LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 16

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      Feeling him abstract, withdrawn from her, Helena experienced the dread of losing him.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

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