The Trespasser by D.H. Lawrence

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THE TRESPASSER

By D. H. Lawrence

1912

_Chapter 1_

'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from the
piano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.

Helena looked slowly from her music.

'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' She
stood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a pathetic
forbearance.

'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair with
the exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is only
lately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time you
would have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'

'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, who
seemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped from
her bristling defiance.

'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don't
like it.'

'_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the place
on Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took the
chords, and the music continued.

A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,
turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dance
with the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a stranger
in the room.

It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundreds
of others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now and
again the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and to
the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was
responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;
the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square
of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace
were smooth white. There was no other colouring.

The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two light
wicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polished
wood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in the
recess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave the
room clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim of
skirting-board, serene.

On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha from
China, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, two
tablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,
and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,
rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.

A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spaces
of dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of his
unwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lamp
that glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,
with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom of
the window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.

The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music fluttered
on, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.
She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, very
hurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, he
turned again to the players.

The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,
swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as if
her body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young man
frown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,
vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the fine
hollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white lace
of her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.

Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. He
watched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of the
soapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in front
and glisten over her forehead.

Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable
resignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.

'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'

Helena laughed wearily.

'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly to
rest.

'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helena
passionately.

'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,
apathetic tone. 'It was I.'

When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood a
moment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,
like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting no
response, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at her
friend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessive
affection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if she
were coaxing a child:

'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'

'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elder
plaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friend
for years.

'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.

Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, and
came to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The music
began. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.

'They are inflamed still' said the young man.

She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,
lighting up with a small smile.

'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,
strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,
like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on the
smarting soft flesh caressively.

'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm with
peculiar joy.

'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.
'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever put
anything on to heal it?'

She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly on
the burn.

'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curious
joy.

'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must be
psychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'

She looked up at him, suddenly cold.

'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.

The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But the
mortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'

'Never?' he re-echoed.

There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continued
to play the piano for their benefit. At last:

'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.

The two looked up at her.

'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.

'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, dropping
her arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.

'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.

'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_
obligation _whatever_.'

With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to her
self-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and her
head languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,
but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of the
hearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.

The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,
the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this
vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained
indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,
glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and the
flameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellow
glow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still no
one spoke.

At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change her
position. She sat motionless.

'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, looked
at her friend, and stretched slightly.

'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'

'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying to
disengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.

'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness and
appealing love.

Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got up
slowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.

'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.
She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.

'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'

'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.

The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, and
played together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming to
an end.

'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're alive
you've got to live.'

Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.

'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.

'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,
grinning.

She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.

'I don't see it at all,' she said.

'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding in
April--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'

'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't help
myself, why trouble, my friend?'

'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, it
does. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'

She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,
metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--and
go through a kind of _danse macabre_--'

'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.

'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'

'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed her
anxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still was
stunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. She
looked in the fire, forgetting him.

'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip off
your old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.

She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, then
broke out once more.

'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of a
blasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.
Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you are
not dead....'

Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gaze
at a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of a
handsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, as
if yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He looked
out musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of the
regular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straight
from his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,
cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. His
look became distressed and helpless.

'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. She
shuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into the
fire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't say
you live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,
and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture of
impatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead red
leaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you are
alive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'

With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked at
him under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath her
steady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.

'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, you
never touch the thing,' he cried.

'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, like
the cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relieve
an ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion from
life. She was very sick after the tragedy.

He frowned, and his eyes dilated.

'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.
You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down the
road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'

She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
moving from her torpor was painful. At last--

'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.

'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
softly, wearily.

For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.

'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,
also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant with
her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
arrival of Louisa with the coffee.

_Chapter 2_

Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to sell
it; she kept the black case out of sight.

Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for
the last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After
two dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the
sensitive body of the instrument. The second string had broken near
Christmas, but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin
lay mute in the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth,
soft wood. Its twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of
breaking, smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund
himself, with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an
odour of must.

Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his
violin, he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of
the heart of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and
turned it into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
remained of him in his violin.

It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and fear
had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
wild in anticipation.

The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and
savage, and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with
anticipation, as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly,
with hands of habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.

The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling their
weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other years
Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house
with a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades'
hands, and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The
theatre, awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a
flame stretched level on the wind.

With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall.
For himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless
to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm
on all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His
face was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey,
shaking golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a
garment before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living
flesh. Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took
his seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a
kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless movement,
fascinated.

This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he was
going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely for
his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of bonds,
a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of this
last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.

He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was to
watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.

When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their
cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The world
was changing.

The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The
night air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again
he lifted his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance
amid the blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would
front the waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena,
looking along the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden
joy. He laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the
black masses of the trees.

He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall,
the sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to
bed. Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held his
breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought, as he
laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.

In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He was
tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair, he
looked round with disgust.

The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
He fetched a glass of water.

The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the
floor, while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the
black stove the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and
newspapers, and rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of
bread-and-jam. As Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two
sweets underfoot. He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his
slippers; and he was in evening dress.

It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund her
husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why he was
miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the morrow. As he
ate, he closed his eyes, half wishing he had not promised Helena, half
wishing he had no tomorrow.

Leaning back in his chair, he felt something in the way. It was a small
teddy-bear and half of a strong white comb. He grinned to himself. This
was the summary of his domestic life--a broken, coarse comb, a child
crying because her hair was lugged, a wife who had let the hair go till
now, when she had got into a temper to see the job through; and then the
teddy-bear, pathetically cocking a black worsted nose, and lifting
absurd arms to him.

He wondered why Gwen had gone to bed without her pet. She would want the
silly thing. The strong feeling of affection for his children came over
him, battling with something else. He sank in his chair, and gradually
his baffled mind went dark. He sat, overcome with weariness and trouble,
staring blankly into the space. His own stifling roused him.
Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, then relaxed again.
After a while he rose, took the teddy-bear, and went slowly to bed.

Gwen and Marjory, aged nine and twelve, slept together in a small room.
It was fairly light. He saw his favourite daughter lying quite
uncovered, her wilful head thrown back, her mouth half open. Her black
hair was tossed across the pillow: he could see the action. Marjory
snuggled under the sheet. He placed the teddy-bear between the
two girls.

As he watched them, he hated the children for being so dear to him.
Either he himself must go under, and drag on an existence he hated, or
they must suffer. But he had agreed to spend this holiday with Helena,
and meant to do so. As he turned, he saw himself like a ghost cross the
mirror. He looked back; he peered at himself. His hair still grew thick
and dark from his brow: he could not see the grey at the temples. His
eyes were dark and tender, and his mouth, under the black moustache, was
full of youth.

He rose, looked at the children, frowned, and went to his own small
room. He was glad to be shut alone in the little cubicle of darkness.

Outside the world lay in a glamorous pallor, casting shadows that made
the farm, the trees, the bulks of villas, look like live creatures. The
same pallor went through all the night, glistening on Helena as she lay
curled up asleep at the core of the glamour, like the moon; on the sea
rocking backwards and forwards till it rocked her island as she slept.
She was so calm and full of her own assurance. It was a great rest to be
with her. With her, nothing mattered but love and the beauty of things.
He felt parched and starving. She had rest and love, like water and
manna for him. She was so strong in her self-possession, in her love of
beautiful things and of dreams.

The clock downstairs struck two.

'I must get to sleep,' he said.

He dragged his portmanteau from beneath the bed and began to pack it.
When at last it was finished, he shut it with a snap. The click sounded
final. He stood up, stretched himself, and sighed.

'I am fearfully tired,' he said.

But that was persuasive. When he was undressed he sat in his pyjamas for
some time, rapidly beating his fingers on his knee.

'Thirty-eight years old,' he said to himself, 'and disconsolate as a
child!' He began to muse of the morrow.

When he seemed to be going to sleep, he woke up to find thoughts
labouring over his brain, like bees on a hive. Recollections, swift
thoughts, flew in and alighted upon him, as wild geese swing down and
take possession of a pond. Phrases from the opera tyrannized over him;
he played the rhythm with all his blood. As he turned over in this
torture, he sighed, and recognized a movement of the De Beriot concerto
which Helena had played for her last lesson. He found himself watching
her as he had watched then, felt again the wild impatience when she was
wrong, started again as, amid the dipping and sliding of her bow, he
realized where his thoughts were going. She was wrong, he was hasty; and
he felt her blue eyes looking intently at him.

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