‘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 misera
bly. ‘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.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 57