They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the cas.e.m.e.nt of the land seductively.
"It"s the finest night I have seen," said Siegmund. Helena"s eyes suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
"I like the moon on the water," she said.
"I can hardly tell the one from the other," he replied simply. "The sea seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say, are all you."
"Yes," she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her now, and did not need her.
"I feel at home here," he said; "as if I had come home where I was bred."
She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
"We go an awful long way round, Helena," he said, "just to find we"re all right." He laughed pleasantly. "I have thought myself such an outcast! How can one be outcast in one"s own night, and the moon always naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?"
Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt something of the harmony.
"Whatever I have or haven"t from now," he continued, "the darkness is a sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and sometimes the sea is a brother: and there"s a family in one house, you see."
"And I, Siegmund?" she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed, then bent to kiss her.
"The key of the castle," he said. He put his face against hers, and felt on his cheek the smart of her tears.
"It"s all very grandiose," he said comfortably, "but it does for tonight, all this that I say."
"It is true for ever," she declared.
"In so far as tonight is eternal," he said.
He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon.
They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
_Chapter 6_
Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. "It is like the magic tales,"
he thought, as he realized where he was; "and I am transported to a new life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all."
He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand, he felt for his watch. It was seven o"clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the window-ledge looking out of the cas.e.m.e.nt. The breeze ruffled his hair, blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed, hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and b.u.t.ter. The gra.s.s wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in s.h.a.ggy lilac, where the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the swinging birds.
He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers of the wind touching him and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the heavy green water.
It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep, watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear green water.
He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play, even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer across, taking a seal"s view of the cliffs as they confronted the morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he liked to see the birds come down.
But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it, but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea"s pa.s.sion.
The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm breath. He delighted in himself.
The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of clear water, with sh.e.l.ls and one rose anemone.
"She would make so much of this little pool," he thought. And as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the rise of his knee.
"That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What makes me myself, among all these?"
Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
"I am at my best, at my strongest," he said proudly to himself. "She ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were a baboon under my clothing."
He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
"If I was giving her myself, I wouldn"t want that blemish on me," he thought.
He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
"She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I"d rather see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together could show.... Why doesn"t she like me?" he thought as he dressed. It was his physical self thinking.
After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
"You have bathed?" she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
"You have not bathed!" he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the brine in his hair.
"No; I bathe later," she replied. "But what--"
Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
"It _is_ blood?" she said.
"I grazed my thigh--nothing at all," he replied.
"Are you sure?"
He laughed.