good as a baked potato,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“So many calories per week—isn’t that how we manage it?” he asked. “On credit?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony, which
+hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their cluster, and
+began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Tong-tong, tong,” went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena’s home to read
+German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his own language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case. He had
+sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle. Helena had come
+quickly and removed the violin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shan’t knock it—it is all right,” he had said, protesting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was Siegmund’s violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and Byrne was
+always ready to yield its precedence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“It was all right,” he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But you were not,” she had replied gently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in a
+little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his gloomy,
+pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to Helena by the
+increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself delicately in a stronger
+and stronger stress over her fingers and palm. By some movement he became aware
+that her hand was uncomfortable. He relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and
+dissatisfied. She wondered what he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The Babes in the Wood,” he teased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird began to
+sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That little beggar sees it’s a hopeless case, so he reminds us of heaven. But
+if he’s going to cover us with yew-leaves, he’s set himself a job.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing her
+nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke for a while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“The rain continues,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“And will do,” she added, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Quite content,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“‘Strew on us roses, roses,’” quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in wistful
+mockery: “‘And never a sprig of yew’—eh?”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and weariness for
+herself. She let herself sink a little closer against him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Shall it not be so—no yew?” he murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on her
+chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held them up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I shall make marks on you,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“They will come off,” she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars off us.”
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“Some scars don’t seem to go,” she smiled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his side.
+There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from last year. Byrne
+regarded it gravely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“But it’s wearing off—even that,” he said wistfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a hot wave
+of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and took off her hat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“That is better,” he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I was afraid of the pins,” said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I’ve been dodging them for the last hour,” he said, laughing, as she put her
+arms under his coat again for warmth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek against
+hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“I want rest and warmth,” she said, in her dull tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+“All right!” he murmured.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D.H. Lawrence
+#8 in our series by D.H. Lawrence
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+Title: The Trespasser
+
+Author: D.H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9498]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 6, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+1912
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+
+'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
+piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
+stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
+forbearance.
+
+'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
+the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
+lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
+would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'
+
+'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
+seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
+her bristling defiance.
+
+'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
+like it.'
+
+'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
+on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
+chords, and the music continued.
+
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
+turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
+with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
+in the room.
+
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
+of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
+again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
+the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
+responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
+the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
+of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
+were smooth white. There was no other colouring.
+
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
+wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
+wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
+recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
+room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
+skirting-board, serene.
+
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
+China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
+tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
+and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
+rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.
+
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
+of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
+unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
+that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
+with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
+the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.
+
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
+on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
+She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
+hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
+turned again to the players.
+
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
+swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
+her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
+frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
+vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
+hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
+of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.
+
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
+watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
+soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
+and glisten over her forehead.
+
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+
+'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'
+
+Helena laughed wearily.
+
+'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
+rest.
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+
+'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
+apathetic tone. 'It was I.'
+
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
+moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
+like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
+response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
+friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
+affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
+were coaxing a child:
+
+'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'
+
+'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
+for years.
+
+'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.
+
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
+came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
+began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+
+'They are inflamed still' said the young man.
+
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
+lighting up with a small smile.
+
+'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
+strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
+like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
+smarting soft flesh caressively.
+
+'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+
+'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
+'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
+anything on to heal it?'
+
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
+the burn.
+
+'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
+joy.
+
+'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'
+
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+
+'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+
+The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
+mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'
+
+'Never?' he re-echoed.
+
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
+to play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+
+'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+
+The two looked up at her.
+
+'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.
+
+'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
+her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+
+'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.
+
+'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
+obligation _whatever_.'
+
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
+head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
+but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
+hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
+the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
+vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
+indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
+glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
+flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
+glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
+one spoke.
+
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
+position. She sat motionless.
+
+'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
+at her friend, and stretched slightly.
+
+'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'
+
+'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.
+
+'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
+appealing love.
+
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
+slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+
+'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
+She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+
+'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'
+
+'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
+played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
+an end.
+
+'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
+you've got to live.'
+
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+
+'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.
+
+'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
+grinning.
+
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+
+'I don't see it at all,' she said.
+
+'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
+April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'
+
+'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
+myself, why trouble, my friend?'
+
+'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'
+
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
+metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+
+'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
+go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'
+
+'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.
+
+'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'
+
+'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
+stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
+looked in the fire, forgetting him.
+
+'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
+your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.
+
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
+broke out once more.
+
+'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
+blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
+Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
+not dead....'
+
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
+at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
+handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
+if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
+out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
+regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
+from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
+cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
+look became distressed and helpless.
+
+'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
+shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
+fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
+you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
+and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
+impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
+leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
+alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'
+
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
+him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
+steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+
+'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
+never touch the thing,' he cried.
+
+'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
+the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
+an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
+life. She was very sick after the tragedy.
+
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+
+'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
+You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
+road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'
+
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
+passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
+moving from her torpor was painful. At last--
+
+'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.
+
+'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
+softly, wearily.
+
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
+over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
+being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
+the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
+to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
+
+'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
+also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
+her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
+arrival of Louisa with the coffee.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+
+Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
+lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
+was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
+it; she kept the black case out of sight.
+
+Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
+the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
+two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
+sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
+Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
+lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
+soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
+breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
+himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
+odour of must.
+
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
+till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
+violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
+the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
+turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
+remained of him in his violin.
+
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
+longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
+fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
+had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
+sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
+had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
+wild in anticipation.
+
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
+savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
+anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
+with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
+
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
+opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
+weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
+suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
+Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
+associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
+with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
+hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
+flame stretched level on the wind.
+
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
+pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
+For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
+moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
+watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
+to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
+on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
+face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
+shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
+garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
+flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
+his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
+kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
+amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
+fascinated.
+
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
+soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
+rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
+going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
+his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
+a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
+last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
+carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
+Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
+fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
+all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
+watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
+
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
+Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
+anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
+cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
+was changing.
+
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
+night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
+he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
+amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
+front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
+looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
+joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
+black masses of the trees.
+
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
+his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
+As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
+the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
+bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
+moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
+breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
+laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
+physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
+to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
+moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
+stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
+turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
+tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
+looked round with disgust.
+
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
+betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
+plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
+wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
+even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
+cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
+gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
+He fetched a glass of water.
+
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
+the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
+floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
+black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
+newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
+bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
+sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
+slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
+ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
+wishing he had no tomorrow.
+
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
+was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
+crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
+now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
+teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
+absurd arms to him.
+
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
+silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
+him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
+his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
+staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
+Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
+After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.
+
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
+It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
+uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
+hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
+snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
+two girls.
+
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
+Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
+they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
+and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
+mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
+and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
+eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
+full of youth.
+
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
+room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
+the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
+same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
+curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
+rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
+She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
+with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
+He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
+manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
+beautiful things and of dreams.
+
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+
+'I must get to sleep,' he said.
+
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
+When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
+final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+
+'I am fearfully tired,' he said.
+
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
+some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+
+'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
+child!' He began to muse of the morrow.
+
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
+labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
+thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
+take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
+he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
+torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
+which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
+her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
+wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
+realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
+he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
+girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
+piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
+a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
+not been in the room.
+
+Helena stood fingering the score of _Pelleas_. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+
+'Why do you consider the music of _Pelleas_ cold?'
+
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
+mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating;
+and to her much was humiliating.
+
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
+theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
+the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
+her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
+walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.
+
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
+He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
+he had lost himself to her.
+
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
+insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at
+him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot
+come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had
+writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
+and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to you.' Then she left him.
+
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when
+he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+
+'You are so tired, Siegmund.' She stroked his face, and kissed him
+softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
+is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
+ugly for Siegmund.
+
+'You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
+week in August.'
+
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
+no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
+Isle of Wight, tomorrow.
+
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
+like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
+white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
+small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
+along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
+flooded him....
+
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
+and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes,
+and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had
+been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:
+
+'I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.'
+
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
+inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
+contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
+hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
+from his children.
+
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
+been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
+evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
+children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
+degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.
+
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
+door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
+the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she
+lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.
+
+'I am nothing, I am nothing,' she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
+for a time.
+
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
+through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
+hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
+train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
+'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
+on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
+rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+
+'God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!' she said aloud,
+in a low tone. She hated Helena.
+
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund's shadows, his children,
+Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young
+man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
+everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
+he looked out of the carriage window.
+
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
+floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter
+of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park.
+People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It
+was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.
+
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
+Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced
+lightly in the sunshine.
+
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
+It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
+white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
+shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
+glistened on her uncovered hair.
+
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
+impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
+and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
+shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on, drawing
+near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was so like
+Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.
+
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out,
+and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
+looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
+and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
+Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
+feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. All
+his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece
+of colour.
+
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a
+bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
+the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
+of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
+look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
+laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the
+blue sea gathering round.
+
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
+alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
+crimson-winged boats.
+
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women
+in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible.
+Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand
+the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath
+him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In
+front, Sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him,
+bringing him Helena.
+
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
+him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
+But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the
+fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he
+watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud
+cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
+chill wind.
+
+His travelling was very slow. The sky's dark shipping pressed closer and
+closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands
+near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All
+the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the
+wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station and the island were
+desolate, having lost their purposes.
+
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning's blaze of
+elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
+only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the
+intoxication was dying out.
+
+At three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
+carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred
+dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the
+reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly
+torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was
+thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
+felt dead.
+
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
+watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under
+the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund's heart
+leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of
+Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into
+the carriage.
+
+'You _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund's
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
+his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in
+to him.
+
+'Is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
+shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.
+
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+
+'Here we are, then!' exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
+cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
+his luggage.
+
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
+tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
+stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
+body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
+astonished cries of delight.
+
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naive
+look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
+fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
+mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
+feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
+hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
+small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
+that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
+his knees.
+
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
+his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
+only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
+lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
+Siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, listening uneasily.
+
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
+look of distress amused her.
+
+'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
+Siegfried's dragon....'
+
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
+the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
+alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
+second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
+Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
+big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
+amused her. But he was tired.
+
+'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.
+
+'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'
+
+'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
+its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
+across the sea to Tristan.'
+
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
+with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
+boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
+fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
+horn-call.
+
+'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.
+
+'This time next week, Helena!' he said.
+
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
+lay upon the table.
+
+'I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,' she said.
+
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
+alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
+wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
+leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
+
+'There is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'There
+is only the present.'
+
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
+round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
+close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed
+against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint,
+intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to
+himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with
+gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face
+upon her.
+
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
+her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his
+forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
+future in a passion worth years of living.
+
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful
+things she had found. She had a woman's curious passion for details, a
+woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened,
+smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed
+him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended
+to her words.
+
+'Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired--you are very
+tired,' said Helena.
+
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+
+'No,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
+handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.'
+
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
+she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+
+'You must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face,
+ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
+arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
+thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself
+up against the fog.
+
+'You are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
+was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
+overcoat, while they walked together.
+
+'I like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+
+'I don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+
+'It puts us together by ourselves,' he said. She plodded alongside,
+bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+
+'It couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said.
+
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+
+'Why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+
+'There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
+me--look!'
+
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
+quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
+sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
+what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
+
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
+their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
+They turned from it.
+
+'What is the pitch?' asked Helena.
+
+'Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Yes, but the settled pitch--is it about E?'
+
+'E!' exclaimed Siegmund. 'More like F.'
+
+'Nay, listen!' said Helena.
+
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
+fog-horn.
+
+'There!' exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. 'That is not E.' He
+repeated the sound. 'It is F.'
+
+'Surely it is E,' persisted Helena.
+
+'Even F sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note.
+
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+
+'But you agree?' he said.
+
+'I do not,' she replied.
+
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+
+'What is the note in _Tristan_?' Helena made an effort to ask.
+
+'That is not the same,' he replied.
+
+'No, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
+footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
+down the fog.
+
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
+haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
+was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely
+to itself.
+
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
+slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
+unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
+into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
+
+'Shall we walk over, then?' said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena's
+heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
+play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
+afraid of him just then.
+
+'Come away, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
+to think so.
+
+'Come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+
+'You are not afraid?' he asked.
+
+'Not afraid, no....' Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
+that made him shiver.
+
+'It is too easy a way,' he said satirically.
+
+She did not take in his meaning.
+
+'And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!' she scolded. 'The mist
+is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.'
+
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
+
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went
+flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western
+sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the
+golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena
+that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber
+of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun
+was departing with pomp.
+
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming
+bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express
+it; how other men had borne this same glory.
+
+'What is the music of it?' he asked.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
+open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
+
+'Of what, dear?'
+
+'What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?'
+
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
+moment.
+
+'I do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+
+'A Beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her.
+
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
+sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+
+'The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,' she decided.
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
+to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
+for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
+almost put her two hands over his eyes.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
+closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
+wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her
+in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he
+bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with
+fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again.
+He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it
+was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his
+breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that
+moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face
+on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried
+against her soft strong throat.
+
+'You are so big I can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching
+her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
+shoulders ineffectually.
+
+'You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,' he whispered.
+
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast
+with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands
+meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+
+'See! I can't,' she whispered.
+
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
+her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
+figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
+under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
+again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
+one great ache.
+
+He crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
+muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
+body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
+towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious
+of nothing.
+
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
+marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
+steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
+herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
+mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
+lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
+strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
+and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
+through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
+his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
+her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
+together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one
+being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
+
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
+class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the
+mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
+flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
+sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man's brightness
+and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
+it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
+bed. She lay still on Siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily
+beating heart.
+
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
+Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
+her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was
+very cruel.
+
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
+bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more
+detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been
+rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract,
+and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is
+full of cruelty.
+
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
+and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
+his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
+sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
+yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
+withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
+some time.
+
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
+grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
+child whom she must correct and lead:
+
+'I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.' He made a small sound, that
+might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
+however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out
+of it.
+
+'It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly.
+
+'Soon,' he said thickly.
+
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath
+to take him from his pleasure:
+
+'Siegmund, I am cold.'
+
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+
+'Cold!' he exclaimed. 'But you are warm with me--'
+
+'But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.'
+
+'Oh dear!' he said. 'Why didn't you give them me to warm?' He leaned
+forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
+
+'They are very cold,' he said. 'We must hurry and make them warm.'
+
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
+clung to Siegmund, laughing.
+
+'I wish you had told me before,' he said. 'I ought to have known....'
+
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
+person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
+charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
+the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
+
+Helena introduced Siegmund as 'My friend'. The old lady smiled upon him.
+He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years
+back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house
+for their honeymoon.
+
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
+attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
+him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
+bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
+scarcely adjust the wicks.
+
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+
+'I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
+Nietzsche I brought--'
+
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms
+along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his
+being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came
+up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in
+the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and
+he smiled.
+
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
+lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
+His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent,
+so strange.
+
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six
+to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and
+looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
+dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam
+to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear
+through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But
+her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared
+not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He
+strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put
+out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for
+her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She
+waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not
+look at her.
+
+'You would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark
+hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
+setting of his shoulders.
+
+'Just as you will,' he replied.
+
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled
+him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
+
+'I will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation.
+She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice,
+but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
+
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
+lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
+her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace,
+and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and
+fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded.
+It was a physical pain to him.
+
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
+enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
+was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
+aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident
+to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
+restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+
+'Will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady.
+
+'Nothing at all, thanks,' said Helena, with decision.
+
+'Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I've washed the dishes. You will
+put the lamp out, dear?'
+
+'I am well used to a lamp,' smiled Helena. 'We use them always at home.'
+
+She had had a day before Siegmund's coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss'
+heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
+
+'Good-night, dear--good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
+long, dear?'
+
+'No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.'
+
+'Yes--yes. It is very tiring, London.'
+
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
+Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking
+in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to
+glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
+disappointed eyes.
+
+'Shall I read to you?' she asked bitterly.
+
+'If you will,' he replied.
+
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
+went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+
+'What is it, dear?' she said.
+
+'You,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+
+'Why me?'
+
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
+arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
+like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
+not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
+after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
+ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
+of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
+still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
+love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
+the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and
+went to the door.
+
+'Shall I let her out?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Do!' said Helena, slipping from his knee. 'She goes out when the nights
+are fine.'
+
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
+Curtiss called from upstairs: 'Is that you, dear?'
+
+'I have just let Kitty out,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Ah, thank you. Good night!' They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
+door.
+
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then
+waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+
+'Shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively.
+
+'Yes--If you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
+was burning and surging with desire.
+
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
+knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
+stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
+advanced out of the shadows.
+
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
+two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt
+on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread
+towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely
+able to move.
+
+'Come,' he pleaded softly.
+
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
+him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
+Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her
+uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
+
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
+abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and
+rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
+feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
+still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
+seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
+tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+
+'Am I not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
+gently.
+
+'It is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. She had lain tranquil
+with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in
+his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from
+an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and
+hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic,
+as if he would destroy her.
+
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
+strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
+of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
+would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
+seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to
+produce him.
+
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
+involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
+Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in
+his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and
+unbearable to herself.
+
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
+looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
+forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
+her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
+to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
+pushed back the curtain.
+
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
+the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea,
+and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution
+on her brow.
+
+'Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?' she asked fretfully.
+
+'Ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
+with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
+the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the
+casement of the land seductively.
+
+'It's the finest night I have seen,' said Siegmund. Helena's eyes
+suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+
+'I like the moon on the water,' she said.
+
+'I can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'The sea
+seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
+coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
+are all you.'
+
+'Yes,' she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
+she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
+now, and did not need her.
+
+'I feel at home here,' he said; 'as if I had come home where I was
+bred.'
+
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+
+'We go an awful long way round, Helena,' he said, 'just to find we're
+all right.' He laughed pleasantly. 'I have thought myself such an
+outcast! How can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always
+naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?'
+
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
+something of the harmony.
+
+'Whatever I have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a
+sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
+sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house,
+you see.'
+
+'And I, Siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
+looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit
+ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed,
+then bent to kiss her.
+
+'The key of the castle,' he said. He put his face against hers, and felt
+on his cheek the smart of her tears.
+
+'It's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for
+tonight, all this that I say.'
+
+'It is true for ever,' she declared.
+
+'In so far as tonight is eternal,' he said.
+
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from
+under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
+They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'It is like the magic tales,'
+he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and I am transported to a new
+life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.'
+
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
+delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand,
+he felt for his watch. It was seven o'clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched
+night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
+
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
+sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
+morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows
+in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine;
+milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the
+sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
+
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
+red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
+sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
+window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
+blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
+hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
+
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
+spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and
+down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the
+wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He
+took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
+grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
+breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
+tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
+out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and
+pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
+the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
+far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
+thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
+travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
+swinging birds.
+
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
+stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
+square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
+delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
+and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
+to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
+heavy green water.
+
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
+watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
+glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear
+green water.
+
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
+and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
+stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
+even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
+across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the
+morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
+liked to see the birds come down.
+
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
+swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the
+pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it,
+but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
+
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
+in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
+sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
+palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against
+him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion.
+The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm
+breath. He delighted in himself.
+
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
+clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+
+'She would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he
+smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
+conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
+his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
+creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
+slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
+itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+
+'That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
+I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
+a person. What makes me myself, among all these?'
+
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+
+'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
+ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
+a baboon under my clothing.'
+
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
+breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
+marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+
+'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
+thought.
+
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+
+'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
+pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
+see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
+could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
+was his physical self thinking.
+
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
+the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
+rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
+ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
+insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
+
+'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
+black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+
+'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
+brine in his hair.
+
+'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--'
+
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+
+'It _is_ blood?' she said.
+
+'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.
+
+'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.
+
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+
+'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.
+
+'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?'
+
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
+above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
+his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+
+'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.
+
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+
+'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
+eat.
+
+'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?'
+
+'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
+deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
+sleeplessness.
+
+'I haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena
+smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
+her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
+the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
+him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
+winking a golden eye at her.
+
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
+dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric
+yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
+and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
+lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
+than imagination.
+
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's
+previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower's name,
+nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
+adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
+florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
+everything in fancy.
+
+'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
+before dawn came. It is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. The pink
+convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
+night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
+spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
+thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
+not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
+sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
+out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
+round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
+water-shadowed reefs.
+
+'This is very good,' she said to herself. 'This is eternally cool, and
+clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.'
+
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away
+the soiling of the last night's passion.
+
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
+like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
+its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
+self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
+
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
+shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
+backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
+warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
+watched the water playing.
+
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him
+with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he
+received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and
+the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It
+is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little
+flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In
+these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards
+something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in
+this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.
+
+'Will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over.
+
+'I don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she
+did not care at all. 'I think it will be a mixed day--cloud and
+sun--more sun than cloud.'
+
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at
+the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+
+'I like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about
+as you walk.'
+
+'It is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled.
+
+'Ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation
+from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena's. She laughed,
+and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an
+hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till
+Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that
+wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold.
+Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But
+psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
+
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point
+of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the
+inscription.
+
+'That's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed Siegmund.
+
+'Oh, they'd have to fence in Lord Tennyson's white marble,' said Helena,
+rather indefinitely.
+
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+
+'Yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Tennyson!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.'
+
+'I shouldn't say so,' she declared.
+
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed
+the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the
+sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below
+the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose
+over the cliff's edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped
+in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds
+passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
+
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
+They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
+the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
+above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
+would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
+to risk it.
+
+'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
+he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
+and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
+symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
+sweeping, and dark.
+
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
+foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
+froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
+
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
+thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+
+'They look so fine down there.'
+
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
+with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
+as he gripped her.
+
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
+the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
+'Path of the Hundred Steps'.
+
+'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
+descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
+laughed at his exactitude.
+
+'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.
+
+'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+
+'Or of exaggeration,' he added.
+
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
+A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
+chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
+confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
+Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
+resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
+above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
+cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
+route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
+flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
+two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
+side by side.
+
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
+lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
+boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
+insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
+of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
+looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.
+
+'Now, that one with the greyish sails--' Siegmund was saying.
+
+'Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?'
+interrupted Helena.
+
+'That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and--'
+
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
+wicked laughter of Helena.
+
+'That is right, I am sure,' he protested.
+
+'I won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
+knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+
+'So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he
+said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked
+at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in
+the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
+slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
+startled them up.
+
+'The clouds are coming,' he said regretfully.
+
+'Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered,
+
+'Look at the shadows--like blots floating away. Don't they devour the
+sunshine?'
+
+'It is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him.
+
+'Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.'
+
+'No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.'
+
+'I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
+like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
+sunshine.'
+
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
+water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund's face. He lay, with
+half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
+she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with
+her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He
+lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
+
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the
+sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It
+seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it
+fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had
+the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding
+out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her.
+This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so
+different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome,
+shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be
+the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves.
+She listened for Siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other
+sound, thudding powerfully.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 7_
+
+
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across
+at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!'
+
+'I was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled.
+
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the
+water and the downs.
+
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
+bay.
+
+'The tide is coming in,' said Helena.
+
+'But this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. It's as soft
+as pepper,' he replied.
+
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
+shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
+the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
+overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and
+fell, overcome at the end of the race.
+
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its
+base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green
+sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of
+withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that
+glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were
+almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the other
+headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must hurry,
+or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining
+between the great wall and the water.
+
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless.
+He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
+for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded
+by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.
+
+'I think I will rest awhile,' she said.
+
+'No, come along,' he begged.
+
+'My dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
+from the sea.'
+
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
+It would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+
+'Look at this black wood,' she said. 'Does the sea really char it?'
+
+'Let us get round the corner,' he begged.
+
+'Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said
+ironically.
+
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
+jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
+This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
+shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
+massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
+was delighted.
+
+'This is fine, Siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west.
+
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
+this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
+would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from
+their feet.
+
+'Would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked.
+
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+
+'This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.'
+
+'And then where?'
+
+'Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.'
+
+'Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.'
+
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
+near their bases.
+
+'I suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began
+silently to clamber forwards.
+
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+
+'I have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'The sea only
+looks near.'
+
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
+against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
+swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
+curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
+slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
+laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
+her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
+had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
+and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
+sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were cut
+off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
+his face.
+
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
+it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
+ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
+furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
+She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
+rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
+on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of
+a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
+damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
+rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
+the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not bear.
+She had no weapon against brute force.
+
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
+was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
+face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
+just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
+populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
+careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.
+
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
+savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
+action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
+whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
+here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
+week--well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.
+
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
+figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest
+tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why
+was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of
+experience? She was young and naive, and should he be angry with her for
+that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would have to
+suffer also, because of him.
+
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
+mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
+her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.
+
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
+he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
+close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
+lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
+pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
+on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
+heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
+face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
+satisfaction.
+
+'It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like
+a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said
+it. He pressed his mouth on hers. 'Not for you,' he thought, by reflex.
+'You can't go that way yet.' But he said nothing, strained her very
+tightly, and kept her lips.
+
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
+at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
+stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light
+bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand
+to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing
+delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness.
+
+'Isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'The sea must be very,
+very gentle--and very kind.'
+
+'Sometimes,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+'But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. She
+breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
+inhaled its fine savour.
+
+'It would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. She looked at him
+with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
+small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
+a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the
+glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
+waited upon her words and movements attentively.
+
+'It is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'Wotan is so
+clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
+fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--'
+
+Helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
+not lucid.
+
+'But life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled
+softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
+her words.
+
+'There's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only
+way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
+float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
+forget he had spoken.
+
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+
+'I will give it to the children,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
+publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
+girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
+the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
+approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
+
+'Would you like this? I found it down there,' said Siegmund, offering
+her the bulb.
+
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
+she was not going to say anything.
+
+'The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,'
+said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+
+The girl looked at her.
+
+'The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers--'
+
+The child's eyes brightened.
+
+'The tide-line is full of treasures,' said Helena, smiling.
+
+The child answered her smile a little.
+
+Siegmund had walked away.
+
+'What beautiful eyes she had!' said Helena.
+
+'Yes,' he replied.
+
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
+But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
+knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 8_
+
+
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
+late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
+rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken
+and trees.
+
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
+carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
+under the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All the
+yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
+
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
+the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
+walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
+admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
+this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
+
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
+kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
+away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
+if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
+assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light
+swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of
+their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
+
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
+They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
+a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
+dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
+Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
+his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
+playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
+
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
+and to strike a last blow for her pride:
+
+'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'
+
+'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
+at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
+to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
+her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
+him, and she wanted to possess him.
+
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
+wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
+that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
+restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
+Her soul seemed blasted.
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
+water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
+continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
+Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
+running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
+it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
+out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
+along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
+fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
+morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
+are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
+sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
+itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
+that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
+
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
+sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as
+they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued
+flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
+
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
+dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against
+the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was
+flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a
+heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air
+of sunshine.
+
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the
+waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her
+feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as
+the breast of a white bird.
+
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
+and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
+restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along
+with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,
+large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
+
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
+full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
+water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
+like pale flowers trembling upward.
+
+'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressed
+forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had
+more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his
+arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
+recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
+through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
+ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
+emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
+
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
+land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
+the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
+sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its
+cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that
+was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling
+with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible
+sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom
+that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
+like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
+under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
+laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
+him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
+it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
+
+'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his hands
+again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,
+gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth
+warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand
+encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end he
+found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his
+hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy
+coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and
+kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a
+flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth
+of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
+lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness
+and warmth merely floated upon.
+
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
+him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
+laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
+below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he
+should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
+free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He
+tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
+child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry and
+warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
+smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
+though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of
+himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
+even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found
+himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his
+head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his
+hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if
+he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and
+sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happy
+priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out
+of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach
+it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean he
+felt--full of lightness and grace.
+
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,
+was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the
+door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the
+garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat
+sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little
+laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very
+still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant
+little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood
+cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green
+twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There
+was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the
+shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,
+leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.
+She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she
+discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next
+mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.
+She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine
+at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+
+'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'
+
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
+glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+
+'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
+sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
+
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
+moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+
+'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim
+there.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+
+'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.
+
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
+came into her voice.
+
+'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.
+
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
+still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that
+would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all
+swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
+himself saying:
+
+'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like
+Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.'
+
+'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at him
+with her eyes heavy with meaning.
+
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+
+'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.
+
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
+it. He became suddenly grave.
+
+'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. It
+is so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
+you think so?'
+
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,
+and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 9_
+
+
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
+across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
+white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
+bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
+of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
+and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
+blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,
+which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
+been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+
+'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.
+
+'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
+heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
+meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
+them--dimly, drowsily, without pain.
+
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path
+down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with
+ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.
+The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks
+of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena
+sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand
+till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then
+she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the
+light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal
+beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on
+the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
+
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then there
+settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
+the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
+wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down
+together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund
+with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in his
+shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.
+The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds
+asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them
+with its bright eyes.
+
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall
+at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came
+like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of
+beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of
+others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and
+bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such
+blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in
+His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid
+blooms of beauty.
+
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
+their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
+shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
+Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
+revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung
+into water. She shivered lightly and rose.
+
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.
+She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in
+the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it
+free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens
+itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers the
+tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and took
+its kisses on her face and throat.
+
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
+like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
+fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+
+'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'
+
+'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.
+
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
+more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
+rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
+smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
+
+'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.
+
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 10_
+
+
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
+sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
+with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed
+suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund's heart was
+leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself
+very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled slowly. Often she
+called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky
+with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but
+shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to
+poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a
+shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones,
+causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
+watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the
+cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and
+gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two
+miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone,
+dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet
+of the weeds.
+
+'Don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
+the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
+childishly happy.
+
+'Why should we?' she asked lightly.
+
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
+with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
+the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
+relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy
+with the individual, no cognizance of him.
+
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things.
+She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful,
+fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below
+consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic
+knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To
+Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her
+kaleidoscope.
+
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
+gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+
+'Come,' he said very gently. 'You are only six years old today.'
+
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling
+in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in
+him sadly alive.
+
+'Now put your stockings on,' he said.
+
+'But my feet are wet.' She laughed.
+
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
+tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and
+more golden.
+
+'I envy the savages their free feet,' she said.
+
+'There is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,'
+he replied.
+
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
+track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
+boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
+Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys
+emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them.
+The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:
+
+'Tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?'
+
+'Ay, let her have a run,' said the father.
+
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
+her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
+pathetically.
+
+'Go on, Tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'Go on; have a run on
+the sand.'
+
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
+distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
+the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps,
+turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It
+looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away
+from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves.
+
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+
+'Crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said.
+
+'But look how frightened it is,' she said.
+
+'So am I.' He laughed. 'And if there are any gods looking on and
+laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their
+pinafores....'
+
+She laughed very quickly.
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed. 'Why should you want putting in a pinafore?'
+
+'I don't,' he laughed.
+
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
+water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
+Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
+glowing. He was watching earnestly.
+
+'I want to absorb it all,' he said.
+
+When at last they turned away:
+
+'Yes,' said Helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.'
+
+He pondered a moment.
+
+'How strange!' he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail.
+It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture
+was in me, not out there.'
+
+Without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it
+verbiage--she made a small sound of assent.
+
+'That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don't care so much,
+because I have it with me,' he concluded.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 11_
+
+
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
+keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
+broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
+however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
+among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
+incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
+
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
+signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
+withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
+
+'We must go to the left,' said Helena.
+
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
+black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
+shoulders.
+
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
+they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
+a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
+sense of space and freedom.
+
+'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
+pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
+large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
+shaggy cloak of furze.
+
+'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.
+
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
+impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+
+'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
+will be tired.'
+
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
+into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
+down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
+far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
+specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
+the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
+west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
+everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
+The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
+the condition of intense waiting.
+
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+
+'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.'
+
+'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.
+
+'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.
+
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
+and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
+odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
+honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
+
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+
+'What day is it, Siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
+laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
+
+'But really,' she insisted, 'I would not have believed the labels could
+have fallen off everything like this.'
+
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+
+'The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
+order and costume, going endlessly round.' She laughed, amused at
+the idea.
+
+'It is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights
+smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
+lifetime.'
+
+'That is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'You have
+torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
+It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be
+parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up
+of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
+cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take
+no notice.'
+
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his
+leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from
+pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek,
+looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a
+keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+
+'You know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. You seem to have
+knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all
+in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
+everything.'
+
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+
+'You must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a
+disciple's vanity.
+
+'Some time,' he answered. 'Later, when I have time.'
+
+'Later,' she murmured--'later than what?'
+
+'I don't know,' he replied. 'This is so bright we can't see beyond.' He
+turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
+that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay,
+with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
+
+'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
+always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+
+'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
+a brass reed was again in her voice.
+
+'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
+nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
+abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+
+'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
+voice to speak.
+
+'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
+hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
+still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
+flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
+make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
+thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
+constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
+north, even?'
+
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
+She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
+of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
+'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
+laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
+
+'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
+here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter
+and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn't it fine to be up here,
+with the sky for nearest neighbour?'
+
+'I did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. He turned to
+her.
+
+'As wise as God for the minute,' he replied softly. 'I think a few
+furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.'
+
+'And you are glad?' she asked. He laughed.
+
+'_Carpe diem_,' he said. 'We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.'
+
+'Why hell, Siegmund?' she asked in displeasure.
+
+'I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I'm a failure,
+Helena. But,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men
+have plucked.'
+
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
+fashion.
+
+'What does it matter, Helena?' he murmured. 'What does it matter? We are
+here yet.'
+
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
+felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
+uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
+her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
+hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
+face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
+his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
+ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.
+
+'What is it, Helena?' he asked at last. 'Why should you cry?'
+
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
+unrecognizable voice:
+
+'You won't leave me, will you, Siegmund?'
+
+'How could I? How should I?' he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
+suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+
+'How could I leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
+the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
+the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
+Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
+heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
+thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
+with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
+so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
+become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
+thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
+and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
+urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
+incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
+her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
+wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
+slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
+incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
+flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
+soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
+decided, was supreme, transcendental.
+
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
+of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
+sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
+stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
+found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
+when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
+of stars.
+
+    _Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
+    Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._
+
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
+she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
+her language.
+
+    _Die Luft ist kuehl, und es dunkelt,
+    Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._
+
+She liked Heine best of all:
+
+    _Wie Traeume der Kindheit seh' ich es flimmern
+    Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
+    Und alte Erinnerung erzaehlt mir auf's Neue
+    Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
+    Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben...._
+
+As she lay in Siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she
+knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the
+gleam of a falling star over water. The night moved on imperceptibly
+across the sky. Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but
+passed unseen, unfelt, over them. Till the moon was ready to step forth.
+Then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds
+round the opening gates:
+
+    _Aus alten Maerchen winket es
+    Hervor mit weisser Hand,
+    Da singt es und da klingt es
+    Von einem Zauberland._
+
+
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the
+clouds. She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful
+singsong, as children do.
+
+'What is it?' said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her
+singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having
+forgotten that he had asked her a question.
+
+'Turn your head,' she told him, when she had finished the verse, 'and
+look at the moon.'
+
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his
+chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his
+nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+
+'"_Die grossen Blumen schmachten_,"' she said to herself, curiously
+awake and joyous. 'The big flowers open with black petals and silvery
+ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the
+bridegroom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled
+flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the _Zauberland_, Siegmund--this is
+the magic land.'
+
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on
+the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay
+still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange
+ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp,
+breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her mouth
+and her cheeks and her forehead.
+
+'"_Und Liebesweisen toenen_"-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing,
+Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the
+trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up
+their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven't you-and it all
+centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in
+them all Siegmund--Siegmund!'
+
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow
+heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay
+prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the
+beautiful strong motion of his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength,
+she swooned lightly into unconsciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite
+heaving of his life beneath her.
+
+'I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!' she said
+to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon it.
+That she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness
+astonished her.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life
+of Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath and
+the next. Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on her
+hands, she kissed him--a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her
+soul into his for ever. Then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply.
+She put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. 'No more,' said
+her heart, almost as if it sighed too-'no more!'
+
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He
+lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his
+side, looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as he
+lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him
+murmured; 'Hawwa--Eve--Mother!' She stood compassionate over him.
+Without touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother.
+Her compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little
+Helena. This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her
+compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a
+personification of the great motherhood of women.
+
+'I am her child, too,' he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in
+sleep. He had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when
+he looked only into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and
+gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+
+'Come,' she said gently, when she knew he was restored. 'Shall we go?'
+
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 12_
+
+
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The
+hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into
+shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some
+distance, very great, it seemed.
+
+'I can't get hold of them,' he said distractedly to himself. He felt
+detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as
+if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported,
+somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down
+again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and
+controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need
+not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he
+would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the
+moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly,
+joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support.
+Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked
+with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious.
+This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
+
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the
+hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in
+his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice
+it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
+
+'What is it?' he asked himself in wonder.
+
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally
+to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
+insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
+from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
+of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
+stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
+securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became
+conscious of it.
+
+'Good Lord!' he said to himself. 'I wonder what it is.'
+
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
+body--his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
+wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
+into another detached phrase. 'There is nothing the matter with me,'
+he said.
+
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
+sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
+he had fallen ill.
+
+'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
+sure my hand is steady.'
+
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
+him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+
+'Yes, I think this is the right way,' said Helena, and they set off
+again, as if gaily.
+
+'It certainly feels rather deathly,' said Siegmund to himself. He
+remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
+stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here
+he chose the French word--'_l'agonie_'. But his mother had seen and had
+cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
+spare her her suffering.
+
+'Certainly it is like that,' he said. 'Certainly it is rather deathly. I
+wonder how it is.'
+
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+
+'I believe we are lost!' Helena interrupted him.
+
+'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
+tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
+way?' he added.
+
+'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
+certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.'
+
+'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
+well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
+where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
+clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
+the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
+left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
+
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
+happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
+beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
+been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
+have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
+they've gone my house is weak.'
+
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
+reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
+
+'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
+my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
+That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.'
+
+Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
+somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
+concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
+was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
+been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
+vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
+his sickness, soothing him.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'I suppose living too
+intensely kills you, more or less.'
+
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
+The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
+veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
+lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
+seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if
+Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
+horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They
+walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a
+little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and
+they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under
+the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the
+moonlight.
+
+'We certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. The
+idea of being lost delighted her.
+
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
+glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking
+along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to
+some state beyond ordinary experience--some place in romance, perhaps,
+or among the hills where Bruenhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo
+of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London
+wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked
+again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist
+ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna
+must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.
+
+'We may be on the road to Newport,' said Helena presently, 'and the
+distance is ten miles.'
+
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in
+this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening
+wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund
+looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he
+sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of
+which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her
+nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her,
+and grew heavy with responsibility.
+
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the
+night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled
+together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the
+supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena
+walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively
+searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached,
+listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the
+darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the
+windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went
+running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed
+to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with
+weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was
+the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the
+grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying
+asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams.
+She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed,
+their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering
+over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
+
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
+fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. Siegmund's arm was
+about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
+stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
+Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
+envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
+The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
+looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
+bowed his head.
+
+'Thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate
+ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
+very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love,
+the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the
+white beauty in the world.'
+
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
+the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
+treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his
+compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped
+softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
+
+'Let me get under cover,' he thought. 'Let me hide in it; it is good,
+the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small,
+futile tragedy!'
+
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the
+silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer,
+leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was
+heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small,
+brave Helena.
+
+'Are you sure this is the right way?' he whispered to her.
+
+'Quite, quite sure,' she whispered confidently in reply. And presently
+they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the
+steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go
+with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping
+cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena's heart was
+beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they
+wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this
+night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road
+not far from home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 13_
+
+
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a
+kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o'clock, yet he lounged,
+dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of
+morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before
+him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naive
+and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
+
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice
+beside him say:
+
+'Where have they come from; do you know, sir?'
+
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing
+beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+
+'The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,' said Siegmund.
+
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+
+'They look rather incongruous, don't you think? We left the sea empty
+and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their
+eye on us!'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'You are not an Anarchist, I hope?' he said jestingly.
+
+'A Nihilist, perhaps,' laughed the other. 'But I am quite fond of the
+Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can't turn round without
+finding some policeman or other at your elbow--look at them, abominable
+ironmongery!--ready to put his hand on your shoulder.'
+
+The speaker's grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from
+the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter
+felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so
+quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
+
+'I suppose we are in the hands of--God,' something moved Siegmund to
+say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at
+the speaker.
+
+'Ah!' he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair,
+the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they
+returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. 'Does the Czar sail this
+way?' he asked at last.
+
+'I do not know,' replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other's
+penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+
+'I suppose the newspaper will tell us?' said the man.
+
+Sure to,' said Siegmund.
+
+'You haven't seen it this morning?'
+
+'Not since Saturday.'
+
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
+
+'You are not alone on your holiday?'
+
+'No.' Siegmund did not like this--he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+
+'I live here--at least for the present--name, Hampson--'
+
+'Why, weren't you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years
+back?' asked Siegmund.
+
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
+fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself
+for having addressed Siegmund:
+
+'I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and
+as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
+re-acquainted.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+
+'I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It's a pity to try
+and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?'
+
+'Stare beyond it, you mean?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a
+day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all
+the confoundedly draughty House of Life.'
+
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
+something in his own soul.
+
+'I mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life
+that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
+blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't
+stop it, once we've begun to leak.'
+
+'What do you mean by "leak"?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Goodness knows--I talk through my hat. But once you've got a bit tired
+of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
+dark--as you were doing.'
+
+'But, to use your metaphor, I'm not tired of the House--if you mean
+Life,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Praise God! I've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket
+picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head
+back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+
+'I don't know what you mean, sir,' said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
+strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+
+'You're not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
+suite of rooms--'
+
+'Tomorrow I am turned out of this "blue room",' said Siegmund with a wry
+smile. The other looked at him seriously.
+
+'Dear Lord!' exclaimed Hampson; then: 'Do you remember Flaubert's saint,
+who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.'
+
+'Nor I,' shuddered Siegmund.
+
+'But you've got to-or something near it!'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+
+'What of yourself?' he said, resentfully.
+
+'I've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
+staring from the window at the dark.'
+
+'But can't you _do_ something?' said Siegmund.
+
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing
+his teeth.
+
+'I won't ask you what _your_ intentions are,' he said, with delicate
+irony in his tone. 'You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five
+hundred a year by hard work; but it's no good. If you have acquired a
+liking for intensity in life, you can't do without it. I mean vivid soul
+experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and
+physical excitement.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+
+'Well, and what then?' he said.
+
+'What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a _concentre_, you feed your normal flame with
+oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are
+always semi-transparent.'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'At least, I am quite opaque,' he said.
+
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+
+'Not altogether,' said Hampson. 'And you, I should think, are one whose
+flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.'
+
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+
+'You haven't much reserve. You're like a tree that'll flower till it
+kills itself,' the man continued. 'You'll run till you drop, and then
+you won't get up again. You've no dispassionate intellect to control you
+and economize.'
+
+'You're telling me very plainly what I am and am not,' said Siegmund,
+laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+
+'Oh, it's only what I think,' replied Hampson. 'We're a good deal alike,
+you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn't; but women
+have always done as they liked with me.'
+
+'That's hardly so in my case,' said Siegmund.
+
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+
+'Say one woman; it's enough,' he replied.
+
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+
+'The best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,'
+Hampson resumed. 'By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
+animal in us. Then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond
+humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
+instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
+and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
+warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of
+life. In us her force becomes evident.
+
+'She can't live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting
+women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can
+gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and
+to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that
+is, us altogether.'
+
+'You're a bit downright are you not?' asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
+did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements
+were arbitrary.
+
+'That's according to my intensity,' laughed Hampson. 'I can open the
+blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
+see--God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
+perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!'
+
+'Don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
+end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and
+the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.'
+
+Siegmund pondered a little....
+
+'You make me feel--as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,'
+he said slowly.
+
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands
+lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+
+'I can scarcely believe they are me,' he said. 'If they rose up and
+refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren't they beautiful?'
+
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger's to his own hands, which lay curved
+on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature,
+but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
+Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over
+his thumbs.
+
+'I wonder,' said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, 'that she
+can't see it; I wonder she doesn't cherish you. You are full and
+beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when
+she loved you to such extremity?'
+
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man,
+with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+
+'Fools--the fools, these women!' he said. 'Either they smash their own
+crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look
+at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with
+compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by
+itself. I am very sorry.'
+
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of
+a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks.
+Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
+
+'I wish I didn't go on like this,' said Hampson piteously. 'I wish I
+could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is
+really hot.' He pulled open his flannel shirt.
+
+'I like the heat,' said Siegmund.
+
+'So do I.'
+
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some
+sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely
+to the village.
+
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful
+dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to
+find Helena.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 14_
+
+
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again
+waiting. It was past nine o'clock, so she was growing impatient. To
+herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of
+verses she had bought in St Martin's Lane for twopence.
+
+    A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,
+    As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew....
+
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself
+that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road
+for Siegmund.
+
+    And now she takes the scissors on her thumb ...
+    Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+
+'H'm!' she said, 'I really don't know whether I like that or not.'
+
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+
+'He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned;
+but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on
+the water!'
+
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+
+'But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them as
+I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the
+flutter of a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way
+to read this poet.'
+
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure
+enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his
+throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+
+'I have kept you waiting,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I was reading, you see.'
+
+She would not admit her impatience.
+
+'I have been talking,' he said.
+
+'Talking!' she exclaimed in slight displeasure. 'Have you found an
+acquaintance even here?'
+
+'A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel
+queer-sort of _Doppelgaenger_, he was.'
+
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+
+'In what way?' she said.
+
+'He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
+The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the
+bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have
+you made the plans for today?'
+
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself
+to the scarlet and green salad.
+
+'Mrs Curtiss,' she said, in rather reedy tone, 'has been very motherly
+to me this morning; oh, very motherly!'
+
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+
+'What, has she been saying something about last night?' he asked.
+
+'She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,' continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which
+showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+
+'Because we weren't in till about eleven?' said Siegmund, also with
+sarcasm.
+
+'I mustn't do it again. Oh no, I mustn't do it again, really.'
+
+'For fear of alarming the old lady?' he asked.
+
+'"You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if I were your
+_mother_, I don't know _how_ I should feel,"' she quoted.
+
+'When one engages rooms one doesn't usually stipulate for a stepmother
+to nourish one's conscience,' said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest
+of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed
+within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth
+were on edge.
+
+'I don't _mind_ in the least,' she said. 'The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.'
+
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+
+'I know I'm a moral coward,' he said bitterly.
+
+'Nonsense' she replied. Then, with a little heat: 'But you _do_ continue
+to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you needed
+justification.'
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+'I tell you--a little thing like this--it remains tied tight round
+something inside me, reminding me for hours--well, what everybody else's
+opinion of me is.'
+
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+
+'I thought you were so sure we were right,' she said.
+
+He winced again.
+
+'In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world--'
+
+'If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?' she said brutally.
+
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+
+'What is myself?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing very definite,' she said, with a bitter laugh.
+
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and
+put her arms round his neck.
+
+'This is our last clear day, dear,' she said.
+
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her in
+his arms....
+
+'It will be hot today,' said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+
+'I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,' he replied.
+
+'I shall wear a hat--you had better do so too.'
+
+'No,' he said. 'I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall
+get one.'
+
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to
+choose for himself.
+
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their
+remaining day.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'we ought to find the little path that
+escaped us last night.'
+
+'We were lucky to miss it,' he answered. 'You don't get a walk like that
+twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.'
+
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a
+loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was--a Londoner on holiday. He
+had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a
+gentleman. He had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he
+walked he looked unseeing in front of him.
+
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or a
+worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+_concentree_ than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something
+she always seemed coiled within herself.
+
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts,
+and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was a large,
+simple hat of burnt straw.
+
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite
+vigorously.
+
+'I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Why?' he laughed. 'My hair is like a hood,' He ruffled it back with his
+hand. The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the
+butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the
+sky. The lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in
+the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. There was a ragged
+noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard. Two
+red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood in
+the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath,
+whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. The white
+legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the
+yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a
+faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The
+farmer's wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if
+necessary.
+
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+
+'That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,' she said. 'It
+is cruder than Theocritus.'
+
+'In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,' he laughed. 'I think
+every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would
+be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one's
+nose, and to own cattle and land.'
+
+'Would it?' asked Helena sceptically.
+
+'If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I
+should love it,'he said.
+
+'It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied.
+
+'To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the
+desideratum.'
+
+'Is it?' she asked ironically.
+
+'I would give anything to be like that,' he said.
+
+'That is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly.
+
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+
+'Don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene.
+'They are farther than Theocritus--down there is farther than Sicily,
+and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren't.'
+
+'Why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly
+opposite the path through the furze.
+
+'There it is!' she cried, 'How could we miss it?'
+
+'Ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of
+_Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.
+
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the
+cliff's edge, she said:
+
+'This shall be our house today.'
+
+'Welcome home!' said Siegmund.
+
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out
+to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was
+slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could
+hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water
+below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with
+his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her
+page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began
+to read.
+
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring
+with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing
+her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes
+wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in
+'Adam Cast Forth'. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure
+strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive
+wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with
+struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the
+face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen
+with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.
+Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,
+abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss
+him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her
+position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on his
+hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a
+sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+
+'It will make him ill,' she whispered to herself, and she bent over to
+smell the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead.
+She felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming
+inflamed with the sun-scalding.
+
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea
+was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses of
+Freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. Green
+Farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and
+sleep. In the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless. Helena
+was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water.
+
+'"And there shall be no more sea,"' she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+
+'No more sea, no more anything,' she thought dazedly, as she sat in the
+midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the
+lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this
+tremendous furnace, leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag
+seamed with metal. She tried to imagine herself resuming the old
+activities, the old manner of living.
+
+'It is impossible,' she said; 'it is impossible! What shall I be when I
+come out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in
+another shape. No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What
+will become of us--what will happen?'
+
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace
+by Siegmund's waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked
+smiling at Helena.
+
+'It is worth while to sleep,' said he, 'for the sake of waking like
+this. I was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.'
+
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She
+smiled upon him almost in condescension.
+
+'I should like to realize your dream,' she said. 'This is terrible!'
+
+They went to the cliff's edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from
+the water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and
+put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+
+'It is really a very fine sun,' said Siegmund lightly. 'I feel as if I
+were almost satisfied with heat.'
+
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived,
+while she affects a light interest in another's pleasure. This time,
+when Siegmund 'failed to follow her', as she put it, she felt she must
+follow him.
+
+'You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,' she said,
+smiling; 'even a sufficiency of me.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund drowsily. 'I think I am. I think this is about
+perfect, don't you?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'I want nothing more and nothing different,' he continued; 'and that's
+the extreme of a decent time, I should think.'
+
+'The extreme of a decent time!' she repeated.
+
+But he drawled on lazily:
+
+'I've only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I've got
+all the cheese--which is you, my dear.'
+
+'I certainly feel eaten up,' she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him
+lying in a royal ease, his eyes naive as a boy's, his whole being
+careless. Although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt
+very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense
+of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his
+fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his
+buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or
+spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the
+path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them.
+Slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid's chair,
+wheeling silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man,
+was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his
+pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted
+body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken
+eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half
+obscure to him. Siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he
+should see. Helena looked intently for two seconds. She thought of the
+torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide--'the life
+tide,' she said to herself. The pain of the invalid overshadowed her own
+distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+
+'Come!' she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the
+completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+
+'We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow--so
+quiet,' she said to herself.
+
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her own
+state, after her own fashion.
+
+'The Mist Spirit,' she said to herself. 'The Mist Spirit draws a curtain
+round us--it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn
+curtain sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the curtain again, I
+do not want to think of the outside. I am afraid of the outside, and I
+am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. I want to be in our own
+fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.'
+
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+
+'Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next
+year, and stay for a whole month?'
+
+'If there be any next year,' said she.
+
+Siegmund did not reply.
+
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were
+mocking fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards
+their lodging.
+
+'There will be an end to this,' said Helena, communing with herself.
+'And when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No
+matter--let come what will. All along Fate has been resolving, from the
+very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar
+progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous harmonies
+with our lives. Really, the working out has been wondrous, is wondrous
+now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to suffer an anti-climax. I
+am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to allow a bathetic
+anti-climax.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 15_
+
+
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
+on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
+perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
+with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
+without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
+clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
+of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
+waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
+each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
+copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound,
+for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware
+that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces,
+like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
+
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
+that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
+time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
+Siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
+anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
+self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
+self-revelation took hold on him.
+
+'It is awfully funny,' he said. 'I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
+army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
+Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
+through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
+the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
+
+'He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
+and was to go into father's business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
+very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
+convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little while,
+but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles above
+me--which she was. She wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all
+like her. I bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children.
+
+'At first I fluttered round her. I remember I'd got a little, silky
+moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was
+mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off
+abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house.
+The mother was an invalid.
+
+'I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened
+off the smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two sisters
+and Beatrice talking about good-looking men.
+
+'"I consider Bertram will make a handsome man," said my younger sister.
+
+'"He's got beautiful eyes," said my other sister.
+
+'"And a real darling nose and chin!" cried Beatrice. "If only he was
+more _solide_! He is like a windmill, all limbs."
+
+'"He will fill out. Remember, he's not quite seventeen," said my elder
+sister.
+
+'"Ah, he is _doux_--he is _calin_," said Beatrice.
+
+'"I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister.
+
+'"But he's a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are," my
+younger sister chimed in.
+
+'"Ah, _si, si_!" cried Beatrice.
+
+'I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+
+'"Hello, is somebody in here?" I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+
+'I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed
+an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I
+of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white
+hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now,
+great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green;
+and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of
+Beatrice ... her great dark eyes.
+
+'It's funny, but Beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than Dante's.
+And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
+
+'I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
+Beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always
+jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen,
+earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when
+we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it
+awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
+
+'There's the romance. I wonder how it will all end.'
+
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before
+Helena's day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea
+that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and
+wonderful a thing in a man's life as birth, or adolescence, or death,
+was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of
+disillusion.
+
+'Come to think of it,' Siegmund continued, 'I have always shirked.
+Whenever I've been in a tight corner I've gone to Pater.'
+
+'I think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get
+out of to go to anybody.'
+
+'Yet I'm here,' he answered simply.
+
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+
+'And some men would have made a better job of it. When it's come to
+sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of
+her, I've always funked. I tell you I'm something of a moral coward.'
+
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'So be it.'
+Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
+discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
+finally--Siegmund.
+
+'In my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'I
+might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies
+running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I
+am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
+glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.'
+
+'You are so hard to get at,' said Siegmund. 'And so scornful of familiar
+things.'
+
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
+that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
+teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
+darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
+Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
+Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her
+whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
+
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
+day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
+night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
+after moments of intense living.
+
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
+herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
+dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash,
+and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
+
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
+livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
+fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong
+again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a
+destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed
+back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against
+her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty,
+mean conclusions.
+
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair
+grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary,
+lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
+
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
+was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
+Walkuere_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
+really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
+that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
+the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
+soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
+whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
+radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past
+the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short,
+something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men.
+
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
+her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
+he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her
+soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
+
+'Siegmund!' she said in despair.
+
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
+distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
+her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
+arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
+
+'What is it, dear? Is something wrong?'
+
+His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round
+her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
+beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
+He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did
+not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in
+his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free
+to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart,
+the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
+She struggled to escape.
+
+'What is it? Won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded.
+
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
+tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
+held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
+brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
+
+'Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me--at any rate tell me, Helena.'
+
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to
+be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
+His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong
+working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic
+to be free.
+
+'Let me go!' she cried. 'Let me go! Let me go!' He held her in
+bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed
+him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her
+suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
+
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down,
+sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a
+small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee
+beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
+
+'Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me,
+Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!'
+
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside
+herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this
+unreasoning pleading of his voice.
+
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on
+one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence
+was crackling with the sound of Helena's dry, hissing sobs. He remained
+silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he
+put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
+
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, 'It is enough,' He went behind the
+small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to
+hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush
+under which he could find cover.
+
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf,
+trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he
+lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time
+before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear,
+even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
+
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At
+length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could
+have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her
+face. Was somebody coming?
+
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied
+herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a
+thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
+She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.
+
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at
+them.
+
+'Dear!' she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to
+struggle with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have
+died than face anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+
+'Dear, someone is looking,' she pleaded.
+
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They walked
+on.
+
+'Forgive me, dear,' she said softly.
+
+'Nay, it's not you,' he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on
+till the night seemed private. She turned to him, and 'Siegmund!' she
+said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
+
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her
+face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered
+it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
+
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The
+stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first
+one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the
+sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he remembered
+how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and
+set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after point with yellow
+drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by one, delicately with
+his rod. The night was religious, then, with its proper order of
+worship. Day and night had their ritual, and passed in uncouth worship.
+
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night,
+where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars
+catch fire. At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might be.
+Helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he
+touched with his lips as part of the service.
+
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was
+quite alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman's
+breast have hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching the
+unknown. But this night he did not want comfort. If he were 'an infant
+crying in the night', it was crying that a woman could not still. He was
+abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. He, in loneliness,
+must search the night for faith.
+
+'My fate is finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation
+may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I
+must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to
+botch and bungle even damnation.'
+
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of
+his acts. Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though
+he could not see it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing
+softly in token of submission.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 16_
+
+
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
+of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
+insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him--she was
+afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
+little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had
+she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost
+him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
+
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
+gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
+back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+
+'What are you thinking of?' she asked.
+
+'I?' he replied. 'I really don't know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.'
+
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
+speech, she asked:
+
+'Was I very cruel, dear?'
+
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
+drew her close into him.
+
+'It was pretty bad, I suppose,' he replied. 'But I should think neither
+of us could help it.'
+
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
+helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
+shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
+in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
+delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to
+her Madonna.
+
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till
+at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of
+healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
+free, turned sharply aside, and said:
+
+'Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+'If you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
+with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless
+water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a
+long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with
+star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
+
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a
+tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay
+close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star
+which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin
+streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
+star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
+the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
+star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home.
+He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was
+behind the gate?
+
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
+populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+
+Siegmund was considering.
+
+'What _was_ the matter with you?' he asked.
+
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
+her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
+in experience:
+
+'Why, you see, dear, you won't understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it--the crying of lives I have touched....'
+
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
+also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled
+with shame.
+
+'....A crying of lives against me, and I couldn't silence them, nor
+escape out of the darkness. I wanted you--I saw you in front, whistling
+the Spring Song, but I couldn't find you--it was not you--I couldn't
+find you.'
+
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+
+'No, I don't see it,' he said. 'You would always be you. I could think
+of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.'
+
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her
+mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
+
+'Sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.'
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+'I lose you!' he repeated. 'You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my
+hold over you, and then you--?'
+
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+
+'It shall not be any more,' she said.
+
+'All right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.'
+
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+
+'You mustn't be bitter,' she murmured.
+
+'Four days is enough,' he said. 'In a fortnight I should be intolerable
+to you. I am not masterful.'
+
+'It is not so, Siegmund,' she said sharply.
+
+'I give way always,' he repeated. 'And then--tonight!'
+
+'Tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'Tonight I have been a fool!'
+
+'And I?' he asked.
+
+'You--what of you?' she cried. Then she became sad. 'I have little
+perverse feelings,' she lamented.
+
+'And I can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I'm
+always pushed this way and that, like a fool.'
+
+'You don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said.
+
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+
+'You are not like other folk. "_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht_." I thought of you when we read it.'
+
+'Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
+Which is it?'
+
+'Neither,' he said. 'You are _you_.'
+
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
+faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
+in black silhouette between them and the sea.
+
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
+life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
+read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his
+mind: '_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
+immer tiefer ins Leben._'
+
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
+home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+
+'This time tomorrow night,' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she implored.
+
+'Why not?' he laughed.
+
+'Don't, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+'All right, I won't.'
+
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
+little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
+on them now and again.
+
+'You won't be tired when you go back?' Helena asked.
+
+'Tired!' he echoed.
+
+'You know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full
+of pity. He laughed.
+
+'Oh, that is gone,' he said.
+
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+
+'And will you be sad?' she said, hesitating.
+
+'Sad!' he repeated.
+
+'But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
+back?'
+
+'The old life will take me up, I suppose,' he said.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'I have done wrong.'
+
+'Good Lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
+look at her, for the first time.
+
+'I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as
+you are now....'
+
+'"Take no thought for the morrow." Be quiet, Helena!' he exclaimed as
+the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+
+'Why?' she asked, afraid.
+
+'Why!' he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
+staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
+terrified her, and she lost courage.
+
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
+on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
+laughed, then became tender.
+
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
+half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
+sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs,
+as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the
+doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched.
+
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
+on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
+days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
+with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
+unity of their fates was gone.
+
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
+definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
+certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
+Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
+consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
+
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
+see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
+ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
+resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
+waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
+looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
+the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
+It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
+of the sea?
+
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
+this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
+overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
+over the sea--a libation.
+
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
+wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
+and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
+the moon looked frail and empty.
+
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
+of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
+into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
+watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
+eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.'
+
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
+moon.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 17_
+
+
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven
+o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+
+'But it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of
+the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted
+hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.
+
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that
+his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium
+glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of
+the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,
+offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the
+brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him
+with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.
+
+'They are all extraordinarily sweet,' said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies
+fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.
+Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.
+
+'The careless little beggars!' he said.
+
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely
+dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to
+meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of
+diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund
+had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and
+everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to
+us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break
+our hearts.
+
+'We have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say.
+
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+
+'It is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.'
+
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last
+night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed
+by his usual altar-stone.
+
+'How closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'It seems almost as if
+the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.'
+
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering
+fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his
+own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with
+things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and
+seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath
+his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with
+wondering pleasure.
+
+'They find no fault with me,' he said. 'I suppose they are as fallible
+as I, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the
+water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+
+'Once more,' he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very
+quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam
+towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like
+beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see
+fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white
+peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a
+sheen of silver.
+
+'Helena is right,' he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but
+moving upon the bosom of the tide; 'she is right, it is all enchanted. I
+have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.'
+
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round the
+terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets
+of the water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his foot;
+they were hard, cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made for the
+archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. There under
+water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls, were
+sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly
+green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the morning, their
+hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half afraid of their
+frantic efforts.
+
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch.
+There was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white, full-fleshed
+walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and
+out among themselves. Siegmund was carried along in an invisible
+chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. The tide swerved, threw him as
+he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow met the rock,
+and he was sick with pain. He held his breath, trying to get back the
+joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely, smooth side of the
+rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt
+him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the
+shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his
+arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch
+no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful,
+especially when, a minute or two later, he bent his arm.
+
+'No,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt
+me. I suppose I was careless.'
+
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
+looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
+bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
+gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the
+sea-shore played together.
+
+'Surely,' said Siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a
+jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.'
+
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
+the cliffs.
+
+'I was mistaken,' he said. 'It was an illusion.'
+
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
+windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
+another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white
+rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit
+and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
+or comrade.
+
+'They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
+after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do
+I matter?'
+
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+
+    We are not long for music and laughter,
+      Love and desire and hate;
+    I think we have no portion in them after
+      We pass the gate.
+
+'Why should I be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling.
+He frowned, and answered: 'Oh, Lord!--the old argument!'
+
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+
+'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.'
+
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
+maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
+
+'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
+that melts on the sunshine.'
+
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
+a joke.
+
+'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
+count; I am inconsiderable.'
+
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
+was arguing with himself.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.'
+
+But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
+answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
+overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
+was a great ignominy.
+
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore
+with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to
+discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box
+which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She
+had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then
+another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean
+lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
+
+'The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting,
+trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
+flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
+Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
+
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
+did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
+anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
+laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
+trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously
+her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend.
+There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the
+air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending,
+though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed
+beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as
+she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which
+made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for
+all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off
+her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
+thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled
+hastily upwards towards the outlet.
+
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
+window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
+throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
+dragon's hole.
+
+'How surprised they will be to see me!' said Helena, scrambling forward,
+laughing.
+
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
+white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the
+flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung
+the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena
+stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she
+stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a
+thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white
+incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips
+were parted in a woman's joy of adoration.
+
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+
+'It is good,' said Helena; 'it is very good.' She looked again, and saw
+the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
+pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
+they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
+
+'It is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she
+could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
+while she turned away.
+
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
+the beach to her.
+
+'You are not gone, then?' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it
+could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
+face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but Helena did not notice
+that his eyes were full of misery.
+
+'I, actually,' he said, smiling.
+
+'I did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant
+wonder. 'I could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and
+continued--'Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,' she said,
+looking radiantly up into Siegmund's face. 'Isn't it beautiful this
+morning?' she added.
+
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
+kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
+of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
+beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+
+'Isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked Helena, as she wrung the
+water from her costume.
+
+'It is very fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
+said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
+and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.'
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.'
+
+'It is,' assented Helena warmly. 'Have you noticed the waves? They are
+like a line of children chased by a white dog.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund.
+
+'Didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips
+the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+
+'I swam to my little bay again,' he replied.
+
+'Did you?' she exclaimed, pleased.
+
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
+holding them to Siegmund to dry.
+
+'I am very hungry,' she said.
+
+'And I,' he agreed.
+
+'I feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his
+position having reminded her of their departure.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't
+it?' she insisted.
+
+'I wish we might never go back,' he said.
+
+Helena sighed.
+
+'It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
+Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+
+'It has been something, dear,' she repeated.
+
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+
+'Everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He
+could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'Everything!' he said.
+
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+
+'I did well, didn't I, Siegmund?' she asked. Helena felt the
+responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
+withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
+word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
+
+'Wonderfully well, Helena,' he replied.
+
+She kissed his forehead.
+
+'You are everything,' he said.
+
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 18_
+
+
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
+brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate,
+gentle manner.
+
+'The water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from
+one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the
+amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his
+capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
+
+'It was,' assented Helena. 'It was as warm as new milk.'
+
+'Ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
+experience of Siegmund and his beloved. 'And did ye see the ships of
+war?' she asked.
+
+'No, they had gone,' replied Helena.
+
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+
+'You'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady.
+
+Helena arranged the matter.
+
+'I think ye both look better,' Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
+Siegmund.
+
+He smiled constrainedly.
+
+'I thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically.
+
+'He had been working hard,' said Helena, also glancing at him.
+
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+
+'Ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'And it's a very short time for you.
+What a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are
+grand, so they say.'
+
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'Have you never seen
+them?' she asked.
+
+'No,' replied Mrs. Curtiss. 'I've never been able to get; but I hope to
+go yet.'
+
+'I hope you may,' said Siegmund.
+
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
+quite satisfied.
+
+'Well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.'
+
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+
+'I've brought you,' she said, 'some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye'll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
+come back.'
+
+'How could we help?' laughed Helena.
+
+'We will,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
+Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
+presence of the delightful little lady.
+
+'This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she
+said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+
+'Ah!' exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+
+'One of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'And
+everybody.'
+
+'You have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony.
+
+'Strangers,' she replied. 'I seem to make strangers of all the people I
+meet.'
+
+She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her intently.
+He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+
+'Need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if
+ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two,
+three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,'
+she laughed.
+
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
+currants she had extricated for him.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 19_
+
+
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
+which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
+a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless
+little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old
+yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
+
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
+them.
+
+'Who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'They are
+tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling
+along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they
+take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when
+they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in
+the dark will gather them away. They won't be here in the morning,
+shrivelled and dowdy ... If only we could curl up and be gone, after
+our day....'
+
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+
+'It is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said.
+
+'Ay!' he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with
+bent head, abstract, but happy.
+
+'What is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'She is sufficient to
+herself--she doesn't want me. She has her own private way of communing
+with things, and is friends with them.'
+
+'The dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him
+from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+
+'I see it has,' he answered. Then to himself he said: 'She can't
+translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can't render
+herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she
+only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After
+a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not indispensable....'
+
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
+the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
+roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
+edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
+brilliant with dew.
+
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
+lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
+avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
+and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular.
+
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
+decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+
+'Amy! Amy!'
+
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
+indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
+calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
+he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
+
+'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.
+
+'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.
+
+'Look!' said Siegmund.
+
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
+holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
+gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with
+hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened
+the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then
+the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
+
+There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by
+the resentful abuse of the man.
+
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+
+'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.
+
+'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as
+if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.'
+
+'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.
+
+Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
+winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next
+incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
+humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
+fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
+self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
+time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
+her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
+of his tortured self-respect.
+
+'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone
+must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in
+it myself.'
+
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,
+the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,
+all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it
+naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this
+bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty
+and find the dirt. What was he to do?
+
+'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
+look quite stern today.'
+
+'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.'
+
+'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
+gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
+so grave.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
+right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
+it had all gone.'
+
+'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
+only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
+such stuff.'
+
+'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
+Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
+came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
+said that.'
+
+'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
+
+'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
+learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
+drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
+mockingly, to tease her.
+
+'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
+ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
+let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
+with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
+rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
+The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
+purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
+and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
+blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
+
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
+trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
+drooped over everything.
+
+'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
+Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
+will not wave my hand.'
+
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
+allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
+Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
+spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
+
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
+also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
+said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
+felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
+neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
+untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
+
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
+disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
+seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
+mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
+interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
+twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
+surprising.
+
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
+the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
+white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
+softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+
+'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
+the light.
+
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
+ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
+wild spinning of the lights.
+
+'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
+apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
+laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+
+'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
+to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
+understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
+cannot compel anybody to follow me.
+
+'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
+sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
+to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
+When can I set my feet on when this is gone?'
+
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
+Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
+looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+
+'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
+'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
+ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
+to the sun.
+
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+
+'This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
+which to lie.
+
+'Shall we not go under the rocks?' said Helena.
+
+'Look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.'
+
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
+with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat
+was dreadful.
+
+'My arms, Siegmund,' said she. 'They feel as if they were dipped in
+fire.'
+
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+
+'Are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed stupidly.
+
+'That is all right,' he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
+him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena's mist-curtain,
+he said:
+
+'I _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only
+I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...'
+
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
+of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
+savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
+beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
+would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
+
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
+lips on her cheek, he murmured:
+
+'I should be able, shouldn't I, Helena?'
+
+'You are always able!' she cried. 'It is I who play with you at hiding.'
+
+'I have really had you so little,' he said.
+
+'Can't you forget it, Siegmund?' she cried. 'Can't you forget it? It was
+only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can't you
+forget it, dear?'
+
+'You can't do without me?' he asked.
+
+'If I lose you I am lost,' answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
+safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
+
+'I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
+us,' said Helena to herself. 'They may go back to hell.'
+
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft
+away.
+
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
+to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
+out to sea and lost.
+
+'If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
+were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
+should get stronger and more upright.'
+
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
+two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
+leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
+his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
+great power.
+
+'If,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
+and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
+Siegmund in my arms....'
+
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
+falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
+that it made silence sweet.
+
+'If now,' prayed Siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
+were dark....'
+
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the
+bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
+rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
+that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger
+of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return,
+to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must
+not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and
+travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He
+lay in suspense, waiting.
+
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+
+'It is time, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
+She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
+him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
+inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
+sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still
+he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart
+crushed with grief for him.
+
+'We must go, Siegmund,' she whispered.
+
+'All right,' he said, but still he did not move.
+
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
+air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving.
+His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too
+strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the
+sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
+
+'We shall be too late,' she said in distress.
+
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She
+put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself
+together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
+
+'Why, what time is it?'
+
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his
+left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
+
+'I can't see the figures,' he said. 'Everything is dimmed, as if it were
+coming dark.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. 'My eyes
+were the same. It is the strong sunlight.'
+
+'I can't,' he repeated, and he was rather surprised--'I can't see the
+time. Can you?'
+
+She stooped down and looked.
+
+'It is half past one,' she said.
+
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time
+to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: 'I
+feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in
+my body is dulled.'
+
+'Yes,' answered Helena, 'I am afraid it will do you harm.'
+
+'At any rate,' he smiled as if sleepily, 'I have had enough. If it's too
+much--what _is_ too much?'
+
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+
+'We are going back--we are going back!' the heart of Helena seemed to
+run hot, beating these words.
+
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge
+of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea.
+The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching
+in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon
+the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still.
+Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful,
+incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund's
+mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then
+turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he
+had enjoyed, '_Addio_!' he said.
+
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+
+'It reminds me of Traviata--an "_Addio_" at every verse-end.'
+
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it
+jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve.
+'_Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o_!' he whistled between his teeth, hissing out
+the Italian's passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
+
+'I suppose,' she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check
+this discord--'I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey--Thursday.'
+
+'I don't know,' said Siegmund.
+
+'There will not be very many people,' she insisted.
+
+'I think,' he said, in a very quiet voice, 'you'd better let me go by
+the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.'
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+'I don't want to sit looking at you all the way,' he said.
+
+'But why should you?' she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Indeed, no!' she said. 'We shall go together.'
+
+'Very well,' he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the
+little post office, he said:
+
+'I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.'
+
+'You haven't sent them any word?' she asked.
+
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood
+still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+
+'Shall I?' he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was
+rather peculiar.
+
+'Well, I should think so,' faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and
+cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a
+telegraph form.
+
+'My God!' he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could
+not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled
+his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the
+amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her
+finger, he felt sick with irony.
+
+'That's right,' she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to
+the instrument. 'What beautiful weather!' she continued. 'It will be
+making you sorry to leave us.'
+
+'There goes my warrant,' thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of
+paper under the post-mistress's heavy hand.
+
+'Yes--it is too bad, isn't it,' he replied, bowing and laughing to the
+woman.
+
+'It is, sir,' she answered pleasantly. 'Good morning.'
+
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face
+like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression
+told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her
+falter with dismay.
+
+'What is he thinking of?' she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back.
+'And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them
+at home?'
+
+'Well,' said Siegmund, 'are there any postcards?'
+
+'None that I care to take,' she replied. 'Perhaps you would like one of
+these?'
+
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary
+views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+
+'I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,' he said.
+
+'Or a brush,' said Helena.
+
+'She does not understand,' said Siegmund to himself. 'And whatever I do
+I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.'
+
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings
+resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 20_
+
+
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other
+with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses,
+the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with
+exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if
+they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think,
+they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back
+her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
+
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
+shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
+at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
+who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here
+was room for all. Faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to
+look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
+and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
+into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself
+carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched
+the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between
+his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against
+the side of the carriage. The German's hips came down tight against her.
+She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure
+of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the
+opposite direction.
+
+'I am afraid I press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
+German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
+she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
+
+'Oh no,' she answered. 'You do not crush me.'
+
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
+The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
+slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
+remark in German: 'Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?'
+
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
+each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
+over 'Billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the German
+Emperor--and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned
+each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
+going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
+were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
+
+Helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
+tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the naive type: he talked with
+face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
+spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
+Helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to
+escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
+beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+
+'I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in
+perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
+her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free
+Helena, and said:
+
+'Forgive me, I am sorry.'
+
+'You are forgiven,' replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
+her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
+at this. The good humour was complete.
+
+'Thank you,' said the German gratefully.
+
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
+rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no
+attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German's apologies, and
+the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell.
+
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
+intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
+never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
+between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
+race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
+Siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
+same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
+It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
+birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
+never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him
+the mistress.
+
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like
+a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund's resentment against
+her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was
+very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made
+her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now,
+small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her.
+But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone,
+little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has
+done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind;
+death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this
+house of strangers which she called 'life'. She had to go on alone, like
+a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+
+'What will she do?' Siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes
+upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
+the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
+strength is established. But what then?'
+
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go
+on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had
+not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do
+when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive.
+Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
+
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
+inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
+and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became
+acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he
+had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour
+with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
+
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
+eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
+an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
+her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar
+hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool
+or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were
+instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar
+jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand.
+Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were
+passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as nonsense.
+
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
+faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
+clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
+them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
+sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
+endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere
+of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing that could
+relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its hold.
+
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
+heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to
+support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out
+of himself whatever she wanted.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 21_
+
+
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.
+It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily
+together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a
+concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. To
+Siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers
+crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from
+the street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay as
+snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,
+without any joy.
+
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their
+steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to
+stimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned
+slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber
+floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;
+small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the
+sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft
+stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were
+men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags
+through a sky dim with distance.
+
+'It is all very glad,' said Siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to be
+fanciful.'
+
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to his
+destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies
+between us and our goal.
+
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
+blue afternoon.
+
+'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over
+again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+
+'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to
+herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
+as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
+their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
+sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the
+swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark head
+and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over
+some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low
+stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer was
+sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing
+straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretching
+forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
+sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.
+
+'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
+watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
+with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
+veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
+lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
+the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
+staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
+the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
+from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
+dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
+quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
+as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
+steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
+coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
+raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
+gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
+the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
+in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
+indifference.
+
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
+whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
+the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
+noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
+moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
+They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of
+life again.
+
+'By Jove, that was a near thing!'
+
+'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.
+
+'A French yacht,' said somebody.
+
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
+to say. Confused, he repeated:
+
+'That was a close shave.'
+
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
+herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
+quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+
+'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the day
+is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
+swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
+That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
+no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of
+the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white
+seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,
+and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+
+'For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness
+through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he
+fumbles with delights like a bee.
+
+'For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness
+the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life,
+the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible
+flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death,
+is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a
+life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers
+into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from the
+death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potent
+shadow, if I do not enrich life.'
+
+'Wasn't that woman fine!' said Helena.
+
+'So perfectly still,' he answered.
+
+'The child realized nothing,' she said.
+
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+
+'I am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urged
+inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.'
+
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+
+'I guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor,
+will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.'
+
+'He was careful of something else just then,' said Siegmund, who hated
+to hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'He was attending to the
+machinery or something.'
+
+'That was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic.
+
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement--very blind.
+Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
+
+'Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked.
+
+'He nearly succeeded,' she replied.
+
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the
+world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'But, after all,' he
+thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event
+and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of
+exoneration.'
+
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of
+the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of
+life, saw it great and impersonal.
+
+'Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' he
+asked.
+
+'I rather think not. Why?' she replied.
+
+'I hope she didn't,' he said.
+
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very
+much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to
+her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and
+proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
+
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman's
+courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the
+boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he
+himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from
+lamenting his hard fate.
+
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they
+looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He
+yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be
+carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came
+round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept
+round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old
+_Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for
+a trophy.
+
+'It is a dreadful thing,' thought Siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy when
+there is nothing more to do.' He watched the landing-stages swooping
+nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of
+the train was London.
+
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.
+The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in
+the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released
+from her.
+
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder,
+in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the
+crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to
+the mainland.
+
+'Won't you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?'
+asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question.
+
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+
+'No,' she replied. 'Let us go together.'
+
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat
+down, facing Helena.
+
+'Now,' said he to himself, 'I wish I were alone.'
+
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+
+'Shall I not go down to Cornwall?'
+
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that
+she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety
+protracted.
+
+'But you have promised Louisa, have you not?' he replied.
+
+'Oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she
+wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+
+'Then you must go,' he said.
+
+'But,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'I do not want to go down to
+Cornwall with _Louisa and Olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after
+_this_,' she added.
+
+'Then Louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he said
+gravely.
+
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+
+'Is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. She glanced angrily at
+the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the
+ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the
+carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved
+by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena in
+his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him
+with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
+
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through
+Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It
+seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of
+the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. The
+afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneys
+and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant
+appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of
+light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+
+'It will go on,' thought Siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever.
+And I shall miss it all!'
+
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he
+began again:
+
+'Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will
+say nothing, thank God--nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there
+will be no interruptions....
+
+'But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss
+reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the
+country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my
+money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.
+Very good.
+
+'But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want
+Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be
+damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never
+get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out
+of pity for me. I know she would.
+
+'But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me
+not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in
+endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a
+red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth.
+Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any
+efforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what the
+result is." And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would be
+a gangrene of shame.
+
+'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
+asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
+creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
+I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?'
+
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
+whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
+imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
+sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
+children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
+bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
+thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
+unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
+her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
+took his pleasure elsewhere.
+
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
+consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
+agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be only
+a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait for
+the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
+inevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money to
+keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
+then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+
+'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give each
+of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
+nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and round
+went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
+grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
+gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his
+knee.
+
+'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with
+pain, 'you will forgive me.'
+
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
+filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
+smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes
+haunted with pain.
+
+'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfect
+happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!'
+
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
+painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned
+back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike
+swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.
+
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
+rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena
+had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,
+so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey
+that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of
+the final convictions.
+
+'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?
+What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
+have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
+inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?'
+
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
+never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
+backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
+great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
+with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a
+breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
+and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
+simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered
+what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague
+roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
+was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
+proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
+magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
+opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
+everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
+sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
+train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
+It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
+darkened grass-lands.
+
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
+breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
+was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
+victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms
+uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. The
+day died nobly, so she thought.
+
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+
+'Surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously.
+Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It
+came, unswerving, from behind the trees.
+
+'I am sure it is for us,' she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.
+Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and
+pointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little of
+her faith.
+
+'It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn't it seem to you to be
+travelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.'
+
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'Aylwin'.
+
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+
+Helena was almost happy.
+
+'I am right,' said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and
+Helena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand
+to confirm it.'
+
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like
+a greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was
+mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,
+his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a
+certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy
+insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courage
+to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on
+towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky, asking
+of everything, 'Am I right? Am I right?' He did not mind what happened
+to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by 'right' he did
+not trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had been
+reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid,
+and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him
+deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.
+
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the
+fountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from
+the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they
+hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the
+hive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of
+purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--a
+village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.
+
+'Ah, well!' thought Siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm,
+what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light,
+and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from these
+rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of
+night, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the day will
+swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, and
+humming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell and
+the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happens
+we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or not,
+bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_
+always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least,
+I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there
+in the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned bright; I
+have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--I wonder where? We can
+never point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!'
+
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking
+towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the
+night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their
+first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw the
+quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between
+high embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered with
+roses of Sharon--the large golden St John's wort of finest silk. He
+looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,
+ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:
+
+'Do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of Sharon all along here?'
+
+'I do,' replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'Weren't they
+pretty?'
+
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+
+'Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I
+should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.'
+
+He smiled, without answering.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+
+'But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked.
+She put the question timidly. 'Would you care to?' she added.
+
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+
+'No,' he said gently; 'I think we had better not.' Almost for the first
+time he did not make apologetic explanation.
+
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning
+of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near
+Sutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and
+her basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite
+ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. Siegmund
+was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, he
+said to himself, 'Ah, well, it must be so.'
+
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+
+'At least,' she said doubtfully, 'I shall see you at the station.'
+
+'At Waterloo?' he asked.
+
+'No, at Wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone.
+
+'But--' he began.
+
+'It will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. 'Much better than crossing London from Victoria to
+Waterloo.'
+
+'Very well,' he replied.
+
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+
+'You will get in Wimbledon 10.5--leave 10.40--leave Waterloo 11.30,' he
+said.
+
+'Very good,' she answered.
+
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the
+train to stop.
+
+'If only she will soon go!' thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable
+minute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,
+pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon
+the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him,
+he could scarcely breathe. 'How long will it be?' he said to himself,
+looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the lady who
+could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her;
+he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors slammed and
+the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.
+
+'Now I lose her,' said Siegmund.
+
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+
+'Good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away.
+
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with
+sickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why
+did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what
+would she do?
+
+
+
+_Chapter 22_
+
+
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to
+Wimbledon. London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this
+peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from
+Victoria to Waterloo.
+
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
+swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
+clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
+hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
+full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating
+with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and
+stood there panting--great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always
+amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased
+with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was
+glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her
+with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the
+rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing
+along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to
+her. 'Discords,' she said, 'after the trees and sea.' She liked the
+glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for
+pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of Heaven;
+but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland.
+
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched
+the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself
+far before him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted
+with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in
+their movement. There was a soft vividness of life in their carriage; it
+reminded Siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised
+candle-flame. The women went blithely alongside. Occasionally, in
+passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he
+knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy;
+besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. The eyes
+of the women said, 'You are comely, you are lovable,' and
+Siegmund smiled.
+
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a
+lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of
+grey-gold light.
+
+'It is a wonderful night,' he said to himself. 'There are not two such
+in a year.'
+
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his
+heart. This purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth
+of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip
+sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him.
+
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but
+rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the
+bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a
+hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the
+black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+
+'Ah!' said Siegmund to himself; 'it is far too wonderful for me. Here,
+as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever
+happens, the world is wonderful.'
+
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night,
+the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the
+floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like
+an army of angels filing past on one of God's campaigns, the purring
+haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people. Siegmund
+went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of life. He
+did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he walked
+home in the moonless dark.
+
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He
+did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: 'Now
+for the beginning of Hell!'
+
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy
+murmur. The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten,
+Siegmund opened the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not
+raise her head. Frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a
+book. He did not look up. Vera had her fingers thrust in among her hair,
+and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before her.
+Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to show they were aware
+of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people who
+cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go. His
+wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing
+under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in the
+creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+
+'I suppose the children are in bed,' he said.
+
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily
+turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly
+interested and had known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his
+slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another.
+
+'They've been gone two hours,' said Frank at last, still without raising
+his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was
+jarring, not yet having developed a man's fullness.
+
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The
+slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag
+seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to
+speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's scornful
+restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat
+leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered
+with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+
+'Do you want any supper?' asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of
+her voice startled him into looking at her.
+
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund's heart went
+down with weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+
+'Aren't _you_ having any?' he asked.
+
+The table was not laid. Beatrice's work-basket, a little wicker
+fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and
+reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows on
+the table.
+
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took out
+a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth
+over one end of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock
+with her hand.
+
+'Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?'
+she asked.
+
+'In where?'
+
+In this month's _Nash's_.'
+
+'No,' replied Beatrice. 'What time have I for reading, much less for
+anything else?'
+
+'You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people,
+then,' said Vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. She rose. 'Let me
+do this. You sit down; you are tired, Mother,' she said.
+
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed
+her. Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his
+thin shoulders lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on
+his knees, looking into the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking of
+crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. All the time Vera was heard
+chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond
+tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail to
+her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity.
+
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a
+plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer,
+and some bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the
+leaves of her magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely
+for his father. He looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained
+himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in
+with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright.
+
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly
+clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin--in fact, it was
+just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous
+neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an
+established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong,
+impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the
+little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. Her
+face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to sew.
+
+'What do you say, Mother?' said Vera, as if resuming a conversation.
+'Shall it be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?'
+
+'I say, as I said before,' replied Beatrice: 'I cannot afford to go
+out.'
+
+'But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. _Dites
+donc_!'
+
+'There are other things to think of,' said Beatrice.
+
+'Now, _maman, nous avons change tout cela_! We are going out--a jolly
+little razzle!' Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and
+smiled at her mother gaily.
+
+'I am afraid there will be no _razzle_'--Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly--'for me. You are slangy, Vera.'
+
+'_Un doux argot, ma mere_. You look tired.'
+
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+
+'I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,' she said.
+
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking
+in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked
+up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+
+'There's your supper, Father.'
+
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head
+lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+
+Siegmund was hungry.
+
+'Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to
+himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He
+seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and
+away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching
+from under his eyebrows.
+
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of
+his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it,
+despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night.
+He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat
+irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.
+
+'Good night!' he said.
+
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut
+the door and went.
+
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the
+tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically,
+catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The
+faces of the two children set hard with hate.
+
+'He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing
+and her cottons.
+
+'At any rate, he's come back red enough,' said Frank, in his grating
+tone of contempt. 'He's like boiled salmon.'
+
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to
+the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude.
+
+'He _would_ come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's
+sneer.
+
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread,
+and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at
+this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched
+her with jealous eyes.
+
+'There is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said Beatrice to him. 'I
+kept you some.'
+
+'All right, Ma,' he replied. Fetch it in.'
+
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+
+'And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called Vera after her.
+
+'The damned coward! Ain't he a rotten funker?' said Frank, _sotto voce_,
+while his mother was out of the room.
+
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank
+yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother,
+and, putting his hand on her arm--the feel of his mother's round arm
+under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise--he said, more gratingly
+than ever:
+
+'Ne'er mind, Ma; we'll be all right to you.' Then he bent and kissed
+her. 'Good night, Mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of
+the room.
+
+Beatrice was crying.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 23_
+
+
+'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind
+him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family
+criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent
+judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house
+from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I
+come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'
+
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him
+a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his
+position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might
+feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after
+time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught
+him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and
+his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touched
+them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own
+childish touch-and-shrink.
+
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he
+stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and
+wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously
+soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The
+night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of
+light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose
+up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth
+of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the
+whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night
+occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across
+the distance.
+
+'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything into
+a oneness. I wonder what is in it.'
+
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the
+night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a
+hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A
+star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a
+yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had
+seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
+
+'It is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a good
+sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'
+
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was
+soon in bed.
+
+'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'
+
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
+his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,
+I've got to go through it.'
+
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
+forgot when he awoke. Only this naive question and answer betrayed what
+had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
+knowledge vanished.
+
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
+did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
+thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
+'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his
+heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep
+activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been
+his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and
+nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the
+expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+
+'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I
+looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.
+Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the
+departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by
+facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it
+was keen, was half pleasure.
+
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
+next to his, and he heard her:
+
+'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.'
+
+'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
+
+'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I
+slept.'
+
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
+The minutes passed.
+
+'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to
+himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
+humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep
+him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
+anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was
+heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
+heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of
+the stairs:
+
+'Do you want any hot water?'
+
+'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,
+lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
+second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
+same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
+girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
+suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
+
+'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'
+Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting
+impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no
+answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
+
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+
+'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you
+want?'
+
+'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
+
+'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are
+you shouting for?'
+
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
+into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'
+
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of
+the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.
+She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and
+pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her
+feet as she went downstairs.
+
+'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'
+
+The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the
+kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's
+feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.
+He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive
+to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and
+meet them all.
+
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'
+Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
+of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
+from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
+suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
+thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
+downstairs. It was nine o'clock.
+
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
+his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
+waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
+knocked loudly.
+
+'All right,' said he.
+
+Then she went downstairs.
+
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's
+voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+
+'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the
+table for a week.'
+
+Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
+to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
+the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
+Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
+pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
+bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
+which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her
+stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
+sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,
+but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge
+and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
+She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
+her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
+child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
+
+'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'
+
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
+back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
+the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
+turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
+his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be
+trying to discover something in him.
+
+'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
+
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
+slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
+continued to regard him curiously.
+
+'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
+
+'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
+
+'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
+
+'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+
+'Much farther than that,' he replied.
+
+'To Worthing?' she asked.
+
+'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
+
+'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
+
+'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
+
+'Twuly?' she asked.
+
+'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
+
+'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
+
+'I will next time,' he replied.
+
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+
+'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+
+'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--'
+
+'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.
+
+'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.
+
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+
+'You _are_ red,' she said.
+
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+
+'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'
+
+'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+
+'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't
+you?'
+
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and
+she drew away from him, unwilling.
+
+'Come and let me look,' he repeated.
+
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her
+face, shy, suspicious, condemning.
+
+'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+
+'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'
+
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went
+downstairs without going into his room.
+
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.
+He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the
+bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and
+licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
+
+'A pity to wash it off,' he said.
+
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment
+exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he
+thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'
+
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of
+forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+
+'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should
+find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my
+affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no
+more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a
+man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of
+creation.'
+
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His
+sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was
+dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was
+indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to
+the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.
+He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and
+Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude
+of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt
+as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked
+nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would
+not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the
+cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few
+days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly
+through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and
+of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and
+madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life
+struggled in a clogged and broken channel.
+
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He
+would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and
+sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him
+into consciousness.
+
+'I suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition
+in his head.
+
+'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intense
+irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot
+irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair
+without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move
+about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
+
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which
+she was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to see
+what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed
+intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let
+go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she
+had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed
+him closely.
+
+'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.
+
+Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'
+
+'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.
+
+'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.
+
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up
+anxiously.
+
+'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'But what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child.
+
+'Nothing--nothing that I can tell _you_. He's only spoilt all our
+lives.'
+
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+
+'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a
+nice plum?'
+
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.
+She was too much perplexed.
+
+'What do you say?' asked her mother.
+
+'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.
+
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in
+his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing
+irritability from his belly.
+
+'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.
+
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+
+'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he asked
+himself.
+
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening
+to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he
+could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would
+be better.
+
+'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this
+out.
+
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or
+distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often
+dreamed of, farming in Canada.
+
+'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.'
+
+'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.
+
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+
+'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better be
+dead. To have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.'
+
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed
+entertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' he
+asked himself.
+
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+
+'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' he
+cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a
+raw place.
+
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.
+There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He
+merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood
+holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
+
+'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.
+
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,
+before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+
+'Dinner's ready.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'
+
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+
+'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.
+
+'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in
+her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+
+'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie--never
+mind.'
+
+The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and
+Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and
+grew cold.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 24_
+
+
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
+pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
+was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
+her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
+like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into
+his box.
+
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
+ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
+which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly
+entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to
+peck forwards as she said:
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+
+'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
+manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?'
+
+'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.
+
+'H'm!'
+
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
+sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
+forbore to question.
+
+'You look well,' she said.
+
+Helena smiled ironically.
+
+'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful,
+affectionate manner she had assumed.
+
+'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.
+
+'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
+regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued,
+'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm,
+like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after
+a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will
+you have?'
+
+'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.
+
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+
+'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point
+curtly.
+
+'Lemonade,' said Helena.
+
+Presently Mr Verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
+voice.
+
+'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+
+'As you see, Pater,' she answered.
+
+'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
+tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!'
+her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can
+never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless
+pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will
+not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of
+offence upon it.
+
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to
+the door.
+
+'Has she come?'
+
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung
+herself upon Helena and kissed her.
+
+'How long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with
+affection.
+
+'Ten minutes,' replied Helena.
+
+'Why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and
+meet you?' Louisa reproached her.
+
+'Why?' drawled Helena.
+
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by
+this sarcasm.
+
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that
+night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their
+usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl--a
+minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made
+confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy
+which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena's
+thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea,
+pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with Siegmund, but
+reaching no further.
+
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender
+advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,
+all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided
+his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity
+which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated
+flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. But the day wore on. Helena
+pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a little,
+mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.
+
+At last the night fell.
+
+'Well,' said Helena to her mother, 'I suppose I'd better pack.'
+
+'Haven't you done it?' cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.
+'You'll never have it done. I'd better help you. What times does the
+train go?'
+
+Helena smiled.
+
+'Ten minutes to ten.'
+
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was
+ample time for everything.
+
+'Nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' Mrs Verden said.
+
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+
+'I'll come with you to the station,' suggested Mrs Verden. 'I'll see the
+last of you. We shan't see much of you just now.'
+
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+
+'Oh, I wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too
+evident.
+
+'Yes--I will--I'll see you off.'
+
+Mrs Verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was
+curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was
+reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played
+the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress.
+
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
+eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away
+swiftly as if she had been burned.
+
+'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
+wonder?'
+
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
+how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
+ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
+came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
+a chair.
+
+'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
+
+'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
+to a child.
+
+'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
+
+'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
+Helena.
+
+'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
+exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+
+'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
+the basket or the violin, Mater?'
+
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
+smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
+Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
+corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
+mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
+third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
+face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
+blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
+was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
+shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
+miles--two hundred and forty miles.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 25_
+
+
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice,
+who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of
+angry hysteria.
+
+'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had
+asked him coldly.
+
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+
+'Tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered.
+
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
+flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.
+
+'What do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done
+enough. We can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. You
+have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want
+to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember
+that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
+You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
+responsible for your children, do you think?'
+
+'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very
+coldly.
+
+'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
+sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
+children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
+_I'll_ stop, I tell you _I'll_ do as I like. _I'll_ go as well. No, I
+wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn't leave
+little children--to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they
+mightn't be yours.'
+
+'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.
+
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
+sick.
+
+Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.
+
+'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a
+great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do
+you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit
+moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
+wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
+up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of
+your hand?'
+
+'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to
+yourself!'
+
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath.
+Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and
+trembling.
+
+'You coward--you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
+who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
+what I am.'
+
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
+with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
+bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
+and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
+withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
+should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger,
+which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He
+trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
+Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
+found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
+Vera tackled the situation.
+
+'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.
+
+Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
+others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no
+reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
+Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
+a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'
+
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
+looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog--'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.
+
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
+taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
+the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
+father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
+in her softest and most persuasive tones:
+
+'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of
+meat. Mam, Mam!'
+
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's
+knee.
+
+'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.
+
+No response.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered.
+
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
+her mother's breast.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.
+
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
+tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her
+close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
+face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
+whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--'
+
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
+nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
+she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
+tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
+gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
+muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
+rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was
+the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the
+trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low;
+he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
+scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous
+sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
+cautiously asking:
+
+'Mam, is dad cross--is he? What did he do?'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'
+
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister.
+The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+
+'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
+unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
+afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
+slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
+the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
+the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
+small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting
+and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does
+who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the
+child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held
+his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
+do he did not know.
+
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
+another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
+wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
+against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
+world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face
+against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a
+piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now--his
+heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. It would
+open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
+with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+
+'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'
+
+'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
+hesitate, move, then turn away.
+
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
+stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
+bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
+pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
+his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay
+down on the bed.
+
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
+of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
+work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
+jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
+pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
+shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
+two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
+again, smiling.
+
+'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
+himself.
+
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
+weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
+intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+
+'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
+instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
+must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
+
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
+her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
+down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
+she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
+that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
+in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
+This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
+should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
+it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+
+'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
+'What time is it?'
+
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
+time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+
+'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
+good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'
+
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
+Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+
+'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'
+
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
+wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
+his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
+was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
+though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
+were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
+
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
+path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran
+out crying:
+
+'Are you going out? Where are you going?'
+
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+
+'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+
+'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
+long.'
+
+'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+
+'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'
+
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+
+'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 26_
+
+
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
+packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
+stopped before the indicator.
+
+'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice,
+'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'
+
+'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.
+
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+
+'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'
+
+'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa,
+skittish.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by
+appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of
+
+    '"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad,
+    And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'
+
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
+something, chimed in sarcastically:
+
+'"They are nothing to her madness--"'
+
+'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.
+
+'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.
+
+'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity
+was given me in large doses.'
+
+'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness,
+if you call it such. You are always so serious.'
+
+'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed
+Olive.
+
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
+acknowledging the sarcasm.
+
+'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the
+point?'
+
+'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to
+accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.'
+
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+
+'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.
+
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
+thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
+made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a
+moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on
+a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under
+the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already
+twenty-five minutes past ten.
+
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
+the platform.
+
+'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'
+
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
+Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
+could not read him.
+
+'Olive is there, too,' she explained.
+
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
+amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things
+more complex.
+
+'Does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked.
+
+'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
+forward to be introduced.
+
+'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the
+dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'
+
+'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling,
+continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'
+
+'She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,' cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really
+good friends.
+
+'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+
+'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.
+
+'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'
+
+'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
+added: 'The children are happier without me.'
+
+'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
+'It's not true.'
+
+'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's
+all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'
+
+Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
+platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
+haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm;
+farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket,
+was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train
+with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon
+the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in
+vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then
+Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the
+rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
+distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+
+'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
+on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'
+
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
+eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of
+his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her
+lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
+
+'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
+What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply.
+She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
+Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away
+her hold over him.
+
+'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was
+to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have
+not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you--and life
+must go on.'
+
+'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a
+day after you.'
+
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
+scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to
+me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
+out tonight there is nothing left.'
+
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train
+was to leave from another platform.
+
+'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa
+and Olive.
+
+'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and
+excitedly announcing the news.
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+
+'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing
+on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the
+sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse
+_sotto voce_.
+
+'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a
+good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it--one
+that will last.'
+
+'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
+ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
+animated to the calmly ironical.
+
+'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
+'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'
+
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+
+'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.
+
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
+watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+
+'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
+make Siegmund talk.'
+
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
+Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
+then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
+two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
+She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people
+entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
+
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
+Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
+her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
+immediately called:
+
+'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'I cannot come,' he said.
+
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
+door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
+sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
+She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+
+'Oh--go--go--go--when will she go?'
+
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+
+'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.
+
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
+the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
+door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa'
+spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at
+Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
+helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
+forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
+one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
+kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because
+she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil
+from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she
+wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could
+not yield.
+
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
+not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
+have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
+the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
+flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
+The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.
+
+'Monday,' she whispered--'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should
+receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
+turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+
+'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at
+a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 27_
+
+
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
+of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till
+they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a
+picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white,
+rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by
+the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
+still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
+west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like
+a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him,
+as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth
+was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
+Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very
+far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy
+eyes, came between again.
+
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
+house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
+feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
+she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
+door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
+
+'You have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she
+found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+
+'Ay,' returned Siegmund.
+
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head
+between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+
+'Will you have anything to eat?' she asked.
+
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole
+of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her
+breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down
+and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor
+spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,
+querulous with trouble.
+
+'Aren't you going to bed?' she asked.
+
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half
+hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+
+'Aren't you going to bed, Father?'
+
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of
+having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was
+not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again
+she sat waiting.
+
+'Father!' she cried at last.
+
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said.
+
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+
+'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he
+did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to
+brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+
+'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I
+must go to bed--I must go to bed--I am very tired.' He stumbled over the
+door mat into his own room.
+
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the
+sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,
+trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing
+up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in
+her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping
+sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to
+get into bed.
+
+'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He
+could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him
+pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action
+aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got
+things right at last, and was in bed.
+
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have
+called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his
+brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening
+rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of
+consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of
+consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+
+'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any
+noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to
+find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could
+remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately
+he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This
+frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the
+family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in
+silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort
+of sleep.
+
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.
+The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot
+vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.
+Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,
+and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a
+terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.
+
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture
+of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and
+running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His
+every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to
+stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the track of this
+drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start
+from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little
+muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the running of a
+spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not wipe himself he
+did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which
+seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which
+he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples. Those
+he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny,
+vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits,
+down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad
+quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet,
+highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with
+outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he
+endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst.
+
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of
+hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs.
+He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on
+the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he
+had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an
+instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as ever
+to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was
+clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his
+sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar
+sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It
+seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and
+the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it
+he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and
+soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a
+sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.
+
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
+and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was
+a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
+something fresh and cool.
+
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
+was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
+clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out
+on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining
+duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in
+the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly
+to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into
+the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring
+restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The
+lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,
+moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered
+its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched
+it with wonder and delight.
+
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon
+would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony
+to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,
+crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the
+western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would
+laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its
+prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last
+run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself
+as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low
+off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
+longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the
+disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning
+gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the
+mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west
+they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising
+higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the
+moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had
+gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As
+a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling
+with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching
+the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole
+field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse
+which floats on water.
+
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were
+astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew
+he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at
+the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache
+and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.
+
+'Where is Helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena
+was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was
+out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as
+if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head
+seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time he sat
+with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his present
+state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him
+with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant company of friends,
+the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts,
+was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing could
+please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the
+discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of
+life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and
+discoloured, racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset
+himself into joint? The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his
+children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his friends of the orchestra. How
+could he set himself again into joint with these? It was impossible.
+Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with
+humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena, which he
+could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night, the
+music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_ which was absurd. In fine, it was
+all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained
+possible? Why, to depart. 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' He
+could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
+
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an
+agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very
+well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,
+Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was
+insufferable--impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not
+strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return
+to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go
+to Helena.
+
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he
+could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the
+room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought
+of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood
+at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap
+would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
+
+'Very well!' said Siegmund, 'it is finally settled. I had better write
+to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I'd better
+tell her.'
+
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote
+nothing. At last he gave up.
+
+'Perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'She said she would
+come with me--perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When
+she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.'
+
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+
+'She will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with
+elation.
+
+'That is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+
+'It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,' he concluded.
+
+Then he sat down again.
+
+'"But for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself.
+
+'It is not fear,' he said. 'The act itself will be horrible and
+fearsome, but the after-death--it's no more than struggling awake when
+you're sick with a fright of dreams. "We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on."'
+
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so
+wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He
+experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness
+in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though
+here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held
+faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was
+cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness
+of his.
+
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or
+of hate.
+
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was
+no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit
+and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer
+universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from
+its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to
+bear the responsibility of the deflection?
+
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;
+otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would
+have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible
+parents weaker than himself.
+
+'I know the heart of life is kind,' said Siegmund, 'because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or
+anybody. We suffer, and we don't know why, often. Life doesn't explain.
+But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all,
+Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much
+zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair
+of Life.'
+
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the
+atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over
+to an imaginary god.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I can't help it. I do not feel altogether
+self-responsible.'
+
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been
+vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into
+a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at
+his door.
+
+'There are two letters for you. Father.'
+
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,
+and he had no idea of his time or place.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard
+his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the
+throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of
+his body.
+
+'What made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. It was a very
+unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'She
+wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.'
+
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The
+discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not
+fetch in the letters.
+
+'Is it so late?' he said. 'Is there no more time for me?'
+
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked
+across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.
+He sat down on the bed.
+
+'What am I going to do?' he asked himself.
+
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his
+belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists
+into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man
+who is sick, incapable of thought or action.
+
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+
+'Here is your shaving-water,' said Beatrice in cold tones. 'It's half
+past nine.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+
+'And what time shall you expect dinner?' asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+
+'Any time. I'm not going out,' he answered.
+
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he
+was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,
+bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He
+was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not
+keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he
+call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed
+his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was
+thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a
+mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with
+convulsive sickness.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 28_
+
+
+Siegmund's lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it
+became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up
+his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving
+the breakfast spread in the kitchen.
+
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner
+at two o'clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with
+her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it
+was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an
+hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning,
+when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with
+coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and
+determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and
+magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the
+grate, which was clear, Friday having been charwoman's day, passing
+swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. It was
+Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In the
+afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what
+occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to
+have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She
+was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come
+to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. Beatrice was going to do
+battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a
+proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust things out of sight,
+or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.
+
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+
+'He can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'Here I've been up
+since seven, broiling at it. I should think he's pitying himself. He
+ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work
+every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too
+little work. He has had too much his own way. But it's come to a stop
+now. I'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.'
+
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the
+bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of
+work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her
+wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table
+and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full
+intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness.
+She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her. As she was
+wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her
+hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting
+them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to make the
+beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so
+heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover
+breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself,
+she said loudly at Siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile:
+
+'Aren't you going to get up?'
+
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the
+gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+
+'It's after half past ten--aren't you going to get up?' she called.
+
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly
+she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of
+shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She
+returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. She
+waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the
+sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull
+and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring,
+so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front
+garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was
+open--everything seemed quiet.
+
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung
+them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some
+dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was
+no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes
+blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out
+on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his
+ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. She
+hurried to him.
+
+'Will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she
+asked wildly.
+
+'Why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly
+familiar. 'Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I'll come.'
+
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so
+loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs
+must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with
+a will.
+
+'Where is he, Mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the
+side passage.
+
+'He's in his bedroom, and I can't get an answer from him.'
+
+'Then I s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift
+one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was
+Siegmund's room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was
+studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and
+afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also knew
+there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.
+
+'Is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner.
+
+'Yes, over the porch,' replied Beatrice.
+
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+
+'It's easy enough,' he said. 'The door's open, and we're soon on the
+balcony.'
+
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious
+fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously
+clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the
+ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he
+was frightened.
+
+'I say there!' he called loudly.
+
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+
+'Go in!' she cried. 'Go in! Is he there?'
+
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and
+peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed
+slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to
+take flight.
+
+'Hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner
+exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:
+
+'I believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!'
+
+'No!' cried Beatrice. 'No, no, no!'
+
+'I believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man.
+
+'Go in and see if he's dead!' cried Beatrice.
+
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+
+'I believe he is,' he said doubtfully.
+
+'No--go and see!' screamed Beatrice.
+
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the
+body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried
+to lift it down. It was too heavy.
+
+'I know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to
+do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between
+himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his
+way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the
+body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the
+scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled the
+body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with
+trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. It
+was bedded in Siegmund's neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it
+frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead
+man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his
+sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side
+naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved,
+ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on
+the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face
+hardly recognizable.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 29_
+
+
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive
+lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in
+a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
+in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
+had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
+north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
+Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed
+between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling
+companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of
+manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward.
+Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The
+north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
+English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
+whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could
+hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward
+whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding
+their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle
+disconcerted by this amusement.
+
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
+the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The
+men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went
+to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat
+weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the
+dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the
+women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought
+of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
+appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
+imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under
+arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
+lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
+and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
+There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
+dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
+flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
+came up.
+
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
+they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
+rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
+very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
+She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock,
+breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid
+blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
+and harsh.
+
+'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.
+
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
+rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
+in an ill humour.
+
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
+the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically
+the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walkuere_; in the second place,
+_Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a
+late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was
+a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of
+pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which
+suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided
+lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she stood on
+the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's
+love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.
+
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
+disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable
+because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in
+Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she
+forgot most whiles.
+
+On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of
+thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
+waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the
+mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her
+friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
+
+'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
+'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!'
+
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
+She hurried to the bed.
+
+'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the
+shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'
+
+'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's _lovely_--lovely!'
+
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
+shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
+shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
+spasmodically.
+
+'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did
+you see that?'
+
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
+Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+
+'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the
+bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'
+
+'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
+jest.
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'
+
+Helena laughed ironically.
+
+'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
+
+'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
+offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
+know, it's not that I'm afraid....'
+
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
+friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
+feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
+opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
+blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
+being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
+thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
+had happened.
+
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
+persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+
+'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
+
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
+to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
+a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
+storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
+The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
+feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
+
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
+have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
+grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+
+'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
+happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
+spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
+dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
+impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'
+
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
+received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
+arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
+and see.'
+
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
+Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
+she went to sleep.
+
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
+wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
+her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
+reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
+of affairs.
+
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
+fatal awaited her.
+
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
+would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
+rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
+tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
+let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
+sat up:
+
+'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
+holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'
+
+'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
+sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'
+
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
+their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
+thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
+more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
+throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
+after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
+the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
+London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
+
+'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
+would come to me.'
+
+'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
+
+'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
+
+'I promise,' he answered.
+
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
+be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
+her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
+what it could.
+
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
+is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
+of suspense.
+
+Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
+this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
+platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
+great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
+planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
+could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
+prearranged everything minutely.
+
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+
+'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
+----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
+holiday on the South Coast....'
+
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+
+'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
+was expressed for the widow and children.'
+
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
+Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where
+she was going.
+
+'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a
+brick, it was like a brick.'
+
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
+lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
+side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house
+standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
+stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
+at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
+anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
+destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
+in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
+over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
+looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to
+return to Cornwall.
+
+'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
+suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
+a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
+eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
+wired the news:
+
+'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
+her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
+was chaotic.
+
+'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
+only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
+She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
+maiming her.
+
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
+mother opened to her.
+
+'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.
+
+'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the
+dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
+there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
+took it. It was from one of the London papers.
+
+'Inquest was held today upon the body of ----.'
+
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her
+mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+
+'How did you get to know?' she asked.
+
+'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in
+her muted, toneless voice.
+
+'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.
+
+'No,' replied Helena.
+
+'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother
+hesitatingly.
+
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
+looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently
+to help her.
+
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her.
+Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by
+watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look.
+They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
+powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
+ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.
+
+Helena shivered slightly.
+
+'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'
+
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
+night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
+When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
+yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
+Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.
+
+'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.
+
+'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
+immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
+entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
+erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
+haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
+himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+
+'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.
+
+'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.
+
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
+cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
+in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
+broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
+could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
+to his head; he was thinking and praying.
+
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
+and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
+followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's
+room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed
+and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but
+occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her
+wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she
+uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and
+soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence,
+Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the
+light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail,
+and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
+bedside, and prayed.
+
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind
+of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to
+herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
+from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
+soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but
+she could not bear to be looked at.
+
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
+having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
+nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
+as she entered.
+
+'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.
+
+'Is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.
+
+'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'
+
+'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+
+He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
+She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
+quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility
+upon himself.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 30_
+
+
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with
+full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
+the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
+When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's
+understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
+suspended.
+
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
+herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
+neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
+stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
+confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house,
+sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
+and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
+bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
+glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
+was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
+wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
+inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
+dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
+
+'The children!' she said to herself--'the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.'
+
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose
+from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back
+a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
+practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
+what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to
+understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
+exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
+blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the
+personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
+common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after
+the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of
+Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
+
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
+living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
+house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
+death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
+heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
+she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
+marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
+tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
+to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
+on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
+hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
+hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's
+father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
+further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
+Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
+come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
+was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
+doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The
+world was big with promise.
+
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice's
+establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
+was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
+blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
+attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
+hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
+sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
+less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
+was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
+learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
+an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
+done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
+Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was naive, inclined to suffer in the first
+pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
+sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
+liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
+stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
+vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him.
+Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance,
+but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of the superior
+and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
+without hurting him.
+
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
+Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his
+elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past
+seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was
+setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room
+through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of
+the twilight.
+
+'What, you here all alone!' exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
+putting the children to bed. 'I thought you had gone out.'
+
+'No--o! What's the use,' replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
+landlady, 'of going out? There's nowhere to go.'
+
+'Oh, come! There's the Heath, and the City--and you must join a tennis
+club. Now I know just the thing--the club to which Vera belongs.'
+
+'Ah, yes! You go down to the City--but there's nothing there--what I
+mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the
+word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.'
+
+'Oh, don't say that!' exclaimed Beatrice. 'You want to enjoy life.'
+
+'Just so! Ah, just so!' exclaimed Mr Allport. 'But all the same--it's
+like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
+say--what's the good, after all? It's merely living because you've
+got to.'
+
+'You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
+differently myself; yet I'll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
+What's the trouble now?'
+
+'We-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
+say--it's nothing very definite. But, after all--what is there to do but
+to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That's the best way.'
+
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+
+'You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,' she said. 'You don't think of the
+others.'
+
+'I don't know,' he drawled. 'What does it matter? Look here--who'd care?
+What I mean to say--for long?'
+
+'That's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied Beatrice gravely.
+
+'Nevertheless,' said Mr. Allport, 'it's true--isn't it?'
+
+'It is not--and I _should_ know,' replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and
+waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You
+men, you're all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.'
+
+'Ah, but then,' said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,
+looking at Beatrice's black dress, 'I've no one depending on _me_.'
+
+'No--you haven't--but you've a mother and sister. The women always have
+to bear the brunt.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+
+'Yes, they do rather,' he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+
+'My husband--' began Beatrice. The young man waited. 'My husband was one
+of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he'd found it--he couldn't
+carry it off--and left it--to me.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+
+'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed softly. 'Surely he didn't--?'
+
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'I know what it is to bear that kind of thing--and it's
+no light thing, I can assure you.'
+
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+
+'And when was this, then--that he--?' asked Mr. Allport, almost with
+reverence.
+
+'Only last year,' replied Beatrice.
+
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by
+little Beatrice told him so much: 'Her husband had got entangled with
+another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last
+she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He
+had killed himself--hanged himself--and left her penniless. Her people,
+who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow them.
+She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for herself;
+it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their careless
+youth, that her heart was heavy.'
+
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and
+sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by
+tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+
+'Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?'
+
+'I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.'
+
+'Pray do not overlook me,' said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+
+'Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting
+with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.'
+
+'On the contrary,' replied Mr. Allport, 'Mrs. MacNair has been so good
+as to bear with me making a fool of myself.'
+
+'In what way?' asked Vera sharply.
+
+'Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,' said
+Beatrice playfully.
+
+'Unfortunately, I am not--or at least I am not yet aware of it,' said
+Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the
+young man's knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped
+behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the
+richly darkening sky.
+
+'Don't look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it's all rind,' said Mr Allport
+in melancholy mockery. 'Somebody's bitten all the meat out of our slice
+of moon, and left us nothing but peel.'
+
+'It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell--one portion,'
+replied Vera.
+
+'Never mind, Miss MacNair,' he said, 'Whoever got the slice found it
+raw, I think.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'But isn't it a beautiful evening? I will
+just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.'
+
+'What primroses?' he exclaimed.
+
+'Evening primroses--there are some.'
+
+'Are there?' he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+
+'Yes, come and look,' she said.
+
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+
+'What, nobody in!' they heard him exclaim.
+
+'There is Holiday,' murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+
+'Ho! that's where you are!' he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed
+Vera's trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress to
+betray herself.
+
+'What have you got?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing in particular,' replied Mr Allport.
+
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+
+'Oh, well, if it's nothing particular and private--' said Mr Holiday,
+and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+
+'Curst fool!' muttered Mr Allport. 'I beg your pardon,' he added swiftly
+to Vera.
+
+'Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly,
+'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open while
+you're looking.'
+
+'No,' sniggered he, I don't blame 'em. Why should they give themselves
+away any more than you do? You won't open while you're watched.' He
+nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.
+
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in
+poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his
+teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+
+'Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not
+play now,' she replied.
+
+'But you will begin again,' pleaded Mr. Allport.
+
+'No, never!' she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The
+family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He
+watched her interestedly.
+
+'Mother used to play--' she began.
+
+'Vera!' said Beatrice reproachfully.
+
+'Let us have a song,' suggested Mr. Holiday.
+
+'Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,' said Vera, going to the
+music-rack.
+
+'Nay--I--it's not me,' Holiday began.
+
+'"The Village Blacksmith",' said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday
+advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.
+
+'But I have not touched the piano for--for years, I am sure,' protested
+Beatrice.
+
+'You can play beautifully,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared
+at him. Vera remained very calm.
+
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went out
+abruptly.
+
+'Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow's jellies are not made,'
+laughed Vera.
+
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She
+would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half
+past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was
+studying a cookery-book.
+
+'You, too, at the midnight lamp!' exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+
+'Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,' Beatrice replied.
+
+'We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,' smiled
+the young man ironically.
+
+'I must look after you,' said Beatrice.
+
+'You do--wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.'
+The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+
+'Because I scan a list of puddings?' smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+
+'For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.' He bowed to her.
+
+'Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.'
+
+'I opened the door,' said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+
+'It is not fair,' said Beatrice. 'I am clumsy now--clumsy. I once could
+play.'
+
+'You play excellently. Why that "once could"?' said MacWhirter.
+
+'Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,' she
+replied.
+
+'We,' said MacWhirter, 'are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than
+excellent.'
+
+'Good old Monsieur Fanniere, how he would scold me! He said I would not
+take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I
+always think Scripture false in French, do not you?'
+
+'Er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to
+say.'
+
+'No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.'
+
+'Ah--that would be very interesting.'
+
+'Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.'
+
+'Alas!' assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+
+'Those times were very different from these,' said Beatrice.
+
+'I should think so,' said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 31_
+
+
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund's death, Helena
+sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue
+linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a
+yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air of
+the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with
+her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song.
+She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
+
+'I can't get it--it's no use. I think it's the swinging of the car
+prevents me getting the time,' she said.
+
+'These little outside things always come a victory over you,' he
+laughed.
+
+'Do they?' she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It
+was six o'clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim,
+warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners
+of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck
+by the wind.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, 'it feels rather like rain.'
+
+'Then,' said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on
+the pavement, 'you certainly ought not to be out.'
+
+'I ought not,' she said, 'for I'm totally unprovided.'
+
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill
+off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side
+stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two
+great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity,
+at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena
+and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the
+other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena
+laughed at them.
+
+'They are--' she began, in her slow manner.
+
+'Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,' he continued.
+
+'No,' she said, 'they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.'
+
+'Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.'
+
+'It appears so,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs generally chum up to me,' he said.
+
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+
+'I remember,' she said, still laughing, 'at Knockholt--you--a half-grown
+lamb--a dog--in procession.' She marked the position of the three with
+her finger.
+
+'What an ass I must have looked!' he said.
+
+'Sort of silent Pied Piper,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs do follow me like that, though,' he said.
+
+'They did Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed
+him home.'
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember, too,' she said, 'a little black-and-white kitten that
+followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. And I remember
+finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don't think I ever
+quite forgave my mater that.'
+
+'More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,' he said.
+
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+
+'For the latter, you see,' she replied, 'I am not responsible.'
+
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+
+'You know,' said Helena, 'if it begins it will continue all night. Look
+at that!'
+
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+
+'Had we better go back?' he asked.
+
+'Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we
+see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.'
+
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned
+away.
+
+'It is exactly a year today,' she said, as they-walked on the round
+shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. 'Exactly!'
+
+'What anniversary is it, then?' he inquired.
+
+'Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here--by the day, Thursday.
+We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the
+larch-wood?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'We will go, then,' she said.
+
+'History repeats itself,' he remarked.
+
+'How?' she asked calmly.
+
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+
+'I see no repetition,' she added.
+
+'No,' he exclaimed bitingly; 'you are right!'
+
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men
+unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the
+air. Though he was angry, he spoke.
+
+'They got that hay rather damp,' he said. 'Can't you smell it--like hot
+tobacco and sandal-wood?'
+
+'What, is that the stack?' she asked.
+
+'Yes, it's always like that when it's picked damp.'
+
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned
+on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over
+the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full
+of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in
+the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers without speaking.
+She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over
+the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. He smiled
+gently to her.
+
+'Isn't it nice?' he said. 'Aren't they fine bits?'
+
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her
+dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place
+by her side.
+
+'I always like the gold-green of cut fields,' he said. 'They seem to
+give off sunshine even when the sky's greyer than a tabby cat.'
+
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing
+field on her right.
+
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into
+sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly
+whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather
+intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was
+exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried
+trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now
+and again he would look down passages between the trees--narrow pillared
+corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a
+twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood
+still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,
+causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a
+bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a
+larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of
+congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+
+'I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,' he said to
+himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+
+'Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make
+a brown mist, a brume?'
+
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+
+'H'm? Yes, I see what you mean.'
+
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+
+'That's the larch fog,' he laughed.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.'
+
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+
+'It laughs through its teeth,' he said, smiling, playing with everything
+he touched.
+
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,
+picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if
+pleased by a coincidence.
+
+'Last year,' she said, 'the larch-fingers stole both my pins--the same
+ones.'
+
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost
+with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down
+the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the
+moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep
+sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he
+hated Helena.
+
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley--one of those wide
+hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held
+loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue
+dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena's dress. They walked on
+a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for shelter.
+
+'Here,' said Byrne--'here is our tent--a black tartar's--ready pitched.'
+
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just
+back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good
+shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked
+under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was
+falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the
+monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone
+intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on
+the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the
+'tong-ting-tong' of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in
+the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each
+other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit
+better than where they stood before.
+
+'That's like us all,' said Byrne whimsically. 'We're all penned out on a
+wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is,
+it would be deliciously cosy.'
+
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and
+fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his
+eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without
+apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously
+increasing the pressure.
+
+'You are cold,' he said.
+
+'Only my hands, and they usually are,' she replied gently.
+
+'And mine are generally warm.'
+
+'I know that,' she said. 'It's almost the only warmth I get now--your
+hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.'
+
+'As good as a baked potato,' he said.
+
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+
+'So many calories per week--isn't that how we manage it?' he asked. 'On
+credit?'
+
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,
+which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their
+cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+
+'Tong-tong, tong,' went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena's home to
+read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his
+own language.
+
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.
+He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.
+Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.
+
+'I shan't knock it--it is all right,' he had said, protesting.
+
+This was Siegmund's violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and
+Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.
+
+'It was all right,' he repeated.
+
+'But you were not,' she had replied gently.
+
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in
+a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his
+gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to
+Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself
+delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.
+By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He
+relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what
+he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+
+'The Babes in the Wood,' he teased.
+
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird
+began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+
+'That little beggar sees it's a hopeless case, so he reminds us of
+heaven. But if he's going to cover us with yew-leaves, he's set
+himself a job.'
+
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing
+her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke
+for a while.
+
+'The rain continues,' he said.
+
+'And will do,' she added, laughing.
+
+'Quite content,' he said.
+
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+
+'"Strew on us roses, roses,"' quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in
+wistful mockery: '"And never a sprig of yew"--eh?'
+
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and
+weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against him.
+
+'Shall it not be so--no yew?' he murmured.
+
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on
+her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held
+them up.
+
+'I shall make marks on you,' he said.
+
+'They will come off,' she replied.
+
+'Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars off
+us.'
+
+'Some scars don't seem to go,' she smiled.
+
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his
+side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from
+last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.
+
+'But it's wearing off--even that,' he said wistfully.
+
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a
+hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and
+took off her hat.
+
+'That is better,' he said.
+
+'I was afraid of the pins,' said she.
+
+'I've been dodging them for the last hour,' he said, laughing, as she
+put her arms under his coat again for warmth.
+
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek
+against hers.
+
+'I want rest and warmth,' she said, in her dull tones.
+
+'All right!' he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D.H. Lawrence
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D.H. Lawrence
+#8 in our series by D.H. Lawrence
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Trespasser
+
+Author: D.H. Lawrence
+
+Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9498]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 6, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+1912
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+
+'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
+piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
+stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
+forbearance.
+
+'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
+the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
+lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
+would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'
+
+'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
+seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
+her bristling defiance.
+
+'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
+like it.'
+
+'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
+on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
+chords, and the music continued.
+
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
+turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
+with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
+in the room.
+
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
+of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
+again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
+the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
+responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
+the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
+of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
+were smooth white. There was no other colouring.
+
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
+wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
+wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
+recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
+room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
+skirting-board, serene.
+
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
+China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
+tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
+and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
+rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.
+
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
+of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
+unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
+that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
+with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
+the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.
+
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
+on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
+She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
+hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
+turned again to the players.
+
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
+swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
+her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
+frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
+vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
+hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
+of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.
+
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
+watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
+soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
+and glisten over her forehead.
+
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+
+'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'
+
+Helena laughed wearily.
+
+'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
+rest.
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+
+'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
+apathetic tone. 'It was I.'
+
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
+moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
+like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
+response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
+friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
+affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
+were coaxing a child:
+
+'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'
+
+'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
+for years.
+
+'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.
+
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
+came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
+began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+
+'They are inflamed still' said the young man.
+
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
+lighting up with a small smile.
+
+'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
+strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
+like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
+smarting soft flesh caressively.
+
+'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+
+'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
+'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
+anything on to heal it?'
+
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
+the burn.
+
+'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
+joy.
+
+'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'
+
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+
+'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+
+The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
+mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'
+
+'Never?' he re-echoed.
+
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
+to play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+
+'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+
+The two looked up at her.
+
+'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.
+
+'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
+her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+
+'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.
+
+'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
+obligation _whatever_.'
+
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
+head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
+but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
+hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
+the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
+vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
+indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
+glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
+flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
+glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
+one spoke.
+
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
+position. She sat motionless.
+
+'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
+at her friend, and stretched slightly.
+
+'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'
+
+'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.
+
+'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
+appealing love.
+
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
+slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+
+'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
+She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+
+'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'
+
+'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
+played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
+an end.
+
+'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
+you've got to live.'
+
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+
+'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.
+
+'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
+grinning.
+
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+
+'I don't see it at all,' she said.
+
+'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
+April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'
+
+'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
+myself, why trouble, my friend?'
+
+'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'
+
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
+metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+
+'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
+go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'
+
+'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.
+
+'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'
+
+'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
+stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
+looked in the fire, forgetting him.
+
+'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
+your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.
+
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
+broke out once more.
+
+'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
+blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
+Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
+not dead....'
+
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
+at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
+handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
+if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
+out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
+regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
+from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
+cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
+look became distressed and helpless.
+
+'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
+shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
+fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
+you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
+and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
+impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
+leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
+alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'
+
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
+him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
+steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+
+'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
+never touch the thing,' he cried.
+
+'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
+the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
+an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
+life. She was very sick after the tragedy.
+
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+
+'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
+You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
+road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'
+
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
+passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
+moving from her torpor was painful. At last--
+
+'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.
+
+'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
+softly, wearily.
+
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
+over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
+being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
+the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
+to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
+
+'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
+also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
+her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
+arrival of Louisa with the coffee.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+
+Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
+lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
+was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
+it; she kept the black case out of sight.
+
+Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
+the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
+two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
+sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
+Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
+lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
+soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
+breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
+himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
+odour of must.
+
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
+till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
+violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
+the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
+turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
+remained of him in his violin.
+
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
+longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
+fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
+had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
+sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
+had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
+wild in anticipation.
+
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
+savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
+anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
+with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
+
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
+opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
+weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
+suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
+Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
+associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
+with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
+hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
+flame stretched level on the wind.
+
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
+pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
+For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
+moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
+watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
+to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
+on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
+face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
+shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
+garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
+flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
+his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
+kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
+amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
+fascinated.
+
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
+soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
+rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
+going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
+his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
+a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
+last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
+carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
+Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
+fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
+all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
+watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
+
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
+Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
+anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
+cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
+was changing.
+
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
+night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
+he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
+amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
+front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
+looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
+joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
+black masses of the trees.
+
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
+his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
+As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
+the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
+bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
+moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
+breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
+laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
+physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
+to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
+moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
+stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
+turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
+tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
+looked round with disgust.
+
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
+betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
+plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
+wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
+even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
+cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
+gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
+He fetched a glass of water.
+
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
+the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
+floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
+black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
+newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
+bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
+sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
+slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
+ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
+wishing he had no tomorrow.
+
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
+was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
+crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
+now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
+teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
+absurd arms to him.
+
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
+silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
+him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
+his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
+staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
+Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
+After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.
+
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
+It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
+uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
+hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
+snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
+two girls.
+
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
+Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
+they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
+and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
+mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
+and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
+eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
+full of youth.
+
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
+room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
+the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
+same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
+curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
+rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
+She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
+with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
+He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
+manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
+beautiful things and of dreams.
+
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+
+'I must get to sleep,' he said.
+
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
+When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
+final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+
+'I am fearfully tired,' he said.
+
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
+some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+
+'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
+child!' He began to muse of the morrow.
+
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
+labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
+thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
+take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
+he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
+torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
+which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
+her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
+wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
+realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
+he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
+girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
+piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
+a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
+not been in the room.
+
+Helena stood fingering the score of _Pell�as_. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+
+'Why do you consider the music of _Pell�as_ cold?'
+
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
+mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating;
+and to her much was humiliating.
+
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
+theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
+the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
+her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
+walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.
+
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
+He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
+he had lost himself to her.
+
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
+insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at
+him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot
+come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had
+writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
+and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to you.' Then she left him.
+
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when
+he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+
+'You are so tired, Siegmund.' She stroked his face, and kissed him
+softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
+is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
+ugly for Siegmund.
+
+'You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
+week in August.'
+
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
+no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
+Isle of Wight, tomorrow.
+
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
+like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
+white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
+small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
+along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
+flooded him....
+
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
+and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes,
+and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had
+been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:
+
+'I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.'
+
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
+inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
+contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
+hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
+from his children.
+
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
+been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
+evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
+children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
+degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.
+
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
+door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
+the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she
+lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.
+
+'I am nothing, I am nothing,' she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
+for a time.
+
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
+through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
+hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
+train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
+'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
+on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
+rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+
+'God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!' she said aloud,
+in a low tone. She hated Helena.
+
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund's shadows, his children,
+Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young
+man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
+everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
+he looked out of the carriage window.
+
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
+floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter
+of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park.
+People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It
+was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.
+
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
+Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced
+lightly in the sunshine.
+
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
+It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
+white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
+shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
+glistened on her uncovered hair.
+
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
+impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
+and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
+shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on, drawing
+near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was so like
+Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.
+
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out,
+and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
+looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
+and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
+Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
+feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. All
+his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece
+of colour.
+
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a
+bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
+the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
+of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
+look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
+laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the
+blue sea gathering round.
+
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
+alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
+crimson-winged boats.
+
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women
+in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible.
+Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand
+the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath
+him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In
+front, Sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him,
+bringing him Helena.
+
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
+him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
+But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the
+fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he
+watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud
+cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
+chill wind.
+
+His travelling was very slow. The sky's dark shipping pressed closer and
+closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands
+near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All
+the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the
+wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station and the island were
+desolate, having lost their purposes.
+
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning's blaze of
+elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
+only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the
+intoxication was dying out.
+
+At three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
+carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred
+dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the
+reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly
+torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was
+thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
+felt dead.
+
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
+watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under
+the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund's heart
+leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of
+Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into
+the carriage.
+
+'You _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund's
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
+his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in
+to him.
+
+'Is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
+shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.
+
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+
+'Here we are, then!' exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
+cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
+his luggage.
+
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
+tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
+stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
+body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
+astonished cries of delight.
+
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His na�ve
+look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
+fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
+mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
+feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
+hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
+small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
+that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
+his knees.
+
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
+his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
+only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
+lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
+Siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, listening uneasily.
+
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
+look of distress amused her.
+
+'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
+Siegfried's dragon....'
+
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
+the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
+alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
+second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
+Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
+big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
+amused her. But he was tired.
+
+'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.
+
+'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'
+
+'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
+its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
+across the sea to Tristan.'
+
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
+with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
+boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
+fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
+horn-call.
+
+'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.
+
+'This time next week, Helena!' he said.
+
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
+lay upon the table.
+
+'I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,' she said.
+
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
+alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
+wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
+leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
+
+'There is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'There
+is only the present.'
+
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
+round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
+close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed
+against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint,
+intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to
+himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with
+gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face
+upon her.
+
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
+her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his
+forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
+future in a passion worth years of living.
+
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful
+things she had found. She had a woman's curious passion for details, a
+woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened,
+smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed
+him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended
+to her words.
+
+'Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired--you are very
+tired,' said Helena.
+
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+
+'No,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
+handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.'
+
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
+she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+
+'You must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face,
+ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
+arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
+thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself
+up against the fog.
+
+'You are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
+was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
+overcoat, while they walked together.
+
+'I like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+
+'I don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+
+'It puts us together by ourselves,' he said. She plodded alongside,
+bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+
+'It couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said.
+
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+
+'Why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+
+'There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
+me--look!'
+
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
+quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
+sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
+what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
+
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
+their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
+They turned from it.
+
+'What is the pitch?' asked Helena.
+
+'Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Yes, but the settled pitch--is it about E?'
+
+'E!' exclaimed Siegmund. 'More like F.'
+
+'Nay, listen!' said Helena.
+
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
+fog-horn.
+
+'There!' exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. 'That is not E.' He
+repeated the sound. 'It is F.'
+
+'Surely it is E,' persisted Helena.
+
+'Even F sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note.
+
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+
+'But you agree?' he said.
+
+'I do not,' she replied.
+
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+
+'What is the note in _Tristan_?' Helena made an effort to ask.
+
+'That is not the same,' he replied.
+
+'No, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
+footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
+down the fog.
+
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
+haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
+was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely
+to itself.
+
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
+slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
+unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
+into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
+
+'Shall we walk over, then?' said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena's
+heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
+play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
+afraid of him just then.
+
+'Come away, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
+to think so.
+
+'Come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+
+'You are not afraid?' he asked.
+
+'Not afraid, no....' Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
+that made him shiver.
+
+'It is too easy a way,' he said satirically.
+
+She did not take in his meaning.
+
+'And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!' she scolded. 'The mist
+is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.'
+
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
+
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went
+flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western
+sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the
+golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena
+that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber
+of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun
+was departing with pomp.
+
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming
+bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express
+it; how other men had borne this same glory.
+
+'What is the music of it?' he asked.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
+open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
+
+'Of what, dear?'
+
+'What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?'
+
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
+moment.
+
+'I do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+
+'A Beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her.
+
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
+sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+
+'The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,' she decided.
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
+to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
+for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
+almost put her two hands over his eyes.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
+closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
+wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her
+in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he
+bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with
+fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again.
+He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it
+was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his
+breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that
+moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face
+on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried
+against her soft strong throat.
+
+'You are so big I can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching
+her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
+shoulders ineffectually.
+
+'You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,' he whispered.
+
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast
+with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands
+meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+
+'See! I can't,' she whispered.
+
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
+her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
+figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
+under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
+again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
+one great ache.
+
+He crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
+muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
+body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
+towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious
+of nothing.
+
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
+marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
+steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
+herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
+mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
+lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
+strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
+and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
+through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
+his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
+her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
+together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one
+being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
+
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
+class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the
+mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
+flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
+sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man's brightness
+and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
+it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
+bed. She lay still on Siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily
+beating heart.
+
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
+Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
+her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was
+very cruel.
+
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
+bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more
+detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been
+rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract,
+and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is
+full of cruelty.
+
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
+and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
+his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
+sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
+yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
+withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
+some time.
+
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
+grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
+child whom she must correct and lead:
+
+'I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.' He made a small sound, that
+might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
+however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out
+of it.
+
+'It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly.
+
+'Soon,' he said thickly.
+
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath
+to take him from his pleasure:
+
+'Siegmund, I am cold.'
+
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+
+'Cold!' he exclaimed. 'But you are warm with me--'
+
+'But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.'
+
+'Oh dear!' he said. 'Why didn't you give them me to warm?' He leaned
+forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
+
+'They are very cold,' he said. 'We must hurry and make them warm.'
+
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
+clung to Siegmund, laughing.
+
+'I wish you had told me before,' he said. 'I ought to have known....'
+
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
+person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
+charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
+the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
+
+Helena introduced Siegmund as 'My friend'. The old lady smiled upon him.
+He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years
+back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house
+for their honeymoon.
+
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
+attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
+him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
+bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
+scarcely adjust the wicks.
+
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+
+'I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
+Nietzsche I brought--'
+
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms
+along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his
+being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came
+up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in
+the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and
+he smiled.
+
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
+lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
+His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent,
+so strange.
+
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six
+to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and
+looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
+dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam
+to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear
+through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But
+her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared
+not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He
+strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put
+out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for
+her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She
+waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not
+look at her.
+
+'You would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark
+hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
+setting of his shoulders.
+
+'Just as you will,' he replied.
+
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled
+him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
+
+'I will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation.
+She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice,
+but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
+
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
+lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
+her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace,
+and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and
+fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded.
+It was a physical pain to him.
+
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
+enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
+was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
+aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident
+to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
+restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+
+'Will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady.
+
+'Nothing at all, thanks,' said Helena, with decision.
+
+'Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I've washed the dishes. You will
+put the lamp out, dear?'
+
+'I am well used to a lamp,' smiled Helena. 'We use them always at home.'
+
+She had had a day before Siegmund's coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss'
+heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
+
+'Good-night, dear--good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
+long, dear?'
+
+'No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.'
+
+'Yes--yes. It is very tiring, London.'
+
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
+Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking
+in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to
+glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
+disappointed eyes.
+
+'Shall I read to you?' she asked bitterly.
+
+'If you will,' he replied.
+
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
+went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+
+'What is it, dear?' she said.
+
+'You,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+
+'Why me?'
+
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
+arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
+like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
+not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
+after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
+ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
+of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
+still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
+love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
+the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and
+went to the door.
+
+'Shall I let her out?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Do!' said Helena, slipping from his knee. 'She goes out when the nights
+are fine.'
+
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
+Curtiss called from upstairs: 'Is that you, dear?'
+
+'I have just let Kitty out,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Ah, thank you. Good night!' They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
+door.
+
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then
+waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+
+'Shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively.
+
+'Yes--If you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
+was burning and surging with desire.
+
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
+knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
+stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
+advanced out of the shadows.
+
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
+two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt
+on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread
+towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely
+able to move.
+
+'Come,' he pleaded softly.
+
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
+him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
+Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her
+uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
+
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
+abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and
+rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
+feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
+still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
+seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
+tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+
+'Am I not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
+gently.
+
+'It is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. She had lain tranquil
+with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in
+his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from
+an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and
+hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic,
+as if he would destroy her.
+
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
+strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
+of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
+would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
+seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to
+produce him.
+
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
+involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
+Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in
+his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and
+unbearable to herself.
+
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
+looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
+forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
+her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
+to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
+pushed back the curtain.
+
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
+the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea,
+and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution
+on her brow.
+
+'Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?' she asked fretfully.
+
+'Ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
+with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
+the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the
+casement of the land seductively.
+
+'It's the finest night I have seen,' said Siegmund. Helena's eyes
+suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+
+'I like the moon on the water,' she said.
+
+'I can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'The sea
+seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
+coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
+are all you.'
+
+'Yes,' she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
+she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
+now, and did not need her.
+
+'I feel at home here,' he said; 'as if I had come home where I was
+bred.'
+
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+
+'We go an awful long way round, Helena,' he said, 'just to find we're
+all right.' He laughed pleasantly. 'I have thought myself such an
+outcast! How can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always
+naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?'
+
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
+something of the harmony.
+
+'Whatever I have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a
+sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
+sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house,
+you see.'
+
+'And I, Siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
+looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit
+ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed,
+then bent to kiss her.
+
+'The key of the castle,' he said. He put his face against hers, and felt
+on his cheek the smart of her tears.
+
+'It's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for
+tonight, all this that I say.'
+
+'It is true for ever,' she declared.
+
+'In so far as tonight is eternal,' he said.
+
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from
+under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
+They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'It is like the magic tales,'
+he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and I am transported to a new
+life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.'
+
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
+delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand,
+he felt for his watch. It was seven o'clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched
+night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
+
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
+sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
+morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows
+in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine;
+milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the
+sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
+
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
+red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
+sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
+window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
+blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
+hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
+
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
+spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and
+down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the
+wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He
+took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
+grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
+breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
+tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
+out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and
+pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
+the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
+far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
+thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
+travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
+swinging birds.
+
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
+stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
+square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
+delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
+and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
+to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
+heavy green water.
+
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
+watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
+glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear
+green water.
+
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
+and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
+stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
+even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
+across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the
+morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
+liked to see the birds come down.
+
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
+swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the
+pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it,
+but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
+
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
+in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
+sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
+palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against
+him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion.
+The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm
+breath. He delighted in himself.
+
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
+clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+
+'She would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he
+smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
+conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
+his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
+creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
+slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
+itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+
+'That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
+I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
+a person. What makes me myself, among all these?'
+
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+
+'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
+ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
+a baboon under my clothing.'
+
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
+breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
+marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+
+'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
+thought.
+
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+
+'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
+pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
+see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
+could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
+was his physical self thinking.
+
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
+the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
+rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
+ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
+insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
+
+'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
+black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+
+'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
+brine in his hair.
+
+'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--'
+
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+
+'It _is_ blood?' she said.
+
+'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.
+
+'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.
+
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+
+'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.
+
+'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?'
+
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
+above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
+his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+
+'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.
+
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+
+'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
+eat.
+
+'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?'
+
+'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
+deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
+sleeplessness.
+
+'I haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena
+smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
+her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
+the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
+him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
+winking a golden eye at her.
+
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
+dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric
+yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
+and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
+lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
+than imagination.
+
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's
+previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower's name,
+nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
+adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
+florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
+everything in fancy.
+
+'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
+before dawn came. It is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. The pink
+convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
+night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
+spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
+thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
+not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
+sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
+out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
+round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
+water-shadowed reefs.
+
+'This is very good,' she said to herself. 'This is eternally cool, and
+clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.'
+
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away
+the soiling of the last night's passion.
+
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
+like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
+its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
+self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
+
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
+shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
+backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
+warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
+watched the water playing.
+
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him
+with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he
+received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and
+the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It
+is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little
+flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In
+these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards
+something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in
+this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.
+
+'Will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over.
+
+'I don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she
+did not care at all. 'I think it will be a mixed day--cloud and
+sun--more sun than cloud.'
+
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at
+the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+
+'I like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about
+as you walk.'
+
+'It is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled.
+
+'Ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation
+from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena's. She laughed,
+and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an
+hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till
+Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that
+wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold.
+Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But
+psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
+
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point
+of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the
+inscription.
+
+'That's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed Siegmund.
+
+'Oh, they'd have to fence in Lord Tennyson's white marble,' said Helena,
+rather indefinitely.
+
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+
+'Yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Tennyson!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.'
+
+'I shouldn't say so,' she declared.
+
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed
+the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the
+sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below
+the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose
+over the cliff's edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped
+in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds
+passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
+
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
+They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
+the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
+above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
+would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
+to risk it.
+
+'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
+he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
+and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
+symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
+sweeping, and dark.
+
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
+foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
+froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
+
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
+thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+
+'They look so fine down there.'
+
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
+with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
+as he gripped her.
+
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
+the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
+'Path of the Hundred Steps'.
+
+'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
+descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
+laughed at his exactitude.
+
+'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.
+
+'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+
+'Or of exaggeration,' he added.
+
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
+A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
+chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
+confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
+Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
+resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
+above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
+cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
+route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
+flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
+two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
+side by side.
+
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
+lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
+boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
+insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
+of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
+looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.
+
+'Now, that one with the greyish sails--' Siegmund was saying.
+
+'Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?'
+interrupted Helena.
+
+'That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and--'
+
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
+wicked laughter of Helena.
+
+'That is right, I am sure,' he protested.
+
+'I won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
+knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+
+'So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he
+said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked
+at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in
+the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
+slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
+startled them up.
+
+'The clouds are coming,' he said regretfully.
+
+'Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered,
+
+'Look at the shadows--like blots floating away. Don't they devour the
+sunshine?'
+
+'It is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him.
+
+'Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.'
+
+'No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.'
+
+'I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
+like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
+sunshine.'
+
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
+water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund's face. He lay, with
+half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
+she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with
+her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He
+lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
+
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the
+sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It
+seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it
+fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had
+the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding
+out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her.
+This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so
+different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome,
+shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be
+the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves.
+She listened for Siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other
+sound, thudding powerfully.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 7_
+
+
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across
+at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!'
+
+'I was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled.
+
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the
+water and the downs.
+
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
+bay.
+
+'The tide is coming in,' said Helena.
+
+'But this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. It's as soft
+as pepper,' he replied.
+
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
+shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
+the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
+overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and
+fell, overcome at the end of the race.
+
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its
+base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green
+sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of
+withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that
+glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were
+almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the other
+headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must hurry,
+or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining
+between the great wall and the water.
+
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless.
+He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
+for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded
+by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.
+
+'I think I will rest awhile,' she said.
+
+'No, come along,' he begged.
+
+'My dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
+from the sea.'
+
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
+It would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+
+'Look at this black wood,' she said. 'Does the sea really char it?'
+
+'Let us get round the corner,' he begged.
+
+'Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said
+ironically.
+
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
+jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
+This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
+shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
+massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
+was delighted.
+
+'This is fine, Siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west.
+
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
+this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
+would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from
+their feet.
+
+'Would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked.
+
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+
+'This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.'
+
+'And then where?'
+
+'Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.'
+
+'Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.'
+
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
+near their bases.
+
+'I suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began
+silently to clamber forwards.
+
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+
+'I have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'The sea only
+looks near.'
+
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
+against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
+swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
+curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
+slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
+laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
+her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
+had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
+and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
+sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were cut
+off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
+his face.
+
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
+it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
+ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
+furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
+She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
+rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
+on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of
+a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
+damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
+rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
+the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not bear.
+She had no weapon against brute force.
+
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
+was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
+face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
+just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
+populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
+careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.
+
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
+savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
+action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
+whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
+here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
+week--well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.
+
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
+figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest
+tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why
+was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of
+experience? She was young and na�ve, and should he be angry with her for
+that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would have to
+suffer also, because of him.
+
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
+mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
+her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.
+
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
+he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
+close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
+lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
+pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
+on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
+heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
+face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
+satisfaction.
+
+'It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like
+a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said
+it. He pressed his mouth on hers. 'Not for you,' he thought, by reflex.
+'You can't go that way yet.' But he said nothing, strained her very
+tightly, and kept her lips.
+
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
+at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
+stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light
+bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand
+to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing
+delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness.
+
+'Isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'The sea must be very,
+very gentle--and very kind.'
+
+'Sometimes,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+'But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. She
+breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
+inhaled its fine savour.
+
+'It would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. She looked at him
+with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
+small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
+a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the
+glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
+waited upon her words and movements attentively.
+
+'It is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'Wotan is so
+clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
+fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--'
+
+Helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
+not lucid.
+
+'But life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled
+softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
+her words.
+
+'There's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only
+way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
+float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
+forget he had spoken.
+
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+
+'I will give it to the children,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
+publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
+girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
+the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
+approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
+
+'Would you like this? I found it down there,' said Siegmund, offering
+her the bulb.
+
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
+she was not going to say anything.
+
+'The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,'
+said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+
+The girl looked at her.
+
+'The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers--'
+
+The child's eyes brightened.
+
+'The tide-line is full of treasures,' said Helena, smiling.
+
+The child answered her smile a little.
+
+Siegmund had walked away.
+
+'What beautiful eyes she had!' said Helena.
+
+'Yes,' he replied.
+
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
+But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
+knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 8_
+
+
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
+late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
+rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken
+and trees.
+
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
+carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
+under the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All the
+yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
+
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
+the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
+walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
+admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
+this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
+
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
+kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
+away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
+if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
+assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light
+swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of
+their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
+
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
+They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
+a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
+dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
+Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
+his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
+playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
+
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
+and to strike a last blow for her pride:
+
+'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'
+
+'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
+at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
+to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
+her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
+him, and she wanted to possess him.
+
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
+wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
+that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
+restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
+Her soul seemed blasted.
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
+water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
+continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
+Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
+running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
+it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
+out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
+along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
+fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
+morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
+are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
+sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
+itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
+that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
+
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
+sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as
+they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued
+flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
+
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
+dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against
+the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was
+flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a
+heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air
+of sunshine.
+
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the
+waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her
+feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as
+the breast of a white bird.
+
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
+and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
+restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along
+with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,
+large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
+
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
+full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
+water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
+like pale flowers trembling upward.
+
+'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressed
+forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had
+more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his
+arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
+recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
+through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
+ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
+emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
+
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
+land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
+the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
+sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its
+cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that
+was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling
+with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible
+sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom
+that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
+like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
+under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
+laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
+him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
+it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
+
+'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his hands
+again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,
+gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth
+warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand
+encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end he
+found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his
+hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy
+coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and
+kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a
+flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth
+of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
+lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness
+and warmth merely floated upon.
+
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
+him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
+laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
+below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he
+should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
+free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He
+tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
+child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry and
+warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
+smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
+though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of
+himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
+even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found
+himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his
+head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his
+hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if
+he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and
+sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happy
+priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out
+of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach
+it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean he
+felt--full of lightness and grace.
+
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,
+was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the
+door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the
+garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat
+sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little
+laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very
+still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant
+little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood
+cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green
+twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There
+was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the
+shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,
+leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.
+She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she
+discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next
+mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.
+She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine
+at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+
+'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'
+
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
+glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+
+'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
+sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
+
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
+moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+
+'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim
+there.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+
+'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.
+
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
+came into her voice.
+
+'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.
+
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
+still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that
+would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all
+swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
+himself saying:
+
+'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like
+Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.'
+
+'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at him
+with her eyes heavy with meaning.
+
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+
+'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.
+
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
+it. He became suddenly grave.
+
+'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. It
+is so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
+you think so?'
+
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,
+and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 9_
+
+
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
+across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
+white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
+bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
+of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
+and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
+blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,
+which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
+been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+
+'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.
+
+'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
+heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
+meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
+them--dimly, drowsily, without pain.
+
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path
+down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with
+ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.
+The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks
+of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena
+sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand
+till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then
+she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the
+light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal
+beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on
+the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
+
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then there
+settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
+the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
+wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down
+together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund
+with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in his
+shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.
+The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds
+asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them
+with its bright eyes.
+
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall
+at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came
+like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of
+beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of
+others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and
+bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such
+blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in
+His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid
+blooms of beauty.
+
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
+their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
+shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
+Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
+revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung
+into water. She shivered lightly and rose.
+
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.
+She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in
+the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it
+free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens
+itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers the
+tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and took
+its kisses on her face and throat.
+
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
+like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
+fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+
+'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'
+
+'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.
+
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
+more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
+rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
+smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
+
+'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.
+
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 10_
+
+
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
+sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
+with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed
+suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund's heart was
+leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself
+very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled slowly. Often she
+called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky
+with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but
+shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to
+poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a
+shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones,
+causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
+watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the
+cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and
+gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two
+miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone,
+dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet
+of the weeds.
+
+'Don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
+the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
+childishly happy.
+
+'Why should we?' she asked lightly.
+
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
+with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
+the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
+relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy
+with the individual, no cognizance of him.
+
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things.
+She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful,
+fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below
+consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic
+knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To
+Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her
+kaleidoscope.
+
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
+gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+
+'Come,' he said very gently. 'You are only six years old today.'
+
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling
+in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in
+him sadly alive.
+
+'Now put your stockings on,' he said.
+
+'But my feet are wet.' She laughed.
+
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
+tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and
+more golden.
+
+'I envy the savages their free feet,' she said.
+
+'There is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,'
+he replied.
+
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
+track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
+boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
+Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys
+emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them.
+The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:
+
+'Tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?'
+
+'Ay, let her have a run,' said the father.
+
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
+her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
+pathetically.
+
+'Go on, Tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'Go on; have a run on
+the sand.'
+
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
+distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
+the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps,
+turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It
+looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away
+from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves.
+
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+
+'Crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said.
+
+'But look how frightened it is,' she said.
+
+'So am I.' He laughed. 'And if there are any gods looking on and
+laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their
+pinafores....'
+
+She laughed very quickly.
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed. 'Why should you want putting in a pinafore?'
+
+'I don't,' he laughed.
+
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
+water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
+Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
+glowing. He was watching earnestly.
+
+'I want to absorb it all,' he said.
+
+When at last they turned away:
+
+'Yes,' said Helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.'
+
+He pondered a moment.
+
+'How strange!' he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail.
+It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture
+was in me, not out there.'
+
+Without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it
+verbiage--she made a small sound of assent.
+
+'That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don't care so much,
+because I have it with me,' he concluded.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 11_
+
+
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
+keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
+broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
+however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
+among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
+incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
+
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
+signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
+withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
+
+'We must go to the left,' said Helena.
+
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
+black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
+shoulders.
+
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
+they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
+a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
+sense of space and freedom.
+
+'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
+pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
+large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
+shaggy cloak of furze.
+
+'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.
+
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
+impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+
+'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
+will be tired.'
+
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
+into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
+down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
+far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
+specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
+the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
+west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
+everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
+The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
+the condition of intense waiting.
+
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+
+'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.'
+
+'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.
+
+'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.
+
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
+and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
+odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
+honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
+
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+
+'What day is it, Siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
+laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
+
+'But really,' she insisted, 'I would not have believed the labels could
+have fallen off everything like this.'
+
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+
+'The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
+order and costume, going endlessly round.' She laughed, amused at
+the idea.
+
+'It is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights
+smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
+lifetime.'
+
+'That is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'You have
+torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
+It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be
+parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up
+of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
+cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take
+no notice.'
+
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his
+leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from
+pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek,
+looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a
+keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+
+'You know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. You seem to have
+knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all
+in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
+everything.'
+
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+
+'You must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a
+disciple's vanity.
+
+'Some time,' he answered. 'Later, when I have time.'
+
+'Later,' she murmured--'later than what?'
+
+'I don't know,' he replied. 'This is so bright we can't see beyond.' He
+turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
+that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay,
+with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
+
+'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
+always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+
+'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
+a brass reed was again in her voice.
+
+'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
+nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
+abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+
+'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
+voice to speak.
+
+'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
+hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
+still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
+flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
+make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
+thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
+constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
+north, even?'
+
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
+She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
+of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
+'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
+laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
+
+'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
+here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter
+and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn't it fine to be up here,
+with the sky for nearest neighbour?'
+
+'I did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. He turned to
+her.
+
+'As wise as God for the minute,' he replied softly. 'I think a few
+furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.'
+
+'And you are glad?' she asked. He laughed.
+
+'_Carpe diem_,' he said. 'We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.'
+
+'Why hell, Siegmund?' she asked in displeasure.
+
+'I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I'm a failure,
+Helena. But,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men
+have plucked.'
+
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
+fashion.
+
+'What does it matter, Helena?' he murmured. 'What does it matter? We are
+here yet.'
+
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
+felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
+uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
+her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
+hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
+face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
+his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
+ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.
+
+'What is it, Helena?' he asked at last. 'Why should you cry?'
+
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
+unrecognizable voice:
+
+'You won't leave me, will you, Siegmund?'
+
+'How could I? How should I?' he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
+suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+
+'How could I leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
+the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
+the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
+Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
+heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
+thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
+with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
+so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
+become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
+thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
+and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
+urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
+incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
+her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
+wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
+slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
+incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
+flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
+soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
+decided, was supreme, transcendental.
+
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
+of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
+sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
+stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
+found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
+when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
+of stars.
+
+    _Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
+    Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._
+
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
+she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
+her language.
+
+    _Die Luft ist k�hl, und es dunkelt,
+    Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._
+
+She liked Heine best of all:
+
+    _Wie Tr�ume der Kindheit seh' ich es flimmern
+    Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
+    Und alte Erinnerung erz�hlt mir auf's Neue
+    Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
+    Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben...._
+
+As she lay in Siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she
+knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the
+gleam of a falling star over water. The night moved on imperceptibly
+across the sky. Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but
+passed unseen, unfelt, over them. Till the moon was ready to step forth.
+Then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds
+round the opening gates:
+
+    _Aus alten M�rchen winket es
+    Hervor mit weisser Hand,
+    Da singt es und da klingt es
+    Von einem Zauberland._
+
+
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the
+clouds. She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful
+singsong, as children do.
+
+'What is it?' said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her
+singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having
+forgotten that he had asked her a question.
+
+'Turn your head,' she told him, when she had finished the verse, 'and
+look at the moon.'
+
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his
+chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his
+nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+
+'"_Die grossen Blumen schmachten_,"' she said to herself, curiously
+awake and joyous. 'The big flowers open with black petals and silvery
+ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the
+bridegroom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled
+flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the _Zauberland_, Siegmund--this is
+the magic land.'
+
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on
+the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay
+still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange
+ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp,
+breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her mouth
+and her cheeks and her forehead.
+
+'"_Und Liebesweisen t�nen_"-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing,
+Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the
+trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up
+their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven't you-and it all
+centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in
+them all Siegmund--Siegmund!'
+
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow
+heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay
+prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the
+beautiful strong motion of his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength,
+she swooned lightly into unconsciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite
+heaving of his life beneath her.
+
+'I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!' she said
+to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon it.
+That she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness
+astonished her.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life
+of Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath and
+the next. Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on her
+hands, she kissed him--a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her
+soul into his for ever. Then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply.
+She put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. 'No more,' said
+her heart, almost as if it sighed too-'no more!'
+
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He
+lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his
+side, looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as he
+lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him
+murmured; 'Hawwa--Eve--Mother!' She stood compassionate over him.
+Without touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother.
+Her compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little
+Helena. This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her
+compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a
+personification of the great motherhood of women.
+
+'I am her child, too,' he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in
+sleep. He had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when
+he looked only into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and
+gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+
+'Come,' she said gently, when she knew he was restored. 'Shall we go?'
+
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 12_
+
+
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The
+hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into
+shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some
+distance, very great, it seemed.
+
+'I can't get hold of them,' he said distractedly to himself. He felt
+detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as
+if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported,
+somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down
+again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and
+controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need
+not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he
+would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the
+moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly,
+joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support.
+Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked
+with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious.
+This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
+
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the
+hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in
+his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice
+it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
+
+'What is it?' he asked himself in wonder.
+
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally
+to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
+insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
+from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
+of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
+stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
+securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became
+conscious of it.
+
+'Good Lord!' he said to himself. 'I wonder what it is.'
+
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
+body--his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
+wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
+into another detached phrase. 'There is nothing the matter with me,'
+he said.
+
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
+sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
+he had fallen ill.
+
+'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
+sure my hand is steady.'
+
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
+him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+
+'Yes, I think this is the right way,' said Helena, and they set off
+again, as if gaily.
+
+'It certainly feels rather deathly,' said Siegmund to himself. He
+remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
+stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here
+he chose the French word--'_l'agonie_'. But his mother had seen and had
+cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
+spare her her suffering.
+
+'Certainly it is like that,' he said. 'Certainly it is rather deathly. I
+wonder how it is.'
+
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+
+'I believe we are lost!' Helena interrupted him.
+
+'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
+tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
+way?' he added.
+
+'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
+certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.'
+
+'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
+well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
+where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
+clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
+the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
+left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
+
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
+happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
+beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
+been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
+have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
+they've gone my house is weak.'
+
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
+reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
+
+'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
+my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
+That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.'
+
+Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
+somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
+concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
+was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
+been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
+vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
+his sickness, soothing him.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'I suppose living too
+intensely kills you, more or less.'
+
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
+The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
+veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
+lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
+seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if
+Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
+horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They
+walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a
+little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and
+they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under
+the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the
+moonlight.
+
+'We certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. The
+idea of being lost delighted her.
+
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
+glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking
+along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to
+some state beyond ordinary experience--some place in romance, perhaps,
+or among the hills where Br�nhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo
+of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London
+wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked
+again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist
+ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna
+must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.
+
+'We may be on the road to Newport,' said Helena presently, 'and the
+distance is ten miles.'
+
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in
+this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening
+wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund
+looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he
+sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of
+which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her
+nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her,
+and grew heavy with responsibility.
+
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the
+night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled
+together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the
+supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena
+walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively
+searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached,
+listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the
+darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the
+windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went
+running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed
+to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with
+weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was
+the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the
+grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying
+asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams.
+She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed,
+their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering
+over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
+
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
+fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. Siegmund's arm was
+about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
+stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
+Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
+envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
+The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
+looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
+bowed his head.
+
+'Thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate
+ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
+very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love,
+the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the
+white beauty in the world.'
+
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
+the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
+treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his
+compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped
+softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
+
+'Let me get under cover,' he thought. 'Let me hide in it; it is good,
+the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small,
+futile tragedy!'
+
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the
+silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer,
+leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was
+heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small,
+brave Helena.
+
+'Are you sure this is the right way?' he whispered to her.
+
+'Quite, quite sure,' she whispered confidently in reply. And presently
+they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the
+steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go
+with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping
+cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena's heart was
+beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they
+wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this
+night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road
+not far from home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 13_
+
+
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a
+kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o'clock, yet he lounged,
+dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of
+morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before
+him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as na�ve
+and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
+
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice
+beside him say:
+
+'Where have they come from; do you know, sir?'
+
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing
+beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+
+'The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,' said Siegmund.
+
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+
+'They look rather incongruous, don't you think? We left the sea empty
+and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their
+eye on us!'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'You are not an Anarchist, I hope?' he said jestingly.
+
+'A Nihilist, perhaps,' laughed the other. 'But I am quite fond of the
+Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can't turn round without
+finding some policeman or other at your elbow--look at them, abominable
+ironmongery!--ready to put his hand on your shoulder.'
+
+The speaker's grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from
+the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter
+felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so
+quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
+
+'I suppose we are in the hands of--God,' something moved Siegmund to
+say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at
+the speaker.
+
+'Ah!' he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair,
+the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they
+returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. 'Does the Czar sail this
+way?' he asked at last.
+
+'I do not know,' replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other's
+penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+
+'I suppose the newspaper will tell us?' said the man.
+
+Sure to,' said Siegmund.
+
+'You haven't seen it this morning?'
+
+'Not since Saturday.'
+
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
+
+'You are not alone on your holiday?'
+
+'No.' Siegmund did not like this--he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+
+'I live here--at least for the present--name, Hampson--'
+
+'Why, weren't you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years
+back?' asked Siegmund.
+
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
+fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself
+for having addressed Siegmund:
+
+'I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and
+as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
+re-acquainted.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+
+'I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It's a pity to try
+and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?'
+
+'Stare beyond it, you mean?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a
+day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all
+the confoundedly draughty House of Life.'
+
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
+something in his own soul.
+
+'I mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life
+that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
+blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't
+stop it, once we've begun to leak.'
+
+'What do you mean by "leak"?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Goodness knows--I talk through my hat. But once you've got a bit tired
+of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
+dark--as you were doing.'
+
+'But, to use your metaphor, I'm not tired of the House--if you mean
+Life,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Praise God! I've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket
+picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head
+back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+
+'I don't know what you mean, sir,' said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
+strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+
+'You're not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
+suite of rooms--'
+
+'Tomorrow I am turned out of this "blue room",' said Siegmund with a wry
+smile. The other looked at him seriously.
+
+'Dear Lord!' exclaimed Hampson; then: 'Do you remember Flaubert's saint,
+who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.'
+
+'Nor I,' shuddered Siegmund.
+
+'But you've got to-or something near it!'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+
+'What of yourself?' he said, resentfully.
+
+'I've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
+staring from the window at the dark.'
+
+'But can't you _do_ something?' said Siegmund.
+
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing
+his teeth.
+
+'I won't ask you what _your_ intentions are,' he said, with delicate
+irony in his tone. 'You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five
+hundred a year by hard work; but it's no good. If you have acquired a
+liking for intensity in life, you can't do without it. I mean vivid soul
+experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and
+physical excitement.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+
+'Well, and what then?' he said.
+
+'What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a _concentr�_, you feed your normal flame with
+oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are
+always semi-transparent.'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'At least, I am quite opaque,' he said.
+
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+
+'Not altogether,' said Hampson. 'And you, I should think, are one whose
+flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.'
+
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+
+'You haven't much reserve. You're like a tree that'll flower till it
+kills itself,' the man continued. 'You'll run till you drop, and then
+you won't get up again. You've no dispassionate intellect to control you
+and economize.'
+
+'You're telling me very plainly what I am and am not,' said Siegmund,
+laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+
+'Oh, it's only what I think,' replied Hampson. 'We're a good deal alike,
+you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn't; but women
+have always done as they liked with me.'
+
+'That's hardly so in my case,' said Siegmund.
+
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+
+'Say one woman; it's enough,' he replied.
+
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+
+'The best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,'
+Hampson resumed. 'By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
+animal in us. Then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond
+humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
+instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
+and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
+warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of
+life. In us her force becomes evident.
+
+'She can't live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting
+women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can
+gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and
+to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that
+is, us altogether.'
+
+'You're a bit downright are you not?' asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
+did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements
+were arbitrary.
+
+'That's according to my intensity,' laughed Hampson. 'I can open the
+blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
+see--God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
+perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!'
+
+'Don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
+end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and
+the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.'
+
+Siegmund pondered a little....
+
+'You make me feel--as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,'
+he said slowly.
+
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands
+lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+
+'I can scarcely believe they are me,' he said. 'If they rose up and
+refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren't they beautiful?'
+
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger's to his own hands, which lay curved
+on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature,
+but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
+Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over
+his thumbs.
+
+'I wonder,' said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, 'that she
+can't see it; I wonder she doesn't cherish you. You are full and
+beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when
+she loved you to such extremity?'
+
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man,
+with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+
+'Fools--the fools, these women!' he said. 'Either they smash their own
+crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look
+at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with
+compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by
+itself. I am very sorry.'
+
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of
+a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks.
+Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
+
+'I wish I didn't go on like this,' said Hampson piteously. 'I wish I
+could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is
+really hot.' He pulled open his flannel shirt.
+
+'I like the heat,' said Siegmund.
+
+'So do I.'
+
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some
+sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely
+to the village.
+
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful
+dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to
+find Helena.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 14_
+
+
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again
+waiting. It was past nine o'clock, so she was growing impatient. To
+herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of
+verses she had bought in St Martin's Lane for twopence.
+
+    A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,
+    As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew....
+
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself
+that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road
+for Siegmund.
+
+    And now she takes the scissors on her thumb ...
+    Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+
+'H'm!' she said, 'I really don't know whether I like that or not.'
+
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+
+'He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned;
+but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on
+the water!'
+
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+
+'But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them as
+I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the
+flutter of a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way
+to read this poet.'
+
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure
+enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his
+throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+
+'I have kept you waiting,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I was reading, you see.'
+
+She would not admit her impatience.
+
+'I have been talking,' he said.
+
+'Talking!' she exclaimed in slight displeasure. 'Have you found an
+acquaintance even here?'
+
+'A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel
+queer-sort of _Doppelg�nger_, he was.'
+
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+
+'In what way?' she said.
+
+'He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
+The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the
+bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have
+you made the plans for today?'
+
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself
+to the scarlet and green salad.
+
+'Mrs Curtiss,' she said, in rather reedy tone, 'has been very motherly
+to me this morning; oh, very motherly!'
+
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+
+'What, has she been saying something about last night?' he asked.
+
+'She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,' continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which
+showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+
+'Because we weren't in till about eleven?' said Siegmund, also with
+sarcasm.
+
+'I mustn't do it again. Oh no, I mustn't do it again, really.'
+
+'For fear of alarming the old lady?' he asked.
+
+'"You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if I were your
+_mother_, I don't know _how_ I should feel,"' she quoted.
+
+'When one engages rooms one doesn't usually stipulate for a stepmother
+to nourish one's conscience,' said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest
+of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed
+within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth
+were on edge.
+
+'I don't _mind_ in the least,' she said. 'The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.'
+
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+
+'I know I'm a moral coward,' he said bitterly.
+
+'Nonsense' she replied. Then, with a little heat: 'But you _do_ continue
+to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you needed
+justification.'
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+'I tell you--a little thing like this--it remains tied tight round
+something inside me, reminding me for hours--well, what everybody else's
+opinion of me is.'
+
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+
+'I thought you were so sure we were right,' she said.
+
+He winced again.
+
+'In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world--'
+
+'If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?' she said brutally.
+
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+
+'What is myself?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing very definite,' she said, with a bitter laugh.
+
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and
+put her arms round his neck.
+
+'This is our last clear day, dear,' she said.
+
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her in
+his arms....
+
+'It will be hot today,' said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+
+'I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,' he replied.
+
+'I shall wear a hat--you had better do so too.'
+
+'No,' he said. 'I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall
+get one.'
+
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to
+choose for himself.
+
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their
+remaining day.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'we ought to find the little path that
+escaped us last night.'
+
+'We were lucky to miss it,' he answered. 'You don't get a walk like that
+twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.'
+
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a
+loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was--a Londoner on holiday. He
+had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a
+gentleman. He had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he
+walked he looked unseeing in front of him.
+
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or a
+worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+_concentr�e_ than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something
+she always seemed coiled within herself.
+
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts,
+and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was a large,
+simple hat of burnt straw.
+
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite
+vigorously.
+
+'I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Why?' he laughed. 'My hair is like a hood,' He ruffled it back with his
+hand. The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the
+butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the
+sky. The lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in
+the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. There was a ragged
+noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard. Two
+red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood in
+the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath,
+whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. The white
+legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the
+yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a
+faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The
+farmer's wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if
+necessary.
+
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+
+'That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,' she said. 'It
+is cruder than Theocritus.'
+
+'In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,' he laughed. 'I think
+every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would
+be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one's
+nose, and to own cattle and land.'
+
+'Would it?' asked Helena sceptically.
+
+'If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I
+should love it,'he said.
+
+'It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied.
+
+'To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the
+desideratum.'
+
+'Is it?' she asked ironically.
+
+'I would give anything to be like that,' he said.
+
+'That is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly.
+
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+
+'Don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene.
+'They are farther than Theocritus--down there is farther than Sicily,
+and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren't.'
+
+'Why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly
+opposite the path through the furze.
+
+'There it is!' she cried, 'How could we miss it?'
+
+'Ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of
+_Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.
+
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the
+cliff's edge, she said:
+
+'This shall be our house today.'
+
+'Welcome home!' said Siegmund.
+
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out
+to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was
+slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could
+hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water
+below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with
+his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her
+page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began
+to read.
+
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring
+with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing
+her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes
+wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in
+'Adam Cast Forth'. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure
+strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive
+wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with
+struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the
+face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen
+with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.
+Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,
+abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss
+him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her
+position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on his
+hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a
+sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+
+'It will make him ill,' she whispered to herself, and she bent over to
+smell the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead.
+She felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming
+inflamed with the sun-scalding.
+
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea
+was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses of
+Freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. Green
+Farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and
+sleep. In the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless. Helena
+was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water.
+
+'"And there shall be no more sea,"' she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+
+'No more sea, no more anything,' she thought dazedly, as she sat in the
+midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the
+lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this
+tremendous furnace, leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag
+seamed with metal. She tried to imagine herself resuming the old
+activities, the old manner of living.
+
+'It is impossible,' she said; 'it is impossible! What shall I be when I
+come out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in
+another shape. No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What
+will become of us--what will happen?'
+
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace
+by Siegmund's waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked
+smiling at Helena.
+
+'It is worth while to sleep,' said he, 'for the sake of waking like
+this. I was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.'
+
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She
+smiled upon him almost in condescension.
+
+'I should like to realize your dream,' she said. 'This is terrible!'
+
+They went to the cliff's edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from
+the water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and
+put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+
+'It is really a very fine sun,' said Siegmund lightly. 'I feel as if I
+were almost satisfied with heat.'
+
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived,
+while she affects a light interest in another's pleasure. This time,
+when Siegmund 'failed to follow her', as she put it, she felt she must
+follow him.
+
+'You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,' she said,
+smiling; 'even a sufficiency of me.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund drowsily. 'I think I am. I think this is about
+perfect, don't you?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'I want nothing more and nothing different,' he continued; 'and that's
+the extreme of a decent time, I should think.'
+
+'The extreme of a decent time!' she repeated.
+
+But he drawled on lazily:
+
+'I've only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I've got
+all the cheese--which is you, my dear.'
+
+'I certainly feel eaten up,' she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him
+lying in a royal ease, his eyes na�ve as a boy's, his whole being
+careless. Although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt
+very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense
+of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his
+fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his
+buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or
+spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the
+path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them.
+Slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid's chair,
+wheeling silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man,
+was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his
+pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted
+body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken
+eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half
+obscure to him. Siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he
+should see. Helena looked intently for two seconds. She thought of the
+torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide--'the life
+tide,' she said to herself. The pain of the invalid overshadowed her own
+distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+
+'Come!' she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the
+completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+
+'We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow--so
+quiet,' she said to herself.
+
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her own
+state, after her own fashion.
+
+'The Mist Spirit,' she said to herself. 'The Mist Spirit draws a curtain
+round us--it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn
+curtain sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the curtain again, I
+do not want to think of the outside. I am afraid of the outside, and I
+am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. I want to be in our own
+fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.'
+
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+
+'Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next
+year, and stay for a whole month?'
+
+'If there be any next year,' said she.
+
+Siegmund did not reply.
+
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were
+mocking fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards
+their lodging.
+
+'There will be an end to this,' said Helena, communing with herself.
+'And when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No
+matter--let come what will. All along Fate has been resolving, from the
+very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar
+progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous harmonies
+with our lives. Really, the working out has been wondrous, is wondrous
+now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to suffer an anti-climax. I
+am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to allow a bathetic
+anti-climax.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 15_
+
+
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
+on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
+perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
+with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
+without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
+clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
+of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
+waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
+each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
+copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound,
+for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware
+that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces,
+like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
+
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
+that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
+time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
+Siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
+anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
+self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
+self-revelation took hold on him.
+
+'It is awfully funny,' he said. 'I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
+army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
+Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
+through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
+the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
+
+'He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
+and was to go into father's business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
+very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
+convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little while,
+but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles above
+me--which she was. She wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all
+like her. I bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children.
+
+'At first I fluttered round her. I remember I'd got a little, silky
+moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was
+mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off
+abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house.
+The mother was an invalid.
+
+'I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened
+off the smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two sisters
+and Beatrice talking about good-looking men.
+
+'"I consider Bertram will make a handsome man," said my younger sister.
+
+'"He's got beautiful eyes," said my other sister.
+
+'"And a real darling nose and chin!" cried Beatrice. "If only he was
+more _solide_! He is like a windmill, all limbs."
+
+'"He will fill out. Remember, he's not quite seventeen," said my elder
+sister.
+
+'"Ah, he is _doux_--he is _c�lin_," said Beatrice.
+
+'"I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister.
+
+'"But he's a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are," my
+younger sister chimed in.
+
+'"Ah, _si, si_!" cried Beatrice.
+
+'I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+
+'"Hello, is somebody in here?" I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+
+'I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed
+an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I
+of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white
+hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now,
+great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green;
+and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of
+Beatrice ... her great dark eyes.
+
+'It's funny, but Beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than Dante's.
+And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
+
+'I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
+Beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always
+jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen,
+earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when
+we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it
+awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
+
+'There's the romance. I wonder how it will all end.'
+
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before
+Helena's day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea
+that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and
+wonderful a thing in a man's life as birth, or adolescence, or death,
+was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of
+disillusion.
+
+'Come to think of it,' Siegmund continued, 'I have always shirked.
+Whenever I've been in a tight corner I've gone to Pater.'
+
+'I think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get
+out of to go to anybody.'
+
+'Yet I'm here,' he answered simply.
+
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+
+'And some men would have made a better job of it. When it's come to
+sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of
+her, I've always funked. I tell you I'm something of a moral coward.'
+
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'So be it.'
+Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
+discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
+finally--Siegmund.
+
+'In my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'I
+might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies
+running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I
+am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
+glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.'
+
+'You are so hard to get at,' said Siegmund. 'And so scornful of familiar
+things.'
+
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
+that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
+teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
+darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
+Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
+Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her
+whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
+
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
+day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
+night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
+after moments of intense living.
+
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
+herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
+dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash,
+and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
+
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
+livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
+fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong
+again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a
+destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed
+back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against
+her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty,
+mean conclusions.
+
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair
+grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary,
+lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
+
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
+was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
+Walk�re_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
+really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
+that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
+the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
+soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
+whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
+radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past
+the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short,
+something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men.
+
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
+her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
+he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her
+soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
+
+'Siegmund!' she said in despair.
+
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
+distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
+her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
+arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
+
+'What is it, dear? Is something wrong?'
+
+His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round
+her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
+beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
+He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did
+not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in
+his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free
+to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart,
+the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
+She struggled to escape.
+
+'What is it? Won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded.
+
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
+tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
+held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
+brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
+
+'Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me--at any rate tell me, Helena.'
+
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to
+be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
+His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong
+working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic
+to be free.
+
+'Let me go!' she cried. 'Let me go! Let me go!' He held her in
+bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed
+him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her
+suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
+
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down,
+sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a
+small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee
+beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
+
+'Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me,
+Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!'
+
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside
+herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this
+unreasoning pleading of his voice.
+
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on
+one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence
+was crackling with the sound of Helena's dry, hissing sobs. He remained
+silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he
+put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
+
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, 'It is enough,' He went behind the
+small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to
+hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush
+under which he could find cover.
+
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf,
+trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he
+lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time
+before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear,
+even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
+
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At
+length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could
+have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her
+face. Was somebody coming?
+
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied
+herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a
+thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
+She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.
+
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at
+them.
+
+'Dear!' she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to
+struggle with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have
+died than face anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+
+'Dear, someone is looking,' she pleaded.
+
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They walked
+on.
+
+'Forgive me, dear,' she said softly.
+
+'Nay, it's not you,' he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on
+till the night seemed private. She turned to him, and 'Siegmund!' she
+said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
+
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her
+face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered
+it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
+
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The
+stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first
+one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the
+sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he remembered
+how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and
+set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after point with yellow
+drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by one, delicately with
+his rod. The night was religious, then, with its proper order of
+worship. Day and night had their ritual, and passed in uncouth worship.
+
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night,
+where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars
+catch fire. At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might be.
+Helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he
+touched with his lips as part of the service.
+
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was
+quite alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman's
+breast have hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching the
+unknown. But this night he did not want comfort. If he were 'an infant
+crying in the night', it was crying that a woman could not still. He was
+abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. He, in loneliness,
+must search the night for faith.
+
+'My fate is finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation
+may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I
+must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to
+botch and bungle even damnation.'
+
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of
+his acts. Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though
+he could not see it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing
+softly in token of submission.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 16_
+
+
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
+of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
+insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him--she was
+afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
+little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had
+she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost
+him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
+
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
+gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
+back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+
+'What are you thinking of?' she asked.
+
+'I?' he replied. 'I really don't know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.'
+
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
+speech, she asked:
+
+'Was I very cruel, dear?'
+
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
+drew her close into him.
+
+'It was pretty bad, I suppose,' he replied. 'But I should think neither
+of us could help it.'
+
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
+helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
+shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
+in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
+delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to
+her Madonna.
+
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till
+at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of
+healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
+free, turned sharply aside, and said:
+
+'Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+'If you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
+with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless
+water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a
+long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with
+star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
+
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a
+tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay
+close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star
+which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin
+streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
+star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
+the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
+star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home.
+He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was
+behind the gate?
+
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
+populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+
+Siegmund was considering.
+
+'What _was_ the matter with you?' he asked.
+
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
+her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
+in experience:
+
+'Why, you see, dear, you won't understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it--the crying of lives I have touched....'
+
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
+also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled
+with shame.
+
+'....A crying of lives against me, and I couldn't silence them, nor
+escape out of the darkness. I wanted you--I saw you in front, whistling
+the Spring Song, but I couldn't find you--it was not you--I couldn't
+find you.'
+
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+
+'No, I don't see it,' he said. 'You would always be you. I could think
+of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.'
+
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her
+mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
+
+'Sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.'
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+'I lose you!' he repeated. 'You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my
+hold over you, and then you--?'
+
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+
+'It shall not be any more,' she said.
+
+'All right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.'
+
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+
+'You mustn't be bitter,' she murmured.
+
+'Four days is enough,' he said. 'In a fortnight I should be intolerable
+to you. I am not masterful.'
+
+'It is not so, Siegmund,' she said sharply.
+
+'I give way always,' he repeated. 'And then--tonight!'
+
+'Tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'Tonight I have been a fool!'
+
+'And I?' he asked.
+
+'You--what of you?' she cried. Then she became sad. 'I have little
+perverse feelings,' she lamented.
+
+'And I can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I'm
+always pushed this way and that, like a fool.'
+
+'You don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said.
+
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+
+'You are not like other folk. "_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht_." I thought of you when we read it.'
+
+'Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
+Which is it?'
+
+'Neither,' he said. 'You are _you_.'
+
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
+faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
+in black silhouette between them and the sea.
+
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
+life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
+read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his
+mind: '_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
+immer tiefer ins Leben._'
+
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
+home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+
+'This time tomorrow night,' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she implored.
+
+'Why not?' he laughed.
+
+'Don't, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+'All right, I won't.'
+
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
+little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
+on them now and again.
+
+'You won't be tired when you go back?' Helena asked.
+
+'Tired!' he echoed.
+
+'You know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full
+of pity. He laughed.
+
+'Oh, that is gone,' he said.
+
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+
+'And will you be sad?' she said, hesitating.
+
+'Sad!' he repeated.
+
+'But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
+back?'
+
+'The old life will take me up, I suppose,' he said.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'I have done wrong.'
+
+'Good Lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
+look at her, for the first time.
+
+'I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as
+you are now....'
+
+'"Take no thought for the morrow." Be quiet, Helena!' he exclaimed as
+the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+
+'Why?' she asked, afraid.
+
+'Why!' he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
+staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
+terrified her, and she lost courage.
+
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
+on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
+laughed, then became tender.
+
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
+half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
+sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs,
+as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the
+doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched.
+
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
+on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
+days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
+with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
+unity of their fates was gone.
+
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
+definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
+certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
+Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
+consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
+
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
+see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
+ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
+resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
+waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
+looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
+the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
+It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
+of the sea?
+
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
+this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
+overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
+over the sea--a libation.
+
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
+wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
+and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
+the moon looked frail and empty.
+
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
+of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
+into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
+watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
+eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.'
+
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
+moon.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 17_
+
+
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven
+o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+
+'But it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of
+the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted
+hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.
+
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that
+his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium
+glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of
+the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,
+offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the
+brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him
+with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.
+
+'They are all extraordinarily sweet,' said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies
+fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.
+Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.
+
+'The careless little beggars!' he said.
+
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely
+dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to
+meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of
+diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund
+had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and
+everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to
+us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break
+our hearts.
+
+'We have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say.
+
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+
+'It is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.'
+
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last
+night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed
+by his usual altar-stone.
+
+'How closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'It seems almost as if
+the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.'
+
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering
+fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his
+own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with
+things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and
+seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath
+his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with
+wondering pleasure.
+
+'They find no fault with me,' he said. 'I suppose they are as fallible
+as I, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the
+water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+
+'Once more,' he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very
+quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam
+towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like
+beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see
+fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white
+peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a
+sheen of silver.
+
+'Helena is right,' he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but
+moving upon the bosom of the tide; 'she is right, it is all enchanted. I
+have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.'
+
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round the
+terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets
+of the water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his foot;
+they were hard, cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made for the
+archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. There under
+water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls, were
+sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly
+green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the morning, their
+hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half afraid of their
+frantic efforts.
+
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch.
+There was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white, full-fleshed
+walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and
+out among themselves. Siegmund was carried along in an invisible
+chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. The tide swerved, threw him as
+he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow met the rock,
+and he was sick with pain. He held his breath, trying to get back the
+joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely, smooth side of the
+rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt
+him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the
+shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his
+arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch
+no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful,
+especially when, a minute or two later, he bent his arm.
+
+'No,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt
+me. I suppose I was careless.'
+
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
+looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
+bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
+gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the
+sea-shore played together.
+
+'Surely,' said Siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a
+jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.'
+
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
+the cliffs.
+
+'I was mistaken,' he said. 'It was an illusion.'
+
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
+windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
+another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white
+rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit
+and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
+or comrade.
+
+'They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
+after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do
+I matter?'
+
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+
+    We are not long for music and laughter,
+      Love and desire and hate;
+    I think we have no portion in them after
+      We pass the gate.
+
+'Why should I be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling.
+He frowned, and answered: 'Oh, Lord!--the old argument!'
+
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+
+'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.'
+
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
+maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
+
+'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
+that melts on the sunshine.'
+
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
+a joke.
+
+'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
+count; I am inconsiderable.'
+
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
+was arguing with himself.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.'
+
+But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
+answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
+overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
+was a great ignominy.
+
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore
+with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to
+discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box
+which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She
+had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then
+another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean
+lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
+
+'The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting,
+trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
+flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
+Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
+
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
+did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
+anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
+laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
+trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously
+her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend.
+There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the
+air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending,
+though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed
+beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as
+she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which
+made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for
+all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off
+her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
+thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled
+hastily upwards towards the outlet.
+
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
+window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
+throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
+dragon's hole.
+
+'How surprised they will be to see me!' said Helena, scrambling forward,
+laughing.
+
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
+white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the
+flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung
+the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena
+stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she
+stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a
+thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white
+incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips
+were parted in a woman's joy of adoration.
+
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+
+'It is good,' said Helena; 'it is very good.' She looked again, and saw
+the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
+pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
+they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
+
+'It is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she
+could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
+while she turned away.
+
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
+the beach to her.
+
+'You are not gone, then?' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it
+could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
+face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but Helena did not notice
+that his eyes were full of misery.
+
+'I, actually,' he said, smiling.
+
+'I did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant
+wonder. 'I could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and
+continued--'Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,' she said,
+looking radiantly up into Siegmund's face. 'Isn't it beautiful this
+morning?' she added.
+
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
+kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
+of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
+beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+
+'Isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked Helena, as she wrung the
+water from her costume.
+
+'It is very fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
+said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
+and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.'
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.'
+
+'It is,' assented Helena warmly. 'Have you noticed the waves? They are
+like a line of children chased by a white dog.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund.
+
+'Didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips
+the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+
+'I swam to my little bay again,' he replied.
+
+'Did you?' she exclaimed, pleased.
+
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
+holding them to Siegmund to dry.
+
+'I am very hungry,' she said.
+
+'And I,' he agreed.
+
+'I feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his
+position having reminded her of their departure.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't
+it?' she insisted.
+
+'I wish we might never go back,' he said.
+
+Helena sighed.
+
+'It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
+Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+
+'It has been something, dear,' she repeated.
+
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+
+'Everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He
+could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'Everything!' he said.
+
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+
+'I did well, didn't I, Siegmund?' she asked. Helena felt the
+responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
+withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
+word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
+
+'Wonderfully well, Helena,' he replied.
+
+She kissed his forehead.
+
+'You are everything,' he said.
+
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 18_
+
+
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
+brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate,
+gentle manner.
+
+'The water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from
+one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the
+amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his
+capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
+
+'It was,' assented Helena. 'It was as warm as new milk.'
+
+'Ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
+experience of Siegmund and his beloved. 'And did ye see the ships of
+war?' she asked.
+
+'No, they had gone,' replied Helena.
+
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+
+'You'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady.
+
+Helena arranged the matter.
+
+'I think ye both look better,' Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
+Siegmund.
+
+He smiled constrainedly.
+
+'I thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically.
+
+'He had been working hard,' said Helena, also glancing at him.
+
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+
+'Ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'And it's a very short time for you.
+What a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are
+grand, so they say.'
+
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'Have you never seen
+them?' she asked.
+
+'No,' replied Mrs. Curtiss. 'I've never been able to get; but I hope to
+go yet.'
+
+'I hope you may,' said Siegmund.
+
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
+quite satisfied.
+
+'Well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.'
+
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+
+'I've brought you,' she said, 'some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye'll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
+come back.'
+
+'How could we help?' laughed Helena.
+
+'We will,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
+Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
+presence of the delightful little lady.
+
+'This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she
+said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+
+'Ah!' exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+
+'One of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'And
+everybody.'
+
+'You have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony.
+
+'Strangers,' she replied. 'I seem to make strangers of all the people I
+meet.'
+
+She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her intently.
+He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+
+'Need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if
+ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two,
+three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,'
+she laughed.
+
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
+currants she had extricated for him.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 19_
+
+
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
+which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
+a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless
+little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old
+yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
+
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
+them.
+
+'Who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'They are
+tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling
+along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they
+take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when
+they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in
+the dark will gather them away. They won't be here in the morning,
+shrivelled and dowdy ... If only we could curl up and be gone, after
+our day....'
+
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+
+'It is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said.
+
+'Ay!' he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with
+bent head, abstract, but happy.
+
+'What is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'She is sufficient to
+herself--she doesn't want me. She has her own private way of communing
+with things, and is friends with them.'
+
+'The dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him
+from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+
+'I see it has,' he answered. Then to himself he said: 'She can't
+translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can't render
+herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she
+only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After
+a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not indispensable....'
+
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
+the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
+roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
+edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
+brilliant with dew.
+
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
+lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
+avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
+and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular.
+
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
+decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+
+'Amy! Amy!'
+
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
+indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
+calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
+he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
+
+'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.
+
+'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.
+
+'Look!' said Siegmund.
+
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
+holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
+gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with
+hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened
+the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then
+the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
+
+There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by
+the resentful abuse of the man.
+
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+
+'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.
+
+'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as
+if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.'
+
+'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.
+
+Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
+winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next
+incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
+humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
+fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
+self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
+time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
+her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
+of his tortured self-respect.
+
+'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone
+must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in
+it myself.'
+
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,
+the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,
+all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it
+naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this
+bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty
+and find the dirt. What was he to do?
+
+'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
+look quite stern today.'
+
+'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.'
+
+'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
+gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
+so grave.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
+right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
+it had all gone.'
+
+'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
+only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
+such stuff.'
+
+'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
+Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
+came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
+said that.'
+
+'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
+
+'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
+learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
+drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
+mockingly, to tease her.
+
+'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
+ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
+let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
+with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
+rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
+The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
+purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
+and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
+blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
+
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
+trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
+drooped over everything.
+
+'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
+Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
+will not wave my hand.'
+
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
+allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
+Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
+spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
+
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
+also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
+said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
+felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
+neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
+untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
+
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
+disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
+seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
+mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
+interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
+twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
+surprising.
+
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
+the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
+white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
+softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+
+'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
+the light.
+
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
+ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
+wild spinning of the lights.
+
+'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
+apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
+laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+
+'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
+to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
+understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
+cannot compel anybody to follow me.
+
+'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
+sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
+to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
+When can I set my feet on when this is gone?'
+
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
+Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
+looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+
+'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
+'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
+ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
+to the sun.
+
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+
+'This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
+which to lie.
+
+'Shall we not go under the rocks?' said Helena.
+
+'Look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.'
+
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
+with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat
+was dreadful.
+
+'My arms, Siegmund,' said she. 'They feel as if they were dipped in
+fire.'
+
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+
+'Are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed stupidly.
+
+'That is all right,' he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
+him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena's mist-curtain,
+he said:
+
+'I _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only
+I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...'
+
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
+of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
+savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
+beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
+would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
+
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
+lips on her cheek, he murmured:
+
+'I should be able, shouldn't I, Helena?'
+
+'You are always able!' she cried. 'It is I who play with you at hiding.'
+
+'I have really had you so little,' he said.
+
+'Can't you forget it, Siegmund?' she cried. 'Can't you forget it? It was
+only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can't you
+forget it, dear?'
+
+'You can't do without me?' he asked.
+
+'If I lose you I am lost,' answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
+safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
+
+'I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
+us,' said Helena to herself. 'They may go back to hell.'
+
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft
+away.
+
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
+to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
+out to sea and lost.
+
+'If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
+were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
+should get stronger and more upright.'
+
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
+two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
+leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
+his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
+great power.
+
+'If,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
+and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
+Siegmund in my arms....'
+
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
+falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
+that it made silence sweet.
+
+'If now,' prayed Siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
+were dark....'
+
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the
+bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
+rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
+that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger
+of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return,
+to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must
+not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and
+travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He
+lay in suspense, waiting.
+
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+
+'It is time, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
+She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
+him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
+inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
+sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still
+he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart
+crushed with grief for him.
+
+'We must go, Siegmund,' she whispered.
+
+'All right,' he said, but still he did not move.
+
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
+air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving.
+His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too
+strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the
+sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
+
+'We shall be too late,' she said in distress.
+
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She
+put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself
+together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
+
+'Why, what time is it?'
+
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his
+left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
+
+'I can't see the figures,' he said. 'Everything is dimmed, as if it were
+coming dark.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. 'My eyes
+were the same. It is the strong sunlight.'
+
+'I can't,' he repeated, and he was rather surprised--'I can't see the
+time. Can you?'
+
+She stooped down and looked.
+
+'It is half past one,' she said.
+
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time
+to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: 'I
+feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in
+my body is dulled.'
+
+'Yes,' answered Helena, 'I am afraid it will do you harm.'
+
+'At any rate,' he smiled as if sleepily, 'I have had enough. If it's too
+much--what _is_ too much?'
+
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+
+'We are going back--we are going back!' the heart of Helena seemed to
+run hot, beating these words.
+
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge
+of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea.
+The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching
+in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon
+the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still.
+Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful,
+incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund's
+mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then
+turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he
+had enjoyed, '_Addio_!' he said.
+
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+
+'It reminds me of Traviata--an "_Addio_" at every verse-end.'
+
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it
+jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve.
+'_Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o_!' he whistled between his teeth, hissing out
+the Italian's passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
+
+'I suppose,' she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check
+this discord--'I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey--Thursday.'
+
+'I don't know,' said Siegmund.
+
+'There will not be very many people,' she insisted.
+
+'I think,' he said, in a very quiet voice, 'you'd better let me go by
+the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.'
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+'I don't want to sit looking at you all the way,' he said.
+
+'But why should you?' she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Indeed, no!' she said. 'We shall go together.'
+
+'Very well,' he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the
+little post office, he said:
+
+'I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.'
+
+'You haven't sent them any word?' she asked.
+
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood
+still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+
+'Shall I?' he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was
+rather peculiar.
+
+'Well, I should think so,' faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and
+cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a
+telegraph form.
+
+'My God!' he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could
+not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled
+his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the
+amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her
+finger, he felt sick with irony.
+
+'That's right,' she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to
+the instrument. 'What beautiful weather!' she continued. 'It will be
+making you sorry to leave us.'
+
+'There goes my warrant,' thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of
+paper under the post-mistress's heavy hand.
+
+'Yes--it is too bad, isn't it,' he replied, bowing and laughing to the
+woman.
+
+'It is, sir,' she answered pleasantly. 'Good morning.'
+
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face
+like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression
+told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her
+falter with dismay.
+
+'What is he thinking of?' she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back.
+'And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them
+at home?'
+
+'Well,' said Siegmund, 'are there any postcards?'
+
+'None that I care to take,' she replied. 'Perhaps you would like one of
+these?'
+
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary
+views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+
+'I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,' he said.
+
+'Or a brush,' said Helena.
+
+'She does not understand,' said Siegmund to himself. 'And whatever I do
+I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.'
+
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings
+resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 20_
+
+
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other
+with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses,
+the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with
+exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if
+they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think,
+they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back
+her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
+
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
+shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
+at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
+who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here
+was room for all. Faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to
+look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
+and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
+into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself
+carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched
+the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between
+his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against
+the side of the carriage. The German's hips came down tight against her.
+She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure
+of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the
+opposite direction.
+
+'I am afraid I press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
+German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
+she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
+
+'Oh no,' she answered. 'You do not crush me.'
+
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
+The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
+slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
+remark in German: 'Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?'
+
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
+each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
+over 'Billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the German
+Emperor--and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned
+each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
+going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
+were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
+
+Helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
+tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the na�ve type: he talked with
+face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
+spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
+Helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to
+escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
+beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+
+'I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in
+perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
+her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free
+Helena, and said:
+
+'Forgive me, I am sorry.'
+
+'You are forgiven,' replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
+her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
+at this. The good humour was complete.
+
+'Thank you,' said the German gratefully.
+
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
+rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no
+attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German's apologies, and
+the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell.
+
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
+intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
+never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
+between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
+race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
+Siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
+same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
+It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
+birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
+never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him
+the mistress.
+
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like
+a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund's resentment against
+her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was
+very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made
+her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now,
+small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her.
+But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone,
+little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has
+done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind;
+death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this
+house of strangers which she called 'life'. She had to go on alone, like
+a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+
+'What will she do?' Siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes
+upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
+the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
+strength is established. But what then?'
+
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go
+on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had
+not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do
+when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive.
+Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
+
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
+inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
+and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became
+acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he
+had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour
+with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
+
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
+eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
+an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
+her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar
+hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool
+or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were
+instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar
+jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand.
+Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were
+passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as nonsense.
+
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
+faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
+clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
+them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
+sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
+endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere
+of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing that could
+relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its hold.
+
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
+heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to
+support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out
+of himself whatever she wanted.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 21_
+
+
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.
+It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily
+together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a
+concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. To
+Siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers
+crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from
+the street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay as
+snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,
+without any joy.
+
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their
+steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to
+stimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned
+slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber
+floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;
+small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the
+sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft
+stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were
+men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags
+through a sky dim with distance.
+
+'It is all very glad,' said Siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to be
+fanciful.'
+
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to his
+destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies
+between us and our goal.
+
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
+blue afternoon.
+
+'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over
+again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+
+'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to
+herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
+as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
+their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
+sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the
+swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark head
+and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over
+some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low
+stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer was
+sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing
+straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretching
+forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
+sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.
+
+'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
+watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
+with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
+veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
+lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
+the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
+staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
+the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
+from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
+dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
+quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
+as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
+steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
+coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
+raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
+gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
+the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
+in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
+indifference.
+
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
+whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
+the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
+noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
+moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
+They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of
+life again.
+
+'By Jove, that was a near thing!'
+
+'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.
+
+'A French yacht,' said somebody.
+
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
+to say. Confused, he repeated:
+
+'That was a close shave.'
+
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
+herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
+quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+
+'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the day
+is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
+swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
+That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
+no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of
+the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white
+seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,
+and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+
+'For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness
+through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he
+fumbles with delights like a bee.
+
+'For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness
+the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life,
+the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible
+flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death,
+is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a
+life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers
+into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from the
+death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potent
+shadow, if I do not enrich life.'
+
+'Wasn't that woman fine!' said Helena.
+
+'So perfectly still,' he answered.
+
+'The child realized nothing,' she said.
+
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+
+'I am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urged
+inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.'
+
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+
+'I guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor,
+will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.'
+
+'He was careful of something else just then,' said Siegmund, who hated
+to hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'He was attending to the
+machinery or something.'
+
+'That was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic.
+
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement--very blind.
+Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
+
+'Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked.
+
+'He nearly succeeded,' she replied.
+
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the
+world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'But, after all,' he
+thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event
+and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of
+exoneration.'
+
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of
+the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of
+life, saw it great and impersonal.
+
+'Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' he
+asked.
+
+'I rather think not. Why?' she replied.
+
+'I hope she didn't,' he said.
+
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very
+much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to
+her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and
+proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
+
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman's
+courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the
+boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he
+himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from
+lamenting his hard fate.
+
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they
+looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He
+yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be
+carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came
+round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept
+round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old
+_Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for
+a trophy.
+
+'It is a dreadful thing,' thought Siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy when
+there is nothing more to do.' He watched the landing-stages swooping
+nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of
+the train was London.
+
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.
+The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in
+the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released
+from her.
+
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder,
+in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the
+crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to
+the mainland.
+
+'Won't you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?'
+asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question.
+
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+
+'No,' she replied. 'Let us go together.'
+
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat
+down, facing Helena.
+
+'Now,' said he to himself, 'I wish I were alone.'
+
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+
+'Shall I not go down to Cornwall?'
+
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that
+she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety
+protracted.
+
+'But you have promised Louisa, have you not?' he replied.
+
+'Oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she
+wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+
+'Then you must go,' he said.
+
+'But,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'I do not want to go down to
+Cornwall with _Louisa and Olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after
+_this_,' she added.
+
+'Then Louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he said
+gravely.
+
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+
+'Is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. She glanced angrily at
+the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the
+ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the
+carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved
+by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena in
+his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him
+with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
+
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through
+Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It
+seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of
+the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. The
+afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneys
+and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant
+appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of
+light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+
+'It will go on,' thought Siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever.
+And I shall miss it all!'
+
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he
+began again:
+
+'Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will
+say nothing, thank God--nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there
+will be no interruptions....
+
+'But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss
+reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the
+country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my
+money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.
+Very good.
+
+'But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want
+Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be
+damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never
+get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out
+of pity for me. I know she would.
+
+'But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me
+not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in
+endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a
+red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth.
+Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any
+efforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what the
+result is." And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would be
+a gangrene of shame.
+
+'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
+asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
+creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
+I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?'
+
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
+whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
+imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
+sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
+children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
+bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
+thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
+unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
+her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
+took his pleasure elsewhere.
+
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
+consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
+agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be only
+a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait for
+the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
+inevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money to
+keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
+then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+
+'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give each
+of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
+nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and round
+went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
+grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
+gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his
+knee.
+
+'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with
+pain, 'you will forgive me.'
+
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
+filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
+smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes
+haunted with pain.
+
+'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfect
+happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!'
+
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
+painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned
+back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike
+swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.
+
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
+rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena
+had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,
+so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey
+that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of
+the final convictions.
+
+'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?
+What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
+have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
+inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?'
+
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
+never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
+backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
+great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
+with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a
+breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
+and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
+simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered
+what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague
+roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
+was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
+proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
+magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
+opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
+everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
+sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
+train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
+It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
+darkened grass-lands.
+
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
+breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
+was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
+victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms
+uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. The
+day died nobly, so she thought.
+
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+
+'Surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously.
+Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It
+came, unswerving, from behind the trees.
+
+'I am sure it is for us,' she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.
+Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and
+pointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little of
+her faith.
+
+'It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn't it seem to you to be
+travelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.'
+
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'Aylwin'.
+
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+
+Helena was almost happy.
+
+'I am right,' said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and
+Helena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand
+to confirm it.'
+
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like
+a greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was
+mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,
+his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a
+certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy
+insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courage
+to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on
+towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky, asking
+of everything, 'Am I right? Am I right?' He did not mind what happened
+to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by 'right' he did
+not trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had been
+reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid,
+and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him
+deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.
+
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the
+fountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from
+the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they
+hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the
+hive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of
+purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--a
+village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.
+
+'Ah, well!' thought Siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm,
+what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light,
+and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from these
+rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of
+night, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the day will
+swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, and
+humming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell and
+the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happens
+we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or not,
+bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_
+always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least,
+I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there
+in the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned bright; I
+have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--I wonder where? We can
+never point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!'
+
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking
+towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the
+night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their
+first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw the
+quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between
+high embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered with
+roses of Sharon--the large golden St John's wort of finest silk. He
+looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,
+ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:
+
+'Do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of Sharon all along here?'
+
+'I do,' replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'Weren't they
+pretty?'
+
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+
+'Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I
+should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.'
+
+He smiled, without answering.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+
+'But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked.
+She put the question timidly. 'Would you care to?' she added.
+
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+
+'No,' he said gently; 'I think we had better not.' Almost for the first
+time he did not make apologetic explanation.
+
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning
+of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near
+Sutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and
+her basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite
+ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. Siegmund
+was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, he
+said to himself, 'Ah, well, it must be so.'
+
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+
+'At least,' she said doubtfully, 'I shall see you at the station.'
+
+'At Waterloo?' he asked.
+
+'No, at Wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone.
+
+'But--' he began.
+
+'It will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. 'Much better than crossing London from Victoria to
+Waterloo.'
+
+'Very well,' he replied.
+
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+
+'You will get in Wimbledon 10.5--leave 10.40--leave Waterloo 11.30,' he
+said.
+
+'Very good,' she answered.
+
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the
+train to stop.
+
+'If only she will soon go!' thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable
+minute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,
+pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon
+the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him,
+he could scarcely breathe. 'How long will it be?' he said to himself,
+looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the lady who
+could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her;
+he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors slammed and
+the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.
+
+'Now I lose her,' said Siegmund.
+
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+
+'Good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away.
+
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with
+sickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why
+did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what
+would she do?
+
+
+
+_Chapter 22_
+
+
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to
+Wimbledon. London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this
+peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from
+Victoria to Waterloo.
+
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
+swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
+clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
+hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
+full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating
+with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and
+stood there panting--great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always
+amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased
+with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was
+glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her
+with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the
+rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing
+along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to
+her. 'Discords,' she said, 'after the trees and sea.' She liked the
+glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for
+pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of Heaven;
+but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland.
+
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched
+the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself
+far before him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted
+with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in
+their movement. There was a soft vividness of life in their carriage; it
+reminded Siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised
+candle-flame. The women went blithely alongside. Occasionally, in
+passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he
+knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy;
+besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. The eyes
+of the women said, 'You are comely, you are lovable,' and
+Siegmund smiled.
+
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a
+lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of
+grey-gold light.
+
+'It is a wonderful night,' he said to himself. 'There are not two such
+in a year.'
+
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his
+heart. This purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth
+of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip
+sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him.
+
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but
+rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the
+bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a
+hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the
+black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+
+'Ah!' said Siegmund to himself; 'it is far too wonderful for me. Here,
+as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever
+happens, the world is wonderful.'
+
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night,
+the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the
+floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like
+an army of angels filing past on one of God's campaigns, the purring
+haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people. Siegmund
+went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of life. He
+did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he walked
+home in the moonless dark.
+
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He
+did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: 'Now
+for the beginning of Hell!'
+
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy
+murmur. The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten,
+Siegmund opened the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not
+raise her head. Frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a
+book. He did not look up. Vera had her fingers thrust in among her hair,
+and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before her.
+Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to show they were aware
+of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people who
+cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go. His
+wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing
+under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in the
+creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+
+'I suppose the children are in bed,' he said.
+
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily
+turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly
+interested and had known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his
+slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another.
+
+'They've been gone two hours,' said Frank at last, still without raising
+his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was
+jarring, not yet having developed a man's fullness.
+
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The
+slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag
+seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to
+speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's scornful
+restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat
+leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered
+with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+
+'Do you want any supper?' asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of
+her voice startled him into looking at her.
+
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund's heart went
+down with weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+
+'Aren't _you_ having any?' he asked.
+
+The table was not laid. Beatrice's work-basket, a little wicker
+fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and
+reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows on
+the table.
+
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took out
+a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth
+over one end of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock
+with her hand.
+
+'Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?'
+she asked.
+
+'In where?'
+
+In this month's _Nash's_.'
+
+'No,' replied Beatrice. 'What time have I for reading, much less for
+anything else?'
+
+'You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people,
+then,' said Vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. She rose. 'Let me
+do this. You sit down; you are tired, Mother,' she said.
+
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed
+her. Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his
+thin shoulders lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on
+his knees, looking into the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking of
+crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. All the time Vera was heard
+chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond
+tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail to
+her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity.
+
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a
+plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer,
+and some bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the
+leaves of her magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely
+for his father. He looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained
+himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in
+with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright.
+
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly
+clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin--in fact, it was
+just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous
+neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an
+established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong,
+impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the
+little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. Her
+face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to sew.
+
+'What do you say, Mother?' said Vera, as if resuming a conversation.
+'Shall it be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?'
+
+'I say, as I said before,' replied Beatrice: 'I cannot afford to go
+out.'
+
+'But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. _D�tes
+donc_!'
+
+'There are other things to think of,' said Beatrice.
+
+'Now, _maman, nous avons chang� tout cela_! We are going out--a jolly
+little razzle!' Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and
+smiled at her mother gaily.
+
+'I am afraid there will be no _razzle_'--Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly--'for me. You are slangy, Vera.'
+
+'_Un doux argot, ma m�re_. You look tired.'
+
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+
+'I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,' she said.
+
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking
+in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked
+up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+
+'There's your supper, Father.'
+
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head
+lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+
+Siegmund was hungry.
+
+'Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to
+himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He
+seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and
+away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching
+from under his eyebrows.
+
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of
+his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it,
+despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night.
+He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat
+irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.
+
+'Good night!' he said.
+
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut
+the door and went.
+
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the
+tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically,
+catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The
+faces of the two children set hard with hate.
+
+'He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing
+and her cottons.
+
+'At any rate, he's come back red enough,' said Frank, in his grating
+tone of contempt. 'He's like boiled salmon.'
+
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to
+the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude.
+
+'He _would_ come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's
+sneer.
+
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread,
+and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at
+this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched
+her with jealous eyes.
+
+'There is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said Beatrice to him. 'I
+kept you some.'
+
+'All right, Ma,' he replied. Fetch it in.'
+
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+
+'And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called Vera after her.
+
+'The damned coward! Ain't he a rotten funker?' said Frank, _sotto voce_,
+while his mother was out of the room.
+
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank
+yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother,
+and, putting his hand on her arm--the feel of his mother's round arm
+under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise--he said, more gratingly
+than ever:
+
+'Ne'er mind, Ma; we'll be all right to you.' Then he bent and kissed
+her. 'Good night, Mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of
+the room.
+
+Beatrice was crying.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 23_
+
+
+'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind
+him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family
+criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent
+judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house
+from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I
+come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'
+
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him
+a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his
+position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might
+feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after
+time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught
+him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and
+his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touched
+them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own
+childish touch-and-shrink.
+
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he
+stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and
+wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously
+soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The
+night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of
+light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose
+up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth
+of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the
+whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night
+occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across
+the distance.
+
+'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything into
+a oneness. I wonder what is in it.'
+
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the
+night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a
+hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A
+star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a
+yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had
+seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
+
+'It is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a good
+sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'
+
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was
+soon in bed.
+
+'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'
+
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
+his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,
+I've got to go through it.'
+
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
+forgot when he awoke. Only this na�ve question and answer betrayed what
+had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
+knowledge vanished.
+
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
+did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
+thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
+'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his
+heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep
+activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been
+his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and
+nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the
+expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+
+'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I
+looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.
+Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the
+departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by
+facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it
+was keen, was half pleasure.
+
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
+next to his, and he heard her:
+
+'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.'
+
+'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
+
+'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I
+slept.'
+
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
+The minutes passed.
+
+'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to
+himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
+humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep
+him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
+anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was
+heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
+heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of
+the stairs:
+
+'Do you want any hot water?'
+
+'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,
+lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
+second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
+same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
+girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
+suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
+
+'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'
+Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting
+impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no
+answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
+
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+
+'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you
+want?'
+
+'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
+
+'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are
+you shouting for?'
+
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
+into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'
+
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of
+the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.
+She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and
+pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her
+feet as she went downstairs.
+
+'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'
+
+The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the
+kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's
+feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.
+He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive
+to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and
+meet them all.
+
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'
+Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
+of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
+from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
+suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
+thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
+downstairs. It was nine o'clock.
+
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
+his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
+waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
+knocked loudly.
+
+'All right,' said he.
+
+Then she went downstairs.
+
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's
+voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+
+'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the
+table for a week.'
+
+Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
+to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
+the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
+Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
+pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
+bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
+which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her
+stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
+sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,
+but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge
+and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
+She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
+her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
+child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
+
+'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'
+
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
+back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
+the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
+turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
+his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be
+trying to discover something in him.
+
+'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
+
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
+slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
+continued to regard him curiously.
+
+'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
+
+'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
+
+'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
+
+'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+
+'Much farther than that,' he replied.
+
+'To Worthing?' she asked.
+
+'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
+
+'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
+
+'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
+
+'Twuly?' she asked.
+
+'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
+
+'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
+
+'I will next time,' he replied.
+
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+
+'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+
+'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--'
+
+'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.
+
+'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.
+
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+
+'You _are_ red,' she said.
+
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+
+'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'
+
+'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+
+'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't
+you?'
+
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and
+she drew away from him, unwilling.
+
+'Come and let me look,' he repeated.
+
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her
+face, shy, suspicious, condemning.
+
+'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+
+'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'
+
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went
+downstairs without going into his room.
+
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.
+He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the
+bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and
+licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
+
+'A pity to wash it off,' he said.
+
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment
+exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he
+thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'
+
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of
+forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+
+'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should
+find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my
+affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no
+more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a
+man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of
+creation.'
+
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His
+sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was
+dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was
+indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to
+the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.
+He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and
+Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude
+of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt
+as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked
+nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would
+not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the
+cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few
+days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly
+through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and
+of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and
+madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life
+struggled in a clogged and broken channel.
+
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He
+would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and
+sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him
+into consciousness.
+
+'I suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition
+in his head.
+
+'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intense
+irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot
+irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair
+without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move
+about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
+
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which
+she was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to see
+what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed
+intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let
+go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she
+had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed
+him closely.
+
+'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.
+
+Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'
+
+'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.
+
+'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.
+
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up
+anxiously.
+
+'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'But what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child.
+
+'Nothing--nothing that I can tell _you_. He's only spoilt all our
+lives.'
+
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+
+'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a
+nice plum?'
+
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.
+She was too much perplexed.
+
+'What do you say?' asked her mother.
+
+'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.
+
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in
+his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing
+irritability from his belly.
+
+'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.
+
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+
+'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he asked
+himself.
+
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening
+to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he
+could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would
+be better.
+
+'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this
+out.
+
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or
+distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often
+dreamed of, farming in Canada.
+
+'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.'
+
+'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.
+
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+
+'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better be
+dead. To have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.'
+
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed
+entertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' he
+asked himself.
+
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+
+'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' he
+cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a
+raw place.
+
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.
+There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He
+merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood
+holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
+
+'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.
+
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,
+before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+
+'Dinner's ready.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'
+
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+
+'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.
+
+'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in
+her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+
+'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie--never
+mind.'
+
+The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and
+Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and
+grew cold.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 24_
+
+
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
+pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
+was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
+her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
+like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into
+his box.
+
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
+ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
+which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly
+entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to
+peck forwards as she said:
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+
+'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
+manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?'
+
+'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.
+
+'H'm!'
+
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
+sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
+forbore to question.
+
+'You look well,' she said.
+
+Helena smiled ironically.
+
+'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful,
+affectionate manner she had assumed.
+
+'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.
+
+'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
+regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued,
+'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm,
+like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after
+a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will
+you have?'
+
+'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.
+
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+
+'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point
+curtly.
+
+'Lemonade,' said Helena.
+
+Presently Mr Verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
+voice.
+
+'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+
+'As you see, Pater,' she answered.
+
+'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
+tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!'
+her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can
+never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless
+pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will
+not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of
+offence upon it.
+
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to
+the door.
+
+'Has she come?'
+
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung
+herself upon Helena and kissed her.
+
+'How long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with
+affection.
+
+'Ten minutes,' replied Helena.
+
+'Why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and
+meet you?' Louisa reproached her.
+
+'Why?' drawled Helena.
+
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by
+this sarcasm.
+
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that
+night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their
+usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl--a
+minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made
+confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy
+which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena's
+thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea,
+pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with Siegmund, but
+reaching no further.
+
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender
+advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,
+all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided
+his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity
+which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated
+flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. But the day wore on. Helena
+pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a little,
+mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.
+
+At last the night fell.
+
+'Well,' said Helena to her mother, 'I suppose I'd better pack.'
+
+'Haven't you done it?' cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.
+'You'll never have it done. I'd better help you. What times does the
+train go?'
+
+Helena smiled.
+
+'Ten minutes to ten.'
+
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was
+ample time for everything.
+
+'Nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' Mrs Verden said.
+
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+
+'I'll come with you to the station,' suggested Mrs Verden. 'I'll see the
+last of you. We shan't see much of you just now.'
+
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+
+'Oh, I wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too
+evident.
+
+'Yes--I will--I'll see you off.'
+
+Mrs Verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was
+curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was
+reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played
+the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress.
+
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
+eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away
+swiftly as if she had been burned.
+
+'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
+wonder?'
+
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
+how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
+ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
+came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
+a chair.
+
+'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
+
+'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
+to a child.
+
+'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
+
+'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
+Helena.
+
+'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
+exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+
+'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
+the basket or the violin, Mater?'
+
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
+smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
+Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
+corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
+mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
+third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
+face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
+blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
+was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
+shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
+miles--two hundred and forty miles.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 25_
+
+
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice,
+who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of
+angry hysteria.
+
+'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had
+asked him coldly.
+
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+
+'Tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered.
+
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
+flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.
+
+'What do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done
+enough. We can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. You
+have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want
+to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember
+that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
+You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
+responsible for your children, do you think?'
+
+'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very
+coldly.
+
+'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
+sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
+children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
+_I'll_ stop, I tell you _I'll_ do as I like. _I'll_ go as well. No, I
+wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn't leave
+little children--to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they
+mightn't be yours.'
+
+'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.
+
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
+sick.
+
+Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.
+
+'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a
+great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do
+you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit
+moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
+wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
+up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of
+your hand?'
+
+'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to
+yourself!'
+
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath.
+Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and
+trembling.
+
+'You coward--you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
+who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
+what I am.'
+
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
+with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
+bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
+and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
+withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
+should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger,
+which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He
+trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
+Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
+found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
+Vera tackled the situation.
+
+'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.
+
+Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
+others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no
+reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
+Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
+a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'
+
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
+looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog--'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.
+
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
+taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
+the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
+father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
+in her softest and most persuasive tones:
+
+'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of
+meat. Mam, Mam!'
+
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's
+knee.
+
+'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.
+
+No response.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered.
+
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
+her mother's breast.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.
+
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
+tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her
+close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
+face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
+whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--'
+
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
+nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
+she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
+tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
+gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
+muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
+rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was
+the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the
+trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low;
+he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
+scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous
+sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
+cautiously asking:
+
+'Mam, is dad cross--is he? What did he do?'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'
+
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister.
+The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+
+'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
+unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
+afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
+slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
+the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
+the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
+small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting
+and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does
+who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the
+child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held
+his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
+do he did not know.
+
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
+another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
+wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
+against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
+world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face
+against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a
+piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now--his
+heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. It would
+open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
+with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+
+'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'
+
+'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
+hesitate, move, then turn away.
+
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
+stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
+bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
+pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
+his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay
+down on the bed.
+
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
+of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
+work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
+jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
+pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
+shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
+two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
+again, smiling.
+
+'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
+himself.
+
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
+weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
+intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+
+'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
+instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
+must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
+
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
+her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
+down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
+she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
+that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
+in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
+This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
+should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
+it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+
+'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
+'What time is it?'
+
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
+time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+
+'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
+good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'
+
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
+Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+
+'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'
+
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
+wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
+his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
+was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
+though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
+were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
+
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
+path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran
+out crying:
+
+'Are you going out? Where are you going?'
+
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+
+'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+
+'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
+long.'
+
+'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+
+'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'
+
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+
+'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 26_
+
+
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
+packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
+stopped before the indicator.
+
+'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice,
+'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'
+
+'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.
+
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+
+'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'
+
+'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa,
+skittish.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by
+appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of
+
+    '"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad,
+    And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'
+
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
+something, chimed in sarcastically:
+
+'"They are nothing to her madness--"'
+
+'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.
+
+'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.
+
+'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity
+was given me in large doses.'
+
+'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness,
+if you call it such. You are always so serious.'
+
+'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed
+Olive.
+
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
+acknowledging the sarcasm.
+
+'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the
+point?'
+
+'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to
+accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.'
+
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+
+'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.
+
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
+thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
+made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a
+moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on
+a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under
+the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already
+twenty-five minutes past ten.
+
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
+the platform.
+
+'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'
+
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
+Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
+could not read him.
+
+'Olive is there, too,' she explained.
+
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
+amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things
+more complex.
+
+'Does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked.
+
+'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
+forward to be introduced.
+
+'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the
+dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'
+
+'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling,
+continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'
+
+'She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,' cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really
+good friends.
+
+'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+
+'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.
+
+'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'
+
+'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
+added: 'The children are happier without me.'
+
+'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
+'It's not true.'
+
+'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's
+all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'
+
+Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
+platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
+haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm;
+farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket,
+was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train
+with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon
+the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in
+vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then
+Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the
+rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
+distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+
+'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
+on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'
+
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
+eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of
+his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her
+lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
+
+'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
+What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply.
+She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
+Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away
+her hold over him.
+
+'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was
+to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have
+not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you--and life
+must go on.'
+
+'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a
+day after you.'
+
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
+scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to
+me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
+out tonight there is nothing left.'
+
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train
+was to leave from another platform.
+
+'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa
+and Olive.
+
+'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and
+excitedly announcing the news.
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+
+'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing
+on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the
+sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse
+_sotto voce_.
+
+'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a
+good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it--one
+that will last.'
+
+'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
+ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
+animated to the calmly ironical.
+
+'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
+'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'
+
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+
+'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.
+
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
+watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+
+'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
+make Siegmund talk.'
+
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
+Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
+then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
+two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
+She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people
+entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
+
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
+Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
+her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
+immediately called:
+
+'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'I cannot come,' he said.
+
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
+door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
+sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
+She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+
+'Oh--go--go--go--when will she go?'
+
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+
+'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.
+
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
+the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
+door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa'
+spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at
+Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
+helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
+forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
+one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
+kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because
+she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil
+from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she
+wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could
+not yield.
+
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
+not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
+have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
+the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
+flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
+The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.
+
+'Monday,' she whispered--'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should
+receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
+turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+
+'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at
+a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 27_
+
+
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
+of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till
+they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a
+picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white,
+rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by
+the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
+still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
+west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like
+a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him,
+as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth
+was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
+Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very
+far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy
+eyes, came between again.
+
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
+house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
+feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
+she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
+door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
+
+'You have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she
+found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+
+'Ay,' returned Siegmund.
+
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head
+between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+
+'Will you have anything to eat?' she asked.
+
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole
+of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her
+breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down
+and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor
+spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,
+querulous with trouble.
+
+'Aren't you going to bed?' she asked.
+
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half
+hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+
+'Aren't you going to bed, Father?'
+
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of
+having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was
+not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again
+she sat waiting.
+
+'Father!' she cried at last.
+
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said.
+
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+
+'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he
+did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to
+brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+
+'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I
+must go to bed--I must go to bed--I am very tired.' He stumbled over the
+door mat into his own room.
+
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the
+sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,
+trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing
+up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in
+her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping
+sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to
+get into bed.
+
+'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He
+could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him
+pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action
+aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got
+things right at last, and was in bed.
+
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have
+called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his
+brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening
+rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of
+consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of
+consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+
+'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any
+noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to
+find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could
+remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately
+he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This
+frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the
+family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in
+silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort
+of sleep.
+
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.
+The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot
+vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.
+Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,
+and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a
+terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.
+
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture
+of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and
+running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His
+every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to
+stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the track of this
+drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start
+from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little
+muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the running of a
+spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not wipe himself he
+did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which
+seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which
+he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples. Those
+he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny,
+vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits,
+down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad
+quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet,
+highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with
+outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he
+endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst.
+
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of
+hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs.
+He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on
+the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he
+had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an
+instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as ever
+to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was
+clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his
+sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar
+sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It
+seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and
+the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it
+he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and
+soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a
+sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.
+
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
+and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was
+a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
+something fresh and cool.
+
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
+was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
+clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out
+on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining
+duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in
+the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly
+to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into
+the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring
+restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The
+lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,
+moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered
+its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched
+it with wonder and delight.
+
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon
+would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony
+to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,
+crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the
+western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would
+laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its
+prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last
+run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself
+as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low
+off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
+longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the
+disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning
+gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the
+mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west
+they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising
+higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the
+moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had
+gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As
+a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling
+with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching
+the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole
+field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse
+which floats on water.
+
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were
+astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew
+he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at
+the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache
+and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.
+
+'Where is Helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena
+was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was
+out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as
+if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head
+seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time he sat
+with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his present
+state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him
+with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant company of friends,
+the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts,
+was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing could
+please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the
+discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of
+life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and
+discoloured, racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset
+himself into joint? The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his
+children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his friends of the orchestra. How
+could he set himself again into joint with these? It was impossible.
+Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with
+humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena, which he
+could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night, the
+music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_ which was absurd. In fine, it was
+all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained
+possible? Why, to depart. 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' He
+could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
+
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an
+agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very
+well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,
+Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was
+insufferable--impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not
+strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return
+to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go
+to Helena.
+
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he
+could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the
+room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought
+of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood
+at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap
+would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
+
+'Very well!' said Siegmund, 'it is finally settled. I had better write
+to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I'd better
+tell her.'
+
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote
+nothing. At last he gave up.
+
+'Perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'She said she would
+come with me--perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When
+she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.'
+
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+
+'She will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with
+elation.
+
+'That is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+
+'It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,' he concluded.
+
+Then he sat down again.
+
+'"But for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself.
+
+'It is not fear,' he said. 'The act itself will be horrible and
+fearsome, but the after-death--it's no more than struggling awake when
+you're sick with a fright of dreams. "We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on."'
+
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so
+wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He
+experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness
+in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though
+here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held
+faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was
+cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness
+of his.
+
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or
+of hate.
+
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was
+no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit
+and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer
+universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from
+its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to
+bear the responsibility of the deflection?
+
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;
+otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would
+have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible
+parents weaker than himself.
+
+'I know the heart of life is kind,' said Siegmund, 'because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or
+anybody. We suffer, and we don't know why, often. Life doesn't explain.
+But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all,
+Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much
+zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair
+of Life.'
+
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the
+atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over
+to an imaginary god.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I can't help it. I do not feel altogether
+self-responsible.'
+
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been
+vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into
+a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at
+his door.
+
+'There are two letters for you. Father.'
+
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,
+and he had no idea of his time or place.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard
+his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the
+throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of
+his body.
+
+'What made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. It was a very
+unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'She
+wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.'
+
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The
+discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not
+fetch in the letters.
+
+'Is it so late?' he said. 'Is there no more time for me?'
+
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked
+across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.
+He sat down on the bed.
+
+'What am I going to do?' he asked himself.
+
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his
+belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists
+into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man
+who is sick, incapable of thought or action.
+
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+
+'Here is your shaving-water,' said Beatrice in cold tones. 'It's half
+past nine.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+
+'And what time shall you expect dinner?' asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+
+'Any time. I'm not going out,' he answered.
+
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he
+was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,
+bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He
+was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not
+keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he
+call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed
+his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was
+thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a
+mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with
+convulsive sickness.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 28_
+
+
+Siegmund's lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it
+became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up
+his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving
+the breakfast spread in the kitchen.
+
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner
+at two o'clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with
+her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it
+was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an
+hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning,
+when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with
+coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and
+determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and
+magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the
+grate, which was clear, Friday having been charwoman's day, passing
+swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. It was
+Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In the
+afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what
+occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to
+have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She
+was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come
+to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. Beatrice was going to do
+battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a
+proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust things out of sight,
+or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.
+
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+
+'He can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'Here I've been up
+since seven, broiling at it. I should think he's pitying himself. He
+ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work
+every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too
+little work. He has had too much his own way. But it's come to a stop
+now. I'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.'
+
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the
+bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of
+work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her
+wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table
+and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full
+intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness.
+She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her. As she was
+wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her
+hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting
+them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to make the
+beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so
+heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover
+breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself,
+she said loudly at Siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile:
+
+'Aren't you going to get up?'
+
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the
+gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+
+'It's after half past ten--aren't you going to get up?' she called.
+
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly
+she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of
+shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She
+returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. She
+waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the
+sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull
+and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring,
+so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front
+garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was
+open--everything seemed quiet.
+
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung
+them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some
+dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was
+no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes
+blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out
+on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his
+ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. She
+hurried to him.
+
+'Will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she
+asked wildly.
+
+'Why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly
+familiar. 'Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I'll come.'
+
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so
+loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs
+must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with
+a will.
+
+'Where is he, Mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the
+side passage.
+
+'He's in his bedroom, and I can't get an answer from him.'
+
+'Then I s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift
+one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was
+Siegmund's room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was
+studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and
+afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also knew
+there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.
+
+'Is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner.
+
+'Yes, over the porch,' replied Beatrice.
+
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+
+'It's easy enough,' he said. 'The door's open, and we're soon on the
+balcony.'
+
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious
+fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously
+clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the
+ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he
+was frightened.
+
+'I say there!' he called loudly.
+
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+
+'Go in!' she cried. 'Go in! Is he there?'
+
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and
+peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed
+slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to
+take flight.
+
+'Hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner
+exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:
+
+'I believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!'
+
+'No!' cried Beatrice. 'No, no, no!'
+
+'I believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man.
+
+'Go in and see if he's dead!' cried Beatrice.
+
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+
+'I believe he is,' he said doubtfully.
+
+'No--go and see!' screamed Beatrice.
+
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the
+body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried
+to lift it down. It was too heavy.
+
+'I know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to
+do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between
+himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his
+way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the
+body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the
+scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled the
+body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with
+trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. It
+was bedded in Siegmund's neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it
+frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead
+man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his
+sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side
+naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved,
+ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on
+the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face
+hardly recognizable.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 29_
+
+
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive
+lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in
+a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
+in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
+had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
+north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
+Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed
+between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling
+companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of
+manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward.
+Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The
+north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
+English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
+whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could
+hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward
+whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding
+their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle
+disconcerted by this amusement.
+
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
+the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The
+men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went
+to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat
+weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the
+dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the
+women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought
+of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
+appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
+imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under
+arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
+lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
+and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
+There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
+dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
+flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
+came up.
+
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
+they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
+rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
+very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
+She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock,
+breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid
+blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
+and harsh.
+
+'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.
+
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
+rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
+in an ill humour.
+
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
+the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically
+the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walk�re_; in the second place,
+_Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a
+late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was
+a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of
+pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which
+suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided
+lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she stood on
+the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's
+love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.
+
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
+disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable
+because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in
+Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she
+forgot most whiles.
+
+On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of
+thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
+waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the
+mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her
+friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
+
+'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
+'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!'
+
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
+She hurried to the bed.
+
+'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the
+shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'
+
+'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's _lovely_--lovely!'
+
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
+shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
+shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
+spasmodically.
+
+'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did
+you see that?'
+
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
+Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+
+'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the
+bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'
+
+'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
+jest.
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'
+
+Helena laughed ironically.
+
+'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
+
+'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
+offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
+know, it's not that I'm afraid....'
+
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
+friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
+feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
+opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
+blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
+being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
+thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
+had happened.
+
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
+persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+
+'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
+
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
+to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
+a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
+storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
+The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
+feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
+
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
+have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
+grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+
+'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
+happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
+spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
+dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
+impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'
+
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
+received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
+arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
+and see.'
+
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
+Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
+she went to sleep.
+
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
+wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
+her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
+reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
+of affairs.
+
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
+fatal awaited her.
+
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
+would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
+rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
+tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
+let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
+sat up:
+
+'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
+holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'
+
+'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
+sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'
+
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
+their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
+thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
+more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
+throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
+after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
+the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
+London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
+
+'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
+would come to me.'
+
+'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
+
+'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
+
+'I promise,' he answered.
+
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
+be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
+her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
+what it could.
+
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
+is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
+of suspense.
+
+Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
+this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
+platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
+great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
+planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
+could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
+prearranged everything minutely.
+
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+
+'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
+----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
+holiday on the South Coast....'
+
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+
+'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
+was expressed for the widow and children.'
+
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
+Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where
+she was going.
+
+'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a
+brick, it was like a brick.'
+
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
+lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
+side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house
+standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
+stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
+at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
+anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
+destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
+in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
+over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
+looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to
+return to Cornwall.
+
+'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
+suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
+a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
+eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
+wired the news:
+
+'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
+her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
+was chaotic.
+
+'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
+only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
+She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
+maiming her.
+
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
+mother opened to her.
+
+'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.
+
+'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the
+dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
+there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
+took it. It was from one of the London papers.
+
+'Inquest was held today upon the body of ----.'
+
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her
+mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+
+'How did you get to know?' she asked.
+
+'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in
+her muted, toneless voice.
+
+'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.
+
+'No,' replied Helena.
+
+'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother
+hesitatingly.
+
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
+looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently
+to help her.
+
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her.
+Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by
+watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look.
+They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
+powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
+ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.
+
+Helena shivered slightly.
+
+'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'
+
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
+night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
+When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
+yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
+Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.
+
+'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.
+
+'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
+immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
+entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
+erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
+haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
+himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+
+'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.
+
+'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.
+
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
+cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
+in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
+broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
+could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
+to his head; he was thinking and praying.
+
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
+and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
+followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's
+room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed
+and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but
+occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her
+wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she
+uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and
+soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence,
+Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the
+light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail,
+and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
+bedside, and prayed.
+
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind
+of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to
+herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
+from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
+soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but
+she could not bear to be looked at.
+
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
+having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
+nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
+as she entered.
+
+'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.
+
+'Is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.
+
+'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'
+
+'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+
+He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
+She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
+quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility
+upon himself.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 30_
+
+
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with
+full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
+the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
+When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's
+understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
+suspended.
+
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
+herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
+neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
+stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
+confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house,
+sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
+and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
+bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
+glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
+was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
+wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
+inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
+dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
+
+'The children!' she said to herself--'the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.'
+
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose
+from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back
+a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
+practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
+what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to
+understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
+exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
+blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the
+personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
+common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after
+the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of
+Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
+
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
+living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
+house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
+death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
+heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
+she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
+marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
+tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
+to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
+on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
+hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
+hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's
+father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
+further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
+Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
+come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
+was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
+doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The
+world was big with promise.
+
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice's
+establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
+was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
+blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
+attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
+hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
+sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
+less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
+was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
+learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
+an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
+done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
+Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was na�ve, inclined to suffer in the first
+pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
+sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
+liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
+stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
+vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him.
+Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance,
+but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of the superior
+and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
+without hurting him.
+
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
+Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his
+elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past
+seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was
+setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room
+through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of
+the twilight.
+
+'What, you here all alone!' exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
+putting the children to bed. 'I thought you had gone out.'
+
+'No--o! What's the use,' replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
+landlady, 'of going out? There's nowhere to go.'
+
+'Oh, come! There's the Heath, and the City--and you must join a tennis
+club. Now I know just the thing--the club to which Vera belongs.'
+
+'Ah, yes! You go down to the City--but there's nothing there--what I
+mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the
+word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.'
+
+'Oh, don't say that!' exclaimed Beatrice. 'You want to enjoy life.'
+
+'Just so! Ah, just so!' exclaimed Mr Allport. 'But all the same--it's
+like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
+say--what's the good, after all? It's merely living because you've
+got to.'
+
+'You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
+differently myself; yet I'll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
+What's the trouble now?'
+
+'We-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
+say--it's nothing very definite. But, after all--what is there to do but
+to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That's the best way.'
+
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+
+'You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,' she said. 'You don't think of the
+others.'
+
+'I don't know,' he drawled. 'What does it matter? Look here--who'd care?
+What I mean to say--for long?'
+
+'That's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied Beatrice gravely.
+
+'Nevertheless,' said Mr. Allport, 'it's true--isn't it?'
+
+'It is not--and I _should_ know,' replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and
+waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You
+men, you're all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.'
+
+'Ah, but then,' said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,
+looking at Beatrice's black dress, 'I've no one depending on _me_.'
+
+'No--you haven't--but you've a mother and sister. The women always have
+to bear the brunt.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+
+'Yes, they do rather,' he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+
+'My husband--' began Beatrice. The young man waited. 'My husband was one
+of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he'd found it--he couldn't
+carry it off--and left it--to me.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+
+'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed softly. 'Surely he didn't--?'
+
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'I know what it is to bear that kind of thing--and it's
+no light thing, I can assure you.'
+
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+
+'And when was this, then--that he--?' asked Mr. Allport, almost with
+reverence.
+
+'Only last year,' replied Beatrice.
+
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by
+little Beatrice told him so much: 'Her husband had got entangled with
+another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last
+she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He
+had killed himself--hanged himself--and left her penniless. Her people,
+who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow them.
+She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for herself;
+it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their careless
+youth, that her heart was heavy.'
+
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and
+sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by
+tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+
+'Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?'
+
+'I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.'
+
+'Pray do not overlook me,' said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+
+'Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting
+with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.'
+
+'On the contrary,' replied Mr. Allport, 'Mrs. MacNair has been so good
+as to bear with me making a fool of myself.'
+
+'In what way?' asked Vera sharply.
+
+'Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,' said
+Beatrice playfully.
+
+'Unfortunately, I am not--or at least I am not yet aware of it,' said
+Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the
+young man's knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped
+behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the
+richly darkening sky.
+
+'Don't look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it's all rind,' said Mr Allport
+in melancholy mockery. 'Somebody's bitten all the meat out of our slice
+of moon, and left us nothing but peel.'
+
+'It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell--one portion,'
+replied Vera.
+
+'Never mind, Miss MacNair,' he said, 'Whoever got the slice found it
+raw, I think.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'But isn't it a beautiful evening? I will
+just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.'
+
+'What primroses?' he exclaimed.
+
+'Evening primroses--there are some.'
+
+'Are there?' he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+
+'Yes, come and look,' she said.
+
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+
+'What, nobody in!' they heard him exclaim.
+
+'There is Holiday,' murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+
+'Ho! that's where you are!' he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed
+Vera's trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress to
+betray herself.
+
+'What have you got?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing in particular,' replied Mr Allport.
+
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+
+'Oh, well, if it's nothing particular and private--' said Mr Holiday,
+and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+
+'Curst fool!' muttered Mr Allport. 'I beg your pardon,' he added swiftly
+to Vera.
+
+'Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly,
+'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open while
+you're looking.'
+
+'No,' sniggered he, I don't blame 'em. Why should they give themselves
+away any more than you do? You won't open while you're watched.' He
+nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.
+
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in
+poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his
+teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+
+'Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not
+play now,' she replied.
+
+'But you will begin again,' pleaded Mr. Allport.
+
+'No, never!' she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The
+family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He
+watched her interestedly.
+
+'Mother used to play--' she began.
+
+'Vera!' said Beatrice reproachfully.
+
+'Let us have a song,' suggested Mr. Holiday.
+
+'Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,' said Vera, going to the
+music-rack.
+
+'Nay--I--it's not me,' Holiday began.
+
+'"The Village Blacksmith",' said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday
+advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.
+
+'But I have not touched the piano for--for years, I am sure,' protested
+Beatrice.
+
+'You can play beautifully,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared
+at him. Vera remained very calm.
+
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went out
+abruptly.
+
+'Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow's jellies are not made,'
+laughed Vera.
+
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She
+would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half
+past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was
+studying a cookery-book.
+
+'You, too, at the midnight lamp!' exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+
+'Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,' Beatrice replied.
+
+'We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,' smiled
+the young man ironically.
+
+'I must look after you,' said Beatrice.
+
+'You do--wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.'
+The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+
+'Because I scan a list of puddings?' smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+
+'For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.' He bowed to her.
+
+'Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.'
+
+'I opened the door,' said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+
+'It is not fair,' said Beatrice. 'I am clumsy now--clumsy. I once could
+play.'
+
+'You play excellently. Why that "once could"?' said MacWhirter.
+
+'Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,' she
+replied.
+
+'We,' said MacWhirter, 'are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than
+excellent.'
+
+'Good old Monsieur Fanni�re, how he would scold me! He said I would not
+take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I
+always think Scripture false in French, do not you?'
+
+'Er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to
+say.'
+
+'No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.'
+
+'Ah--that would be very interesting.'
+
+'Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.'
+
+'Alas!' assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+
+'Those times were very different from these,' said Beatrice.
+
+'I should think so,' said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 31_
+
+
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund's death, Helena
+sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue
+linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a
+yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air of
+the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with
+her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song.
+She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
+
+'I can't get it--it's no use. I think it's the swinging of the car
+prevents me getting the time,' she said.
+
+'These little outside things always come a victory over you,' he
+laughed.
+
+'Do they?' she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It
+was six o'clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim,
+warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners
+of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck
+by the wind.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, 'it feels rather like rain.'
+
+'Then,' said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on
+the pavement, 'you certainly ought not to be out.'
+
+'I ought not,' she said, 'for I'm totally unprovided.'
+
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill
+off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side
+stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two
+great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity,
+at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena
+and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the
+other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena
+laughed at them.
+
+'They are--' she began, in her slow manner.
+
+'Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,' he continued.
+
+'No,' she said, 'they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.'
+
+'Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.'
+
+'It appears so,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs generally chum up to me,' he said.
+
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+
+'I remember,' she said, still laughing, 'at Knockholt--you--a half-grown
+lamb--a dog--in procession.' She marked the position of the three with
+her finger.
+
+'What an ass I must have looked!' he said.
+
+'Sort of silent Pied Piper,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs do follow me like that, though,' he said.
+
+'They did Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed
+him home.'
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember, too,' she said, 'a little black-and-white kitten that
+followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. And I remember
+finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don't think I ever
+quite forgave my mater that.'
+
+'More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,' he said.
+
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+
+'For the latter, you see,' she replied, 'I am not responsible.'
+
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+
+'You know,' said Helena, 'if it begins it will continue all night. Look
+at that!'
+
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+
+'Had we better go back?' he asked.
+
+'Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we
+see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.'
+
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned
+away.
+
+'It is exactly a year today,' she said, as they-walked on the round
+shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. 'Exactly!'
+
+'What anniversary is it, then?' he inquired.
+
+'Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here--by the day, Thursday.
+We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the
+larch-wood?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'We will go, then,' she said.
+
+'History repeats itself,' he remarked.
+
+'How?' she asked calmly.
+
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+
+'I see no repetition,' she added.
+
+'No,' he exclaimed bitingly; 'you are right!'
+
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men
+unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the
+air. Though he was angry, he spoke.
+
+'They got that hay rather damp,' he said. 'Can't you smell it--like hot
+tobacco and sandal-wood?'
+
+'What, is that the stack?' she asked.
+
+'Yes, it's always like that when it's picked damp.'
+
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned
+on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over
+the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full
+of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in
+the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers without speaking.
+She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over
+the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. He smiled
+gently to her.
+
+'Isn't it nice?' he said. 'Aren't they fine bits?'
+
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her
+dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place
+by her side.
+
+'I always like the gold-green of cut fields,' he said. 'They seem to
+give off sunshine even when the sky's greyer than a tabby cat.'
+
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing
+field on her right.
+
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into
+sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly
+whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather
+intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was
+exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried
+trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now
+and again he would look down passages between the trees--narrow pillared
+corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a
+twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood
+still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,
+causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a
+bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a
+larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of
+congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+
+'I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,' he said to
+himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+
+'Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make
+a brown mist, a brume?'
+
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+
+'H'm? Yes, I see what you mean.'
+
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+
+'That's the larch fog,' he laughed.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.'
+
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+
+'It laughs through its teeth,' he said, smiling, playing with everything
+he touched.
+
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,
+picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if
+pleased by a coincidence.
+
+'Last year,' she said, 'the larch-fingers stole both my pins--the same
+ones.'
+
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost
+with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down
+the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the
+moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep
+sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he
+hated Helena.
+
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley--one of those wide
+hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held
+loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue
+dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena's dress. They walked on
+a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for shelter.
+
+'Here,' said Byrne--'here is our tent--a black tartar's--ready pitched.'
+
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just
+back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good
+shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked
+under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was
+falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the
+monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone
+intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on
+the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the
+'tong-ting-tong' of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in
+the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each
+other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit
+better than where they stood before.
+
+'That's like us all,' said Byrne whimsically. 'We're all penned out on a
+wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is,
+it would be deliciously cosy.'
+
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and
+fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his
+eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without
+apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously
+increasing the pressure.
+
+'You are cold,' he said.
+
+'Only my hands, and they usually are,' she replied gently.
+
+'And mine are generally warm.'
+
+'I know that,' she said. 'It's almost the only warmth I get now--your
+hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.'
+
+'As good as a baked potato,' he said.
+
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+
+'So many calories per week--isn't that how we manage it?' he asked. 'On
+credit?'
+
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,
+which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their
+cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+
+'Tong-tong, tong,' went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena's home to
+read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his
+own language.
+
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.
+He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.
+Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.
+
+'I shan't knock it--it is all right,' he had said, protesting.
+
+This was Siegmund's violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and
+Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.
+
+'It was all right,' he repeated.
+
+'But you were not,' she had replied gently.
+
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in
+a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his
+gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to
+Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself
+delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.
+By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He
+relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what
+he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+
+'The Babes in the Wood,' he teased.
+
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird
+began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+
+'That little beggar sees it's a hopeless case, so he reminds us of
+heaven. But if he's going to cover us with yew-leaves, he's set
+himself a job.'
+
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing
+her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke
+for a while.
+
+'The rain continues,' he said.
+
+'And will do,' she added, laughing.
+
+'Quite content,' he said.
+
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+
+'"Strew on us roses, roses,"' quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in
+wistful mockery: '"And never a sprig of yew"--eh?'
+
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and
+weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against him.
+
+'Shall it not be so--no yew?' he murmured.
+
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on
+her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held
+them up.
+
+'I shall make marks on you,' he said.
+
+'They will come off,' she replied.
+
+'Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars off
+us.'
+
+'Some scars don't seem to go,' she smiled.
+
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his
+side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from
+last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.
+
+'But it's wearing off--even that,' he said wistfully.
+
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a
+hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and
+took off her hat.
+
+'That is better,' he said.
+
+'I was afraid of the pins,' said she.
+
+'I've been dodging them for the last hour,' he said, laughing, as she
+put her arms under his coat again for warmth.
+
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek
+against hers.
+
+'I want rest and warmth,' she said, in her dull tones.
+
+'All right!' he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D.H. Lawrence
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Trespasser
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Posting Date: August 5, 2012 [EBook #9498]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 6, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+1912
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+
+'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
+piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
+stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
+forbearance.
+
+'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
+the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
+lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
+would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'
+
+'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
+seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
+her bristling defiance.
+
+'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
+like it.'
+
+'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
+on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
+chords, and the music continued.
+
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
+turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
+with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
+in the room.
+
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
+of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
+again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
+the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
+responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
+the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
+of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
+were smooth white. There was no other colouring.
+
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
+wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
+wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
+recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
+room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
+skirting-board, serene.
+
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
+China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
+tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
+and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
+rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.
+
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
+of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
+unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
+that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
+with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
+the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.
+
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
+on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
+She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
+hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
+turned again to the players.
+
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
+swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
+her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
+frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
+vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
+hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
+of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.
+
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
+watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
+soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
+and glisten over her forehead.
+
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+
+'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'
+
+Helena laughed wearily.
+
+'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
+rest.
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+
+'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
+apathetic tone. 'It was I.'
+
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
+moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
+like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
+response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
+friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
+affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
+were coaxing a child:
+
+'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'
+
+'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
+for years.
+
+'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.
+
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
+came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
+began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+
+'They are inflamed still' said the young man.
+
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
+lighting up with a small smile.
+
+'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
+strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
+like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
+smarting soft flesh caressively.
+
+'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+
+'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
+'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
+anything on to heal it?'
+
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
+the burn.
+
+'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
+joy.
+
+'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'
+
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+
+'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+
+The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
+mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'
+
+'Never?' he re-echoed.
+
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
+to play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+
+'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+
+The two looked up at her.
+
+'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.
+
+'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
+her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+
+'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.
+
+'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
+obligation _whatever_.'
+
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
+head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
+but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
+hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
+the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
+vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
+indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
+glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
+flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
+glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
+one spoke.
+
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
+position. She sat motionless.
+
+'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
+at her friend, and stretched slightly.
+
+'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'
+
+'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.
+
+'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
+appealing love.
+
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
+slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+
+'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
+She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+
+'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'
+
+'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
+played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
+an end.
+
+'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
+you've got to live.'
+
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+
+'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.
+
+'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
+grinning.
+
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+
+'I don't see it at all,' she said.
+
+'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
+April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'
+
+'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
+myself, why trouble, my friend?'
+
+'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'
+
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
+metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+
+'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
+go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'
+
+'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.
+
+'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'
+
+'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
+stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
+looked in the fire, forgetting him.
+
+'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
+your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.
+
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
+broke out once more.
+
+'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
+blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
+Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
+not dead....'
+
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
+at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
+handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
+if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
+out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
+regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
+from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
+cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
+look became distressed and helpless.
+
+'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
+shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
+fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
+you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
+and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
+impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
+leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
+alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'
+
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
+him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
+steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+
+'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
+never touch the thing,' he cried.
+
+'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
+the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
+an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
+life. She was very sick after the tragedy.
+
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+
+'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
+You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
+road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'
+
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
+passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
+moving from her torpor was painful. At last--
+
+'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.
+
+'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
+softly, wearily.
+
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
+over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
+being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
+the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
+to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
+
+'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
+also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
+her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
+arrival of Louisa with the coffee.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+
+Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
+lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
+was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
+it; she kept the black case out of sight.
+
+Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
+the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
+two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
+sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
+Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
+lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
+soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
+breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
+himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
+odour of must.
+
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
+till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
+violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
+the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
+turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
+remained of him in his violin.
+
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
+longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
+fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
+had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
+sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
+had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
+wild in anticipation.
+
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
+savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
+anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
+with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
+
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
+opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
+weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
+suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
+Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
+associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
+with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
+hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
+flame stretched level on the wind.
+
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
+pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
+For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
+moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
+watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
+to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
+on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
+face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
+shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
+garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
+flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
+his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
+kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
+amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
+fascinated.
+
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
+soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
+rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
+going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
+his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
+a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
+last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
+carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
+Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
+fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
+all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
+watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
+
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
+Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
+anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
+cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
+was changing.
+
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
+night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
+he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
+amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
+front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
+looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
+joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
+black masses of the trees.
+
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
+his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
+As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
+the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
+bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
+moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
+breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
+laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
+physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
+to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
+moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
+stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
+turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
+tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
+looked round with disgust.
+
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
+betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
+plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
+wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
+even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
+cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
+gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
+He fetched a glass of water.
+
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
+the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
+floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
+black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
+newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
+bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
+sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
+slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
+ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
+wishing he had no tomorrow.
+
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
+was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
+crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
+now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
+teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
+absurd arms to him.
+
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
+silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
+him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
+his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
+staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
+Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
+After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.
+
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
+It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
+uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
+hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
+snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
+two girls.
+
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
+Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
+they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
+and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
+mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
+and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
+eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
+full of youth.
+
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
+room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
+the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
+same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
+curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
+rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
+She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
+with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
+He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
+manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
+beautiful things and of dreams.
+
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+
+'I must get to sleep,' he said.
+
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
+When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
+final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+
+'I am fearfully tired,' he said.
+
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
+some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+
+'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
+child!' He began to muse of the morrow.
+
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
+labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
+thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
+take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
+he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
+torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
+which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
+her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
+wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
+realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
+he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
+girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
+piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
+a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
+not been in the room.
+
+Helena stood fingering the score of _Pell�as_. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+
+'Why do you consider the music of _Pell�as_ cold?'
+
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
+mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating;
+and to her much was humiliating.
+
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
+theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
+the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
+her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
+walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.
+
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
+He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
+he had lost himself to her.
+
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
+insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at
+him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot
+come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had
+writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
+and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to you.' Then she left him.
+
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when
+he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+
+'You are so tired, Siegmund.' She stroked his face, and kissed him
+softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
+is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
+ugly for Siegmund.
+
+'You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
+week in August.'
+
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
+no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
+Isle of Wight, tomorrow.
+
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
+like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
+white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
+small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
+along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
+flooded him....
+
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
+and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes,
+and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had
+been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:
+
+'I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.'
+
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
+inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
+contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
+hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
+from his children.
+
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
+been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
+evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
+children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
+degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.
+
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
+door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
+the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she
+lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.
+
+'I am nothing, I am nothing,' she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
+for a time.
+
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
+through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
+hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
+train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
+'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
+on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
+rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+
+'God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!' she said aloud,
+in a low tone. She hated Helena.
+
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund's shadows, his children,
+Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young
+man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
+everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
+he looked out of the carriage window.
+
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
+floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter
+of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park.
+People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It
+was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.
+
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
+Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced
+lightly in the sunshine.
+
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
+It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
+white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
+shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
+glistened on her uncovered hair.
+
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
+impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
+and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
+shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on, drawing
+near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was so like
+Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.
+
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out,
+and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
+looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
+and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
+Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
+feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. All
+his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece
+of colour.
+
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a
+bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
+the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
+of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
+look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
+laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the
+blue sea gathering round.
+
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
+alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
+crimson-winged boats.
+
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women
+in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible.
+Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand
+the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath
+him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In
+front, Sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him,
+bringing him Helena.
+
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
+him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
+But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the
+fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he
+watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud
+cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
+chill wind.
+
+His travelling was very slow. The sky's dark shipping pressed closer and
+closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands
+near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All
+the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the
+wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station and the island were
+desolate, having lost their purposes.
+
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning's blaze of
+elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
+only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the
+intoxication was dying out.
+
+At three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
+carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred
+dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the
+reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly
+torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was
+thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
+felt dead.
+
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
+watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under
+the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund's heart
+leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of
+Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into
+the carriage.
+
+'You _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund's
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
+his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in
+to him.
+
+'Is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
+shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.
+
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+
+'Here we are, then!' exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
+cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
+his luggage.
+
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
+tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
+stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
+body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
+astonished cries of delight.
+
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His na�ve
+look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
+fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
+mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
+feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
+hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
+small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
+that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
+his knees.
+
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
+his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
+only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
+lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
+Siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, listening uneasily.
+
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
+look of distress amused her.
+
+'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
+Siegfried's dragon....'
+
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
+the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
+alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
+second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
+Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
+big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
+amused her. But he was tired.
+
+'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.
+
+'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'
+
+'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
+its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
+across the sea to Tristan.'
+
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
+with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
+boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
+fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
+horn-call.
+
+'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.
+
+'This time next week, Helena!' he said.
+
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
+lay upon the table.
+
+'I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,' she said.
+
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
+alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
+wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
+leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
+
+'There is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'There
+is only the present.'
+
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
+round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
+close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed
+against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint,
+intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to
+himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with
+gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face
+upon her.
+
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
+her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his
+forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
+future in a passion worth years of living.
+
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful
+things she had found. She had a woman's curious passion for details, a
+woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened,
+smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed
+him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended
+to her words.
+
+'Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired--you are very
+tired,' said Helena.
+
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+
+'No,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
+handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.'
+
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
+she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+
+'You must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face,
+ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
+arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
+thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself
+up against the fog.
+
+'You are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
+was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
+overcoat, while they walked together.
+
+'I like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+
+'I don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+
+'It puts us together by ourselves,' he said. She plodded alongside,
+bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+
+'It couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said.
+
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+
+'Why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+
+'There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
+me--look!'
+
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
+quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
+sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
+what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
+
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
+their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
+They turned from it.
+
+'What is the pitch?' asked Helena.
+
+'Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Yes, but the settled pitch--is it about E?'
+
+'E!' exclaimed Siegmund. 'More like F.'
+
+'Nay, listen!' said Helena.
+
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
+fog-horn.
+
+'There!' exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. 'That is not E.' He
+repeated the sound. 'It is F.'
+
+'Surely it is E,' persisted Helena.
+
+'Even F sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note.
+
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+
+'But you agree?' he said.
+
+'I do not,' she replied.
+
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+
+'What is the note in _Tristan_?' Helena made an effort to ask.
+
+'That is not the same,' he replied.
+
+'No, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
+footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
+down the fog.
+
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
+haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
+was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely
+to itself.
+
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
+slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
+unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
+into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
+
+'Shall we walk over, then?' said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena's
+heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
+play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
+afraid of him just then.
+
+'Come away, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
+to think so.
+
+'Come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+
+'You are not afraid?' he asked.
+
+'Not afraid, no....' Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
+that made him shiver.
+
+'It is too easy a way,' he said satirically.
+
+She did not take in his meaning.
+
+'And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!' she scolded. 'The mist
+is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.'
+
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
+
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went
+flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western
+sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the
+golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena
+that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber
+of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun
+was departing with pomp.
+
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming
+bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express
+it; how other men had borne this same glory.
+
+'What is the music of it?' he asked.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
+open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
+
+'Of what, dear?'
+
+'What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?'
+
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
+moment.
+
+'I do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+
+'A Beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her.
+
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
+sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+
+'The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,' she decided.
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
+to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
+for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
+almost put her two hands over his eyes.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
+closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
+wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her
+in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he
+bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with
+fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again.
+He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it
+was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his
+breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that
+moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face
+on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried
+against her soft strong throat.
+
+'You are so big I can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching
+her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
+shoulders ineffectually.
+
+'You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,' he whispered.
+
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast
+with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands
+meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+
+'See! I can't,' she whispered.
+
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
+her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
+figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
+under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
+again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
+one great ache.
+
+He crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
+muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
+body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
+towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious
+of nothing.
+
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
+marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
+steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
+herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
+mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
+lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
+strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
+and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
+through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
+his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
+her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
+together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one
+being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
+
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
+class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the
+mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
+flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
+sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man's brightness
+and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
+it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
+bed. She lay still on Siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily
+beating heart.
+
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
+Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
+her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was
+very cruel.
+
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
+bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more
+detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been
+rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract,
+and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is
+full of cruelty.
+
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
+and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
+his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
+sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
+yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
+withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
+some time.
+
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
+grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
+child whom she must correct and lead:
+
+'I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.' He made a small sound, that
+might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
+however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out
+of it.
+
+'It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly.
+
+'Soon,' he said thickly.
+
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath
+to take him from his pleasure:
+
+'Siegmund, I am cold.'
+
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+
+'Cold!' he exclaimed. 'But you are warm with me--'
+
+'But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.'
+
+'Oh dear!' he said. 'Why didn't you give them me to warm?' He leaned
+forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
+
+'They are very cold,' he said. 'We must hurry and make them warm.'
+
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
+clung to Siegmund, laughing.
+
+'I wish you had told me before,' he said. 'I ought to have known....'
+
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
+person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
+charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
+the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
+
+Helena introduced Siegmund as 'My friend'. The old lady smiled upon him.
+He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years
+back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house
+for their honeymoon.
+
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
+attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
+him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
+bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
+scarcely adjust the wicks.
+
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+
+'I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
+Nietzsche I brought--'
+
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms
+along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his
+being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came
+up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in
+the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and
+he smiled.
+
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
+lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
+His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent,
+so strange.
+
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six
+to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and
+looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
+dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam
+to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear
+through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But
+her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared
+not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He
+strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put
+out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for
+her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She
+waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not
+look at her.
+
+'You would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark
+hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
+setting of his shoulders.
+
+'Just as you will,' he replied.
+
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled
+him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
+
+'I will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation.
+She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice,
+but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
+
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
+lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
+her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace,
+and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and
+fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded.
+It was a physical pain to him.
+
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
+enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
+was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
+aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident
+to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
+restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+
+'Will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady.
+
+'Nothing at all, thanks,' said Helena, with decision.
+
+'Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I've washed the dishes. You will
+put the lamp out, dear?'
+
+'I am well used to a lamp,' smiled Helena. 'We use them always at home.'
+
+She had had a day before Siegmund's coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss'
+heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
+
+'Good-night, dear--good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
+long, dear?'
+
+'No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.'
+
+'Yes--yes. It is very tiring, London.'
+
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
+Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking
+in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to
+glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
+disappointed eyes.
+
+'Shall I read to you?' she asked bitterly.
+
+'If you will,' he replied.
+
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
+went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+
+'What is it, dear?' she said.
+
+'You,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+
+'Why me?'
+
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
+arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
+like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
+not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
+after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
+ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
+of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
+still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
+love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
+the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and
+went to the door.
+
+'Shall I let her out?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Do!' said Helena, slipping from his knee. 'She goes out when the nights
+are fine.'
+
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
+Curtiss called from upstairs: 'Is that you, dear?'
+
+'I have just let Kitty out,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Ah, thank you. Good night!' They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
+door.
+
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then
+waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+
+'Shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively.
+
+'Yes--If you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
+was burning and surging with desire.
+
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
+knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
+stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
+advanced out of the shadows.
+
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
+two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt
+on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread
+towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely
+able to move.
+
+'Come,' he pleaded softly.
+
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
+him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
+Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her
+uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
+
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
+abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and
+rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
+feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
+still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
+seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
+tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+
+'Am I not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
+gently.
+
+'It is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. She had lain tranquil
+with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in
+his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from
+an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and
+hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic,
+as if he would destroy her.
+
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
+strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
+of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
+would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
+seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to
+produce him.
+
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
+involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
+Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in
+his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and
+unbearable to herself.
+
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
+looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
+forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
+her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
+to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
+pushed back the curtain.
+
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
+the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea,
+and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution
+on her brow.
+
+'Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?' she asked fretfully.
+
+'Ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
+with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
+the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the
+casement of the land seductively.
+
+'It's the finest night I have seen,' said Siegmund. Helena's eyes
+suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+
+'I like the moon on the water,' she said.
+
+'I can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'The sea
+seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
+coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
+are all you.'
+
+'Yes,' she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
+she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
+now, and did not need her.
+
+'I feel at home here,' he said; 'as if I had come home where I was
+bred.'
+
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+
+'We go an awful long way round, Helena,' he said, 'just to find we're
+all right.' He laughed pleasantly. 'I have thought myself such an
+outcast! How can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always
+naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?'
+
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
+something of the harmony.
+
+'Whatever I have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a
+sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
+sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house,
+you see.'
+
+'And I, Siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
+looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit
+ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed,
+then bent to kiss her.
+
+'The key of the castle,' he said. He put his face against hers, and felt
+on his cheek the smart of her tears.
+
+'It's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for
+tonight, all this that I say.'
+
+'It is true for ever,' she declared.
+
+'In so far as tonight is eternal,' he said.
+
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from
+under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
+They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'It is like the magic tales,'
+he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and I am transported to a new
+life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.'
+
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
+delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand,
+he felt for his watch. It was seven o'clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched
+night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
+
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
+sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
+morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows
+in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine;
+milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the
+sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
+
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
+red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
+sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
+window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
+blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
+hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
+
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
+spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and
+down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the
+wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He
+took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
+grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
+breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
+tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
+out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and
+pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
+the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
+far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
+thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
+travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
+swinging birds.
+
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
+stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
+square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
+delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
+and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
+to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
+heavy green water.
+
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
+watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
+glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear
+green water.
+
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
+and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
+stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
+even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
+across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the
+morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
+liked to see the birds come down.
+
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
+swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the
+pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it,
+but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
+
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
+in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
+sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
+palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against
+him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion.
+The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm
+breath. He delighted in himself.
+
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
+clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+
+'She would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he
+smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
+conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
+his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
+creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
+slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
+itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+
+'That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
+I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
+a person. What makes me myself, among all these?'
+
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+
+'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
+ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
+a baboon under my clothing.'
+
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
+breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
+marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+
+'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
+thought.
+
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+
+'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
+pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
+see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
+could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
+was his physical self thinking.
+
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
+the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
+rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
+ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
+insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
+
+'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
+black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+
+'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
+brine in his hair.
+
+'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--'
+
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+
+'It _is_ blood?' she said.
+
+'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.
+
+'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.
+
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+
+'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.
+
+'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?'
+
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
+above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
+his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+
+'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.
+
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+
+'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
+eat.
+
+'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?'
+
+'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
+deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
+sleeplessness.
+
+'I haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena
+smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
+her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
+the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
+him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
+winking a golden eye at her.
+
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
+dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric
+yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
+and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
+lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
+than imagination.
+
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's
+previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower's name,
+nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
+adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
+florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
+everything in fancy.
+
+'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
+before dawn came. It is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. The pink
+convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
+night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
+spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
+thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
+not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
+sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
+out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
+round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
+water-shadowed reefs.
+
+'This is very good,' she said to herself. 'This is eternally cool, and
+clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.'
+
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away
+the soiling of the last night's passion.
+
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
+like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
+its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
+self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
+
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
+shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
+backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
+warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
+watched the water playing.
+
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him
+with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he
+received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and
+the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It
+is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little
+flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In
+these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards
+something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in
+this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.
+
+'Will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over.
+
+'I don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she
+did not care at all. 'I think it will be a mixed day--cloud and
+sun--more sun than cloud.'
+
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at
+the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+
+'I like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about
+as you walk.'
+
+'It is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled.
+
+'Ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation
+from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena's. She laughed,
+and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an
+hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till
+Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that
+wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold.
+Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But
+psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
+
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point
+of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the
+inscription.
+
+'That's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed Siegmund.
+
+'Oh, they'd have to fence in Lord Tennyson's white marble,' said Helena,
+rather indefinitely.
+
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+
+'Yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Tennyson!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.'
+
+'I shouldn't say so,' she declared.
+
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed
+the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the
+sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below
+the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose
+over the cliff's edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped
+in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds
+passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
+
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
+They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
+the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
+above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
+would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
+to risk it.
+
+'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
+he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
+and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
+symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
+sweeping, and dark.
+
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
+foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
+froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
+
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
+thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+
+'They look so fine down there.'
+
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
+with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
+as he gripped her.
+
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
+the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
+'Path of the Hundred Steps'.
+
+'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
+descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
+laughed at his exactitude.
+
+'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.
+
+'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+
+'Or of exaggeration,' he added.
+
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
+A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
+chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
+confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
+Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
+resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
+above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
+cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
+route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
+flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
+two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
+side by side.
+
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
+lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
+boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
+insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
+of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
+looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.
+
+'Now, that one with the greyish sails--' Siegmund was saying.
+
+'Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?'
+interrupted Helena.
+
+'That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and--'
+
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
+wicked laughter of Helena.
+
+'That is right, I am sure,' he protested.
+
+'I won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
+knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+
+'So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he
+said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked
+at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in
+the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
+slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
+startled them up.
+
+'The clouds are coming,' he said regretfully.
+
+'Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered,
+
+'Look at the shadows--like blots floating away. Don't they devour the
+sunshine?'
+
+'It is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him.
+
+'Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.'
+
+'No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.'
+
+'I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
+like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
+sunshine.'
+
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
+water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund's face. He lay, with
+half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
+she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with
+her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He
+lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
+
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the
+sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It
+seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it
+fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had
+the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding
+out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her.
+This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so
+different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome,
+shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be
+the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves.
+She listened for Siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other
+sound, thudding powerfully.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 7_
+
+
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across
+at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!'
+
+'I was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled.
+
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the
+water and the downs.
+
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
+bay.
+
+'The tide is coming in,' said Helena.
+
+'But this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. It's as soft
+as pepper,' he replied.
+
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
+shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
+the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
+overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and
+fell, overcome at the end of the race.
+
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its
+base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green
+sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of
+withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that
+glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were
+almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the other
+headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must hurry,
+or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining
+between the great wall and the water.
+
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless.
+He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
+for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded
+by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.
+
+'I think I will rest awhile,' she said.
+
+'No, come along,' he begged.
+
+'My dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
+from the sea.'
+
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
+It would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+
+'Look at this black wood,' she said. 'Does the sea really char it?'
+
+'Let us get round the corner,' he begged.
+
+'Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said
+ironically.
+
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
+jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
+This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
+shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
+massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
+was delighted.
+
+'This is fine, Siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west.
+
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
+this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
+would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from
+their feet.
+
+'Would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked.
+
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+
+'This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.'
+
+'And then where?'
+
+'Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.'
+
+'Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.'
+
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
+near their bases.
+
+'I suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began
+silently to clamber forwards.
+
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+
+'I have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'The sea only
+looks near.'
+
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
+against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
+swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
+curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
+slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
+laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
+her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
+had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
+and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
+sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were cut
+off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
+his face.
+
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
+it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
+ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
+furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
+She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
+rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
+on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of
+a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
+damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
+rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
+the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not bear.
+She had no weapon against brute force.
+
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
+was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
+face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
+just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
+populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
+careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.
+
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
+savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
+action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
+whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
+here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
+week--well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.
+
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
+figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest
+tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why
+was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of
+experience? She was young and na�ve, and should he be angry with her for
+that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would have to
+suffer also, because of him.
+
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
+mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
+her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.
+
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
+he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
+close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
+lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
+pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
+on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
+heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
+face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
+satisfaction.
+
+'It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like
+a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said
+it. He pressed his mouth on hers. 'Not for you,' he thought, by reflex.
+'You can't go that way yet.' But he said nothing, strained her very
+tightly, and kept her lips.
+
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
+at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
+stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light
+bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand
+to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing
+delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness.
+
+'Isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'The sea must be very,
+very gentle--and very kind.'
+
+'Sometimes,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+'But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. She
+breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
+inhaled its fine savour.
+
+'It would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. She looked at him
+with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
+small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
+a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the
+glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
+waited upon her words and movements attentively.
+
+'It is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'Wotan is so
+clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
+fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--'
+
+Helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
+not lucid.
+
+'But life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled
+softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
+her words.
+
+'There's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only
+way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
+float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
+forget he had spoken.
+
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+
+'I will give it to the children,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
+publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
+girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
+the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
+approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
+
+'Would you like this? I found it down there,' said Siegmund, offering
+her the bulb.
+
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
+she was not going to say anything.
+
+'The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,'
+said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+
+The girl looked at her.
+
+'The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers--'
+
+The child's eyes brightened.
+
+'The tide-line is full of treasures,' said Helena, smiling.
+
+The child answered her smile a little.
+
+Siegmund had walked away.
+
+'What beautiful eyes she had!' said Helena.
+
+'Yes,' he replied.
+
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
+But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
+knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 8_
+
+
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
+late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
+rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken
+and trees.
+
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
+carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
+under the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All the
+yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
+
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
+the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
+walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
+admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
+this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
+
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
+kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
+away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
+if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
+assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light
+swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of
+their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
+
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
+They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
+a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
+dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
+Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
+his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
+playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
+
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
+and to strike a last blow for her pride:
+
+'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'
+
+'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
+at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
+to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
+her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
+him, and she wanted to possess him.
+
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
+wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
+that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
+restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
+Her soul seemed blasted.
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
+water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
+continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
+Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
+running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
+it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
+out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
+along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
+fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
+morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
+are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
+sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
+itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
+that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
+
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
+sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as
+they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued
+flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
+
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
+dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against
+the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was
+flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a
+heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air
+of sunshine.
+
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the
+waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her
+feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as
+the breast of a white bird.
+
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
+and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
+restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along
+with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,
+large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
+
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
+full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
+water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
+like pale flowers trembling upward.
+
+'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressed
+forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had
+more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his
+arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
+recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
+through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
+ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
+emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
+
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
+land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
+the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
+sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its
+cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that
+was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling
+with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible
+sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom
+that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
+like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
+under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
+laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
+him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
+it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
+
+'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his hands
+again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,
+gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth
+warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand
+encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end he
+found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his
+hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy
+coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and
+kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a
+flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth
+of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
+lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness
+and warmth merely floated upon.
+
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
+him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
+laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
+below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he
+should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
+free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He
+tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
+child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry and
+warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
+smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
+though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of
+himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
+even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found
+himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his
+head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his
+hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if
+he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and
+sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happy
+priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out
+of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach
+it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean he
+felt--full of lightness and grace.
+
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,
+was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the
+door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the
+garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat
+sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little
+laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very
+still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant
+little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood
+cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green
+twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There
+was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the
+shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,
+leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.
+She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she
+discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next
+mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.
+She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine
+at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+
+'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'
+
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
+glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+
+'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
+sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
+
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
+moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+
+'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim
+there.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+
+'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.
+
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
+came into her voice.
+
+'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.
+
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
+still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that
+would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all
+swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
+himself saying:
+
+'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like
+Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.'
+
+'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at him
+with her eyes heavy with meaning.
+
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+
+'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.
+
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
+it. He became suddenly grave.
+
+'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. It
+is so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
+you think so?'
+
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,
+and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 9_
+
+
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
+across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
+white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
+bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
+of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
+and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
+blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,
+which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
+been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+
+'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.
+
+'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
+heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
+meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
+them--dimly, drowsily, without pain.
+
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path
+down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with
+ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.
+The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks
+of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena
+sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand
+till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then
+she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the
+light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal
+beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on
+the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
+
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then there
+settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
+the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
+wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down
+together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund
+with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in his
+shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.
+The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds
+asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them
+with its bright eyes.
+
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall
+at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came
+like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of
+beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of
+others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and
+bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such
+blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in
+His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid
+blooms of beauty.
+
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
+their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
+shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
+Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
+revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung
+into water. She shivered lightly and rose.
+
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.
+She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in
+the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it
+free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens
+itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers the
+tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and took
+its kisses on her face and throat.
+
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
+like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
+fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+
+'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'
+
+'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.
+
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
+more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
+rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
+smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
+
+'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.
+
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 10_
+
+
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
+sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
+with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed
+suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund's heart was
+leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself
+very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled slowly. Often she
+called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky
+with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but
+shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to
+poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a
+shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones,
+causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
+watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the
+cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and
+gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two
+miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone,
+dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet
+of the weeds.
+
+'Don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
+the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
+childishly happy.
+
+'Why should we?' she asked lightly.
+
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
+with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
+the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
+relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy
+with the individual, no cognizance of him.
+
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things.
+She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful,
+fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below
+consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic
+knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To
+Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her
+kaleidoscope.
+
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
+gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+
+'Come,' he said very gently. 'You are only six years old today.'
+
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling
+in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in
+him sadly alive.
+
+'Now put your stockings on,' he said.
+
+'But my feet are wet.' She laughed.
+
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
+tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and
+more golden.
+
+'I envy the savages their free feet,' she said.
+
+'There is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,'
+he replied.
+
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
+track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
+boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
+Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys
+emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them.
+The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:
+
+'Tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?'
+
+'Ay, let her have a run,' said the father.
+
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
+her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
+pathetically.
+
+'Go on, Tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'Go on; have a run on
+the sand.'
+
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
+distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
+the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps,
+turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It
+looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away
+from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves.
+
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+
+'Crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said.
+
+'But look how frightened it is,' she said.
+
+'So am I.' He laughed. 'And if there are any gods looking on and
+laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their
+pinafores....'
+
+She laughed very quickly.
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed. 'Why should you want putting in a pinafore?'
+
+'I don't,' he laughed.
+
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
+water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
+Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
+glowing. He was watching earnestly.
+
+'I want to absorb it all,' he said.
+
+When at last they turned away:
+
+'Yes,' said Helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.'
+
+He pondered a moment.
+
+'How strange!' he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail.
+It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture
+was in me, not out there.'
+
+Without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it
+verbiage--she made a small sound of assent.
+
+'That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don't care so much,
+because I have it with me,' he concluded.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 11_
+
+
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
+keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
+broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
+however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
+among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
+incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
+
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
+signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
+withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
+
+'We must go to the left,' said Helena.
+
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
+black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
+shoulders.
+
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
+they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
+a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
+sense of space and freedom.
+
+'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
+pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
+large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
+shaggy cloak of furze.
+
+'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.
+
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
+impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+
+'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
+will be tired.'
+
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
+into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
+down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
+far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
+specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
+the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
+west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
+everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
+The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
+the condition of intense waiting.
+
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+
+'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.'
+
+'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.
+
+'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.
+
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
+and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
+odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
+honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
+
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+
+'What day is it, Siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
+laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
+
+'But really,' she insisted, 'I would not have believed the labels could
+have fallen off everything like this.'
+
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+
+'The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
+order and costume, going endlessly round.' She laughed, amused at
+the idea.
+
+'It is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights
+smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
+lifetime.'
+
+'That is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'You have
+torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
+It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be
+parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up
+of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
+cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take
+no notice.'
+
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his
+leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from
+pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek,
+looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a
+keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+
+'You know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. You seem to have
+knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all
+in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
+everything.'
+
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+
+'You must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a
+disciple's vanity.
+
+'Some time,' he answered. 'Later, when I have time.'
+
+'Later,' she murmured--'later than what?'
+
+'I don't know,' he replied. 'This is so bright we can't see beyond.' He
+turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
+that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay,
+with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
+
+'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
+always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+
+'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
+a brass reed was again in her voice.
+
+'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
+nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
+abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+
+'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
+voice to speak.
+
+'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
+hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
+still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
+flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
+make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
+thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
+constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
+north, even?'
+
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
+She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
+of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
+'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
+laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
+
+'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
+here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter
+and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn't it fine to be up here,
+with the sky for nearest neighbour?'
+
+'I did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. He turned to
+her.
+
+'As wise as God for the minute,' he replied softly. 'I think a few
+furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.'
+
+'And you are glad?' she asked. He laughed.
+
+'_Carpe diem_,' he said. 'We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.'
+
+'Why hell, Siegmund?' she asked in displeasure.
+
+'I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I'm a failure,
+Helena. But,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men
+have plucked.'
+
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
+fashion.
+
+'What does it matter, Helena?' he murmured. 'What does it matter? We are
+here yet.'
+
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
+felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
+uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
+her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
+hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
+face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
+his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
+ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.
+
+'What is it, Helena?' he asked at last. 'Why should you cry?'
+
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
+unrecognizable voice:
+
+'You won't leave me, will you, Siegmund?'
+
+'How could I? How should I?' he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
+suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+
+'How could I leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
+the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
+the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
+Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
+heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
+thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
+with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
+so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
+become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
+thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
+and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
+urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
+incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
+her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
+wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
+slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
+incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
+flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
+soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
+decided, was supreme, transcendental.
+
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
+of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
+sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
+stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
+found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
+when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
+of stars.
+
+    _Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
+    Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._
+
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
+she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
+her language.
+
+    _Die Luft ist k�hl, und es dunkelt,
+    Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._
+
+She liked Heine best of all:
+
+    _Wie Tr�ume der Kindheit seh' ich es flimmern
+    Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
+    Und alte Erinnerung erz�hlt mir auf's Neue
+    Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
+    Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben...._
+
+As she lay in Siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she
+knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the
+gleam of a falling star over water. The night moved on imperceptibly
+across the sky. Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but
+passed unseen, unfelt, over them. Till the moon was ready to step forth.
+Then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds
+round the opening gates:
+
+    _Aus alten M�rchen winket es
+    Hervor mit weisser Hand,
+    Da singt es und da klingt es
+    Von einem Zauberland._
+
+
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the
+clouds. She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful
+singsong, as children do.
+
+'What is it?' said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her
+singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having
+forgotten that he had asked her a question.
+
+'Turn your head,' she told him, when she had finished the verse, 'and
+look at the moon.'
+
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his
+chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his
+nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+
+'"_Die grossen Blumen schmachten_,"' she said to herself, curiously
+awake and joyous. 'The big flowers open with black petals and silvery
+ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the
+bridegroom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled
+flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the _Zauberland_, Siegmund--this is
+the magic land.'
+
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on
+the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay
+still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange
+ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp,
+breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her mouth
+and her cheeks and her forehead.
+
+'"_Und Liebesweisen t�nen_"-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing,
+Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the
+trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up
+their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven't you-and it all
+centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in
+them all Siegmund--Siegmund!'
+
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow
+heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay
+prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the
+beautiful strong motion of his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength,
+she swooned lightly into unconsciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite
+heaving of his life beneath her.
+
+'I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!' she said
+to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon it.
+That she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness
+astonished her.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life
+of Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath and
+the next. Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on her
+hands, she kissed him--a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her
+soul into his for ever. Then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply.
+She put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. 'No more,' said
+her heart, almost as if it sighed too-'no more!'
+
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He
+lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his
+side, looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as he
+lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him
+murmured; 'Hawwa--Eve--Mother!' She stood compassionate over him.
+Without touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother.
+Her compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little
+Helena. This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her
+compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a
+personification of the great motherhood of women.
+
+'I am her child, too,' he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in
+sleep. He had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when
+he looked only into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and
+gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+
+'Come,' she said gently, when she knew he was restored. 'Shall we go?'
+
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 12_
+
+
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The
+hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into
+shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some
+distance, very great, it seemed.
+
+'I can't get hold of them,' he said distractedly to himself. He felt
+detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as
+if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported,
+somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down
+again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and
+controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need
+not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he
+would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the
+moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly,
+joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support.
+Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked
+with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious.
+This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
+
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the
+hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in
+his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice
+it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
+
+'What is it?' he asked himself in wonder.
+
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally
+to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
+insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
+from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
+of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
+stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
+securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became
+conscious of it.
+
+'Good Lord!' he said to himself. 'I wonder what it is.'
+
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
+body--his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
+wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
+into another detached phrase. 'There is nothing the matter with me,'
+he said.
+
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
+sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
+he had fallen ill.
+
+'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
+sure my hand is steady.'
+
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
+him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+
+'Yes, I think this is the right way,' said Helena, and they set off
+again, as if gaily.
+
+'It certainly feels rather deathly,' said Siegmund to himself. He
+remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
+stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here
+he chose the French word--'_l'agonie_'. But his mother had seen and had
+cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
+spare her her suffering.
+
+'Certainly it is like that,' he said. 'Certainly it is rather deathly. I
+wonder how it is.'
+
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+
+'I believe we are lost!' Helena interrupted him.
+
+'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
+tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
+way?' he added.
+
+'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
+certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.'
+
+'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
+well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
+where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
+clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
+the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
+left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
+
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
+happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
+beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
+been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
+have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
+they've gone my house is weak.'
+
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
+reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
+
+'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
+my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
+That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.'
+
+Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
+somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
+concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
+was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
+been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
+vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
+his sickness, soothing him.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'I suppose living too
+intensely kills you, more or less.'
+
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
+The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
+veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
+lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
+seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if
+Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
+horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They
+walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a
+little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and
+they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under
+the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the
+moonlight.
+
+'We certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. The
+idea of being lost delighted her.
+
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
+glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking
+along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to
+some state beyond ordinary experience--some place in romance, perhaps,
+or among the hills where Br�nhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo
+of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London
+wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked
+again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist
+ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna
+must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.
+
+'We may be on the road to Newport,' said Helena presently, 'and the
+distance is ten miles.'
+
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in
+this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening
+wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund
+looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he
+sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of
+which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her
+nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her,
+and grew heavy with responsibility.
+
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the
+night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled
+together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the
+supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena
+walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively
+searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached,
+listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the
+darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the
+windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went
+running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed
+to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with
+weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was
+the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the
+grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying
+asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams.
+She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed,
+their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering
+over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
+
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
+fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. Siegmund's arm was
+about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
+stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
+Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
+envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
+The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
+looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
+bowed his head.
+
+'Thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate
+ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
+very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love,
+the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the
+white beauty in the world.'
+
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
+the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
+treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his
+compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped
+softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
+
+'Let me get under cover,' he thought. 'Let me hide in it; it is good,
+the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small,
+futile tragedy!'
+
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the
+silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer,
+leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was
+heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small,
+brave Helena.
+
+'Are you sure this is the right way?' he whispered to her.
+
+'Quite, quite sure,' she whispered confidently in reply. And presently
+they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the
+steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go
+with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping
+cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena's heart was
+beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they
+wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this
+night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road
+not far from home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 13_
+
+
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a
+kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o'clock, yet he lounged,
+dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of
+morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before
+him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as na�ve
+and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
+
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice
+beside him say:
+
+'Where have they come from; do you know, sir?'
+
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing
+beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+
+'The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,' said Siegmund.
+
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+
+'They look rather incongruous, don't you think? We left the sea empty
+and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their
+eye on us!'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'You are not an Anarchist, I hope?' he said jestingly.
+
+'A Nihilist, perhaps,' laughed the other. 'But I am quite fond of the
+Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can't turn round without
+finding some policeman or other at your elbow--look at them, abominable
+ironmongery!--ready to put his hand on your shoulder.'
+
+The speaker's grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from
+the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter
+felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so
+quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
+
+'I suppose we are in the hands of--God,' something moved Siegmund to
+say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at
+the speaker.
+
+'Ah!' he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair,
+the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they
+returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. 'Does the Czar sail this
+way?' he asked at last.
+
+'I do not know,' replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other's
+penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+
+'I suppose the newspaper will tell us?' said the man.
+
+Sure to,' said Siegmund.
+
+'You haven't seen it this morning?'
+
+'Not since Saturday.'
+
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
+
+'You are not alone on your holiday?'
+
+'No.' Siegmund did not like this--he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+
+'I live here--at least for the present--name, Hampson--'
+
+'Why, weren't you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years
+back?' asked Siegmund.
+
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
+fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself
+for having addressed Siegmund:
+
+'I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and
+as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
+re-acquainted.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+
+'I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It's a pity to try
+and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?'
+
+'Stare beyond it, you mean?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a
+day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all
+the confoundedly draughty House of Life.'
+
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
+something in his own soul.
+
+'I mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life
+that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
+blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't
+stop it, once we've begun to leak.'
+
+'What do you mean by "leak"?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Goodness knows--I talk through my hat. But once you've got a bit tired
+of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
+dark--as you were doing.'
+
+'But, to use your metaphor, I'm not tired of the House--if you mean
+Life,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Praise God! I've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket
+picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head
+back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+
+'I don't know what you mean, sir,' said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
+strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+
+'You're not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
+suite of rooms--'
+
+'Tomorrow I am turned out of this "blue room",' said Siegmund with a wry
+smile. The other looked at him seriously.
+
+'Dear Lord!' exclaimed Hampson; then: 'Do you remember Flaubert's saint,
+who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.'
+
+'Nor I,' shuddered Siegmund.
+
+'But you've got to-or something near it!'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+
+'What of yourself?' he said, resentfully.
+
+'I've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
+staring from the window at the dark.'
+
+'But can't you _do_ something?' said Siegmund.
+
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing
+his teeth.
+
+'I won't ask you what _your_ intentions are,' he said, with delicate
+irony in his tone. 'You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five
+hundred a year by hard work; but it's no good. If you have acquired a
+liking for intensity in life, you can't do without it. I mean vivid soul
+experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and
+physical excitement.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+
+'Well, and what then?' he said.
+
+'What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a _concentr�_, you feed your normal flame with
+oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are
+always semi-transparent.'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'At least, I am quite opaque,' he said.
+
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+
+'Not altogether,' said Hampson. 'And you, I should think, are one whose
+flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.'
+
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+
+'You haven't much reserve. You're like a tree that'll flower till it
+kills itself,' the man continued. 'You'll run till you drop, and then
+you won't get up again. You've no dispassionate intellect to control you
+and economize.'
+
+'You're telling me very plainly what I am and am not,' said Siegmund,
+laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+
+'Oh, it's only what I think,' replied Hampson. 'We're a good deal alike,
+you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn't; but women
+have always done as they liked with me.'
+
+'That's hardly so in my case,' said Siegmund.
+
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+
+'Say one woman; it's enough,' he replied.
+
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+
+'The best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,'
+Hampson resumed. 'By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
+animal in us. Then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond
+humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
+instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
+and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
+warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of
+life. In us her force becomes evident.
+
+'She can't live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting
+women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can
+gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and
+to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that
+is, us altogether.'
+
+'You're a bit downright are you not?' asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
+did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements
+were arbitrary.
+
+'That's according to my intensity,' laughed Hampson. 'I can open the
+blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
+see--God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
+perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!'
+
+'Don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
+end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and
+the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.'
+
+Siegmund pondered a little....
+
+'You make me feel--as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,'
+he said slowly.
+
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands
+lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+
+'I can scarcely believe they are me,' he said. 'If they rose up and
+refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren't they beautiful?'
+
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger's to his own hands, which lay curved
+on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature,
+but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
+Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over
+his thumbs.
+
+'I wonder,' said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, 'that she
+can't see it; I wonder she doesn't cherish you. You are full and
+beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when
+she loved you to such extremity?'
+
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man,
+with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+
+'Fools--the fools, these women!' he said. 'Either they smash their own
+crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look
+at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with
+compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by
+itself. I am very sorry.'
+
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of
+a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks.
+Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
+
+'I wish I didn't go on like this,' said Hampson piteously. 'I wish I
+could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is
+really hot.' He pulled open his flannel shirt.
+
+'I like the heat,' said Siegmund.
+
+'So do I.'
+
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some
+sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely
+to the village.
+
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful
+dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to
+find Helena.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 14_
+
+
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again
+waiting. It was past nine o'clock, so she was growing impatient. To
+herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of
+verses she had bought in St Martin's Lane for twopence.
+
+    A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,
+    As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew....
+
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself
+that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road
+for Siegmund.
+
+    And now she takes the scissors on her thumb ...
+    Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+
+'H'm!' she said, 'I really don't know whether I like that or not.'
+
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+
+'He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned;
+but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on
+the water!'
+
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+
+'But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them as
+I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the
+flutter of a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way
+to read this poet.'
+
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure
+enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his
+throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+
+'I have kept you waiting,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I was reading, you see.'
+
+She would not admit her impatience.
+
+'I have been talking,' he said.
+
+'Talking!' she exclaimed in slight displeasure. 'Have you found an
+acquaintance even here?'
+
+'A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel
+queer-sort of _Doppelg�nger_, he was.'
+
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+
+'In what way?' she said.
+
+'He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
+The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the
+bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have
+you made the plans for today?'
+
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself
+to the scarlet and green salad.
+
+'Mrs Curtiss,' she said, in rather reedy tone, 'has been very motherly
+to me this morning; oh, very motherly!'
+
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+
+'What, has she been saying something about last night?' he asked.
+
+'She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,' continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which
+showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+
+'Because we weren't in till about eleven?' said Siegmund, also with
+sarcasm.
+
+'I mustn't do it again. Oh no, I mustn't do it again, really.'
+
+'For fear of alarming the old lady?' he asked.
+
+'"You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if I were your
+_mother_, I don't know _how_ I should feel,"' she quoted.
+
+'When one engages rooms one doesn't usually stipulate for a stepmother
+to nourish one's conscience,' said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest
+of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed
+within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth
+were on edge.
+
+'I don't _mind_ in the least,' she said. 'The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.'
+
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+
+'I know I'm a moral coward,' he said bitterly.
+
+'Nonsense' she replied. Then, with a little heat: 'But you _do_ continue
+to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you needed
+justification.'
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+'I tell you--a little thing like this--it remains tied tight round
+something inside me, reminding me for hours--well, what everybody else's
+opinion of me is.'
+
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+
+'I thought you were so sure we were right,' she said.
+
+He winced again.
+
+'In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world--'
+
+'If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?' she said brutally.
+
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+
+'What is myself?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing very definite,' she said, with a bitter laugh.
+
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and
+put her arms round his neck.
+
+'This is our last clear day, dear,' she said.
+
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her in
+his arms....
+
+'It will be hot today,' said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+
+'I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,' he replied.
+
+'I shall wear a hat--you had better do so too.'
+
+'No,' he said. 'I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall
+get one.'
+
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to
+choose for himself.
+
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their
+remaining day.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'we ought to find the little path that
+escaped us last night.'
+
+'We were lucky to miss it,' he answered. 'You don't get a walk like that
+twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.'
+
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a
+loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was--a Londoner on holiday. He
+had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a
+gentleman. He had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he
+walked he looked unseeing in front of him.
+
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or a
+worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+_concentr�e_ than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something
+she always seemed coiled within herself.
+
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts,
+and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was a large,
+simple hat of burnt straw.
+
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite
+vigorously.
+
+'I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Why?' he laughed. 'My hair is like a hood,' He ruffled it back with his
+hand. The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the
+butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the
+sky. The lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in
+the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. There was a ragged
+noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard. Two
+red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood in
+the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath,
+whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. The white
+legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the
+yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a
+faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The
+farmer's wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if
+necessary.
+
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+
+'That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,' she said. 'It
+is cruder than Theocritus.'
+
+'In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,' he laughed. 'I think
+every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would
+be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one's
+nose, and to own cattle and land.'
+
+'Would it?' asked Helena sceptically.
+
+'If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I
+should love it,'he said.
+
+'It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied.
+
+'To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the
+desideratum.'
+
+'Is it?' she asked ironically.
+
+'I would give anything to be like that,' he said.
+
+'That is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly.
+
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+
+'Don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene.
+'They are farther than Theocritus--down there is farther than Sicily,
+and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren't.'
+
+'Why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly
+opposite the path through the furze.
+
+'There it is!' she cried, 'How could we miss it?'
+
+'Ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of
+_Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.
+
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the
+cliff's edge, she said:
+
+'This shall be our house today.'
+
+'Welcome home!' said Siegmund.
+
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out
+to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was
+slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could
+hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water
+below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with
+his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her
+page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began
+to read.
+
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring
+with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing
+her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes
+wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in
+'Adam Cast Forth'. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure
+strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive
+wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with
+struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the
+face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen
+with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.
+Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,
+abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss
+him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her
+position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on his
+hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a
+sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+
+'It will make him ill,' she whispered to herself, and she bent over to
+smell the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead.
+She felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming
+inflamed with the sun-scalding.
+
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea
+was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses of
+Freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. Green
+Farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and
+sleep. In the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless. Helena
+was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water.
+
+'"And there shall be no more sea,"' she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+
+'No more sea, no more anything,' she thought dazedly, as she sat in the
+midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the
+lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this
+tremendous furnace, leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag
+seamed with metal. She tried to imagine herself resuming the old
+activities, the old manner of living.
+
+'It is impossible,' she said; 'it is impossible! What shall I be when I
+come out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in
+another shape. No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What
+will become of us--what will happen?'
+
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace
+by Siegmund's waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked
+smiling at Helena.
+
+'It is worth while to sleep,' said he, 'for the sake of waking like
+this. I was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.'
+
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She
+smiled upon him almost in condescension.
+
+'I should like to realize your dream,' she said. 'This is terrible!'
+
+They went to the cliff's edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from
+the water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and
+put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+
+'It is really a very fine sun,' said Siegmund lightly. 'I feel as if I
+were almost satisfied with heat.'
+
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived,
+while she affects a light interest in another's pleasure. This time,
+when Siegmund 'failed to follow her', as she put it, she felt she must
+follow him.
+
+'You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,' she said,
+smiling; 'even a sufficiency of me.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund drowsily. 'I think I am. I think this is about
+perfect, don't you?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'I want nothing more and nothing different,' he continued; 'and that's
+the extreme of a decent time, I should think.'
+
+'The extreme of a decent time!' she repeated.
+
+But he drawled on lazily:
+
+'I've only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I've got
+all the cheese--which is you, my dear.'
+
+'I certainly feel eaten up,' she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him
+lying in a royal ease, his eyes na�ve as a boy's, his whole being
+careless. Although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt
+very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense
+of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his
+fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his
+buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or
+spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the
+path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them.
+Slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid's chair,
+wheeling silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man,
+was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his
+pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted
+body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken
+eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half
+obscure to him. Siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he
+should see. Helena looked intently for two seconds. She thought of the
+torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide--'the life
+tide,' she said to herself. The pain of the invalid overshadowed her own
+distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+
+'Come!' she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the
+completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+
+'We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow--so
+quiet,' she said to herself.
+
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her own
+state, after her own fashion.
+
+'The Mist Spirit,' she said to herself. 'The Mist Spirit draws a curtain
+round us--it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn
+curtain sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the curtain again, I
+do not want to think of the outside. I am afraid of the outside, and I
+am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. I want to be in our own
+fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.'
+
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+
+'Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next
+year, and stay for a whole month?'
+
+'If there be any next year,' said she.
+
+Siegmund did not reply.
+
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were
+mocking fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards
+their lodging.
+
+'There will be an end to this,' said Helena, communing with herself.
+'And when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No
+matter--let come what will. All along Fate has been resolving, from the
+very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar
+progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous harmonies
+with our lives. Really, the working out has been wondrous, is wondrous
+now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to suffer an anti-climax. I
+am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to allow a bathetic
+anti-climax.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 15_
+
+
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
+on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
+perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
+with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
+without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
+clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
+of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
+waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
+each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
+copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound,
+for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware
+that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces,
+like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
+
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
+that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
+time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
+Siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
+anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
+self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
+self-revelation took hold on him.
+
+'It is awfully funny,' he said. 'I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
+army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
+Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
+through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
+the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
+
+'He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
+and was to go into father's business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
+very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
+convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little while,
+but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles above
+me--which she was. She wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all
+like her. I bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children.
+
+'At first I fluttered round her. I remember I'd got a little, silky
+moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was
+mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off
+abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house.
+The mother was an invalid.
+
+'I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened
+off the smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two sisters
+and Beatrice talking about good-looking men.
+
+'"I consider Bertram will make a handsome man," said my younger sister.
+
+'"He's got beautiful eyes," said my other sister.
+
+'"And a real darling nose and chin!" cried Beatrice. "If only he was
+more _solide_! He is like a windmill, all limbs."
+
+'"He will fill out. Remember, he's not quite seventeen," said my elder
+sister.
+
+'"Ah, he is _doux_--he is _c�lin_," said Beatrice.
+
+'"I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister.
+
+'"But he's a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are," my
+younger sister chimed in.
+
+'"Ah, _si, si_!" cried Beatrice.
+
+'I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+
+'"Hello, is somebody in here?" I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+
+'I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed
+an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I
+of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white
+hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now,
+great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green;
+and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of
+Beatrice ... her great dark eyes.
+
+'It's funny, but Beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than Dante's.
+And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
+
+'I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
+Beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always
+jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen,
+earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when
+we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it
+awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
+
+'There's the romance. I wonder how it will all end.'
+
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before
+Helena's day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea
+that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and
+wonderful a thing in a man's life as birth, or adolescence, or death,
+was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of
+disillusion.
+
+'Come to think of it,' Siegmund continued, 'I have always shirked.
+Whenever I've been in a tight corner I've gone to Pater.'
+
+'I think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get
+out of to go to anybody.'
+
+'Yet I'm here,' he answered simply.
+
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+
+'And some men would have made a better job of it. When it's come to
+sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of
+her, I've always funked. I tell you I'm something of a moral coward.'
+
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'So be it.'
+Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
+discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
+finally--Siegmund.
+
+'In my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'I
+might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies
+running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I
+am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
+glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.'
+
+'You are so hard to get at,' said Siegmund. 'And so scornful of familiar
+things.'
+
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
+that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
+teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
+darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
+Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
+Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her
+whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
+
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
+day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
+night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
+after moments of intense living.
+
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
+herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
+dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash,
+and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
+
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
+livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
+fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong
+again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a
+destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed
+back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against
+her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty,
+mean conclusions.
+
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair
+grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary,
+lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
+
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
+was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
+Walk�re_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
+really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
+that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
+the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
+soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
+whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
+radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past
+the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short,
+something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men.
+
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
+her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
+he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her
+soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
+
+'Siegmund!' she said in despair.
+
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
+distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
+her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
+arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
+
+'What is it, dear? Is something wrong?'
+
+His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round
+her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
+beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
+He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did
+not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in
+his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free
+to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart,
+the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
+She struggled to escape.
+
+'What is it? Won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded.
+
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
+tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
+held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
+brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
+
+'Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me--at any rate tell me, Helena.'
+
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to
+be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
+His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong
+working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic
+to be free.
+
+'Let me go!' she cried. 'Let me go! Let me go!' He held her in
+bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed
+him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her
+suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
+
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down,
+sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a
+small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee
+beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
+
+'Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me,
+Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!'
+
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside
+herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this
+unreasoning pleading of his voice.
+
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on
+one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence
+was crackling with the sound of Helena's dry, hissing sobs. He remained
+silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he
+put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
+
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, 'It is enough,' He went behind the
+small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to
+hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush
+under which he could find cover.
+
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf,
+trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he
+lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time
+before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear,
+even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
+
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At
+length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could
+have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her
+face. Was somebody coming?
+
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied
+herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a
+thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
+She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.
+
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at
+them.
+
+'Dear!' she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to
+struggle with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have
+died than face anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+
+'Dear, someone is looking,' she pleaded.
+
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They walked
+on.
+
+'Forgive me, dear,' she said softly.
+
+'Nay, it's not you,' he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on
+till the night seemed private. She turned to him, and 'Siegmund!' she
+said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
+
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her
+face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered
+it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
+
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The
+stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first
+one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the
+sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he remembered
+how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and
+set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after point with yellow
+drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by one, delicately with
+his rod. The night was religious, then, with its proper order of
+worship. Day and night had their ritual, and passed in uncouth worship.
+
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night,
+where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars
+catch fire. At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might be.
+Helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he
+touched with his lips as part of the service.
+
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was
+quite alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman's
+breast have hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching the
+unknown. But this night he did not want comfort. If he were 'an infant
+crying in the night', it was crying that a woman could not still. He was
+abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. He, in loneliness,
+must search the night for faith.
+
+'My fate is finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation
+may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I
+must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to
+botch and bungle even damnation.'
+
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of
+his acts. Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though
+he could not see it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing
+softly in token of submission.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 16_
+
+
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
+of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
+insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him--she was
+afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
+little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had
+she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost
+him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
+
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
+gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
+back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+
+'What are you thinking of?' she asked.
+
+'I?' he replied. 'I really don't know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.'
+
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
+speech, she asked:
+
+'Was I very cruel, dear?'
+
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
+drew her close into him.
+
+'It was pretty bad, I suppose,' he replied. 'But I should think neither
+of us could help it.'
+
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
+helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
+shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
+in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
+delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to
+her Madonna.
+
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till
+at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of
+healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
+free, turned sharply aside, and said:
+
+'Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+'If you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
+with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless
+water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a
+long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with
+star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
+
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a
+tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay
+close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star
+which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin
+streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
+star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
+the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
+star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home.
+He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was
+behind the gate?
+
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
+populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+
+Siegmund was considering.
+
+'What _was_ the matter with you?' he asked.
+
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
+her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
+in experience:
+
+'Why, you see, dear, you won't understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it--the crying of lives I have touched....'
+
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
+also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled
+with shame.
+
+'....A crying of lives against me, and I couldn't silence them, nor
+escape out of the darkness. I wanted you--I saw you in front, whistling
+the Spring Song, but I couldn't find you--it was not you--I couldn't
+find you.'
+
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+
+'No, I don't see it,' he said. 'You would always be you. I could think
+of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.'
+
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her
+mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
+
+'Sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.'
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+'I lose you!' he repeated. 'You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my
+hold over you, and then you--?'
+
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+
+'It shall not be any more,' she said.
+
+'All right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.'
+
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+
+'You mustn't be bitter,' she murmured.
+
+'Four days is enough,' he said. 'In a fortnight I should be intolerable
+to you. I am not masterful.'
+
+'It is not so, Siegmund,' she said sharply.
+
+'I give way always,' he repeated. 'And then--tonight!'
+
+'Tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'Tonight I have been a fool!'
+
+'And I?' he asked.
+
+'You--what of you?' she cried. Then she became sad. 'I have little
+perverse feelings,' she lamented.
+
+'And I can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I'm
+always pushed this way and that, like a fool.'
+
+'You don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said.
+
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+
+'You are not like other folk. "_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht_." I thought of you when we read it.'
+
+'Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
+Which is it?'
+
+'Neither,' he said. 'You are _you_.'
+
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
+faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
+in black silhouette between them and the sea.
+
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
+life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
+read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his
+mind: '_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
+immer tiefer ins Leben._'
+
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
+home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+
+'This time tomorrow night,' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she implored.
+
+'Why not?' he laughed.
+
+'Don't, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+'All right, I won't.'
+
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
+little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
+on them now and again.
+
+'You won't be tired when you go back?' Helena asked.
+
+'Tired!' he echoed.
+
+'You know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full
+of pity. He laughed.
+
+'Oh, that is gone,' he said.
+
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+
+'And will you be sad?' she said, hesitating.
+
+'Sad!' he repeated.
+
+'But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
+back?'
+
+'The old life will take me up, I suppose,' he said.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'I have done wrong.'
+
+'Good Lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
+look at her, for the first time.
+
+'I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as
+you are now....'
+
+'"Take no thought for the morrow." Be quiet, Helena!' he exclaimed as
+the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+
+'Why?' she asked, afraid.
+
+'Why!' he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
+staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
+terrified her, and she lost courage.
+
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
+on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
+laughed, then became tender.
+
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
+half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
+sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs,
+as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the
+doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched.
+
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
+on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
+days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
+with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
+unity of their fates was gone.
+
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
+definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
+certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
+Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
+consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
+
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
+see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
+ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
+resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
+waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
+looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
+the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
+It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
+of the sea?
+
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
+this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
+overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
+over the sea--a libation.
+
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
+wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
+and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
+the moon looked frail and empty.
+
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
+of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
+into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
+watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
+eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.'
+
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
+moon.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 17_
+
+
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven
+o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+
+'But it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of
+the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted
+hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.
+
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that
+his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium
+glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of
+the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,
+offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the
+brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him
+with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.
+
+'They are all extraordinarily sweet,' said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies
+fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.
+Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.
+
+'The careless little beggars!' he said.
+
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely
+dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to
+meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of
+diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund
+had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and
+everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to
+us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break
+our hearts.
+
+'We have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say.
+
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+
+'It is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.'
+
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last
+night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed
+by his usual altar-stone.
+
+'How closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'It seems almost as if
+the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.'
+
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering
+fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his
+own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with
+things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and
+seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath
+his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with
+wondering pleasure.
+
+'They find no fault with me,' he said. 'I suppose they are as fallible
+as I, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the
+water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+
+'Once more,' he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very
+quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam
+towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like
+beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see
+fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white
+peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a
+sheen of silver.
+
+'Helena is right,' he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but
+moving upon the bosom of the tide; 'she is right, it is all enchanted. I
+have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.'
+
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round the
+terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets
+of the water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his foot;
+they were hard, cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made for the
+archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. There under
+water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls, were
+sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly
+green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the morning, their
+hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half afraid of their
+frantic efforts.
+
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch.
+There was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white, full-fleshed
+walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and
+out among themselves. Siegmund was carried along in an invisible
+chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. The tide swerved, threw him as
+he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow met the rock,
+and he was sick with pain. He held his breath, trying to get back the
+joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely, smooth side of the
+rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt
+him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the
+shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his
+arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch
+no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful,
+especially when, a minute or two later, he bent his arm.
+
+'No,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt
+me. I suppose I was careless.'
+
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
+looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
+bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
+gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the
+sea-shore played together.
+
+'Surely,' said Siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a
+jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.'
+
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
+the cliffs.
+
+'I was mistaken,' he said. 'It was an illusion.'
+
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
+windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
+another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white
+rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit
+and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
+or comrade.
+
+'They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
+after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do
+I matter?'
+
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+
+    We are not long for music and laughter,
+      Love and desire and hate;
+    I think we have no portion in them after
+      We pass the gate.
+
+'Why should I be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling.
+He frowned, and answered: 'Oh, Lord!--the old argument!'
+
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+
+'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.'
+
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
+maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
+
+'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
+that melts on the sunshine.'
+
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
+a joke.
+
+'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
+count; I am inconsiderable.'
+
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
+was arguing with himself.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.'
+
+But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
+answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
+overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
+was a great ignominy.
+
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore
+with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to
+discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box
+which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She
+had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then
+another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean
+lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
+
+'The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting,
+trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
+flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
+Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
+
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
+did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
+anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
+laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
+trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously
+her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend.
+There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the
+air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending,
+though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed
+beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as
+she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which
+made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for
+all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off
+her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
+thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled
+hastily upwards towards the outlet.
+
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
+window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
+throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
+dragon's hole.
+
+'How surprised they will be to see me!' said Helena, scrambling forward,
+laughing.
+
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
+white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the
+flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung
+the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena
+stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she
+stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a
+thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white
+incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips
+were parted in a woman's joy of adoration.
+
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+
+'It is good,' said Helena; 'it is very good.' She looked again, and saw
+the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
+pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
+they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
+
+'It is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she
+could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
+while she turned away.
+
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
+the beach to her.
+
+'You are not gone, then?' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it
+could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
+face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but Helena did not notice
+that his eyes were full of misery.
+
+'I, actually,' he said, smiling.
+
+'I did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant
+wonder. 'I could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and
+continued--'Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,' she said,
+looking radiantly up into Siegmund's face. 'Isn't it beautiful this
+morning?' she added.
+
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
+kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
+of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
+beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+
+'Isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked Helena, as she wrung the
+water from her costume.
+
+'It is very fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
+said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
+and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.'
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.'
+
+'It is,' assented Helena warmly. 'Have you noticed the waves? They are
+like a line of children chased by a white dog.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund.
+
+'Didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips
+the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+
+'I swam to my little bay again,' he replied.
+
+'Did you?' she exclaimed, pleased.
+
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
+holding them to Siegmund to dry.
+
+'I am very hungry,' she said.
+
+'And I,' he agreed.
+
+'I feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his
+position having reminded her of their departure.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't
+it?' she insisted.
+
+'I wish we might never go back,' he said.
+
+Helena sighed.
+
+'It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
+Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+
+'It has been something, dear,' she repeated.
+
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+
+'Everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He
+could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'Everything!' he said.
+
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+
+'I did well, didn't I, Siegmund?' she asked. Helena felt the
+responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
+withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
+word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
+
+'Wonderfully well, Helena,' he replied.
+
+She kissed his forehead.
+
+'You are everything,' he said.
+
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 18_
+
+
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
+brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate,
+gentle manner.
+
+'The water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from
+one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the
+amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his
+capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
+
+'It was,' assented Helena. 'It was as warm as new milk.'
+
+'Ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
+experience of Siegmund and his beloved. 'And did ye see the ships of
+war?' she asked.
+
+'No, they had gone,' replied Helena.
+
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+
+'You'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady.
+
+Helena arranged the matter.
+
+'I think ye both look better,' Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
+Siegmund.
+
+He smiled constrainedly.
+
+'I thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically.
+
+'He had been working hard,' said Helena, also glancing at him.
+
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+
+'Ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'And it's a very short time for you.
+What a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are
+grand, so they say.'
+
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'Have you never seen
+them?' she asked.
+
+'No,' replied Mrs. Curtiss. 'I've never been able to get; but I hope to
+go yet.'
+
+'I hope you may,' said Siegmund.
+
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
+quite satisfied.
+
+'Well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.'
+
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+
+'I've brought you,' she said, 'some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye'll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
+come back.'
+
+'How could we help?' laughed Helena.
+
+'We will,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
+Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
+presence of the delightful little lady.
+
+'This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she
+said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+
+'Ah!' exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+
+'One of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'And
+everybody.'
+
+'You have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony.
+
+'Strangers,' she replied. 'I seem to make strangers of all the people I
+meet.'
+
+She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her intently.
+He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+
+'Need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if
+ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two,
+three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,'
+she laughed.
+
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
+currants she had extricated for him.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 19_
+
+
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
+which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
+a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless
+little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old
+yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
+
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
+them.
+
+'Who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'They are
+tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling
+along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they
+take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when
+they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in
+the dark will gather them away. They won't be here in the morning,
+shrivelled and dowdy ... If only we could curl up and be gone, after
+our day....'
+
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+
+'It is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said.
+
+'Ay!' he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with
+bent head, abstract, but happy.
+
+'What is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'She is sufficient to
+herself--she doesn't want me. She has her own private way of communing
+with things, and is friends with them.'
+
+'The dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him
+from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+
+'I see it has,' he answered. Then to himself he said: 'She can't
+translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can't render
+herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she
+only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After
+a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not indispensable....'
+
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
+the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
+roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
+edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
+brilliant with dew.
+
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
+lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
+avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
+and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular.
+
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
+decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+
+'Amy! Amy!'
+
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
+indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
+calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
+he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
+
+'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.
+
+'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.
+
+'Look!' said Siegmund.
+
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
+holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
+gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with
+hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened
+the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then
+the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
+
+There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by
+the resentful abuse of the man.
+
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+
+'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.
+
+'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as
+if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.'
+
+'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.
+
+Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
+winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next
+incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
+humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
+fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
+self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
+time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
+her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
+of his tortured self-respect.
+
+'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone
+must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in
+it myself.'
+
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,
+the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,
+all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it
+naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this
+bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty
+and find the dirt. What was he to do?
+
+'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
+look quite stern today.'
+
+'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.'
+
+'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
+gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
+so grave.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
+right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
+it had all gone.'
+
+'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
+only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
+such stuff.'
+
+'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
+Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
+came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
+said that.'
+
+'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
+
+'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
+learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
+drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
+mockingly, to tease her.
+
+'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
+ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
+let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
+with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
+rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
+The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
+purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
+and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
+blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
+
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
+trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
+drooped over everything.
+
+'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
+Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
+will not wave my hand.'
+
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
+allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
+Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
+spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
+
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
+also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
+said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
+felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
+neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
+untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
+
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
+disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
+seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
+mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
+interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
+twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
+surprising.
+
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
+the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
+white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
+softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+
+'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
+the light.
+
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
+ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
+wild spinning of the lights.
+
+'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
+apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
+laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+
+'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
+to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
+understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
+cannot compel anybody to follow me.
+
+'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
+sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
+to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
+When can I set my feet on when this is gone?'
+
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
+Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
+looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+
+'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
+'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
+ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
+to the sun.
+
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+
+'This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
+which to lie.
+
+'Shall we not go under the rocks?' said Helena.
+
+'Look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.'
+
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
+with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat
+was dreadful.
+
+'My arms, Siegmund,' said she. 'They feel as if they were dipped in
+fire.'
+
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+
+'Are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed stupidly.
+
+'That is all right,' he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
+him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena's mist-curtain,
+he said:
+
+'I _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only
+I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...'
+
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
+of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
+savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
+beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
+would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
+
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
+lips on her cheek, he murmured:
+
+'I should be able, shouldn't I, Helena?'
+
+'You are always able!' she cried. 'It is I who play with you at hiding.'
+
+'I have really had you so little,' he said.
+
+'Can't you forget it, Siegmund?' she cried. 'Can't you forget it? It was
+only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can't you
+forget it, dear?'
+
+'You can't do without me?' he asked.
+
+'If I lose you I am lost,' answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
+safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
+
+'I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
+us,' said Helena to herself. 'They may go back to hell.'
+
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft
+away.
+
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
+to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
+out to sea and lost.
+
+'If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
+were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
+should get stronger and more upright.'
+
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
+two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
+leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
+his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
+great power.
+
+'If,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
+and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
+Siegmund in my arms....'
+
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
+falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
+that it made silence sweet.
+
+'If now,' prayed Siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
+were dark....'
+
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the
+bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
+rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
+that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger
+of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return,
+to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must
+not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and
+travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He
+lay in suspense, waiting.
+
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+
+'It is time, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
+She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
+him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
+inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
+sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still
+he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart
+crushed with grief for him.
+
+'We must go, Siegmund,' she whispered.
+
+'All right,' he said, but still he did not move.
+
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
+air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving.
+His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too
+strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the
+sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
+
+'We shall be too late,' she said in distress.
+
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She
+put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself
+together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
+
+'Why, what time is it?'
+
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his
+left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
+
+'I can't see the figures,' he said. 'Everything is dimmed, as if it were
+coming dark.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. 'My eyes
+were the same. It is the strong sunlight.'
+
+'I can't,' he repeated, and he was rather surprised--'I can't see the
+time. Can you?'
+
+She stooped down and looked.
+
+'It is half past one,' she said.
+
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time
+to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: 'I
+feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in
+my body is dulled.'
+
+'Yes,' answered Helena, 'I am afraid it will do you harm.'
+
+'At any rate,' he smiled as if sleepily, 'I have had enough. If it's too
+much--what _is_ too much?'
+
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+
+'We are going back--we are going back!' the heart of Helena seemed to
+run hot, beating these words.
+
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge
+of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea.
+The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching
+in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon
+the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still.
+Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful,
+incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund's
+mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then
+turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he
+had enjoyed, '_Addio_!' he said.
+
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+
+'It reminds me of Traviata--an "_Addio_" at every verse-end.'
+
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it
+jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve.
+'_Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o_!' he whistled between his teeth, hissing out
+the Italian's passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
+
+'I suppose,' she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check
+this discord--'I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey--Thursday.'
+
+'I don't know,' said Siegmund.
+
+'There will not be very many people,' she insisted.
+
+'I think,' he said, in a very quiet voice, 'you'd better let me go by
+the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.'
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+'I don't want to sit looking at you all the way,' he said.
+
+'But why should you?' she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Indeed, no!' she said. 'We shall go together.'
+
+'Very well,' he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the
+little post office, he said:
+
+'I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.'
+
+'You haven't sent them any word?' she asked.
+
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood
+still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+
+'Shall I?' he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was
+rather peculiar.
+
+'Well, I should think so,' faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and
+cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a
+telegraph form.
+
+'My God!' he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could
+not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled
+his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the
+amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her
+finger, he felt sick with irony.
+
+'That's right,' she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to
+the instrument. 'What beautiful weather!' she continued. 'It will be
+making you sorry to leave us.'
+
+'There goes my warrant,' thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of
+paper under the post-mistress's heavy hand.
+
+'Yes--it is too bad, isn't it,' he replied, bowing and laughing to the
+woman.
+
+'It is, sir,' she answered pleasantly. 'Good morning.'
+
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face
+like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression
+told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her
+falter with dismay.
+
+'What is he thinking of?' she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back.
+'And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them
+at home?'
+
+'Well,' said Siegmund, 'are there any postcards?'
+
+'None that I care to take,' she replied. 'Perhaps you would like one of
+these?'
+
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary
+views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+
+'I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,' he said.
+
+'Or a brush,' said Helena.
+
+'She does not understand,' said Siegmund to himself. 'And whatever I do
+I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.'
+
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings
+resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 20_
+
+
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other
+with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses,
+the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with
+exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if
+they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think,
+they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back
+her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
+
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
+shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
+at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
+who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here
+was room for all. Faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to
+look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
+and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
+into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself
+carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched
+the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between
+his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against
+the side of the carriage. The German's hips came down tight against her.
+She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure
+of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the
+opposite direction.
+
+'I am afraid I press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
+German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
+she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
+
+'Oh no,' she answered. 'You do not crush me.'
+
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
+The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
+slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
+remark in German: 'Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?'
+
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
+each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
+over 'Billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the German
+Emperor--and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned
+each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
+going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
+were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
+
+Helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
+tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the na�ve type: he talked with
+face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
+spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
+Helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to
+escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
+beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+
+'I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in
+perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
+her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free
+Helena, and said:
+
+'Forgive me, I am sorry.'
+
+'You are forgiven,' replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
+her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
+at this. The good humour was complete.
+
+'Thank you,' said the German gratefully.
+
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
+rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no
+attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German's apologies, and
+the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell.
+
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
+intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
+never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
+between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
+race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
+Siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
+same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
+It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
+birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
+never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him
+the mistress.
+
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like
+a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund's resentment against
+her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was
+very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made
+her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now,
+small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her.
+But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone,
+little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has
+done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind;
+death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this
+house of strangers which she called 'life'. She had to go on alone, like
+a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+
+'What will she do?' Siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes
+upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
+the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
+strength is established. But what then?'
+
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go
+on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had
+not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do
+when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive.
+Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
+
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
+inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
+and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became
+acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he
+had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour
+with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
+
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
+eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
+an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
+her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar
+hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool
+or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were
+instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar
+jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand.
+Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were
+passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as nonsense.
+
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
+faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
+clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
+them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
+sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
+endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere
+of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing that could
+relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its hold.
+
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
+heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to
+support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out
+of himself whatever she wanted.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 21_
+
+
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.
+It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily
+together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a
+concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. To
+Siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers
+crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from
+the street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay as
+snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,
+without any joy.
+
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their
+steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to
+stimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned
+slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber
+floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;
+small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the
+sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft
+stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were
+men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags
+through a sky dim with distance.
+
+'It is all very glad,' said Siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to be
+fanciful.'
+
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to his
+destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies
+between us and our goal.
+
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
+blue afternoon.
+
+'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over
+again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+
+'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to
+herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
+as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
+their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
+sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the
+swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark head
+and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over
+some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low
+stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer was
+sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing
+straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretching
+forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
+sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.
+
+'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
+watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
+with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
+veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
+lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
+the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
+staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
+the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
+from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
+dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
+quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
+as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
+steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
+coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
+raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
+gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
+the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
+in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
+indifference.
+
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
+whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
+the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
+noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
+moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
+They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of
+life again.
+
+'By Jove, that was a near thing!'
+
+'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.
+
+'A French yacht,' said somebody.
+
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
+to say. Confused, he repeated:
+
+'That was a close shave.'
+
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
+herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
+quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+
+'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the day
+is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
+swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
+That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
+no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of
+the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white
+seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,
+and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+
+'For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness
+through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he
+fumbles with delights like a bee.
+
+'For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness
+the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life,
+the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible
+flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death,
+is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a
+life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers
+into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from the
+death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potent
+shadow, if I do not enrich life.'
+
+'Wasn't that woman fine!' said Helena.
+
+'So perfectly still,' he answered.
+
+'The child realized nothing,' she said.
+
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+
+'I am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urged
+inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.'
+
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+
+'I guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor,
+will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.'
+
+'He was careful of something else just then,' said Siegmund, who hated
+to hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'He was attending to the
+machinery or something.'
+
+'That was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic.
+
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement--very blind.
+Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
+
+'Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked.
+
+'He nearly succeeded,' she replied.
+
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the
+world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'But, after all,' he
+thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event
+and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of
+exoneration.'
+
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of
+the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of
+life, saw it great and impersonal.
+
+'Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' he
+asked.
+
+'I rather think not. Why?' she replied.
+
+'I hope she didn't,' he said.
+
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very
+much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to
+her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and
+proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
+
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman's
+courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the
+boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he
+himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from
+lamenting his hard fate.
+
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they
+looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He
+yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be
+carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came
+round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept
+round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old
+_Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for
+a trophy.
+
+'It is a dreadful thing,' thought Siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy when
+there is nothing more to do.' He watched the landing-stages swooping
+nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of
+the train was London.
+
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.
+The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in
+the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released
+from her.
+
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder,
+in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the
+crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to
+the mainland.
+
+'Won't you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?'
+asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question.
+
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+
+'No,' she replied. 'Let us go together.'
+
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat
+down, facing Helena.
+
+'Now,' said he to himself, 'I wish I were alone.'
+
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+
+'Shall I not go down to Cornwall?'
+
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that
+she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety
+protracted.
+
+'But you have promised Louisa, have you not?' he replied.
+
+'Oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she
+wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+
+'Then you must go,' he said.
+
+'But,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'I do not want to go down to
+Cornwall with _Louisa and Olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after
+_this_,' she added.
+
+'Then Louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he said
+gravely.
+
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+
+'Is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. She glanced angrily at
+the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the
+ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the
+carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved
+by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena in
+his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him
+with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
+
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through
+Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It
+seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of
+the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. The
+afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneys
+and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant
+appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of
+light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+
+'It will go on,' thought Siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever.
+And I shall miss it all!'
+
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he
+began again:
+
+'Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will
+say nothing, thank God--nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there
+will be no interruptions....
+
+'But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss
+reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the
+country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my
+money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.
+Very good.
+
+'But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want
+Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be
+damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never
+get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out
+of pity for me. I know she would.
+
+'But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me
+not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in
+endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a
+red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth.
+Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any
+efforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what the
+result is." And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would be
+a gangrene of shame.
+
+'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
+asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
+creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
+I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?'
+
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
+whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
+imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
+sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
+children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
+bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
+thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
+unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
+her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
+took his pleasure elsewhere.
+
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
+consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
+agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be only
+a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait for
+the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
+inevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money to
+keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
+then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+
+'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give each
+of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
+nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and round
+went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
+grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
+gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his
+knee.
+
+'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with
+pain, 'you will forgive me.'
+
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
+filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
+smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes
+haunted with pain.
+
+'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfect
+happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!'
+
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
+painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned
+back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike
+swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.
+
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
+rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena
+had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,
+so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey
+that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of
+the final convictions.
+
+'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?
+What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
+have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
+inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?'
+
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
+never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
+backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
+great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
+with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a
+breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
+and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
+simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered
+what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague
+roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
+was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
+proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
+magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
+opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
+everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
+sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
+train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
+It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
+darkened grass-lands.
+
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
+breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
+was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
+victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms
+uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. The
+day died nobly, so she thought.
+
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+
+'Surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously.
+Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It
+came, unswerving, from behind the trees.
+
+'I am sure it is for us,' she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.
+Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and
+pointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little of
+her faith.
+
+'It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn't it seem to you to be
+travelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.'
+
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'Aylwin'.
+
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+
+Helena was almost happy.
+
+'I am right,' said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and
+Helena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand
+to confirm it.'
+
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like
+a greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was
+mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,
+his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a
+certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy
+insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courage
+to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on
+towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky, asking
+of everything, 'Am I right? Am I right?' He did not mind what happened
+to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by 'right' he did
+not trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had been
+reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid,
+and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him
+deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.
+
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the
+fountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from
+the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they
+hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the
+hive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of
+purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--a
+village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.
+
+'Ah, well!' thought Siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm,
+what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light,
+and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from these
+rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of
+night, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the day will
+swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, and
+humming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell and
+the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happens
+we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or not,
+bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_
+always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least,
+I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there
+in the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned bright; I
+have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--I wonder where? We can
+never point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!'
+
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking
+towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the
+night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their
+first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw the
+quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between
+high embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered with
+roses of Sharon--the large golden St John's wort of finest silk. He
+looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,
+ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:
+
+'Do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of Sharon all along here?'
+
+'I do,' replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'Weren't they
+pretty?'
+
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+
+'Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I
+should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.'
+
+He smiled, without answering.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+
+'But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked.
+She put the question timidly. 'Would you care to?' she added.
+
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+
+'No,' he said gently; 'I think we had better not.' Almost for the first
+time he did not make apologetic explanation.
+
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning
+of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near
+Sutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and
+her basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite
+ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. Siegmund
+was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, he
+said to himself, 'Ah, well, it must be so.'
+
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+
+'At least,' she said doubtfully, 'I shall see you at the station.'
+
+'At Waterloo?' he asked.
+
+'No, at Wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone.
+
+'But--' he began.
+
+'It will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. 'Much better than crossing London from Victoria to
+Waterloo.'
+
+'Very well,' he replied.
+
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+
+'You will get in Wimbledon 10.5--leave 10.40--leave Waterloo 11.30,' he
+said.
+
+'Very good,' she answered.
+
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the
+train to stop.
+
+'If only she will soon go!' thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable
+minute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,
+pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon
+the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him,
+he could scarcely breathe. 'How long will it be?' he said to himself,
+looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the lady who
+could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her;
+he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors slammed and
+the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.
+
+'Now I lose her,' said Siegmund.
+
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+
+'Good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away.
+
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with
+sickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why
+did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what
+would she do?
+
+
+
+_Chapter 22_
+
+
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to
+Wimbledon. London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this
+peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from
+Victoria to Waterloo.
+
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
+swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
+clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
+hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
+full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating
+with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and
+stood there panting--great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always
+amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased
+with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was
+glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her
+with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the
+rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing
+along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to
+her. 'Discords,' she said, 'after the trees and sea.' She liked the
+glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for
+pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of Heaven;
+but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland.
+
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched
+the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself
+far before him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted
+with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in
+their movement. There was a soft vividness of life in their carriage; it
+reminded Siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised
+candle-flame. The women went blithely alongside. Occasionally, in
+passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he
+knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy;
+besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. The eyes
+of the women said, 'You are comely, you are lovable,' and
+Siegmund smiled.
+
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a
+lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of
+grey-gold light.
+
+'It is a wonderful night,' he said to himself. 'There are not two such
+in a year.'
+
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his
+heart. This purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth
+of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip
+sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him.
+
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but
+rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the
+bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a
+hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the
+black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+
+'Ah!' said Siegmund to himself; 'it is far too wonderful for me. Here,
+as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever
+happens, the world is wonderful.'
+
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night,
+the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the
+floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like
+an army of angels filing past on one of God's campaigns, the purring
+haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people. Siegmund
+went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of life. He
+did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he walked
+home in the moonless dark.
+
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He
+did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: 'Now
+for the beginning of Hell!'
+
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy
+murmur. The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten,
+Siegmund opened the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not
+raise her head. Frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a
+book. He did not look up. Vera had her fingers thrust in among her hair,
+and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before her.
+Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to show they were aware
+of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people who
+cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go. His
+wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing
+under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in the
+creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+
+'I suppose the children are in bed,' he said.
+
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily
+turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly
+interested and had known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his
+slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another.
+
+'They've been gone two hours,' said Frank at last, still without raising
+his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was
+jarring, not yet having developed a man's fullness.
+
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The
+slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag
+seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to
+speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's scornful
+restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat
+leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered
+with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+
+'Do you want any supper?' asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of
+her voice startled him into looking at her.
+
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund's heart went
+down with weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+
+'Aren't _you_ having any?' he asked.
+
+The table was not laid. Beatrice's work-basket, a little wicker
+fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and
+reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows on
+the table.
+
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took out
+a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth
+over one end of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock
+with her hand.
+
+'Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?'
+she asked.
+
+'In where?'
+
+In this month's _Nash's_.'
+
+'No,' replied Beatrice. 'What time have I for reading, much less for
+anything else?'
+
+'You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people,
+then,' said Vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. She rose. 'Let me
+do this. You sit down; you are tired, Mother,' she said.
+
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed
+her. Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his
+thin shoulders lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on
+his knees, looking into the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking of
+crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. All the time Vera was heard
+chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond
+tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail to
+her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity.
+
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a
+plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer,
+and some bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the
+leaves of her magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely
+for his father. He looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained
+himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in
+with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright.
+
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly
+clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin--in fact, it was
+just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous
+neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an
+established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong,
+impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the
+little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. Her
+face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to sew.
+
+'What do you say, Mother?' said Vera, as if resuming a conversation.
+'Shall it be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?'
+
+'I say, as I said before,' replied Beatrice: 'I cannot afford to go
+out.'
+
+'But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. _D�tes
+donc_!'
+
+'There are other things to think of,' said Beatrice.
+
+'Now, _maman, nous avons chang� tout cela_! We are going out--a jolly
+little razzle!' Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and
+smiled at her mother gaily.
+
+'I am afraid there will be no _razzle_'--Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly--'for me. You are slangy, Vera.'
+
+'_Un doux argot, ma m�re_. You look tired.'
+
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+
+'I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,' she said.
+
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking
+in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked
+up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+
+'There's your supper, Father.'
+
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head
+lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+
+Siegmund was hungry.
+
+'Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to
+himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He
+seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and
+away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching
+from under his eyebrows.
+
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of
+his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it,
+despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night.
+He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat
+irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.
+
+'Good night!' he said.
+
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut
+the door and went.
+
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the
+tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically,
+catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The
+faces of the two children set hard with hate.
+
+'He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing
+and her cottons.
+
+'At any rate, he's come back red enough,' said Frank, in his grating
+tone of contempt. 'He's like boiled salmon.'
+
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to
+the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude.
+
+'He _would_ come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's
+sneer.
+
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread,
+and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at
+this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched
+her with jealous eyes.
+
+'There is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said Beatrice to him. 'I
+kept you some.'
+
+'All right, Ma,' he replied. Fetch it in.'
+
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+
+'And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called Vera after her.
+
+'The damned coward! Ain't he a rotten funker?' said Frank, _sotto voce_,
+while his mother was out of the room.
+
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank
+yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother,
+and, putting his hand on her arm--the feel of his mother's round arm
+under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise--he said, more gratingly
+than ever:
+
+'Ne'er mind, Ma; we'll be all right to you.' Then he bent and kissed
+her. 'Good night, Mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of
+the room.
+
+Beatrice was crying.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 23_
+
+
+'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind
+him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family
+criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent
+judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house
+from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I
+come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'
+
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him
+a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his
+position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might
+feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after
+time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught
+him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and
+his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touched
+them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own
+childish touch-and-shrink.
+
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he
+stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and
+wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously
+soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The
+night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of
+light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose
+up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth
+of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the
+whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night
+occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across
+the distance.
+
+'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything into
+a oneness. I wonder what is in it.'
+
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the
+night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a
+hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A
+star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a
+yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had
+seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
+
+'It is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a good
+sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'
+
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was
+soon in bed.
+
+'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'
+
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
+his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,
+I've got to go through it.'
+
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
+forgot when he awoke. Only this na�ve question and answer betrayed what
+had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
+knowledge vanished.
+
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
+did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
+thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
+'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his
+heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep
+activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been
+his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and
+nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the
+expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+
+'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I
+looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.
+Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the
+departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by
+facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it
+was keen, was half pleasure.
+
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
+next to his, and he heard her:
+
+'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.'
+
+'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
+
+'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I
+slept.'
+
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
+The minutes passed.
+
+'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to
+himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
+humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep
+him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
+anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was
+heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
+heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of
+the stairs:
+
+'Do you want any hot water?'
+
+'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,
+lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
+second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
+same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
+girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
+suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
+
+'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'
+Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting
+impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no
+answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
+
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+
+'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you
+want?'
+
+'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
+
+'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are
+you shouting for?'
+
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
+into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'
+
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of
+the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.
+She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and
+pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her
+feet as she went downstairs.
+
+'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'
+
+The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the
+kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's
+feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.
+He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive
+to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and
+meet them all.
+
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'
+Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
+of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
+from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
+suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
+thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
+downstairs. It was nine o'clock.
+
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
+his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
+waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
+knocked loudly.
+
+'All right,' said he.
+
+Then she went downstairs.
+
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's
+voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+
+'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the
+table for a week.'
+
+Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
+to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
+the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
+Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
+pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
+bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
+which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her
+stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
+sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,
+but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge
+and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
+She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
+her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
+child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
+
+'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'
+
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
+back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
+the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
+turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
+his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be
+trying to discover something in him.
+
+'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
+
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
+slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
+continued to regard him curiously.
+
+'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
+
+'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
+
+'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
+
+'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+
+'Much farther than that,' he replied.
+
+'To Worthing?' she asked.
+
+'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
+
+'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
+
+'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
+
+'Twuly?' she asked.
+
+'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
+
+'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
+
+'I will next time,' he replied.
+
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+
+'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+
+'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--'
+
+'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.
+
+'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.
+
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+
+'You _are_ red,' she said.
+
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+
+'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'
+
+'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+
+'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't
+you?'
+
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and
+she drew away from him, unwilling.
+
+'Come and let me look,' he repeated.
+
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her
+face, shy, suspicious, condemning.
+
+'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+
+'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'
+
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went
+downstairs without going into his room.
+
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.
+He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the
+bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and
+licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
+
+'A pity to wash it off,' he said.
+
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment
+exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he
+thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'
+
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of
+forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+
+'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should
+find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my
+affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no
+more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a
+man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of
+creation.'
+
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His
+sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was
+dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was
+indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to
+the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.
+He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and
+Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude
+of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt
+as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked
+nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would
+not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the
+cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few
+days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly
+through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and
+of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and
+madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life
+struggled in a clogged and broken channel.
+
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He
+would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and
+sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him
+into consciousness.
+
+'I suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition
+in his head.
+
+'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intense
+irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot
+irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair
+without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move
+about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
+
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which
+she was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to see
+what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed
+intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let
+go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she
+had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed
+him closely.
+
+'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.
+
+Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'
+
+'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.
+
+'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.
+
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up
+anxiously.
+
+'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'But what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child.
+
+'Nothing--nothing that I can tell _you_. He's only spoilt all our
+lives.'
+
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+
+'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a
+nice plum?'
+
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.
+She was too much perplexed.
+
+'What do you say?' asked her mother.
+
+'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.
+
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in
+his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing
+irritability from his belly.
+
+'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.
+
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+
+'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he asked
+himself.
+
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening
+to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he
+could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would
+be better.
+
+'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this
+out.
+
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or
+distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often
+dreamed of, farming in Canada.
+
+'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.'
+
+'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.
+
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+
+'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better be
+dead. To have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.'
+
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed
+entertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' he
+asked himself.
+
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+
+'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' he
+cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a
+raw place.
+
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.
+There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He
+merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood
+holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
+
+'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.
+
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,
+before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+
+'Dinner's ready.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'
+
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+
+'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.
+
+'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in
+her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+
+'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie--never
+mind.'
+
+The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and
+Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and
+grew cold.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 24_
+
+
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
+pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
+was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
+her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
+like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into
+his box.
+
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
+ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
+which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly
+entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to
+peck forwards as she said:
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+
+'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
+manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?'
+
+'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.
+
+'H'm!'
+
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
+sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
+forbore to question.
+
+'You look well,' she said.
+
+Helena smiled ironically.
+
+'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful,
+affectionate manner she had assumed.
+
+'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.
+
+'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
+regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued,
+'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm,
+like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after
+a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will
+you have?'
+
+'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.
+
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+
+'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point
+curtly.
+
+'Lemonade,' said Helena.
+
+Presently Mr Verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
+voice.
+
+'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+
+'As you see, Pater,' she answered.
+
+'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
+tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!'
+her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can
+never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless
+pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will
+not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of
+offence upon it.
+
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to
+the door.
+
+'Has she come?'
+
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung
+herself upon Helena and kissed her.
+
+'How long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with
+affection.
+
+'Ten minutes,' replied Helena.
+
+'Why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and
+meet you?' Louisa reproached her.
+
+'Why?' drawled Helena.
+
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by
+this sarcasm.
+
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that
+night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their
+usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl--a
+minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made
+confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy
+which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena's
+thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea,
+pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with Siegmund, but
+reaching no further.
+
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender
+advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,
+all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided
+his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity
+which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated
+flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. But the day wore on. Helena
+pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a little,
+mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.
+
+At last the night fell.
+
+'Well,' said Helena to her mother, 'I suppose I'd better pack.'
+
+'Haven't you done it?' cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.
+'You'll never have it done. I'd better help you. What times does the
+train go?'
+
+Helena smiled.
+
+'Ten minutes to ten.'
+
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was
+ample time for everything.
+
+'Nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' Mrs Verden said.
+
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+
+'I'll come with you to the station,' suggested Mrs Verden. 'I'll see the
+last of you. We shan't see much of you just now.'
+
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+
+'Oh, I wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too
+evident.
+
+'Yes--I will--I'll see you off.'
+
+Mrs Verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was
+curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was
+reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played
+the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress.
+
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
+eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away
+swiftly as if she had been burned.
+
+'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
+wonder?'
+
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
+how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
+ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
+came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
+a chair.
+
+'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
+
+'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
+to a child.
+
+'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
+
+'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
+Helena.
+
+'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
+exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+
+'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
+the basket or the violin, Mater?'
+
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
+smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
+Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
+corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
+mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
+third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
+face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
+blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
+was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
+shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
+miles--two hundred and forty miles.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 25_
+
+
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice,
+who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of
+angry hysteria.
+
+'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had
+asked him coldly.
+
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+
+'Tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered.
+
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
+flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.
+
+'What do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done
+enough. We can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. You
+have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want
+to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember
+that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
+You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
+responsible for your children, do you think?'
+
+'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very
+coldly.
+
+'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
+sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
+children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
+_I'll_ stop, I tell you _I'll_ do as I like. _I'll_ go as well. No, I
+wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn't leave
+little children--to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they
+mightn't be yours.'
+
+'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.
+
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
+sick.
+
+Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.
+
+'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a
+great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do
+you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit
+moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
+wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
+up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of
+your hand?'
+
+'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to
+yourself!'
+
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath.
+Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and
+trembling.
+
+'You coward--you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
+who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
+what I am.'
+
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
+with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
+bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
+and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
+withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
+should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger,
+which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He
+trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
+Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
+found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
+Vera tackled the situation.
+
+'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.
+
+Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
+others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no
+reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
+Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
+a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'
+
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
+looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog--'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.
+
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
+taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
+the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
+father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
+in her softest and most persuasive tones:
+
+'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of
+meat. Mam, Mam!'
+
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's
+knee.
+
+'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.
+
+No response.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered.
+
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
+her mother's breast.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.
+
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
+tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her
+close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
+face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
+whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--'
+
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
+nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
+she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
+tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
+gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
+muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
+rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was
+the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the
+trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low;
+he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
+scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous
+sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
+cautiously asking:
+
+'Mam, is dad cross--is he? What did he do?'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'
+
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister.
+The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+
+'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
+unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
+afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
+slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
+the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
+the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
+small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting
+and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does
+who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the
+child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held
+his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
+do he did not know.
+
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
+another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
+wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
+against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
+world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face
+against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a
+piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now--his
+heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. It would
+open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
+with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+
+'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'
+
+'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
+hesitate, move, then turn away.
+
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
+stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
+bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
+pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
+his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay
+down on the bed.
+
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
+of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
+work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
+jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
+pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
+shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
+two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
+again, smiling.
+
+'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
+himself.
+
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
+weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
+intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+
+'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
+instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
+must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
+
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
+her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
+down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
+she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
+that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
+in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
+This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
+should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
+it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+
+'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
+'What time is it?'
+
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
+time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+
+'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
+good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'
+
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
+Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+
+'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'
+
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
+wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
+his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
+was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
+though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
+were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
+
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
+path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran
+out crying:
+
+'Are you going out? Where are you going?'
+
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+
+'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+
+'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
+long.'
+
+'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+
+'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'
+
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+
+'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 26_
+
+
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
+packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
+stopped before the indicator.
+
+'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice,
+'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'
+
+'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.
+
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+
+'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'
+
+'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa,
+skittish.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by
+appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of
+
+    '"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad,
+    And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'
+
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
+something, chimed in sarcastically:
+
+'"They are nothing to her madness--"'
+
+'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.
+
+'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.
+
+'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity
+was given me in large doses.'
+
+'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness,
+if you call it such. You are always so serious.'
+
+'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed
+Olive.
+
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
+acknowledging the sarcasm.
+
+'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the
+point?'
+
+'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to
+accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.'
+
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+
+'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.
+
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
+thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
+made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a
+moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on
+a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under
+the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already
+twenty-five minutes past ten.
+
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
+the platform.
+
+'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'
+
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
+Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
+could not read him.
+
+'Olive is there, too,' she explained.
+
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
+amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things
+more complex.
+
+'Does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked.
+
+'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
+forward to be introduced.
+
+'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the
+dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'
+
+'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling,
+continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'
+
+'She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,' cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really
+good friends.
+
+'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+
+'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.
+
+'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'
+
+'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
+added: 'The children are happier without me.'
+
+'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
+'It's not true.'
+
+'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's
+all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'
+
+Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
+platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
+haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm;
+farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket,
+was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train
+with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon
+the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in
+vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then
+Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the
+rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
+distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+
+'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
+on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'
+
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
+eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of
+his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her
+lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
+
+'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
+What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply.
+She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
+Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away
+her hold over him.
+
+'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was
+to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have
+not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you--and life
+must go on.'
+
+'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a
+day after you.'
+
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
+scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to
+me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
+out tonight there is nothing left.'
+
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train
+was to leave from another platform.
+
+'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa
+and Olive.
+
+'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and
+excitedly announcing the news.
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+
+'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing
+on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the
+sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse
+_sotto voce_.
+
+'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a
+good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it--one
+that will last.'
+
+'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
+ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
+animated to the calmly ironical.
+
+'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
+'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'
+
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+
+'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.
+
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
+watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+
+'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
+make Siegmund talk.'
+
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
+Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
+then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
+two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
+She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people
+entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
+
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
+Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
+her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
+immediately called:
+
+'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'I cannot come,' he said.
+
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
+door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
+sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
+She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+
+'Oh--go--go--go--when will she go?'
+
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+
+'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.
+
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
+the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
+door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa'
+spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at
+Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
+helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
+forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
+one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
+kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because
+she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil
+from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she
+wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could
+not yield.
+
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
+not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
+have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
+the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
+flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
+The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.
+
+'Monday,' she whispered--'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should
+receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
+turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+
+'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at
+a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 27_
+
+
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
+of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till
+they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a
+picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white,
+rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by
+the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
+still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
+west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like
+a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him,
+as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth
+was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
+Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very
+far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy
+eyes, came between again.
+
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
+house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
+feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
+she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
+door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
+
+'You have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she
+found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+
+'Ay,' returned Siegmund.
+
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head
+between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+
+'Will you have anything to eat?' she asked.
+
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole
+of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her
+breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down
+and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor
+spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,
+querulous with trouble.
+
+'Aren't you going to bed?' she asked.
+
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half
+hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+
+'Aren't you going to bed, Father?'
+
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of
+having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was
+not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again
+she sat waiting.
+
+'Father!' she cried at last.
+
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said.
+
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+
+'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he
+did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to
+brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+
+'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I
+must go to bed--I must go to bed--I am very tired.' He stumbled over the
+door mat into his own room.
+
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the
+sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,
+trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing
+up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in
+her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping
+sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to
+get into bed.
+
+'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He
+could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him
+pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action
+aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got
+things right at last, and was in bed.
+
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have
+called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his
+brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening
+rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of
+consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of
+consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+
+'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any
+noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to
+find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could
+remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately
+he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This
+frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the
+family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in
+silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort
+of sleep.
+
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.
+The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot
+vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.
+Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,
+and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a
+terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.
+
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture
+of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and
+running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His
+every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to
+stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the track of this
+drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start
+from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little
+muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the running of a
+spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not wipe himself he
+did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which
+seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which
+he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples. Those
+he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny,
+vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits,
+down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad
+quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet,
+highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with
+outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he
+endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst.
+
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of
+hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs.
+He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on
+the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he
+had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an
+instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as ever
+to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was
+clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his
+sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar
+sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It
+seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and
+the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it
+he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and
+soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a
+sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.
+
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
+and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was
+a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
+something fresh and cool.
+
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
+was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
+clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out
+on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining
+duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in
+the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly
+to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into
+the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring
+restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The
+lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,
+moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered
+its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched
+it with wonder and delight.
+
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon
+would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony
+to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,
+crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the
+western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would
+laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its
+prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last
+run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself
+as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low
+off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
+longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the
+disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning
+gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the
+mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west
+they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising
+higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the
+moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had
+gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As
+a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling
+with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching
+the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole
+field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse
+which floats on water.
+
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were
+astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew
+he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at
+the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache
+and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.
+
+'Where is Helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena
+was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was
+out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as
+if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head
+seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time he sat
+with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his present
+state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him
+with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant company of friends,
+the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts,
+was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing could
+please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the
+discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of
+life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and
+discoloured, racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset
+himself into joint? The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his
+children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his friends of the orchestra. How
+could he set himself again into joint with these? It was impossible.
+Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with
+humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena, which he
+could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night, the
+music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_ which was absurd. In fine, it was
+all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained
+possible? Why, to depart. 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' He
+could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
+
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an
+agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very
+well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,
+Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was
+insufferable--impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not
+strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return
+to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go
+to Helena.
+
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he
+could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the
+room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought
+of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood
+at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap
+would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
+
+'Very well!' said Siegmund, 'it is finally settled. I had better write
+to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I'd better
+tell her.'
+
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote
+nothing. At last he gave up.
+
+'Perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'She said she would
+come with me--perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When
+she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.'
+
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+
+'She will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with
+elation.
+
+'That is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+
+'It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,' he concluded.
+
+Then he sat down again.
+
+'"But for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself.
+
+'It is not fear,' he said. 'The act itself will be horrible and
+fearsome, but the after-death--it's no more than struggling awake when
+you're sick with a fright of dreams. "We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on."'
+
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so
+wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He
+experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness
+in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though
+here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held
+faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was
+cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness
+of his.
+
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or
+of hate.
+
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was
+no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit
+and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer
+universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from
+its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to
+bear the responsibility of the deflection?
+
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;
+otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would
+have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible
+parents weaker than himself.
+
+'I know the heart of life is kind,' said Siegmund, 'because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or
+anybody. We suffer, and we don't know why, often. Life doesn't explain.
+But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all,
+Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much
+zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair
+of Life.'
+
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the
+atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over
+to an imaginary god.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I can't help it. I do not feel altogether
+self-responsible.'
+
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been
+vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into
+a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at
+his door.
+
+'There are two letters for you. Father.'
+
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,
+and he had no idea of his time or place.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard
+his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the
+throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of
+his body.
+
+'What made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. It was a very
+unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'She
+wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.'
+
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The
+discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not
+fetch in the letters.
+
+'Is it so late?' he said. 'Is there no more time for me?'
+
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked
+across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.
+He sat down on the bed.
+
+'What am I going to do?' he asked himself.
+
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his
+belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists
+into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man
+who is sick, incapable of thought or action.
+
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+
+'Here is your shaving-water,' said Beatrice in cold tones. 'It's half
+past nine.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+
+'And what time shall you expect dinner?' asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+
+'Any time. I'm not going out,' he answered.
+
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he
+was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,
+bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He
+was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not
+keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he
+call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed
+his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was
+thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a
+mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with
+convulsive sickness.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 28_
+
+
+Siegmund's lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it
+became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up
+his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving
+the breakfast spread in the kitchen.
+
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner
+at two o'clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with
+her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it
+was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an
+hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning,
+when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with
+coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and
+determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and
+magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the
+grate, which was clear, Friday having been charwoman's day, passing
+swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. It was
+Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In the
+afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what
+occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to
+have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She
+was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come
+to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. Beatrice was going to do
+battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a
+proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust things out of sight,
+or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.
+
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+
+'He can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'Here I've been up
+since seven, broiling at it. I should think he's pitying himself. He
+ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work
+every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too
+little work. He has had too much his own way. But it's come to a stop
+now. I'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.'
+
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the
+bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of
+work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her
+wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table
+and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full
+intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness.
+She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her. As she was
+wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her
+hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting
+them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to make the
+beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so
+heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover
+breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself,
+she said loudly at Siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile:
+
+'Aren't you going to get up?'
+
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the
+gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+
+'It's after half past ten--aren't you going to get up?' she called.
+
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly
+she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of
+shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She
+returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. She
+waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the
+sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull
+and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring,
+so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front
+garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was
+open--everything seemed quiet.
+
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung
+them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some
+dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was
+no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes
+blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out
+on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his
+ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. She
+hurried to him.
+
+'Will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she
+asked wildly.
+
+'Why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly
+familiar. 'Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I'll come.'
+
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so
+loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs
+must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with
+a will.
+
+'Where is he, Mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the
+side passage.
+
+'He's in his bedroom, and I can't get an answer from him.'
+
+'Then I s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift
+one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was
+Siegmund's room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was
+studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and
+afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also knew
+there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.
+
+'Is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner.
+
+'Yes, over the porch,' replied Beatrice.
+
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+
+'It's easy enough,' he said. 'The door's open, and we're soon on the
+balcony.'
+
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious
+fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously
+clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the
+ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he
+was frightened.
+
+'I say there!' he called loudly.
+
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+
+'Go in!' she cried. 'Go in! Is he there?'
+
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and
+peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed
+slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to
+take flight.
+
+'Hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner
+exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:
+
+'I believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!'
+
+'No!' cried Beatrice. 'No, no, no!'
+
+'I believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man.
+
+'Go in and see if he's dead!' cried Beatrice.
+
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+
+'I believe he is,' he said doubtfully.
+
+'No--go and see!' screamed Beatrice.
+
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the
+body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried
+to lift it down. It was too heavy.
+
+'I know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to
+do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between
+himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his
+way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the
+body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the
+scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled the
+body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with
+trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. It
+was bedded in Siegmund's neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it
+frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead
+man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his
+sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side
+naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved,
+ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on
+the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face
+hardly recognizable.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 29_
+
+
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive
+lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in
+a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
+in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
+had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
+north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
+Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed
+between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling
+companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of
+manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward.
+Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The
+north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
+English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
+whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could
+hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward
+whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding
+their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle
+disconcerted by this amusement.
+
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
+the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The
+men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went
+to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat
+weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the
+dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the
+women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought
+of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
+appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
+imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under
+arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
+lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
+and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
+There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
+dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
+flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
+came up.
+
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
+they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
+rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
+very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
+She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock,
+breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid
+blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
+and harsh.
+
+'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.
+
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
+rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
+in an ill humour.
+
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
+the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically
+the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walk�re_; in the second place,
+_Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a
+late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was
+a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of
+pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which
+suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided
+lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she stood on
+the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's
+love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.
+
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
+disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable
+because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in
+Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she
+forgot most whiles.
+
+On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of
+thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
+waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the
+mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her
+friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
+
+'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
+'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!'
+
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
+She hurried to the bed.
+
+'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the
+shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'
+
+'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's _lovely_--lovely!'
+
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
+shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
+shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
+spasmodically.
+
+'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did
+you see that?'
+
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
+Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+
+'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the
+bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'
+
+'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
+jest.
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'
+
+Helena laughed ironically.
+
+'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
+
+'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
+offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
+know, it's not that I'm afraid....'
+
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
+friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
+feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
+opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
+blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
+being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
+thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
+had happened.
+
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
+persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+
+'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
+
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
+to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
+a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
+storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
+The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
+feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
+
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
+have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
+grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+
+'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
+happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
+spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
+dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
+impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'
+
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
+received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
+arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
+and see.'
+
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
+Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
+she went to sleep.
+
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
+wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
+her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
+reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
+of affairs.
+
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
+fatal awaited her.
+
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
+would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
+rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
+tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
+let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
+sat up:
+
+'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
+holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'
+
+'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
+sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'
+
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
+their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
+thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
+more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
+throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
+after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
+the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
+London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
+
+'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
+would come to me.'
+
+'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
+
+'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
+
+'I promise,' he answered.
+
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
+be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
+her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
+what it could.
+
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
+is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
+of suspense.
+
+Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
+this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
+platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
+great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
+planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
+could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
+prearranged everything minutely.
+
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+
+'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
+----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
+holiday on the South Coast....'
+
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+
+'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
+was expressed for the widow and children.'
+
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
+Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where
+she was going.
+
+'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a
+brick, it was like a brick.'
+
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
+lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
+side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house
+standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
+stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
+at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
+anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
+destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
+in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
+over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
+looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to
+return to Cornwall.
+
+'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
+suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
+a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
+eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
+wired the news:
+
+'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
+her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
+was chaotic.
+
+'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
+only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
+She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
+maiming her.
+
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
+mother opened to her.
+
+'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.
+
+'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the
+dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
+there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
+took it. It was from one of the London papers.
+
+'Inquest was held today upon the body of ----.'
+
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her
+mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+
+'How did you get to know?' she asked.
+
+'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in
+her muted, toneless voice.
+
+'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.
+
+'No,' replied Helena.
+
+'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother
+hesitatingly.
+
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
+looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently
+to help her.
+
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her.
+Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by
+watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look.
+They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
+powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
+ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.
+
+Helena shivered slightly.
+
+'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'
+
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
+night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
+When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
+yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
+Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.
+
+'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.
+
+'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
+immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
+entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
+erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
+haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
+himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+
+'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.
+
+'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.
+
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
+cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
+in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
+broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
+could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
+to his head; he was thinking and praying.
+
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
+and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
+followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's
+room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed
+and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but
+occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her
+wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she
+uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and
+soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence,
+Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the
+light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail,
+and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
+bedside, and prayed.
+
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind
+of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to
+herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
+from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
+soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but
+she could not bear to be looked at.
+
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
+having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
+nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
+as she entered.
+
+'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.
+
+'Is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.
+
+'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'
+
+'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+
+He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
+She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
+quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility
+upon himself.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 30_
+
+
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with
+full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
+the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
+When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's
+understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
+suspended.
+
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
+herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
+neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
+stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
+confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house,
+sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
+and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
+bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
+glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
+was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
+wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
+inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
+dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
+
+'The children!' she said to herself--'the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.'
+
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose
+from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back
+a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
+practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
+what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to
+understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
+exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
+blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the
+personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
+common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after
+the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of
+Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
+
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
+living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
+house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
+death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
+heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
+she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
+marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
+tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
+to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
+on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
+hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
+hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's
+father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
+further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
+Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
+come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
+was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
+doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The
+world was big with promise.
+
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice's
+establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
+was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
+blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
+attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
+hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
+sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
+less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
+was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
+learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
+an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
+done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
+Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was na�ve, inclined to suffer in the first
+pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
+sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
+liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
+stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
+vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him.
+Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance,
+but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of the superior
+and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
+without hurting him.
+
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
+Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his
+elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past
+seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was
+setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room
+through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of
+the twilight.
+
+'What, you here all alone!' exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
+putting the children to bed. 'I thought you had gone out.'
+
+'No--o! What's the use,' replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
+landlady, 'of going out? There's nowhere to go.'
+
+'Oh, come! There's the Heath, and the City--and you must join a tennis
+club. Now I know just the thing--the club to which Vera belongs.'
+
+'Ah, yes! You go down to the City--but there's nothing there--what I
+mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the
+word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.'
+
+'Oh, don't say that!' exclaimed Beatrice. 'You want to enjoy life.'
+
+'Just so! Ah, just so!' exclaimed Mr Allport. 'But all the same--it's
+like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
+say--what's the good, after all? It's merely living because you've
+got to.'
+
+'You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
+differently myself; yet I'll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
+What's the trouble now?'
+
+'We-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
+say--it's nothing very definite. But, after all--what is there to do but
+to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That's the best way.'
+
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+
+'You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,' she said. 'You don't think of the
+others.'
+
+'I don't know,' he drawled. 'What does it matter? Look here--who'd care?
+What I mean to say--for long?'
+
+'That's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied Beatrice gravely.
+
+'Nevertheless,' said Mr. Allport, 'it's true--isn't it?'
+
+'It is not--and I _should_ know,' replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and
+waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You
+men, you're all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.'
+
+'Ah, but then,' said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,
+looking at Beatrice's black dress, 'I've no one depending on _me_.'
+
+'No--you haven't--but you've a mother and sister. The women always have
+to bear the brunt.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+
+'Yes, they do rather,' he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+
+'My husband--' began Beatrice. The young man waited. 'My husband was one
+of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he'd found it--he couldn't
+carry it off--and left it--to me.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+
+'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed softly. 'Surely he didn't--?'
+
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'I know what it is to bear that kind of thing--and it's
+no light thing, I can assure you.'
+
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+
+'And when was this, then--that he--?' asked Mr. Allport, almost with
+reverence.
+
+'Only last year,' replied Beatrice.
+
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by
+little Beatrice told him so much: 'Her husband had got entangled with
+another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last
+she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He
+had killed himself--hanged himself--and left her penniless. Her people,
+who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow them.
+She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for herself;
+it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their careless
+youth, that her heart was heavy.'
+
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and
+sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by
+tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+
+'Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?'
+
+'I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.'
+
+'Pray do not overlook me,' said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+
+'Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting
+with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.'
+
+'On the contrary,' replied Mr. Allport, 'Mrs. MacNair has been so good
+as to bear with me making a fool of myself.'
+
+'In what way?' asked Vera sharply.
+
+'Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,' said
+Beatrice playfully.
+
+'Unfortunately, I am not--or at least I am not yet aware of it,' said
+Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the
+young man's knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped
+behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the
+richly darkening sky.
+
+'Don't look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it's all rind,' said Mr Allport
+in melancholy mockery. 'Somebody's bitten all the meat out of our slice
+of moon, and left us nothing but peel.'
+
+'It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell--one portion,'
+replied Vera.
+
+'Never mind, Miss MacNair,' he said, 'Whoever got the slice found it
+raw, I think.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'But isn't it a beautiful evening? I will
+just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.'
+
+'What primroses?' he exclaimed.
+
+'Evening primroses--there are some.'
+
+'Are there?' he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+
+'Yes, come and look,' she said.
+
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+
+'What, nobody in!' they heard him exclaim.
+
+'There is Holiday,' murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+
+'Ho! that's where you are!' he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed
+Vera's trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress to
+betray herself.
+
+'What have you got?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing in particular,' replied Mr Allport.
+
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+
+'Oh, well, if it's nothing particular and private--' said Mr Holiday,
+and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+
+'Curst fool!' muttered Mr Allport. 'I beg your pardon,' he added swiftly
+to Vera.
+
+'Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly,
+'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open while
+you're looking.'
+
+'No,' sniggered he, I don't blame 'em. Why should they give themselves
+away any more than you do? You won't open while you're watched.' He
+nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.
+
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in
+poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his
+teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+
+'Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not
+play now,' she replied.
+
+'But you will begin again,' pleaded Mr. Allport.
+
+'No, never!' she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The
+family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He
+watched her interestedly.
+
+'Mother used to play--' she began.
+
+'Vera!' said Beatrice reproachfully.
+
+'Let us have a song,' suggested Mr. Holiday.
+
+'Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,' said Vera, going to the
+music-rack.
+
+'Nay--I--it's not me,' Holiday began.
+
+'"The Village Blacksmith",' said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday
+advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.
+
+'But I have not touched the piano for--for years, I am sure,' protested
+Beatrice.
+
+'You can play beautifully,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared
+at him. Vera remained very calm.
+
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went out
+abruptly.
+
+'Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow's jellies are not made,'
+laughed Vera.
+
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She
+would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half
+past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was
+studying a cookery-book.
+
+'You, too, at the midnight lamp!' exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+
+'Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,' Beatrice replied.
+
+'We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,' smiled
+the young man ironically.
+
+'I must look after you,' said Beatrice.
+
+'You do--wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.'
+The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+
+'Because I scan a list of puddings?' smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+
+'For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.' He bowed to her.
+
+'Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.'
+
+'I opened the door,' said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+
+'It is not fair,' said Beatrice. 'I am clumsy now--clumsy. I once could
+play.'
+
+'You play excellently. Why that "once could"?' said MacWhirter.
+
+'Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,' she
+replied.
+
+'We,' said MacWhirter, 'are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than
+excellent.'
+
+'Good old Monsieur Fanni�re, how he would scold me! He said I would not
+take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I
+always think Scripture false in French, do not you?'
+
+'Er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to
+say.'
+
+'No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.'
+
+'Ah--that would be very interesting.'
+
+'Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.'
+
+'Alas!' assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+
+'Those times were very different from these,' said Beatrice.
+
+'I should think so,' said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 31_
+
+
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund's death, Helena
+sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue
+linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a
+yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air of
+the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with
+her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song.
+She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
+
+'I can't get it--it's no use. I think it's the swinging of the car
+prevents me getting the time,' she said.
+
+'These little outside things always come a victory over you,' he
+laughed.
+
+'Do they?' she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It
+was six o'clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim,
+warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners
+of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck
+by the wind.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, 'it feels rather like rain.'
+
+'Then,' said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on
+the pavement, 'you certainly ought not to be out.'
+
+'I ought not,' she said, 'for I'm totally unprovided.'
+
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill
+off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side
+stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two
+great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity,
+at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena
+and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the
+other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena
+laughed at them.
+
+'They are--' she began, in her slow manner.
+
+'Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,' he continued.
+
+'No,' she said, 'they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.'
+
+'Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.'
+
+'It appears so,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs generally chum up to me,' he said.
+
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+
+'I remember,' she said, still laughing, 'at Knockholt--you--a half-grown
+lamb--a dog--in procession.' She marked the position of the three with
+her finger.
+
+'What an ass I must have looked!' he said.
+
+'Sort of silent Pied Piper,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs do follow me like that, though,' he said.
+
+'They did Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed
+him home.'
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember, too,' she said, 'a little black-and-white kitten that
+followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. And I remember
+finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don't think I ever
+quite forgave my mater that.'
+
+'More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,' he said.
+
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+
+'For the latter, you see,' she replied, 'I am not responsible.'
+
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+
+'You know,' said Helena, 'if it begins it will continue all night. Look
+at that!'
+
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+
+'Had we better go back?' he asked.
+
+'Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we
+see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.'
+
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned
+away.
+
+'It is exactly a year today,' she said, as they-walked on the round
+shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. 'Exactly!'
+
+'What anniversary is it, then?' he inquired.
+
+'Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here--by the day, Thursday.
+We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the
+larch-wood?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'We will go, then,' she said.
+
+'History repeats itself,' he remarked.
+
+'How?' she asked calmly.
+
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+
+'I see no repetition,' she added.
+
+'No,' he exclaimed bitingly; 'you are right!'
+
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men
+unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the
+air. Though he was angry, he spoke.
+
+'They got that hay rather damp,' he said. 'Can't you smell it--like hot
+tobacco and sandal-wood?'
+
+'What, is that the stack?' she asked.
+
+'Yes, it's always like that when it's picked damp.'
+
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned
+on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over
+the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full
+of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in
+the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers without speaking.
+She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over
+the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. He smiled
+gently to her.
+
+'Isn't it nice?' he said. 'Aren't they fine bits?'
+
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her
+dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place
+by her side.
+
+'I always like the gold-green of cut fields,' he said. 'They seem to
+give off sunshine even when the sky's greyer than a tabby cat.'
+
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing
+field on her right.
+
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into
+sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly
+whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather
+intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was
+exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried
+trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now
+and again he would look down passages between the trees--narrow pillared
+corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a
+twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood
+still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,
+causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a
+bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a
+larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of
+congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+
+'I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,' he said to
+himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+
+'Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make
+a brown mist, a brume?'
+
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+
+'H'm? Yes, I see what you mean.'
+
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+
+'That's the larch fog,' he laughed.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.'
+
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+
+'It laughs through its teeth,' he said, smiling, playing with everything
+he touched.
+
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,
+picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if
+pleased by a coincidence.
+
+'Last year,' she said, 'the larch-fingers stole both my pins--the same
+ones.'
+
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost
+with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down
+the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the
+moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep
+sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he
+hated Helena.
+
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley--one of those wide
+hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held
+loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue
+dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena's dress. They walked on
+a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for shelter.
+
+'Here,' said Byrne--'here is our tent--a black tartar's--ready pitched.'
+
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just
+back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good
+shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked
+under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was
+falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the
+monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone
+intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on
+the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the
+'tong-ting-tong' of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in
+the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each
+other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit
+better than where they stood before.
+
+'That's like us all,' said Byrne whimsically. 'We're all penned out on a
+wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is,
+it would be deliciously cosy.'
+
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and
+fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his
+eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without
+apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously
+increasing the pressure.
+
+'You are cold,' he said.
+
+'Only my hands, and they usually are,' she replied gently.
+
+'And mine are generally warm.'
+
+'I know that,' she said. 'It's almost the only warmth I get now--your
+hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.'
+
+'As good as a baked potato,' he said.
+
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+
+'So many calories per week--isn't that how we manage it?' he asked. 'On
+credit?'
+
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,
+which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their
+cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+
+'Tong-tong, tong,' went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena's home to
+read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his
+own language.
+
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.
+He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.
+Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.
+
+'I shan't knock it--it is all right,' he had said, protesting.
+
+This was Siegmund's violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and
+Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.
+
+'It was all right,' he repeated.
+
+'But you were not,' she had replied gently.
+
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in
+a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his
+gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to
+Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself
+delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.
+By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He
+relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what
+he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+
+'The Babes in the Wood,' he teased.
+
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird
+began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+
+'That little beggar sees it's a hopeless case, so he reminds us of
+heaven. But if he's going to cover us with yew-leaves, he's set
+himself a job.'
+
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing
+her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke
+for a while.
+
+'The rain continues,' he said.
+
+'And will do,' she added, laughing.
+
+'Quite content,' he said.
+
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+
+'"Strew on us roses, roses,"' quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in
+wistful mockery: '"And never a sprig of yew"--eh?'
+
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and
+weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against him.
+
+'Shall it not be so--no yew?' he murmured.
+
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on
+her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held
+them up.
+
+'I shall make marks on you,' he said.
+
+'They will come off,' she replied.
+
+'Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars off
+us.'
+
+'Some scars don't seem to go,' she smiled.
+
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his
+side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from
+last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.
+
+'But it's wearing off--even that,' he said wistfully.
+
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a
+hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and
+took off her hat.
+
+'That is better,' he said.
+
+'I was afraid of the pins,' said she.
+
+'I've been dodging them for the last hour,' he said, laughing, as she
+put her arms under his coat again for warmth.
+
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek
+against hers.
+
+'I want rest and warmth,' she said, in her dull tones.
+
+'All right!' he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Trespasser
+
+Author: D. H. Lawrence
+
+Posting Date: August 5, 2012 [EBook #9498]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 6, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRESPASSER
+
+By D. H. Lawrence
+
+
+
+1912
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+
+'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
+piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.
+
+Helena looked slowly from her music.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
+stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
+forbearance.
+
+'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
+the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
+lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
+would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'
+
+'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
+seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
+her bristling defiance.
+
+'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
+like it.'
+
+'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
+on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
+chords, and the music continued.
+
+A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
+turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
+with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
+in the room.
+
+It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
+of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
+again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
+the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
+responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
+the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
+of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
+were smooth white. There was no other colouring.
+
+The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
+wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
+wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
+recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
+room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
+skirting-board, serene.
+
+On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
+China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
+tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
+and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
+rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.
+
+A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
+of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
+unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
+that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
+with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
+the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.
+
+The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
+on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
+She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
+hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
+turned again to the players.
+
+The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
+swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
+her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
+frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
+vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
+hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
+of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.
+
+Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
+watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
+soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
+and glisten over her forehead.
+
+Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
+resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.
+
+'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'
+
+Helena laughed wearily.
+
+'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
+rest.
+
+'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
+passionately.
+
+'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
+apathetic tone. 'It was I.'
+
+When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
+moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
+like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
+response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
+friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
+affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
+were coaxing a child:
+
+'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'
+
+'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
+plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
+for years.
+
+'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.
+
+Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
+came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
+began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.
+
+'They are inflamed still' said the young man.
+
+She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
+lighting up with a small smile.
+
+'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
+strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
+like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
+smarting soft flesh caressively.
+
+'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
+peculiar joy.
+
+'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
+'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
+anything on to heal it?'
+
+She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
+the burn.
+
+'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
+joy.
+
+'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
+psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'
+
+She looked up at him, suddenly cold.
+
+'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.
+
+The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
+mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'
+
+'Never?' he re-echoed.
+
+There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
+to play the piano for their benefit. At last:
+
+'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.
+
+The two looked up at her.
+
+'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.
+
+'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
+her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.
+
+'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.
+
+'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
+obligation _whatever_.'
+
+With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
+self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
+head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
+but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
+hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.
+
+The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
+the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
+vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
+indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
+glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
+flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
+glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
+one spoke.
+
+At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
+position. She sat motionless.
+
+'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
+at her friend, and stretched slightly.
+
+'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'
+
+'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
+disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.
+
+'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
+appealing love.
+
+Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
+slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.
+
+'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
+She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.
+
+'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'
+
+'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.
+
+The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
+played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
+an end.
+
+'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
+you've got to live.'
+
+Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.
+
+'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.
+
+'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
+grinning.
+
+She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.
+
+'I don't see it at all,' she said.
+
+'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
+April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'
+
+'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
+myself, why trouble, my friend?'
+
+'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
+does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'
+
+She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
+metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:
+
+'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
+go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'
+
+'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.
+
+'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'
+
+'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
+anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
+stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
+looked in the fire, forgetting him.
+
+'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
+your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.
+
+She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
+broke out once more.
+
+'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
+blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
+Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
+not dead....'
+
+Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
+at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
+handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
+if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
+out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
+regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
+from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
+cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
+look became distressed and helpless.
+
+'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
+shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
+fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
+you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
+and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
+impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
+leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
+alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'
+
+With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
+him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
+steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.
+
+'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
+never touch the thing,' he cried.
+
+'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
+the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
+an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
+life. She was very sick after the tragedy.
+
+He frowned, and his eyes dilated.
+
+'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
+You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
+road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'
+
+She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
+passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
+moving from her torpor was painful. At last--
+
+'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.
+
+'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
+softly, wearily.
+
+For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
+over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
+being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
+the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
+to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
+
+'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
+intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
+sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
+also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
+her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
+arrival of Louisa with the coffee.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+
+Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
+lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
+was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
+it; she kept the black case out of sight.
+
+Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
+the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
+two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
+sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
+Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
+lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
+soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
+breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
+himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
+odour of must.
+
+Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
+till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
+violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
+the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
+turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
+remained of him in his violin.
+
+It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
+longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
+fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
+had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
+sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
+had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
+wild in anticipation.
+
+The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
+spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
+savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
+anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
+with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
+
+The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
+opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
+weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
+suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
+Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
+associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
+with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
+hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
+theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
+flame stretched level on the wind.
+
+With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
+pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
+For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
+moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
+watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
+to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
+on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
+face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
+shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
+garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
+flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
+his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
+kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
+amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
+fascinated.
+
+This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
+soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
+rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
+going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
+his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
+a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
+last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
+carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
+
+He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
+Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
+fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
+all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
+watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
+
+When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
+Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
+anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
+cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
+was changing.
+
+The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
+night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
+he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
+amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
+front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
+looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
+joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
+black masses of the trees.
+
+He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
+his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
+As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
+the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
+bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
+moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
+breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
+laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
+physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
+to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
+moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
+stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
+
+In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
+turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
+tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
+looked round with disgust.
+
+The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
+betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
+plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
+wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
+even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
+cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
+gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
+He fetched a glass of water.
+
+The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
+the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
+floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
+black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
+newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
+bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
+sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
+slippers; and he was in evening dress.
+
+It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
+husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
+miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
+ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
+wishing he had no tomorrow.
+
+Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
+teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
+was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
+crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
+now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
+teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
+absurd arms to him.
+
+He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
+silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
+him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
+his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
+staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
+Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
+After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.
+
+Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
+It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
+uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
+hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
+snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
+two girls.
+
+As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
+Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
+they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
+and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
+mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
+and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
+eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
+full of youth.
+
+He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
+room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.
+
+Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
+the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
+same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
+curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
+rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
+She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
+with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
+He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
+manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
+beautiful things and of dreams.
+
+The clock downstairs struck two.
+
+'I must get to sleep,' he said.
+
+He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
+When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
+final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.
+
+'I am fearfully tired,' he said.
+
+But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
+some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.
+
+'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
+child!' He began to muse of the morrow.
+
+When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
+labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
+thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
+take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
+he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
+torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
+which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
+her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
+wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
+realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
+he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.
+
+Both started as his daughter Vera entered suddenly. She was a handsome
+girl of nineteen. Crossing the room, brushing Helena as if she were a
+piece of furniture in the way, Vera had asked her father a question, in
+a hard, insulting tone, then had gone out again, just as if Helena had
+not been in the room.
+
+Helena stood fingering the score of _Pelleas_. When Vera had gone, she
+asked, in the peculiar tone that made Siegmund shiver:
+
+'Why do you consider the music of _Pelleas_ cold?'
+
+Siegmund had struggled to answer. So they passed everything off, without
+mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating;
+and to her much was humiliating.
+
+For years she had come as pupil to Siegmund, first as a friend of the
+household. Then she and Louisa went occasionally to whatever hall or
+theatre had Siegmund in the orchestra, so that shortly the three formed
+the habit of coming home together. Then Helena had invited Siegmund to
+her home; then the three friends went walks together; then the two went
+walks together, whilst Louisa sheltered them.
+
+Helena had come to read his loneliness and the humiliation of his lot.
+He had felt her blue eyes, heavily, steadily gazing into his soul, and
+he had lost himself to her.
+
+That day, three weeks before the end of the season, when Vera had so
+insulted Helena, the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at
+him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot
+come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had
+writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely
+and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to you.' Then she left him.
+
+Siegmund had hated his life that day. Soon she wrote. A week later, when
+he lay resting his head on her lap in Richmond Park, she said:
+
+'You are so tired, Siegmund.' She stroked his face, and kissed him
+softly. Siegmund lay in the molten daze of love. But Helena was, if it
+is not to debase the word, virtuous: an inconsistent virtue, cruel and
+ugly for Siegmund.
+
+'You are so tired, dear. You must come away with me and rest, the first
+week in August.'
+
+His blood had leapt, and whatever objections he raised, such as having
+no money, he allowed to be overridden. He was going to Helena, to the
+Isle of Wight, tomorrow.
+
+Helena, with her blue eyes so full of storm, like the sea, but, also
+like the sea, so eternally self-sufficient, solitary; with her thick
+white throat, the strongest and most wonderful thing on earth, and her
+small hands, silken and light as wind-flowers, would be his tomorrow,
+along with the sea and the downs. He clung to the exquisite flame which
+flooded him....
+
+But it died out, and he thought of the return to London, to Beatrice,
+and the children. How would it be? Beatrice, with her furious dark eyes,
+and her black hair loosely knotted back, came to his mind as she had
+been the previous day, flaring with temper when he said to her:
+
+'I shall be going away tomorrow for a few days' holiday.'
+
+She asked for detail, some of which he gave. Then, dissatisfied and
+inflamed, she broke forth in her suspicion and her abuse, and her
+contempt, while two large-eyed children stood listening by. Siegmund
+hated his wife for drawing on him the grave, cold looks of condemnation
+from his children.
+
+Something he had said touched Beatrice. She came of good family, had
+been brought up like a lady, educated in a convent school in France. He
+evoked her old pride. She drew herself up with dignity, and called the
+children away. He wondered if he could bear a repetition of that
+degradation. It bled him of his courage and self-respect.
+
+In the morning Beatrice was disturbed by the sharp sneck of the hall
+door. Immediately awake, she heard his quick, firm step hastening down
+the gravel path. In her impotence, discarded like a worn out object, she
+lay for the moment stiff with bitterness.
+
+'I am nothing, I am nothing,' she said to herself. She lay quite rigid
+for a time.
+
+There was no sound anywhere. The morning sunlight pierced vividly
+through the slits of the blind. Beatrice lay rocking herself, breathing
+hard, her finger-nails pressing into her palm. Then came the sound of a
+train slowing down in the station, and directly the quick
+'chuff-chuff-chuff' of its drawing out. Beatrice imagined the sunlight
+on the puffs of steam, and the two lovers, her husband and Helena,
+rushing through the miles of morning sunshine.
+
+'God strike her dead! Mother of God, strike her down!' she said aloud,
+in a low tone. She hated Helena.
+
+Irene, who lay with her mother, woke up and began to question her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+
+In the miles of morning sunshine, Siegmund's shadows, his children,
+Beatrice, his sorrow, dissipated like mist, and he was elated as a young
+man setting forth to travel. When he had passed Portsmouth Town
+everything had vanished but the old gay world of romance. He laughed as
+he looked out of the carriage window.
+
+Below, in the street, a military band passed glittering. A brave sound
+floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter
+of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park.
+People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It
+was no time; it was Romance, going back to Tristan.
+
+Women, like crocus flowers, in white and blue and lavender, moved gaily.
+Everywhere fluttered the small flags of holiday. Every form danced
+lightly in the sunshine.
+
+And beyond it all were the silent hillsides of the island, with Helena.
+It was so wonderful, he could bear to be patient. She would be all in
+white, with her cool, thick throat left bare to the breeze, her face
+shining, smiling as she dipped her head because of the sun, which
+glistened on her uncovered hair.
+
+He breathed deeply, stirring at the thought. But he would not grow
+impatient. The train had halted over the town, where scarlet soldiers,
+and ludicrous blue sailors, and all the brilliant women from church
+shook like a kaleidoscope down the street. The train crawled on, drawing
+near to the sea, for which Siegmund waited breathless. It was so like
+Helena, blue, beautiful, strong in its reserve.
+
+Another moment they were in the dirty station. Then the day flashed out,
+and Siegmund mated with joy. He felt the sea heaving below him. He
+looked round, and the sea was blue as a periwinkle flower, while gold
+and white and blood-red sails lit here and there upon the blueness.
+Standing on the deck, he gave himself to the breeze and to the sea,
+feeling like one of the ruddy sails--as if he were part of it all. All
+his body radiated amid the large, magnificent sea-moon like a piece
+of colour.
+
+The little ship began to pulse, to tremble. White with the softness of a
+bosom, the water rose up frothing and swaying gently. Ships drew near
+the inquisitive birds; the old _Victory_ shook her myriad pointed flags
+of yellow and scarlet; the straight old houses of the quay passed by.
+
+Outside the harbour, like fierce creatures of the sea come wildly up to
+look, the battleships laid their black snouts on the water. Siegmund
+laughed at them. He felt the foam on his face like a sparkling, felt the
+blue sea gathering round.
+
+On the left stood the round fortress, quaintly chequered, and solidly
+alone in the walk of water, amid the silent flight of the golden-and
+crimson-winged boats.
+
+Siegmund watched the bluish bulk of the island. Like the beautiful women
+in the myths, his love hid in its blue haze. It seemed impossible.
+Behind him, the white wake trailed myriads of daisies. On either hand
+the grim and wicked battleships watched along their sharp noses. Beneath
+him the clear green water swung and puckered as if it were laughing. In
+front, Sieglinde's island drew near and nearer, creeping towards him,
+bringing him Helena.
+
+Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
+him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
+But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under the
+fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As he
+watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of cloud
+cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
+chill wind.
+
+His travelling was very slow. The sky's dark shipping pressed closer and
+closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat lands
+near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many violoncellos. All
+the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport station, where the
+wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station and the island were
+desolate, having lost their purposes.
+
+Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning's blaze of
+elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
+only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now the
+intoxication was dying out.
+
+At three o'clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
+carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred
+dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the
+reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly
+torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was
+thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
+felt dead.
+
+The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
+watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey under
+the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund's heart
+leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught hold of
+Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her into
+the carriage.
+
+'You _here_!' he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
+cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund's
+question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
+his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in
+to him.
+
+'Is it a dream now, dear?' he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
+shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through her.
+
+Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
+
+'Here we are, then!' exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
+cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
+his luggage.
+
+Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
+tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
+stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
+body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
+astonished cries of delight.
+
+When Helena came back, she sat opposite to him to see him. His naive
+look of joy was very sweet to her. His eyes were dark blue, showing the
+fibrils, like a purple-veined flower at twilight, and somehow,
+mysteriously, joy seemed to quiver in the iris. Helena appreciated him,
+feature by feature. She liked his clear forehead, with its thick black
+hair, and his full mouth, and his chin. She loved his hands, that were
+small, but strong and nervous, and very white. She liked his breast,
+that breathed so strong and quietly, and his arms, and his thighs, and
+his knees.
+
+For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of
+his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he
+only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their
+lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea,
+Siegmund's eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, listening uneasily.
+
+Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious
+look of distress amused her.
+
+'The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear--not Wotan's wrath, nor
+Siegfried's dragon....'
+
+The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds
+the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal,
+alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a
+second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and
+Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a
+big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound
+amused her. But he was tired.
+
+'I assure you, it _is_ only a fog-horn,' she laughed.
+
+'Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.'
+
+'Is it?' she said curiously. 'Why? Well--yes--I think I can understand
+its being so to some people. It's something like the call of the horn
+across the sea to Tristan.'
+
+She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund,
+with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The
+boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of
+fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her
+horn-call.
+
+'Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,' she said, curiously interested.
+
+'This time next week, Helena!' he said.
+
+She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it
+lay upon the table.
+
+'I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,' she said.
+
+He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him
+alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was
+wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him,
+leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
+
+'There is _no_ next week,' she declared, with great cheerfulness. 'There
+is only the present.'
+
+At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms
+round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it
+close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed
+against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint,
+intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to
+himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with
+gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face
+upon her.
+
+She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against
+her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his
+forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
+
+Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and
+future in a passion worth years of living.
+
+After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful
+things she had found. She had a woman's curious passion for details, a
+woman's peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened,
+smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed
+him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended
+to her words.
+
+'Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired--you are very
+tired,' said Helena.
+
+She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
+
+'No,' he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his
+handsome limbs in relief--'no, not at all tired now.'
+
+Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But
+she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
+
+'You must go to bed early tonight,' she said, turning aside her face,
+ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his
+arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be
+thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself
+up against the fog.
+
+'You are sure you're not too tired?' she reiterated.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It
+was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his
+overcoat, while they walked together.
+
+'I like the mist,' he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
+
+'I don't dislike it,' she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
+
+'It puts us together by ourselves,' he said. She plodded alongside,
+bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
+
+'It couldn't have happened better for us than this mist,' he said.
+
+She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
+
+'Why?' she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
+
+'There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but
+me--look!'
+
+He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself
+quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself
+sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing
+what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
+
+In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in
+their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense.
+They turned from it.
+
+'What is the pitch?' asked Helena.
+
+'Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Yes, but the settled pitch--is it about E?'
+
+'E!' exclaimed Siegmund. 'More like F.'
+
+'Nay, listen!' said Helena.
+
+They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the
+fog-horn.
+
+'There!' exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. 'That is not E.' He
+repeated the sound. 'It is F.'
+
+'Surely it is E,' persisted Helena.
+
+'Even F sharp,' he rejoined, humming the note.
+
+She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
+
+'But you agree?' he said.
+
+'I do not,' she replied.
+
+The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
+
+'What is the note in _Tristan_?' Helena made an effort to ask.
+
+'That is not the same,' he replied.
+
+'No, dear, that is not the same,' she said in low, comforting tones. He
+quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face
+yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public
+footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps
+down the fog.
+
+As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey
+haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky
+was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely
+to itself.
+
+Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing
+slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming
+unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope
+into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
+
+'Shall we walk over, then?' said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena's
+heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he
+play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was
+afraid of him just then.
+
+'Come away, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her
+to think so.
+
+'Come away, dear!' she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
+
+'You are not afraid?' he asked.
+
+'Not afraid, no....' Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality
+that made him shiver.
+
+'It is too easy a way,' he said satirically.
+
+She did not take in his meaning.
+
+'And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!' she scolded. 'The mist
+is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.'
+
+He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
+
+They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
+
+As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went
+flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western
+sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the
+golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena
+that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber
+of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun
+was departing with pomp.
+
+Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming
+bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express
+it; how other men had borne this same glory.
+
+'What is the music of it?' he asked.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly
+open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
+
+'Of what, dear?'
+
+'What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?'
+
+His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a
+moment.
+
+'I do not know,' she said quietly; and she rested her head against his
+shoulder, looking out west.
+
+There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
+
+'A Beethoven symphony--the one--' and he explained to her.
+
+She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The
+sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
+
+'The Grail music in _Lohengrin_,' she decided.
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble
+to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him
+for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She
+almost put her two hands over his eyes.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+
+The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist
+closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense
+wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her
+in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he
+bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with
+fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again.
+He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it
+was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his
+breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that
+moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face
+on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried
+against her soft strong throat.
+
+'You are so big I can't hold you,' she whispered plaintively, catching
+her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his
+shoulders ineffectually.
+
+'You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,' he whispered.
+
+He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast
+with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands
+meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
+
+'See! I can't,' she whispered.
+
+He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
+
+Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid
+her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his
+figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat,
+under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up
+again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was
+one great ache.
+
+He crushed her to him--crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His
+muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid
+body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running
+towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious
+of nothing.
+
+She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was
+marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up that grip of her like
+steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found
+herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his
+mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his
+lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her
+strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear,
+and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate
+through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath
+his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in
+her breast.
+
+Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed
+her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse
+together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one
+being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
+
+When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that
+class of 'dreaming women' with whom passion exhausts itself at the
+mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy
+flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It
+sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man's brightness
+and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful
+it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare
+bed. She lay still on Siegmund's breast, listening to his heavily
+beating heart.
+
+With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of
+Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than
+her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was
+very cruel.
+
+He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran
+bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more
+detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been
+rejecting the 'animal' in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract,
+and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is
+full of cruelty.
+
+Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely,
+and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from
+his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too
+sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to
+yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her
+withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for
+some time.
+
+She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet
+grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her
+child whom she must correct and lead:
+
+'I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.' He made a small sound, that
+might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth,
+however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out
+of it.
+
+'It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,' she coaxed determinedly.
+
+'Soon,' he said thickly.
+
+She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath
+to take him from his pleasure:
+
+'Siegmund, I am cold.'
+
+There was a reproach in this which angered him.
+
+'Cold!' he exclaimed. 'But you are warm with me--'
+
+'But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.'
+
+'Oh dear!' he said. 'Why didn't you give them me to warm?' He leaned
+forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
+
+'They are very cold,' he said. 'We must hurry and make them warm.'
+
+When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She
+clung to Siegmund, laughing.
+
+'I wish you had told me before,' he said. 'I ought to have known....'
+
+Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+
+They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other
+person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a
+charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for
+the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
+
+Helena introduced Siegmund as 'My friend'. The old lady smiled upon him.
+He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years
+back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house
+for their honeymoon.
+
+Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena
+attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found
+him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and
+bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could
+scarcely adjust the wicks.
+
+Helena left the room to change her dress.
+
+'I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the
+Nietzsche I brought--'
+
+He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms
+along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his
+being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came
+up in his brain like bubbles--random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in
+the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and
+he smiled.
+
+When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks
+lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness.
+His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent,
+so strange.
+
+Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way--she was only twenty-six
+to his thirty-eight--she stood before him, holding both his hands and
+looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white
+dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam
+to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear
+through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But
+her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared
+not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He
+strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put
+out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for
+her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She
+waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not
+look at her.
+
+'You would like supper now, dear?' she asked, looking where the dark
+hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong
+setting of his shoulders.
+
+'Just as you will,' he replied.
+
+Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled
+him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
+
+'I will spread the cloth, then,' she said, in deep tones of resignation.
+She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice,
+but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
+
+In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and
+lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched
+her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace,
+and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and
+fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded.
+It was a physical pain to him.
+
+Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar,
+enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He
+was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there
+aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident
+to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
+
+At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile,
+restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
+
+'Will you want anything else?' asked the smiling old landlady.
+
+'Nothing at all, thanks,' said Helena, with decision.
+
+'Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I've washed the dishes. You will
+put the lamp out, dear?'
+
+'I am well used to a lamp,' smiled Helena. 'We use them always at home.'
+
+She had had a day before Siegmund's coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss'
+heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
+
+'Good-night, dear--good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be
+long, dear?'
+
+'No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.'
+
+'Yes--yes. It is very tiring, London.'
+
+When the door was closed, Helena stood a moment undecided, looking at
+Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking
+in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to
+glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching,
+disappointed eyes.
+
+'Shall I read to you?' she asked bitterly.
+
+'If you will,' he replied.
+
+He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She
+went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
+
+'What is it, dear?' she said.
+
+'You,' he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
+
+'Why me?'
+
+He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his
+arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up
+like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did
+not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
+
+He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time
+after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would
+ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness
+of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
+
+After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very
+still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his
+love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of
+the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and
+went to the door.
+
+'Shall I let her out?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Do!' said Helena, slipping from his knee. 'She goes out when the nights
+are fine.'
+
+Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs
+Curtiss called from upstairs: 'Is that you, dear?'
+
+'I have just let Kitty out,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Ah, thank you. Good night!' They heard the old lady lock her bedroom
+door.
+
+Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then
+waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
+
+'Shall we sit by firelight?' he asked tentatively.
+
+'Yes--If you wish,' she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He
+carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body
+was burning and surging with desire.
+
+The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she
+knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red
+stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy,
+advanced out of the shadows.
+
+He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like
+two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt
+on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread
+towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely
+able to move.
+
+'Come,' he pleaded softly.
+
+She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms,
+bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards
+him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid.
+Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her
+uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
+
+In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder,
+abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund's arms, and
+rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot,
+feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely
+still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not
+seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She
+tossed in restlessness on his breast.
+
+'Am I not uneasy?' she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled
+gently.
+
+'It is wonderful to be as still as this,' he said. She had lain tranquil
+with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in
+his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from
+an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and
+hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic,
+as if he would destroy her.
+
+She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his
+strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced
+of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next
+would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He
+seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to
+produce him.
+
+Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of
+involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time
+Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in
+his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and
+unbearable to herself.
+
+At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund
+looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her
+forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at
+her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned
+to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She
+pushed back the curtain.
+
+The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond
+the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea,
+and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution
+on her brow.
+
+'Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?' she asked fretfully.
+
+'Ay, if you wish to,' he answered, altogether willing. He was filled
+with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
+
+They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at
+the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the
+casement of the land seductively.
+
+'It's the finest night I have seen,' said Siegmund. Helena's eyes
+suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
+
+'I like the moon on the water,' she said.
+
+'I can hardly tell the one from the other,' he replied simply. 'The sea
+seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the
+coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say,
+are all you.'
+
+'Yes,' she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and
+she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her
+now, and did not need her.
+
+'I feel at home here,' he said; 'as if I had come home where I was
+bred.'
+
+She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
+
+'We go an awful long way round, Helena,' he said, 'just to find we're
+all right.' He laughed pleasantly. 'I have thought myself such an
+outcast! How can one be outcast in one's own night, and the moon always
+naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?'
+
+Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt
+something of the harmony.
+
+'Whatever I have or haven't from now,' he continued, 'the darkness is a
+sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and
+sometimes the sea is a brother: and there's a family in one house,
+you see.'
+
+'And I, Siegmund?' she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She
+looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit
+ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed,
+then bent to kiss her.
+
+'The key of the castle,' he said. He put his face against hers, and felt
+on his cheek the smart of her tears.
+
+'It's all very grandiose,' he said comfortably, 'but it does for
+tonight, all this that I say.'
+
+'It is true for ever,' she declared.
+
+'In so far as tonight is eternal,' he said.
+
+He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from
+under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
+They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+
+Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. 'It is like the magic tales,'
+he thought, as he realized where he was; 'and I am transported to a new
+life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.'
+
+He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with
+delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand,
+he felt for his watch. It was seven o'clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched
+night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
+
+The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the
+sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the
+morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows
+in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine;
+milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the
+sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
+
+Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and
+red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of
+sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the
+window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair,
+blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed,
+hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
+
+There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and
+spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and
+down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the
+wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He
+took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The
+grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh
+breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a
+tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown
+out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and
+pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
+
+Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where
+the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the
+far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the
+thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent
+travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the
+swinging birds.
+
+He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a
+stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling
+square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It
+delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him
+and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand
+to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the
+heavy green water.
+
+It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep,
+watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable
+glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear
+green water.
+
+He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose
+gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved
+and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he
+stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play,
+even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
+
+With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer
+across, taking a seal's view of the cliffs as they confronted the
+morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he
+liked to see the birds come down.
+
+But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he
+swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the
+pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it,
+but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
+
+When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were
+in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was
+sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful
+palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against
+him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea's passion.
+The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm
+breath. He delighted in himself.
+
+The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of
+clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
+
+'She would make so much of this little pool,' he thought. And as he
+smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him
+conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at
+his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious
+creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red
+slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound
+itself redly round the rise of his knee.
+
+'That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is
+I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be
+a person. What makes me myself, among all these?'
+
+Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
+
+'I am at my best, at my strongest,' he said proudly to himself. 'She
+ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were
+a baboon under my clothing.'
+
+He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his
+breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was
+marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
+
+'If I was giving her myself, I wouldn't want that blemish on me,' he
+thought.
+
+He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
+
+'She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of
+pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I'd rather
+see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together
+could show.... Why doesn't she like me?' he thought as he dressed. It
+was his physical self thinking.
+
+After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in
+the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him
+rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her
+ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and
+insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
+
+'You have bathed?' she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled
+black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
+
+'You have not bathed!' he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the
+brine in his hair.
+
+'No; I bathe later,' she replied. 'But what--'
+
+Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
+
+'It _is_ blood?' she said.
+
+'I grazed my thigh--nothing at all,' he replied.
+
+'Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'The towel looks bad enough,' she said.
+
+'It's an alarmist,' he laughed.
+
+She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
+
+'Breakfast is quite ready,' she said.
+
+'And I for breakfast--but shall I do?'
+
+She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare
+above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of
+his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
+
+'I would not trouble,' she said almost sarcastically.
+
+Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
+
+'How did you sleep?' she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to
+eat.
+
+'Like the dead--solid,' he replied'. 'And you?'
+
+'Oh, pretty well, thanks,' she said, rather piqued that he had slept so
+deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of
+sleeplessness.
+
+'I haven't slept like that for years,' he said enthusiastically. Helena
+smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over
+her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested
+the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with
+him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily
+winking a golden eye at her.
+
+After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She
+dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things--on the barbaric
+yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers,
+and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long
+lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more
+than imagination.
+
+She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity's
+previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower's name,
+nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an
+adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny
+florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed
+everything in fancy.
+
+'That yellow flower hadn't time to be brushed and combed by the fairies
+before dawn came. It is tousled ...' so she thought to herself. The pink
+convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the
+night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens
+spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of
+thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did
+not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
+
+Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low
+sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic
+out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets
+round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the
+water-shadowed reefs.
+
+'This is very good,' she said to herself. 'This is eternally cool, and
+clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.'
+
+She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away
+the soiling of the last night's passion.
+
+The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its
+self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take,
+like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends
+its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea,
+self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
+
+Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes
+shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging
+backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall,
+warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they
+watched the water playing.
+
+When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards
+something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him
+with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he
+received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and
+the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It
+is that makes love. He could always sympathize with the wistful little
+flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In
+these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards
+something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in
+this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.
+
+'Will it be fine all day?' he asked, when a cloud came over.
+
+'I don't know,' she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she
+did not care at all. 'I think it will be a mixed day--cloud and
+sun--more sun than cloud.'
+
+She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at
+the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
+
+'I like a bare blue sky,' he said; 'sunshine that you seem to stir about
+as you walk.'
+
+'It is warm enough here, even for you,' she smiled.
+
+'Ah, here!' he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation
+from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena's. She laughed,
+and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an
+hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till
+Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that
+wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold.
+Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But
+psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
+
+They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point
+of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the
+inscription.
+
+'That's all right--but a vilely ugly railing!' exclaimed Siegmund.
+
+'Oh, they'd have to fence in Lord Tennyson's white marble,' said Helena,
+rather indefinitely.
+
+He interpreted her according to his own idea.
+
+'Yes, he did belittle great things, didn't he?' said Siegmund.
+
+'Tennyson!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.'
+
+'I shouldn't say so,' she declared.
+
+He sounded indeterminate, but was not really so.
+
+They wandered over the downs westward, among the wind. As they followed
+the headland to the Needles, they felt the breeze from the wings of the
+sea brushing them, and heard restless, poignant voices screaming below
+the cliffs. Now and again a gull, like a piece of spume flung up, rose
+over the cliff's edge, and sank again. Now and again, as the path dipped
+in a hollow, they could see the low, suspended intertwining of the birds
+passing in and out of the cliff shelter.
+
+These savage birds appealed to all the poetry and yearning in Helena.
+They fascinated her, they almost voiced her. She crept nearer and nearer
+the edge, feeling she must watch the gulls thread out in flakes of white
+above the weed-black rocks. Siegmund stood away back, anxiously. He
+would not dare to tempt Fate now, having too strong a sense of death
+to risk it.
+
+'Come back, dear. Don't go so near,' he pleaded, following as close as
+he might. She heard the pain and appeal in his voice. It thrilled her,
+and she went a little nearer. What was death to her but one of her
+symbols, the death of which the sagas talk--something grand, and
+sweeping, and dark.
+
+Leaning forward, she could see the line of grey sand and the line of
+foam broken by black rocks, and over all the gulls, stirring round like
+froth on a pot, screaming in chorus.
+
+She watched the beautiful birds, heard the pleading of Siegmund, and she
+thrilled with pleasure, toying with his keen anguish.
+
+Helena came smiling to Siegmund, saying:
+
+'They look so fine down there.'
+
+He fastened his hands upon her, as a relief from his pain. He was filled
+with a keen, strong anguish of dread, like a presentiment. She laughed
+as he gripped her.
+
+They went searching for a way of descent. At last Siegmund inquired of
+the coastguard the nearest way down the cliff. He was pointed to the
+'Path of the Hundred Steps'.
+
+'When is a hundred not a hundred?' he said sceptically, as they
+descended the dazzling white chalk. There were sixty-eight steps. Helena
+laughed at his exactitude.
+
+'It must be a love of round numbers,' he said.
+
+'No doubt,' she laughed. He took the thing so seriously.
+
+'Or of exaggeration,' he added.
+
+There was a shelving beach of warm white sand, bleached soft as velvet.
+A sounding of gulls filled the dark recesses of the headland; a low
+chatter of shingle came from where the easy water was breaking; the
+confused, shell-like murmur of the sea between the folded cliffs.
+Siegmund and Helena lay side by side upon the dry sand, small as two
+resting birds, while thousands of gulls whirled in a white-flaked storm
+above them, and the great cliffs towered beyond, and high up over the
+cliffs the multitudinous clouds were travelling, a vast caravan _en
+route_. Amidst the journeying of oceans and clouds and the circling
+flight of heavy spheres, lost to sight in the sky, Siegmund and Helena,
+two grains of life in the vast movement, were travelling a moment
+side by side.
+
+They lay on the beach like a grey and a white sea-bird together. The
+lazy ships that were idling down the Solent observed the cliffs and the
+boulders, but Siegmund and Helena were too little. They lay ignored and
+insignificant, watching through half-closed fingers the diverse caravan
+of Day go past. They lay with their latticed fingers over their eyes,
+looking out at the sailing of ships across their vision of blue water.
+
+'Now, that one with the greyish sails--' Siegmund was saying.
+
+'Like a housewife of forty going placidly round with the duster--yes?'
+interrupted Helena.
+
+'That is a schooner. You see her four sails, and--'
+
+He continued to classify the shipping, until he was interrupted by the
+wicked laughter of Helena.
+
+'That is right, I am sure,' he protested.
+
+'I won't contradict you,' she laughed, in a tone which showed him he
+knew even less of the classifying of ships than she did.
+
+'So you have lain there amusing yourself at my expense all the time?' he
+said, not knowing in the least why she laughed. They turned and looked
+at one another, blue eyes smiling and wavering as the beach wavers in
+the heat. Then they closed their eyes with sunshine.
+
+Drowsed by the sun, and the white sand, and the foam, their thoughts
+slept like butterflies on the flowers of delight. But cold shadows
+startled them up.
+
+'The clouds are coming,' he said regretfully.
+
+'Yes; but the wind is quite strong enough for them,' she answered,
+
+'Look at the shadows--like blots floating away. Don't they devour the
+sunshine?'
+
+'It is quite warm enough here,' she said, nestling in to him.
+
+'Yes; but the sting is missing. I like to feel the warmth biting in.'
+
+'No, I do not. To be cosy is enough.'
+
+'I like the sunshine on me, real, and manifest, and tangible. I feel
+like a seed that has been frozen for ages. I want to be bitten by the
+sunshine.'
+
+She leaned over and kissed him. The sun came bright-footed over the
+water, leaving a shining print on Siegmund's face. He lay, with
+half-closed eyes, sprawled loosely on the sand. Looking at his limbs,
+she imagined he must be heavy, like the bounders. She sat over him, with
+her fingers stroking his eyebrows, that were broad and rather arched. He
+lay perfectly still, in a half-dream.
+
+Presently she laid her head on his breast, and remained so, watching the
+sea, and listening to his heart-beats. The throb was strong and deep. It
+seemed to go through the whole island and the whole afternoon, and it
+fascinated her: so deep, unheard, with its great expulsions of life. Had
+the world a heart? Was there also deep in the world a great God thudding
+out waves of life, like a great heart, unconscious? It frightened her.
+This was the God she knew not, as she knew not this Siegmund. It was so
+different from the half-shut eyes with black lashes, and the winsome,
+shapely nose. And the heart of the world, as she heard it, could not be
+the same as the curling splash of retreat of the little sleepy waves.
+She listened for Siegmund's soul, but his heart overbeat all other
+sound, thudding powerfully.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 7_
+
+
+Siegmund woke to the muffled firing of guns on the sea. He looked across
+at the shaggy grey water in wonder. Then he turned to Helena.
+
+'I suppose,' he said, 'they are saluting the Czar. Poor beggar!'
+
+'I was afraid they would wake you,' she smiled.
+
+They listened again to the hollow, dull sound of salutes from across the
+water and the downs.
+
+The day had gone grey. They decided to walk, down below, to the next
+bay.
+
+'The tide is coming in,' said Helena.
+
+'But this broad strip of sand hasn't been wet for months. It's as soft
+as pepper,' he replied.
+
+They laboured along the shore, beside the black, sinuous line of
+shrivelled fucus. The base of the cliff was piled with chalk debris. On
+the other side was the level plain of the sea. Hand in hand, alone and
+overshadowed by huge cliffs, they toiled on. The waves staggered in, and
+fell, overcome at the end of the race.
+
+Siegmund and Helena neared a headland, sheer as the side of a house, its
+base weighted with a tremendous white mass of boulders, that the green
+sea broke amongst with a hollow sound, followed by a sharp hiss of
+withdrawal. The lovers had to cross this desert of white boulders, that
+glistened in smooth skins uncannily. But Siegmund saw the waves were
+almost at the wall of the headland. Glancing back, he saw the other
+headland white-dashed at the base with foam. He and Helena must hurry,
+or they would be prisoned on the thin crescent of strand still remaining
+between the great wall and the water.
+
+The cliffs overhead oppressed him--made him feel trapped and helpless.
+He was caught by them in a net of great boulders, while the sea fumbled
+for him. But he and Helena. She laboured strenuously beside him, blinded
+by the skin-like glisten of the white rock.
+
+'I think I will rest awhile,' she said.
+
+'No, come along,' he begged.
+
+'My dear,' she laughed, 'there is tons of this shingle to buttress us
+from the sea.'
+
+He looked at the waves curving and driving maliciously at the boulders.
+It would be ridiculous to be trapped.
+
+'Look at this black wood,' she said. 'Does the sea really char it?'
+
+'Let us get round the corner,' he begged.
+
+'Really, Siegmund, the sea is not so anxious to take us,' she said
+ironically.
+
+When they rounded the first point, they found themselves in a small bay
+jutted out to sea; the front of the headland was, as usual, grooved.
+This bay was pure white at the base, from its great heaped mass of
+shingle. With the huge concave of the cliff behind, the foothold of
+massed white boulders, and the immense arc of the sea in front, Helena
+was delighted.
+
+'This is fine, Siegmund!' she said, halting and facing west.
+
+Smiling ironically, he sat down on a boulder. They were quite alone, in
+this great white niche thrust out to sea. Here, he could see, the tide
+would beat the base of the wall. It came plunging not far from
+their feet.
+
+'Would you really like to travel beyond the end?' he asked.
+
+She looked round quickly, thrilled, then answered as if in rebuke:
+
+'This is a fine place. I should like to stay here an hour.'
+
+'And then where?'
+
+'Then? Oh, then, I suppose, it would be tea-time.'
+
+'Tea on brine and pink anemones, with Daddy Neptune.'
+
+She looked sharply at the outjutting capes. The sea did foam perilously
+near their bases.
+
+'I suppose it _is_ rather risky,' she said; and she turned, began
+silently to clamber forwards.
+
+He followed; she should set the pace.
+
+'I have no doubt there's plenty of room, really,' he said. 'The sea only
+looks near.'
+
+But she toiled on intently. Now it was a question of danger, not of
+inconvenience, Siegmund felt elated. The waves foamed up, as it seemed,
+against the exposed headland, from which the massive shingle had been
+swept back. Supposing they could not get by? He began to smile
+curiously. He became aware of the tremendous noise of waters, of the
+slight shudder of the shingle when a wave struck it, and he always
+laughed to himself. Helena laboured on in silence; he kept just behind
+her. The point seemed near, but it took longer than they thought. They
+had against them the tremendous cliff, the enormous weight of shingle,
+and the swinging sea. The waves struck louder, booming fearfully; wind,
+sweeping round the corner, wet their faces. Siegmund hoped they were cut
+off, and hoped anxiously the way was clear. The smile became set on
+his face.
+
+Then he saw there was a ledge or platform at the base of the cliff, and
+it was against this the waves broke. They climbed the side of this
+ridge, hurried round to the front. There the wind caught them, wet and
+furious; the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted.
+She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the
+rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun
+on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of
+a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out
+damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the
+rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under
+the breast. There was something brutal about it that she could not bear.
+She had no weapon against brute force.
+
+She glanced up at Siegmund. Tiny drops of mist greyed his eyebrows. He
+was looking out to sea, screwing up his eyes, and smiling brutally. Her
+face became heavy and sullen. He was like the heart and the brute sea,
+just here; he was not her Siegmund. She hated the brute in him.
+
+Turning suddenly, she plunged over the shingle towards the wide,
+populous bay. He remained alone, grinning at the smashing turmoil,
+careless of her departure. He would easily catch her.
+
+When at last he turned from the wrestling water, he had spent his
+savagery, and was sad. He could never take part in the great battle of
+action. It was beyond him. Many things he had let slip by. His life was
+whittled down to only a few interests, only a few necessities. Even
+here, he had but Helena, and through her the rest. After this
+week--well, that was vague. He left it in the dark, dreading it.
+
+And Helena was toiling over the rough beach alone. He saw her small
+figure bowed as she plunged forward. It smote his heart with the keenest
+tenderness. She was so winsome, a playmate with beauty and fancy. Why
+was he cruel to her because she had not his own bitter wisdom of
+experience? She was young and naive, and should he be angry with her for
+that? His heart was tight at the thought of her. She would have to
+suffer also, because of him.
+
+He hurried after her. Not till they had nearly come to a little green
+mound, where the downs sloped, and the cliffs were gone, did he catch
+her up. Then he took her hand as they walked.
+
+They halted on the green hillock beyond the sand, and, without a word,
+he folded her in his arms. Both were put of breath. He clasped her
+close, seeming to rock her with his strong panting. She felt his body
+lifting into her, and sinking away. It seemed to force a rhythm, a new
+pulse, in her. Gradually, with a fine, keen thrilling, she melted down
+on him, like metal sinking on a mould. He was sea and sunlight mixed,
+heaving, warm, deliciously strong.
+
+Siegmund exulted. At last she was moulded to him in pure passion.
+
+They stood folded thus for some time. Then Helena raised her burning
+face, and relaxed. She was throbbing with strange elation and
+satisfaction.
+
+'It might as well have been the sea as any other way, dear,' she said,
+startling both of them. The speech went across their thoughtfulness like
+a star flying into the night, from nowhere. She had no idea why she said
+it. He pressed his mouth on hers. 'Not for you,' he thought, by reflex.
+'You can't go that way yet.' But he said nothing, strained her very
+tightly, and kept her lips.
+
+They were roused by the sound of voices. Unclasping, they went to walk
+at the fringe of the water. The tide was creeping back. Siegmund
+stooped, and from among the water's combings picked up an electric-light
+bulb. It lay in some weed at the base of a rock. He held it in his hand
+to Helena. Her face lighted with a curious pleasure. She took the thing
+delicately from his hand, fingered it with her exquisite softness.
+
+'Isn't it remarkable!' she exclaimed joyously. 'The sea must be very,
+very gentle--and very kind.'
+
+'Sometimes,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+'But I did not think it could be so fine-fingered,' she said. She
+breathed on the glass bulb till it looked like a dim magnolia bud; she
+inhaled its fine savour.
+
+'It would not have treated _you_ so well,' he said. She looked at him
+with heavy eyes. Then she returned to her bulb. Her fingers were very
+small and very pink. She had the most delicate touch in the world, like
+a faint feel of silk. As he watched her lifting her fingers from off the
+glass, then gently stroking it, his blood ran hot. He watched her,
+waited upon her words and movements attentively.
+
+'It is a graceful act on the sea's part,' she said. 'Wotan is so
+clumsy--he knocks over the bowl, and flap-flap-flap go the gasping
+fishes, _pizzicato_!--but the sea--'
+
+Helena's speech was often difficult to render into plain terms. She was
+not lucid.
+
+'But life's so full of anti-climax,' she concluded. Siegmund smiled
+softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine
+her words.
+
+'There's no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only
+way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and
+float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to
+forget he had spoken.
+
+There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the
+senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
+
+'I will give it to the children,' he said.
+
+She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
+
+Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other
+publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little
+girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to
+the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they
+approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
+
+'Would you like this? I found it down there,' said Siegmund, offering
+her the bulb.
+
+She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently
+she was not going to say anything.
+
+'The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,'
+said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
+
+The girl looked at her.
+
+'The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful
+fingers--'
+
+The child's eyes brightened.
+
+'The tide-line is full of treasures,' said Helena, smiling.
+
+The child answered her smile a little.
+
+Siegmund had walked away.
+
+'What beautiful eyes she had!' said Helena.
+
+'Yes,' he replied.
+
+She looked up at him. He felt her searching him tenderly with her eyes.
+But he could not look back at her. She took his hand and kissed it,
+knowing he was thinking of his own youngest child.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 8_
+
+
+The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where the
+late foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,
+rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of bracken
+and trees.
+
+They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There the
+carved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made mounds
+under the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All the
+yearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
+
+The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one hand
+the sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, but
+walking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness and
+admiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, but
+this evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
+
+She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, she
+kissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burned
+away his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing as
+if soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
+
+As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a family
+assembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the light
+swish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing of
+their motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
+
+They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.
+They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, through
+a poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once more
+dismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation to
+Siegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, but
+his heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band was
+playing 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
+
+As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,
+and to strike a last blow for her pride:
+
+'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'
+
+'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smiling
+at her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderful
+to her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evaded
+her. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar to
+him, and she wanted to possess him.
+
+The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
+
+That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion she
+wanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, and
+that he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. It
+restored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.
+Her soul seemed blasted.
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously cool
+water, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,
+continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.
+Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool water
+running over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,
+it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs rose
+out of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocks
+along the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness was
+fused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of the
+morning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as we
+are full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glistening
+sap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast round
+itself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast by
+that fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
+
+She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at
+sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as
+they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued
+flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
+
+Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was coming
+dimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised against
+the morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself was
+flying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it a
+heavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast air
+of sunshine.
+
+She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made the
+waves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Her
+feet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright as
+the breast of a white bird.
+
+Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the sea
+and the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,
+restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling along
+with him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,
+large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
+
+Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and
+full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the
+water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,
+like pale flowers trembling upward.
+
+'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressed
+forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had
+more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his
+arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturing
+recklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,
+through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the water
+ran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly he
+emerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
+
+There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from the
+land. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure as
+the shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into the
+sunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
+
+He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with its
+cold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand that
+was soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swelling
+with glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessible
+sea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossom
+that had waited, how long, for its bee.
+
+The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It was
+like a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heaving
+under him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, and
+laughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneath
+him. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and let
+it run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
+
+'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his hands
+again on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,
+gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smooth
+warm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his hand
+encountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end he
+found the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in his
+hands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavy
+coldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and
+kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a
+flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth
+of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and
+lovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness
+and warmth merely floated upon.
+
+Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over
+him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and
+laughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebbles
+below, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair he
+should abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himself
+free of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. He
+tossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like a
+child playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry and
+warm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed and
+smeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,
+though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of
+himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,
+even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found
+himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his
+head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his
+hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as if
+he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea and
+sun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happy
+priest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked out
+of him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleach
+it white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean he
+felt--full of lightness and grace.
+
+The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,
+was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to the
+door by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of the
+garden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena sat
+sideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy little
+laburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was very
+still. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliant
+little porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stood
+cool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the green
+twilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. There
+was a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in the
+shade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,
+leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.
+She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As she
+discovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the next
+mark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
+
+She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.
+She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshine
+at the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
+
+When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
+
+'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'
+
+She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. She
+glanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
+
+'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almost
+sacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
+
+Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a few
+moments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
+
+'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swim
+there.'
+
+'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
+
+'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.
+
+She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibration
+came into her voice.
+
+'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.
+
+He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white and
+still and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, that
+would not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things all
+swept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he found
+himself saying:
+
+'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: like
+Adam when he opened the first eyes in the world.'
+
+'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at him
+with her eyes heavy with meaning.
+
+He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
+
+'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.
+
+The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyond
+self-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissed
+it. He became suddenly grave.
+
+'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. It
+is so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Do
+you think so?'
+
+Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,
+and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 9_
+
+
+The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawled
+across the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads were
+white, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastward
+bareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the niche
+of a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies here
+and there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine like
+blood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,
+which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,
+thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must have
+been. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
+
+'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.
+
+'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot bright
+heaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemed
+meagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitied
+them--dimly, drowsily, without pain.
+
+They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a path
+down a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow with
+ragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.
+The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocks
+of the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helena
+sat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sand
+till her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Then
+she ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in the
+light water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystal
+beetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out on
+the sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
+
+For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then there
+settled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closes
+the doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. They
+wandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat down
+together on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmund
+with the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in his
+shadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.
+The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birds
+asleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at them
+with its bright eyes.
+
+Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fall
+at noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams came
+like a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust of
+beautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls of
+others withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled and
+bred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of such
+blossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it in
+His palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendid
+blooms of beauty.
+
+A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers of
+their experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in a
+shadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face of
+Helena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on she
+revived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flung
+into water. She shivered lightly and rose.
+
+Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.
+She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet in
+the early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook it
+free from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opens
+itself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers the
+tangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and took
+its kisses on her face and throat.
+
+Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,
+like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of a
+fresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
+
+'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'
+
+'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.
+
+For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, but
+more impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. She
+rejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continued
+smiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
+
+'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.
+
+He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 10_
+
+
+Siegmund carried the boots and the shoes while they wandered over the
+sand to the rocks. There was a delightful sense of risk in scrambling
+with bare feet over the smooth irregular jumble of rocks. Helena laughed
+suddenly from fear as she felt herself slipping. Siegmund's heart was
+leaping like a child's with excitement as he stretched forward, himself
+very insecure, to succour her. Thus they travelled slowly. Often she
+called to him to come and look in the lovely little rock-pools, dusky
+with blossoms of red anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but
+shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to
+poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a
+shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones,
+causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to
+watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the
+cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and
+gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked doubtfully at two
+miles more of glistening, gilded boulders. Helena was seated on a stone,
+dabbling her feet in a warm pool, delicately feeling the wet sea-velvet
+of the weeds.
+
+'Don't you think we had better be mounting the cliffs?' he said.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling with irresponsible eyes. Then she lapped
+the water with her feet, and surveyed her pink toes. She was absurdly,
+childishly happy.
+
+'Why should we?' she asked lightly.
+
+He watched her. Her child-like indifference to consequences touched him
+with a sense of the distance between them. He himself might play with
+the delicious warm surface of life, but always he reeked of the
+relentless mass of cold beneath--the mass of life which has no sympathy
+with the individual, no cognizance of him.
+
+She loved the trifles and the toys, the mystery and the magic of things.
+She would not own life to be relentless. It was either beautiful,
+fantastic, or weird, or inscrutable, or else mean and vulgar, below
+consideration. He had to get a sense of the anemone and a sympathetic
+knowledge of its experience, into his blood, before he was satisfied. To
+Helena an anemone was one more fantastic pretty figure in her
+kaleidoscope.
+
+So she sat dabbling her pink feet in the water, quite unconscious of his
+gravity. He waited on her, since he never could capture her.
+
+'Come,' he said very gently. 'You are only six years old today.'
+
+She laughed as she let him take her. Then she nestled up to him, smiling
+in a brilliant, child-like fashion. He kissed her with all the father in
+him sadly alive.
+
+'Now put your stockings on,' he said.
+
+'But my feet are wet.' She laughed.
+
+He kneeled down and dried her feet on his handkerchief while she sat
+tossing his hair with her finger-tips. The sunlight grew more and
+more golden.
+
+'I envy the savages their free feet,' she said.
+
+'There is no broken glass in the wilderness--or there used not to be,'
+he replied.
+
+As they were crossing the sands, a whole family entered by the cliff
+track. They descended in single file, unequally, like the theatre; two
+boys, then a little girl, the father, another girl, then the mother.
+Last of all trotted the dog, warily, suspicious of the descent. The boys
+emerged into the bay with a shout; the dog rushed, barking, after them.
+The little one waited for her father, calling shrilly:
+
+'Tiss can't fall now, can she, dadda? Shall I put her down?'
+
+'Ay, let her have a run,' said the father.
+
+Very carefully she lowered the kitten which she had carried clasped to
+her bosom. The mite was bewildered and scared. It turned round
+pathetically.
+
+'Go on, Tissie; you're all right,' said the child. 'Go on; have a run on
+the sand.'
+
+The kitten stood dubious and unhappy. Then, perceiving the dog some
+distance ahead, it scampered after him, a fluffy, scurrying mite. But
+the dog had already raced into the water. The kitten walked a few steps,
+turning its small face this way and that, and mewing piteously. It
+looked extraordinarily tiny as it stood, a fluffy handful, staring away
+from the noisy water, its thin cry floating over the plash of waves.
+
+Helena glanced at Siegmund, and her eyes were shining with pity. He was
+watching the kitten and smiling.
+
+'Crying because things are too big, and it can't take them in,' he said.
+
+'But look how frightened it is,' she said.
+
+'So am I.' He laughed. 'And if there are any gods looking on and
+laughing at me, at least they won't be kind enough to put me in their
+pinafores....'
+
+She laughed very quickly.
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed. 'Why should you want putting in a pinafore?'
+
+'I don't,' he laughed.
+
+On the top of the cliff they were between two bays, with darkening blue
+water on the left, and on the right gold water smoothing to the sun.
+Siegmund seemed to stand waist-deep in shadow, with his face bright and
+glowing. He was watching earnestly.
+
+'I want to absorb it all,' he said.
+
+When at last they turned away:
+
+'Yes,' said Helena slowly; 'one can recall the details, but never the
+atmosphere.'
+
+He pondered a moment.
+
+'How strange!' he said. I can recall the atmosphere, but not the detail.
+It is a moment to me, not a piece of scenery. I should say the picture
+was in me, not out there.'
+
+Without troubling to understand--she was inclined to think it
+verbiage--she made a small sound of assent.
+
+'That is why you want to go again to a place, and I don't care so much,
+because I have it with me,' he concluded.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 11_
+
+
+They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
+keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
+broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
+however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
+among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
+incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
+
+Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
+signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
+withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
+
+'We must go to the left,' said Helena.
+
+To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
+black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
+shoulders.
+
+Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
+they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
+a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
+sense of space and freedom.
+
+'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
+pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
+large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
+shaggy cloak of furze.
+
+'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.
+
+But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
+impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
+
+'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
+will be tired.'
+
+She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
+into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
+down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
+far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
+specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
+the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
+west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
+everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
+The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
+bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
+the condition of intense waiting.
+
+He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
+
+'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.'
+
+'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.
+
+'"Here on this mole-hill,"' he quoted mockingly.
+
+They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft,
+and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool
+odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with
+honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
+
+Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
+
+'What day is it, Siegmund?' she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He
+laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
+
+'But really,' she insisted, 'I would not have believed the labels could
+have fallen off everything like this.'
+
+He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand,
+stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
+
+'The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in
+order and costume, going endlessly round.' She laughed, amused at
+the idea.
+
+'It is very strange,' she continued, 'to have the days and nights
+smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a
+lifetime.'
+
+'That is how it is,' he admitted, touched by her eloquence. 'You have
+torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
+It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be
+parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up
+of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like
+cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take
+no notice.'
+
+She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his
+leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from
+pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek,
+looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a
+keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
+
+'You know,' he said, repeating himself, 'it is true. You seem to have
+knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all
+in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in
+everything.'
+
+Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
+
+'You must write a symphony of this--of us,' she said, prompted by a
+disciple's vanity.
+
+'Some time,' he answered. 'Later, when I have time.'
+
+'Later,' she murmured--'later than what?'
+
+'I don't know,' he replied. 'This is so bright we can't see beyond.' He
+turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes
+that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay,
+with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
+
+'I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume,' he said,
+always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
+
+'Haven't all women?' she replied, and the peculiar penetrating twang of
+a brass reed was again in her voice.
+
+'I don't know,' he said, quite untouched. 'But you are scented like
+nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium....' He remained
+abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
+
+'You are so strange,' she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her
+voice to speak.
+
+'I believe,' he said slowly, 'I can see the stars moving through your
+hair. No, keep still, _you_ can't see them.' Helena lay obediently very
+still. 'I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold
+flies on the ceiling,' he continued in a slow sing-song. 'But now you
+make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about.' Then, as a new
+thought struck him: 'Have you noticed that you can't recognize the
+constellations lying back like this. I can't see one. Where is the
+north, even?'
+
+She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
+She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as
+of the wayside plants. 'Why should I want to label them?' she would say.
+'I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name.' So she
+laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
+
+'How full the sky is!' Siegmund dreamed on--'like a crowded street. Down
+here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We've found a place far quieter
+and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn't it fine to be up here,
+with the sky for nearest neighbour?'
+
+'I did well to ask you to come?' she inquired wistfully. He turned to
+her.
+
+'As wise as God for the minute,' he replied softly. 'I think a few
+furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in.'
+
+'And you are glad?' she asked. He laughed.
+
+'_Carpe diem_,' he said. 'We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this
+rose in my coat I dare go to hell or anywhere.'
+
+'Why hell, Siegmund?' she asked in displeasure.
+
+'I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I'm a failure,
+Helena. But,' he laughed, 'this day of ours is a rose not many men
+have plucked.'
+
+She kissed him passionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless
+fashion.
+
+'What does it matter, Helena?' he murmured. 'What does it matter? We are
+here yet.'
+
+The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid passion of grief. She
+felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into
+uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt
+her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking
+hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her
+face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt
+his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the
+ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.
+
+'What is it, Helena?' he asked at last. 'Why should you cry?'
+
+She pressed her face in his breast, and said in a muffled,
+unrecognizable voice:
+
+'You won't leave me, will you, Siegmund?'
+
+'How could I? How should I?' he murmured soothingly. She lifted her face
+suddenly and pressed on him a fierce kiss.
+
+'How could I leave you?' he repeated, and she heard his voice waking,
+the grip coming into his arms, and she was glad.
+
+An intense silence came over everything. Helena almost expected to hear
+the stars moving, everything below was so still. She had no idea what
+Siegmund was thinking. He lay with his arms strong around her. Then she
+heard the beating of his heart, like the muffled sound of salutes, she
+thought. It gave her the same thrill of dread and excitement, mingled
+with a sense of triumph. Siegmund had changed again, his mood was gone,
+so that he was no longer wandering in a night of thoughts, but had
+become different, incomprehensible to her. She had no idea what she
+thought or felt. All she knew was that he was strong, and was knocking
+urgently with his heart on her breast, like a man who wanted something
+and who dreaded to be sent away. How he came to be so concentratedly
+urgent she could not understand. It seemed an unreasonable an
+incomprehensible obsession to her. Yet she was glad, and she smiled in
+her heart, feeling triumphant and restored. Yet again, dimly, she
+wondered where was the Siegmund of ten minutes ago, and her heart lifted
+slightly with yearning, to sink with a dismay. This Siegmund was so
+incomprehensible. Then again, when he raised his head and found her
+mouth, his lips filled her with a hot flush like wine, a sweet, flaming
+flush of her whole body, most exquisite, as if she were nothing but a
+soft rosy flame of fire against him for a moment or two. That, she
+decided, was supreme, transcendental.
+
+The lights of the little farmhouse below had vanished, the yellow specks
+of ships were gone. Only the pier-light, far away, shone in the black
+sea like the broken piece of a star. Overhead was a silver-greyness of
+stars; below was the velvet blackness of the night and the sea. Helena
+found herself glimmering with fragments of poetry, as she saw the sea,
+when she looked very closely, glimmered dustily with a reflection
+of stars.
+
+    _Tiefe Stille herrscht im Wasser
+    Ohne Regung ruht das Meer ..._
+
+She was fond of what scraps of German verse she knew. With French verse
+she had no sympathy; but Goethe and Heine and Uhland seemed to speak
+her language.
+
+    _Die Luft ist kuehl, und es dunkelt,
+    Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein._
+
+She liked Heine best of all:
+
+    _Wie Traeume der Kindheit seh' ich es flimmern
+    Auf deinem wogenden Wellengebiet,
+    Und alte Erinnerung erzaehlt mir auf's Neue
+    Von all dem lieben herrlichen Spielzeug,
+    Von all den blinkenden Weihnachtsgaben...._
+
+As she lay in Siegmund's arms again, and he was very still, dreaming she
+knew not what, fragments such as these flickered and were gone, like the
+gleam of a falling star over water. The night moved on imperceptibly
+across the sky. Unlike the day, it made no sound and gave no sign, but
+passed unseen, unfelt, over them. Till the moon was ready to step forth.
+Then the eastern sky blenched, and there was a small gathering of clouds
+round the opening gates:
+
+    _Aus alten Maerchen winket es
+    Hervor mit weisser Hand,
+    Da singt es und da klingt es
+    Von einem Zauberland._
+
+
+Helena sang this to herself as the moon lifted herself slowly among the
+clouds. She found herself repeating them aloud in in a forgetful
+singsong, as children do.
+
+'What is it?' said Siegmund. They were both of them sunk in their own
+stillness, therefore it was a moment or two before she repeated her
+singsong, in a little louder tone. He did not listen to her, having
+forgotten that he had asked her a question.
+
+'Turn your head,' she told him, when she had finished the verse, 'and
+look at the moon.'
+
+He pressed back his head, so that there was a gleaming pallor on his
+chin and his forehead and deep black shadow over his eyes and his
+nostrils. This thrilled Helena with a sense of mystery and magic.
+
+'"_Die grossen Blumen schmachten_,"' she said to herself, curiously
+awake and joyous. 'The big flowers open with black petals and silvery
+ones, Siegmund. You are the big flowers, Siegmund; yours is the
+bridegroom face, Siegmund, like a black and glistening flesh-petalled
+flower, Siegmund, and it blooms in the _Zauberland_, Siegmund--this is
+the magic land.'
+
+Between the phrases of this whispered ecstasy she kissed him swiftly on
+the throat, in the shadow, and on his faintly gleaming cheeks. He lay
+still, his heart beating heavily; he was almost afraid of the strange
+ecstasy she concentrated on him. Meanwhile she whispered over him sharp,
+breathless phrases in German and English, touching him with her mouth
+and her cheeks and her forehead.
+
+'"_Und Liebesweisen toenen_"-not tonight, Siegmund. They are all
+still-gorse and the stars and the sea and the trees, are all kissing,
+Siegmund. The sea has its mouth on the earth, and the gorse and the
+trees press together, and they all look up at the moon, they put up
+their faces in a kiss, my darling. But they haven't you-and it all
+centres in you, my dear, all the wonder-love is in you, more than in
+them all Siegmund--Siegmund!'
+
+He felt the tears falling on him as he lay with heart beating in slow
+heavy drops under the ecstasy of her love. Then she sank down and lay
+prone on him, spent, clinging to him, lifted up and down by the
+beautiful strong motion of his breathing. Rocked thus on his strength,
+she swooned lightly into unconsciousness.
+
+When she came to herself she sighed deeply. She woke to the exquisite
+heaving of his life beneath her.
+
+'I have been beyond life. I have been a little way into death!' she said
+to her soul, with wide-eyed delight. She lay dazed, wondering upon it.
+That she should come back into a marvellous, peaceful happiness
+astonished her.
+
+Suddenly she became aware that she must be slowly weighing down the life
+of Siegmund. There was a long space between the lift of one breath and
+the next. Her heart melted with sorrowful pity. Resting herself on her
+hands, she kissed him--a long, anguished kiss, as if she would fuse her
+soul into his for ever. Then she rose, sighing, sighing again deeply.
+She put up her hands to her head and looked at the moon. 'No more,' said
+her heart, almost as if it sighed too-'no more!'
+
+She looked down at Siegmund. He was drawing in great heavy breaths. He
+lay still on his back, gazing up at her, and she stood motionless at his
+side, looking down at him. He felt stunned, half-conscious. Yet as he
+lay helplessly looking up at her some other consciousness inside him
+murmured; 'Hawwa--Eve--Mother!' She stood compassionate over him.
+Without touching him she seemed to be yearning over him like a mother.
+Her compassion, her benignity, seemed so different from his little
+Helena. This woman, tall and pale, drooping with the strength of her
+compassion, seemed stable, immortal, not a fragile human being, but a
+personification of the great motherhood of women.
+
+'I am her child, too,' he dreamed, as a child murmurs unconscious in
+sleep. He had never felt her eyes so much as now, in the darkness, when
+he looked only into deep shadow. She had never before so entered and
+gathered his plaintive masculine soul to the bosom of her nurture.
+
+'Come,' she said gently, when she knew he was restored. 'Shall we go?'
+
+He rose, with difficulty gathering his strength.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 12_
+
+
+Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The
+hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into
+shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some
+distance, very great, it seemed.
+
+'I can't get hold of them,' he said distractedly to himself. He felt
+detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as
+if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported,
+somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down
+again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and
+controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need
+not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he
+would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
+
+But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the
+moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly,
+joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support.
+Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked
+with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious.
+This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
+
+He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the
+hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in
+his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice
+it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
+
+'What is it?' he asked himself in wonder.
+
+His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally
+to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost
+insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought
+from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir
+of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
+
+They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so
+uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he
+stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot
+securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became
+conscious of it.
+
+'Good Lord!' he said to himself. 'I wonder what it is.'
+
+He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his
+body--his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing
+wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself
+into another detached phrase. 'There is nothing the matter with me,'
+he said.
+
+Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched
+sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when
+he had fallen ill.
+
+'But I am not like that,' he said, 'because I don't feel tremulous. I am
+sure my hand is steady.'
+
+Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before
+him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
+
+'Yes, I think this is the right way,' said Helena, and they set off
+again, as if gaily.
+
+'It certainly feels rather deathly,' said Siegmund to himself. He
+remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had
+stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was--and here
+he chose the French word--'_l'agonie_'. But his mother had seen and had
+cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to
+spare her her suffering.
+
+'Certainly it is like that,' he said. 'Certainly it is rather deathly. I
+wonder how it is.'
+
+Then he reviewed the last hour.
+
+'I believe we are lost!' Helena interrupted him.
+
+'Lost! What matter!' he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him
+tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. 'But did we not come this
+way?' he added.
+
+'No. See'--her voice was reeded with restrained emotion--'we have
+certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.'
+
+'Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty
+well, as much as we can,' said Siegmund, looking forward over the down,
+where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of
+clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at
+the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding,
+left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
+
+Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously
+happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately
+beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had
+been wandering in another--a glamorous, primordial world.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself, 'I have lived too intensely, I seem to
+have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now
+they've gone my house is weak.'
+
+So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He
+reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
+
+'Surely,' he told himself, 'I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt
+my cup. My soul seems to leak out--I am half here, half gone away.
+That's why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.'
+
+Then he came to the hour of Helena's strange ecstasy over him. That,
+somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness
+concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine
+was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had
+been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing
+vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away
+his sickness, soothing him.
+
+'I suppose,' he said to himself for the last time, 'I suppose living too
+intensely kills you, more or less.'
+
+Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him.
+The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine
+veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a
+lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever
+seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if
+Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of
+horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They
+walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a
+little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and
+they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under
+the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the
+moonlight.
+
+'We certainly did not come this way before,' she said triumphantly. The
+idea of being lost delighted her.
+
+Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim
+glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking
+along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to
+some state beyond ordinary experience--some place in romance, perhaps,
+or among the hills where Bruenhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo
+of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London
+wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked
+again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist
+ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna
+must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.
+
+'We may be on the road to Newport,' said Helena presently, 'and the
+distance is ten miles.'
+
+She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in
+this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening
+wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund
+looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he
+sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of
+which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her
+nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her,
+and grew heavy with responsibility.
+
+The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the
+night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled
+together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the
+supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena
+walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively
+searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached,
+listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the
+darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the
+windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went
+running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed
+to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with
+weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was
+the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the
+grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying
+asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams.
+She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed,
+their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering
+over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
+
+So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was
+fain to remember that it was a long way--a long way. Siegmund's arm was
+about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a
+stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the
+Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with
+envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground.
+The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena
+looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and
+bowed his head.
+
+'Thirty years of earnest love; three years' life like a passionate
+ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am
+very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love,
+the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the
+white beauty in the world.'
+
+Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of
+the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was
+treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his
+compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped
+softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
+
+'Let me get under cover,' he thought. 'Let me hide in it; it is good,
+the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small,
+futile tragedy!'
+
+Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the
+silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer,
+leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was
+heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small,
+brave Helena.
+
+'Are you sure this is the right way?' he whispered to her.
+
+'Quite, quite sure,' she whispered confidently in reply. And presently
+they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the
+steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go
+with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping
+cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena's heart was
+beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they
+wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this
+night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road
+not far from home.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 13_
+
+
+In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a
+kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o'clock, yet he lounged,
+dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of
+morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before
+him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naive
+and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
+
+Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice
+beside him say:
+
+'Where have they come from; do you know, sir?'
+
+He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing
+beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
+
+'The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,' said Siegmund.
+
+The other glanced negligently into his face.
+
+'They look rather incongruous, don't you think? We left the sea empty
+and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their
+eye on us!'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'You are not an Anarchist, I hope?' he said jestingly.
+
+'A Nihilist, perhaps,' laughed the other. 'But I am quite fond of the
+Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can't turn round without
+finding some policeman or other at your elbow--look at them, abominable
+ironmongery!--ready to put his hand on your shoulder.'
+
+The speaker's grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from
+the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter
+felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so
+quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
+
+'I suppose we are in the hands of--God,' something moved Siegmund to
+say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at
+the speaker.
+
+'Ah!' he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair,
+the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they
+returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. 'Does the Czar sail this
+way?' he asked at last.
+
+'I do not know,' replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other's
+penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
+
+'I suppose the newspaper will tell us?' said the man.
+
+Sure to,' said Siegmund.
+
+'You haven't seen it this morning?'
+
+'Not since Saturday.'
+
+The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
+
+'You are not alone on your holiday?'
+
+'No.' Siegmund did not like this--he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
+
+'I live here--at least for the present--name, Hampson--'
+
+'Why, weren't you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years
+back?' asked Siegmund.
+
+They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
+fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself
+for having addressed Siegmund:
+
+'I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and
+as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
+re-acquainted.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
+
+'I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It's a pity to try
+and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?'
+
+'Stare beyond it, you mean?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a
+day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all
+the confoundedly draughty House of Life.'
+
+Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
+something in his own soul.
+
+'I mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life
+that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
+blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't
+stop it, once we've begun to leak.'
+
+'What do you mean by "leak"?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Goodness knows--I talk through my hat. But once you've got a bit tired
+of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
+dark--as you were doing.'
+
+'But, to use your metaphor, I'm not tired of the House--if you mean
+Life,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Praise God! I've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket
+picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head
+back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
+
+'I don't know what you mean, sir,' said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
+strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
+
+'You're not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
+suite of rooms--'
+
+'Tomorrow I am turned out of this "blue room",' said Siegmund with a wry
+smile. The other looked at him seriously.
+
+'Dear Lord!' exclaimed Hampson; then: 'Do you remember Flaubert's saint,
+who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.'
+
+'Nor I,' shuddered Siegmund.
+
+'But you've got to-or something near it!'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
+
+'What of yourself?' he said, resentfully.
+
+'I've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
+staring from the window at the dark.'
+
+'But can't you _do_ something?' said Siegmund.
+
+The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing
+his teeth.
+
+'I won't ask you what _your_ intentions are,' he said, with delicate
+irony in his tone. 'You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five
+hundred a year by hard work; but it's no good. If you have acquired a
+liking for intensity in life, you can't do without it. I mean vivid soul
+experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and
+physical excitement.'
+
+Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
+
+'Well, and what then?' he said.
+
+'What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other
+craving. You become a _concentre_, you feed your normal flame with
+oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are
+always semi-transparent.'
+
+Siegmund laughed.
+
+'At least, I am quite opaque,' he said.
+
+The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
+
+'Not altogether,' said Hampson. 'And you, I should think, are one whose
+flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.'
+
+Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
+
+'You haven't much reserve. You're like a tree that'll flower till it
+kills itself,' the man continued. 'You'll run till you drop, and then
+you won't get up again. You've no dispassionate intellect to control you
+and economize.'
+
+'You're telling me very plainly what I am and am not,' said Siegmund,
+laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
+
+'Oh, it's only what I think,' replied Hampson. 'We're a good deal alike,
+you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn't; but women
+have always done as they liked with me.'
+
+'That's hardly so in my case,' said Siegmund.
+
+Hampson eyed him critically.
+
+'Say one woman; it's enough,' he replied.
+
+Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
+
+'The best sort of women--the most interesting--are the worst for us,'
+Hampson resumed. 'By instinct they aim at suppressing the gross and
+animal in us. Then they are supersensitive--refined a bit beyond
+humanity. We, who are as little gross as need be, become their
+instruments. Life is grounded in them, like electricity in the earth;
+and we take from them their unrealized life, turn it into light or
+warmth or power for them. The ordinary woman is, alone, a great
+potential force, an accumulator, if you like, charged from the source of
+life. In us her force becomes evident.
+
+'She can't live without us, but she destroys us. These deep, interesting
+women don't want _us_; they want the flowers of the spirit they can
+gather of us. We, as natural men, are more or less degrading to them and
+to their love of us; therefore they destroy the natural man in us--that
+is, us altogether.'
+
+'You're a bit downright are you not?' asked Siegmund, deprecatingly. He
+did not disagree with what his friend said, nor tell him such statements
+were arbitrary.
+
+'That's according to my intensity,' laughed Hampson. 'I can open the
+blue heaven with looking, and push back the doors of day a little, and
+see--God knows what! One of these days I shall slip through. Oh, I am
+perfectly sane; I only strive beyond myself!'
+
+'Don't you think it's wrong to get like it?' asked Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I do, and so does everybody; but the crowd profits by us in the
+end. When they understand my music, it will be an education to them; and
+the whole aim of mankind is to render life intelligible.'
+
+Siegmund pondered a little....
+
+'You make me feel--as if I were loose, and a long way off from myself,'
+he said slowly.
+
+The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands
+lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
+
+'I can scarcely believe they are me,' he said. 'If they rose up and
+refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren't they beautiful?'
+
+He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
+
+Siegmund glanced from the stranger's to his own hands, which lay curved
+on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature,
+but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
+Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over
+his thumbs.
+
+'I wonder,' said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, 'that she
+can't see it; I wonder she doesn't cherish you. You are full and
+beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when
+she loved you to such extremity?'
+
+Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man,
+with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
+
+'Fools--the fools, these women!' he said. 'Either they smash their own
+crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look
+at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with
+compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by
+itself. I am very sorry.'
+
+All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of
+a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks.
+Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
+
+'I wish I didn't go on like this,' said Hampson piteously. 'I wish I
+could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is
+really hot.' He pulled open his flannel shirt.
+
+'I like the heat,' said Siegmund.
+
+'So do I.'
+
+Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some
+sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely
+to the village.
+
+Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful
+dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to
+find Helena.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 14_
+
+
+In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again
+waiting. It was past nine o'clock, so she was growing impatient. To
+herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of
+verses she had bought in St Martin's Lane for twopence.
+
+    A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings,
+    As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew....
+
+So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself
+that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road
+for Siegmund.
+
+    And now she takes the scissors on her thumb ...
+    Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
+
+'H'm!' she said, 'I really don't know whether I like that or not.'
+
+Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
+
+'He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned;
+but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on
+the water!'
+
+Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
+
+'But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them as
+I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the
+flutter of a butterfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way
+to read this poet.'
+
+So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure
+enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his
+throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
+
+'I have kept you waiting,' said Siegmund.
+
+'Well, I was reading, you see.'
+
+She would not admit her impatience.
+
+'I have been talking,' he said.
+
+'Talking!' she exclaimed in slight displeasure. 'Have you found an
+acquaintance even here?'
+
+'A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel
+queer-sort of _Doppelgaenger_, he was.'
+
+Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
+
+'In what way?' she said.
+
+'He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
+The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the
+bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have
+you made the plans for today?'
+
+They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself
+to the scarlet and green salad.
+
+'Mrs Curtiss,' she said, in rather reedy tone, 'has been very motherly
+to me this morning; oh, very motherly!'
+
+Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
+
+'What, has she been saying something about last night?' he asked.
+
+'She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had
+happened,' continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which
+showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
+
+'Because we weren't in till about eleven?' said Siegmund, also with
+sarcasm.
+
+'I mustn't do it again. Oh no, I mustn't do it again, really.'
+
+'For fear of alarming the old lady?' he asked.
+
+'"You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if I were your
+_mother_, I don't know _how_ I should feel,"' she quoted.
+
+'When one engages rooms one doesn't usually stipulate for a stepmother
+to nourish one's conscience,' said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest
+of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed
+within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth
+were on edge.
+
+'I don't _mind_ in the least,' she said. 'The poor old woman has her
+opinions, and I mine.'
+
+Siegmund brooded a little.
+
+'I know I'm a moral coward,' he said bitterly.
+
+'Nonsense' she replied. Then, with a little heat: 'But you _do_ continue
+to try so hard to justify yourself, as if _you_ felt you needed
+justification.'
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+'I tell you--a little thing like this--it remains tied tight round
+something inside me, reminding me for hours--well, what everybody else's
+opinion of me is.'
+
+Helena laughed rather plaintively.
+
+'I thought you were so sure we were right,' she said.
+
+He winced again.
+
+'In myself I am. But in the eyes of the world--'
+
+'If you feel so in yourself, is not that enough?' she said brutally.
+
+He hung his head, and slowly turned his serviette-ring.
+
+'What is myself?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing very definite,' she said, with a bitter laugh.
+
+They were silent. After a while she rose, went lovingly over to him, and
+put her arms round his neck.
+
+'This is our last clear day, dear,' she said.
+
+A wave of love came over him, sweeping away all the rest. He took her in
+his arms....
+
+'It will be hot today,' said Helena, as they prepared to go out.
+
+'I felt the sun steaming in my hair as I came up,' he replied.
+
+'I shall wear a hat--you had better do so too.'
+
+'No,' he said. 'I told you I wanted a sun-soaking; now I think I shall
+get one.'
+
+She did not urge or compel him. In these matters he was old enough to
+choose for himself.
+
+This morning they were rather silent. Each felt the tarnish on their
+remaining day.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'we ought to find the little path that
+escaped us last night.'
+
+'We were lucky to miss it,' he answered. 'You don't get a walk like that
+twice in a lifetime, in spite of the old ladies.'
+
+She glanced up at him with a winsome smile, glad to hear his words.
+
+They set off, Siegmund bare-headed. He was dressed in flannels and a
+loose canvas shirt, but he looked what he was--a Londoner on holiday. He
+had the appearance, the diffident bearing, and the well-cut clothes of a
+gentleman. He had a slight stoop, a strong-shouldered stoop, and as he
+walked he looked unseeing in front of him.
+
+Helena belonged to the unclassed. She was not ladylike, nor smart, nor
+assertive. One could not tell whether she were of independent means or a
+worker. One thing was obvious about her: she was evidently educated.
+
+Rather short, of strong figure, she was much more noticeably a
+_concentree_ than was Siegmund. Unless definitely looking at something
+she always seemed coiled within herself.
+
+She wore a white voile dress made with the waist just below her breasts,
+and the skirt dropping straight and clinging. On her head was a large,
+simple hat of burnt straw.
+
+Through the open-worked sleeves of her dress she could feel the sun bite
+vigorously.
+
+'I wish you had put on a hat, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Why?' he laughed. 'My hair is like a hood,' He ruffled it back with his
+hand. The sunlight glistened on his forehead.
+
+On the higher paths a fresh breeze was energetically chasing the
+butterflies and driving the few small clouds disconsolate out of the
+sky. The lovers stood for some time watching the people of the farm in
+the down below dip their sheep on this sunny morning. There was a ragged
+noise of bleating from the flock penned in a corner of the yard. Two
+red-armed men seized a sheep, hauled it to a large bath that stood in
+the middle of the yard, and there held it, more or less in the bath,
+whilst a third man baled a dirty yellow liquid over its body. The white
+legs of the sheep twinkled as it butted this way and that to escape the
+yellow douche, the blue-shirted men ducked and struggled. There was a
+faint splashing and shouting to be heard even from a distance. The
+farmer's wife and children stood by ready to rush in with assistance if
+necessary.
+
+Helena laughed with pleasure.
+
+'That is really a very quaint and primitive proceeding,' she said. 'It
+is cruder than Theocritus.'
+
+'In an instant it makes me wish I were a farmer,' he laughed. 'I think
+every man has a passion for farming at the bottom of his blood. It would
+be fine to be plain-minded, to see no farther than the end of one's
+nose, and to own cattle and land.'
+
+'Would it?' asked Helena sceptically.
+
+'If I had a red face, and went to sleep as soon as I sat comfortable, I
+should love it,'he said.
+
+'It amuses me to hear you long to be stupid,' she replied.
+
+'To have a simple, slow-moving mind and an active life is the
+desideratum.'
+
+'Is it?' she asked ironically.
+
+'I would give anything to be like that,' he said.
+
+'That is, not to be yourself,' she said pointedly.
+
+He laughed without much heartiness.
+
+'Don't they seem a long way off?' he said, staring at the bucolic scene.
+'They are farther than Theocritus--down there is farther than Sicily,
+and more than twenty centuries from us. I wish it weren't.'
+
+'Why do you?' she cried, with curious impatience.
+
+He laughed.
+
+Crossing the down, scattered with dark bushes, they came directly
+opposite the path through the furze.
+
+'There it is!' she cried, 'How could we miss it?'
+
+'Ascribe it to the fairies,' he replied, whistling the bird music out of
+_Siegfried_, then pieces of _Tristan_. They talked very little.
+
+She was tired. When they arrived at a green, naked hollow near the
+cliff's edge, she said:
+
+'This shall be our house today.'
+
+'Welcome home!' said Siegmund.
+
+He flung himself down on the high, breezy slope of the dip, looking out
+to sea. Helena sat beside him. It was absolutely still, and the wind was
+slackening more and more. Though they listened attentively, they could
+hear only an indistinct breathing sound, quite small, from the water
+below: no clapping nor hoarse conversation of waves. Siegmund lay with
+his hands beneath his head, looking over the sparkling sea. To put her
+page in the shadow, Helena propped her book against him and began
+to read.
+
+Presently the breeze, and Siegmund, dropped asleep. The sun was pouring
+with dreadful persistence. It beat and beat on Helena, gradually drawing
+her from her book in a confusion of thought. She closed her eyes
+wearily, longing for shade. Vaguely she felt a sympathy with Adam in
+'Adam Cast Forth'. Her mind traced again the tumultuous, obscure
+strugglings of the two, forth from Eden through the primitive
+wildernesses, and she felt sorrowful. Thinking of Adam blackened with
+struggle, she looked down at Siegmund. The sun was beating him upon the
+face and upon his glistening brow. His two hands, which lay out on the
+grass, were full of blood, the veins of his wrists purple and swollen
+with heat. Yet he slept on, breathing with a slight, panting motion.
+Helena felt deeply moved. She wanted to kiss him as he lay helpless,
+abandoned to the charge of the earth and the sky. She wanted to kiss
+him, and shed a few tears. She did neither, but instead, moved her
+position so that she shaded his head. Cautiously putting her hand on his
+hair, she found it warm, quite hot, as when you put your hand under a
+sitting hen, and feel the hot-feathered bosom.
+
+'It will make him ill,' she whispered to herself, and she bent over to
+smell the hot hair. She noticed where the sun was scalding his forehead.
+She felt very pitiful and helpless when she saw his brow becoming
+inflamed with the sun-scalding.
+
+Turning weariedly away, she sought relief in the landscape. But the sea
+was glittering unbearably, like a scaled dragon wreathing. The houses of
+Freshwater slept, as cattle sleep motionless in the hollow valley. Green
+Farringford on the slope, was drawn over with a shadow of heat and
+sleep. In the bay below the hill the sea was hot and restless. Helena
+was sick with sunshine and the restless glitter of water.
+
+'"And there shall be no more sea,"' she quoted to herself, she knew not
+wherefrom.
+
+'No more sea, no more anything,' she thought dazedly, as she sat in the
+midst of this fierce welter of sunshine. It seemed to her as if all the
+lightness of her fancy and her hope were being burned away in this
+tremendous furnace, leaving her, Helena, like a heavy piece of slag
+seamed with metal. She tried to imagine herself resuming the old
+activities, the old manner of living.
+
+'It is impossible,' she said; 'it is impossible! What shall I be when I
+come out of this? I shall not come out, except as metal to be cast in
+another shape. No more the same Siegmund, no more the same life. What
+will become of us--what will happen?'
+
+She was roused from these semi-delirious speculations in the sun furnace
+by Siegmund's waking. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked
+smiling at Helena.
+
+'It is worth while to sleep,' said he, 'for the sake of waking like
+this. I was dreaming of huge ice-crystals.'
+
+She smiled at him. He seemed unconscious of fate, happy and strong. She
+smiled upon him almost in condescension.
+
+'I should like to realize your dream,' she said. 'This is terrible!'
+
+They went to the cliff's edge, to receive the cool up-flow of air from
+the water. She drank the travelling freshness eagerly with her face, and
+put forward her sunburnt arms to be refreshed.
+
+'It is really a very fine sun,' said Siegmund lightly. 'I feel as if I
+were almost satisfied with heat.'
+
+Helena felt the chagrin of one whose wretchedness must go unperceived,
+while she affects a light interest in another's pleasure. This time,
+when Siegmund 'failed to follow her', as she put it, she felt she must
+follow him.
+
+'You are having your satisfaction complete this journey,' she said,
+smiling; 'even a sufficiency of me.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund drowsily. 'I think I am. I think this is about
+perfect, don't you?'
+
+She laughed.
+
+'I want nothing more and nothing different,' he continued; 'and that's
+the extreme of a decent time, I should think.'
+
+'The extreme of a decent time!' she repeated.
+
+But he drawled on lazily:
+
+'I've only rubbed my bread on the cheese-board until now. Now I've got
+all the cheese--which is you, my dear.'
+
+'I certainly feel eaten up,' she laughed, rather bitterly. She saw him
+lying in a royal ease, his eyes naive as a boy's, his whole being
+careless. Although very glad to see him thus happy, for herself she felt
+very lonely. Being listless with sun-weariness, and heavy with a sense
+of impending fate, she felt a great yearning for his sympathy, his
+fellow-suffering. Instead of receiving this, she had to play to his
+buoyant happiness, so as not to shrivel one petal of his flower, or
+spoil one minute of his consummate hour.
+
+From the high point of the cliff where they stood, they could see the
+path winding down to the beach, and broadening upwards towards them.
+Slowly approaching up the slight incline came a black invalid's chair,
+wheeling silently over the short dry grass. The invalid, a young man,
+was so much deformed that already his soul seemed to be wilting in his
+pale sharp face, as if there were not enough life-flow in the distorted
+body to develop the fair bud of the spirit. He turned his pain-sunken
+eyes towards the sea, whose meaning, like that of all things, was half
+obscure to him. Siegmund glanced, and glanced quickly away, before he
+should see. Helena looked intently for two seconds. She thought of the
+torn, shrivelled seaweed flung above the reach of the tide--'the life
+tide,' she said to herself. The pain of the invalid overshadowed her own
+distress. She was fretted to her soul.
+
+'Come!' she said quietly to Siegmund, no longer resenting the
+completeness of his happiness, which left her unnecessary to him.
+
+'We will leave the poor invalid in possession of our green hollow--so
+quiet,' she said to herself.
+
+They sauntered downwards towards the bay. Helena was brooding on her own
+state, after her own fashion.
+
+'The Mist Spirit,' she said to herself. 'The Mist Spirit draws a curtain
+round us--it is very kind. A heavy gold curtain sometimes; a thin, torn
+curtain sometimes. I want the Mist Spirit to close the curtain again, I
+do not want to think of the outside. I am afraid of the outside, and I
+am afraid when the curtain tears open in rags. I want to be in our own
+fine world inside the heavy gold mist-curtain.'
+
+As if in answer or in protest to her thoughts, Siegmund said:
+
+'Do you want anything better than this, dear? Shall we come here next
+year, and stay for a whole month?'
+
+'If there be any next year,' said she.
+
+Siegmund did not reply.
+
+She wondered if he had really spoken in sincerity, or if he, too, were
+mocking fate. They walked slowly through the broiling sun towards
+their lodging.
+
+'There will be an end to this,' said Helena, communing with herself.
+'And when we come out of the mist-curtain, what will it be? No
+matter--let come what will. All along Fate has been resolving, from the
+very beginning, resolving obvious discords, gradually, by unfamiliar
+progression; and out of original combinations weaving wondrous harmonies
+with our lives. Really, the working out has been wondrous, is wondrous
+now. The Master-Fate is too great an artist to suffer an anti-climax. I
+am sure the Master-Musician is too great an artist to allow a bathetic
+anti-climax.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 15_
+
+
+The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
+on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
+perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
+with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
+without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
+clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
+of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
+waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
+each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
+copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
+was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound,
+for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware
+that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces,
+like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
+
+After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
+that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
+time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
+Siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
+anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
+self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
+self-revelation took hold on him.
+
+'It is awfully funny,' he said. 'I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
+married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
+army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
+Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
+through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
+the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
+
+'He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
+and was to go into father's business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
+very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
+convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little while,
+but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles above
+me--which she was. She wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all
+like her. I bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children.
+
+'At first I fluttered round her. I remember I'd got a little, silky
+moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was
+mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off
+abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house.
+The mother was an invalid.
+
+'I remember I nearly stood on my head one day. The conservatory opened
+off the smoking-room, so when I came in the room, I heard my two sisters
+and Beatrice talking about good-looking men.
+
+'"I consider Bertram will make a handsome man," said my younger sister.
+
+'"He's got beautiful eyes," said my other sister.
+
+'"And a real darling nose and chin!" cried Beatrice. "If only he was
+more _solide_! He is like a windmill, all limbs."
+
+'"He will fill out. Remember, he's not quite seventeen," said my elder
+sister.
+
+'"Ah, he is _doux_--he is _calin_," said Beatrice.
+
+'"I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister.
+
+'"But he's a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are," my
+younger sister chimed in.
+
+'"Ah, _si, si_!" cried Beatrice.
+
+'I made a row against the door, then walked across.
+
+'"Hello, is somebody in here?" I said, as I pushed into the little
+conservatory.
+
+'I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed
+an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I
+of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white
+hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now,
+great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green;
+and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of
+Beatrice ... her great dark eyes.
+
+'It's funny, but Beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than Dante's.
+And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
+
+'I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
+Beatrice said nobody cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always
+jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen,
+earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when
+we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it
+awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
+
+'There's the romance. I wonder how it will all end.'
+
+Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
+
+They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before
+Helena's day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea
+that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and
+wonderful a thing in a man's life as birth, or adolescence, or death,
+was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of
+disillusion.
+
+'Come to think of it,' Siegmund continued, 'I have always shirked.
+Whenever I've been in a tight corner I've gone to Pater.'
+
+'I think,' she said, 'marriage has been a tight corner you couldn't get
+out of to go to anybody.'
+
+'Yet I'm here,' he answered simply.
+
+The blood suffused her face and neck.
+
+'And some men would have made a better job of it. When it's come to
+sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of
+her, I've always funked. I tell you I'm something of a moral coward.'
+
+He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, 'So be it.'
+Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty
+discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies,
+finally--Siegmund.
+
+'In my life,' she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, 'I
+might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies
+running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I
+am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circumstances, able to
+glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality.'
+
+'You are so hard to get at,' said Siegmund. 'And so scornful of familiar
+things.'
+
+She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so
+that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her
+teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
+
+A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising
+darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
+Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
+Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her
+whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
+
+They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the
+day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the
+night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes
+after moments of intense living.
+
+The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In
+herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold
+dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash,
+and she herself an upright mass of soft ash.
+
+She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her
+livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of
+fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong
+again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a
+destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed
+back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against
+her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty,
+mean conclusions.
+
+Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair
+grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary,
+lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
+
+Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he
+was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die
+Walkuere_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that
+really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was
+that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings,
+the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her
+soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her,
+whose face was a panorama of passing God? She looked at him again. His
+radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past
+the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short,
+something of the 'clothed animal on end', like the rest of men.
+
+She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and
+her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was
+he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her
+soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
+
+'Siegmund!' she said in despair.
+
+He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and
+distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted
+her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his
+arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
+
+'What is it, dear? Is something wrong?'
+
+His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round
+her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the
+beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
+He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did
+not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in
+his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free
+to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart,
+the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
+She struggled to escape.
+
+'What is it? Won't you tell me what is the matter?' he pleaded.
+
+She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He
+tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he
+held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this
+brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
+
+'Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said
+anything? Tell me--at any rate tell me, Helena.'
+
+Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to
+be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
+His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong
+working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic
+to be free.
+
+'Let me go!' she cried. 'Let me go! Let me go!' He held her in
+bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed
+him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her
+suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
+
+His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down,
+sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a
+small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee
+beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
+
+'Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me,
+Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!'
+
+She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside
+herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this
+unreasoning pleading of his voice.
+
+Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on
+one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence
+was crackling with the sound of Helena's dry, hissing sobs. He remained
+silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he
+put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
+
+Then he rose, saying in his heart, 'It is enough,' He went behind the
+small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to
+hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush
+under which he could find cover.
+
+He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf,
+trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he
+lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time
+before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear,
+even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
+
+Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At
+length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could
+have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her
+face. Was somebody coming?
+
+It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied
+herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a
+thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
+She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.
+
+Suddenly she became aware of someone passing and looking curiously at
+them.
+
+'Dear!' she said softly, stooping and touching his hair. He began to
+struggle with himself to respond. At that minute he would rather have
+died than face anyone. His soul was too much uncovered.
+
+'Dear, someone is looking,' she pleaded.
+
+He drew himself up from cover. But he kept his face averted. They walked
+on.
+
+'Forgive me, dear,' she said softly.
+
+'Nay, it's not you,' he answered, and she was silenced. They walked on
+till the night seemed private. She turned to him, and 'Siegmund!' she
+said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
+
+He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her
+face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered
+it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
+
+The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The
+stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first
+one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the
+sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. Gradually he remembered
+how, in the cathedral, the tapers of the choir-stalls would tremble and
+set steadily to burn, opening the darkness point after point with yellow
+drops of flame, as the acolyte touched them, one by one, delicately with
+his rod. The night was religious, then, with its proper order of
+worship. Day and night had their ritual, and passed in uncouth worship.
+
+Siegmund found himself in an abbey. He looked up the nave of the night,
+where the sky came down on the sea-like arches, and he watched the stars
+catch fire. At least it was all sacred, whatever the God might be.
+Helena herself, the bitter bread, was stuff of the ceremony, which he
+touched with his lips as part of the service.
+
+He had Helena in his arms, which was sweet company, but in spirit he was
+quite alone. She would have drawn him back to her, and on her woman's
+breast have hidden him from Fate, and saved him from searching the
+unknown. But this night he did not want comfort. If he were 'an infant
+crying in the night', it was crying that a woman could not still. He was
+abroad seeking courage and faith for his own soul. He, in loneliness,
+must search the night for faith.
+
+'My fate is finely wrought out,' he thought to himself. 'Even damnation
+may be finely imagined for me in the night. I have come so far. Now I
+must get clarity and courage to follow out the theme. I don't want to
+botch and bungle even damnation.'
+
+But he needed to know what was right, what was the proper sequence of
+his acts. Staring at the darkness, he seemed to feel his course, though
+he could not see it. He bowed in obedience. The stars seemed to swing
+softly in token of submission.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 16_
+
+
+Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
+of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
+insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him--she was
+afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
+little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had
+she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost
+him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
+
+At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
+gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
+back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
+
+'What are you thinking of?' she asked.
+
+'I?' he replied. 'I really don't know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
+anything.'
+
+She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
+speech, she asked:
+
+'Was I very cruel, dear?'
+
+It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
+drew her close into him.
+
+'It was pretty bad, I suppose,' he replied. 'But I should think neither
+of us could help it.'
+
+She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
+helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
+shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
+in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
+delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to
+her Madonna.
+
+They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till
+at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of
+healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
+
+Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
+free, turned sharply aside, and said:
+
+'Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+'If you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
+with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
+
+There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless
+water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a
+long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with
+star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
+
+As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a
+tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay
+close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star
+which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin
+streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
+star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
+the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
+star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home.
+He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was
+behind the gate?
+
+They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
+populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
+
+Siegmund was considering.
+
+'What _was_ the matter with you?' he asked.
+
+She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
+her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
+in experience:
+
+'Why, you see, dear, you won't understand. But there was such a greyish
+darkness, and through it--the crying of lives I have touched....'
+
+His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
+also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled
+with shame.
+
+'....A crying of lives against me, and I couldn't silence them, nor
+escape out of the darkness. I wanted you--I saw you in front, whistling
+the Spring Song, but I couldn't find you--it was not you--I couldn't
+find you.'
+
+She kissed his eyes and his brows.
+
+'No, I don't see it,' he said. 'You would always be you. I could think
+of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.'
+
+She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her
+mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
+
+'Sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.'
+
+He gave a brief laugh.
+
+'I lose you!' he repeated. 'You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my
+hold over you, and then you--?'
+
+He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
+
+'It shall not be any more,' she said.
+
+'All right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.'
+
+She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
+
+'You mustn't be bitter,' she murmured.
+
+'Four days is enough,' he said. 'In a fortnight I should be intolerable
+to you. I am not masterful.'
+
+'It is not so, Siegmund,' she said sharply.
+
+'I give way always,' he repeated. 'And then--tonight!'
+
+'Tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'Tonight I have been a fool!'
+
+'And I?' he asked.
+
+'You--what of you?' she cried. Then she became sad. 'I have little
+perverse feelings,' she lamented.
+
+'And I can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I'm
+always pushed this way and that, like a fool.'
+
+'You don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said.
+
+He kissed her. After a moment he said:
+
+'You are not like other folk. "_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
+Geschlecht_." I thought of you when we read it.'
+
+'Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
+Which is it?'
+
+'Neither,' he said. 'You are _you_.'
+
+They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
+faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
+in black silhouette between them and the sea.
+
+He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
+life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
+read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his
+mind: '_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
+immer tiefer ins Leben._'
+
+Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
+home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
+
+'This time tomorrow night,' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she implored.
+
+'Why not?' he laughed.
+
+'Don't, dear,' she pleaded.
+
+'All right, I won't.'
+
+Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
+little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
+on them now and again.
+
+'You won't be tired when you go back?' Helena asked.
+
+'Tired!' he echoed.
+
+'You know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full
+of pity. He laughed.
+
+'Oh, that is gone,' he said.
+
+With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
+
+'And will you be sad?' she said, hesitating.
+
+'Sad!' he repeated.
+
+'But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
+back?'
+
+'The old life will take me up, I suppose,' he said.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'I think, dear,' she said, 'I have done wrong.'
+
+'Good Lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
+look at her, for the first time.
+
+'I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as
+you are now....'
+
+'"Take no thought for the morrow." Be quiet, Helena!' he exclaimed as
+the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
+
+'Why?' she asked, afraid.
+
+'Why!' he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
+staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
+terrified her, and she lost courage.
+
+With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
+on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
+laughed, then became tender.
+
+Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
+half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
+sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs,
+as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the
+doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched.
+
+But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
+on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
+days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
+with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
+unity of their fates was gone.
+
+Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
+definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
+certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
+Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
+consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
+
+In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
+see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
+ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
+resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
+waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
+looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
+the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
+It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
+of the sea?
+
+It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
+this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
+overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
+over the sea--a libation.
+
+Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
+wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
+and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
+the moon looked frail and empty.
+
+And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
+of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
+into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
+watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
+eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.'
+
+Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
+moon.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 17_
+
+
+Towards morning, Siegmund went to sleep. For four hours, until seven
+o'clock, the womb of sleep received him and nourished him again.
+
+'But it is finest of all to wake,' he said, as the bright sunshine of
+the window, and the lumining green sunshine coming through the lifted
+hands of the leaves, challenged him into the open.
+
+The morning was exceedingly fair, and it looked at him so gently that
+his blue eyes trembled with self-pity. A fragment of scarlet geranium
+glanced up at him as he passed, so that amid the vermilion tyranny of
+the uniform it wore he could see the eyes of the flower, wistful,
+offering him love, as one sometimes see the eyes of a man beneath the
+brass helmet of a soldier, and is startled. Everything looked at him
+with the same eyes of tenderness, offering him, timidly, a little love.
+
+'They are all extraordinarily sweet,' said Siegmund to the full-mouthed
+scabious and the awkward, downcast ragwort. Three or four butterflies
+fluttered up and down in agitated little leaps, around him.
+Instinctively Siegmund put his hand forward to touch them.
+
+'The careless little beggars!' he said.
+
+When he came to the cliff tops there was the morning, very bravely
+dressed, rustling forward with a silken sound and much silken shining to
+meet him. The battleships had gone; the sea was blue with a _panier_ of
+diamonds; the sky was full with a misty tenderness like love. Siegmund
+had never recognized before the affection that existed between him and
+everything. We do not realize how tremendously dear and indispensable to
+us are the hosts of common things, till we must leave them, and we break
+our hearts.
+
+'We have been very happy together,' everything seemed to say.
+
+Siegmund looked up into the eyes of the morning with a laugh.
+
+'It is very lovely,' he said, 'whatever happens.'
+
+So he went down to the beach; his dark blue eyes, darker from last
+night's experience, smiled always with the pride of love. He undressed
+by his usual altar-stone.
+
+'How closely familiar everything is,' he thought. 'It seems almost as if
+the curves of this stone were rounded to fit in my soul.'
+
+He touched the smooth white slope of the stone gently with discovering
+fingers, in the same way as he touched the cheek of Helena, or of his
+own babies. He found great pleasure in this feeling of intimacy with
+things. A very soft wind, shy as a girl, put his arms round him, and
+seemed to lay its cheek against his chest. He placed his hands beneath
+his arms, where the wind was caressing him, and his eyes opened with
+wondering pleasure.
+
+'They find no fault with me,' he said. 'I suppose they are as fallible
+as I, and so don't judge,' he added, as he waded thigh-deep into the
+water, thrusting it to hear the mock-angry remonstrance.
+
+'Once more,' he said, and he took the sea in his arms. He swam very
+quietly. The water buoyed him up, holding him closely clasped. He swam
+towards the white rocks of the headlands; they rose before him like
+beautiful buttressed gates, so glistening that he half expected to see
+fantail pigeons puffing like white irises in the niches, and white
+peacocks with dark green feet stepping down the terraces, trailing a
+sheen of silver.
+
+'Helena is right,' he said to himself as he swam, scarcely swimming, but
+moving upon the bosom of the tide; 'she is right, it is all enchanted. I
+have got into her magic at last. Let us see what it is like.'
+
+He determined to visit again his little bay. He swam carefully round the
+terraces, whose pale shadows through the swift-spinning emerald facets
+of the water seemed merest fancy. Siegmund touched them with his foot;
+they were hard, cold, dangerous. He swam carefully. As he made for the
+archway, the shadows of the headland chilled the water. There under
+water, clamouring in a throng at the base of the submerged walls, were
+sea-women with dark locks, and young sea-girls, with soft hair, vividly
+green, striving to climb up out of the darkness into the morning, their
+hair swirling in abandon. Siegmund was half afraid of their
+frantic efforts.
+
+But the tide carried him swiftly through the high gate into the porch.
+There was exultance in this sweeping entry. The skin-white, full-fleshed
+walls of the archway were dappled with green lights that danced in and
+out among themselves. Siegmund was carried along in an invisible
+chariot, beneath the jewel-stained walls. The tide swerved, threw him as
+he swam against the inward-curving white rock; his elbow met the rock,
+and he was sick with pain. He held his breath, trying to get back the
+joy and magic. He could not believe that the lovely, smooth side of the
+rock, fair as his own side with its ripple of muscles, could have hurt
+him thus. He let the water carry him till he might climb out on to the
+shingle. There he sat upon a warm boulder, and twisted to look at his
+arm. The skin was grazed, not very badly, merely a ragged scarlet patch
+no bigger than a carnation petal. The bruise, however, was painful,
+especially when, a minute or two later, he bent his arm.
+
+'No,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt
+me. I suppose I was careless.'
+
+Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
+looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
+bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
+gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the
+sea-shore played together.
+
+'Surely,' said Siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a
+jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.'
+
+He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
+the cliffs.
+
+'I was mistaken,' he said. 'It was an illusion.'
+
+He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
+windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
+another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white
+rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit
+and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
+or comrade.
+
+'They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
+after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do
+I matter?'
+
+Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
+
+    We are not long for music and laughter,
+      Love and desire and hate;
+    I think we have no portion in them after
+      We pass the gate.
+
+'Why should I be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling.
+He frowned, and answered: 'Oh, Lord!--the old argument!'
+
+But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
+
+'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.'
+
+He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
+maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
+
+'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
+that melts on the sunshine.'
+
+Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
+a joke.
+
+'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
+count; I am inconsiderable.'
+
+He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
+convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
+was arguing with himself.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.'
+
+But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
+answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
+overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
+was a great ignominy.
+
+Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore
+with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to
+discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box
+which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She
+had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then
+another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean
+lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
+
+'The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting,
+trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
+flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
+Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
+
+She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
+did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
+anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
+laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
+trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously
+her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend.
+There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the
+air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending,
+though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed
+beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as
+she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which
+made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for
+all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off
+her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
+thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled
+hastily upwards towards the outlet.
+
+Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
+window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
+throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
+dragon's hole.
+
+'How surprised they will be to see me!' said Helena, scrambling forward,
+laughing.
+
+She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
+white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the
+flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung
+the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena
+stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she
+stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a
+thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white
+incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips
+were parted in a woman's joy of adoration.
+
+The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
+
+'It is good,' said Helena; 'it is very good.' She looked again, and saw
+the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
+pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
+they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
+
+'It is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she
+could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
+while she turned away.
+
+As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
+the beach to her.
+
+'You are not gone, then?' he said.
+
+'Siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it
+could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
+face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but Helena did not notice
+that his eyes were full of misery.
+
+'I, actually,' he said, smiling.
+
+'I did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant
+wonder. 'I could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and
+continued--'Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,' she said,
+looking radiantly up into Siegmund's face. 'Isn't it beautiful this
+morning?' she added.
+
+Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
+kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
+of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
+beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
+
+'Isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked Helena, as she wrung the
+water from her costume.
+
+'It is very fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
+said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
+and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.'
+
+'Yes,' said Siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.'
+
+'It is,' assented Helena warmly. 'Have you noticed the waves? They are
+like a line of children chased by a white dog.'
+
+'Ay!' said Siegmund.
+
+'Didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips
+the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
+
+'I swam to my little bay again,' he replied.
+
+'Did you?' she exclaimed, pleased.
+
+She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
+holding them to Siegmund to dry.
+
+'I am very hungry,' she said.
+
+'And I,' he agreed.
+
+'I feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his
+position having reminded her of their departure.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't
+it?' she insisted.
+
+'I wish we might never go back,' he said.
+
+Helena sighed.
+
+'It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
+Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He bowed his head, and did not answer.
+
+'It has been something, dear,' she repeated.
+
+He rose and took her in his arms.
+
+'Everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He
+could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'Everything!' he said.
+
+She pressed her two hands on his head.
+
+'I did well, didn't I, Siegmund?' she asked. Helena felt the
+responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
+withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
+word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
+
+'Wonderfully well, Helena,' he replied.
+
+She kissed his forehead.
+
+'You are everything,' he said.
+
+She pressed his head on her bosom.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 18_
+
+
+Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
+brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate,
+gentle manner.
+
+'The water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from
+one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the
+amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his
+capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
+
+'It was,' assented Helena. 'It was as warm as new milk.'
+
+'Ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
+experience of Siegmund and his beloved. 'And did ye see the ships of
+war?' she asked.
+
+'No, they had gone,' replied Helena.
+
+Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
+
+'You'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady.
+
+Helena arranged the matter.
+
+'I think ye both look better,' Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
+Siegmund.
+
+He smiled constrainedly.
+
+'I thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically.
+
+'He had been working hard,' said Helena, also glancing at him.
+
+He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
+
+'Ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'And it's a very short time for you.
+What a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are
+grand, so they say.'
+
+Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'Have you never seen
+them?' she asked.
+
+'No,' replied Mrs. Curtiss. 'I've never been able to get; but I hope to
+go yet.'
+
+'I hope you may,' said Siegmund.
+
+The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
+quite satisfied.
+
+'Well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.'
+
+She tripped out, to return directly.
+
+'I've brought you,' she said, 'some of the Island cream, and some white
+currants, if ye'll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
+come back.'
+
+'How could we help?' laughed Helena.
+
+'We will,' smiled Siegmund.
+
+When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
+Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
+presence of the delightful little lady.
+
+'This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she
+said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
+
+'Ah!' exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
+
+'One of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'And
+everybody.'
+
+'You have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony.
+
+'Strangers,' she replied. 'I seem to make strangers of all the people I
+meet.'
+
+She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her intently.
+He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
+
+'Need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if
+ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two,
+three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,'
+she laughed.
+
+Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
+currants she had extricated for him.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 19_
+
+
+The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
+which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
+a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless
+little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old
+yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
+
+Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
+them.
+
+'Who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'They are
+tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling
+along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they
+take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when
+they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in
+the dark will gather them away. They won't be here in the morning,
+shrivelled and dowdy ... If only we could curl up and be gone, after
+our day....'
+
+She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
+
+'It is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said.
+
+'Ay!' he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
+
+She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with
+bent head, abstract, but happy.
+
+'What is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'She is sufficient to
+herself--she doesn't want me. She has her own private way of communing
+with things, and is friends with them.'
+
+'The dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him
+from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
+
+'I see it has,' he answered. Then to himself he said: 'She can't
+translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can't render
+herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she
+only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After
+a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not indispensable....'
+
+The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
+the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
+roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
+edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
+brilliant with dew.
+
+A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
+lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
+avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
+and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular.
+
+He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
+decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
+
+'Amy! Amy!'
+
+No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
+indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
+calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
+he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
+
+'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.
+
+'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.
+
+'Look!' said Siegmund.
+
+An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
+holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
+gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with
+hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened
+the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then
+the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
+
+There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by
+the resentful abuse of the man.
+
+The lovers moved out of hearing.
+
+'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.
+
+'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as
+if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.'
+
+'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.
+
+Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
+winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next
+incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
+humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
+fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
+self-esteem tortured him to the end.
+
+Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
+time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
+her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
+of his tortured self-respect.
+
+'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone
+must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in
+it myself.'
+
+And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,
+the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,
+all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it
+naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this
+bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty
+and find the dirt. What was he to do?
+
+'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
+look quite stern today.'
+
+'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.'
+
+'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
+gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
+so grave.'
+
+He laughed.
+
+'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
+strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
+right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
+it had all gone.'
+
+'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
+only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
+such stuff.'
+
+'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
+Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
+came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
+said that.'
+
+'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
+
+'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
+learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
+drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
+mockingly, to tease her.
+
+'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
+ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
+let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
+with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
+rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
+The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
+purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
+and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
+blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
+
+They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
+trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
+drooped over everything.
+
+'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
+Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
+will not wave my hand.'
+
+She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
+allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
+Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
+spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
+
+Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
+also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
+said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
+felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
+neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
+untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
+
+It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
+disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
+seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
+mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
+interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
+twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
+surprising.
+
+But why should he have failed with Helena?
+
+The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
+the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
+white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
+softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
+
+'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
+the light.
+
+No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
+ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
+wild spinning of the lights.
+
+'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
+apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
+laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
+
+'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
+to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
+understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
+cannot compel anybody to follow me.
+
+'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
+sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
+to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
+When can I set my feet on when this is gone?'
+
+The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
+Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
+looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
+
+'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
+'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
+ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
+to the sun.
+
+Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
+thought-activity. Presently she said:
+
+'This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?'
+
+They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
+sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
+which to lie.
+
+'Shall we not go under the rocks?' said Helena.
+
+'Look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
+suffocating, there.'
+
+So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
+with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat
+was dreadful.
+
+'My arms, Siegmund,' said she. 'They feel as if they were dipped in
+fire.'
+
+Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
+
+'Are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?'
+
+He laughed stupidly.
+
+'That is all right,' he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
+him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
+
+As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena's mist-curtain,
+he said:
+
+'I _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only
+I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...'
+
+Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
+of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
+savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
+beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
+would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
+
+He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
+lips on her cheek, he murmured:
+
+'I should be able, shouldn't I, Helena?'
+
+'You are always able!' she cried. 'It is I who play with you at hiding.'
+
+'I have really had you so little,' he said.
+
+'Can't you forget it, Siegmund?' she cried. 'Can't you forget it? It was
+only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can't you
+forget it, dear?'
+
+'You can't do without me?' he asked.
+
+'If I lose you I am lost,' answered she with swift decision. She had no
+knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
+safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
+
+'I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
+us,' said Helena to herself. 'They may go back to hell.'
+
+She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft
+away.
+
+Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
+to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
+out to sea and lost.
+
+'If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
+were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
+should get stronger and more upright.'
+
+This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
+
+Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
+two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
+leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
+his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
+great power.
+
+'If,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
+and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
+Siegmund in my arms....'
+
+But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
+falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
+that it made silence sweet.
+
+'If now,' prayed Siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
+were dark....'
+
+But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the
+bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
+
+Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
+rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
+that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger
+of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return,
+to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must
+not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and
+travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He
+lay in suspense, waiting.
+
+At last she sat up abruptly.
+
+'It is time, Siegmund,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
+She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
+him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
+inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
+sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still
+he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart
+crushed with grief for him.
+
+'We must go, Siegmund,' she whispered.
+
+'All right,' he said, but still he did not move.
+
+She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
+air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
+
+Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving.
+His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
+
+Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too
+strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the
+sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
+
+'We shall be too late,' she said in distress.
+
+He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
+
+Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She
+put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
+
+Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself
+together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
+
+'Why, what time is it?'
+
+He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his
+left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
+
+'I can't see the figures,' he said. 'Everything is dimmed, as if it were
+coming dark.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. 'My eyes
+were the same. It is the strong sunlight.'
+
+'I can't,' he repeated, and he was rather surprised--'I can't see the
+time. Can you?'
+
+She stooped down and looked.
+
+'It is half past one,' she said.
+
+Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time
+to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: 'I
+feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in
+my body is dulled.'
+
+'Yes,' answered Helena, 'I am afraid it will do you harm.'
+
+'At any rate,' he smiled as if sleepily, 'I have had enough. If it's too
+much--what _is_ too much?'
+
+They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
+
+'We are going back--we are going back!' the heart of Helena seemed to
+run hot, beating these words.
+
+They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge
+of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea.
+The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching
+in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon
+the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still.
+Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful,
+incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund's
+mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then
+turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he
+had enjoyed, '_Addio_!' he said.
+
+He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling
+peculiarly:
+
+'It reminds me of Traviata--an "_Addio_" at every verse-end.'
+
+She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it
+jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve.
+'_Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o_!' he whistled between his teeth, hissing out
+the Italian's passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
+
+'I suppose,' she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check
+this discord--'I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey--Thursday.'
+
+'I don't know,' said Siegmund.
+
+'There will not be very many people,' she insisted.
+
+'I think,' he said, in a very quiet voice, 'you'd better let me go by
+the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.'
+
+'But why?' she exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+'I don't want to sit looking at you all the way,' he said.
+
+'But why should you?' she exclaimed.
+
+He laughed.
+
+'Indeed, no!' she said. 'We shall go together.'
+
+'Very well,' he answered.
+
+They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the
+little post office, he said:
+
+'I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.'
+
+'You haven't sent them any word?' she asked.
+
+He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood
+still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
+
+'Shall I?' he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was
+rather peculiar.
+
+'Well, I should think so,' faltered Helena, turning away to look at the
+postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and
+cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a
+telegraph form.
+
+'My God!' he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could
+not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled
+his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the
+amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her
+finger, he felt sick with irony.
+
+'That's right,' she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to
+the instrument. 'What beautiful weather!' she continued. 'It will be
+making you sorry to leave us.'
+
+'There goes my warrant,' thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of
+paper under the post-mistress's heavy hand.
+
+'Yes--it is too bad, isn't it,' he replied, bowing and laughing to the
+woman.
+
+'It is, sir,' she answered pleasantly. 'Good morning.'
+
+He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the
+postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face
+like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression
+told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her
+falter with dismay.
+
+'What is he thinking of?' she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back.
+'And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them
+at home?'
+
+'Well,' said Siegmund, 'are there any postcards?'
+
+'None that I care to take,' she replied. 'Perhaps you would like one of
+these?'
+
+She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary
+views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
+
+'I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,' he said.
+
+'Or a brush,' said Helena.
+
+'She does not understand,' said Siegmund to himself. 'And whatever I do
+I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.'
+
+As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings
+resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 20_
+
+
+At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other
+with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses,
+the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with
+exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if
+they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think,
+they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back
+her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
+
+At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
+shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
+at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
+who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here
+was room for all. Faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to
+look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
+
+There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
+and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
+into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself
+carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched
+the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between
+his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against
+the side of the carriage. The German's hips came down tight against her.
+She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure
+of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the
+opposite direction.
+
+'I am afraid I press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
+German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
+she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
+
+'Oh no,' she answered. 'You do not crush me.'
+
+Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
+The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
+slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
+remark in German: 'Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?'
+
+The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
+each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
+over 'Billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the German
+Emperor--and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned
+each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
+going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
+were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
+
+Helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
+tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the naive type: he talked with
+face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
+spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
+Helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to
+escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
+beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
+
+'I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in
+perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
+her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free
+Helena, and said:
+
+'Forgive me, I am sorry.'
+
+'You are forgiven,' replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
+her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
+at this. The good humour was complete.
+
+'Thank you,' said the German gratefully.
+
+Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
+_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
+rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no
+attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German's apologies, and
+the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell.
+
+She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
+intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
+never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
+between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
+race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
+Siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
+same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
+It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
+birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
+never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him
+the mistress.
+
+As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like
+a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund's resentment against
+her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was
+very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made
+her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now,
+small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her.
+But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone,
+little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has
+done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind;
+death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this
+house of strangers which she called 'life'. She had to go on alone, like
+a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
+
+'What will she do?' Siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes
+upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
+the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
+strength is established. But what then?'
+
+Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go
+on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had
+not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do
+when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive.
+Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
+
+Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
+inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
+and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became
+acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he
+had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour
+with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
+
+He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
+eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
+an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
+her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar
+hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool
+or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were
+instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar
+jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand.
+Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were
+passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as nonsense.
+
+The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
+faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
+clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
+them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
+sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
+endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere
+of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing that could
+relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its hold.
+
+She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
+heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to
+support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out
+of himself whatever she wanted.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 21_
+
+
+The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.
+It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftily
+together, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like a
+concourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. To
+Siegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancers
+crossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up from
+the street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay as
+snow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,
+without any joy.
+
+He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of their
+steamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces to
+stimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leaned
+slightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amber
+floated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;
+small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing the
+sea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her soft
+stout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background were
+men-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flags
+through a sky dim with distance.
+
+'It is all very glad,' said Siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to be
+fanciful.'
+
+He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to his
+destination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that lies
+between us and our goal.
+
+Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on the
+blue afternoon.
+
+'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and over
+again. Each new charm she caught eagerly.
+
+'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said to
+herself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.
+
+They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,
+as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading across
+their course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on the
+sky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over the
+swell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark head
+and white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending over
+some machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the low
+stern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer was
+sweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursing
+straight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretching
+forward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making no
+sound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.
+
+'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
+watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
+with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
+veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
+lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
+the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
+staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
+the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
+from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
+dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
+quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
+as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
+steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
+coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
+raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
+gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
+the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
+in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
+indifference.
+
+Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
+whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
+the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
+noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
+moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
+They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of
+life again.
+
+'By Jove, that was a near thing!'
+
+'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.
+
+'A French yacht,' said somebody.
+
+Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
+to say. Confused, he repeated:
+
+'That was a close shave.'
+
+Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
+herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
+quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
+
+'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the day
+is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
+swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
+That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
+no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of
+the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white
+seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,
+and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.
+
+'For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darkness
+through its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which he
+fumbles with delights like a bee.
+
+'For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness
+the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life,
+the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible
+flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death,
+is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a
+life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers
+into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from the
+death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potent
+shadow, if I do not enrich life.'
+
+'Wasn't that woman fine!' said Helena.
+
+'So perfectly still,' he answered.
+
+'The child realized nothing,' she said.
+
+Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
+
+'I am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urged
+inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.'
+
+She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
+
+'I guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor,
+will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.'
+
+'He was careful of something else just then,' said Siegmund, who hated
+to hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'He was attending to the
+machinery or something.'
+
+'That was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic.
+
+Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement--very blind.
+Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
+
+'Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked.
+
+'He nearly succeeded,' she replied.
+
+There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the
+world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'But, after all,' he
+thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event
+and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of
+exoneration.'
+
+Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of
+the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of
+life, saw it great and impersonal.
+
+'Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' he
+asked.
+
+'I rather think not. Why?' she replied.
+
+'I hope she didn't,' he said.
+
+Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very
+much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to
+her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and
+proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
+
+Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman's
+courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the
+boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he
+himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from
+lamenting his hard fate.
+
+They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they
+looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He
+yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be
+carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came
+round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept
+round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old
+_Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for
+a trophy.
+
+'It is a dreadful thing,' thought Siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy when
+there is nothing more to do.' He watched the landing-stages swooping
+nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of
+the train was London.
+
+He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.
+The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in
+the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released
+from her.
+
+They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder,
+in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the
+crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to
+the mainland.
+
+'Won't you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?'
+asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question.
+
+Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
+
+'No,' she replied. 'Let us go together.'
+
+Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
+
+There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class
+compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat
+down, facing Helena.
+
+'Now,' said he to himself, 'I wish I were alone.'
+
+He wanted to think and prepare himself.
+
+Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
+
+'Shall I not go down to Cornwall?'
+
+By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that
+she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety
+protracted.
+
+'But you have promised Louisa, have you not?' he replied.
+
+'Oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she
+wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
+
+'Then you must go,' he said.
+
+'But,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'I do not want to go down to
+Cornwall with _Louisa and Olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after
+_this_,' she added.
+
+'Then Louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he said
+gravely.
+
+Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
+
+'Is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. She glanced angrily at
+the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the
+ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the
+carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved
+by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena in
+his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him
+with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
+
+The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through
+Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It
+seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of
+the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. The
+afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneys
+and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant
+appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of
+light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
+
+'It will go on,' thought Siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever.
+And I shall miss it all!'
+
+But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he
+began again:
+
+'Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will
+say nothing, thank God--nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there
+will be no interruptions....
+
+'But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss
+reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the
+country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my
+money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.
+Very good.
+
+'But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want
+Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be
+damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never
+get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out
+of pity for me. I know she would.
+
+'But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me
+not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in
+endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a
+red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth.
+Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any
+efforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what the
+result is." And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would be
+a gangrene of shame.
+
+'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
+asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
+creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
+I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?'
+
+Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
+whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
+imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
+sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
+children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
+bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
+thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
+unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
+her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
+took his pleasure elsewhere.
+
+This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
+consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
+agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be only
+a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait for
+the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
+inevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money to
+keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
+then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
+
+'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give each
+of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
+nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and round
+went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
+grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
+gathered small and hard upon the floor.
+
+As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his
+knee.
+
+'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with
+pain, 'you will forgive me.'
+
+He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
+filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
+smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes
+haunted with pain.
+
+'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfect
+happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!'
+
+Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
+painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned
+back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike
+swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.
+
+Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
+rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena
+had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,
+so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey
+that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of
+the final convictions.
+
+'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?
+What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
+have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
+inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?'
+
+It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
+never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
+
+They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
+backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
+great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
+with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a
+breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
+and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
+simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered
+what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague
+roar of the train that was carrying him home.
+
+Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
+was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
+proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
+magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
+opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
+everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
+sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
+train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
+It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
+darkened grass-lands.
+
+Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
+breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
+was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
+victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms
+uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. The
+day died nobly, so she thought.
+
+One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.
+
+'Surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously.
+Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. It
+came, unswerving, from behind the trees.
+
+'I am sure it is for us,' she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.
+Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund and
+pointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little of
+her faith.
+
+'It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn't it seem to you to be
+travelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.'
+
+She then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'Aylwin'.
+
+Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.
+
+Helena was almost happy.
+
+'I am right,' said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, and
+Helena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the hand
+to confirm it.'
+
+The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging like
+a greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund was
+mechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,
+his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was a
+certain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavy
+insistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courage
+to sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going on
+towards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky, asking
+of everything, 'Am I right? Am I right?' He did not mind what happened
+to him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by 'right' he did
+not trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had been
+reassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid,
+and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped him
+deeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.
+
+The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as the
+fountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth from
+the foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders they
+hung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of the
+hive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome of
+purple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--a
+village; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.
+
+'Ah, well!' thought Siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm,
+what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light,
+and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from these
+rushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows of
+night, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the day will
+swarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, and
+humming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell and
+the sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happens
+we see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or not,
+bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_
+always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least,
+I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is there
+in the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned bright; I
+have laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--I wonder where? We can
+never point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!'
+
+They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorking
+towards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of the
+night. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for their
+first walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw the
+quick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran between
+high embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered with
+roses of Sharon--the large golden St John's wort of finest silk. He
+looked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,
+ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:
+
+'Do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of Sharon all along here?'
+
+'I do,' replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'Weren't they
+pretty?'
+
+After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:
+
+'Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; I
+should like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.'
+
+He smiled, without answering.
+
+She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.
+
+'But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked.
+She put the question timidly. 'Would you care to?' she added.
+
+Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.
+
+'No,' he said gently; 'I think we had better not.' Almost for the first
+time he did not make apologetic explanation.
+
+Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinning
+of the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were near
+Sutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves and
+her basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quite
+ready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. Siegmund
+was aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, he
+said to himself, 'Ah, well, it must be so.'
+
+She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.
+
+'At least,' she said doubtfully, 'I shall see you at the station.'
+
+'At Waterloo?' he asked.
+
+'No, at Wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone.
+
+'But--' he began.
+
+'It will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone of
+conviction. 'Much better than crossing London from Victoria to
+Waterloo.'
+
+'Very well,' he replied.
+
+He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.
+
+'You will get in Wimbledon 10.5--leave 10.40--leave Waterloo 11.30,' he
+said.
+
+'Very good,' she answered.
+
+The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for the
+train to stop.
+
+'If only she will soon go!' thought Siegmund. It was an intolerable
+minute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,
+pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned upon
+the window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him,
+he could scarcely breathe. 'How long will it be?' he said to himself,
+looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the lady who
+could not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her;
+he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors slammed and
+the whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.
+
+'Now I lose her,' said Siegmund.
+
+She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.
+
+'Good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away.
+
+Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled with
+sickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but why
+did she fling round in that manner, stopping the keen note short; what
+would she do?
+
+
+
+_Chapter 22_
+
+
+Siegmund went up to Victoria. He was in no hurry to get down to
+Wimbledon. London was warm and exhausted after the hot day, but this
+peculiar lukewarmness was not unpleasant to him. He chose to walk from
+Victoria to Waterloo.
+
+The streets were like polished gun-metal glistened over with gold. The
+taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor
+swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other
+clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging
+hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged
+full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating
+with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and
+stood there panting--great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always
+amused by the headlong, floundering career of the buses. He was pleased
+with this scampering of the traffic; anything for distraction. He was
+glad Helena was not with him, for the streets would have irritated her
+with their coarse noise. She would stand for a long time to watch the
+rabbits pop and hobble along on the common at night; but the tearing
+along of the taxis and the charge of a great motor-bus was painful to
+her. 'Discords,' she said, 'after the trees and sea.' She liked the
+glistening of the streets; it seemed a fine alloy of gold laid down for
+pavement, such pavement as drew near to the pure gold streets of Heaven;
+but this noise could not be endured near any wonderland.
+
+Siegmund did not mind it; it drummed out his own thoughts. He watched
+the gleaming magic of the road, raced over with shadows, project itself
+far before him into the night. He watched the people. Soldiers, belted
+with scarlet, went jauntily on in front. There was a peculiar charm in
+their movement. There was a soft vividness of life in their carriage; it
+reminded Siegmund of the soft swaying and lapping of a poised
+candle-flame. The women went blithely alongside. Occasionally, in
+passing, one glanced at him; then, in spite of himself, he smiled; he
+knew not why. The women glanced at him with approval, for he was ruddy;
+besides, he had that carelessness and abstraction of despair. The eyes
+of the women said, 'You are comely, you are lovable,' and
+Siegmund smiled.
+
+When the street opened, at Westminster, he noticed the city sky, a
+lovely deep purple, and the lamps in the square steaming out a vapour of
+grey-gold light.
+
+'It is a wonderful night,' he said to himself. 'There are not two such
+in a year.'
+
+He went forward to the Embankment, with a feeling of elation in his
+heart. This purple and gold-grey world, with the fluttering flame-warmth
+of soldiers and the quick brightness of women, like lights that clip
+sharply in a draught, was a revelation to him.
+
+As he leaned upon the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but
+rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the
+bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a
+hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the
+black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
+
+'Ah!' said Siegmund to himself; 'it is far too wonderful for me. Here,
+as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever
+happens, the world is wonderful.'
+
+So he went on amid all the vast miracle of movement in the city night,
+the swirling of water to the sea, the gradual sweep of the stars, the
+floating of many lofty, luminous cars through the bridged darkness, like
+an army of angels filing past on one of God's campaigns, the purring
+haste of the taxis, the slightly dancing shadows of people. Siegmund
+went on slowly, like a slow bullet winging into the heart of life. He
+did not lose this sense of wonder, not in the train, nor as he walked
+home in the moonless dark.
+
+When he closed the door behind him and hung up his hat he frowned. He
+did not think definitely of anything, but his frown meant to him: 'Now
+for the beginning of Hell!'
+
+He went towards the dining-room, where the light was, and the uneasy
+murmur. The clock, with its deprecating, suave chime, was striking ten,
+Siegmund opened the door of the room. Beatrice was sewing, and did not
+raise her head. Frank, a tall, thin lad of eighteen, was bent over a
+book. He did not look up. Vera had her fingers thrust in among her hair,
+and continued to read the magazine that lay on the table before her.
+Siegmund looked at them all. They gave no sign to show they were aware
+of his entry; there was only that unnatural tenseness of people who
+cover their agitation. He glanced round to see where he should go. His
+wicker arm-chair remained by the fireplace; his slippers were standing
+under the sideboard, as he had left them. Siegmund sat down in the
+creaking chair; he began to feel sick and tired.
+
+'I suppose the children are in bed,' he said.
+
+His wife sewed on as if she had not heard him; his daughter noisily
+turned over a leaf and continued to read, as if she were pleasantly
+interested and had known no interruption. Siegmund waited, with his
+slipper dangling from his hand, looking from one to another.
+
+'They've been gone two hours,' said Frank at last, still without raising
+his eyes from his book. His tone was contemptuous, his voice was
+jarring, not yet having developed a man's fullness.
+
+Siegmund put on his slipper, and began to unlace the other boot. The
+slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag
+seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to
+speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's scornful
+restraint upon her. Siegmund rested his arms upon his knees, and sat
+leaning forward, looking into the barren fireplace, which was littered
+with paper, and orange-peel, and a banana-skin.
+
+'Do you want any supper?' asked Beatrice, and the sudden harshness of
+her voice startled him into looking at her.
+
+She had her face averted, refusing to see him. Siegmund's heart went
+down with weariness and despair at the sight of her.
+
+'Aren't _you_ having any?' he asked.
+
+The table was not laid. Beatrice's work-basket, a little wicker
+fruit-skep, overflowed scissors, and pins, and scraps of holland, and
+reels of cotton on the green serge cloth. Vera leaned both her elbows on
+the table.
+
+Instead of replying to him, Beatrice went to the sideboard. She took out
+a table-cloth, pushing her sewing litter aside, and spread the cloth
+over one end of the table. Vera gave her magazine a little knock
+with her hand.
+
+'Have you read this tale of a French convent school in here, Mother?'
+she asked.
+
+'In where?'
+
+In this month's _Nash's_.'
+
+'No,' replied Beatrice. 'What time have I for reading, much less for
+anything else?'
+
+'You should think more of yourself, and a little less of other people,
+then,' said Vera, with a sneer at the 'other people'. She rose. 'Let me
+do this. You sit down; you are tired, Mother,' she said.
+
+Her mother, without replying, went out to the kitchen. Vera followed
+her. Frank, left alone with his father, moved uneasily, and bent his
+thin shoulders lower over his book. Siegmund remained with his arms on
+his knees, looking into the grate. From the kitchen came the chinking of
+crockery, and soon the smell of coffee. All the time Vera was heard
+chatting with affected brightness to her mother, addressing her in fond
+tones, using all her wits to recall bright little incidents to retail to
+her. Beatrice answered rarely, and then with utmost brevity.
+
+Presently Vera came in with the tray. She put down a cup of coffee, a
+plate with boiled ham, pink and thin, such as is bought from a grocer,
+and some bread-and-butter. Then she sat down, noisily turning over the
+leaves of her magazine. Frank glanced at the table; it was laid solely
+for his father. He looked at the bread and the meat, but restrained
+himself, and went on reading, or pretended to do so. Beatrice came in
+with the small cruet; it was conspicuously bright.
+
+Everything was correct: knife and fork, spoon, cruet, all perfectly
+clean, the crockery fine, the bread and butter thin--in fact, it was
+just as it would have been for a perfect stranger. This scrupulous
+neatness, in a household so slovenly and easy-going, where it was an
+established tradition that something should be forgotten or wrong,
+impressed Siegmund. Beatrice put the serving knife and fork by the
+little dish of ham, saw that all was proper, then went and sat down. Her
+face showed no emotion; it was calm and proud. She began to sew.
+
+'What do you say, Mother?' said Vera, as if resuming a conversation.
+'Shall it be Hampton Court or Richmond on Sunday?'
+
+'I say, as I said before,' replied Beatrice: 'I cannot afford to go
+out.'
+
+'But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. _Dites
+donc_!'
+
+'There are other things to think of,' said Beatrice.
+
+'Now, _maman, nous avons change tout cela_! We are going out--a jolly
+little razzle!' Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and
+smiled at her mother gaily.
+
+'I am afraid there will be no _razzle_'--Beatrice accented the word,
+smiling slightly--'for me. You are slangy, Vera.'
+
+'_Un doux argot, ma mere_. You look tired.'
+
+Beatrice glanced at the clock.
+
+'I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,' she said.
+
+Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking
+in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked
+up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:
+
+'There's your supper, Father.'
+
+The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head
+lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.
+
+Siegmund was hungry.
+
+'Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to
+himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He
+seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and
+away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching
+from under his eyebrows.
+
+Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of
+his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it,
+despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night.
+He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat
+irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.
+
+'Good night!' he said.
+
+Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut
+the door and went.
+
+There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the
+tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically,
+catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The
+faces of the two children set hard with hate.
+
+'He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing
+and her cottons.
+
+'At any rate, he's come back red enough,' said Frank, in his grating
+tone of contempt. 'He's like boiled salmon.'
+
+Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to
+the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude.
+
+'He _would_ come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's
+sneer.
+
+Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread,
+and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at
+this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched
+her with jealous eyes.
+
+'There is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said Beatrice to him. 'I
+kept you some.'
+
+'All right, Ma,' he replied. Fetch it in.'
+
+Beatrice went out to the kitchen.
+
+'And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called Vera after her.
+
+'The damned coward! Ain't he a rotten funker?' said Frank, _sotto voce_,
+while his mother was out of the room.
+
+Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.
+
+They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank
+yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother,
+and, putting his hand on her arm--the feel of his mother's round arm
+under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise--he said, more gratingly
+than ever:
+
+'Ne'er mind, Ma; we'll be all right to you.' Then he bent and kissed
+her. 'Good night, Mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of
+the room.
+
+Beatrice was crying.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 23_
+
+
+'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind
+him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family
+criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent
+judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house
+from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I
+come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'
+
+He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him
+a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his
+position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might
+feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after
+time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught
+him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and
+his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touched
+them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own
+childish touch-and-shrink.
+
+Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he
+stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and
+wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously
+soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The
+night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of
+light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose
+up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth
+of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the
+whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night
+occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across
+the distance.
+
+'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything into
+a oneness. I wonder what is in it.'
+
+He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the
+night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a
+hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A
+star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a
+yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had
+seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
+
+'It is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a good
+sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'
+
+Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was
+soon in bed.
+
+'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'
+
+He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
+his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
+
+At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,
+I've got to go through it.'
+
+His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
+forgot when he awoke. Only this naive question and answer betrayed what
+had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
+knowledge vanished.
+
+Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
+did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
+thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
+'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his
+heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep
+activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been
+his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and
+nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the
+expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
+
+'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I
+looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.
+Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the
+departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by
+facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it
+was keen, was half pleasure.
+
+Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
+next to his, and he heard her:
+
+'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.'
+
+'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
+
+'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I
+slept.'
+
+She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
+The minutes passed.
+
+'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to
+himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
+humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep
+him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
+anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was
+heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
+heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of
+the stairs:
+
+'Do you want any hot water?'
+
+'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,
+lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
+
+The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his
+second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the
+same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder
+girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken
+suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
+
+'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'
+Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting
+impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no
+answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
+
+Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
+
+'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
+
+And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you
+want?'
+
+'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
+
+'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are
+you shouting for?'
+
+The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed
+into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'
+
+Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of
+the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.
+She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and
+pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her
+feet as she went downstairs.
+
+'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'
+
+The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the
+kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's
+feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.
+He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive
+to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and
+meet them all.
+
+The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'
+Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound
+of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water
+from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he
+suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the
+thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go
+downstairs. It was nine o'clock.
+
+The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the
+bathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to
+his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and
+waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She
+knocked loudly.
+
+'All right,' said he.
+
+Then she went downstairs.
+
+He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's
+voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
+
+'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the
+table for a week.'
+
+Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across
+to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at
+the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.
+Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little
+pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were
+bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,
+which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her
+stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully
+sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,
+but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge
+and proceeded to wipe away the soap.
+
+For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.
+She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at
+her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The
+child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
+
+'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'
+
+The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her
+back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in
+the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she
+turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,
+his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be
+trying to discover something in him.
+
+'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
+
+She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a
+slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she
+continued to regard him curiously.
+
+'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
+
+'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
+
+'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
+
+'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
+
+'Much farther than that,' he replied.
+
+'To Worthing?' she asked.
+
+'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
+
+'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
+
+'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
+
+'Twuly?' she asked.
+
+'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
+
+'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
+
+'I will next time,' he replied.
+
+The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
+
+'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.
+
+'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--'
+
+'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.
+
+'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.
+
+Gwen still looked full at him.
+
+'You _are_ red,' she said.
+
+He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
+
+'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'
+
+'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new
+potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.
+
+'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't
+you?'
+
+He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and
+she drew away from him, unwilling.
+
+'Come and let me look,' he repeated.
+
+She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her
+face, shy, suspicious, condemning.
+
+'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+She glanced into his room, and answered:
+
+'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'
+
+Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went
+downstairs without going into his room.
+
+Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have
+expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.
+He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the
+bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and
+licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
+
+'A pity to wash it off,' he said.
+
+As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment
+exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he
+thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'
+
+He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of
+forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
+
+'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should
+find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my
+affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no
+more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a
+man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of
+creation.'
+
+Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His
+sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was
+dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was
+indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to
+the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.
+He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and
+Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude
+of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt
+as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked
+nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would
+not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the
+cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an
+arm-chair, and felt sick.
+
+All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few
+days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly
+through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and
+of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and
+madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life
+struggled in a clogged and broken channel.
+
+Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He
+would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and
+sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him
+into consciousness.
+
+'I suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said,
+realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition
+in his head.
+
+'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intense
+irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot
+irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair
+without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move
+about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
+
+The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement
+perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which
+she was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to see
+what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed
+intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let
+go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she
+had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed
+him closely.
+
+'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.
+
+Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'
+
+'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.
+
+'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.
+
+Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up
+anxiously.
+
+'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in the
+drawing-room.'
+
+'But what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child.
+
+'Nothing--nothing that I can tell _you_. He's only spoilt all our
+lives.'
+
+The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and
+perplexity.
+
+'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.
+
+'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a
+nice plum?'
+
+She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.
+She was too much perplexed.
+
+'What do you say?' asked her mother.
+
+'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.
+
+Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in
+his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing
+irritability from his belly.
+
+'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.
+
+He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
+
+'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he asked
+himself.
+
+But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening
+to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he
+could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would
+be better.
+
+'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this
+out.
+
+Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or
+distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often
+dreamed of, farming in Canada.
+
+'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the same
+sickening feeling there that I want nothing.'
+
+'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.
+
+But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink
+convulsively.
+
+'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better be
+dead. To have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.'
+
+He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed
+entertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' he
+asked himself.
+
+To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
+
+'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' he
+cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a
+raw place.
+
+He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.
+There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He
+merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood
+holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
+
+'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.
+
+Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,
+before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
+
+'Dinner's ready.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'
+
+The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very
+crestfallen.
+
+'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.
+
+'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.
+
+Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in
+her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
+
+'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie--never
+mind.'
+
+The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and
+Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and
+grew cold.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 24_
+
+
+When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything
+repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must
+pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house
+was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought
+her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt
+like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into
+his box.
+
+The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth,
+ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird
+which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly
+entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to
+peck forwards as she said:
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became
+proportionately cold.
+
+'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular
+manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?'
+
+'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.
+
+'H'm!'
+
+Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar
+sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she
+forbore to question.
+
+'You look well,' she said.
+
+Helena smiled ironically.
+
+'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful,
+affectionate manner she had assumed.
+
+'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.
+
+'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and
+regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued,
+'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm,
+like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after
+a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will
+you have?'
+
+'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.
+
+Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
+
+'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point
+curtly.
+
+'Lemonade,' said Helena.
+
+Presently Mr Verden entered--a small, white-bearded man with a gentle
+voice.
+
+'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
+
+'As you see, Pater,' she answered.
+
+'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
+
+Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on
+tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!'
+her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can
+never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless
+pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will
+not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of
+offence upon it.
+
+There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to
+the door.
+
+'Has she come?'
+
+And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung
+herself upon Helena and kissed her.
+
+'How long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with
+affection.
+
+'Ten minutes,' replied Helena.
+
+'Why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and
+meet you?' Louisa reproached her.
+
+'Why?' drawled Helena.
+
+Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by
+this sarcasm.
+
+As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that
+night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their
+usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl--a
+minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
+
+During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made
+confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy
+which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena's
+thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea,
+pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with Siegmund, but
+reaching no further.
+
+Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender
+advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,
+all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided
+his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity
+which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated
+flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. But the day wore on. Helena
+pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a little,
+mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.
+
+At last the night fell.
+
+'Well,' said Helena to her mother, 'I suppose I'd better pack.'
+
+'Haven't you done it?' cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.
+'You'll never have it done. I'd better help you. What times does the
+train go?'
+
+Helena smiled.
+
+'Ten minutes to ten.'
+
+Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was
+ample time for everything.
+
+'Nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' Mrs Verden said.
+
+Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.
+
+'I'll come with you to the station,' suggested Mrs Verden. 'I'll see the
+last of you. We shan't see much of you just now.'
+
+Helena turned round in surprise.
+
+'Oh, I wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too
+evident.
+
+'Yes--I will--I'll see you off.'
+
+Mrs Verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was
+curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was
+reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played
+the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress.
+
+Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her
+dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her
+eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away
+swiftly as if she had been burned.
+
+'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
+wonder?'
+
+She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
+how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
+
+Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
+ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
+came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
+a chair.
+
+'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
+
+'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
+to a child.
+
+'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
+
+'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
+Helena.
+
+'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
+exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
+
+'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
+dejectedly.
+
+'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
+the basket or the violin, Mater?'
+
+Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
+
+The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
+smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
+Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
+corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
+mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
+third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
+face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
+blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
+was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
+shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
+miles--two hundred and forty miles.'
+
+
+
+_Chapter 25_
+
+
+Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice,
+who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of
+angry hysteria.
+
+'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had
+asked him coldly.
+
+He knew she was wondering about money.
+
+'Tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered.
+
+She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
+flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.
+
+'What do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done
+enough. We can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. You
+have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want
+to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember
+that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
+You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
+responsible for your children, do you think?'
+
+'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very
+coldly.
+
+'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
+sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
+children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
+_I'll_ stop, I tell you _I'll_ do as I like. _I'll_ go as well. No, I
+wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn't leave
+little children--to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they
+mightn't be yours.'
+
+'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.
+
+The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
+sick.
+
+Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.
+
+'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a
+great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do
+you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit
+moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
+wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
+up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of
+your hand?'
+
+'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to
+yourself!'
+
+Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath.
+Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and
+trembling.
+
+'You coward--you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
+who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
+what I am.'
+
+Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
+with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
+bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
+and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
+withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
+should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger,
+which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He
+trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
+Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
+slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
+
+Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
+found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
+Vera tackled the situation.
+
+'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.
+
+Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
+others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no
+reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
+Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
+a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'
+
+Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
+looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady had a dog--'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.
+
+The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
+taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
+the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
+father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
+in her softest and most persuasive tones:
+
+'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of
+meat. Mam, Mam!'
+
+There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's
+knee.
+
+'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.
+
+No response.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered.
+
+She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
+her mother's breast.
+
+'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.
+
+Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
+tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her
+close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
+face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
+whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
+
+'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--'
+
+Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
+nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
+she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
+tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
+gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
+muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
+rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was
+the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the
+trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low;
+he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
+
+Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
+scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous
+sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
+cautiously asking:
+
+'Mam, is dad cross--is he? What did he do?'
+
+'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
+this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'
+
+The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister.
+The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
+
+'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
+
+Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
+unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
+afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
+slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
+the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
+the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
+small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting
+and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does
+who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the
+child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held
+his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
+do he did not know.
+
+He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
+another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
+wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
+against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
+world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face
+against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a
+piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now--his
+heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. It would
+open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
+with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
+
+'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'
+
+'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
+hesitate, move, then turn away.
+
+She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
+stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
+bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
+pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
+his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay
+down on the bed.
+
+For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
+of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
+work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
+jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
+pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
+shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
+two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
+again, smiling.
+
+'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
+himself.
+
+His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
+weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
+intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
+
+'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
+instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
+must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
+
+The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
+her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
+down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
+she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
+that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
+in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
+This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
+should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
+it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
+
+'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
+'What time is it?'
+
+It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
+time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
+
+'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
+good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'
+
+He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
+Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
+
+'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'
+
+It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
+wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
+his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
+was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
+though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
+were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
+
+Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
+path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran
+out crying:
+
+'Are you going out? Where are you going?'
+
+Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
+
+'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.
+
+'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
+long.'
+
+'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
+
+'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'
+
+He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
+
+'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.
+
+He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 26_
+
+
+Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
+platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
+packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
+stopped before the indicator.
+
+'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice,
+'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'
+
+'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.
+
+Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
+
+'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
+sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
+prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'
+
+'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa,
+skittish.
+
+'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by
+appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of
+
+    '"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad,
+    And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'
+
+She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
+something, chimed in sarcastically:
+
+'"They are nothing to her madness--"'
+
+'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.
+
+'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.
+
+'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity
+was given me in large doses.'
+
+'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness,
+if you call it such. You are always so serious.'
+
+'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed
+Olive.
+
+She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
+acknowledging the sarcasm.
+
+'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the
+point?'
+
+'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to
+accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.'
+
+Louisa laughed and shook herself.
+
+'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.
+
+Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
+thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
+made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a
+moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on
+a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under
+the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already
+twenty-five minutes past ten.
+
+She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
+the platform.
+
+'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'
+
+Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
+Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
+could not read him.
+
+'Olive is there, too,' she explained.
+
+Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
+amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things
+more complex.
+
+'Does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked.
+
+'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
+forward to be introduced.
+
+'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the
+dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'
+
+'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling,
+continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'
+
+'She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,' cried Louisa,
+vindictive, triumphant.
+
+There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
+understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really
+good friends.
+
+'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
+
+He and Helena walked down the platform.
+
+'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.
+
+'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'
+
+'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
+added: 'The children are happier without me.'
+
+'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
+'It's not true.'
+
+'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's
+all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'
+
+Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
+platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
+haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm;
+farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket,
+was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train
+with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon
+the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in
+vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then
+Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the
+rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
+distance where the train had vanished, he said:
+
+'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
+on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'
+
+Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
+eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of
+his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her
+lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
+
+'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
+What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply.
+She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
+Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away
+her hold over him.
+
+'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was
+to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have
+not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you--and life
+must go on.'
+
+'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a
+day after you.'
+
+Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
+scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to
+me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
+out tonight there is nothing left.'
+
+Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
+
+They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train
+was to leave from another platform.
+
+'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa
+and Olive.
+
+'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and
+excitedly announcing the news.
+
+'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.
+
+Siegmund picked up the luggage.
+
+'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
+'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing
+on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the
+sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse
+_sotto voce_.
+
+'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a
+good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it--one
+that will last.'
+
+'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
+
+Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
+ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
+animated to the calmly ironical.
+
+'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
+'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'
+
+Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
+
+'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.
+
+As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
+watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
+
+'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be
+three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
+make Siegmund talk.'
+
+She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
+Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
+then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
+two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
+She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people
+entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
+
+When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
+Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
+her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
+immediately called:
+
+'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'I cannot come,' he said.
+
+She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
+door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
+sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
+She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
+
+'Oh--go--go--go--when will she go?'
+
+He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
+
+'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.
+
+She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
+the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
+door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa'
+spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at
+Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
+helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
+forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
+one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
+kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because
+she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil
+from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she
+wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could
+not yield.
+
+The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
+not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
+have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
+the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
+flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
+The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.
+
+'Monday,' she whispered--'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should
+receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
+turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
+
+'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at
+a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 27_
+
+
+He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
+of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till
+they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a
+picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white,
+rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by
+the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
+still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
+west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like
+a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him,
+as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth
+was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
+Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very
+far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy
+eyes, came between again.
+
+He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
+house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
+feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
+she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
+door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
+
+'You have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she
+found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
+
+'Ay,' returned Siegmund.
+
+He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head
+between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
+
+'Will you have anything to eat?' she asked.
+
+He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and
+incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole
+of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her
+breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down
+and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor
+spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,
+querulous with trouble.
+
+'Aren't you going to bed?' she asked.
+
+Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half
+hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
+
+'Aren't you going to bed, Father?'
+
+Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of
+having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was
+not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again
+she sat waiting.
+
+'Father!' she cried at last.
+
+He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
+
+'Yes, I'm going,' he said.
+
+He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
+
+'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he
+did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to
+brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
+
+'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I
+must go to bed--I must go to bed--I am very tired.' He stumbled over the
+door mat into his own room.
+
+Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the
+sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,
+trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing
+up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in
+her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping
+sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to
+get into bed.
+
+'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He
+could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him
+pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action
+aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got
+things right at last, and was in bed.
+
+Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have
+called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his
+brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening
+rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of
+consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of
+consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.
+
+'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any
+noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to
+find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could
+remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately
+he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This
+frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the
+family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in
+silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort
+of sleep.
+
+He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.
+The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot
+vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.
+Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,
+and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a
+terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.
+
+Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture
+of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and
+running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His
+every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to
+stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the track of this
+drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start
+from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little
+muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the running of a
+spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not wipe himself he
+did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which
+seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which
+he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples. Those
+he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny,
+vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits,
+down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad
+quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet,
+highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with
+outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he
+endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst.
+
+He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of
+hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs.
+He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on
+the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he
+had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an
+instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as ever
+to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was
+clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his
+sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air
+entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar
+sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It
+seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and
+the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it
+he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and
+soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a
+sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.
+
+Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow
+and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was
+a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted
+something fresh and cool.
+
+Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air
+was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not
+clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out
+on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining
+duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in
+the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly
+to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into
+the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring
+restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The
+lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,
+moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered
+its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched
+it with wonder and delight.
+
+The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon
+would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony
+to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,
+crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the
+western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would
+laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its
+prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last
+run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself
+as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low
+off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no
+longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the
+disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning
+gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the
+mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west
+they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising
+higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the
+moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had
+gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As
+a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling
+with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching
+the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole
+field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse
+which floats on water.
+
+When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had
+finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were
+astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew
+he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at
+the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache
+and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.
+
+'Where is Helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.
+
+Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena
+was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was
+out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as
+if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head
+seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time he sat
+with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his present
+state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him
+with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant company of friends,
+the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts,
+was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing could
+please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the
+discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of
+life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and
+discoloured, racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset
+himself into joint? The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his
+children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his friends of the orchestra. How
+could he set himself again into joint with these? It was impossible.
+Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with
+humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena, which he
+could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night, the
+music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_ which was absurd. In fine, it was
+all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained
+possible? Why, to depart. 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' He
+could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
+
+But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an
+agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very
+well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,
+Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was
+insufferable--impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not
+strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return
+to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go
+to Helena.
+
+Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he
+could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the
+room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought
+of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood
+at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap
+would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
+
+'Very well!' said Siegmund, 'it is finally settled. I had better write
+to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I'd better
+tell her.'
+
+He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote
+nothing. At last he gave up.
+
+'Perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'She said she would
+come with me--perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When
+she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.'
+
+He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his
+pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
+
+'She will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with
+elation.
+
+'That is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if
+wondering whether to destroy it.
+
+'It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at
+Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,' he concluded.
+
+Then he sat down again.
+
+'"But for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself.
+
+'It is not fear,' he said. 'The act itself will be horrible and
+fearsome, but the after-death--it's no more than struggling awake when
+you're sick with a fright of dreams. "We are such stuff as dreams are
+made on."'
+
+Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so
+wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He
+experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness
+in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though
+here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held
+faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was
+cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness
+of his.
+
+The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to
+fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or
+of hate.
+
+Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was
+no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit
+and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer
+universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from
+its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to
+bear the responsibility of the deflection?
+
+Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his
+treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;
+otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would
+have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible
+parents weaker than himself.
+
+'I know the heart of life is kind,' said Siegmund, 'because I feel it.
+Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or
+anybody. We suffer, and we don't know why, often. Life doesn't explain.
+But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all,
+Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much
+zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair
+of Life.'
+
+It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the
+atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over
+to an imaginary god.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I can't help it. I do not feel altogether
+self-responsible.'
+
+The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been
+vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into
+a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at
+his door.
+
+'There are two letters for you. Father.'
+
+He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,
+and he had no idea of his time or place.
+
+'Oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard
+his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the
+throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of
+his body.
+
+'What made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. It was a very
+unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'She
+wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.'
+
+Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The
+discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not
+fetch in the letters.
+
+'Is it so late?' he said. 'Is there no more time for me?'
+
+He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked
+across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.
+He sat down on the bed.
+
+'What am I going to do?' he asked himself.
+
+By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his
+belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists
+into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man
+who is sick, incapable of thought or action.
+
+A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.
+
+'Here is your shaving-water,' said Beatrice in cold tones. 'It's half
+past nine.'
+
+'All right,' said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.
+
+'And what time shall you expect dinner?' asked Beatrice. She was still
+contemptuous.
+
+'Any time. I'm not going out,' he answered.
+
+He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he
+was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,
+bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He
+was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not
+keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he
+call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed
+his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was
+thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a
+mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with
+convulsive sickness.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 28_
+
+
+Siegmund's lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it
+became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up
+his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving
+the breakfast spread in the kitchen.
+
+Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner
+at two o'clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with
+her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it
+was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an
+hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning,
+when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with
+coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and
+determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and
+magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the
+grate, which was clear, Friday having been charwoman's day, passing
+swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. It was
+Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In the
+afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what
+occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to
+have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She
+was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come
+to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. Beatrice was going to do
+battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a
+proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust things out of sight,
+or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.
+
+He did not come, so her anger waxed.
+
+'He can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'Here I've been up
+since seven, broiling at it. I should think he's pitying himself. He
+ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work
+every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too
+little work. He has had too much his own way. But it's come to a stop
+now. I'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.'
+
+Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the
+bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of
+work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her
+wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table
+and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full
+intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness.
+She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her. As she was
+wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her
+hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting
+them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to make the
+beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so
+heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover
+breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself,
+she said loudly at Siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile:
+
+'Aren't you going to get up?'
+
+There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the
+gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.
+
+'It's after half past ten--aren't you going to get up?' she called.
+
+She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly
+she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of
+shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She
+returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. She
+waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the
+sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull
+and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring,
+so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front
+garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was
+open--everything seemed quiet.
+
+Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung
+them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some
+dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was
+no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes
+blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out
+on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his
+ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. She
+hurried to him.
+
+'Will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she
+asked wildly.
+
+'Why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly
+familiar. 'Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I'll come.'
+
+He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so
+loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs
+must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with
+a will.
+
+'Where is he, Mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the
+side passage.
+
+'He's in his bedroom, and I can't get an answer from him.'
+
+'Then I s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift
+one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was
+Siegmund's room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was
+studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and
+afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also knew
+there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.
+
+'Is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner.
+
+'Yes, over the porch,' replied Beatrice.
+
+The man bustled with his ladder.
+
+'It's easy enough,' he said. 'The door's open, and we're soon on the
+balcony.'
+
+He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious
+fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously
+clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the
+ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he
+was frightened.
+
+'I say there!' he called loudly.
+
+Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.
+
+'Go in!' she cried. 'Go in! Is he there?'
+
+The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and
+peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed
+slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to
+take flight.
+
+'Hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.
+
+Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner
+exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:
+
+'I believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!'
+
+'No!' cried Beatrice. 'No, no, no!'
+
+'I believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man.
+
+'Go in and see if he's dead!' cried Beatrice.
+
+The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.
+
+'I believe he is,' he said doubtfully.
+
+'No--go and see!' screamed Beatrice.
+
+The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the
+body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried
+to lift it down. It was too heavy.
+
+'I know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to
+do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between
+himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his
+way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the
+body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the
+scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled the
+body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with
+trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. It
+was bedded in Siegmund's neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it
+frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead
+man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his
+sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side
+naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved,
+ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on
+the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face
+hardly recognizable.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 29_
+
+
+Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive
+lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in
+a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
+
+The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
+in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
+had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
+north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
+Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed
+between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling
+companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of
+manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward.
+Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The
+north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
+English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
+whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could
+hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward
+whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding
+their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle
+disconcerted by this amusement.
+
+The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
+the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The
+men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went
+to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat
+weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the
+dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the
+women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought
+of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
+appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
+imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under
+arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
+lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
+
+The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
+and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
+There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
+dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
+flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
+came up.
+
+Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
+they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
+rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
+very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
+She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock,
+breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid
+blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
+and harsh.
+
+'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.
+
+The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
+rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
+in an ill humour.
+
+When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
+the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically
+the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walkuere_; in the second place,
+_Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a
+late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was
+a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of
+pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which
+suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided
+lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she stood on
+the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's
+love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.
+
+She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
+disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable
+because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in
+Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she
+forgot most whiles.
+
+On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of
+thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
+waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the
+mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her
+friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
+
+'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
+'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!'
+
+The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
+She hurried to the bed.
+
+'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the
+shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'
+
+'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's _lovely_--lovely!'
+
+There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
+shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
+shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
+spasmodically.
+
+'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did
+you see that?'
+
+She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
+Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
+
+'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the
+bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'
+
+'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
+jest.
+
+'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'
+
+Helena laughed ironically.
+
+'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
+
+'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
+offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
+know, it's not that I'm afraid....'
+
+The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
+
+Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
+friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
+feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
+opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
+blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
+being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
+thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
+had happened.
+
+Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
+persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
+
+'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
+
+No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
+to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
+a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
+storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
+The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
+feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
+
+She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
+have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
+grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
+
+'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
+happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
+spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
+dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
+impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'
+
+She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
+received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
+arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
+and see.'
+
+She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
+Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
+she went to sleep.
+
+The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
+wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
+her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
+reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
+of affairs.
+
+Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
+fatal awaited her.
+
+The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
+would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
+rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
+tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
+let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
+sat up:
+
+'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
+holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'
+
+'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
+sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'
+
+The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
+their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
+thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
+more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
+throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
+after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
+the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
+London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
+
+'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
+would come to me.'
+
+'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
+
+'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
+
+'I promise,' he answered.
+
+Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
+be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
+her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
+what it could.
+
+That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
+is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
+of suspense.
+
+Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
+this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
+platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
+great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
+planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
+could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
+prearranged everything minutely.
+
+After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
+
+'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
+----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
+holiday on the South Coast....'
+
+The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
+
+'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
+was expressed for the widow and children.'
+
+Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
+Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where
+she was going.
+
+'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a
+brick, it was like a brick.'
+
+She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
+lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
+side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house
+standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
+stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
+at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
+anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
+destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
+in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
+over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
+her with him?
+
+The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
+looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to
+return to Cornwall.
+
+'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
+suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
+a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
+eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
+wired the news:
+
+'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
+her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
+was chaotic.
+
+'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
+only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
+She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
+maiming her.
+
+As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
+mother opened to her.
+
+'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.
+
+'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the
+dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
+there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
+took it. It was from one of the London papers.
+
+'Inquest was held today upon the body of ----.'
+
+Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her
+mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
+
+'How did you get to know?' she asked.
+
+'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in
+her muted, toneless voice.
+
+'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.
+
+'No,' replied Helena.
+
+'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother
+hesitatingly.
+
+Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
+looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently
+to help her.
+
+For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her.
+Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by
+watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look.
+They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
+powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an
+unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
+ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
+
+'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.
+
+Helena shivered slightly.
+
+'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'
+
+Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
+night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
+When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
+yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
+Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.
+
+'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.
+
+'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
+immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
+entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
+erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
+haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
+himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
+
+'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.
+
+'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.
+
+The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
+cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
+in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
+broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
+could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
+to his head; he was thinking and praying.
+
+Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
+and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
+followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's
+room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed
+and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but
+occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her
+wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she
+uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and
+soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence,
+Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the
+light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail,
+and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
+bedside, and prayed.
+
+Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind
+of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to
+herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
+from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
+soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but
+she could not bear to be looked at.
+
+Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
+closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
+having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
+nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
+as she entered.
+
+'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.
+
+'Is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.
+
+'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'
+
+'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
+
+He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
+She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
+quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility
+upon himself.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 30_
+
+
+Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with
+full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
+the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
+When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's
+understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
+suspended.
+
+When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
+herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
+neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
+stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
+confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house,
+sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
+and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
+bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
+
+Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
+glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
+was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
+wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
+inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
+dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
+
+'The children!' she said to herself--'the children. I must live for the
+children; I must think for the children.'
+
+This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose
+from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back
+a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
+practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
+what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to
+understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
+exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
+blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the
+personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
+behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
+common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after
+the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of
+Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
+
+Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
+living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
+house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
+death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
+heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
+she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
+marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
+tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
+to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
+on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
+hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
+hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's
+father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
+further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
+grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
+Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
+come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
+was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
+doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The
+world was big with promise.
+
+Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice's
+establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
+was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
+blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
+attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
+hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
+sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
+less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
+was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
+learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
+an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
+done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
+Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
+remarkably small chin. He was naive, inclined to suffer in the first
+pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
+sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
+liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
+stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
+vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him.
+Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance,
+but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of the superior
+and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
+without hurting him.
+
+One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
+Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his
+elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past
+seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was
+setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room
+through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of
+the twilight.
+
+'What, you here all alone!' exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
+putting the children to bed. 'I thought you had gone out.'
+
+'No--o! What's the use,' replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
+landlady, 'of going out? There's nowhere to go.'
+
+'Oh, come! There's the Heath, and the City--and you must join a tennis
+club. Now I know just the thing--the club to which Vera belongs.'
+
+'Ah, yes! You go down to the City--but there's nothing there--what I
+mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the
+word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.'
+
+'Oh, don't say that!' exclaimed Beatrice. 'You want to enjoy life.'
+
+'Just so! Ah, just so!' exclaimed Mr Allport. 'But all the same--it's
+like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
+say--what's the good, after all? It's merely living because you've
+got to.'
+
+'You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
+differently myself; yet I'll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
+What's the trouble now?'
+
+'We-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
+say--it's nothing very definite. But, after all--what is there to do but
+to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That's the best way.'
+
+Beatrice became suddenly grave.
+
+'You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,' she said. 'You don't think of the
+others.'
+
+'I don't know,' he drawled. 'What does it matter? Look here--who'd care?
+What I mean to say--for long?'
+
+'That's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied Beatrice gravely.
+
+'Nevertheless,' said Mr. Allport, 'it's true--isn't it?'
+
+'It is not--and I _should_ know,' replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of
+reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and
+waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your
+difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You
+men, you're all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.'
+
+'Ah, but then,' said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,
+looking at Beatrice's black dress, 'I've no one depending on _me_.'
+
+'No--you haven't--but you've a mother and sister. The women always have
+to bear the brunt.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.
+
+'Yes, they do rather,' he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.
+
+'My husband--' began Beatrice. The young man waited. 'My husband was one
+of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he'd found it--he couldn't
+carry it off--and left it--to me.'
+
+Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.
+
+'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed softly. 'Surely he didn't--?'
+
+Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'I know what it is to bear that kind of thing--and it's
+no light thing, I can assure you.'
+
+There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.
+
+'And when was this, then--that he--?' asked Mr. Allport, almost with
+reverence.
+
+'Only last year,' replied Beatrice.
+
+Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by
+little Beatrice told him so much: 'Her husband had got entangled with
+another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last
+she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He
+had killed himself--hanged himself--and left her penniless. Her people,
+who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow them.
+She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for herself;
+it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their careless
+youth, that her heart was heavy.'
+
+There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and
+sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by
+tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.
+
+'Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?'
+
+'I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.'
+
+'Pray do not overlook me,' said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.
+
+'Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting
+with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.'
+
+'On the contrary,' replied Mr. Allport, 'Mrs. MacNair has been so good
+as to bear with me making a fool of myself.'
+
+'In what way?' asked Vera sharply.
+
+'Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,' said
+Beatrice playfully.
+
+'Unfortunately, I am not--or at least I am not yet aware of it,' said
+Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.
+
+She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the
+young man's knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped
+behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the
+richly darkening sky.
+
+'Don't look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it's all rind,' said Mr Allport
+in melancholy mockery. 'Somebody's bitten all the meat out of our slice
+of moon, and left us nothing but peel.'
+
+'It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell--one portion,'
+replied Vera.
+
+'Never mind, Miss MacNair,' he said, 'Whoever got the slice found it
+raw, I think.'
+
+'Oh, I don't know,' she said. 'But isn't it a beautiful evening? I will
+just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.'
+
+'What primroses?' he exclaimed.
+
+'Evening primroses--there are some.'
+
+'Are there?' he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.
+
+'Yes, come and look,' she said.
+
+The young man rose with alacrity.
+
+Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.
+
+'What, nobody in!' they heard him exclaim.
+
+'There is Holiday,' murmured Mr Allport resentfully.
+
+Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the
+fragrance.
+
+'Ho! that's where you are!' he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed
+Vera's trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress to
+betray herself.
+
+'What have you got?' he asked.
+
+'Nothing in particular,' replied Mr Allport.
+
+Mr Holiday sniggered.
+
+'Oh, well, if it's nothing particular and private--' said Mr Holiday,
+and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.
+
+'Curst fool!' muttered Mr Allport. 'I beg your pardon,' he added swiftly
+to Vera.
+
+'Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,' asked Vera, as if very friendly,
+'how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won't open while
+you're looking.'
+
+'No,' sniggered he, I don't blame 'em. Why should they give themselves
+away any more than you do? You won't open while you're watched.' He
+nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.
+
+After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in
+poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his
+teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.
+
+'Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not
+play now,' she replied.
+
+'But you will begin again,' pleaded Mr. Allport.
+
+'No, never!' she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The
+family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He
+watched her interestedly.
+
+'Mother used to play--' she began.
+
+'Vera!' said Beatrice reproachfully.
+
+'Let us have a song,' suggested Mr. Holiday.
+
+'Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,' said Vera, going to the
+music-rack.
+
+'Nay--I--it's not me,' Holiday began.
+
+'"The Village Blacksmith",' said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday
+advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.
+
+'But I have not touched the piano for--for years, I am sure,' protested
+Beatrice.
+
+'You can play beautifully,' said Vera.
+
+Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared
+at him. Vera remained very calm.
+
+At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went out
+abruptly.
+
+'Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow's jellies are not made,'
+laughed Vera.
+
+Allport looked at her, and was sad.
+
+When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She
+would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.
+
+Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half
+past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was
+studying a cookery-book.
+
+'You, too, at the midnight lamp!' exclaimed MacWhirter politely.
+
+'Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,' Beatrice replied.
+
+'We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,' smiled
+the young man ironically.
+
+'I must look after you,' said Beatrice.
+
+'You do--wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.'
+The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.
+
+'Because I scan a list of puddings?' smiled Beatrice uneasily.
+
+'For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for
+instance. That was very nice indeed.' He bowed to her.
+
+'Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.'
+
+'I opened the door,' said MacWhirter, bowing again.
+
+'It is not fair,' said Beatrice. 'I am clumsy now--clumsy. I once could
+play.'
+
+'You play excellently. Why that "once could"?' said MacWhirter.
+
+'Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,' she
+replied.
+
+'We,' said MacWhirter, 'are humble amateurs, and to us you are more than
+excellent.'
+
+'Good old Monsieur Fanniere, how he would scold me! He said I would not
+take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament. I
+always think Scripture false in French, do not you?'
+
+'Er--my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to
+say.'
+
+'No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.'
+
+'Ah--that would be very interesting.'
+
+'Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off everything.'
+
+'Alas!' assented MacWhirter, smiling.
+
+'Those times were very different from these,' said Beatrice.
+
+'I should think so,' said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.
+
+
+
+_Chapter 31_
+
+
+In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund's death, Helena
+sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed in blue
+linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a
+yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air of
+the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding with
+her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the song.
+She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.
+
+'I can't get it--it's no use. I think it's the swinging of the car
+prevents me getting the time,' she said.
+
+'These little outside things always come a victory over you,' he
+laughed.
+
+'Do they?' she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It
+was six o'clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a dim,
+warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the corners
+of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on her neck
+by the wind.
+
+'Do you know,' she said, 'it feels rather like rain.'
+
+'Then,' said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on
+the pavement, 'you certainly ought not to be out.'
+
+'I ought not,' she said, 'for I'm totally unprovided.'
+
+Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.
+
+Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill
+off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side
+stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two
+great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy declivity,
+at some height above the road, barking and urging boisterously. Helena
+and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was grey, as is usual, the
+other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the two pedestrians. Helena
+laughed at them.
+
+'They are--' she began, in her slow manner.
+
+'Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,' he continued.
+
+'No,' she said, 'they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.'
+
+'Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.'
+
+'It appears so,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs generally chum up to me,' he said.
+
+Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.
+
+'I remember,' she said, still laughing, 'at Knockholt--you--a half-grown
+lamb--a dog--in procession.' She marked the position of the three with
+her finger.
+
+'What an ass I must have looked!' he said.
+
+'Sort of silent Pied Piper,' she laughed.
+
+'Dogs do follow me like that, though,' he said.
+
+'They did Siegmund,' she said.
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed
+him home.'
+
+'Ah!' he exclaimed.
+
+'I remember, too,' she said, 'a little black-and-white kitten that
+followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in--she would not. And I remember
+finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don't think I ever
+quite forgave my mater that.'
+
+'More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the
+sufferings of men,' he said.
+
+She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.
+
+'For the latter, you see,' she replied, 'I am not responsible.'
+
+As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.
+
+'You know,' said Helena, 'if it begins it will continue all night. Look
+at that!'
+
+She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.
+
+'Had we better go back?' he asked.
+
+'Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we
+see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.'
+
+They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned
+away.
+
+'It is exactly a year today,' she said, as they-walked on the round
+shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. 'Exactly!'
+
+'What anniversary is it, then?' he inquired.
+
+'Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here--by the day, Thursday.
+We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the
+larch-wood?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'We will go, then,' she said.
+
+'History repeats itself,' he remarked.
+
+'How?' she asked calmly.
+
+He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.
+
+'I see no repetition,' she added.
+
+'No,' he exclaimed bitingly; 'you are right!'
+
+They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men
+unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the
+air. Though he was angry, he spoke.
+
+'They got that hay rather damp,' he said. 'Can't you smell it--like hot
+tobacco and sandal-wood?'
+
+'What, is that the stack?' she asked.
+
+'Yes, it's always like that when it's picked damp.'
+
+The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned
+on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning over
+the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as butter, full
+of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her head, looking in
+the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers without speaking.
+She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and looked up at him over
+the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue eyes. He smiled
+gently to her.
+
+'Isn't it nice?' he said. 'Aren't they fine bits?'
+
+She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her
+dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his place
+by her side.
+
+'I always like the gold-green of cut fields,' he said. 'They seem to
+give off sunshine even when the sky's greyer than a tabby cat.'
+
+She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing
+field on her right.
+
+They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into
+sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly
+whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather
+intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was
+exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.
+
+The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried
+trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now
+and again he would look down passages between the trees--narrow pillared
+corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a
+twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood
+still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,
+causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At a
+bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a
+larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of
+congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.
+
+'I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,' he said to
+himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:
+
+'Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks make
+a brown mist, a brume?'
+
+She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.
+
+'H'm? Yes, I see what you mean.'
+
+She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.
+
+'That's the larch fog,' he laughed.
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.'
+
+He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.
+
+'It laughs through its teeth,' he said, smiling, playing with everything
+he touched.
+
+As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,
+picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if
+pleased by a coincidence.
+
+'Last year,' she said, 'the larch-fingers stole both my pins--the same
+ones.'
+
+He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a ghost
+with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him swinging down
+the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was doing at the
+moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always felt a deep
+sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he
+hated Helena.
+
+They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley--one of those wide
+hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry held
+loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark blue
+dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena's dress. They walked on
+a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for shelter.
+
+'Here,' said Byrne--'here is our tent--a black tartar's--ready pitched.'
+
+He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood just
+back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good
+shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked
+under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was
+falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the
+monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone
+intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on
+the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the
+'tong-ting-tong' of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in
+the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the
+growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each
+other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit
+better than where they stood before.
+
+'That's like us all,' said Byrne whimsically. 'We're all penned out on a
+wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else is,
+it would be deliciously cosy.'
+
+Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and
+fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his
+eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without
+apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and unconsciously
+increasing the pressure.
+
+'You are cold,' he said.
+
+'Only my hands, and they usually are,' she replied gently.
+
+'And mine are generally warm.'
+
+'I know that,' she said. 'It's almost the only warmth I get now--your
+hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.'
+
+'As good as a baked potato,' he said.
+
+She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.
+
+'So many calories per week--isn't that how we manage it?' he asked. 'On
+credit?'
+
+She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,
+which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their
+cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.
+
+'Tong-tong, tong,' went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.
+
+Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena's home to
+read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in his
+own language.
+
+In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.
+He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.
+Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.
+
+'I shan't knock it--it is all right,' he had said, protesting.
+
+This was Siegmund's violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and
+Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.
+
+'It was all right,' he repeated.
+
+'But you were not,' she had replied gently.
+
+Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in
+a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his
+gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to
+Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself
+delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.
+By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He
+relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what
+he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.
+
+'The Babes in the Wood,' he teased.
+
+Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird
+began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.
+
+'That little beggar sees it's a hopeless case, so he reminds us of
+heaven. But if he's going to cover us with yew-leaves, he's set
+himself a job.'
+
+Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing
+her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke
+for a while.
+
+'The rain continues,' he said.
+
+'And will do,' she added, laughing.
+
+'Quite content,' he said.
+
+The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.
+
+'"Strew on us roses, roses,"' quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in
+wistful mockery: '"And never a sprig of yew"--eh?'
+
+Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and
+weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against him.
+
+'Shall it not be so--no yew?' he murmured.
+
+He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on
+her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held
+them up.
+
+'I shall make marks on you,' he said.
+
+'They will come off,' she replied.
+
+'Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars off
+us.'
+
+'Some scars don't seem to go,' she smiled.
+
+And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his
+side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from
+last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.
+
+'But it's wearing off--even that,' he said wistfully.
+
+Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a
+hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and
+took off her hat.
+
+'That is better,' he said.
+
+'I was afraid of the pins,' said she.
+
+'I've been dodging them for the last hour,' he said, laughing, as she
+put her arms under his coat again for warmth.
+
+She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and
+helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek
+against hers.
+
+'I want rest and warmth,' she said, in her dull tones.
+
+'All right!' he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trespasser, by D. H. Lawrence
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