_Chapter 9_
The day waxed hot. A few little silver tortoises of cloud had crawledacross the desert of sky, and hidden themselves. The chalk roads werewhite, quivering with heat. Helena and Siegmund walked eastwardbareheaded under the sunshine. They felt like two insects in the nicheof a hot hearth as they toiled along the deep road. A few poppies hereand there among the wild rye floated scarlet in sunshine likeblood-drops on green water. Helena recalled Francis Thompson's poems,which Siegmund had never read. She repeated what she knew, and laughed,thinking what an ineffectual pale shadow of a person Thompson must havebeen. She looked at Siegmund, walking in large easiness beside her.
'Artists are supremely unfortunate persons,' she announced.
'Think of Wagner,' said Siegmund, lifting his face to the hot brightheaven, and drinking the heat with his blinded face. All states seemedmeagre, save his own. He recalled people who had loved, and he pitiedthem--dimly, drowsily, without pain.
They came to a place where they might gain access to the shore by a pathdown a landslip. As they descended through the rockery, yellow withragwort, they felt themselves dip into the inert, hot air of the bay.The living atmosphere of the uplands was left overhead. Among the rocksof the sand, white as if smelted, the heat glowed and quivered. Helenasat down and took off her shoes. She walked on the hot, glistening sandtill her feet were delightfully, almost intoxicatingly scorched. Thenshe ran into the water to cool them. Siegmund and she paddled in thelight water, pensively watching the haste of the ripples, like crystalbeetles, running over the white outline of their feet; looking out onthe sea that rose so near to them, dwarfing them by its far reach.
For a short time they flitted silently in the water's edge. Then theresettled down on them a twilight of sleep, the little hush that closesthe doors and draws the blinds of the house after a festival. Theywandered out across the beach above high-water mark, where they sat downtogether on the sand, leaning back against a flat brown stone, Siegmundwith the sunshine on his forehead, Helena drooping close to him, in hisshadow. Then the hours ride by unnoticed, making no sound as they go.The sea creeps nearer, nearer, like a snake which watches two birdsasleep. It may not disturb them, but sinks back, ceasing to look at themwith its bright eyes.
Meanwhile the flowers of their passion were softly shed, as poppies fallat noon, and the seed of beauty ripened rapidly within them. Dreams camelike a wind through, their souls, drifting off with the seed-dust ofbeautiful experience which they had ripened, to fertilize the souls ofothers withal. In them the sea and the sky and ships had mingled andbred new blossoms of the torrid heat of their love. And the seed of suchblossoms was shaken as they slept, into the hand of God, who held it inHis palm preciously; then scattered it again, to produce new splendidblooms of beauty.
A little breeze came down the cliffs. Sleep lightened the lovers oftheir experience; new buds were urged in their souls as they lay in ashadowed twilight, at the porch of death. The breeze fanned the face ofHelena; a coolness wafted on her throat. As the afternoon wore on sherevived. Quick to flag, she was easy to revive, like a white pansy flunginto water. She shivered lightly and rose.
Strange, it seemed to her, to rise from the brown stone into life again.She felt beautifully refreshed. All around was quick as a garden wet inthe early morning of June. She took her hair and loosened it, shook itfree from sand, spread, and laughed like a fringed poppy that opensitself to the sun. She let the wind comb through its soft fingers thetangles of her hair. Helena loved the wind. She turned to it, and tookits kisses on her face and throat.
Siegmund lay still, looking up at her. The changes in him were deeper,like alteration in his tissue. His new buds came slowly, and were of afresh type. He lay smiling at her. At last he said:
'You look now as if you belonged to the sea.'
'I do; and some day I shall go back to it,' she replied.
For to her at that moment the sea was a great lover, like Siegmund, butmore impersonal, who would receive her when Siegmund could not. Sherejoiced momentarily in the fact. Siegmund looked at her and continuedsmiling. His happiness was budded firm and secure.
'Come!' said Helena, holding out her hand.
He rose somewhat reluctantly from his large, fruitful inertia.
The Trespasser Page 9
