He laughed.
"And shall I not be brave?" he said. "Can"t you smell _Fumum et opes strepitumque Romae_?" He turned quickly to Helena. "I wonder if that"s right," he said. "It"s years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought it had all gone."
"In the first place, what does it mean?" said Helena calmly, "for I can only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my sc.r.a.p-books of such stuff."
"Why," said Siegmund, rather abashed, "only "the row and the smoke of Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena"--here the peculiar look of interest came on his face again--"it is really remarkable that I should have said that."
"Yes, you look surprised," smiled she.
"But it must be twenty"--he counted--"twenty-two or three years since I learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a drowning man, I have these memories before...." He broke off, smiling mockingly, to tease her.
"Before you go back to London," said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. "No," she said, with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the rise to the cliff"s edge. "I can"t say that I smell the smoke of London.
The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is"--she pointed to the heavy, purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning"s mist-curtain, thick and blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
They lay down in the dry gra.s.s, upon the gold bits of bird"s-foot trefoil of the cliff"s edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm drooped over everything.
"Six hours," thought Helena, "and we shall have pa.s.sed the mist-curtain.
Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I will not wave my hand."
She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena"s lover, yet he felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circ.u.mstance, not even Helena, could untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very surprising.
But why should he have failed with Helena?
The bees droned fitfully over the scented gra.s.s, aimlessly swinging in the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy s.p.a.ce.
"The little fool!" said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into the light.
No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the wild spinning of the lights.
"Even if I were free," he continued to think, "we should only grow apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
"Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I cannot compel anybody to follow me.
"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 s.p.a.ce, 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 h.e.l.l."
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.