Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender

advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother,

all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and

avoided his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a

dignity which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the

repeated flagrant questionings of the mother’s eyes. But the day wore

on. Helena pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a

little, mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.

At last the night fell.

“Well,” said Helena to her mother, “I suppose I’d better pack.”

“Haven’t you done it?” cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise.

“You’ll never have it done. I’d better help you. What times does the

train go?”

Helena smiled.

“Ten minutes to ten.”

Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was

ample time for everything.

“Nevertheless, you’d better look sharp,” Mrs Verden said.

Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.

“I’ll come with you to the station,” suggested Mrs Verden. “I’ll see

the last of you. We shan’t see much of you just now.”

Helena turned round in surprise.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother,” she said, fearing to make her disapproval too

evident.

“Yes—I will—I’ll see you off.”

Mrs Verden’s animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was

curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she

was reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she

played the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general

distress.

Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her

dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her

eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced

away swiftly as if she had been burned.

“How stupid I look!” she said to herself. “And Siegmund, how is he, I

wonder?”

She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,

how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.

Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was

ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time

Louisa came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank

into a chair.

“I don’t want to go, Nell,” she said, after a few moments of silence.

“Why, how is that?” asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as

to a child.

“Oh, I don’t know; I’m tired,” said the other petulantly.

“Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?” said

Helena.

“And rushing about packing,” exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an

exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I want to go, dear,” repeated Louisa

dejectedly.

“Well, it is time we set out,” replied Helena, rising. “Will you carry

the basket or the violin, Mater?”

Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.

The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is

only smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken

day. Such was Helena’s longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In

one corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them.

Helena sat mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights

of a third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her

sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation

in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering.

Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur

of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: “Two hundred and forty

miles—two hundred and forty miles.”

XXV

Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time

Beatrice, who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an

outburst of angry hysteria.

“When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?” she had

asked him coldly.

He knew she was wondering about money.

“Tomorrow—if ever,” he had answered.

She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her

anger flashed out like sudden lightning at his “if ever”.

“What do you think you _can_ do?” she cried. “For I think you have done

enough. We can’t do as we like altogether—indeed, indeed we cannot. You

have had your fling, haven’t you? You have had your fling, and you want

to keep on. But there’s more than one person in the world. Remember

that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?

You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be

responsible for your children, do you think?”

“I said nothing about shirking the engagement,” replied Siegmund, very

coldly.

“No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there

sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the

children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you

_I’ll_ stop, I tell you _I’ll_ do as I like. _I’ll_ go as well. No, I

wouldn’t be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn’t leave

little children—to the workhouse or anything. They’re my children; they

mightn’t be yours.”

“There is no need for this,” said Siegmund contemptuously.

The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely

sick.

Beatrice’s dark eyes flashed with rage.

“Isn’t there!” she cried. “Oh, isn’t there? No, there is need for a

great deal more. I don’t know what you think I am. How much farther do

you think you can go? No, you don’t like reminding of us. You sit

moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I

wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put

up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of your

hand?”

“Be quiet!” shouted Siegmund. “Don’t I know what you are? Listen to

yourself!”

Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot

wrath. Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low

and trembling.

“You coward—you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I

who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know

what I am.”

Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him

with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were

bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate

and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had

withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength

should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by

anger, which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise.

He trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.

Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering

slightly, and her eyes were fixed.

Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they

found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.

Vera tackled the situation.

“Is the table ready to be cleared yet?” she asked in an unpleasant

tone.

Her father’s cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the

others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made

no reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.

Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.

“Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked

a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.”

Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child

looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.

“Mam, there was a lady had a dog—”

“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera sharply.

The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was

taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on

the tray. Gwen’s eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her

father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated

in her softest and most persuasive tones:

“Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher’s shop and licked a piece of

meat. Mam, Mam!”

There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother’s

knee.

“Mam!” she pleaded timidly.

No response.

“Mam!” she whispered.

She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at

her mother’s breast.

“Mam!” she whispered shrilly.

Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of

tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child’s shoulders, drew her

close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest

face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to

whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.

“Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog—”

Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her

nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,

she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the

tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears

gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a

muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of

rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room

was the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without

the trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked

low; he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.

Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the

scullery. There came the low sound of women’s talking—an angry, ominous

sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard

cautiously asking:

“Mam, is dad cross—is he? What did he do?”

“Don’t bother!” snapped Vera. “You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take

this into the dining-room, and don’t drop it.”

The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her

sister. The latter pushed a dish into her hand.

“Go along,” she said, gently thrusting the child forth.

Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained

unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was

afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came

slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round

the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from

the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her

small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes,

waiting and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a

man does who watches the surgeon’s lancet suspended over his wound.

Would the child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands?

He held his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What

he should do he did not know.

He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to

another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He

wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something

against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the

world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his

face against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like

a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now—his

heart halted again in suspense—he knew not what he would do. It would

open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast

with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.

“Gwen!” called Vera, wondering why she did not return. “Gwen!”

“Yes,” answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,

hesitate, move, then turn away.

She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned

stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so

bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,

pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,

his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He

lay down on the bed.

For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end

of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at

work—an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,

jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o’clock he sat up. A cramped

pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically

shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after

two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands again,

smiling.

“It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,” he said to

himself.

His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if

weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at

intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.

“I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,” he said to himself,

and instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere.

“But I must be getting ready. I can’t disappoint her,” said Siegmund.

The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to

her, “Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,” then he might

lie down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head.

If she could hold his head in her hands—for she had fine, silken hands

that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up

in life—then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.

This was the one thing that remained for his restoration—that she

should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for

it utterly—for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.

“But it is no good,” he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.

“What time is it?”

It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was

time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.

“I am forgetting again,” he said. “But I do not want to go. What is the

good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.”

He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.

Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.

“Goodness,” he said, “it’s getting quite dark!”

It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to

wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and

his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual.

It was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically

dark, though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the

children were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.

Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the

path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran out

crying:

“Are you going out? Where are you going?”

Siegmund stood still and looked at her.

“She is frightened,” he said to himself, smiling ironically.

“I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very

long.”

“Wimbledon, at this time!” said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.

“Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.”

He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.

“You need not keep us sitting up,” she said.

He did not answer, but hurried to the station.

XXVI

Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western

platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little

packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive

stopped before the indicator.

“The next train for Waterloo,” she announced, in her contralto voice,

“is 10.30. It is now 10.12.”

“We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,” said Helena.

Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.

“Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We

sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a

prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.”

“You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,” cried Louisa,

skittish.

“My dear Louisa,” rang out Olive’s contralto, “don’t judge me by

appearances. You’re sure to be taken in. With me it’s a case of

“‘Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she’s sad,

And the sadness of her sadness when she’s glad!’”

She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say

something, chimed in sarcastically:

“‘They are nothing to her madness—’”

“When she’s going for a holiday, dear,” cried Olive.

“Oh, go on being mad,” cried Louisa.

“What, do you like it? I thought you’d be thanking Heaven that sanity

was given me in large doses.”

“And holidays in small,” laughed Louisa. “Good! No, I like your

madness, if you call it such. You are always so serious.”

“‘It’s ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged,’ dear,”

boomed Olive.

She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,

acknowledging the sarcasm.

“But,” said Louisa, smiling anxiously, “I don’t quite see it. What’s

the point?”

“Well, to be explicit, dear,” replied Olive, “it is hardly safe to

accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.”

Louisa laughed and shook herself.

“Come to think of it, it isn’t,” she said.

Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating

thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they

made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For

a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick

on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered

under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was

already twenty-five minutes past ten.

She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to

the platform.

“Here I am!” he said. “Where is Louisa?”

Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at

Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she

could not read him.

“Olive is there, too,” she explained.

Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated

amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made

things more complex.

“Does she—your other friend—does she know?” he asked.

“She knows nothing,” replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him

forward to be introduced.

“How do you do?” replied Olive in most mellow contralto. “Behold the

dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our

perils?”

“I will, since I may not do more,” replied Siegmund, smiling,

continuing: “And how is Sister Louisa?”

“She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,” cried Louisa,

vindictive, triumphant.

There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He

understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really good

friends.

“It is your turn now,” he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.

He and Helena walked down the platform.

“How did you find things at home?” he asked her.

“Oh, as usual,” she replied indifferently. “And you?”

“Just the same,” he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then

added: “The children are happier without me.”

“Oh, you mustn’t say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.

“It’s not true.”

“It’s all right, dear,” he answered. “So long as they are happy, it’s

all right.” After a pause he added: “But I feel pretty bad tonight.”

Helena’s hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the

platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a

haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet

swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst

sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps

settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came

thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of

carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and

the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the

green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness.

Still watching the distance where the train had vanished, he said:

“Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go

on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his

eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound

of his voice, lacking resonance—the dead, expressionless tone—made her

lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.

“What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.

What has happened at home? What are you going to do?” she said sharply.

She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.

Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken

away her hold over him.

“There is nothing fresh the matter at home,” he replied wearily. He was

to be scourged with emotion again. “I swear it,” he added. “And I have

not made up my mind. But I can’t think of life without you—and life

must go on.”

“And I swear,” she said wrathfully, turning at bay, “that I won’t live

a day after you.”

Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up

scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: “Ah, don’t speak to

me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train

out tonight there is nothing left.”

Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.

They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo

train was to leave from another platform.

“You’d better come,” said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards

Louisa and Olive.

“We’ve got to change platforms,” cried Louisa, running forward and

excitedly announcing the news.

“Yes,” replied Helena, pale and impassive.

Siegmund picked up the luggage.

“I say,” cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,

“look—look—both of you—look at that hat!” A lady in front was wearing

on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. “It’s the

sight of a lifetime. I wouldn’t have you miss it,” added Olive in

hoarse _sotto voce_.

“Indeed not!” cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. “Get

a good view of it, Olive. Let’s have a good mental impression of it—one

that will last.”

“That’s right, dear,” said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.

Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him

ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly

animated to the calmly ironical.

“After all, dear,” she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,

“it’s not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.”

Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.

“Just now, at any rate,” she rejoined.

As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena

watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.

“Perhaps it is as well,” she thought. “We needn’t talk. There will be

three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would

make Siegmund talk.”

She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.

Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and

then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other

two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.

She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other

people entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.

When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but

Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw

her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and

immediately called:

“You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?”

He shook his head.

“I cannot come,” he said.

She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the

door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and

sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.

She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:

“Oh—go—go—go—when will she go?”

He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.

“Would you like to come to the window?” a man asked of Helena kindly.

She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled

the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the

door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her

“Hawwa” spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking

at Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of

helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His

forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath

one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a

kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her

because she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only

recoil from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone.

Yet she wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he

could not yield.

The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did

not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to

have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,

the guard’s whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm

flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.

The train began to move, drawing Helena’s hand from his.

“Monday,” she whispered—“Monday,” meaning that on Monday she should

receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,

turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.

“Now, dear, we are manless,” said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt

at a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.

XXVII

He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory

of Helena’s last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists

till they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers.

Like a picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena’s face, white,

rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible

by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,

still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing

west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund

like a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of

him, as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the

cloth was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on

intensely. Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of

Cornwall, very far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a

mask, with heavy eyes, came between again.

He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his

house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of

feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively

she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the

door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.

“You have been over an hour,” she said, still more troubled when she

found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.

“Ay,” returned Siegmund.

He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head

between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.

“Will you have anything to eat?” she asked.

He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and

incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole

of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her

breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat

down and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved

nor spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep,

querulous with trouble.

“Aren’t you going to bed?” she asked.

Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half

hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:

“Aren’t you going to bed, Father?”

Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of

having to move. He looked at her confusedly.

“Yes, I’m going,” he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was

not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again

she sat waiting.

“Father!” she cried at last.

He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.

“Yes, I’m going,” he said.

He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.

“If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,” she thought, but he

did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to

brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.

“I’ll pick it up in the morning,” he said, continuing deliriously: “I

must go to bed—I must go to bed—I am very tired.” He stumbled over the

door mat into his own room.

Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the

sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,

trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing

up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again

in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping

sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to

get into bed.

“One must sleep,” he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He

could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him

pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action

aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got

things right at last, and was in bed.

Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have

called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his

brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening

rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of

consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of

consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.

“What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any

noise? Do I disturb them?” he wondered, and he tried to cast back to

find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could

remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately

he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This

frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the

family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in

silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort of

sleep.

He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.

The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with

hot vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.

Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,

and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing,

a terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.

Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite

torture of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one

gathering and running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of

his neck. His every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move

more than to stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the

track of this drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop

would start from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among

the little muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the

running of a spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not

wipe himself he did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible

tickling, which seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the

effort to move, which he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead

down his temples. Those he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they

started again, in tiny, vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest,

from under his armpits, down the inner sides of his thighs, till he

seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of a myriad running insects

over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling,

one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He

felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or

suffocate and burst.

He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff

of hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his

legs. He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He

sat on the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place

where he had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then,

in an instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as

ever to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was

clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his

sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air

entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar

sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It

seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and

the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it

he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and

soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt

a sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.

Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow

and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There

was a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted

something fresh and cool.

Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air

was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not

clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked

out on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was

shining duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of

him, in the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited

breathlessly to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning

jumped up into the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird

stirring restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner,

greyer. The lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the

arm of day, moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself,

flickered its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly.

Siegmund watched it with wonder and delight.

The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor

moon would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the

balcony to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a

half-moon, crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly

over to the western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the

sun would laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing

with its prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making

its last run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing

to itself as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however,

leaped low off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away.

Siegmund no longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation

amid the disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white

lightning gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose

up from the mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even

in the west they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned,

rising higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold

across the moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink

butterflies had gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies

in the fens. As a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff

after puff filling with whiteness the space which had been the night.

Siegmund sat watching the last morning blowing in across the mown

darkness, till the whole field of the world was exposed, till the moon

was like a dead mouse which floats on water.

When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had

finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were

astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew

he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair

at the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an

ache and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.

“Where is Helena?” he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.

Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow.

Helena was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He

alone was out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his

shoulders as if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while

his head seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time

he sat with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his

present state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind

stirred him with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant

company of friends, the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered

itself to his thoughts, was met by an angry contempt, was rejected

scornfully. As nothing could please or distract him, the only thing

that remained was to support the discord. He felt as if he were a limb

out of joint from the body of life: there occurred to his imagination a

disjointed finger, swollen and discoloured, racked with pains. The

question was, How should he reset himself into joint? The body of life

for him meant Beatrice, his children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his

friends of the orchestra. How could he set himself again into joint

with these? It was impossible. Towards his family he would henceforward

have to bear himself with humility. That was a cynicism. He would have

to leave Helena, which he could not do. He would have to play

strenuously, night after night, the music of _The Saucy Little Switzer_

which was absurd. In fine, it was all absurd and impossible. Very well,

then, that being so, what remained possible? Why, to depart. “If thine

hand offend thee, cut it off.” He could cut himself off from life. It

was plain and straightforward.

But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an

agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very

well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home,

Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was

insufferable—impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not

strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and

return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and

go to Helena.

Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which

he could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round

the room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had

thought of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His

portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A

portmanteau strap would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!

“Very well!” said Siegmund, “it is finally settled. I had better write

to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I’d better tell

her.”

He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote

nothing. At last he gave up.

“Perhaps it is just as well,” he said to himself. “She said she would

come with me—perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When

she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.”

He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his

pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.

“She will come with me,” he said to himself, and his heart rose with

elation.

“That is a cowardice,” he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if

wondering whether to destroy it.

“It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at

Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,” he concluded.

Then he sat down again.

“‘But for that fear of something after-death,’” he quoted to himself.

“It is not fear,” he said. “The act itself will be horrible and

fearsome, but the after-death—it’s no more than struggling awake when

you’re sick with a fright of dreams. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are

made on.’”

Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so

wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He

experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness

in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though

here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly

held faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was

cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness of

his.

The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to

fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or

of hate.

Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was

no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit

and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer

universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from

its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to

bear the responsibility of the deflection?

Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his

treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room;

otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would

have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible

parents weaker than himself.

“I know the heart of life is kind,” said Siegmund, “because I feel it.

Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or

anybody. We suffer, and we don’t know why, often. Life doesn’t explain.

But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After

all, Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally,

as much zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair

of Life.”

It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the

atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it

over to an imaginary god.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t help it. I do not feel altogether

self-responsible.”

The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been

vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into

a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at his

door.

“There are two letters for you. Father.”

He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance,

and he had no idea of his time or place.

“Oh, all right,” he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He

heard his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the

throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his

body.

“What made her bring me the letters?” he asked himself. It was a very

unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: “She

wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.”

Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The

discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not

fetch in the letters.

“Is it so late?” he said. “Is there no more time for me?”

He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked

across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten.

He sat down on the bed.

“What am I going to do?” he asked himself.

By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his

belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists

into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man

who is sick, incapable of thought or action.

A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.

“Here is your shaving-water,” said Beatrice in cold tones. “It’s half

past nine.”

“All right,” said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.

“And what time shall you expect dinner?” asked Beatrice. She was still

contemptuous.

“Any time. I’m not going out,” he answered.

He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for

he was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking,

bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose.

He was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could

not keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor

could he call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he

performed his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he

was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a

mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with convulsive

sickness.

XXVIII

Siegmund’s lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it

became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up

his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving

the breakfast spread in the kitchen.

Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner

at two o’clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with

her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it

was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an

hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still

morning, when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was

dusked with coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved

rapidly and determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old

newspapers and magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing

the litter in the grate, which was clear, Friday having been

charwoman’s day, passing swiftly, lightly over the front of the

furniture with the duster. It was Saturday, when she did not spend much

time over the work. In the afternoon she was going out with Vera. That

was not, however, what occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work.

She had determined to have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how

matters should continue. She was going to have no more of the past

three years’ life; things had come to a crisis, and there must be an

alteration. Beatrice was going to do battle, therefore she flew at her

work, thus stirring herself up to a proper heat of blood. All the time,

as she thrust things out of sight, or straightened a cover, she

listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.

He did not come, so her anger waxed.

“He can lie skulking in bed!” she said to herself. “Here I’ve been up

since seven, broiling at it. I should think he’s pitying himself. He

ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work

every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too

little work. He has had too much his own way. But it’s come to a stop

now. I’ll servant-housekeeper him no longer.”

Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the

bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of

work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her

wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table

and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full

intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in

uneasiness. She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her.

As she was wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her

that her hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and

putting them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to

make the beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was

beating so heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to

recover breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling

herself, she said loudly at Siegmund’s door, her voice coldly hostile:

“Aren’t you going to get up?”

There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the

gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.

“It’s after half past ten—aren’t you going to get up?” she called.

She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly

she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of

shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it.

She returned and knocked swiftly at her husband’s door, not speaking.

She waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in

the sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was

dull and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural

ring, so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the

front garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was

open—everything seemed quiet.

Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung

them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply;

some dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl.

There was no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her

black eyes blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin

temples, out on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just

pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down

the road. She hurried to him.

“Will you come and see if there’s anything wrong with my husband?” she

asked wildly.

“Why, mum?” answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly

familiar. “Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I’ll come.”

He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so

loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs

must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with a

will.

“Where is he, Mum?” he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the

side passage.

“He’s in his bedroom, and I can’t get an answer from him.”

“Then I s’ll want a ladder,” said the window-cleaner, proceeding to

lift one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which

was Siegmund’s room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he

was studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began,

and afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also

knew there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.

“Is it the least of the front rooms he’s in?” asked the window-cleaner.

“Yes, over the porch,” replied Beatrice.

The man bustled with his ladder.

“It’s easy enough,” he said. “The door’s open, and we’re soon on the

balcony.”

He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious

fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously

clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the

ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he

was frightened.

“I say there!” he called loudly.

Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.

“Go in!” she cried. “Go in! Is he there?”

The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and

peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed

slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to

take flight.

“Hie, hie!” he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.

Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner

exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:

“I believe ’e’s ’anged ’imself from the door-’ooks!”

“No!” cried Beatrice. “No, no, no!”

“I believe ’e ’as!” repeated the man.

“Go in and see if he’s dead!” cried Beatrice.

The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.

“I believe he is,” he said doubtfully.

“No—go and see!” screamed Beatrice.

The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the

body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried

to lift it down. It was too heavy.

“I know!” he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something

to do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between

himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his

way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the

body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the

scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled

the body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with

trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran.

It was bedded in Siegmund’s neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it

frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead

man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his

sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his

side naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite

unnerved, ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay

heaped on the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him,

his face hardly recognizable.

XXIX

Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and

Olive lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in

rest, in a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.

The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour

in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they

had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five

north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,

Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were

distributed between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy

travelling companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank

honesty of manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out

westward. Helena began to count the miles that separated her from

Siegmund. The north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in

their uncouth English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they

furtively drank whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls.

As much could hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned

forward whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats

laughing, hiding their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who

were a trifle disconcerted by this amusement.

The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting

the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness.

The men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and

went to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena

sat weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and

the dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor

the women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She

thought of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the

appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She

imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the

under arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve

of his lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.

The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs

and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.

There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly

dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of

flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun

came up.

Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there

they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train

rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were

very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?

She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o’clock,

breakfast-time, the ”dauntless three” were driving in a waggonette amid

blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious

and harsh.

“Why am I doing this?” Helena asked herself.

The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to

rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling

in an ill humour.

When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In

the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost

identically the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walküre_; in the second

place, _Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the

flowers of a late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third

place, it was a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning

baths, of pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam

which suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of

divided lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she

stood on the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits

of Isolde’s love, bits of Tristan’s anguish, to Siegmund.

She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much

disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was

miserable because of Siegmund’s silence, but there was so much of

enchantment in Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high

spirits, that she forgot most whiles.

On Monday night, towards two o’clock, there came a violent storm of

thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,

waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds;

the mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched

her friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.

“There, wasn’t that lovely!” cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.

“Oo, wasn’t it magnificent!—glorious!”

The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.

She hurried to the bed.

“I say, dear!” she exclaimed, “may I come into the fold? I prefer the

shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.”

“Don’t you like it?” cried Louisa. “I think it’s _lovely_—lovely!”

There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and

shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging

shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other

spasmodically.

“There!” exclaimed the former, breathless. “That was fine! Helena, did

you see that?”

She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.

Helena’s answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.

“There’s no accounting for tastes,” said Olive, taking a place in the

bed. “I can’t say I’m struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?”

“I’m not struck yet,” replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a

jest.

“Thank you, dear,” said Olive; “you do me the honour of catching hold.”

Helena laughed ironically.

“Catching what?” asked Louisa, mystified.

“Why, dear,” answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, “I

offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You

know, it’s not that I’m afraid….”

The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.

Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one

friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical

feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night

opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with

blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were

being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The

thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something had

happened.

Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,

persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.

“What a deluge!” exclaimed Louisa.

No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no

mood to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window,

nursing a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was

awake; the storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She

felt bruised. The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside

represented her feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of

disaster.

She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could

have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued

with grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.

“But no,” she said to herself, “it is impossible anything should have

happened to him—I should have known. I should have known the moment his

spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without

dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is

impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.”

She was very certain that in event of Siegmund’s death, she would have

received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might

arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.

“Nevertheless,” she said at last, “if I don’t hear tomorrow I will go

and see.”

She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by

Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this

she went to sleep.

The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress.

Her wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited

upon her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming

painful by reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part

of the state of affairs.

Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that

something fatal awaited her.

The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she

would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa

rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed

tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be

let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat

up:

“Oh, I know I’m a pig, dear, am I not?” she exclaimed. “Spoiling your

holiday. But I couldn’t help it, dear, indeed I could not.”

“My dear Lou!” cried Olive in tragic contralto. “Don’t refrain for my

sake. The bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.”

The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to

their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same

thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything

more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is

throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour

after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All

the time Helena’s heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in

London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.

“Promise me,” she had said, “if ever I were sick and wanted you, you

would come to me.”

“I would come to you from hell!” Siegmund had replied.

“And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?” she had added.

“I promise,” he answered.

Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only

could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron

across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The

train did what it could.

That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there

is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of

suspense.

Towards six o’clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that

this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the

platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the

great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had

planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she

could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had

prearranged everything minutely.

After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.

“The funeral took place, at two o’clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of

——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a

holiday on the South Coast….”

The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.

“Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy

was expressed for the widow and children.”

Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.

Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing

where she was going.

“That was what I got,” she said, months afterwards; “and it was like a

brick, it was like a brick.”

She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy

lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either

side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund’s house

standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she

stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking

at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going

anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no

destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned

in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund

over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken

her with him?

The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena

looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her

to return to Cornwall.

“I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of

suspense,” said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch

a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to

eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she

wired the news:

“Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.”

This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of

her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind

was chaotic.

“It was like a brick,” she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the

only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.

She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and

maiming her.

As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her

mother opened to her.

“What, are you alone?” cried Mrs. Verden.

“Yes. Louisa did not come up,” replied Helena, passing into the

dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if

there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and

took it. It was from one of the London papers.

“Inquest was held today upon the body of ——.”

Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse.

Her mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.

“How did you get to know?” she asked.

“I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,” replied the daughter,

in her muted, toneless voice.

“Did you go to the house?” asked the mother sharply.

“No,” replied Helena.

“I was wondering whether to send you that paper,” said her mother

hesitatingly.

Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,

looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently to

help her.

For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before

her. Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate

her by watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her

look. They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt

powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.

“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” asked the father at last. He was an

unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose

ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.

“Won’t you go to rest, Nellie?” he repeated.

Helena shivered slightly.

“Do, my dear,” her mother pleaded. “Let me take you to bed.”

Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this

night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.

When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,

yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.

Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother’s gaze.

“Shall I leave you the candle?” said Mrs Verden.

“No, blow it out,” replied the daughter. The mother did so, and

immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she

entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,

erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were

haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating

himself. His hands were tightly clasped.

“Will she be all right if you leave her?” he asked.

“We must listen,” replied the mother abruptly.

The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden

cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor

in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of

broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One

could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand

to his head; he was thinking and praying.

Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,

and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband

followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter’s

room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena’s aspect distressed

and alarmed her. The girl’s face was masked as if in sleep, but

occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror.

Her wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to

time she uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her

hands and soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother’s

presence, Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and

turned out the light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put

on the bed-rail, and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled

down by his own bedside, and prayed.

Mrs Verden watched her daughter’s delirium, and all the time, in a kind

of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came

to herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned

from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could

soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother’s presence,

but she could not bear to be looked at.

Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her

closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,

having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his

nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up

as she entered.

“She is asleep,” whispered the wife hoarsely.

“Is it a—a natural sleep?” hesitated the husband.

“Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.”

“Thank God!” whispered the father, almost inaudibly.

He held his wife’s hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.

She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the

quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility upon

himself.

XXX

Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund’s death fall with

full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet

the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.

When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul’s

understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally

suspended.

When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed

herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a

neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and

stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with

confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund’s house,

sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera

and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the

bedroom of Siegmund was locked.

Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift

glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She

was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts

wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his

inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself

dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.

“The children!” she said to herself—“the children. I must live for the

children; I must think for the children.”

This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness

rose from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend

back a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too

practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and

what ought not, ever to put herself in her father’s place and try to

understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,

exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to

blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over

the personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing

behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By

common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible

after the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The

memory of Siegmund began to fade rapidly.

Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of

living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the

house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the

death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her

heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom

she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading

marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the

tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again

to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves

on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and

hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of

hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund’s

father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready

further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his

grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in

Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to

come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice

was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but

doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering.

The world was big with promise.

Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice’s

establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan

was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable

blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone

attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right

hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him

sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of

less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he

was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily

learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always

an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have

done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.

Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a

remarkably small chin. He was naïve, inclined to suffer in the first

pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,

sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera

liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very

stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was

vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to

him. Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty

appearance, but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of

the superior and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him

into shape without hurting him.

One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,

Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with

his elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was

half-past seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed

the sun was setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered

into the room through the open window; towards the south the moon was

budding out of the twilight.

“What, you here all alone!” exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from

putting the children to bed. “I thought you had gone out.”

“No—o! What’s the use,” replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his

landlady, “of going out? There’s nowhere to go.”

“Oh, come! There’s the Heath, and the City—and you must join a tennis

club. Now I know just the thing—the club to which Vera belongs.”

“Ah, yes! You go down to the City—but there’s nothing there—what I mean

to say—you want a pal—and even then—well”—he drawled the word—“we-ell,

it’s merely escaping from yourself—killing time.”

“Oh, don’t say that!” exclaimed Beatrice. “You want to enjoy life.”

“Just so! Ah, just so!” exclaimed Mr Allport. “But all the same—it’s

like this—you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to

say—what’s the good, after all? It’s merely living because you’ve got

to.”

“You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it

differently myself; yet I’ll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.

What’s the trouble now?”

“We-ell—you can’t lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to

say—it’s nothing very definite. But, after all—what is there to do but

to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That’s the best way.”

Beatrice became suddenly grave.

“You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,” she said. “You don’t think of the

others.”

“I don’t know,” he drawled. “What does it matter? Look here—who’d care?

What I mean to say—for long?”

“That’s all very easy, but it’s cowardly,” replied Beatrice gravely.

“Nevertheless,” said Mr. Allport, “it’s true—isn’t it?”

“It is not—and I _should_ know,” replied Beatrice, drawing a cloak of

reserve ostentatiously over her face. Mr. Allport looked at her and

waited. Beatrice relaxed toward the pessimistic young man.

“Yes,” she said, “I call it very cowardly to want to get out of your

difficulties in that way. Think what you inflict on other people. You

men, you’re all selfish. The burden is always left for the women.”

“Ah, but then,” said Mr. Allport very softly and sympathetically,

looking at Beatrice’s black dress, “I’ve no one depending on _me_.”

“No—you haven’t—but you’ve a mother and sister. The women always have

to bear the brunt.”

Mr. Allport looked at Beatrice, and found her very pathetic.

“Yes, they do rather,” he replied sadly, tentatively waiting.

“My husband—” began Beatrice. The young man waited. “My husband was one

of your sort: he ran after trouble, and when he’d found it—he couldn’t

carry it off—and left it—to me.”

Mr. Allport looked at her very sympathetically.

“You don’t mean it!” he exclaimed softly. “Surely he didn’t—?”

Beatrice nodded, and turned aside her face.

“Yes,” she said. “I know what it is to bear that kind of thing—and it’s

no light thing, I can assure you.”

There was a suspicion of tears in her voice.

“And when was this, then—that he—?” asked Mr. Allport, almost with

reverence.

“Only last year,” replied Beatrice.

Mr. Allport made a sound expressing astonishment and dismay. Little by

little Beatrice told him so much: “Her husband had got entangled with

another woman. She herself had put up with it for a long time. At last

she had brought matters to a crisis, declaring what she should do. He

had killed himself—hanged himself—and left her penniless. Her people,

who were very wealthy, had done for her as much as she would allow

them. She and Frank and Vera had done the rest. She did not mind for

herself; it was for Frank and Vera, who should be now enjoying their

careless youth, that her heart was heavy.”

There was silence for a while. Mr. Allport murmured his sympathy, and

sat overwhelmed with respect for this little woman who was unbroken by

tragedy. The bell rang in the kitchen. Vera entered.

“Oh, what a nice smell! Sitting in the dark, Mother?”

“I was just trying to cheer up Mr. Allport; he is very despondent.”

“Pray do not overlook me,” said Mr. Allport, rising and bowing.

“Well! I did not see you! Fancy your sitting in the twilight chatting

with the mater. You must have been an unscrupulous bore, maman.”

“On the contrary,” replied Mr. Allport, “Mrs. MacNair has been so good

as to bear with me making a fool of myself.”

“In what way?” asked Vera sharply.

“Mr. Allport is so despondent. I think he must be in love,” said

Beatrice playfully.

“Unfortunately, I am not—or at least I am not yet aware of it,” said

Mr. Allport, bowing slightly to Vera.

She advanced and stood in the bay of the window, her skirt touching the

young man’s knees. She was tall and graceful. With her hands clasped

behind her back she stood looking up at the moon, now white upon the

richly darkening sky.

“Don’t look at the moon, Miss MacNair, it’s all rind,” said Mr Allport

in melancholy mockery. “Somebody’s bitten all the meat out of our slice

of moon, and left us nothing but peel.”

“It certainly does look like a piece of melon-shell—one portion,”

replied Vera.

“Never mind, Miss MacNair,” he said, “Whoever got the slice found it

raw, I think.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “But isn’t it a beautiful evening? I will

just go and see if I can catch the primroses opening.”

“What primroses?” he exclaimed.

“Evening primroses—there are some.”

“Are there?” he said in surprise. Vera smiled to herself.

“Yes, come and look,” she said.

The young man rose with alacrity.

Mr Holiday came into the dining-room whilst they were down the garden.

“What, nobody in!” they heard him exclaim.

“There is Holiday,” murmured Mr Allport resentfully.

Vera did not answer. Holiday came to the open window, attracted by the

fragrance.

“Ho! that’s where you are!” he cried in his nasal tenor, which annoyed

Vera’s trained ear. She wished she had not been wearing a white dress

to betray herself.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular,” replied Mr Allport.

Mr Holiday sniggered.

“Oh, well, if it’s nothing particular and private—” said Mr Holiday,

and with that he leaped over the window-sill and went to join them.

“Curst fool!” muttered Mr Allport. “I beg your pardon,” he added

swiftly to Vera.

“Have you ever noticed, Mr Holiday,” asked Vera, as if very friendly,

“how awfully tantalizing these flowers are? They won’t open while

you’re looking.”

“No,” sniggered he, I don’t blame ’em. Why should they give themselves

away any more than you do? You won’t open while you’re watched.” He

nudged Allport facetiously with his elbow.

After supper, which was late and badly served, the young men were in

poor spirits. Mr MacWhirter retired to read. Mr Holiday sat picking his

teeth; Mr. Allport begged Vera to play the piano.

“Oh, the piano is not my instrument; mine was the violin, but I do not

play now,” she replied.

“But you will begin again,” pleaded Mr. Allport.

“No, never!” she said decisively. Allport looked at her closely. The

family tragedy had something to do with her decision, he was sure. He

watched her interestedly.

“Mother used to play—” she began.

“Vera!” said Beatrice reproachfully.

“Let us have a song,” suggested Mr. Holiday.

“Mr. Holiday wishes to sing, Mother,” said Vera, going to the

music-rack.

“Nay—I—it’s not me,” Holiday began.

“‘The Village Blacksmith’,” said Vera, pulling out the piece. Holiday

advanced. Vera glanced at her mother.

“But I have not touched the piano for—for years, I am sure,” protested

Beatrice.

“You can play beautifully,” said Vera.

Beatrice accompanied the song. Holiday sang atrociously. Allport glared

at him. Vera remained very calm.

At the end Beatrice was overcome by the touch of the piano. She went

out abruptly.

“Mother has suddenly remembered that tomorrow’s jellies are not made,”

laughed Vera.

Allport looked at her, and was sad.

When Beatrice returned, Holiday insisted she should play again. She

would have found it more difficult to refuse than to comply.

Vera retired early, soon to be followed by Allport and Holiday. At half

past ten Mr. MacWhirter came in with his ancient volume. Beatrice was

studying a cookery-book.

“You, too, at the midnight lamp!” exclaimed MacWhirter politely.

“Ah, I am only looking for a pudding for tomorrow,” Beatrice replied.

“We shall feel hopelessly in debt if you look after us so well,” smiled

the young man ironically.

“I must look after you,” said Beatrice.

“You do—wonderfully. I feel that we owe you large debts of gratitude.”

The meals were generally late, and something was always wrong.

“Because I scan a list of puddings?” smiled Beatrice uneasily.

“For the puddings themselves, and all your good things. The piano, for

instance. That was very nice indeed.” He bowed to her.

“Did it disturb you? But one does not hear very well in the study.”

“I opened the door,” said MacWhirter, bowing again.

“It is not fair,” said Beatrice. “I am clumsy now—clumsy. I once could

play.”

“You play excellently. Why that ‘once could’?” said MacWhirter.

“Ah, you are amiable. My old master would have said differently,” she

replied.

“We,” said MacWhirter, “are humble amateurs, and to us you are more

than excellent.”

“Good old Monsieur Fannière, how he would scold me! He said I would not

take my talent out of the napkin. He would quote me the New Testament.

I always think Scripture false in French, do not you?”

“Er—my acquaintance with modern languages is not extensive, I regret to

say.”

“No? I was brought up at a convent school near Rouen.”

“Ah—that would be very interesting.”

“Yes, but I was there six years, and the interest wears off

everything.”

“Alas!” assented MacWhirter, smiling.

“Those times were very different from these,” said Beatrice.

“I should think so,” said MacWhirter, waxing grave and sympathetic.

XXXI

In the same month of July, not yet a year after Siegmund’s death,

Helena sat on the top of the tramcar with Cecil Byrne. She was dressed

in blue linen, for the day had been hot. Byrne was holding up to her a

yellow-backed copy of _Einsame Menschen_, and she was humming the air

of the Russian folk-song printed on the front page, frowning, nodding

with her head, and beating time with her hand to get the rhythm of the

song. She turned suddenly to him, and shook her head, laughing.

“I can’t get it—it’s no use. I think it’s the swinging of the car

prevents me getting the time,” she said.

“These little outside things always come a victory over you,” he

laughed.

“Do they?” she replied, smiling, bending her head against the wind. It

was six o’clock in the evening. The sky was quite overcast, after a

dim, warm day. The tramcar was leaping along southwards. Out of the

corners of his eyes Byrne watched the crisp morsels of hair shaken on

her neck by the wind.

“Do you know,” she said, “it feels rather like rain.”

“Then,” said he calmly, but turning away to watch the people below on

the pavement, “you certainly ought not to be out.”

“I ought not,” she said, “for I’m totally unprovided.”

Neither, however, had the slightest intention of turning back.

Presently they descended from the car, and took a road leading uphill

off the highway. Trees hung over one side, whilst on the other side

stood a few villas with lawns upraised. Upon one of these lawns two

great sheep-dogs rushed and stood at the brink of the, grassy

declivity, at some height above the road, barking and urging

boisterously. Helena and Byrne stood still to watch them. One dog was

grey, as is usual, the other pale fawn. They raved extravagantly at the

two pedestrians. Helena laughed at them.

“They are—” she began, in her slow manner.

“Villa sheep-dogs baying us wolves,” he continued.

“No,” she said, “they remind me of Fafner and Fasolt.”

“Fasolt? They _are_ like that. I wonder if they really dislike us.”

“It appears so,” she laughed.

“Dogs generally chum up to me,” he said.

Helena began suddenly to laugh. He looked at her inquiringly.

“I remember,” she said, still laughing, “at Knockholt—you—a half-grown

lamb—a dog—in procession.” She marked the position of the three with

her finger.

“What an ass I must have looked!” he said.

“Sort of silent Pied Piper,” she laughed.

“Dogs do follow me like that, though,” he said.

“They did Siegmund,” she said.

“Ah!” he exclaimed.

“I remember they had for a long time a little brown dog that followed

him home.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed.

“I remember, too,” she said, “a little black-and-white kitten that

followed me. Mater _would not_ have it in—she would not. And I remember

finding it, a few days after, dead in the road. I don’t think I ever

quite forgave my mater that.”

“More sorrow over one kitten brought to destruction than over all the

sufferings of men,” he said.

She glanced at him and laughed. He was smiling ironically.

“For the latter, you see,” she replied, “I am not responsible.”

As they neared the top of the hill a few spots of rain fell.

“You know,” said Helena, “if it begins it will continue all night. Look

at that!”

She pointed to the great dark reservoir of cloud ahead.

“Had we better go back?” he asked.

“Well, we will go on and find a thick tree; then we can shelter till we

see how it turns out. We are not far from the cars here.”

They walked on and on. The raindrops fell more thickly, then thinned

away.

“It is exactly a year today,” she said, as they-walked on the round

shoulder of the down with an oak-wood on the left hand. “Exactly!”

“What anniversary is it, then?” he inquired.

“Exactly a year today, Siegmund and I walked here—by the day, Thursday.

We went through the larch-wood. Have you ever been through the

larch-wood?”

“No.”

“We will go, then,” she said.

“History repeats itself,” he remarked.

“How?” she asked calmly.

He was pulling at the heads of the cocksfoot grass as he walked.

“I see no repetition,” she added.

“No,” he exclaimed bitingly; “you are right!”

They went on in silence. As they drew near a farm they saw the men

unloading a last wagon of hay on to a very brown stack. He sniffed the

air. Though he was angry, he spoke.

“They got that hay rather damp,” he said. “Can’t you smell it—like hot

tobacco and sandal-wood?”

“What, is that the stack?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s always like that when it’s picked damp.”

The conversation was restarted, but did not flourish. When they turned

on to a narrow path by the side of the field he went ahead. Leaning

over the hedge, he pulled three sprigs of honeysuckle, yellow as

butter, full of scent; then he waited for her. She was hanging her

head, looking in the hedge-bottom. He presented her with the flowers

without speaking. She bent forward, inhaled the rich fragrance, and

looked up at him over the blossoms with her beautiful, beseeching blue

eyes. He smiled gently to her.

“Isn’t it nice?” he said. “Aren’t they fine bits?”

She took them without answering, and put one piece carefully in her

dress. It was quite against her rule to wear a flower. He took his

place by her side.

“I always like the gold-green of cut fields,” he said. “They seem to

give off sunshine even when the sky’s greyer than a tabby cat.”

She laughed, instinctively putting out her hand towards the glowing

field on her right.

They entered the larch-wood. There the chill wind was changed into

sound. Like a restless insect he hovered about her, like a butterfly

whose antennae flicker and twitch sensitively as they gather

intelligence, touching the aura, as it were, of the female. He was

exceedingly delicate in his handling of her.

The path was cut windingly through the lofty, dark, and closely serried

trees, which vibrated like chords under the soft bow of the wind. Now

and again he would look down passages between the trees—narrow pillared

corridors, dusky as if webbed across with mist. All round was a

twilight, thickly populous with slender, silent trunks. Helena stood

still, gazing up at the tree-tops where the bow of the wind was drawn,

causing slight, perceptible quivering. Byrne walked on without her. At

a bend in the path he stood, with his hand on the roundness of a

larch-trunk, looking back at her, a blue fleck in the brownness of

congregated trees. She moved very slowly down the path.

“I might as well not exist, for all she is aware of me,” he said to

himself bitterly. Nevertheless, when she drew near he said brightly:

“Have you noticed how the thousands of dry twigs between the trunks

make a brown mist, a brume?”

She looked at him suddenly as if interrupted.

“H’m? Yes, I see what you mean.”

She smiled at him, because of his bright boyish tone and manner.

“That’s the larch fog,” he laughed.

“Yes,” she said, “you see it in pictures. I had not noticed it before.”

He shook the tree on which his hand was laid.

“It laughs through its teeth,” he said, smiling, playing with

everything he touched.

As they went along she caught swiftly at her hat; then she stooped,

picking up a hat-pin of twined silver. She laughed to herself as if

pleased by a coincidence.

“Last year,” she said, “the larch-fingers stole both my pins—the same

ones.”

He looked at her, wondering how much he was filling the place of a

ghost with warmth. He thought of Siegmund, and seemed to see him

swinging down the steep bank out of the wood exactly as he himself was

doing at the moment, with Helena stepping carefully behind. He always

felt a deep sympathy and kinship with Siegmund; sometimes he thought he

hated Helena.

They had emerged at the head of a shallow valley—one of those wide

hollows in the North Downs that are like a great length of tapestry

held loosely by four people. It was raining. Byrne looked at the dark

blue dots rapidly appearing on the sleeves of Helena’s dress. They

walked on a little way. The rain increased. Helena looked about for

shelter.

“Here,” said Byrne—“here is our tent—a black tartar’s—ready pitched.”

He stooped under the low boughs of a very large yew tree that stood

just back from the path. She crept after him. It was really a very good

shelter. Byrne sat on the ledge of a root, Helena beside him. He looked

under the flap of the black branches down the valley. The grey rain was

falling steadily; the dark hollow under the tree was immersed in the

monotonous sound of it. In the open, where the bright young corn shone

intense with wet green, was a fold of sheep. Exposed in a large pen on

the hillside, they were moving restlessly; now and again came the

“tong-ting-tong” of a sheep-bell. First the grey creatures huddled in

the high corner, then one of them descended and took shelter by the

growing corn lowest down. The rest followed, bleating and pushing each

other in their anxiety to reach the place of desire, which was no whit

better than where they stood before.

“That’s like us all,” said Byrne whimsically. “We’re all penned out on

a wet evening, but we think, if only we could get where someone else

is, it would be deliciously cosy.”

Helena laughed swiftly, as she always did when he became whimsical and

fretful. He sat with his head bent down, smiling with his lips, but his

eyes melancholy. She put her hand out to him. He took it without

apparently observing it, folding his own hand over it, and

unconsciously increasing the pressure.

“You are cold,” he said.

“Only my hands, and they usually are,” she replied gently.

“And mine are generally warm.”

“I know that,” she said. “It’s almost the only warmth I get now—your

hands. They really are wonderfully warm and close-touching.”

“As good as a baked potato,” he said.

She pressed his hand, scolding him for his mockery.

“So many calories per week—isn’t that how we manage it?” he asked. “On

credit?”

She put her other hand on his, as if beseeching him to forgo his irony,

which hurt her. They sat silent for some time. The sheep broke their

cluster, and began to straggle back to the upper side of the pen.

“Tong-tong, tong,” went the forlorn bell. The rain waxed louder.

Byrne was thinking of the previous week. He had gone to Helena’s home

to read German with her as usual. She wanted to understand Wagner in

his own language.

In each of the arm-chairs, reposing across the arms, was a violin-case.

He had sat down on the edge of one seat in front of the sacred fiddle.

Helena had come quickly and removed the violin.

“I shan’t knock it—it is all right,” he had said, protesting.

This was Siegmund’s violin, which Helena had managed to purchase, and

Byrne was always ready to yield its precedence.

“It was all right,” he repeated.

“But you were not,” she had replied gently.

Since that time his heart had beat quick with excitement. Now he sat in

a little storm of agitation, of which nothing was betrayed by his

gloomy, pondering expression, but some of which was communicated to

Helena by the increasing pressure of his hand, which adjusted itself

delicately in a stronger and stronger stress over her fingers and palm.

By some movement he became aware that her hand was uncomfortable. He

relaxed. She sighed, as if restless and dissatisfied. She wondered what

he was thinking of. He smiled quietly.

“The Babes in the Wood,” he teased.

Helena laughed, with a sound of tears. In the tree overhead some bird

began to sing, in spite of the rain, a broken evening song.

“That little beggar sees it’s a hopeless case, so he reminds us of

heaven. But if he’s going to cover us with yew-leaves, he’s set himself

a job.”

Helena laughed again, and shivered. He put his arm round her, drawing

her nearer his warmth. After this new and daring move neither spoke for

a while.

“The rain continues,” he said.

“And will do,” she added, laughing.

“Quite content,” he said.

The bird overhead chirruped loudly again.

“‘Strew on us roses, roses,’” quoted Byrne, adding after a while, in

wistful mockery: “‘And never a sprig of yew’—eh?”

Helena made a small sound of tenderness and comfort for him, and

weariness for herself. She let herself sink a little closer against

him.

“Shall it not be so—no yew?” he murmured.

He put his left hand, with which he had been breaking larch-twigs, on

her chilled wrist. Noticing that his fingers were dirty, he held them

up.

“I shall make marks on you,” he said.

“They will come off,” she replied.

“Yes, we come clean after everything. Time scrubs all sorts of scars

off us.”

“Some scars don’t seem to go,” she smiled.

And she held out her other arm, which had been pressed warm against his

side. There, just above the wrist, was the red sun-inflammation from

last year. Byrne regarded it gravely.

“But it’s wearing off—even that,” he said wistfully.

Helena put her arms found him under his coat. She was cold. He felt a

hot wave of joy suffuse him. Almost immediately she released him, and

took off her hat.

“That is better,” he said.

“I was afraid of the pins,” said she.

“I’ve been dodging them for the last hour,” he said, laughing, as she

put her arms under his coat again for warmth.

She laughed, and, making a small, moaning noise, as if of weariness and

helplessness, she sank her head on his chest. He put down his cheek

against hers.

“I want rest and warmth,” she said, in her dull tones.

“All right!” he murmured.