‘You must go to bed early tonight,’ she said, turning aside her face, ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself up against the fog.
‘You are sure you’re not too tired?’ she reiterated.
He laughed.
Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his overcoat, while they walked together.
‘I like the mist,’ he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
‘I don’t dislike it,’ she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
‘It puts us together by ourselves,’ he said. She plodded alongside, bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
‘It couldn’t have happened better for us than this mist,’ he said.
She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
‘Why?’ she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
‘There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but me — look!’
He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense. They turned from it.
‘What is the pitch?’ asked Helena.
‘Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,’ said Siegmund.
‘Yes, but the settled pitch — is it about E?’
‘E!’ exclaimed Siegmund. ‘More like F.’
‘Nay, listen!’ said Helena.
They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the fog-horn.
‘There!’ exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. ‘That is not E.’ He repeated the sound. ‘It is F.’
‘Surely it is E,’ persisted Helena.
‘Even F sharp,’ he rejoined, humming the note.
She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
‘But you agree?’ he said.
‘I do not,’ she replied.
The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
‘What is the note in Tristan?’ Helena made an effort to ask.
‘That is not the same,’ he replied.
‘No, dear, that is not the same,’ she said in low, comforting tones. He quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps down the fog.
As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely to itself.
Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
‘Shall we walk over, then?’ said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena’s heart stood still a moment at the idea, then beat heavily. How could he play with the idea of death, and the five great days in front? She was afraid of him just then.
‘Come away, dear,’ she pleaded.
He would, then, forgo the few consummate days! It was bitterness to her to think so.
‘Come away, dear!’ she repeated, drawing him slowly to the path.
‘You are not afraid?’ he asked.
‘Not afraid, no....’ Her voice had that peculiar, reedy, harsh quality that made him shiver.
‘It is too easy a way,’ he said satirically.
She did not take in his meaning.
‘And five days of our own before us, Siegmund!’ she scolded. ‘The mist is Lethe. It is enough for us if its spell lasts five days.’
He laughed, and took her in his arms, kissing her very closely.
They walked on joyfully, locking behind them the doors of forgetfulness.
As the sun set, the fog dispersed a little. Breaking masses of mist went flying from cliff to cliff, and far away beyond the cliffs the western sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun was departing with pomp.
Siegmund sat very still, watching the sunset. It was a splendid, flaming bridal chamber where he had come to Helena. He wondered how to express it; how other men had borne this same glory.
‘What is the music of it?’ he asked.
She glanced at him. His eyelids were half lowered, his mouth slightly open, as if in ironic rhapsody.
‘Of what, dear?’
‘What music do you think holds the best interpretation of sunset?’
His skin was gold, his real mood was intense. She revered him for a moment.
‘I do not know,’ she said quietly; and she rested her head against his shoulder, looking out west.
There was a space of silence, while Siegmund dreamed on.
‘A Beethoven symphony — the one — ’ and he explained to her.
She was not satisfied, but leaned against him, making her choice. The sunset hung steady, she could scarcely perceive a change.
‘The Grail music in Lohengrin,’ she decided.
‘Yes,’ said Siegmund. He found it quite otherwise, but did not trouble to dispute. He dreamed by himself. This displeased her. She wanted him for herself. How could he leave her alone while he watched the sky? She almost put her two hands over his eyes.
CHAPTER 4
The gold march of sunset passed quickly, the ragged curtains of mist closed to. Soon Siegmund and Helena were shut alone within the dense wide fog. She shivered with the cold and the damp. Startled, he took her in his arms, where she lay and clung to him. Holding her closely, he bent forward, straight to her lips. His moustache was drenched cold with fog, so that she shuddered slightly after his kiss, and shuddered again. He did not know why the strong tremor passed through her. Thinking it was with fear and with cold, he undid his overcoat, put her close on his breast, and covered her as best he could. That she feared him at that moment was half pleasure, half shame to him. Pleadingly he hid his face on her shoulder, held her very tightly, till his face grew hot, buried against her soft strong throat.
‘You are so big I can’t hold you,’ she whispered plaintively, catching her breath with fear. Her small hands grasped at the breadth of his shoulders ineffectually.
‘You will be cold. Put your hands under my coat,’ he whispered.
He put her inside his overcoat and his coat. She came to his warm breast with a sharp intaking of delight and fear; she tried to make her hands meet in the warmth of his shoulders, tried to clasp him.
‘See! I can’t,’ she whispered.
He laughed short, and pressed her closer.
Then, tucking her head in his breast, hiding her face, she timidly slid her hands along his sides, pressing softly, to find the contours of his figure. Softly her hands crept over the silky back of his waistcoat, under his coats, and as they stirred, his blood flushed up, and up again, with fire, till all Siegmund was hot blood, and his breast was one great ache.
He crushed her to him — crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, conscious of nothing.
She was hurt and crushed, but it was pain delicious to her. It was marvellous to her how strong he was, to keep up
that grip of her like steel. She swooned in a kind of intense bliss. At length she found herself released, taking a great breath, while Siegmund was moving his mouth over her throat, something like a dog snuffing her, but with his lips. Her heart leaped away in revulsion. His moustache thrilled her strangely. His lips, brushing and pressing her throat beneath the ear, and his warm breath flying rhythmically upon her, made her vibrate through all her body. Like a violin under the bow, she thrilled beneath his mouth, and shuddered from his moustache. Her heart was like fire in her breast.
Suddenly she strained madly to him, and, drawing back her head, placed her lips on his, close, till at the mouth they seemed to melt and fuse together. It was the long, supreme kiss, in which man and woman have one being, Two-in-one, the only Hermaphrodite.
When Helena drew away her lips, she was exhausted. She belonged to that class of ‘dreaming women’ with whom passion exhausts itself at the mouth. Her desire was accomplished in a real kiss. The fire, in heavy flames, had poured through her to Siegmund, from Siegmund to her. It sank, and she felt herself flagging. She had not the man’s brightness and vividness of blood. She lay upon his breast, dreaming how beautiful it would be to go to sleep, to swoon unconscious there, on that rare bed. She lay still on Siegmund’s breast, listening to his heavily beating heart.
With her the dream was always more than the actuality. Her dream of Siegmund was more to her than Siegmund himself. He might be less than her dream, which is as it may be. However, to the real man she was very cruel.
He held her close. His dream was melted in his blood, and his blood ran bright for her. His dreams were the flowers of his blood. Hers were more detached and inhuman. For centuries a certain type of woman has been rejecting the ‘animal’ in humanity, till now her dreams are abstract, and full of fantasy, and her blood runs in bondage, and her kindness is full of cruelty.
Helena lay flagging upon the breast of Siegmund. He folded her closely, and his mouth and his breath were warm on her neck. She sank away from his caresses, passively, subtly drew back from him. He was far too sensitive not to be aware of this, and far too much of a man not to yield to the woman. His heart sank, his blood grew sullen at her withdrawal. Still he held her; the two were motionless and silent for some time.
She became distressedly conscious that her feet, which lay on the wet grass, were aching with cold. She said softly, gently, as if he was her child whom she must correct and lead:
‘I think we ought to go home, Siegmund.’ He made a small sound, that might mean anything, but did not stir or release her. His mouth, however, remained motionless on her throat, and the caress went out of it.
‘It is cold and wet, dear; we ought to go,’ she coaxed determinedly.
‘Soon,’ he said thickly.
She sighed, waited a moment, then said very gently, as if she were loath to take him from his pleasure:
‘Siegmund, I am cold.’
There was a reproach in this which angered him.
‘Cold!’ he exclaimed. ‘But you are warm with me — ’
‘But my feet are out on the grass, dear, and they are like wet pebbles.’
‘Oh dear!’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you give them me to warm?’ He leaned forward, and put his hand on her shoes.
‘They are very cold,’ he said. ‘We must hurry and make them warm.’
When they rose, her feet were so numbed she could hardly stand. She clung to Siegmund, laughing.
‘I wish you had told me before,’ he said. ‘I ought to have known....’
Vexed with himself, he put his arm round her, and they set off home.
CHAPTER 5
They found the fire burning brightly in their room. The only other person in the pretty, stiffly-furnished cottage was their landlady, a charming old lady, who let this sitting-room more for the change, for the sake of having visitors, than for gain.
Helena introduced Siegmund as ‘My friend’. The old lady smiled upon him. He was big, and good-looking, and embarrassed. She had had a son years back.... And the two were lovers. She hoped they would come to her house for their honeymoon.
Siegmund sat in his great horse-hair chair by the fire, while Helena attended to the lamp. Glancing at him over the glowing globe, she found him watching her with a small, peculiar smile of irony, and anger, and bewilderment. He was not quite himself. Her hand trembled so, she could scarcely adjust the wicks.
Helena left the room to change her dress.
‘I shall be back before Mrs Curtiss brings in the tray. There is the Nietzsche I brought — ’
He did not answer as he watched her go. Left alone, he sat with his arms along his knees, perfectly still. His heart beat heavily, and all his being felt sullen, watchful, aloof, like a balked animal. Thoughts came up in his brain like bubbles — random, hissing out aimlessly. Once, in the startling inflammability of his blood, his veins ran hot, and he smiled.
When Helena entered the room his eyes sought hers swiftly, as sparks lighting on the tinder. But her eyes were only moist with tenderness. His look instantly changed. She wondered at his being so silent, so strange.
Coming to him in her unhesitating, womanly way — she was only twenty-six to his thirty-eight — she stood before him, holding both his hands and looking down on him with almost gloomy tenderness. She wore a white dress that showed her throat gathering like a fountain-jet of solid foam to balance her head. He could see the full white arms passing clear through the dripping spume of lace, towards the rise of her breasts. But her eyes bent down upon him with such gloom of tenderness that he dared not reveal the passion burning in him. He could not look at her. He strove almost pitifully to be with her sad, tender, but he could not put out his fire. She held both his hands firm, pressing them in appeal for her dream love. He glanced at her wistfully, then turned away. She waited for him. She wanted his caresses and tenderness. He would not look at her.
‘You would like supper now, dear?’ she asked, looking where the dark hair ended, and his neck ran smooth, under his collar, to the strong setting of his shoulders.
‘Just as you will,’ he replied.
Still she waited, and still he would not look at her. Something troubled him, she thought. He was foreign to her.
‘I will spread the cloth, then,’ she said, in deep tones of resignation. She pressed his hands closely, and let them drop. He took no notice, but, still with his arms on his knees, he stared into the fire.
In the golden glow of lamplight she set small bowls of white and lavender sweet-peas, and mignonette, upon the round table. He watched her moving, saw the stir of her white, sloping shoulders under the lace, and the hollow of her shoulders firm as marble, and the slight rise and fall of her loins as she walked. He felt as if his breast were scalded. It was a physical pain to him.
Supper was very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his strangeness. In her heart she wept.
At last she tinkled the bell for supper to be cleared. Meanwhile, restlessly, she played fragments of Wagner on the piano.
‘Will you want anything else?’ asked the smiling old landlady.
‘Nothing at all, thanks,’ said Helena, with decision.
‘Oh! then I think I will go to bed when I’ve washed the dishes. You will put the lamp out, dear?’
‘I am well used to a lamp,’ smiled Helena. ‘We use them always at home.’
She had had a day before Siegmund’s coming, in which to win Mrs Curtiss’ heart, and she had been successful. The old lady took the tray.
‘Good-night, dear — good-night, sir. I will leave you. You will not be long, dear?’
‘No, we shall not be long. Mr MacNair is very evidently tired out.’
‘Yes — yes. It is very tiring, London.’
When the door was closed, Helena
stood a moment undecided, looking at Siegmund. He was lying in his arm-chair in a dispirited way, and looking in the fire. As she gazed at him with troubled eyes, he happened to glance to her, with the same dark, curiously searching, disappointed eyes.
‘Shall I read to you?’ she asked bitterly.
‘If you will,’ he replied.
He sounded so indifferent, she could scarcely refrain from crying. She went and stood in front of him, looking down on him heavily.
‘What is it, dear?’ she said.
‘You,’ he replied, smiling with a little grimace.
‘Why me?’
He smiled at her ironically, then closed his eyes. She slid into his arms with a little moan. He took her on his knee, where she curled up like a heavy white cat. She let him caress her with his mouth, and did not move, but lay there curled up and quiet and luxuriously warm.
He kissed her hair, which was beautifully fragrant of itself, and time after time drew between his lips one long, keen thread, as if he would ravel out with his mouth her vigorous confusion of hair. His tenderness of love was like a soft flame lapping her voluptuously.
After a while they heard the old lady go upstairs. Helena went very still, and seemed to contract. Siegmund himself hesitated in his love-making. All was very quiet. They could hear the faint breathing of the sea. Presently the cat, which had been sleeping in a chair, rose and went to the door.
‘Shall I let her out?’ said Siegmund.
‘Do!’ said Helena, slipping from his knee. ‘She goes out when the nights are fine.’
Siegmund rose to set free the tabby. Hearing the front door open, Mrs Curtiss called from upstairs: ‘Is that you, dear?’
‘I have just let Kitty out,’ said Siegmund.
‘Ah, thank you. Good night!’ They heard the old lady lock her bedroom door.
Helena was kneeling on the hearth. Siegmund softly closed the door, then waited a moment. His heart was beating fast.
‘Shall we sit by firelight?’ he asked tentatively.
‘Yes — If you wish,’ she replied, very slowly, as if against her will. He carefully turned down the lamp, then blew out the light. His whole body was burning and surging with desire.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 42