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‘But what will he do, Mam?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Don’t bother. Run and play with Marjory now. Do you want a nice plum?’
She took a yellow plum from the table. Gwen accepted it without a word. She was too much perplexed.
‘What do you say?’ asked her mother.
‘Thank you,’ replied the child, turning away.
Siegmund sighed with relief when he was again left alone. He twisted in his chair, and sighed again, trying to drive out the intolerable clawing irritability from his belly.
‘Ah, this is horrible!’ he said.
He stiffened his muscles to quieten them.
‘I’ve never been like this before. What is the matter?’ he asked himself.
But the question died out immediately. It seemed useless and sickening to try and answer it. He began to cast about for an alleviation. If he could only do something, or have something he wanted, it would be better.
‘What do I want?’ he asked himself, and he anxiously strove to find this out.
Everything he suggested to himself made him sicken with weariness or distaste: the seaside, a foreign land, a fresh life that he had often dreamed of, farming in Canada.
‘I should be just the same there,’ he answered himself. ‘Just the same sickening feeling there that I want nothing.’
‘Helena!’ he suggested to himself, trembling.
But he only felt a deeper horror. The thought of her made him shrink convulsively.
‘I can’t endure this,’ he said. If this is the case, I had better be dead. To have no want, no desire — that is death, to begin with.’
He rested awhile after this. The idea of death alone seemed entertaining. Then, ‘Is there really nothing I could turn to?’ he asked himself.
To him, in that state of soul, it seemed there was not.
‘Helena!’ he suggested again, appealingly testing himself. ‘Ah, no!’ he cried, drawing sharply back, as from an approaching touch upon a raw place.
He groaned slightly as he breathed, with a horrid weight of nausea. There was a fumbling upon the door-knob. Siegmund did not start. He merely pulled himself together. Gwen pushed open the door, and stood holding on to the door-knob looking at him.
‘Dad, Mam says dinner’s ready,’ she announced.
Siegmund did not reply. The child waited, at a loss for some moments, before she repeated, in a hesitating tone:
‘Dinner’s ready.’
‘All right,’ said Siegmund. ‘Go away.’
The little girl returned to the kitchen with tears in her eyes, very crestfallen.
‘What did he say?’ asked Beatrice.
‘He shouted at me,’ replied the little one, breaking into tears.
Beatrice flushed. Tears came into her own eyes. She took the child in her arms and pressed her to her, kissing her forehead.
‘Did he?’ she said very tenderly. ‘Never mind, then, dearie — never mind.’
The tears in her mother’s voice made the child sob bitterly. Vera and Marjory sat silent at table. The steak and mashed potatoes steamed and grew cold.
Chapter 24
When Helena arrived home on the Thursday evening she found everything repulsive. All the odours of the sordid street through which she must pass hung about the pavement, having crept out in the heat. The house was bare and narrow. She remembered children sometimes to have brought her moths shut up in matchboxes. As she knocked at the door she felt like a numbed moth which a boy is pushing off its leaf-rest into his box.
The door was opened by her mother. She was a woman whose sunken mouth, ruddy cheeks, and quick brown eyes gave her the appearance of a bird which walks about pecking suddenly here and there. As Helena reluctantly entered the mother drew herself up, and immediately relaxed, seeming to peck forwards as she said:
‘Well?’
‘Well, here we are!’ replied the daughter in a matter-of-fact tone.
Her mother was inclined to be affectionate, therefore she became proportionately cold.
‘So I see,’ exclaimed Mrs Verden, tossing her head in a peculiar jocular manner. ‘And what sort of a time have you had?’
‘Oh, very good,’ replied Helena, still more coolly.
‘H’m!’
Mrs Verden looked keenly at her daughter. She recognized the peculiar sulky, childish look she knew so well, therefore, making an effort, she forbore to question.
‘You look well,’ she said.
Helena smiled ironically.
‘And are you ready for your supper?’ she asked, in the playful, affectionate manner she had assumed.
‘If the supper is ready I will have it,’ replied her daughter.
‘Well, it’s not ready.’ The mother shut tight her sunken mouth, and regarded her daughter with playful challenge. ‘Because,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t known when you were coming.’ She gave a jerk with her arm, like an orator who utters the incontrovertible. ‘But,’ she added, after a tedious dramatic pause, ‘I can soon have it ready. What will you have?’
‘The full list of your capacious larder,’ replied Helena.
Mrs Verden looked at her again, and hesitated.
‘Will you have cocoa or lemonade?’ she asked, coming to the point curtly.
‘Lemonade,’ said Helena.
Presently Mr Verden entered — a small, white-bearded man with a gentle voice.
‘Oh, so you are back, Nellie!’ he said, in his quiet, reserved manner.
‘As you see, Pater,’ she answered.
‘H’m!’ he murmured, and he moved about at his accounts.
Neither of her parents dared to question Helena. They moved about her on tiptoe, stealthily. Yet neither subserved her. Her father’s quiet ‘H’m!’ her mother’s curt question, made her draw inwards like a snail which can never retreat far enough from condemning eyes. She made a careless pretence of eating. She was like a child which has done wrong, and will not be punished, but will be left with the humiliating smear of offence upon it.
There was a quick, light palpitating of the knocker. Mrs Verden went to the door.
‘Has she come?’
And there were hasty steps along the passage. Louisa entered. She flung herself upon Helena and kissed her.
‘How long have you been in?’ she asked, in a voice trembling with affection.
‘Ten minutes,’ replied Helena.
‘Why didn’t you send me the time of the train, so that I could come and meet you?’ Louisa reproached her.
‘Why?’ drawled Helena.
Louisa looked at her friend without speaking. She was deeply hurt by this sarcasm.
As soon as possible Helena went upstairs. Louisa stayed with her that night. On the next day they were going to Cornwall together for their usual midsummer holiday. They were to be accompanied by a third girl — a minor friend of Louisa, a slight acquaintance of