CHAPTER 12
Siegmund made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The hill-side, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some distance, very great, it seemed.
‘I can’t get hold of them,’ he said distractedly to himself. He felt detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported, somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and outside himself.
But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support. Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious. This pity for her drew him nearer to life.
He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped lurching down the hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.
‘What is it?’ he asked himself in wonder.
His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally to himself. Between-whiles he was conscious only of an almost insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.
They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became conscious of it.
‘Good Lord!’ he said to himself. ‘I wonder what it is.’
He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his body — his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself into another detached phrase. ‘There is nothing the matter with me,’ he said.
Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when he had fallen ill.
‘But I am not like that,’ he said, ‘because I don’t feel tremulous. I am sure my hand is steady.’
Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before him. It was motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.
‘Yes, I think this is the right way,’ said Helena, and they set off again, as if gaily.
‘It certainly feels rather deathly,’ said Siegmund to himself. He remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was — and here he chose the French word — ’l’agonie’. But his mother had seen and had cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to spare her her suffering.
‘Certainly it is like that,’ he said. ‘Certainly it is rather deathly. I wonder how it is.’
Then he reviewed the last hour.
‘I believe we are lost!’ Helena interrupted him.
‘Lost! What matter!’ he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him tighter, hearer to her in a kind of triumph. ‘But did we not come this way?’ he added.
‘No. See’ — her voice was reeded with restrained emotion — ’we have certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.’
‘Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty well, as much as we can,’ said Siegmund, looking forward over the down, where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding, left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.
Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He had been so wondrously happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had been wandering in another — a glamorous, primordial world.
‘I suppose,’ he said to himself, ‘I have lived too intensely, I seem to have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now they’ve gone my house is weak.’
So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.
‘Surely,’ he told himself, ‘I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt my cup. My soul seems to leak out — I am half here, half gone away. That’s why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.’
Then he came to the hour of Helena’s strange ecstasy over him. That, somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling has brain, sweeping away his sickness, soothing him.
‘I suppose,’ he said to himself for the last time, ‘I suppose living too intensely kills you, more or less.’
Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him. The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever seen. When the little lane turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a little rapture, until once mote the little lane curved wilfully, and they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the moonlight.
‘We certainly did not come this way before,’ she said triumphantly. The idea of being lost delighted her.
Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to some state beyond ordinary experience — some place in romance, perhaps, or among the hills where Brünhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.
‘We may be on the road to Newport,’ said Helena presently, ‘and the distance is ten miles.’
She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in this wonderful excursion! She and Siegmund alone in a glistening wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund looked at her. He by no means shared her exultation, though he sympathized with it. He walked on alone in his deep seriousness, of which she was not aware. Yet when he noticed her abandon, he drew her nearer, and his heart softened with protecting tenderness towards her, and grew heavy with responsibility.
The fields breathed off a scent as if they were come to life with the night, and were talking with fragrant eagerness. The farms huddled together in sleep, and pulled the dark shadow over them to hide from the supernatural white night; the cottages were locked and darkened. Helena walked on in triumph through this wondrous hinterland of night, actively searching for the spirits, watching the cottages they approached, listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at
the windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams. She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed, their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering over the grey grass seeking her dreams.
So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was fain to remember that it was a long way — a long way. Siegmund’s arm was about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground. The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and bowed his head.
‘Thirty years of earnest love; three years’ life like a passionate ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the white beauty in the world.’
Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped softly into the shadow of the pine copse.
‘Let me get under cover,’ he thought. ‘Let me hide in it; it is good, the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small, futile tragedy!’
Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer, leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small, brave Helena.
‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ he whispered to her.
‘Quite, quite sure,’ she whispered confidently in reply. And presently they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena’s heart was beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road not far from home.
CHAPTER 13
In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.
Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice beside him say:
‘Where have they come from; do you know, sir?’
He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.
‘The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,’ said Siegmund.
The other glanced negligently into his face.
‘They look rather incongruous, don’t you think? We left the sea empty and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their eye on us!’
Siegmund laughed.
‘You are not an Anarchist, I hope?’ he said jestingly.
‘A Nihilist, perhaps,’ laughed the other. ‘But I am quite fond of the Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can’t turn round without finding some policeman or other at your elbow — look at them, abominable ironmongery! — ready to put his hand on your shoulder.’
The speaker’s grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so quickly to a perturbing intimacy.
‘I suppose we are in the hands of — God,’ something moved Siegmund to say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the speaker.
‘Ah!’ he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair, the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. ‘Does the Czar sail this way?’ he asked at last.
‘I do not know,’ replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other’s penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.
‘I suppose the newspaper will tell us?’ said the man.
Sure to,’ said Siegmund.
‘You haven’t seen it this morning?’
‘Not since Saturday.’
The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.
‘You are not alone on your holiday?’
‘No.’ Siegmund did not like this — he gazed over the sea in displeasure.
‘I live here — at least for the present — name, Hampson — ’
‘Why, weren’t you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years back?’ asked Siegmund.
They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself for having addressed Siegmund:
‘I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,’ he said, ‘and as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be re-acquainted.’
Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
‘I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It’s a pity to try and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don’t you think?’
‘Stare beyond it, you mean?’ asked Siegmund.
‘Exactly!’ replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. ‘I call a day like this “the blue room”. It’s the least draughty apartment in all the confoundedly draughty House of Life.’
Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express something in his own soul.
‘I mean,’ the man explained, ‘that after all, the great mass of life that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can’t stop it, once we’ve begun to leak.’
‘What do you mean by “leak”?’ asked Siegmund.
‘Goodness knows — I talk through my hat. But once you’ve got a bit tired of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the dark — as you were doing.’
‘But, to use your metaphor, I’m not tired of the House — if you mean Life,’ said Siegmund.
‘Praise God! I’ve met a poet who’s not afraid of having his pocket picked — or his soul, or his brain!’ said the stranger, throwing his head back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ said Siegmund, very quietly, with a strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
‘You’re not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say, suite of rooms — ’
‘Tomorrow I am turned out of this “blue room”,’ said Siegmund with a wry smile. The other looked at him seriously.
‘Dear Lord!’ exclaimed Hampson; then: ‘Do you remember Flaubert’s saint, who laid naked against a leper? I could not do it.’
‘Nor I,’ shuddered Siegmund.
‘But you’ve got to-or something near it!’
Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
‘What of yourself?’ he said, resentfully.
‘I’ve funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and staring fro
m the window at the dark.’
‘But can’t you do something?’ said Siegmund.
The other man laughed with amusement, throwing his head back and showing his teeth.
‘I won’t ask you what your intentions are,’ he said, with delicate irony in his tone. ‘You know, I am a tremendously busy man. I earn five hundred a year by hard work; but it’s no good. If you have acquired a liking for intensity in life, you can’t do without it. I mean vivid soul experience. It takes the place, with us, of the old adventure, and physical excitement.’
Siegmund looked at the other man with baffled, anxious eyes.
‘Well, and what then?’ he said.
‘What then? A craving for intense life is nearly as deadly as any other craving. You become a concentré, you feed your normal flame with oxygen, and it devours your tissue. The soulful ladies of romance are always semi-transparent.’
Siegmund laughed.
‘At least, I am quite opaque,’ he said.
The other glanced over his easy, mature figure and strong throat.
‘Not altogether,’ said Hampson. ‘And you, I should think, are one whose flame goes nearly out, when the stimulant is lacking.’
Siegmund glanced again at him, startled.
‘You haven’t much reserve. You’re like a tree that’ll flower till it kills itself,’ the man continued. ‘You’ll run till you drop, and then you won’t get up again. You’ve no dispassionate intellect to control you and economize.’
‘You’re telling me very plainly what I am and am not,’ said Siegmund, laughing rather sarcastically. He did not like it.
‘Oh, it’s only what I think,’ replied Hampson. ‘We’re a good deal alike, you see, and have gone the same way. You married and I didn’t; but women have always done as they liked with me.’
‘That’s hardly so in my case,’ said Siegmund.
Hampson eyed him critically.
‘Say one woman; it’s enough,’ he replied.
Siegmund gazed, musing, over the sea.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 47
