Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing irritability from his belly.
‘Ah, this is horrible!’ he said.
He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
‘I’ve never been like this before. What is the matter?’ he asked himself.
But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be better.
‘What do I want?’ he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out.
Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming in Canada.
‘I should be just the same there,’ he answered himself. ‘Just the same sickening feeling there that I want nothing.’
‘Helena!’ he suggested to himself, trembling.
But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink convulsively.
‘I can’t endure this,’ he said. If this is the case, I had better be dead. To have no want, no desire — that is death, to begin with.’
He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed entertaining. Then, ‘Is there really nothing I could turn to?’ he asked himself.
To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
‘Helena!’ he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. ‘Ah, no!’ he cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw place.
He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea. There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
‘Dad, Mam says dinner’s ready,’ she announced.
Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments, before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘All right,’ said Siegmund. ‘Go away.’
The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very crestfallen.
‘What did he say?’ asked Beatrice.
‘He shouted at me,’ replied the little one, breaking into tears.
Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
‘Did he?’ she said very tenderly. ‘Never mind, then, dearie — never mind.’
The tears in her mother’s voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold.
CHAPTER 24
When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box.
The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:
‘Well?’
‘Well, here we are!’ replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became proportionately cold.
‘So I see,’ exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular manner. ‘And what sort of a time have you had?’
‘Oh, very good,’ replied Helena, still more coolly.
‘H’m!’
Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to question.
‘You look well,’ she said.
Helena smiled ironically.
‘And are you ready for your supper?’ she asked, in the playful, affectionate manner she had assumed.
‘If the supper is ready I will have it,’ replied her daughter.
‘Well, it’s not ready.’ The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. ‘Because,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t known when you were coming.’ She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. ‘But,’ she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, ‘I can soon have it ready. What will you have?’
‘The full list of your capacious larder,’ replied Helena.
Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
‘Will you have cocoa or lemonade?’ she asked, coming to the point curtly.
‘Lemonade,’ said Helena.
Presently Mr Verden entered — a small, white-bearded man with a gentle voice.
‘Oh, so you are back, Nellie!’ he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
‘As you see, Pater,’ she answered.
‘H’m!’ he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father’s quiet ‘H’m!’ her mother’s curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of offence upon it.
There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to the door.
‘Has she come?’
And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung herself upon Helena and kissed her.
‘How long have you been in?’ she asked, in a voice trembling with affection.
‘Ten minutes,’ replied Helena.
‘Why didn’t you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and meet you?’ Louisa reproached her.
‘Why?’ drawled Helena.
Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by this sarcasm.
As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl — a minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.
During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena’s thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea, pulling forwards as far as the morrow’s meeting with Siegmund, but reaching no further.
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 yo
u 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.’
CHAPTER 25
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 t
o 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.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated) Page 56
