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‘Oh, Lord! — the old argument!’
But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
‘Like the puff from the steamer’s funnel, I should be gone.’
He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
‘Nothing, in the place where I am,’ he said. ‘Gone, like a puff of steam that melts on the sunshine.’
Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at a joke.
‘And I,’ he said, lying down in the warm sand, ‘I am nothing. I do not count; I am inconsiderable.’
He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he was arguing with himself.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.’
But the vulgar proverb arose —‘Better a live dog than a dead lion,’ to answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God’s earth. Surely that was a great ignominy.
Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She had bathed in many rock-pools’ tepid baths, trying first one, then another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
‘The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,’ she said, as she rose panting, trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the anemone’s fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend. There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending, though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled hastily upwards towards the outlet.
Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the dragon’s hole.
‘How surprised they will be to see me!’ said Helena, scrambling forward, laughing.
She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips were parted in a woman’s joy of adoration.
The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
‘It is good,’ said Helena; ‘it is very good.’ She looked again, and saw the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
‘It is really wonderful here!’ said she; but the moment had gone, she could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a while she turned away.
As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over the beach to her.
‘You are not gone, then?’ he said.
‘Siegmund!’ she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His face was glowing with the sun’s inflaming, but Helena did not notice that his eyes were full of misery.
‘I, actually,’ he said, smiling.
‘I did not expect you,’ she said, still looking at him in radiant wonder. ‘I could easier have expected’— she hesitated, struggled, and continued —‘Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,’ she said, looking radiantly up into Siegmund’s face. ‘Isn’t it beautiful this morning?’ she added.
Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see, beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
‘Isn’t the sea wonderful this morning?’ asked Helena, as she wrung the water from her costume.
‘It is very fine,’ he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart said: ‘It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning, and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.’
‘Yes,’ said Siegmund, ‘the morning is perfect.’
‘It is,’ assented Helena warmly. ‘Have you noticed the waves? They are like a line of children chased by a white dog.’
‘Ay!’ said Siegmund.
‘Didn’t you have a good time?’ she asked, touching with her finger-tips the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
‘I swam to my little bay again,’ he replied.
‘Did you?’ she exclaimed, pleased.
She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand, holding them to Siegmund to dry.
‘I am very hungry,’ she said.
‘And I,’ he agreed.
‘I feel quite established here,’ she said gaily, something in his position having reminded her of their departure.
He laughed.
‘It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn’t it?’ she insisted.
‘I wish we might never go back,’ he said.
Helena sighed.
‘It would be too much for life to give. We have had something, Siegmund,’ she said.
He bowed his head, and did not answer.
‘It has been something, dear,’ she repeated.
He rose and took her in his arms.
‘Everything,’ he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. ‘Everything!’ he said.
She pressed her two hands on his head.
‘I did well, didn’t I, Siegmund?’ she asked. Helena felt the responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
‘Wonderfully well, Helena,’ he replied.
She kissed his forehead.
‘You are everything,’ he said.
She pressed his head on her bosom.