""Ah, he is _doux_--he is _calin_," said Beatrice.
""I think he is rather _too_ spoony for his age," said my elder sister.
""But he"s a fine boy for all that. See how thick his knees are," my younger sister chimed in.
""Ah, _si, si_!" cried Beatrice.
"I made a row against the door, then walked across.
""h.e.l.lo, is somebody in here?" I said, as I pushed into the little conservatory.
"I looked straight at Beatrice, and she at me. We seemed to have formed an alliance in that look: she was the other half of my consciousness, I of hers. Ha! Ha! there were a lot of white narcissus, and little white hyacinths, Roman hyacinths, in the conservatory. I can see them now, great white stars, and tangles of little ones, among a bank of green; and I can recall the keen, fresh scent on the warm air; and the look of Beatrice ... her great dark eyes.
"It"s funny, but Beatrice is as dead--ay, far more dead--than Dante"s.
And I am not that young fool, not a bit.
"I was very romantic, fearfully emotional, and the soul of honour.
Beatrice said n.o.body cared a thing about her. FitzHerbert was always jaunting off, the mother was a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen, earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on him, you know.
"There"s the romance. I wonder how it will all end."
Helena laughed, and he did not detect her extreme bitterness of spirit.
They walked on in silence for some time. He was thinking back, before Helena"s day. This left her very much alone, and forced on her the idea that, after all, love, which she chose to consider as single and wonderful a thing in a man"s life as birth, or adolescence, or death, was temporary, and formed only an episode. It was her hour of disillusion.
"Come to think of it," Siegmund continued, "I have always shirked.
Whenever I"ve been in a tight corner I"ve gone to Pater."
"I think," she said, "marriage has been a tight corner you couldn"t get out of to go to anybody."
"Yet I"m here," he answered simply.
The blood suffused her face and neck.
"And some men would have made a better job of it. When it"s come to sticking out against Beatrice, and sailing the domestic ship in spite of her, I"ve always funked. I tell you I"m something of a moral coward."
He had her so much on edge she was inclined to answer, "So be it."
Instead, she ran back over her own history: it consisted of petty discords in contemptible surroundings, then of her dreams and fancies, finally--Siegmund.
"In my life," she said, with the fine, grating discord in her tones, "I might say _always_, the real life has seemed just outside--brownies running and fairies peeping--just beyond the common, ugly place where I am. I seem to have been hedged in by vulgar circ.u.mstances, able to glimpse outside now and then, and see the reality."
"You are so hard to get at," said Siegmund. "And so scornful of familiar things."
She smiled, knowing he did not understand. The heat had jaded her, so that physically she was full of discord, of dreariness that set her teeth on edge. Body and soul, she was out of tune.
A warm, noiseless twilight was gathering over the downs and rising darkly from the sea. Fate, with wide wings, was hovering just over her.
Fate, ashen grey and black, like a carrion crow, had her in its shadow.
Yet Siegmund took no notice. He did not understand. He walked beside her whistling to himself, which only distressed her the more.
They were alone on the smooth hills to the east. Helena looked at the day melting out of the sky, leaving the permanent structure of the night. It was her turn to suffer the sickening detachment which comes after moments of intense living.
The rosiness died out of the sunset as embers fade into thick ash. In herself, too, the ruddy glow sank and went out. The earth was a cold dead heap, coloured drearily, the sky was dark with flocculent grey ash, and she herself an upright ma.s.s of soft ash.
She shuddered slightly with horror. The whole face of things was to her livid and ghastly. Being a moralist rather than an artist, coming of fervent Wesleyan stock, she began to scourge herself. She had done wrong again. Looking back, no one had she touched without hurting. She had a destructive force; anyone she embraced she injured. Faint voices echoed back from her conscience. The shadows were full of complaint against her. It was all true, she was a harmful force, dragging Fate to petty, mean conclusions.
Life and hope were ash in her mouth. She shuddered with discord. Despair grated between her teeth. This dreariness was worse than any her dreary, lonely life had known. She felt she could bear it no longer.
Siegmund was there. Surely he could help? He would rekindle her. But he was straying ahead, carelessly whistling the Spring Song from _Die Walkure_. She looked at him, and again shuddered with horror. Was that really Siegmund, that stooping, thick-shouldered, indifferent man? Was that the Siegmund who had seemed to radiate joy into his surroundings, the Siegmund whose coming had always changed the whole weather of her soul? Was that the Siegmund whose touch was keen with bliss for her, whose face was a panorama of pa.s.sing G.o.d? She looked at him again. His radiance was gone, his aura had ceased. She saw him a stooping man, past the buoyancy of youth, walking and whistling rather stupidly--in short, something of the "clothed animal on end", like the rest of men.
She suffered an agony of disillusion. Was this the real Siegmund, and her own only a projection of her soul? She took her breath sharply. Was he the real clay, and that other, her beloved, only the breathing of her soul upon this. There was an awful blank before her.
"Siegmund!" she said in despair.
He turned sharply at the sound of her voice. Seeing her face pale and distorted in the twilight, he was filled with dismay. She mutely lifted her arms to him, watching him in despair. Swiftly he took her in his arms, and asked in a troubled voice:
"What is it, dear? Is something wrong?"
His voice was nothing to her--it was stupid. She felt his arms round her, felt her face pressed against the cloth of his coat, against the beating of his heart. What was all this? This was not comfort or love.
He was not understanding or helping, only chaining her, hurting. She did not want his brute embrace--she was most utterly alone, gripped so in his arms. If he could not save her from herself, he must leave her free to pant her heart out in free air. The secret thud, thud of his heart, the very self of that animal in him she feared and hated, repulsed her.
She struggled to escape.
"What is it? Won"t you tell me what is the matter?" he pleaded.
She began to sob, dry wild sobs, feeling as if she would go mad. He tried to look at her face, for which she hated him. And all the time he held her fast, all the time she was imprisoned in the embrace of this brute, blind creature, whose heart confessed itself in thud, thud, thud.
"Have you heard anything against us? Have I done anything? Have I said anything? Tell me--at any rate tell me, Helena."
Her sobbing was like the chattering of dry leaves. She grew frantic to be free. Stifled in that prison any longer, she would choke and go mad.
His coat chafed her face; as she struggled she could see the strong working of his throat. She fought against him; she struggled in panic to be free.
"Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go! Let me go!" He held her in bewilderment and terror. She thrust her hands in his chest and pushed him apart. Her face, blind to him, was very much distorted by her suffering. She thrust him furiously away with great strength.
His heart stood still with wonder. She broke from him and dropped down, sobbing wildly, in the shelter of the tumuli. She was bunched in a small, shaken heap. Siegmund could not bear it. He went on one knee beside her, trying to take her hand in his, and pleading:
"Only tell me, Helena, what it is. Tell me what it is. At least tell me, Helena; tell me what it is. Oh, but this is dreadful!"
She had turned convulsively from him. She shook herself, as if beside herself, and at last covered her ears with her hands, to shut out this unreasoning pleading of his voice.
Seeing her like this, Siegmund at last gave in. Quite still, he knelt on one knee beside her, staring at the late twilight. The intense silence was crackling with the sound of Helena"s dry, hissing sobs. He remained silenced, stunned by the unnatural conflict. After waiting a while, he put his hand on her. She winced convulsively away.
Then he rose, saying in his heart, "It is enough," He went behind the small hill, and looked at the night. It was all exposed. He wanted to hide, to cover himself from the openness, and there was not even a bush under which he could find cover.
He lay down flat on the ground, pressing his face into the wiry turf, trying to hide. Quite stunned, with a death taking place in his soul, he lay still, pressed against the earth. He held his breath for a long time before letting it go, then again he held it. He could scarcely bear, even by breathing, to betray himself. His consciousness was dark.
Helena had sobbed and struggled the life animation back into herself. At length, weary but comfortable, she lay still to rest. Almost she could have gone to sleep. But she grew chilly, and a ground insect tickled her face. Was somebody coming?
It was dark when she rose. Siegmund was not in sight. She tidied herself, and rather frightened, went to look for him. She saw him like a thick shadow on the earth. Now she was heavy with tears good to shed.
She stood in silent sorrow, looking at him.