_Chapter 16_
Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread
of losing him. She was in his arms, but his spirit ignored her. That was
insufferable to her pride. Yet she dared not disturb him--she was
afraid. Bitterly she repented her of the giving way to her revulsion a
little space before. Why had she not smothered it and pretended? Why had
she, a woman, betrayed herself so flagrantly? Now perhaps she had lost
him for good. She was consumed with uneasiness.
At last she drew back from him, held him her mouth to kiss. As he
gently, sadly kissed her she pressed him to her bosom. She must get him
back, whatever else she lost. She put her hand tenderly on his brow.
'What are you thinking of?' she asked.
'I?' he replied. 'I really don't know. I suppose I was hardly thinking
anything.'
She waited a while, clinging to him, then, finding some difficulty in
speech, she asked:
'Was I very cruel, dear?'
It was so unusual to hear her grieved and filled with humility that he
drew her close into him.
'It was pretty bad, I suppose,' he replied. 'But I should think neither
of us could help it.'
She gave a little sob, pressed her face into his chest, wishing she had
helped it. Then, with Madonna love, she clasped his head upon her
shoulder, covering her hands over his hair. Twice she kissed him softly
in the nape of the neck, with fond, reassuring kisses. All the while,
delicately, she fondled and soothed him, till he was child to
her Madonna.
They remained standing with his head on her shoulder for some time, till
at last he raised himself to lay his lips on hers in a long kiss of
healing and renewal--long, pale kisses of after-suffering.
Someone was coming along the path. Helena let him go, shook herself
free, turned sharply aside, and said:
'Shall we go down to the water?'
'If you like,' he replied, putting out his hand to her. They went thus
with clasped hands down the cliff path to the beach.
There they sat in the shadow of the uprising island, facing the restless
water. Around them the sand and shingle were grey; there stretched a
long pale line of surf, beyond which the sea was black and smeared with
star-reflections. The deep, velvety sky shone with lustrous stars.
As yet the moon was not risen. Helena proposed that they should lie on a
tuft of sand in a black cleft of the cliff to await its coming. They lay
close together without speaking. Each was looking at a low, large star
which hung straight in front of them, dripping its brilliance in a thin
streamlet of light along the sea almost to their feet. It was a
star-path fine and clear, trembling in its brilliance, but certain upon
the water. Helena watched it with delight. As Siegmund looked at the
star, it seemed to him a lantern hung at the gate to light someone home.
He imagined himself following the thread of the star-track. What was
behind the gate?
They heard the wash of a steamer crossing the bay. The water seemed
populous in the night-time, with dark, uncanny comings and goings.
Siegmund was considering.
'What _was_ the matter with you?' he asked.
She leaned over him, took his head in her lap, holding his face between
her two hands as she answered in a low, grave voice, very wise and old
in experience:
'Why, you see, dear, you won't understand. But there was such a greyish
darkness, and through it--the crying of lives I have touched....'
His heart suddenly shrank and sank down. She acknowledged then that she
also had helped to injure Beatrice and his children. He coiled
with shame.
'....A crying of lives against me, and I couldn't silence them, nor
escape out of the darkness. I wanted you--I saw you in front, whistling
the Spring Song, but I couldn't find you--it was not you--I couldn't
find you.'
She kissed his eyes and his brows.
'No, I don't see it,' he said. 'You would always be you. I could think
of hating you, but you'd still be yourself.'
She made a moaning, loving sound. Full of passionate pity, she moved her
mouth on his face, as a woman does on her child that has hurt itself.
'Sometimes,' she murmured, in a low, grieved confession, 'you lose me.'
He gave a brief laugh.
'I lose you!' he repeated. 'You mean I lose my attraction for you, or my
hold over you, and then you--?'
He did not finish. She made the same grievous murmuring noise over him.
'It shall not be any more,' she said.
'All right,' he replied, 'since you decide it.'
She clasped him round the chest and fondled him, distracted with pity.
'You mustn't be bitter,' she murmured.
'Four days is enough,' he said. 'In a fortnight I should be intolerable
to you. I am not masterful.'
'It is not so, Siegmund,' she said sharply.
'I give way always,' he repeated. 'And then--tonight!'
'Tonight, tonight!' she cried in wrath. 'Tonight I have been a fool!'
'And I?' he asked.
'You--what of you?' she cried. Then she became sad. 'I have little
perverse feelings,' she lamented.
'And I can't bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I'm
always pushed this way and that, like a fool.'
'You don't know how you hurt me, talking so,' she said.
He kissed her. After a moment he said:
'You are not like other folk. "_Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes
Geschlecht_." I thought of you when we read it.'
'Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund?
Which is it?'
'Neither,' he said. 'You are _you_.'
They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the
faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed
in black silhouette between them and the sea.
He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into
life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she
read with him--she loved its loose and violent romance--came back to his
mind: '_Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem
immer tiefer ins Leben._'
Well, the next place he would be hunted to, like a hare run down, was
home. It seemed impossible the morrow would take him back to Beatrice.
'This time tomorrow night,' he said.
'Siegmund!' she implored.
'Why not?' he laughed.
'Don't, dear,' she pleaded.
'All right, I won't.'
Some large steamer crossing the mouth of the bay made the water dash a
little as it broke in accentuated waves. A warm puff of air wandered in
on them now and again.
'You won't be tired when you go back?' Helena asked.
'Tired!' he echoed.
'You know how you were when you came,' she reminded him, in tones full
of pity. He laughed.
'Oh, that is gone,' he said.
With a slow, mechanical rhythm she stroked his cheek.
'And will you be sad?' she said, hesitating.
'Sad!' he repeated.
'But will you be able to fake the old life up, happier, when you go
back?'
'The old life will take me up, I suppose,' he said.
There was a pause.
'I think, dear,' she said, 'I have done wrong.'
'Good Lord--you have not!' he replied sharply, pressing back his head to
look at her, for the first time.
'I shall have to send you back to Beatrice and the babies--tomorrow--as
you are now....'
'"Take no thought for the morrow." Be quiet, Helena!' he exclaimed as
the reality bit him. He sat up suddenly.
'Why?' she asked, afraid.
'Why!' he repeated. He remained sitting, leaning forward on the sand,
staring intently at Helena. She looked back in fear at him. The moment
terrified her, and she lost courage.
With a fluttered motion she put her hand on his, which was pressed hard
on the sand as he leaned forward. At once he relaxed his intensity,
laughed, then became tender.
Helena yielded herself like a forlorn child to his arms, and there lay,
half crying, while he smoothed her brow with his fingers, and grains of
sand fell from his palm on her cheek. She shook with dry, withered sobs,
as a child does when it snatches itself away from the lancet of the
doctor and hides in the mother's bosom, refusing to be touched.
But she knew the morrow was coming, whether or not, and she cowered down
on his breast. She was wild with fear of the parting and the subsequent
days. They must drink, after tomorrow, separate cups. She was filled
with vague terror of what it would be. The sense of the oneness and
unity of their fates was gone.
Siegmund also was cowed by the threat of separation. He had more
definite knowledge of the next move than had Helena. His heart was
certain of calamity, which would overtake him directly. He shrank away.
Wildly he beat about to find a means of escape from the next day and its
consequences. He did not want to go. Anything rather than go back.
In the midst of their passion of fear the moon rose. Siegmund started to
see the rim appear ruddily beyond the sea. His struggling suddenly
ceased, and he watched, spellbound, the oval horn of fiery gold come up,
resolve itself. Some golden liquor dripped and spilled upon the far
waves, where it shook in ruddy splashes. The gold-red cup rose higher,
looming before him very large, yet still not all discovered. By degrees
the horn of gold detached itself from the darkness at back of the waves.
It was immense and terrible. When would the tip be placed upon the table
of the sea?
It stood at last, whole and calm, before him; then the night took up
this drinking-cup of fiery gold, lifting it with majestic movement
overhead, letting stream forth the wonderful unwasted liquor of gold
over the sea--a libation.
Siegmund looked at the shaking flood of gold and paling gold spread
wider as the night upraised the blanching crystal, poured out farther
and farther the immense libation from the whitening cup, till at last
the moon looked frail and empty.
And there, exhaustless in the night, the white light shook on the floor
of the sea. He wondered how it would be gathered up. 'I gather it up
into myself,' he said. And the stars and the cliffs and a few trees were
watching, too. 'If I have spilled my life,' he thought, 'the unfamiliar
eyes of the land and sky will gather it up again.'
Turning to Helena, he found her face white and shining as the empty
moon.
