_Chapter 20_
At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other
with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses,
the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with
exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if
they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think,
they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back
her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.
At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of
shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself
at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man
who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here
was room for all. Faces innumerable--hot, blue-eyed faces--strained to
look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.
There entered eight Germans into the second-class compartment, five men
and three ladies. When at last the luggage was stowed away they sank
into the seats. The last man on either side to be seated lowered himself
carefully, like a wedge, between his two neighbours. Siegmund watched
the stout man, the one who had led the charge, settling himself between
his large lady and the small Helena. The latter crushed herself against
the side of the carriage. The German's hips came down tight against her.
She strove to lessen herself against the window, to escape the pressure
of his flesh, whose heat was transmitted to her. The man squeezed in the
opposite direction.
'I am afraid I press you,' he said, smiling in his gentle, chivalric
German fashion. Helena glanced swiftly at him. She liked his grey eyes,
she liked the agreeable intonation, and the pleasant sound of his words.
'Oh no,' she answered. 'You do not crush me.'
Almost before she had finished the words she turned away to the window.
The man seemed to hesitate a moment, as if recovering himself from a
slight rebuff, before he could address his lady with the good-humoured
remark in German: 'Well, and have we not managed it very nicely, eh?'
The whole party began to talk in German with great animation. They told
each other of the quaint ways of this or the other; they joked loudly
over 'Billy'--this being a nickname discovered for the German
Emperor--and what he would be saying of the Czar's trip; they questioned
each other, and answered each other concerning the places they were
going to see, with great interest, displaying admirable knowledge. They
were pleased with everything; they extolled things English.
Helena's stout neighbour, who, it seemed, was from Dresden, began to
tell anecdotes. He was a _raconteur_ of the naïve type: he talked with
face, hands, with his whole body. Now and again he would give little
spurts in his seat. After one of these he must have become aware of
Helena--who felt as if she were enveloped by a soft stove--struggling to
escape his compression. He stopped short, lifted his hat, and smiling
beseechingly, said in his persuasive way:
'I am sorry. I am sorry. I compress you!' He glanced round in
perplexity, seeking some escape or remedy. Finding none, he turned to
her again, after having squeezed hard against his lady to free
Helena, and said:
'Forgive me, I am sorry.'
'You are forgiven,' replied Helena, suddenly smiling into his face with
her rare winsomeness. The whole party, attentive, relaxed into a smile
at this. The good humour was complete.
'Thank you,' said the German gratefully.
Helena turned away. The talk began again like the popping of corn; the
_raconteur_ resumed his anecdote. Everybody was waiting to laugh. Helena
rapidly wearied of trying to follow the tale. Siegmund had made no
attempt. He had watched, with the others, the German's apologies, and
the sight of his lover's face had moved him more than he could tell.
She had a peculiar, childish wistfulness at times, and with this an
intangible aloofness that pierced his heart. It seemed to him he should
never know her. There was a remoteness about her, an estrangement
between her and all natural daily things, as if she were of an unknown
race that never can tell its own story. This feeling always moved
Siegmund's pity to its deepest, leaving him poignantly helpless. This
same foreignness, revealed in other ways, sometimes made him hate her.
It was as if she would sacrifice him rather than renounce her foreign
birth. There was something in her he could never understand, so that
never, never could he say he was master of her as she was of him
the mistress.
As she smiled and turned away from the German, mute, uncomplaining, like
a child wise in sorrow beyond its years, Siegmund's resentment against
her suddenly took fire, and blazed him with sheer pain of pity. She was
very small. Her quiet ways, and sometimes her impetuous clinging made
her seem small; for she was very strong. But Siegmund saw her now,
small, quiet, uncomplaining, living for him who sat and looked at her.
But what would become of her when he had left her, when she was alone,
little foreigner as she was, in this world, which apologizes when it has
done the hurt, too blind to see beforehand? Helena would be left behind;
death was no way for her. She could not escape thus with him from this
house of strangers which she called 'life'. She had to go on alone, like
a foreigner who cannot learn the strange language.
'What will she do?' Siegmund asked himself, 'when her loneliness comes
upon her like a horror, and she has no one to go to. She will come to
the memory of me for a while, and that will take her over till her
strength is established. But what then?'
Siegmund could find no answer. He tried to imagine her life. It would go
on, after his death, just in the same way, for a while, and then? He had
not the faintest knowledge of how she would develop. What would she do
when she was thirty-eight, and as old as himself? He could not conceive.
Yet she would not die, of that he was certain.
Siegmund suddenly realized that he knew nothing of her life, her real
inner life. She was a book written in characters unintelligible to him
and to everybody. He was tortured with the problem of her till it became
acute, and he felt as if his heart would burst inside him. As a boy he
had experienced the same sort of feeling after wrestling for an hour
with a problem in Euclid, for he was capable of great concentration.
He felt Helena looking at him. Turning, he found her steady, unswerving
eyes fixed on him, so that he shrank confused from them. She smiled: by
an instinctive movement she made him know that she wanted him to hold
her hand. He leaned forward and put his hand over hers. She had peculiar
hands, small, with a strange, delightful silkiness. Often they were cool
or cold; generally they lay unmoved within his clasp, but then they were
instinct with life, not inert. Sometimes he would feel a peculiar
jerking in his pulse, very much like electricity, when he held her hand.
Occasionally it was almost painful, and felt as if a little virtue were
passing out of his blood. But that he dismissed as nonsense.
The Germans were still rattling away, perspiring freely, wiping their
faces with their handkerchiefs as they laughed, moving inside their
clothing, which was sticking to their sides. Siegmund had not noticed
them for some time, he was so much absorbed. But Helena, though she
sympathized with her fellow-passengers, was tormented almost beyond
endurance by the noise, the heat of her neighbour's body, the atmosphere
of the crowded carriage, and her own emotion. The only thing that could
relieve her was the hand of Siegmund soothing her in its hold.
She looked at him with the same steadiness which made her eyes feel
heavy upon him, and made him shrink. She wanted his strength of nerve to
support her, and he submitted at once, his one aim being to give her out
of himself whatever she wanted.
