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.