The young man smiled, then looked down at the wall, where his own hands lay white and fragile, showing the blue veins.
"I can scarcely believe they are me," he said. "If they rose up and refused me, I should not be surprised. But aren"t they beautiful?"
He looked, with a faint smile, at Siegmund.
Siegmund glanced from the stranger"s to his own hands, which lay curved on the sea-wall as if asleep. They were small for a man of his stature, but, lying warm in the sun, they looked particularly secure in life.
Instinctively, with a wave of self-love, he closed his fists over his thumbs.
"I wonder," said Hampson softly, with strange bitterness, "that she can"t see it; I wonder she doesn"t cherish you. You are full and beautiful enough in the flesh--why will she help to destroy you, when she loved you to such extremity?"
Siegmund looked at him with awe-stricken eyes. The frail, swift man, with his intensely living eyes, laughed suddenly.
"Fools--the fools, these women!" he said. "Either they smash their own crystal, or it revolts, turns opaque, and leaps out of their hands. Look at me, I am whittled down to the quick; but your neck is thick with compressed life; it is a stem so tense with life that it will hold up by itself. I am very sorry."
All at once he stopped. The bitter despair in his tone was the voice of a heavy feeling of which Siegmund had been vaguely aware for some weeks.
Siegmund felt a sense of doom. He laughed, trying to shake it off.
"I wish I didn"t go on like this," said Hampson piteously. "I wish I could be normal. How hot it is already! You should wear a hat. It is really hot." He pulled open his flannel shirt.
"I like the heat," said Siegmund.
"So do I."
Directly, the young man dashed the long hair on his forehead into some sort of order, bowed, and smiling in his gay fashion, walked leisurely to the village.
Siegmund stood awhile as if stunned. It seemed to him only a painful dream. Sighing deeply to relieve himself of the pain, he set off to find Helena.
_Chapter 14_
In the garden of tall rose trees and nasturtiums Helena was again waiting. It was past nine o"clock, so she was growing impatient. To herself, however, she professed a great interest in a little book of verses she had bought in St Martin"s Lane for twopence.
A late, harsh blackbird smote him with her wings, As through the glade, dim in the dark, she flew....
So she read. She made a curious, pleased sound, and remarked to herself that she thought these verses very fine. But she watched the road for Siegmund.
And now she takes the scissors on her thumb ...
Oh then, no more unto my lattice come.
"H"m!" she said, "I really don"t know whether I like that or not."
Therefore she read the piece again before she looked down the road.
"He really is very late. It is absurd to think he may have got drowned; but if he were washing about at the bottom of the sea, his hair loose on the water!"
Her heart stood still as she imagined this.
"But what nonsense! I like these verses _very_ much. I will read them as I walk along the side path, where I shall hear the bees, and catch the flutter of a b.u.t.terfly among the words. That will be a very fitting way to read this poet."
So she strolled to the gate, glancing up now and again. There, sure enough, was Siegmund coming, the towel hanging over his shoulder, his throat bare, and his face bright. She stood in the mottled shade.
"I have kept you waiting," said Siegmund.
"Well, I was reading, you see."
She would not admit her impatience.
"I have been talking," he said.
"Talking!" she exclaimed in slight displeasure. "Have you found an acquaintance even here?"
"A fellow who was quite close friends in Savoy days; he made me feel queer-sort of _Doppelganger_, he was."
Helena glanced up swiftly and curiously.
"In what way?" she said.
"He talked all the skeletons in the cupboard-such piffle it seems, now!
The sea is like a harebell, and there are two battleships lying in the bay. You can hear the voices of the men on deck distinctly. Well, have you made the plans for today?"
They went into the house to breakfast. She watched him helping himself to the scarlet and green salad.
"Mrs Curtiss," she said, in rather reedy tone, "has been very motherly to me this morning; oh, very motherly!"
Siegmund, who was in a warm, gay mood, shrank up.
"What, has she been saying something about last night?" he asked.
"She was very much concerned for me-was afraid something dreadful had happened," continued Helena, in the same keen, sarcastic tone, which showed she was trying to rid herself of her own mortification.
"Because we weren"t in till about eleven?" said Siegmund, also with sarcasm.
"I mustn"t do it again. Oh no, I mustn"t do it again, really."
"For fear of alarming the old lady?" he asked.
""You know, dear, it troubles _me_ a good deal ... but if I were your _mother_, I don"t know _how_ I should feel,"" she quoted.
"When one engages rooms one doesn"t usually stipulate for a stepmother to nourish one"s conscience," said Siegmund. They laughed, making jest of the affair; but they were both too thin-skinned. Siegmund writhed within himself with mortification, while Helena talked as if her teeth were on edge.
"I don"t _mind_ in the least," she said. "The poor old woman has her opinions, and I mine."
Siegmund brooded a little.
"I know I"m a moral coward," he said bitterly.