LITMIR.BIZ

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but his thoughts laboured like ants, in spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.

      Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena’s lover, yet he felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.

      It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very surprising.

      But why should he have failed with Helena?

      The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.

      ‘The little fool!’ said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into the light.

      No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the wild spinning of the lights.

      ‘Even if I were free,’ he continued to think, ‘we should only grow apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.

      ‘Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I cannot compel anybody to follow me.

      ‘So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back. When can I set my feet on when this is gone?’

      The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of Siegmund’s mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed, looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.

      ‘I feel as if it were burning into me,’ thought Siegmund abstractedly. ‘It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me ill.’ Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair to the sun.

      Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her thought-activity. Presently she said:

      ‘This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?’

      They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to lie.

      ‘Shall we not go under the rocks?’ said Helena.

      ‘Look!’ he said, ‘the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more suffocating, there.’

      So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was dreadful.

      ‘My arms, Siegmund,’ said she. ‘They feel as if they were dipped in fire.’

      Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.

      ‘Are you sure it is not bad for you — your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?’

      He laughed stupidly.

      ‘That is all right,’ he said. He knew that the sun was burning through him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.

      As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain, he said:

      ‘I think we should be able to keep together if’— he faltered —‘if only I could have you a little longer. I have never had you . . . ’

      Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.

      He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on her cheek, he murmured:

      ‘I should be able, shouldn’t I, Helena?’

      ‘You are always able!’ she cried. ‘It is I who play with you at hiding.’

      ‘I have really had you so little,’ he said.

      ‘Can’t you forget it, Siegmund?’ she cried. ‘Can’t you forget it? It was only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can’t you forget it, dear?’

      ‘You can’t do without me?’ he asked.

      ‘If I lose you I am lost,’ answered she with swift decision. She had no knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.

      ‘I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between us,’ said Helena to herself. ‘They may go back to hell.’

      She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft away.

      Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown out to sea and lost.

      ‘If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I should get stronger and more upright.’

      This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.

      Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of great power.

      ‘If,’ thought she, ‘the whole clock of the world could stand still now, and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of Siegmund in my arms. . . . ’

      But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm, that it made silence sweet.

      ‘If now,’ prayed Siegmund, ‘death would wipe the sweat from me, and it were dark. . . . ’

      But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.

      Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return, to let the finger travel and be gone. But then . . . Helena knew she must not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He lay in suspense, waiting.

      At last she sat up abruptly.

      ‘It is time, Siegmund,’ she said.

      He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him. She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart crushed with grief for him.

      ‘We must go, Siegmund,’ she whispered.

      ‘All right,’ he said, but still he did not move.

      She stood up beside him, shook

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