LITMIR.BIZ

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sarcastic attempt at a jest.

      ‘Thank you, dear,’ said Olive; ‘you do me the honour of catching hold.’

      Helena laughed ironically.

      ‘Catching what?’ asked Louisa, mystified.

      ‘Why, dear,’ answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, ‘I offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You know, it’s not that I’m afraid. . . . ’

      The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.

      Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something had happened.

      Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush, persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.

      ‘What a deluge!’ exclaimed Louisa.

      No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised. The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.

      She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.

      ‘But no,’ she said to herself, ‘it is impossible anything should have happened to him — I should have known. I should have known the moment his spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.’

      She was very certain that in event of Siegmund’s death, she would have received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.

      ‘Nevertheless,’ she said at last, ‘if I don’t hear tomorrow I will go and see.’

      She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this she went to sleep.

      The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state of affairs.

      Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something fatal awaited her.

      The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and sat up:

      ‘Oh, I know I’m a pig, dear, am I not?’ she exclaimed. ‘Spoiling your holiday. But I couldn’t help it, dear, indeed I could not.’

      ‘My dear Lou!’ cried Olive in tragic contralto. ‘Don’t refrain for my sake. The bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.’

      The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All the time Helena’s heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.

      ‘Promise me,’ she had said, ‘if ever I were sick and wanted you, you would come to me.’

      ‘I would come to you from hell!’ Siegmund had replied.

      ‘And if you were ill — you would let me come to you?’ she had added.

      ‘I promise,’ he answered.

      Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did what it could.

      That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense.

      Towards six o’clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had prearranged everything minutely.

      After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.

      ‘The funeral took place, at two o’clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of ——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the South Coast. . . . ’

      The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.

      ‘Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy was expressed for the widow and children.’

      Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going.

      ‘That was what I got,’ she said, months afterwards; ‘and it was like a brick, it was like a brick.’

      She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund’s house standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken her with him?

      The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to return to Cornwall.

      ‘I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of suspense,’ said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she wired the news:

      ‘Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.’

      * * * * *

      This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind was chaotic.

      ‘It was like a brick,’ she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition. She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and maiming her.

      As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her mother opened to her.

      ‘What, are you alone?’ cried Mrs. Verden.

      ‘Yes. Louisa did not come up,’ replied Helena, passing into the dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if there was a letter.

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