LITMIR.BIZ

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      Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the sand, and she tried gently to draw him.

      ‘We shall be too late,’ she said in distress.

      He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.

      Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.

      Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:

      ‘Why, what time is it?’

      He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his left hand, and had one arm round his neck.

      ‘I can’t see the figures,’ he said. ‘Everything is dimmed, as if it were coming dark.’

      ‘Yes,’ replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. ‘My eyes were the same. It is the strong sunlight.’

      ‘I can’t,’ he repeated, and he was rather surprised —‘I can’t see the time. Can you?’

      She stooped down and looked.

      ‘It is half past one,’ she said.

      Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: ‘I feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is dulled.’

      ‘Yes,’ answered Helena, ‘I am afraid it will do you harm.’

      ‘At any rate,’ he smiled as if sleepily, ‘I have had enough. If it’s too much — what is too much?’

      They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.

      ‘We are going back — we are going back!’ the heart of Helena seemed to run hot, beating these words.

      They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still. Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful, incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund’s mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he had enjoyed, ‘Addio!’ he said.

      He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling peculiarly:

      ‘It reminds me of Traviata — an “Addio“ at every verse-end.’

      She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve. ‘Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o!’ he whistled between his teeth, hissing out the Italian’s passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.

      ‘I suppose,’ she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check this discord —‘I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey — Thursday.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Siegmund.

      ‘There will not be very many people,’ she insisted.

      ‘I think,’ he said, in a very quiet voice, ‘you’d better let me go by the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.’

      ‘But why?’ she exclaimed in astonishment.

      ‘I don’t want to sit looking at you all the way,’ he said.

      ‘But why should you?’ she exclaimed.

      He laughed.

      ‘Indeed, no!’ she said. ‘We shall go together.’

      ‘Very well,’ he answered.

      They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the little post office, he said:

      ‘I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.’

      ‘You haven’t sent them any word?’ she asked.

      He laughed. They came to the open door of the little shop. He stood still, not entering. Helena wondered what he was thinking.

      ‘Shall I?’ he asked, meaning, should he wire to Beatrice. His manner was rather peculiar.

      ‘Well, I should think so,’ faltered Helena, turning away to look at the postcards in the window. Siegmund entered the shop. It was dark and cumbered with views, cheap china ornaments, and toys. He asked for a telegraph form.

      ‘My God!’ he said to himself bitterly as he took the pencil. He could not sign the abbreviated name his wife used towards him. He scribbled his surname, as he would have done to a stranger. As he watched the amiable, stout woman counting up his words carefully, pointing with her finger, he felt sick with irony.

      ‘That’s right,’ she said, picking up the sixpence and taking the form to the instrument. ‘What beautiful weather!’ she continued. ‘It will be making you sorry to leave us.’

      ‘There goes my warrant,’ thought Siegmund, watching the flimsy bit of paper under the post-mistress’s heavy hand.

      ‘Yes — it is too bad, isn’t it,’ he replied, bowing and laughing to the woman.

      ‘It is, sir,’ she answered pleasantly. ‘Good morning.’

      He came out of the shop still smiling, and when Helena turned from the postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her falter with dismay.

      ‘What is he thinking of?’ she asked herself. Her thoughts flashed back. ‘And why did he ask me so peculiarly whether he should wire them at home?’

      ‘Well,’ said Siegmund, ‘are there any postcards?’

      ‘None that I care to take,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps you would like one of these?’

      She pointed to some faded-looking cards which proved to be imaginary views of Alum Bay done in variegated sand. Siegmund smiled.

      ‘I wonder if they dribbled the sand on with a fine glass tube,’ he said.

      ‘Or a brush,’ said Helena.

      ‘She does not understand,’ said Siegmund to himself. ‘And whatever I do I must not tell her. I should have thought she would understand.’

      As he walked home beside her there mingled with his other feelings resentment against her. Almost he hated her.

      Chapter 20

       Table of Contents

      At first they had a carriage to themselves. They sat opposite each other with averted faces, looking out of the windows and watching the houses, the downs dead asleep in the sun, the embankments of the railway with exhausted hot flowers go slowly past out of their reach. They felt as if they were being dragged away like criminals. Unable to speak or think, they stared out of the windows, Helena struggling in vain to keep back her tears, Siegmund labouring to breathe normally.

      At Yarmouth the door was snatched open, and there was a confusion of shouting and running; a swarm of humanity, clamouring, attached itself at the carriage doorway, which was immediately blocked by a stout man who heaved a leather bag in front of him as he cried in German that here was room for all. Faces innumerable — hot, blue-eyed faces — strained to look over his shoulders at the shocked girl and the amazed Siegmund.

      There entered eight Germans into

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