_Chapter 8_
The way home lay across country, through deep little lanes where thelate foxgloves sat seriously, like sad hounds; over open downlands,rough with gorse and ling, and through pocketed hollows of brackenand trees.
They came to a small Roman Catholic church in the fields. There thecarved Christ looked down on the dead whose sleeping forms made moundsunder the coverlet. Helena's heart was swelling with emotion. All theyearning and pathos of Christianity filled her again.
The path skirted the churchyard wall, so that she had on the one handthe sleeping dead, and on the other Siegmund, strong and vigorous, butwalking in the old, dejected fashion. She felt a rare tenderness andadmiration for him. It was unusual for her to be so humble-minded, butthis evening she felt she must minister to him, and be submissive.
She made him stop to look at the graves. Suddenly, as they stood, shekissed him, clasped him fervently, roused him till his passion burnedaway his heaviness, and he seemed tipped with life, his face glowing asif soon he would burst alight. Then she was satisfied, and could laugh.
As they went through the fir copse, listening to the birds like a familyassembled and chattering at home in the evening, listening to the lightswish of the wind, she let Siegmund predominate; he set the swing oftheir motion; she rested on him like a bird on a swaying bough.
They argued concerning the way. Siegmund, as usual, submitted to her.They went quite wrong. As they retraced their steps, stealthily, througha poultry farm whose fowls were standing in forlorn groups, once moredismayed by evening, Helena's pride battled with her new subjugation toSiegmund. She walked head down, saying nothing. He also was silent, buthis heart was strong in him. Somewhere in the distance a band wasplaying 'The Watch on the Rhine'.
As they passed the beeches and were near home, Helena said, to try him,and to strike a last blow for her pride:
'I wonder what next Monday will bring us.'
'Quick curtain,' he answered joyously. He was looking down and smilingat her with such careless happiness that she loved him. He was wonderfulto her. She loved him, was jealous of every particle of him that evadedher. She wanted to sacrifice to him, make herself a burning altar tohim, and she wanted to possess him.
The hours that would be purely their own came too slowly for her.
That night she met his passion with love. It was not his passion shewanted, actually. But she desired that he should want _her_ madly, andthat he should have all--everything. It was a wonderful night to him. Itrestored in him the full 'will to live'. But she felt it destroyed her.Her soul seemed blasted.
At seven o'clock in the morning Helena lay in the deliciously coolwater, while small waves ran up the beach full and clear and foamless,continuing perfectly in their flicker the rhythm of the night's passion.Nothing, she felt, had ever been so delightful as this cool waterrunning over her. She lay and looked out on the shining sea. All things,it seemed, were made of sunshine more or less soiled. The cliffs roseout of the shining waves like clouds of strong, fine texture, and rocksalong the shore were the dapplings of a bright dawn. The coarseness wasfused out of the world, so that sunlight showed in the veins of themorning cliffs and the rocks. Yea, everything ran with sunshine, as weare full of blood, and plants are tissued from green-gold, glisteningsap. Substance and solidity were shadows that the morning cast rounditself to make itself tangible: as she herself was a shadow, cast bythat fragment of sunshine, her soul, over its inefficiency.
She remembered to have seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool atsunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, asthey stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissuedflame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret to her.
Now the cliffs were like wings uplifted, and the morning was comingdimly through them. She felt the wings of all the world upraised againstthe morning in a flashing, multitudinous flight. The world itself wasflying. Sunlight poured on the large round world till she fancied it aheavy bee humming on its iridescent atmosphere across a vast airof sunshine.
She lay and rode the fine journey. Sunlight liquid in the water made thewaves heavy, golden, and rich with a velvety coolness like cowslips. Herfeet fluttered in the shadowy underwater. Her breast came out bright asthe breast of a white bird.
Where was Siegmund? she wondered. He also was somewhere among the seaand the sunshine, white and playing like a bird, shining like a vivid,restless speck of sunlight. She struck the water, smiling, feeling alongwith him. They two were the owners of this morning, as a pair of wild,large birds inhabiting an empty sea.
Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant andfull of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through thewater, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea,like pale flowers trembling upward.
'The water,' said Siegmund, 'is as full of life as I am,' and he pressedforward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he hadmore wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with hisarms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. Venturingrecklessly in his new pride, he swam round the corner of the rock,through an archway, lofty and spacious, into a passage where the waterran like a flood of green light over the skin-white bottom. Suddenly heemerged in the brilliant daylight of the next tiny scoop of a bay.
There he arrived like a pioneer, for the bay was inaccessible from theland. He waded out of the green, cold water on to sand that was pure asthe shoulders of Helena, out of the shadow of the archway into thesunlight, on to the glistening petal of this blossom of a sea-bay.
He did not know till he felt the sunlight how the sea had drunk with itscold lips deeply of his warmth. Throwing himself down on the sand thatwas soft and warm as white fur, he lay glistening wet, panting, swellingwith glad pride at having conquered also this small, inaccessiblesea-cave, creeping into it like a white bee into a white virgin blossomthat had waited, how long, for its bee.
The sand was warm to his breast, and his belly, and his arms. It waslike a great body he cleaved to. Almost, he fancied, he felt it heavingunder him in its breathing. Then he turned his face to the sun, andlaughed. All the while, he hugged the warm body of the sea-bay beneathhim. He spread his hands upon the sand; he took it in handfuls, and letit run smooth, warm, delightful, through his fingers.
'Surely,' he said to himself, 'it is like Helena;' and he laid his handsagain on the warm body of the shore, let them wander, discovering,gathering all the warmth, the softness, the strange wonder of smoothwarm pebbles, then shrinking from the deep weight of cold his handencountered as he burrowed under the surface wrist-deep. In the end hefound the cold mystery of the deep sand also thrilling. He pushed in hishands again and deeper, enjoying the almost hurt of the dark, heavycoldness. For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing andkissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in aflower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmthof her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near andlovingly; yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softnessand warmth merely floated upon.
Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till overhim he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself andlaughed. The water was swaying reproachfully against the steep pebblesbelow, murmuring like a child that it was not fair--it was not fair heshould abandon his playmate. Siegmund laughed, and began to rub himselffree of the clogging sand. He found himself strangely dry and smooth. Hetossed more dry sand, and more, over himself, busy and intent like achild playing some absorbing game with itself. Soon his body was dry andwarm and smooth as a camomile flower. He was, however, greyed andsmeared with sand-dust. Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval,though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch ofhimself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair,even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he foundhimself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook hishead in the w
ater, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with hishands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free--fresh, as ifhe had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning's sea andsun and sand. It was the purification. Siegmund became again a happypriest of the sun. He felt as if all the dirt of misery were soaked outof him, as he might soak clean a soiled garment in the sea, and bleachit white on the sunny shore. So white and sweet and tissue-clean hefelt--full of lightness and grace.
The garden in front of their house, where Helena was waiting for him,was long and crooked, with a sunken flagstone pavement running up to thedoor by the side of the lawn. On either hand the high fence of thegarden was heavy with wild clematis and honeysuckle. Helena satsideways, with a map spread out on her bench under the bushy littlelaburnum tree, tracing the course of their wanderings. It was verystill. There was just a murmur of bees going in and out the brilliantlittle porches of nasturtium flowers. The nasturtium leaf-coins stoodcool and grey; in their delicate shade, underneath in the greentwilight, a few flowers shone their submerged gold and scarlet. Therewas a faint scent of mignonette. Helena, like a white butterfly in theshade, her two white arms for antennae stretching firmly to the bench,leaned over her map. She was busy, very busy, out of sheer happiness.She traced word after word, and evoked scene after scene. As shediscovered a name, she conjured up the place. As she moved to the nextmark she imagined the long path lifting and falling happily.
She was waiting for Siegmund, yet his hand upon the latch startled her.She rose suddenly, in agitation. Siegmund was standing in the sunshineat the gate. They greeted each other across the tall roses.
When Siegmund was holding her hand, he said, softly laughing:
'You have come out of the water very beautiful this morning.'
She laughed. She was not beautiful, but she felt so at that moment. Sheglanced up at him, full of love and gratefulness.
'And you,' she murmured, in a still tone, as if it were almostsacrilegiously unnecessary to say it.
Siegmund was glad. He rejoiced to be told he was beautiful. After a fewmoments of listening to the bees and breathing the mignonette, he said:
'I found a little white bay, just like you--a virgin bay. I had to swimthere.'
'Oh!' she said, very interested in him, not in the fact.
'It seemed just like you. Many things seem like you,' he said.
She laughed again in her joyous fashion, and the reed-like vibrationcame into her voice.
'I saw the sun through the cliffs, and the sea, and you,' she said.
He did not understand. He looked at her searchingly. She was white andstill and inscrutable. Then she looked up at him; her earnest eyes, thatwould not flinch, gazed straight into him. He trembled, and things allswept into a blur. After she had taken away her eyes he foundhimself saying:
'You know, I felt as if I were the first man to discover things: likeAdam when he opened the first eyes in the world.'
'I saw the sunshine in you,' repeated Helena quietly, looking at himwith her eyes heavy with meaning.
He laughed again, not understanding, but feeling she meant love.
'No, but you have altered everything,' he said.
The note of wonder, of joy, in his voice touched her almost beyondself-control. She caught his hand and pressed it; then quickly kissedit. He became suddenly grave.
'I feel as if it were right--you and me, Helena--so, even righteous. Itis so, isn't it? And the sea and everything, they all seem with us. Doyou think so?'
Looking at her, he found her eyes full of tears. He bent and kissed her,and she pressed his head to her bosom. He was very glad.