The room was black and red with firelight. Helena shone ruddily as she knelt, a bright, bowed figure, full in the glow. Now and then red stripes of firelight leapt across the walls. Siegmund, his face ruddy, advanced out of the shadows.
He sat in the chair beside her, leaning forward, his hands hanging like two scarlet flowers listless in the fire glow, near to her, as she knelt on the hearth, with head bowed down. One of the flowers awoke and spread towards her. It asked for her mutely. She was fascinated, scarcely able to move.
‘Come,’ he pleaded softly.
She turned, lifted her hands to him. The lace fell back, and her arms, bare to the shoulder, shone rosily. He saw her breasts raised towards him. Her face was bent between her arms as she looked up at him afraid. Lit by the firelight, in her white, clinging dress, cowering between her uplifted arms, she seemed to be offering him herself to sacrifice.
In an instant he was kneeling, and she was lying on his shoulder, abandoned to him. There was a good deal of sorrow in his joy.
* * * * *
It was eleven o’clock when Helena at last loosened Siegmund’s arms, and rose from the armchair where she lay beside him. She was very hot, feverish, and restless. For the last half-hour he had lain absolutely still, with his heavy arms about her, making her hot. If she had not seen his eyes blue and dark, she would have thought him asleep. She tossed in restlessness on his breast.
‘Am I not uneasy?’ she had said, to make him speak. He had smiled gently.
‘It is wonderful to be as still as this,’ he said. She had lain tranquil with him, then, for a few moments. To her there was something sacred in his stillness and peace. She wondered at him; he was so different from an hour ago. How could he be the same! Now he was like the sea, blue and hazy in the morning, musing by itself. Before, he was burning, volcanic, as if he would destroy her.
She had given him this new soft beauty. She was the earth in which his strange flowers grew. But she herself wondered at the flowers produced of her. He was so strange to her, so different from herself. What next would he ask of her, what new blossom would she rear in him then. He seemed to grow and flower involuntarily. She merely helped to produce him.
Helena could not keep still; her body was full of strange sensations, of involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and unbearable to herself.
At last she lifted his arm, and drew herself out of the chair. Siegmund looked at her from his tranquillity. She put the damp hair from her forehead, breathed deep, almost panting. Then she glanced hauntingly at her flushed face in the mirror. With the same restlessness, she turned to look at the night. The cool, dark, watery sea called to her. She pushed back the curtain.
The moon was wading deliciously through shallows of white cloud. Beyond the trees and the few houses was the great concave of darkness, the sea, and the moonlight. The moon was there to put a cool hand of absolution on her brow.
‘Shall we go out a moment, Siegmund?’ she asked fretfully.
‘Ay, if you wish to,’ he answered, altogether willing. He was filled with an easiness that would comply with her every wish.
They went out softly, walked in silence to the bay. There they stood at the head of the white, living moonpath, where the water whispered at the casement of the land seductively.
‘It’s the finest night I have seen,’ said Siegmund. Helena’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, at his simplicity of happiness.
‘I like the moon on the water,’ she said.
‘I can hardly tell the one from the other,’ he replied simply. ‘The sea seems to be poured out of the moon, and rocking in the hands of the coast. They are all one, just as your eyes and hands and what you say, are all you.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, thrilled. This was the Siegmund of her dream, and she had created him. Yet there was a quiver of pain. He was beyond her now, and did not need her.
‘I feel at home here,’ he said; ‘as if I had come home where I was bred.’
She pressed his hand hard, clinging to him.
‘We go an awful long way round, Helena,’ he said, ‘just to find we’re all right.’ He laughed pleasantly. ‘I have thought myself such an outcast! How can one be outcast in one’s own night, and the moon always naked to us, and the sky half her time in rags? What do we want?’
Helena did not know. Nor did she know what he meant. But she felt something of the harmony.
‘Whatever I have or haven’t from now,’ he continued, ‘the darkness is a sort of mother, and the moon a sister, and the stars children, and sometimes the sea is a brother: and there’s a family in one house, you see.’
‘And I, Siegmund?’ she said softly, taking him in all seriousness. She looked up at him piteously. He saw the silver of tears among the moonlit ivory of her face. His heart tightened with tenderness, and he laughed, then bent to kiss her.
‘The key of the castle,’ he said. He put his face against hers, and felt on his cheek the smart of her tears.
‘It’s all very grandiose,’ he said comfortably, ‘but it does for tonight, all this that I say.’
‘It is true for ever,’ she declared.
‘In so far as tonight is eternal,’ he said.
He remained, with the wetness of her cheek smarting on his, looking from under his brows at the white transport of the water beneath the moon. They stood folded together, gazing into the white heart of the night.
CHAPTER 6
Siegmund woke with wonder in the morning. ‘It is like the magic tales,’ he thought, as he realized where he was; ‘and I am transported to a new life, to realize my dream! Fairy-tales are true, after all.’
He had slept very deeply, so that he felt strangely new. He issued with delight from the dark of sleep into the sunshine. Reaching out his hand, he felt for his watch. It was seven o’clock. The dew of a sleep-drenched night glittered before his eyes. Then he laughed and forgot the night.
The creeper was tapping at the window, as a little wind blew up the sunshine. Siegmund put out his hands for the unfolding happiness of the morning. Helena was in the next room, which she kept inviolate. Sparrows in the creeper were shaking shadows of leaves among the sunshine; milk-white shallop of cloud stemmed bravely across the bright sky; the sea would be blossoming with a dewy shimmer of sunshine.
Siegmund rose to look, and it was so. Also the houses, like white, and red, and black cattle, were wandering down the bay, with a mist of sunshine between him and them. He leaned with his hands on the window-ledge looking out of the casement. The breeze ruffled his hair, blew down the neck of his sleeping-jacket upon his chest. He laughed, hastily threw on his clothes, and went out.
There was no sign of Helena. He strode along, singing to himself, and spinning his towel rhythmically. A small path led him across a field and down a zigzag in front of the cliffs. Some nooks, sheltered from the wind, were warm with sunshine, scented of honeysuckle and of thyme. He took a sprig of woodbine that was coloured of cream and butter. The grass wetted his brown shoes and his flannel trousers. Again, a fresh breeze put the scent of the sea in his uncovered hair. The cliff was a tangle of flowers above and below, with poppies at the lip being blown out like red flame, and scabious leaning inquisitively to look down, and pink and white rest-harrow everywhere, very pretty.
Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the swinging birds.
He chose his bathing-place where the incoming tide had half covered a stretch of fair, bright sand that was studded with rocks resembling square altars, hollowed on top. He threw his clothes on a high rock. It delighted him to feel the fresh, soft fingers
of the wind touching him and wandering timidly over his nakedness. He ran laughing over the sand to the sea, where he waded in, thrusting his legs noisily through the heavy green water.
It was cold, and he shrank. For a moment he found himself thigh-deep, watching the horizontal stealing of a ship through the intolerable glitter, afraid to plunge. Laughing, he went under the clear green water.
He was a poor swimmer. Sometimes a choppy wave swamped him, and he rose gasping, wringing the water from his eyes and nostrils, while he heaved and sank with the rocking of the waves that clasped his breast. Then he stooped again to resume his game with the sea. It is splendid to play, even at middle age, and the sea is a fine partner.
With his eyes at the shining level of the water, he liked to peer across, taking a seal’s view of the cliffs as they confronted the morning. He liked to see the ships standing up on a bright floor; he liked to see the birds come down.
But in his playing he drifted towards the spur of rock, where, as he swam, he caught his thigh on a sharp, submerged point. He frowned at the pain, at the sudden cruelty of the sea; then he thought no more of it, but ruffled his way back to the clear water, busily continuing his play.
When he ran out on to the fair sand his heart, and brain, and body were in a turmoil. He panted, filling his breast with the air that was sparkled and tasted of the sea. As he shuddered a little, the wilful palpitations of his flesh pleased him, as if birds had fluttered against him. He offered his body to the morning, glowing with the sea’s passion. The wind nestled in to him, the sunshine came on his shoulders like warm breath. He delighted in himself.
The rock before him was white and wet, like himself; it had a pool of clear water, with shells and one rose anemone.
‘She would make so much of this little pool,’ he thought. And as he smiled, he saw, very faintly, his own shadow in the water. It made him conscious of himself, seeming to look at him. He glanced at himself, at his handsome, white maturity. As he looked he felt the insidious creeping of blood down his thigh, which was marked with a long red slash. Siegmund watched the blood travel over the bright skin. It wound itself redly round the rise of his knee.
‘That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What makes me myself, among all these?’
Feeling chill, he wiped himself quickly.
‘I am at my best, at my strongest,’ he said proudly to himself. ‘She ought to be rejoiced at me, but she is not; she rejects me as if I were a baboon under my clothing.’
He glanced at his whole handsome maturity, the firm plating of his breasts, the full thighs, creatures proud in themselves. Only he was marred by the long raw scratch, which he regretted deeply.
‘If I was giving her myself, I wouldn’t want that blemish on me,’ he thought.
He wiped the blood from the wound. It was nothing.
‘She thinks ten thousand times more of that little pool, with a bit of pink anemone and some yellow weed, than of me. But, by Jove! I’d rather see her shoulders and breast than all heaven and earth put together could show.... Why doesn’t she like me?’ he thought as he dressed. It was his physical self thinking.
After dabbling his feet in a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and insistent. She smiled on him with tender dignity.
‘You have bathed?’ she said, smiling, and looking at his damp, ruffled black hair. She shrank from his eyes, but he was quite unconscious.
‘You have not bathed!’ he said; then bent to kiss her. She smelt the brine in his hair.
‘No; I bathe later,’ she replied. ‘But what — ’
Hesitating, she touched the towel, then looked up at him anxiously.
‘It is blood?’ she said.
‘I grazed my thigh — nothing at all,’ he replied.
‘Are you sure?’
He laughed.
‘The towel looks bad enough,’ she said.
‘It’s an alarmist,’ he laughed.
She looked in concern at him, then turned aside.
‘Breakfast is quite ready,’ she said.
‘And I for breakfast — but shall I do?’
She glanced at him. He was without a collar, so his throat was bare above the neck-band of his flannel shirt. Altogether she disapproved of his slovenly appearance. He was usually so smart in his dress.
‘I would not trouble,’ she said almost sarcastically.
Whistling, he threw the towel on a chair.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked gravely, as she watched him beginning to eat.
‘Like the dead — solid,’ he replied’. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, pretty well, thanks,’ she said, rather piqued that he had slept so deeply, whilst she had tossed, and had called his name in a torture of sleeplessness.
‘I haven’t slept like that for years,’ he said enthusiastically. Helena smiled gently on him. The charm of his handsome, healthy zest came over her. She liked his naked throat and his shirt-breast, which suggested the breast of the man beneath it. She was extraordinarily happy, with him so bright. The dark-faced pansies, in a little crowd, seemed gaily winking a golden eye at her.
After breakfast, while Siegmund dressed, she went down to the sea. She dwelled, as she passed, on all tiny, pretty things — on the barbaric yellow ragwort, and pink convolvuli; on all the twinkling of flowers, and dew, and snail-tracks drying in the sun. Her walk was one long lingering. More than the spaces, she loved the nooks, and fancy more than imagination.
She wanted to see just as she pleased, without any of humanity’s previous vision for spectacles. So she knew hardly any flower’s name, nor perceived any of the relationships, nor cared a jot about an adaptation or a modification. It pleased her that the lowest browny florets of the clover hung down; she cared no more. She clothed everything in fancy.
‘That yellow flower hadn’t time to be brushed and combed by the fairies before dawn came. It is tousled ...’ so she thought to herself. The pink convolvuli were fairy horns or telephones from the day fairies to the night fairies. The rippling sunlight on the sea was the Rhine maidens spreading their bright hair to the sun. That was her favourite form of thinking. The value of all things was in the fancy they evoked. She did not care for people; they were vulgar, ugly, and stupid, as a rule.
Her sense of satisfaction was complete as she leaned on the low sea-wall, spreading her fingers to warm on the stones, concocting magic out of the simple morning. She watched the indolent chasing of wavelets round the small rocks, the curling of the deep blue water round the water-shadowed reefs.
‘This is very good,’ she said to herself. ‘This is eternally cool, and clean and fresh. It could never be spoiled by satiety.’
She tried to wash herself with the white and blue morning, to clear away the soiling of the last night’s passion.
The sea played by itself, intent on its own game. Its aloofness, its self-sufficiency, are its great charm. The sea does not give and take, like the land and the sky. It has no traffic with the world. It spends its passion upon itself. Helena was something like the sea, self-sufficient and careless of the rest.
Siegmund came bareheaded, his black hair ruffling to the wind, his eyes shining warmer than the sea-like cornflowers rather, his limbs swinging backward and forward like the water. Together they leaned on the wall, warming the four white hands upon the grey bleached stone as they watched the water playing.
When Siegmund had Helena near, he lost the ache, the yearning towards something, which he always felt otherwise. She seemed to connect him with the beauty of things, as if she were the nerve through which he received intelligence of the sun, and wind, and sea, and of the moon and the darkness. Beauty she never felt herself came to him through her. It is that makes love.
He could always sympathize with the wistful little flowers, and trees lonely in their crowds, and wild, sad seabirds. In these things he recognized the great yearning, the ache outwards towards something, with which he was ordinarily burdened. But with Helena, in this large sea-morning, he was whole and perfect as the day.
‘Will it be fine all day?’ he asked, when a cloud came over.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied in her gentle, inattentive manner, as if she did not care at all. ‘I think it will be a mixed day — cloud and sun — more sun than cloud.’
She looked up gravely to see if he agreed. He turned from frowning at the cloud to smile at her. He seemed so bright, teeming with life.
‘I like a bare blue sky,’ he said; ‘sunshine that you seem to stir about as you walk.’
‘It is warm enough here, even for you,’ she smiled.
‘Ah, here!’ he answered, putting his face down to receive the radiation from the stone, letting his fingers creep towards Helena’s. She laughed, and captured his fingers, pressing them into her hand. For nearly an hour they remained thus in the still sunshine by the sea-wall, till Helena began to sigh, and to lift her face to the little breeze that wandered down from the west. She fled as soon from warmth as from cold. Physically, she was always so; she shrank from anything extreme. But psychically she was an extremist, and a dangerous one.
They climbed the hill to the fresh-breathing west. On the highest point of land stood a tall cross, railed in by a red iron fence. They read the inscription.
‘That’s all right — but a vilely ugly railing!’ exclaimed Siegmund.
‘Oh, they’d have to fence in Lord Tennyson’s white marble,’ said Helena, rather indefinitely.
He interpreted her according to his own idea.
‘Yes, he did belittle great things, didn’t he?’ said Siegmund.
‘Tennyson!’ she exclaimed.
‘Not peacocks and princesses, but the bigger things.’
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 43