LITMIR.BIZ

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      He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now — his heart halted again in suspense — he knew not what he would do. It would open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.

      ‘Gwen!’ called Vera, wondering why she did not return. ‘Gwen!’

      ‘Yes,’ answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted, hesitate, move, then turn away.

      She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly, pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched, his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay down on the bed.

      For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at work — an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness, jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o’clock he sat up. A cramped pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands again, smiling.

      ‘It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,’ he said to himself.

      His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.

      ‘I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,’ he said to himself, and instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. ‘But I must be getting ready. I can’t disappoint her,’ said Siegmund.

      The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to her, ‘Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,’ then he might lie down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If she could hold his head in her hands — for she had fine, silken hands that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up in life — then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest. This was the one thing that remained for his restoration — that she should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for it utterly — for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.

      ‘But it is no good,’ he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep. ‘What time is it?’

      It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.

      ‘I am forgetting again,’ he said. ‘But I do not want to go. What is the good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.’

      He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep. Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.

      ‘Goodness,’ he said, ‘it’s getting quite dark!’

      It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark, though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.

      Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran out crying:

      ‘Are you going out? Where are you going?’

      Siegmund stood still and looked at her.

      ‘She is frightened,’ he said to himself, smiling ironically.

      ‘I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very long.’

      ‘Wimbledon, at this time!’ said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.

      ‘Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.’

      He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.

      ‘You need not keep us sitting up,’ she said.

      He did not answer, but hurried to the station.

      Chapter 26

       Table of Contents

      Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive stopped before the indicator.

      ‘The next train for Waterloo,’ she announced, in her contralto voice, ‘is 10.30. It is now 10.12.’

      ‘We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,’ said Helena.

      Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.

      ‘Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.’

      ‘You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,’ cried Louisa, skittish.

      ‘My dear Louisa,’ rang out Olive’s contralto, ‘don’t judge me by appearances. You’re sure to be taken in. With me it’s a case of

      ‘“Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she’s sad,

       And the sadness of her sadness when she’s glad!”’

      She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say something, chimed in sarcastically:

      ‘“They are nothing to her madness —”’

      ‘When she’s going for a holiday, dear,’ cried Olive.

      ‘Oh, go on being mad,’ cried Louisa.

      ‘What, do you like it? I thought you’d be thanking Heaven that sanity was given me in large doses.’

      ‘And holidays in small,’ laughed Louisa. ‘Good! No, I like your madness, if you call it such. You are always so serious.’

      ‘“It’s ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged,” dear,’ boomed Olive.

      She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled, acknowledging the sarcasm.

      ‘But,’ said Louisa, smiling anxiously, ‘I don’t quite see it. What’s the point?’

      ‘Well, to be explicit, dear,’ replied Olive, ‘it is hardly safe to accuse me of sadness and seriousness in this trio.’

      Louisa laughed and shook herself.

      ‘Come to think of it, it isn’t,’ she said.

      Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already twenty-five minutes past ten.

      She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to the platform.

      ‘Here I am!’ he said. ‘Where is Louisa?’

      Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was

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