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Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
‘I am always so sorry,’ he said, ‘that the human race is urged inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.’
She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
‘I guess,’ she said slowly, after a while, ‘that the man, the sailor, will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.’
‘He was careful of something else just then,’ said Siegmund, who hated to hear her speak in cold condemnation. ‘He was attending to the machinery or something.’
‘That was scarcely his first business,’ said she, rather sarcastic.
Siegmund looked at her. She seemed very hard in judgement — very blind. Sometimes his soul surged against her in hatred.
‘Do you think the man wanted to drown the boat?’ he asked.
‘He nearly succeeded,’ she replied.
There was antagonism between them. Siegmund recognized in Helena the world sitting in judgement, and he hated it. ‘But, after all,’ he thought, I suppose it is the only way to get along, to judge the event and not the person. I have a disease of sympathy, a vice of exoneration.’
Nevertheless, he did not love Helena as a judge. He thought rather of the woman in the boat. She was evidently one who watched the sources of life, saw it great and impersonal.
‘Would the woman cry, or hug and kiss the boy when she got on board?’ he asked.
‘I rather think not. Why?’ she replied.
‘I hope she didn’t,’ he said.
Helena sat watching the water spurt back from the bows. She was very much in love with Siegmund. He was suggestive; he stimulated her. But to her mind he had not her own dark eyes of hesitation; he was swift and proud as the wind. She never realized his helplessness.
Siegmund was gathering strength from the thought of that other woman’s courage. If she had so much restraint as not to cry out, or alarm the boy, if she had so much grace not to complain to her husband, surely he himself might refrain from revealing his own fear of Helena, and from lamenting his hard fate.
They sailed on past the chequered round towers. The sea opened, and they looked out to eastward into the sea-space. Siegmund wanted to flee. He yearned to escape down the open ways before him. Yet he knew he would be carried on to London. He watched the sea-ways closing up. The shore came round. The high old houses stood flat on the right hand. The shore swept round in a sickle, reaping them into the harbour. There the old Victory, gay with myriad pointed pennons, was harvested, saved for a trophy.
‘It is a dreadful thing,’ thought Siegmund, ‘to remain as a trophy when there is nothing more to do.’ He watched the landing-stages swooping nearer. There were the trains drawn up in readiness. At the other end of the train was London.
He could scarcely bear to have Helena before him for another two hours. The suspense of that protracted farewell, while he sat opposite her in the beating train, would cost too much. He longed to be released from her.
They had got their luggage, and were standing at the foot of the ladder, in the heat of the engines and the smell of hot oil, waiting for the crowd to pass on, so that they might ascend and step off the ship on to the mainland.
‘Won’t you let me go by the South-Western, and you by the Brighton?’ asked Siegmund, hesitating, repeating the morning’s question.
Helena looked at him, knitting her brows with misgiving and perplexity.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Let us go together.’
Siegmund followed her up the iron ladder to the quay.
There was no great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack and sat down, facing Helena.
‘Now,’ said he to himself, ‘I wish I were alone.’
He wanted to think and prepare himself.
Helena, who was thinking actively, leaned forward to him to say:
‘Shall I not go down to Cornwall?’
By her soothing willingness to do anything for him, Siegmund knew that she was dogging him closely. He could not bear to have his anxiety protracted.
‘But you have promised Louisa, have you not?’ he replied.
‘Oh, well!’ she said, in the peculiar slighting tone she had when she wished to convey the unimportance of affairs not touching him.
‘Then you must go,’ he said.
‘But,’ she began, with harsh petulance, ‘I do not want to go down to Cornwall with Louisa and Olive‘— she accentuated the two names —‘after this,’ she added.
‘Then Louisa will have no holiday — and you have promised,’ he said gravely.
Helena looked at him. She saw he had decided that she should go.
‘Is my promise so very important?’ she asked. She glanced angrily at the three ladies who were hesitating in the doorway. Nevertheless, the ladies entered, and seated themselves at the opposite end of the carriage. Siegmund did not know whether he were displeased or relieved by their intrusion. If they had stayed out, he might have held Helena in his arms for still another hour. As it was, she could not harass him with words. He tried not to look at her, but to think.
The train at last moved out of the station. As it passed through Portsmouth, Siegmund remembered his coming down, on the Sunday. It seemed an indefinite age ago. He was thankful that he sat on the side of the carriage opposite from the one he had occupied five days before. The afternoon of the flawless sky was ripening into evening. The chimneys and the sides of the houses of Portsmouth took on that radiant appearance which transfigures the end of day in town. A rich bloom of light appears on the surfaces of brick and stone.
‘It will go on,’ thought Siegmund, ‘being gay of an evening, for ever. And I shall miss it all!’
But as soon as the train moved into the gloom of the Town station, he began again:
‘Beatrice will be proud, and silent as steel when I get home. She will say nothing, thank God — nor shall I. That will expedite matters: there will be no interruptions. . . .
‘But we cannot continue together after this. Why should I discuss reasons for and against? We cannot. She goes to a cottage in the country. Already I have spoken of it to her. I allow her all I can of my money, and on the rest I manage for myself in lodgings in London. Very good.
‘But when I am comparatively free I cannot live alone. I shall want Helena; I shall remember the children. If I have the one, I shall be damned by the thought of the other. This bruise on my mind will never get better. Helena says she would never come to me; but she would, out of pity for me. I know she would.
‘But then, what then? Beatrice and the children in the country, and me not looking after the children. Beatrice is thriftless. She would be in endless difficulty. It would be a degradation to me. She would keep a red sore inflamed against me; I should be a shameful thing in her mouth. Besides, there would go all her strength. She would not make any efforts. “He has brought it on us,” she would say; “let him see what the result is.” And things would go from bad to worse with them. It would be a gangrene of shame.
‘And Helena — I should have nothing but mortification. When she was asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?’
Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He sketched the morning — breakfast