The Complete Novels - D. H. Lawrence

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the cottages they approached, listening, looking for the dreams of those sleeping inside, in the darkened rooms. She imagined she could see the frail dream-faces at the windows; she fancied they stole out timidly into the gardens, and went running away among the rabbits on the gleamy hill-side. Helena laughed to herself, pleased with her fancy of wayward little dreams playing with weak hands and feet among the large, solemn-sleeping cattle. This was the first time, she told herself, that she had ever been out among the grey-frocked dreams and white-armed fairies. She imagined herself lying asleep in her room, while her own dreams slid out down the moonbeams. She imagined Siegmund sleeping in his room, while his dreams, dark-eyed, their blue eyes very dark and yearning at night-time, came wandering over the grey grass seeking her dreams.

      So she wove her fancies as she walked, until for very weariness she was fain to remember that it was a long way — a long way. Siegmund’s arm was about her to support her; she rested herself upon it. They crossed a stile and recognized, on the right of the path, the graveyard of the Catholic chapel. The moon, which the days were paring smaller with envious keen knife, shone upon the white stones in the burial-ground. The carved Christ upon His cross hung against a silver-grey sky. Helena looked up wearily, bowing to the tragedy. Siegmund also looked, and bowed his head.

      ‘Thirty years of earnest love; three years’ life like a passionate ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the white beauty in the world.’

      Siegmund felt his heart very heavy, sad, and at fault, in presence of the Christ. Yet he derived comfort from the knowledge that life was treating him in the same manner as it had treated the Master, though his compared small and despicable with the Christ-tragedy. Siegmund stepped softly into the shadow of the pine copse.

      ‘Let me get under cover,’ he thought. ‘Let me hide in it; it is good, the sudden intense darkness. I am small and futile: my small, futile tragedy!’

      Helena shrank in the darkness. It was almost terrible to her, and the silence was like a deep pit. She shrank to Siegmund. He drew her closer, leaning over her as they walked, trying to assure her. His heart was heavy, and heavy with a tenderness approaching grief, for his small, brave Helena.

      ‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ he whispered to her.

      ‘Quite, quite sure,’ she whispered confidently in reply. And presently they came out into the hazy moonlight, and began stumbling down the steep hill. They were both very tired, both found it difficult to go with ease or surety this sudden way down. Soon they were creeping cautiously across the pasture and the poultry farm. Helena’s heart was beating, as she imagined what a merry noise there would be should they wake all the fowls. She dreaded any commotion, any questioning, this night, so she stole carefully along till they issued on the high-road not far from home.

      Chapter 13

       Table of Contents

      In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed afar.

      Siegmund was gazing oversea in a half-stupid way, when he heard a voice beside him say:

      ‘Where have they come from; do you know, sir?’

      He turned, saw a fair, slender man of some thirty-five years standing beside him and smiling faintly at the battleships.

      ‘The men-of-war? There are a good many at Spithead,’ said Siegmund.

      The other glanced negligently into his face.

      ‘They look rather incongruous, don’t you think? We left the sea empty and shining, and when we come again, behold, these objects keeping their eye on us!’

      Siegmund laughed.

      ‘You are not an Anarchist, I hope?’ he said jestingly.

      ‘A Nihilist, perhaps,’ laughed the other. ‘But I am quite fond of the Czar, if pity is akin to love. No; but you can’t turn round without finding some policeman or other at your elbow — look at them, abominable ironmongery! — ready to put his hand on your shoulder.’

      The speaker’s grey-blue eyes, always laughing with mockery, glanced from the battleships and lit on the dark blue eyes of Siegmund. The latter felt his heart lift in a convulsive movement. This stranger ran so quickly to a perturbing intimacy.

      ‘I suppose we are in the hands of — God,’ something moved Siegmund to say. The stranger contracted his eyes slightly as he gazed deep at the speaker.

      ‘Ah!’ he drawled curiously. Then his eyes wandered over the wet hair, the white brow, and the bare throat of Siegmund, after which they returned again to the eyes of his interlocutor. ‘Does the Czar sail this way?’ he asked at last.

      ‘I do not know,’ replied Siegmund, who, troubled by the other’s penetrating gaze, had not expected so trivial a question.

      ‘I suppose the newspaper will tell us?’ said the man.

      Sure to,’ said Siegmund.

      ‘You haven’t seen it this morning?’

      ‘Not since Saturday.’

      The swift blue eyes of the man dilated. He looked curiously at Siegmund.

      ‘You are not alone on your holiday?’

      ‘No.’ Siegmund did not like this — he gazed over the sea in displeasure.

      ‘I live here — at least for the present — name, Hampson —’

      ‘Why, weren’t you one of the first violins at the Savoy fifteen years back?’ asked Siegmund.

      They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself for having addressed Siegmund:

      ‘I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,’ he said, ‘and as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be re-acquainted.’

      Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.

      ‘I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It’s a pity to try and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don’t you think?’

      ‘Stare beyond it, you mean?’ asked Siegmund.

      ‘Exactly!’ replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. ‘I call a day like this “the blue room”. It’s the least draughty apartment in all the confoundedly draughty House of Life.’

      Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express something in his own soul.

      ‘I mean,’ the man explained, ‘that after all, the great mass of life that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can’t stop it, once we’ve begun to leak.’

      ‘What do you mean by “leak”?’ asked Siegmund.

      ‘Goodness knows — I talk through my hat. But once you’ve got a bit tired of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the dark — as you were doing.’

      ‘But, to use your metaphor, I’m not tired of the House — if you mean Life,’ said Siegmund.

      ‘Praise God! I’ve met a poet who’s not afraid of having his pocket picked — or his soul, or his brain!’ said the stranger, throwing his head back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.

      ‘I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ said

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