'I say, as I said before,' replied Beatrice: 'I cannot afford to go out.'

'But you must begin, my dear, and Sunday shall see the beginning. Dites donc!'

'There are other things to think of,' said Beatrice.

'Now, maman, nous avons change tout cela! We are going out—a jolly little razzle!' Vera, who was rather handsome, lifted up her face and smiled at her mother gaily.

'I am afraid there will be no razzle'—Beatrice accented the word, smiling slightly—'for me. You are slangy, Vera.'

'Un doux argot, ma mere. You look tired.'

Beatrice glanced at the clock.

'I will go to bed when I have cleared the table,' she said.

Siegmund winced. He was still sitting with his head bent down, looking in the grate. Vera went on to say something more. Presently Frank looked up at the table, and remarked in his grating voice:

'There's your supper, Father.'

The women stopped and looked round at this. Siegmund bent his head lower. Vera resumed her talk. It died out, and there was silence.

Siegmund was hungry.

'Oh, good Lord, good Lord! bread of humiliation tonight!' he said to himself before he could muster courage to rise and go to the table. He seemed to be shrinking inwards. The women glanced swiftly at him and away from him as his chair creaked and he got up. Frank was watching from under his eyebrows.

Siegmund went through the ordeal of eating and drinking in presence of his family. If he had not been hungry, he could not have done it, despite the fact that he was content to receive humiliation this night. He swallowed the coffee with effort. When he had finished he sat irresolute for some time; then he arose and went to the door.

'Good night!' he said.

Nobody made any reply. Frank merely stirred in his chair. Siegmund shut the door and went.

There was absolute silence in the room till they heard him turn on the tap in the bathroom; then Beatrice began to breathe spasmodically, catching her breath as if she would sob. But she restrained herself. The faces of the two children set hard with hate.

'He is not worth the flicking of your little finger, Mother,' said Vera.

Beatrice moved about with pitiful, groping hands, collecting her sewing and her cottons.

'At any rate, he's come back red enough,' said Frank, in his grating tone of contempt. 'He's like boiled salmon.'

Beatrice did not answer anything. Frank rose, and stood with his back to the grate, in his father's characteristic attitude.

'He would come slinking back in a funk!' he said, with a young man's sneer.

Stretching forward, he put a piece of ham between two pieces of bread, and began to eat the sandwich in large bites. Vera came to the table at this, and began to make herself a more dainty sandwich. Frank watched her with jealous eyes.

'There is a little more ham, if you'd like it,' said Beatrice to him. 'I kept you some.'

'All right, Ma,' he replied. Fetch it in.'

Beatrice went out to the kitchen.

'And bring the bread and butter, too, will you?' called Vera after her.

'The damned coward! Ain't he a rotten funker?' said Frank, sotto voce, while his mother was out of the room.

Vera did not reply, but she seemed tacitly to agree.

They petted their mother, while she waited on them. At length Frank yawned. He fidgeted a moment or two, then he went over to his mother, and, putting his hand on her arm—the feel of his mother's round arm under the black silk sleeve made his tears rise—he said, more gratingly than ever:

'Ne'er mind, Ma; we'll be all right to you.' Then he bent and kissed her. 'Good night, Mother,' he said awkwardly, and he went out of the room.

Beatrice was crying.



Chapter 23

'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behind him the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a family criminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolent judgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the house from which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did I come back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'

He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave him a grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of his position. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he might feel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time after time, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caught him and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead and his neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touched them very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his own childish touch-and-shrink.

Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, he stepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck and wrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciously soft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. The night was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere of light. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees rose up. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowth of darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like the whispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer night occasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared across the distance.

'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything into a oneness. I wonder what is in it.'

He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of the night. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp a hold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? A star fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with a yellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he had seen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.

'It is a good sign—a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a good sign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'

Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and was soon in bed.

'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'

He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.

At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.

'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well, I've got to go through it.'

His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he forgot when he awoke. Only this naive question and answer betrayed what had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate knowledge vanished.

Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight. 'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.

'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now. Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it was keen, was half pleasure.

Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room next to his, and he heard her:

'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You will be late.'

'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.

'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I slept.'

She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed. The minutes passed.

'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of the stairs:

'Do you want any hot water?'

'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son, lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.

The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard his second daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied the same room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the elder girl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, broken suddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:

'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!' Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was getting impatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still no answer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.

Siegmund could hardly contain himself.

'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.

And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do you want?'

'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.

'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What are you shouting for?'

The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passed into Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'

Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling of the sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out. She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug and pulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of her feet as she went downstairs.

'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'

The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of the kitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen's feet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more. He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitive to madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up and meet them all.

The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!' Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the sound of the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the water from the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, he suggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At the thought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to go downstairs. It was nine o'clock.

The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in the bathroom—his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come to his door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, and waited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. She knocked loudly.

'All right,' said he.

Then she went downstairs.

He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera's voice said coldly, beneath his window outside:

'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on the table for a week.'

Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went across to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund felt slightly amused to see her stout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefully sponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair, but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the sponge and proceeded to wipe away the soap.

For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his. She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge at her neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. The child's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.

'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'

The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned her back on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge in the water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then she turned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her, his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to be trying to discover something in him.

'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.

She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore a slight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still she continued to regard him curiously.

'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.

'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.

'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.

'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.

'Much farther than that,' he replied.

'To Worthing?' she asked.

'Farther—in a steamer,' he replied.

'But who did you go with?' asked the child.

'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.

'Twuly?' she asked.

'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.

'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.

'I will next time,' he replied.

The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.

'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.

'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons—'

'You might have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.

'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.

Gwen still looked full at him.

'You are red,' she said.

He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:

'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'

'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.

'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't you?'

He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and she drew away from him, unwilling.

'Come and let me look,' he repeated.

She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her face, shy, suspicious, condemning.

'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child hesitated in the doorway.

She glanced into his room, and answered:

'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'

Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went downstairs without going into his room.

Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart. He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.

'A pity to wash it off,' he said.

As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'

He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.

'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of creation.'

Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him. He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would not have allowed it—on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an arm-chair, and felt sick.

All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past few days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life struggled in a clogged and broken channel.

Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him into consciousness.

'I suppose this is the result of the sun—a sort of sunstroke,' he said, realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned condition in his head.

'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intense irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.

The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which she was going to copy a drawing from the London Opinion, really to see what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed him closely.

'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.

Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'

'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.

'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.

Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking up anxiously.

'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.

'Nothing,' replied her mother—'nothing; only sitting in the drawing-room.'

'But what has he been doing?' persisted the anxious child.

'Nothing—nothing that I can tell you. He's only spoilt all our lives.'

The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and perplexity.

'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.

'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a nice plum?'

She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word. She was too much perplexed.

'What do you say?' asked her mother.

'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.

Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing irritability from his belly.

'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.

He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.

'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he asked himself.

But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be better.

'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out.

Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming in Canada.

'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the same sickening feeling there that I want nothing.'

'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.

But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink convulsively.

'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better be dead. To have no want, no desire—that is death, to begin with.'

He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed entertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' he asked himself.

To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.

'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' he cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw place.

He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea. There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding on to the door-knob looking at him.

'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.

Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments, before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:

'Dinner's ready.'

'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'

The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very crestfallen.

'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.

'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.

Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.

'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie—never mind.'

The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold.



Chapter 24

When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box.

The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:

'Well?'

'Well, here we are!' replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.

Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became proportionately cold.

'So I see,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular manner. 'And what sort of a time have you had?'

'Oh, very good,' replied Helena, still more coolly.

'H'm!'

Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to question.

'You look well,' she said.

Helena smiled ironically.

'And are you ready for your supper?' she asked, in the playful, affectionate manner she had assumed.

'If the supper is ready I will have it,' replied her daughter.

'Well, it's not ready.' The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. 'Because,' she continued, 'I didn't known when you were coming.' She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. 'But,' she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, 'I can soon have it ready. What will you have?'

'The full list of your capacious larder,' replied Helena.

Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.

'Will you have cocoa or lemonade?' she asked, coming to the point curtly.

'Lemonade,' said Helena.

Presently Mr Verden entered—a small, white-bearded man with a gentle voice.

'Oh, so you are back, Nellie!' he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.

'As you see, Pater,' she answered.

'H'm!' he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.

Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father's quiet 'H'm!' her mother's curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of offence upon it.

There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to the door.

'Has she come?'

And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung herself upon Helena and kissed her.

'How long have you been in?' she asked, in a voice trembling with affection.

'Ten minutes,' replied Helena.

'Why didn't you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and meet you?' Louisa reproached her.

'Why?' drawled Helena.

Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by this sarcasm.

As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl—a minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of Helena.

During the night neither of the two friends slept much. Helena made confidences to Louisa, who brooded on these, on the romance and tragedy which enveloped the girl she loved so dearly. Meanwhile, Helena's thoughts went round and round, tethered amid the five days by the sea, pulling forwards as far as the morrow's meeting with Siegmund, but reaching no further.

Friday was an intolerable day of silence, broken by little tender advances and playful, affectionate sallies on the part of the mother, all of which were rapidly repulsed. The father said nothing, and avoided his daughter with his eyes. In his humble reserve there was a dignity which made his disapproval far more difficult to bear than the repeated flagrant questionings of the mother's eyes. But the day wore on. Helena pretended to read, and sat thinking. She played her violin a little, mechanically. She went out into the town, and wandered about.

At last the night fell.

'Well,' said Helena to her mother, 'I suppose I'd better pack.'

'Haven't you done it?' cried Mrs Verden, exaggerating her surprise. 'You'll never have it done. I'd better help you. What times does the train go?'

Helena smiled.

'Ten minutes to ten.'

Her mother glanced at the clock. It was only half-past eight. There was ample time for everything.

'Nevertheless, you'd better look sharp,' Mrs Verden said.

Helena turned away, weary of this exaggeration.

'I'll come with you to the station,' suggested Mrs Verden. 'I'll see the last of you. We shan't see much of you just now.'

Helena turned round in surprise.

'Oh, I wouldn't bother,' she said, fearing to make her disapproval too evident.

'Yes—I will—I'll see you off.'

Mrs Verden's animation and indulgence were remarkable. Usually she was curt and undemonstrative. On occasions like these, however, when she was reminded of the ideal relations between mother and daughter, she played the part of the affectionate parent, much to the general distress.

Helena lit a candle and went to her bedroom. She quickly packed her dress-basket. As she stood before the mirror to put on her hat, her eyes, gazing heavily, met her heavy eyes in the mirror. She glanced away swiftly as if she had been burned.

'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I wonder?'

She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him, how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.

Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into a chair.

'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.

'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as to a child.

'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.

'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said Helena.

'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.

'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa dejectedly.

'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry the basket or the violin, Mater?'

Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.

The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day. Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty miles—two hundred and forty miles.'



Chapter 25

Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice, who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of angry hysteria.

'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had asked him coldly.

He knew she was wondering about money.

'Tomorrow—if ever,' he had answered.

She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.

'What do you think you can do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done enough. We can't do as we like altogether—indeed, indeed we cannot. You have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they? You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be responsible for your children, do you think?'

'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very coldly.

'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there sulking all day. What do you think I do? I have to see to the children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you I'll stop, I tell you I'll do as I like. I'll go as well. No, I wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know I wouldn't leave little children—to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they mightn't be yours.'

'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.

The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely sick.

Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.

'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of your hand?'

'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to yourself!'

Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath. Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and trembling.

'You coward—you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know what I am.'

Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger, which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest. Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering slightly, and her eyes were fixed.

Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested. Vera tackled the situation.

'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.

Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father. Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.

'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'

Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.

'Mam, there was a lady had a dog—'

'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.

The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated in her softest and most persuasive tones:

'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of meat. Mam, Mam!'

There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's knee.

'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.

No response.

'Mam!' she whispered.

She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at her mother's breast.

'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.

Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.

'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog—'

Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms, she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low; he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.

Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking—an angry, ominous sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard cautiously asking:

'Mam, is dad cross—is he? What did he do?'

'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You are a little nuisance! Here, take this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'

The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister. The latter pushed a dish into her hand.

'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.

Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should do he did not know.

He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now—his heart halted again in suspense—he knew not what he would do. It would open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.

'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'

'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted, hesitate, move, then turn away.

She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly, pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched, his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay down on the bed.

For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at work—an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness, jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands again, smiling.

'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to himself.

His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.

'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.

The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If she could hold his head in her hands—for she had fine, silken hands that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up in life—then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest. This was the one thing that remained for his restoration—that she should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for it utterly—for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.

'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep. 'What time is it?'

It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.

'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'

He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep. Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.

'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'

It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark, though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.

Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran out crying:

'Are you going out? Where are you going?'

Siegmund stood still and looked at her.

'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.

'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very long.'

'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.

'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'

He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.

'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.

He did not answer, but hurried to the station.



Chapter 26

Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive stopped before the indicator.

'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice, 'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'

'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.

Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.

'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'

'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa, skittish.

'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of

'"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad, And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'

She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say something, chimed in sarcastically:

'"They are nothing to her madness—"'

'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.

'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.

'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity was given me in large doses.'

'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness, if you call it such. You are always so serious.'

'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed Olive.

She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled, acknowledging the sarcasm.

'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the point?'

'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to accuse me of sadness and seriousness in this trio.'

Louisa laughed and shook herself.

'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.

Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already twenty-five minutes past ten.

She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to the platform.

'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'

Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she could not read him.

'Olive is there, too,' she explained.

Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things more complex.

'Does she—your other friend—does she know?' he asked.

'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him forward to be introduced.

'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'

'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling, continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'

'She is very well, thank you. It is her turn now,' cried Louisa, vindictive, triumphant.

There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really good friends.

'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.

He and Helena walked down the platform.

'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.

'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'

'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then added: 'The children are happier without me.'

'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably. 'It's not true.'

'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'

Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the distance where the train had vanished, he said:

'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'

Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of his voice, lacking resonance—the dead, expressionless tone—made her lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.

'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you. What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply. She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless. Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away her hold over him.

'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you—and life must go on.'

'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a day after you.'

Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train out tonight there is nothing left.'

Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.

They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train was to leave from another platform.

'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa and Olive.

'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and excitedly announcing the news.

'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.

Siegmund picked up the luggage.

'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm, 'look—look—both of you—look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse sotto voce.

'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it—one that will last.'

'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.

Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly animated to the calmly ironical.

'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd, 'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'

Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.

'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.

As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.

'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would make Siegmund talk.'

She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession. Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them. She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.

When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and immediately called:

'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'

He shook his head.

'I cannot come,' he said.

She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers. She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:

'Oh—go—go—go—when will she go?'

He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.

'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.

She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa' spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could not yield.

The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally, the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time. The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.

'Monday,' she whispered—'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her, turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.

'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.



Chapter 27

He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white, rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on, still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him, as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely. Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy eyes, came between again.

He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.

'You have been over an hour,' she said, still more troubled when she found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.

'Ay,' returned Siegmund.

He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.

'Will you have anything to eat?' she asked.

He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep, querulous with trouble.

'Aren't you going to bed?' she asked.

Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:

'Aren't you going to bed, Father?'

Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of having to move. He looked at her confusedly.

'Yes, I'm going,' he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again she sat waiting.

'Father!' she cried at last.

He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.

'Yes, I'm going,' he said.

He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.

'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.

'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I must go to bed—I must go to bed—I am very tired.' He stumbled over the door mat into his own room.

Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom, trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to get into bed.

'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got things right at last, and was in bed.

Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.

'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort of sleep.

He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot. The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light. Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious, and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.

Siegmund lay still, with his eyes closed, enduring the exquisite torture of the trickling of drops of sweat. First it would be one gathering and running its irregular, hesitating way into the hollow of his neck. His every nerve thrilled to it, yet he felt he could not move more than to stiffen his throat slightly. While yet the nerves in the track of this drop were quivering, raw with sensitiveness, another drop would start from off the side of his chest, and trickle downwards among the little muscles of his side, to drip on to the bed. It was like the running of a spider over his sensitive, moveless body. Why he did not wipe himself he did not know. He lay still and endured this horrible tickling, which seemed to bite deep into him, rather than make the effort to move, which he loathed to do. The drops ran off his forehead down his temples. Those he did not mind: he was blunt there. But they started again, in tiny, vicious spurts, down the sides of his chest, from under his armpits, down the inner sides of his thighs, till he seemed to have a myriad quivering tracks of a myriad running insects over his hot, wet, highly-sensitized body. His nerves were trembling, one and all, with outrage and vivid suspense. It became unbearable. He felt that, if he endured it another moment, he would cry out, or suffocate and burst.

He sat up suddenly, threw away the bedclothes, from which came a puff of hot steam, and began to rub his pyjamas against his sides and his legs. He rubbed madly for a few moments. Then he sighed with relief. He sat on the side of the bed, moving from the hot dampness of the place where he had lain. For a moment he thought he would go to sleep. Then, in an instant his brain seemed to click awake. He was still as loath as ever to move, but his brain was no longer clouded in hot vapour: it was clear. He sat, bowing forward on the side of the bed, his sleeping-jacket open, the dawn stealing into the room, the morning air entering fresh through the wide-flung window-door. He felt a peculiar sense of guilt, of wrongness, in thus having jumped out of bed. It seemed to him as if he ought to have endured the heat of his body, and the infernal trickling of the drops of sweat. But at the thought of it he moved his hands gratefully over his sides, which now were dry, and soft, and smooth; slightly chilled on the surface perhaps, for he felt a sudden tremor of shivering from the warm contact of his hands.

Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted something fresh and cool.

Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day, moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched it with wonder and delight.

The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon, crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse which floats on water.

When the few birds had called in the August morning, when the cocks had finished their crowing, when the minute sounds of the early day were astir, Siegmund shivered disconsolate. He felt tired again, yet he knew he could not sleep. The bed was repulsive to him. He sat in his chair at the open door, moving uneasily. What should have been sleep was an ache and a restlessness. He turned and twisted in his chair.

'Where is Helena?' he asked himself, and he looked out on the morning.

Everything out of doors was unreal, like a show, like a peepshow. Helena was an actress somewhere in the brightness of this view. He alone was out of the piece. He sighed petulantly, pressing back his shoulders as if they ached. His arms, too, ached with irritation, while his head seemed to be hissing with angry irritability. For a long time he sat with clenched teeth, merely holding himself in check. In his present state of irritability everything that occurred to his mind stirred him with dislike or disgust. Helena, music, the pleasant company of friends, the sunshine of the country, each, as it offered itself to his thoughts, was met by an angry contempt, was rejected scornfully. As nothing could please or distract him, the only thing that remained was to support the discord. He felt as if he were a limb out of joint from the body of life: there occurred to his imagination a disjointed finger, swollen and discoloured, racked with pains. The question was, How should he reset himself into joint? The body of life for him meant Beatrice, his children, Helena, the Comic Opera, his friends of the orchestra. How could he set himself again into joint with these? It was impossible. Towards his family he would henceforward have to bear himself with humility. That was a cynicism. He would have to leave Helena, which he could not do. He would have to play strenuously, night after night, the music of The Saucy Little Switzer which was absurd. In fine, it was all absurd and impossible. Very well, then, that being so, what remained possible? Why, to depart. 'If thine hand offend thee, cut it off.' He could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.

But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home, Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was insufferable—impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go to Helena.

Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!

'Very well!' said Siegmund, 'it is finally settled. I had better write to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I'd better tell her.'

He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote nothing. At last he gave up.

'Perhaps it is just as well,' he said to himself. 'She said she would come with me—perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.'

He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.

'She will come with me,' he said to himself, and his heart rose with elation.

'That is a cowardice,' he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if wondering whether to destroy it.

'It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,' he concluded.

Then he sat down again.

'"But for that fear of something after-death,"' he quoted to himself.

'It is not fear,' he said. 'The act itself will be horrible and fearsome, but the after-death—it's no more than struggling awake when you're sick with a fright of dreams. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on."'

Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness of his.

The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or of hate.

Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If Life could swerve from its orbit for pity, what terror of vacillation; and who would wish to bear the responsibility of the deflection?

Siegmund thanked God that life was pitiless, strong enough to take his treasures out of his hands, and to thrust him out of the room; otherwise, how could he go with any faith to death; otherwise, he would have felt the helpless disillusion of a youth who finds his infallible parents weaker than himself.

'I know the heart of life is kind,' said Siegmund, 'because I feel it. Otherwise I would live in defiance. But Life is greater than me or anybody. We suffer, and we don't know why, often. Life doesn't explain. But I can keep faith in it, as a dog has faith in his master. After all, Life is as kind to me as I am to my dog. I have, proportionally, as much zest. And my purpose towards my dog is good. I need not despair of Life.'

It occurred to Siegmund that he was meriting the old gibe of the atheists. He was shirking the responsibility of himself, turning it over to an imaginary god.

'Well,' he said, 'I can't help it. I do not feel altogether self-responsible.'

The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at his door.

'There are two letters for you. Father.'

He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance, and he had no idea of his time or place.

'Oh, all right,' he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his body.

'What made her bring me the letters?' he asked himself. It was a very unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: 'She wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.'

Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not fetch in the letters.

'Is it so late?' he said. 'Is there no more time for me?'

He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten. He sat down on the bed.

'What am I going to do?' he asked himself.

By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man who is sick, incapable of thought or action.

A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt.

'Here is your shaving-water,' said Beatrice in cold tones. 'It's half past nine.'

'All right,' said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered.

'And what time shall you expect dinner?' asked Beatrice. She was still contemptuous.

'Any time. I'm not going out,' he answered.

He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking, bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with convulsive sickness.



Chapter 28

Siegmund's lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving the breakfast spread in the kitchen.

Vera and Frank were gone up to town; they would both be home for dinner at two o'clock. Marjory was despatched on an errand, taking Gwen with her. The children had no need to return home immediately, therefore it was highly probable they would play in the field or in the lane for an hour or two. Beatrice was alone downstairs. It was a hot, still morning, when everything outdoors shone brightly, and all indoors was dusked with coolness and colour. But Beatrice was angry. She moved rapidly and determinedly about the dining-room, thrusting old newspapers and magazines between the cupboard and the wall, throwing the litter in the grate, which was clear, Friday having been charwoman's day, passing swiftly, lightly over the front of the furniture with the duster. It was Saturday, when she did not spend much time over the work. In the afternoon she was going out with Vera. That was not, however, what occupied her mind as she brushed aside her work. She had determined to have a settlement with Siegmund, as to how matters should continue. She was going to have no more of the past three years' life; things had come to a crisis, and there must be an alteration. Beatrice was going to do battle, therefore she flew at her work, thus stirring herself up to a proper heat of blood. All the time, as she thrust things out of sight, or straightened a cover, she listened for Siegmund to come downstairs.

He did not come, so her anger waxed.

'He can lie skulking in bed!' she said to herself. 'Here I've been up since seven, broiling at it. I should think he's pitying himself. He ought to have something else to do. He ought to have to go out to work every morning, like another man, as his son has to do. He has had too little work. He has had too much his own way. But it's come to a stop now. I'll servant-housekeeper him no longer.'

Beatrice went to clean the step of the front door. She clanged the bucket loudly, every minute becoming more and more angry. That piece of work finished, she went into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten. Her wrath was at ignition point. She cleared all the things from the table and washed them up. As she was so doing, her anger, having reached full intensity without bursting into flame, began to dissipate in uneasiness. She tried to imagine what Siegmund would do and say to her. As she was wiping a cup, she dropped it, and the smash so unnerved her that her hands trembled almost too much to finish drying the things and putting them away. At last it was done. Her next piece of work was to make the beds. She took her pail and went upstairs. Her heart was beating so heavily in her throat that she had to stop on the landing to recover breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself, she said loudly at Siegmund's door, her voice coldly hostile:

'Aren't you going to get up?'

There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.

'It's after half past ten—aren't you going to get up?' she called.

She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She returned and knocked swiftly at her husband's door, not speaking. She waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring, so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was open—everything seemed quiet.

Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a little farther down the road. She hurried to him.

'Will you come and see if there's anything wrong with my husband?' she asked wildly.

'Why, mum?' answered the window-cleaner, who knew her, and was humbly familiar. 'Is he taken bad or something? Yes, I'll come.'

He was a tall thin man with a brown beard. His clothes were all so loose, his trousers so baggy, that he gave one the impression his limbs must be bone, and his body a skeleton. He pushed at his ladders with a will.

'Where is he, Mum?' he asked officiously, as they slowed down at the side passage.

'He's in his bedroom, and I can't get an answer from him.'

'Then I s'll want a ladder,' said the window-cleaner, proceeding to lift one off his trolley. He was in a very great bustle. He knew which was Siegmund's room: he had often seen Siegmund rise from some music he was studying and leave the drawing-room when the window-cleaning began, and afterwards he had found him in the small front bedroom. He also knew there were matrimonial troubles: Beatrice was not reserved.

'Is it the least of the front rooms he's in?' asked the window-cleaner.

'Yes, over the porch,' replied Beatrice.

The man bustled with his ladder.

'It's easy enough,' he said. 'The door's open, and we're soon on the balcony.'

He set the ladder securely. Beatrice cursed him for a slow, officious fool. He tested the ladder, to see it was safe, then he cautiously clambered up. At the top he stood leaning sideways, bending over the ladder to peer into the room. He could see all sorts of things, for he was frightened.

'I say there!' he called loudly.

Beatrice stood below in horrible suspense.

'Go in!' she cried. 'Go in! Is he there?'

The man stepped very cautiously with one foot on to the balcony, and peered forward. But the glass door reflected into his eyes. He followed slowly with the other foot, and crept forward, ready at any moment to take flight.

'Hie, hie!' he suddenly cried in terror, and he drew back.

Beatrice was opening her mouth to scream, when the window-cleaner exclaimed weakly, as if dubious:

'I believe 'e's 'anged 'imself from the door-'ooks!'

'No!' cried Beatrice. 'No, no, no!'

'I believe 'e 'as!' repeated the man.

'Go in and see if he's dead!' cried Beatrice.

The man remained in the doorway, peering fixedly.

'I believe he is,' he said doubtfully.

'No—go and see!' screamed Beatrice.

The man went into the room, trembling, hesitating. He approached the body as if fascinated. Shivering, he took it round the loins and tried to lift it down. It was too heavy.

'I know!' he said to himself, once more bustling now he had something to do. He took his clasp-knife from his pocket, jammed the body between himself and the door so that it should not drop, and began to saw his way through the leathern strap. It gave. He started, and clutched the body, dropping his knife. Beatrice, below in the garden, hearing the scuffle and the clatter, began to scream in hysteria. The man hauled the body of Siegmund, with much difficulty, on to the bed, and with trembling fingers tried to unloose the buckle in which the strap ran. It was bedded in Siegmund's neck. The window-cleaner tugged at it frantically, till he got it loose. Then he looked at Siegmund. The dead man lay on the bed with swollen, discoloured face, with his sleeping-jacket pushed up in a bunch under his armpits, leaving his side naked. Beatrice was screaming below. The window-cleaner, quite unnerved, ran from the room and scrambled down the ladder. Siegmund lay heaped on the bed, his sleeping-suit twisted and bunched up about him, his face hardly recognizable.



Chapter 29

Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.

The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena, Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward. Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle disconcerted by this amusement.

The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought of Bazarof in Fathers and Sons, endorsing his opinion on the appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.

The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window. There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun came up.

Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her? She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock, breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious and harsh.

'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.

The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling in an ill humour.

When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically the same as the Walhalla scene in Walkuere; in the second place, Tristan was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of Tristan. As she stood on the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.

She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she forgot most whiles.

On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap, waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.

'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning. 'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!—glorious!'

The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown. She hurried to the bed.

'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'

'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's lovely—lovely!'

There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other spasmodically.

'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did you see that?'

She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down. Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.

'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'

'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a jest.

'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'

Helena laughed ironically.

'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.

'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You know, it's not that I'm afraid....'

The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.

Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something had happened.

Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush, persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.

'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.

No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised. The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.

She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.

'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have happened to him—I should have known. I should have known the moment his spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'

She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.

'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go and see.'

She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this she went to sleep.

The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state of affairs.

Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something fatal awaited her.

The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat up:

'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'

'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'

The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.

'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you would come to me.'

'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.

'And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?' she had added.

'I promise,' he answered.

Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did what it could.

That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense.

Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had prearranged everything minutely.

After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.

'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of ——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the South Coast....'

The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.

'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy was expressed for the widow and children.'

Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going.

'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a brick, it was like a brick.'

She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken her with him?

The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to return to Cornwall.

'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she wired the news:

'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'

* * * * *

This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind was chaotic.

'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition. She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and maiming her.

As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her mother opened to her.

'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.

'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and took it. It was from one of the London papers.

'Inquest was held today upon the body of ——.'

Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.

'How did you get to know?' she asked.

'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in her muted, toneless voice.

'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.

'No,' replied Helena.

'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother hesitatingly.

Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically, looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently to help her.

For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her. Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look. They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.

'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.

'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.

Helena shivered slightly.

'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'

Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress. When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her, yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not. Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.

'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.

'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall, erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating himself. His hands were tightly clasped.

'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.

'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.

The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand to his head; he was thinking and praying.

Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece, and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence, Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail, and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own bedside, and prayed.

Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but she could not bear to be looked at.

Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away, having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up as she entered.

'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.

'Is it a—a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.

'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'

'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.

He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter. She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility upon himself.



Chapter 30

Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories. When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally suspended.

When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house, sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the bedroom of Siegmund was locked.

Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.

'The children!' she said to herself—'the children. I must live for the children; I must think for the children.'

This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully, exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of Siegmund began to fade rapidly.

Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The world was big with promise.