‘So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back. When can I set my feet on when this is gone?’
The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of Siegmund’s mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed, looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
‘I feel as if it were burning into me,’ thought Siegmund abstractedly. ‘It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me ill.’ Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to the sun.
Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her thought-activity. Presently she said:
‘This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?’
They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to lie.
‘Shall we not go under the rocks?’ said Helena.
‘Look!’ he said, ‘the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more suffocating, there.’
So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was dreadful.
‘My arms, Siegmund,’ said she. ‘They feel as if they were dipped in fire.’
Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
‘Are you sure it is not bad for you — your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?’
He laughed stupidly.
‘That is all right,’ he said. He knew that the sun was burning through him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain, he said:
‘I think we should be able to keep together if’ — he faltered — ’if only I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...’
Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on her cheek, he murmured:
‘I should be able, shouldn’t I, Helena?’
‘You are always able!’ she cried. ‘It is I who play with you at hiding.’
‘I have really had you so little,’ he said.
‘Can’t you forget it, Siegmund?’ she cried. ‘Can’t you forget it? It was only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can’t you forget it, dear?’
‘You can’t do without me?’ he asked.
‘If I lose you I am lost,’ answered she with swift decision. She had no knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
‘I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between us,’ said Helena to herself. ‘They may go back to hell.’
She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft away.
Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown out to sea and lost.
‘If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I should get stronger and more upright.’
This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of great power.
‘If,’ thought she, ‘the whole clock of the world could stand still now, and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of Siegmund in my arms....’
But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm, that it made silence sweet.
‘If now,’ prayed Siegmund, ‘death would wipe the sweat from me, and it were dark....’
But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return, to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He lay in suspense, waiting.
At last she sat up abruptly.
‘It is time, Siegmund,’ she said.
He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him. She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart crushed with grief for him.
‘We must go, Siegmund,’ she whispered.
‘All right,’ he said, but still he did not move.
She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving. His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
‘We shall be too late,’ she said in distress.
He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
‘Why, what time is it?’
He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
‘I can’t see the figures,’ he said. ‘Everything is dimmed, as if it were coming dark.’
‘Yes,’ replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. ‘My eyes were the same. It is the strong sunlight.’
‘I can’t,’ he repeated, and he was rather surprised — ’I can’t see the time. Can you?’
She stooped down and looked.
‘It is half past one,’ she said.
Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: ‘I feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is dulled.’
‘Yes,’ answered Helena, ‘I am afraid it will do you harm.’
‘At any rate,’ he smiled as if sleepily, ‘I have had enough. If it’s too much — what is too much?’
They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
‘We are going back — we are going back!’ the heart of Helena seemed to run hot, beating these words.
They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still. Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful, in
candescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund’s mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he had enjoyed, ‘Addio!’ he said.
He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling peculiarly:
‘It reminds me of Traviata — an “Addio” at every verse-end.’
She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve. ‘Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o!’ he whistled between his teeth, hissing out the Italian’s passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
‘I suppose,’ she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check this discord — ’I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey — Thursday.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Siegmund.
‘There will not be very many people,’ she insisted.
‘I think,’ he said, in a very quiet voice, ‘you’d better let me go by the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.’
‘But why?’ she exclaimed in astonishment.
‘I don’t want to sit looking at you all the way,’ he said.
‘But why should you?’ she exclaimed.
He laughed.
‘Indeed, no!’ she said. ‘We shall go together.’
‘Very well,’ he answered.
They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the little post office, he said:
‘I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.’
‘You haven’t sent them any word?’ she asked.
He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.
‘Shall I?’ he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was rather peculiar.
‘Well, I should think so,’ faltered Helena, turning away to look at the postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a telegraph form.
‘My God!’ he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her finger, he felt sick with irony.
‘That’s right,’ she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to the instrument. ‘What beautiful weather!’ she continued. ‘It will be making you sorry to leave us.’
‘There goes my warrant,’ thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of paper under the post-mistress’s heavy hand.
‘Yes — it is too bad, isn’t it,’ he replied, bowing and laughing to the woman.
‘It is, sir,’ she answered pleasantly. ‘Good morning.’
He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her falter with dismay.
‘What is he thinking of?’ she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back. ‘And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them at home?’
‘Well,’ said Siegmund, ‘are there any postcards?’
‘None that I care to take,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps you would like one of these?’
She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.
‘I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,’ he said.
‘Or a brush,’ said Helena.
‘She does not understand,’ said Siegmund to himself. ‘And whatever I do I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.’
As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings resentment against her. Almost he hated her.
CHAPTER 20
At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses, the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think, they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here was room for all. Faces innumerable — hot, blue-eyed faces — strained to look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against the side of the carriage. The German’s hips came down tight against her. She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the opposite direction.
‘I am afraid I press you,’ he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes, she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
‘Oh no,’ she answered. ‘You do not crush me.’
Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window. The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured remark in German: ‘Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?’
The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly over ‘Billy’ — this being a nickname discovered for the German Emperor — and what he would be saying of the Czar’s trip; they questioned each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
Helena’s stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to tell anecdotes. He was a raconteur of the naïve type: he talked with face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of Helena — who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove — struggling to escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
‘I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!’ He glanced round in perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free Helena, and said:
‘Forgive me, I am sorry.’
‘You are forgiven,’ replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile at this. The good humour was complete.
‘Thank you,’ said the German gratefully.
Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the raconteur resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German’s apologies, and the sight of his lover’s face had moved him more than he could tell.
She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown race that
never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved Siegmund’s pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her. It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him the mistress.
As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund’s resentment against her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now, small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her. But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone, little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind; death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this house of strangers which she called ‘life’. She had to go on alone, like a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
‘What will she do?’ Siegmund asked himself, ‘when her loneliness comes upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her strength is established. But what then?’
Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive. Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 52
