_Chapter 11_
They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then, keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight, however, rose more rapidly than they had antic.i.p.ated. The lane twisted among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
"We must go to the left," said Helena.
To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his shoulders.
Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing, they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circ.u.mvented. Having pa.s.sed a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a sense of s.p.a.ce and freedom.
"We can steer by the night," said Siegmund, as they trod upwards pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the s.h.a.ggy cloak of furze.
"There will be a path through it," said Siegmund.
But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall, impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
"Stay here," said he, "while I look for a way through. I am afraid you will be tired."
She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure the condition of intense waiting.
He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
"No good," he said, "no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run."
"Then we will sit down awhile," said she calmly.
""Here on this mole-hill,"" he quoted mockingly.
They sat down in a small gap in the gorse, where the turf was very soft, and where the darkness seemed deeper. The night was all fragrance, cool odour of darkness, keen, savoury scent of the downs, touched with honeysuckle and gorse and bracken scent.
Helena turned to him, leaning her hand on his thigh.
"What day is it, Siegmund?" she asked, in a joyous, wondering tone. He laughed, understanding, and kissed her.
"But really," she insisted, "I would not have believed the labels could have fallen off everything like this."
He laughed again. She still leaned towards him, her weight on her hand, stopping the flow in the artery down his thigh.
"The days used to walk in procession like seven marionettes, each in order and costume, going endlessly round." She laughed, amused at the idea.
"It is very strange," she continued, "to have the days and nights smeared into one piece, as if the clock-hand only went round once in a lifetime."
"That is how it is," he admitted, touched by her eloquence. "You have torn the labels off things, and they all are so different. This morning!
It does seem absurd to talk about this morning. Why should I be parcelled up into mornings and evenings and nights? _I_ am not made up of sections of time. Now, nights and days go racing over us like cloud-shadows and sunshine over the sea, and all the time we take no notice."
She put her arms round his neck. He was reminded by a sudden pain in his leg how much her hand had been pressing on him. He held his breath from pain. She was kissing him softly over the eyes. They lay cheek to cheek, looking at the stars. He felt a peculiar tingling sense of joy, a keenness of perception, a fine, delicate tingling as of music.
"You know," he said, repeating himself, "it is true. You seem to have knit all things in a piece for me. Things are not separate; they are all in a symphony. They go moving on and on. You are the motive in everything."
Helena lay beside him, half upon him, sad with bliss.
"You must write a symphony of this--of us," she said, prompted by a disciple"s vanity.
"Some time," he answered. "Later, when I have time."
"Later," she murmured--"later than what?"
"I don"t know," he replied. "This is so bright we can"t see beyond." He turned his face to hers and through the darkness smiled into her eyes that were so close to his. Then he kissed her long and lovingly. He lay, with her head on his shoulder looking through her hair at the stars.
"I wonder how it is you have such a fine natural perfume," he said, always in the same abstract, inquiring tone of happiness.
"Haven"t all women?" she replied, and the peculiar penetrating tw.a.n.g of a bra.s.s reed was again in her voice.
"I don"t know," he said, quite untouched. "But you are scented like nuts, new kernels of hazel-nuts, and a touch of opium...." He remained abstractedly breathing her with his open mouth, quite absorbed in her.
"You are so strange," she murmured tenderly, hardly able to control her voice to speak.
"I believe," he said slowly, "I can see the stars moving through your hair. No, keep still, _you_ can"t see them." Helena lay obediently very still. "I thought I could watch them travelling, crawling like gold flies on the ceiling," he continued in a slow sing-song. "But now you make your hair tremble, and the stars rush about." Then, as a new thought struck him: "Have you noticed that you can"t recognize the constellations lying back like this. I can"t see one. Where is the north, even?"
She laughed at the idea of his questioning her concerning these things.
She refused to learn the names of the stars or of the constellations, as of the wayside plants. "Why should I want to label them?" she would say.
"I prefer to look at them, not to hide them under a name." So she laughed when he asked her to find Vega or Arcturus.
"How full the sky is!" Siegmund dreamed on--"like a crowded street. Down here it is vastly lonely in comparison. We"ve found a place far quieter and more private than the stars, Helena. Isn"t it fine to be up here, with the sky for nearest neighbour?"
"I did well to ask you to come?" she inquired wistfully. He turned to her.
"As wise as G.o.d for the minute," he replied softly. "I think a few furtive angels brought us here--smuggled us in."
"And you are glad?" she asked. He laughed.
"_Carpe diem_," he said. "We have plucked a beauty, my dear. With this rose in my coat I dare go to h.e.l.l or anywhere."
"Why h.e.l.l, Siegmund?" she asked in displeasure.
"I suppose it is the _postero_. In everything else I"m a failure, Helena. But," he laughed, "this day of ours is a rose not many men have plucked."
She kissed him pa.s.sionately, beginning to cry in a quick, noiseless fashion.
"What does it matter, Helena?" he murmured. "What does it matter? We are here yet."
The quiet tone of Siegmund moved her with a vivid pa.s.sion of grief. She felt she should lose him. Clasping him very closely, she burst into uncontrollable sobbing. He did not understand, but he did not interrupt her. He merely held her very close, while he looked through her shaking hair at the motionless stars. He bent his head to hers, he sought her face with his lips, heavy with pity. She grew a little quieter. He felt his cheek all wet with her tears, and, between his cheek and hers, the ravelled roughness of her wet hair that chafed and made his face burn.