_Chapter 23_
'I shall never re-establish myself,' said Siegmund as he closed behindhim the dining-room door and went upstairs in the dark. 'I am a familycriminal. Beatrice might come round, but the children's insolentjudgement is too much. And I am like a dog that creeps round the housefrom which it escaped with joy. I have nowhere else to go. Why did Icome back? But I am sleepy. I will not bother tonight.'
He went into the bathroom and washed himself. Everything he did gave hima grateful sense of pleasure, notwithstanding the misery of hisposition. He dipped his arms deeper into the cold water, that he mightfeel the delight of it a little farther. His neck he swilled time aftertime, and it seemed to him he laughed with pleasure as the water caughthim and fell away. The towel reminded him how sore were his forehead andhis neck, blistered both to a state of rawness by the sun. He touchedthem very cautiously to dry them, wincing, and smiling at his ownchildish touch-and-shrink.
Though his bedroom was very dark, he did not light the gas. Instead, hestepped out into the small balcony. His shirt was open at the neck andwrists. He pulled it farther apart, baring his chest to the deliciouslysoft night. He stood looking out at the darkness for some time. Thenight was as yet moonless, but luminous with a certain atmosphere oflight. The stars were small. Near at hand, large shapes of trees roseup. Farther, lamps like little mushroom groups shone amid an undergrowthof darkness. There was a vague hoarse noise filling the sky, like thewhispering in a shell, and this breathing of the summer nightoccasionally swelled into a restless sigh as a train roared acrossthe distance.
'What a big night!' thought Siegmund. 'The night gathers everything intoa oneness. I wonder what is in it.'
He leaned forward over the balcony, trying to catch something out of thenight. He felt his soul like tendrils stretched out anxiously to grasp ahold. What could he hold to in this great, hoarse breathing night? Astar fell. It seemed to burst into sight just across his eyes with ayellow flash. He looked up, unable to make up his mind whether he hadseen it or not. There was no gap in the sky.
'It is a good sign--a shooting star,' he said to himself. 'It is a goodsign for me. I know I am right. That was my sign.'
Having assured himself, he stepped indoors, unpacked his bag, and wassoon in bed.
'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.'
He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking fromhis pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,I've got to go through it.'
His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, heforgot when he awoke. Only this naive question and answer betrayed whathad taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinateknowledge vanished.
Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmunddid was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The secondthing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give hisheart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleepactivity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had beenhis during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses andnasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all theexpanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. Ilooked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for thedeparted beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet byfacet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though itwas keen, was half pleasure.
Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the roomnext to his, and he heard her:
'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.'
'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then Islept.'
She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.The minutes passed.
'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily tohimself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger andhumiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keephim to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, andanxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock washeard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could beheard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom ofthe stairs:
'Do you want any hot water?'
'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.
The scent of the cooking of bacon filled the house. Siegmund heard hissecond daughter, Marjory, aged nine, talking to Vera, who occupied thesame room with her. The child was evidently questioning, and the eldergirl answered briefly. There was a lull in the household noises, brokensuddenly by Marjory, shouting from the top of the stairs:
'Mam!' She wailed. 'Mam!' Still Beatrice did not hear her. 'Mam! Mamma!'Beatrice was in the scullery. 'Mamma-a!' The child was gettingimpatient. She lifted her voice and shouted: 'Mam? Mamma!' Still noanswer. 'Mam-mee-e!' she squealed.
Siegmund could hardly contain himself.
'Why don't you go down and ask?' Vera called crossly from the bedroom.
And at the same moment Beatrice answered, also crossly: 'What do youwant?'
'Where's my stockings?' cried the child at the top of her voice.
'Why do you ask me? Are they down here?' replied her mother. 'What areyou shouting for?'
The child plodded downstairs. Directly she returned, and as she passedinto Vera's room, she grumbled: 'And now they're not mended.'
Siegmund heard a sound that made his heart beat. It was the crackling ofthe sides of the crib, as Gwen, his little girl of five, climbed out.She was silent for a space. He imagined her sitting on the white rug andpulling on her stockings. Then there came the quick little thud of herfeet as she went downstairs.
'Mam,' Siegmund heard her say as she went down the hall, 'has dad come?'
The answer and the child's further talk were lost in the distance of thekitchen. The small, anxious question, and the quick thudding of Gwen'sfeet, made Siegmund lie still with torture. He wanted to hear no more.He lay shrinking within himself. It seemed that his soul was sensitiveto madness. He felt that he could not, come what might, get up andmeet them all.
The front door banged, and he heard Frank's hasty call: 'Good-bye!'Evidently the lad was in an ill-humour. Siegmund listened for the soundof the train; it seemed an age; the boy would catch it. Then the waterfrom the wash-hand bowl in the bathroom ran loudly out. That, hesuggested, was Vera, who was evidently not going up to town. At thethought of this, Siegmund almost hated her. He listened for her to godownstairs. It was nine o'clock.
The footsteps of Beatrice came upstairs. She put something down in thebathroom--his hot water. Siegmund listened intently for her to come tohis door. Would she speak? She approached hurriedly, knocked, andwaited. Siegmund, startled, for the moment, could not answer. Sheknocked loudly.
'All right,' said he.
Then she went downstairs.
He lay probing and torturing himself for another half-hour, till Vera'svoice said coldly, beneath his window outside:
'You should clear away, then. We don't want the breakfast things on thetable for a week.'
Siegmund's heart set hard. He rose, with a shut mouth, and went acrossto the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood atthe bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly.Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff littlepigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms werebare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette,which hardly reached her knees. Siegmund
felt slightly amused to see herstout little calves planted so firmly close together. She carefullysponged her cheeks, her pursed-up mouth, and her neck, soaping her hair,but not her ears. Then, very deliberately, she squeezed out the spongeand proceeded to wipe away the soap.
For some reason or other she glanced round. Her startled eyes met his.She, too, had beautiful dark blue eyes. She stood, with the sponge ather neck, looking full at him. Siegmund felt himself shrinking. Thechild's look was steady, calm, inscrutable.
'Hello!' said her father. 'Are you here!'
The child, without altering her expression in the slightest, turned herback on him, and continued wiping her neck. She dropped the sponge inthe water and took the towel from off the side of the bath. Then sheturned to look again at Siegmund, who stood in his pyjamas before her,his mouth shut hard, but his eyes shrinking and tender. She seemed to betrying to discover something in him.
'Have you washed your ears?' he said gaily.
She paid no heed to this, except that he noticed her face now wore aslight constrained smile as she looked at him. She was shy. Still shecontinued to regard him curiously.
'There is some chocolate on my dressing-table,' he said.
'Where have you been to?' she asked suddenly.
'To the seaside,' he answered, smiling.
'To Brighton?' she asked. Her tone was still condemning.
'Much farther than that,' he replied.
'To Worthing?' she asked.
'Farther--in a steamer,' he replied.
'But who did you go with?' asked the child.
'Why, I went all by myself,' he answered.
'Twuly?' she asked.
'Weally and twuly,' he answered, laughing.
'Couldn't you take me?' she asked.
'I will next time,' he replied.
The child still looked at him, unsatisfied.
'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.
'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--'
'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.
'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.
Gwen still looked full at him.
'You _are_ red,' she said.
He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied:
'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?'
'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a newpotato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.
'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven'tyou?'
He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, andshe drew away from him, unwilling.
'Come and let me look,' he repeated.
She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on herface, shy, suspicious, condemning.
'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the childhesitated in the doorway.
She glanced into his room, and answered:
'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.'
Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She wentdownstairs without going into his room.
Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might haveexpected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for thebath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head andlicked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.
'A pity to wash it off,' he said.
As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the momentexhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, hethought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.'
He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man offorty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.
'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I shouldfind everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through myaffairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have nomore confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me aman needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord ofcreation.'
Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. Hissensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he wasdressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He wasindifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat tothe table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs andVera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitudeof the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he feltas if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarkednothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he wouldnot have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on thecold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in anarm-chair, and felt sick.
All his unnatural excitement, all the poetic stimulation of the past fewdays, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowlythrough him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, andof sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously andmadly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his lifestruggled in a clogged and broken channel.
Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. Hewould have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing andsickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented himinto consciousness.
'I suppose this is the result of the sun--a sort of sunstroke,' he said,realizing an intolerable stiffness of his brain, a stunned conditionin his head.
'This is hideous!' he said. His arms were quivering with intenseirritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hotirritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chairwithout changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and moveabout. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.
The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movementperceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into whichshe was going to copy a drawing from the _London Opinion_, really to seewhat her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longedintensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could letgo. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently shehad not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observedhim closely.
'He is sitting with his head in his hands,' she said to her mother.
Beatrice replied: 'I'm glad he's nothing else to do.'
'I should think he's pitying himself,' said Vera.
'He's a good one at it,' answered Beatrice.
Gwen came forward and took hold of her mother's skirt, looking upanxiously.
'What is he doing, Mam?' she asked.
'Nothing,' replied her mother--'nothing; only sitting in thedrawing-room.'
'But what has he _been_ doing?' persisted the anxious child.
'Nothing--nothing that I can tell _you_. He's only spoilt all ourlives.'
The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress andperplexity.
'But what will he do, Mam?' she asked.
'Nothing. Don't bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want anice plum?'
She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word.She was too much perplexed.
'What do you say?' asked her mother.
'Thank you,' replied the child, turning away.
Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted inhis chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawingirritability from his belly.
'Ah, this is horrible!' he said.
He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
'I've never been like this before. What is the matter?' he askedhimself.
But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickeningto try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If hecould only d
o something, or have something he wanted, it wouldbe better.
'What do I want?' he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find thisout.
Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness ordistaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had oftendreamed of, farming in Canada.
'I should be just the same there,' he answered himself. 'Just the samesickening feeling there that I want nothing.'
'Helena!' he suggested to himself, trembling.
But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrinkconvulsively.
'I can't endure this,' he said. If this is the case, I had better bedead. To have no want, no desire--that is death, to begin with.'
He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemedentertaining. Then, 'Is there really nothing I could turn to?' heasked himself.
To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
'Helena!' he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. 'Ah, no!' hecried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon araw place.
He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea.There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. Hemerely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stoodholding on to the door-knob looking at him.
'Dad, Mam says dinner's ready,' she announced.
Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments,before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
'Dinner's ready.'
'All right,' said Siegmund. 'Go away.'
The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, verycrestfallen.
'What did he say?' asked Beatrice.
'He shouted at me,' replied the little one, breaking into tears.
Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child inher arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
'Did he?' she said very tenderly. 'Never mind, then, dearie--nevermind.'
The tears in her mother's voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera andMarjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed andgrew cold.