LITMIR.BIZ

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all the poetic stimulation of the past few days, had vanished. He felt flaccid, while his life struggled slowly through him. After an intoxication of passion and love, and beauty, and of sunshine, he was prostrate. Like a plant that blossoms gorgeously and madly, he had wasted the tissue of his strength, so that now his life struggled in a clogged and broken channel.

      Siegmund sat with his head between his hands, leaning upon the table. He would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented him into 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 condition in his head.

      ‘This is hideous!’ he said. His arms were quivering with intense irritation. He exerted all his will to stop them, and then the hot irritability commenced in his belly. Siegmund fidgeted in his chair without changing his position. He had not the energy to get up and move about. He fidgeted like an insect pinned down.

      The door opened. He felt violently startled; yet there was no movement perceptible. Vera entered, ostensibly for an autograph-album into which she was going to copy a drawing from the London Opinion, really to see what her father was doing. He did not move a muscle. He only longed intensely for his daughter to go out of the room, so that he could let go. Vera went out of the drawing-room humming to herself. Apparently she had not even glanced at her father. In reality, she had observed him 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 up anxiously.

      ‘What is he doing, Mam?’ she asked.

      ‘Nothing,’ replied her mother —‘nothing; only sitting in the drawing-room.’

      ‘But what has he been doing?’ persisted the anxious child.

      ‘Nothing — nothing that I can tell you. He’s only spoilt all our lives.’

      The little girl stood regarding her mother In the greatest distress and perplexity.

      ‘But what will he do, Mam?’ she asked.

      ‘Nothing. Don’t bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a nice 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 in his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing irritability 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 asked himself.

      But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be better.

      ‘What do I want?’ he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out.

      Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming in Canada.

      ‘I should be just the same there,’ he answered himself. ‘Just the same sickening 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 shrink convulsively.

      ‘I can’t endure this,’ he said. If this is the case, I had better be dead. To have no want, no desire — that is death, to begin with.’

      He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed entertaining. Then, ‘Is there really nothing I could turn to?’ he asked himself.

      To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.

      ‘Helena!’ he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. ‘Ah, no!’ he cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw 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. He merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding 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, very crestfallen.

      ‘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 in her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.

      ‘Did he?’ she said very tenderly. ‘Never mind, then, dearie — never mind.’

      The tears in her mother’s voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold.

      Chapter 24

       Table of Contents

      When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box.

      The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:

      ‘Well?’

      ‘Well, here we are!’ replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.

      Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became proportionately cold.

      ‘So I see,’ exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular manner. ‘And what sort of a time have you had?’

      ‘Oh, very good,’ replied Helena, still more coolly.

      ‘H’m!’

      Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to question.

      ‘You look well,’ she said.

      Helena smiled ironically.

      ‘And are you ready for your supper?’ she asked, in the playful, affectionate manner she had assumed.

      ‘If the supper is ready I will have it,’ replied her daughter.

      ‘Well, it’s not ready.’ The

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