The Trespasser

by D. H. Lawrence

  _Chapter 21_

  The tall white yachts in a throng were lounging off the roads of Ryde.It was near the regatta time, so these proud creatures had flown loftilytogether, and now flitted hither and thither among themselves, like aconcourse of tall women, footing the waves with superb touch. ToSiegmund they were very beautiful, but removed from him, as dancerscrossing the window-lights are removed from the man who looks up fromthe street. He saw the Solent and the world of glamour flying gay assnow outside, where inside was only Siegmund, tired, dispirited,without any joy.

  He and Helena had climbed among coils of rope on to the prow of theirsteamer, so they could catch a little spray of speed on their faces tostimulate them. The sea was very bright and crowded. White sails leanedslightly and filed along the roads; two yachts with sails of amberfloated, it seemed, without motion, amid the eclipsed blue of the day;small boats with red and yellow flags fluttered quickly, trailing thesea with colour; a pleasure steamer coming from Cowes swung her softstout way among the fleeting ships; high in the background weremen-of-war, a long line, each one threading tiny triangles of flagsthrough a sky dim with distance.

  'It is all very glad,' said Siegmund to himself, 'but it seems to befanciful.'

  He was out of it. Already he felt detached from life. He belonged to hisdestination. It is always so: we have no share in the beauty that liesbetween us and our goal.

  Helena watched with poignant sorrow all the agitation of colour on theblue afternoon.

  'We must leave it; we must pass out of it,' she lamented, over and overagain. Each new charm she caught eagerly.

  'I like the steady purpose of that brown-sailed tramp,' she said toherself, watching a laden coaster making for Portsmouth.

  They were still among the small shipping of Ryde. Siegmund and Helena,as they looked out, became aware of a small motor-launch heading acrosstheir course towards a yacht whose tall masts were drawn clean on thesky. The eager launch, its nose up as if to breathe, was racing over theswell like a coursing dog. A lady, in white, and a lad with dark headand white jersey were leaning in the bows; a gentleman was bending oversome machinery in the middle of the boat, while the sailor in the lowstern was also stooping forward attending to something. The steamer wassweeping onwards, huge above the water; the dog of a boat was coursingstraight across her track. The lady saw the danger first. Stretchingforward, she seized the arm of the lad and held him firm, making nosound, but watching the forward menace of the looming steamer.

  'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was alreadywatching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launchveered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. Thelady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face atthe high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water underthe bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dogfrom in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like adog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced backquickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face wasas if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to thesteering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boatcoursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launchraced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a briefgesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward tothe lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost withindifference.

  Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white tothe lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. Thenoise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for amoment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour oflife again.

  'By Jove, that was a near thing!'

  'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.

  'A French yacht,' said somebody.

  Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know whatto say. Confused, he repeated:

  'That was a close shave.'

  Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference fromherself. There was something in his experience that made him different,quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.

  'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the dayis for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, andswallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, hasno suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness ofthe sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine whiteseamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.

  'For me the day is transparent and shrivelling. I can see the darknessthrough its petals. But for him it is a fresh bell-flower, in which hefumbles with delights like a bee.

  'For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darknessthe same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life,the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisibleflame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death,is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is alife but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapersinto the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from thedeath that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potentshadow, if I do not enrich life.'

  'Wasn't that woman fine!' said Helena.

  'So perfectly still,' he answered.

  'The child realized nothing,' she said.

  Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.

  'I am always so sorry,' he said, 'that the human race is urgedinevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.'

  She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.

  'I guess,' she said slowly, after a while, 'that the man, the sailor,will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.'

  'He was careful of something else just then,' said Siegmund, who hatedto hear her speak in cold condemnation. 'He was attending to themachinery or something.'

  'That was scarcely his first business,' said she, rather sarcastic.

  Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement--very blind.Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.

  'Do you think the man _wanted_ to drown the boat?' he asked.

  'He nearly succeeded,' she replied.

  There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena theworld sitting in judgement, and he hated it. 'But, after all,' hethought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the eventand not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice ofexoneration.'

  Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather ofthe woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources oflife, saw it great and impersonal.

  'Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?' heasked.

  'I rather think not. Why?' she replied.

  'I hope she didn't,' he said.

  Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was verymuch in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But toher mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift andproud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.

  Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman'scourage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm theboy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely hehimself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and fromlamenting his hard fate.

  They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and theylooked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund
wanted to flee. Heyearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would becarried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore cameround. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore sweptround in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old_Victory_, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved fora trophy.

  'It is a dreadful thing,' thought Siegmund, 'to remain as a trophy whenthere is nothing more to do.' He watched the landing-stages swoopingnearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end ofthe train was London.

  He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours.The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her inthe beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be releasedfrom her.

  They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder,in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for thecrowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on tothe mainland.

  'Won't you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?'asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning's question.

  Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.

  'No,' she replied. 'Let us go together.'

  Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.

  There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-classcompartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and satdown, facing Helena.

  'Now,' said he to himself, 'I wish I were alone.'

  He wanted to think and prepare himself.

  Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:

  'Shall I not go down to Cornwall?'

  By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew thatshe was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxietyprotracted.

  'But you have promised Louisa, have you not?' he replied.

  'Oh, well!' she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when shewished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.

  'Then you must go,' he said.

  'But,' she began, with harsh petulance, 'I do not want to go down toCornwall with _Louisa and Olive_'--she accentuated the two names--'after_this_,' she added.

  'Then Louisa will have no holiday--and you have promised,' he saidgravely.

  Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.

  'Is my promise so _very_ important?' she asked. She glanced angrily atthe three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, theladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of thecarriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relievedby their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena inhis arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass himwith words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.

  The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed throughPortsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. Itseemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side ofthe carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. Theafternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneysand the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiantappearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom oflight appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.

  'It will go on,' thought Siegmund, 'being gay of an evening, for ever.And I shall miss it all!'

  But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, hebegan again:

  'Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She willsay nothing, thank God--nor shall I. That will expedite matters: therewill be no interruptions....

  'But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discussreasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in thecountry. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of mymoney, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London.Very good.

  'But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall wantHelena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall bedamned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will neverget better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, outof pity for me. I know she would.

  'But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and menot looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be inendless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep ared sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth.Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make anyefforts. "He has brought it on us," she would say; "let him see what theresult is." And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would bea gangrene of shame.

  'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she wasasleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruouscreature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as ifI had the power of God. What should I think of myself?'

  Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the countrywhirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and hisimagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. Hesketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elderchildren rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngestbewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. Hethought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her billsunpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty ofher husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while hetook his pleasure elsewhere.

  This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to theconsideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; theagreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be onlya brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait forthe home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It wasinevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money tokeep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings wouldthen be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!

  'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give eachof my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I amnearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and roundwent his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out thegrain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of convictiongathered small and hard upon the floor.

  As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on hisknee.

  'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh withpain, 'you will forgive me.'

  He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly hesmiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyeshaunted with pain.

  'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfecthappiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!'

  Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging withpainful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leanedback in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strikeswiftly, in long rows, across her vision.

  Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where therotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helenahad interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful preythat was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home ofthe final convictions.

  'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she willhave no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What aninextricable knot this is! But what will she do?'

  It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he couldnever answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.

  They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, lookingbackward, saw the northern
slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in agreat, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmedwith sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like abreast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender andsimple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wonderedwhat fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vagueroar of the train that was carrying him home.

  Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. Itwas evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapesproud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot andmagnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, andopened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgoteverything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of thesunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimsontrain. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom ofdarkened grass-lands.

  Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. Shebreathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunsetwas stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought itsvictory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white armsuplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. Theday died nobly, so she thought.

  One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.

  'Surely that cloud is for us,' said she, as she watched it anxiously.Dark trees brushed between it and her, while she waited in suspense. Itcame, unswerving, from behind the trees.

  'I am sure it is for us,' she repeated. A gladness came into her eyes.Still the cloud followed the train. She leaned forward to Siegmund andpointed out the cloud to him. She was very eager to give him a little ofher faith.

  'It has come with us quite a long way. Doesn't it seem to you to betravelling with us? It is the golden hand; it is the good omen.'

  She then proceeded to tell him the legend from 'Aylwin'.

  Siegmund listened, and smiled. The sunset was handsome on his face.

  Helena was almost happy.

  'I am right,' said he to himself. I am right in my conclusions, andHelena will manage by herself afterwards. I am right; there is the handto confirm it.'

  The heavy train settled down to an easy, unbroken stroke, swinging likea greyhound over the level northwards. All the time Siegmund wasmechanically thinking the well-known movement from the Valkyrie Ride,his whole self beating to the rhythm. It seemed to him there was acertain grandeur in this flight, but it hurt him with its heavyinsistence of catastrophe. He was afraid; he had to summon his courageto sit quiet. For a time he was reassured; he believed he was going ontowards the right end. He hunted through the country and the sky, askingof everything, 'Am I right? Am I right?' He did not mind what happenedto him, so long as he felt it was right. What he meant by 'right' he didnot trouble to think, but the question remained. For a time he had beenreassured; then a dullness came over him, when his thoughts were stupid,and he merely submitted to the rhythm of the train, which stamped himdeeper and deeper with a brand of catastrophe.

  The sun had gone down. Over the west was a gush of brightness as thefountain of light bubbled lower. The stars, like specks of froth fromthe foaming of the day, clung to the blue ceiling. Like spiders theyhung overhead, while the hosts of the gold atmosphere poured out of thehive by the western low door. Soon the hive was empty, a hollow dome ofpurple, with here and there on the floor a bright brushing of wings--avillage; then, overhead, the luminous star-spider began to run.

  'Ah, well!' thought Siegmund--he was tired--'if one bee dies in a swarm,what is it, so long as the hive is all right? Apart from the gold light,and the hum and the colour of day, what was I? Nothing! Apart from theserushings out of the hive, along with swarm, into the dark meadows ofnight, gathering God knows what, I was a pebble. Well, the day willswarm in golden again, with colour on the wings of every bee, andhumming in each activity. The gold and the colour and sweet smell andthe sound of life, they exist, even if there is no bee; it only happenswe see the iridescence on the wings of a bee. It exists whether or not,bee or no bee. Since the iridescence and the humming of life _are_always, and since it was they who made me, then I am not lost. At least,I do not care. If the spark goes out, the essence of the fire is therein the darkness. What does it matter? Besides, I _have_ burned bright; Ihave laid up a fine cell of honey somewhere--I wonder where? We cannever point to it; but it _is_ so--what does it matter, then!'

  They had entered the north downs, and were running through Dorkingtowards Leatherhead. Box Hill stood dark in the dusky sweetness of thenight. Helena remembered that here she and Siegmund had come for theirfirst walk together. She would like to come again. Presently she saw thequick stilettos of stars on the small, baffled river; they ran betweenhigh embankments. Siegmund recollected that these were covered withroses of Sharon--the large golden St John's wort of finest silk. Helooked, and could just distinguish the full-blown, delicate flowers,ignored by the stars. At last he had something to say to Helena:

  'Do you remember,' he asked, 'the roses of Sharon all along here?'

  'I do,' replied Helena, glad he spoke so brightly. 'Weren't theypretty?'

  After a few moments of watching the bank, she said:

  'Do you know, I have never gathered one? I think I should like to; Ishould like to feel them, and they should have an orangy smell.'

  He smiled, without answering.

  She glanced up at him, smiling brightly.

  'But shall we come down here in the morning, and find some?' she asked.She put the question timidly. 'Would you care to?' she added.

  Siegmund darkened and frowned. Here was the pain revived again.

  'No,' he said gently; 'I think we had better not.' Almost for the firsttime he did not make apologetic explanation.

  Helena turned to the window, and remained, looking out at the spinningof the lights of the towns without speaking, until they were nearSutton. Then she rose and pinned on her hat, gathering her gloves andher basket. She was, in spite of herself, slightly angry. Being quiteready to leave the train, she sat down to wait for the station. Siegmundwas aware that she was displeased, and again, for the first time, hesaid to himself, 'Ah, well, it must be so.'

  She looked at him. He was sad, therefore she softened instantly.

  'At least,' she said doubtfully, 'I shall see you at the station.'

  'At Waterloo?' he asked.

  'No, at Wimbledon,' she replied, in her metallic tone.

  'But--' he began.

  'It will be the best way for us,' she interrupted, in the calm tone ofconviction. 'Much better than crossing London from Victoria toWaterloo.'

  'Very well,' he replied.

  He looked up a train for her in his little time-table.

  'You will get in Wimbledon 10.5--leave 10.40--leave Waterloo 11.30,' hesaid.

  'Very good,' she answered.

  The brakes were grinding. They waited in a burning suspense for thetrain to stop.

  'If only she will soon go!' thought Siegmund. It was an intolerableminute. She rose; everything was a red blur. She stood before him,pressing his hand; then he rose to give her the bag. As he leaned uponthe window-frame and she stood below on the platform, looking up at him,he could scarcely breathe. 'How long will it be?' he said to himself,looking at the open carriage doors. He hated intensely the lady whocould not get a porter to remove her luggage; he could have killed her;he could have killed the dilatory guard. At last the doors slammed andthe whistle went. The train started imperceptibly into motion.

  'Now I lose her,' said Siegmund.

  She looked up at him; her face was white and dismal.

  'Good-bye, then!' she said, and she turned away.

  Siegmund went back to his seat. He was relieved, but he trembled withsickness. We are all glad when intense moments are done with; but whydid she fling round in that manne
r, stopping the keen note short; whatwould she do?