The Trespasser by D.H. Lawrence
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D.H. Lawrence >> The Trespasser
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'How stupid I look!' she said to herself. 'And Siegmund, how is he, I
wonder?'
She wondered how Siegmund had passed the day, what had happened to him,
how he felt, how he looked. She thought of him protectively.
Having strapped her basket, she carried it downstairs. Her mother was
ready, with a white lace scarf round her neck. After a short time Louisa
came in. She dropped her basket in the passage, and then sank into
a chair.
'I don't want to go, Nell,' she said, after a few moments of silence.
'Why, how is that?' asked Helena, not surprised, but condescending, as
to a child.
'Oh, I don't know; I'm tired,' said the other petulantly.
'Of course you are. What do you expect, after a day like this?' said
Helena.
'And rushing about packing,' exclaimed Mrs Verden, still in an
exaggerated manner, this time scolding playfully.
'Oh, I don't know. I don't think I want to go, dear,' repeated Louisa
dejectedly.
'Well, it is time we set out,' replied Helena, rising. 'Will you carry
the basket or the violin, Mater?'
Louisa rose, and with a forlorn expression took up her light luggage.
The west opposite the door was smouldering with sunset. Darkness is only
smoke that hangs suffocatingly over the low red heat of the sunken day.
Such was Helena's longed-for night. The tramcar was crowded. In one
corner Olive, the third friend, rose excitedly to greet them. Helena sat
mute, while the car swung through the yellow, stale lights of a
third-rate street of shops. She heard Olive remarking on her sunburned
face and arms; she became aware of the renewed inflammation in her
blistered arms; she heard her own curious voice answering. Everything
was in a maze. To the beat of the car, while the yellow blur of the
shops passed over her eyes, she repeated: 'Two hundred and forty
miles--two hundred and forty miles.'
_Chapter 25_
Siegmund passed the afternoon in a sort of stupor. At tea-time Beatrice,
who had until then kept herself in restraint, gave way to an outburst of
angry hysteria.
'When does your engagement at the Comedy Theatre commence?' she had
asked him coldly.
He knew she was wondering about money.
'Tomorrow--if ever,' he had answered.
She was aware that he hated the work. For some reason or other her anger
flashed out like sudden lightning at his 'if ever'.
'What do you think you _can_ do?' she cried. 'For I think you have done
enough. We can't do as we like altogether--indeed, indeed we cannot. You
have had your fling, haven't you? You have had your fling, and you want
to keep on. But there's more than one person in the world. Remember
that. But there are your children, let me remind you. Whose are they?
You talk about shirking the engagement, but who is going to be
responsible for your children, do you think?'
'I said nothing about shirking the engagement,' replied Siegmund, very
coldly.
'No, there was no need to say. I know what it means. You sit there
sulking all day. What do you think _I_ do? I have to see to the
children, I have to work and slave, I go on from day to day. I tell you
_I'll_ stop, I tell you _I'll_ do as I like. _I'll_ go as well. No, I
wouldn't be such a coward, you know that. You know _I_ wouldn't leave
little children--to the workhouse or anything. They're my children; they
mightn't be yours.'
'There is no need for this,' said Siegmund contemptuously.
The pressure in his temples was excruciating, and he felt loathsomely
sick.
Beatrice's dark eyes flashed with rage.
'Isn't there!' she cried. 'Oh, isn't there? No, there is need for a
great deal more. I don't know what you think I am. How much farther do
you' think you can go? No, you don't like reminding of us. You sit
moping, sulking, because you have to come back to your own children. I
wonder how much you think I shall stand? What do you think I am, to put
up with it? What do you think I am? Am I a servant to eat out of
your hand?'
'Be quiet!' shouted Siegmund. 'Don't I know what you are? Listen to
yourself!'
Beatrice was suddenly silenced. It was the stillness of white-hot wrath.
Even Siegmund was glad to hear her voice again. She spoke low and
trembling.
'You coward--you miserable coward! It is I, is it, who am wrong? It is I
who am to blame, is it? You miserable thing! I have no doubt you know
what I am.'
Siegmund looked up at her as her words died off. She looked back at him
with dark eyes loathing his cowed, wretched animosity. His eyes were
bloodshot and furtive, his mouth was drawn back in a half-grin of hate
and misery. She was goading him, in his darkness whither he had
withdrawn himself like a sick dog, to die or recover as his strength
should prove. She tortured him till his sickness was swallowed by anger,
which glared redly at her as he pushed back his chair to rise. He
trembled too much, however. His chin dropped again on his chest.
Beatrice sat down in her place, hearing footsteps. She was shuddering
slightly, and her eyes were fixed.
Vera entered with the two children. All three immediately, as if they
found themselves confronted by something threatening, stood arrested.
Vera tackled the situation.
'Is the table ready to be cleared yet?' she asked in an unpleasant tone.
Her father's cup was half emptied. He had come to tea late, after the
others had left the table. Evidently he had not finished, but he made no
reply, neither did Beatrice. Vera glanced disgustedly at her father.
Gwen sidled up to her mother, and tried to break the tension.
'Mam, there was a lady had a dog, and it ran into a shop, and it licked
a sheep, Mam, what was hanging up.'
Beatrice sat fixed, and paid not the slightest attention. The child
looked up at her, waited, then continued softly.
'Mam, there was a lady had a dog--'
'Don't bother!' snapped Vera sharply.
The child looked, wondering and resentful, at her sister. Vera was
taking the things from the table, snatching them, and thrusting them on
the tray. Gwen's eyes rested a moment or two on the bent head of her
father; then deliberately she turned again to her mother, and repeated
in her softest and most persuasive tones:
'Mam, I saw a dog, and it ran in a butcher's shop and licked a piece of
meat. Mam, Mam!'
There was no answer. Gwen went forward and put her hand on her mother's
knee.
'Mam!' she pleaded timidly.
No response.
'Mam!' she whispered.
She was desperate. She stood on tiptoe, and pulled with little hands at
her mother's breast.
'Mam!' she whispered shrilly.
Her mother, with an effort of self-denial, put off her investment of
tragedy, and, laying her arm round the child's shoulders, drew her
close. Gwen was somewhat reassured, but not satisfied. With an earnest
face upturned to the impassive countenance of her mother, she began to
whisper, sibilant, coaxing, pleading.
'Mam, there was a lady, she had a dog--'
Vera turned sharply to stop this whispering, which was too much for her
nerves, but the mother forestalled her. Taking the child in her arms,
she averted her face, put her cheek against the baby cheek, and let the
tears run freely. Gwen was too much distressed to cry. The tears
gathered very slowly in her eyes, and fell without her having moved a
muscle in her face. Vera remained in the scullery, weeping tears of
rage, and pity, and shame into the towel. The only sound in the room was
the occasional sharp breathing of Beatrice. Siegmund sat without the
trace of a movement, almost without breathing. His head was ducked low;
he dared never lift it, he dared give no sign of his presence.
Presently Beatrice put down the child, and went to join Vera in the
scullery. There came the low sound of women's talking--an angry, ominous
sound. Gwen followed her mother. Her little voice could be heard
cautiously asking:
'Mam, is dad cross--is he? What did he do?'
'Don't bother!' snapped Vera. 'You _are_ a little nuisance! Here, take
this into the dining-room, and don't drop it.'
The child did not obey. She stood looking from her mother to her sister.
The latter pushed a dish into her hand.
'Go along,' she said, gently thrusting the child forth.
Gwen departed. She hesitated in the kitchen. Her father still remained
unmoved. The child wished to go to him, to speak to him, but she was
afraid. She crossed the kitchen slowly, hugging the dish; then she came
slowly back, hesitating. She sidled into the kitchen; she crept round
the table inch by inch, drawing nearer her father. At about a yard from
the chair she stopped. He, from under his bent brows, could see her
small feet in brown slippers, nearly kicked through at the toes, waiting
and moving nervously near him. He pulled himself together, as a man does
who watches the surgeon's lancet suspended over his wound. Would the
child speak to him? Would she touch him with her small hands? He held
his breath, and, it seemed, held his heart from beating. What he should
do he did not know.
He waited in a daze of suspense. The child shifted from one foot to
another. He could just see the edge of her white-frilled drawers. He
wanted, above all things, to take her in his arms, to have something
against which to hide his face. Yet he was afraid. Often, when all the
world was hostile, he had found her full of love, he had hidden his face
against her, she had gone to sleep in his arms, she had been like a
piece of apple-blossom in his arms. If she should come to him now--his
heart halted again in suspense--he knew not what he would do. It would
open, perhaps, the tumour of his sickness. He was quivering too fast
with suspense to know what he feared, or wanted, or hoped.
'Gwen!' called Vera, wondering why she did not return. 'Gwen!'
'Yes,' answered the child, and slowly Siegmund saw her feet lifted,
hesitate, move, then turn away.
She had gone. His excitement sank rapidly, and the sickness returned
stronger, more horrible and wearying than ever. For a moment it was so
bad that he was afraid of losing consciousness. He recovered slightly,
pulled himself up, and went upstairs. His fists were tightly clenched,
his fingers closed over his thumbs, which were pressed bloodless. He lay
down on the bed.
For two hours he lay in a dazed condition resembling sleep. At the end
of that time the knowledge that he had to meet Helena was actively at
work--an activity quite apart from his will or his consciousness,
jogging and pulling him awake. At eight o'clock he sat up. A cramped
pain in his thumbs made him wonder. He looked at them, and mechanically
shut them again under his fingers into the position they sought after
two hours of similar constraint. Siegmund opened his hands
again, smiling.
'It is said to be the sign of a weak, deceitful character,' he said to
himself.
His head was peculiarly numbed; at the back it felt heavy, as if
weighted with lead. He could think only one detached sentence at
intervals. Between-whiles there was a blank, grey sleep or swoon.
'I have got to go and meet Helena at Wimbledon,' he said to himself, and
instantly he felt a peculiar joy, as if he had laughed somewhere. 'But I
must be getting ready. I can't disappoint her,' said Siegmund.
The idea of Helena woke a craving for rest in him. If he should say to
her, 'Do not go away from me; come with me somewhere,' then he might lie
down somewhere beside her, and she might put her hands on his head. If
she could hold his head in her hands--for she had fine, silken hands
that adjusted themselves with a rare pressure, wrapping his weakness up
in life--then his head would gradually grow healed, and he could rest.
This was the one thing that remained for his restoration--that she
should with long, unwearying gentleness put him to rest. He longed for
it utterly--for the hands and the restfulness of Helena.
'But it is no good,' he said, staring like a drunken man from sleep.
'What time is it?'
It was ten minutes to nine. She would be in Wimbledon by 10.10. It was
time he should be getting ready. Yet he remained sitting on the bed.
'I am forgetting again,' he said. 'But I do not want to go. What is the
good? I have only to tie a mask on for the meeting. It is too much.'
He waited and waited; his head dropped forward in a sort of sleep.
Suddenly he started awake. The back of his head hurt severely.
'Goodness,' he said, 'it's getting quite dark!'
It was twenty minutes to ten. He went bewildered into the bathroom to
wash in cold water and bring back his senses. His hands were sore, and
his face blazed with sun inflammation. He made himself neat as usual. It
was ten minutes to ten. He would be very late. It was practically dark,
though these bright days were endless. He wondered whether the children
were in bed. It was too late, however, to wonder.
Siegmund hurried downstairs and took his hat. He was walking down the
path when the door was snatched open behind him, and Vera ran
out crying:
'Are you going out? Where are you going?'
Siegmund stood still and looked at her.
'She is frightened,' he said to himself, smiling ironically.
'I am only going a walk. I have to go to Wimbledon. I shall not be very
long.'
'Wimbledon, at this time!' said Vera sharply, full of suspicion.
'Yes, I am late. I shall be back in an hour.'
He was sorry for her. She knew he gave her an honourable promise.
'You need not keep us sitting up,' she said.
He did not answer, but hurried to the station.
_Chapter 26_
Helena, Louisa, and Olive climbed the steps to go to the South-Western
platform. They were laden with dress-baskets, umbrellas, and little
packages. Olive and Louisa, at least, were in high spirits. Olive
stopped before the indicator.
'The next train for Waterloo,' she announced, in her contralto voice,
'is 10.30. It is now 10.12.'
'We go by the 10.40; it is a better train,' said Helena.
Olive turned to her with a heavy-arch manner.
'Very well, dear. There is a parting to be got through, I am told. We
sympathize, dear, but we regret it. Starting for a holiday is always a
prolonged agony. But I am strong to endure it.'
'You look it. You look as if you could tackle a bull,' cried Louisa,
skittish.
'My dear Louisa,' rang out Olive's contralto, 'don't judge me by
appearances. You're sure to be taken in. With me it's a case of
'"Oh, the gladness of her gladness when she's sad,
And the sadness of her sadness when she's glad!"'
She looked round to see the effect of this. Helena, expected to say
something, chimed in sarcastically:
'"They are nothing to her madness--"'
'When she's going for a holiday, dear,' cried Olive.
'Oh, go on being mad,' cried Louisa.
'What, do you like it? I thought you'd be thanking Heaven that sanity
was given me in large doses.'
'And holidays in small,' laughed Louisa. 'Good! No, I like your madness,
if you call it such. You are always so serious.'
'"It's ill talking of halters in the house of the hanged," dear,' boomed
Olive.
She looked from side to side. She felt triumphant. Helena smiled,
acknowledging the sarcasm.
'But,' said Louisa, smiling anxiously, 'I don't quite see it. What's the
point?'
'Well, to be explicit, dear,' replied Olive, 'it is hardly safe to
accuse me of sadness and seriousness in _this_ trio.'
Louisa laughed and shook herself.
'Come to think of it, it isn't,' she said.
Helena sighed, and walked down the platform. Her heart was beating
thickly; she could hardly breathe. The station lamps hung low, so they
made a ceiling of heat and dusty light. She suffocated under them. For a
moment she beat with hysteria, feeling, as most of us feel when sick on
a hot summer night, as if she must certainly go crazed, smothered under
the grey, woolly blanket of heat. Siegmund was late. It was already
twenty-five minutes past ten.
She went towards the booking-office. At that moment Siegmund came on to
the platform.
'Here I am!' he said. 'Where is Louisa?'
Helena pointed to the seat without answering. She was looking at
Siegmund. He was distracted by the excitement of the moment, so she
could not read him.
'Olive is there, too,' she explained.
Siegmund stood still, straining his eyes to see the two women seated
amidst pale wicker dress-baskets and dark rugs. The stranger made things
more complex.
'Does she--your other friend--does she know?' he asked.
'She knows nothing,' replied Helena in a low tone, as she led him
forward to be introduced.
'How do you do?' replied Olive in most mellow contralto. 'Behold the
dauntless three, with their traps! You will see us forth on our perils?'
'I will, since I may not do more,' replied Siegmund, smiling,
continuing: 'And how is Sister Louisa?'
'She is very well, thank you. It is _her_ turn now,' cried Louisa,
vindictive, triumphant.
There was always a faint animosity in her bearing towards Siegmund. He
understood, and smiled at her enmity, for the two were really
good friends.
'It is your turn now,' he repeated, smiling, and he turned away.
He and Helena walked down the platform.
'How did you find things at home?' he asked her.
'Oh, as usual,' she replied indifferently. 'And you?'
'Just the same,' he answered. He thought for a moment or two, then
added: 'The children are happier without me.'
'Oh, you mustn't say that kind of thing protested Helena miserably.
'It's not true.'
'It's all right, dear,' he answered. 'So long as they are happy, it's
all right.' After a pause he added: 'But I feel pretty bad tonight.'
Helena's hand tightened on his arm. He had reached the end of the
platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a
haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm;
farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket,
was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train
with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon
the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in
vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. Then
Siegmund turned his head to watch the red and the green lights in the
rear of the train swiftly dwindle on the darkness. Still watching the
distance where the train had vanished, he said:
'Dear, I want you to promise that, whatever happens to me, you will go
on. Remember, dear, two wrongs don't make a right.'
Helena swiftly, with a movement of terror, faced him, looking into his
eyes. But he was in the shadow, she could not see him. The flat sound of
his voice, lacking resonance--the dead, expressionless tone--made her
lose her presence of mind. She stared at him blankly.
'What do you mean? What has happened? Something has happened to you.
What has happened at home? What are you going to do?' she said sharply.
She palpitated with terror. For the first time she felt powerless.
Siegmund was beyond her grasp. She was afraid of him. He had shaken away
her hold over him.
'There is nothing fresh the matter at home,' he replied wearily. He was
to be scourged with emotion again. 'I swear it,' he added. 'And I have
not made up my mind. But I can't think of life without you--and life
must go on.'
'And I swear,' she said wrathfully, turning at bay, 'that I won't live a
day after you.'
Siegmund dropped his head. The dead spring of his emotion swelled up
scalding hot again. Then he said, almost inaudibly: 'Ah, don't speak to
me like that, dear. It is late to be angry. When I have seen your train
out tonight there is nothing left.'
Helena looked at him, dumb with dismay, stupid, angry.
They became aware of the porters shouting loudly that the Waterloo train
was to leave from another platform.
'You'd better come,' said Siegmund, and they hurried down towards Louisa
and Olive.
'We've got to change platforms,' cried Louisa, running forward and
excitedly announcing the news.
'Yes,' replied Helena, pale and impassive.
Siegmund picked up the luggage.
'I say,' cried Olive, rushing to catch Helena and Louisa by the arm,
'look--look--both of you--look at that hat!' A lady in front was wearing
on her hat a wild and dishevelled array of peacock feathers. 'It's the
sight of a lifetime. I wouldn't have you miss it,' added Olive in hoarse
_sotto voce_.
'Indeed not!' cried Helena, turning in wild exasperation to look. 'Get a
good view of it, Olive. Let's have a good mental impression of it--one
that will last.'
'That's right, dear,' said Olive, somewhat nonplussed by this outburst.
Siegmund had escaped with the heaviest two bags. They could see him
ahead, climbing the steps. Olive readjusted herself from the wildly
animated to the calmly ironical.
'After all, dear,' she said, as they hurried in the tail of the crowd,
'it's not half a bad idea to get a man on the job.'
Louisa laughed aloud at this vulgar conception of Siegmund.
'Just now, at any rate,' she rejoined.
As they reached the platform the train ran in before them. Helena
watched anxiously for an empty carriage. There was not one.
'Perhaps it is as well,' she thought. 'We needn't talk. There will be
three-quarters of an hour at Waterloo. If we were alone. Olive would
make Siegmund talk.'
She found a carriage with four people, and hastily took possession.
Siegmund followed her with the bags. He swung these on the rack, and
then quickly received the rugs, umbrellas, and packages from the other
two. These he put on the seats or anywhere, while Helena stowed them.
She was very busy for a moment or two; the racks were full. Other people
entered; their luggage was troublesome to bestow.
When she turned round again she found Louisa and Olive seated, but
Siegmund was outside on the platform, and the door was closed. He saw
her face move as if she would cry to him. She restrained herself, and
immediately called:
'You are coming? Oh, you are coming to Waterloo?'
He shook his head.
'I cannot come,' he said.
She stood looking blankly at him for some moments, unable to reach the
door because of the portmanteau thrust through with umbrellas and
sticks, which stood on the floor between the knees of the passengers.
She was helpless. Siegmund was repeating deliriously in his mind:
'Oh--go--go--go--when will she go?'
He could not bear her piteousness. Her presence made him feel insane.
'Would you like to come to the window?' a man asked of Helena kindly.
She smiled suddenly in his direction, without perceiving him. He pulled
the portmanteau under his legs, and Helena edged past. She stood by the
door, leaning forward with some of her old protective grace, her 'Hawwa'
spirit evident. Benign and shielding, she bent forward, looking at
Siegmund. But her face was blank with helplessness, with misery of
helplessness. She stood looking at Siegmund, saying nothing. His
forehead was scorched and swollen, she noticed sorrowfully, and beneath
one eye the skin was blistered. His eyes were bloodshot and glazed in a
kind of apathy; they filled her with terror. He looked up at her because
she wished it. For himself, he could not see her; he could only recoil
from her. All he wished was to hide himself in the dark, alone. Yet she
wanted him, and so far he yielded. But to go to Waterloo he could
not yield.
The people in the carriage, made uneasy by this strange farewell, did
not speak. There were a few taut moments of silence. No one seems to
have strength to interrupt these spaces of irresolute anguish. Finally,
the guard's whistle went. Siegmund and Helena clasped hands. A warm
flush of love and healthy grief came over Siegmund for the last time.
The train began to move, drawing Helena's hand from his.
'Monday,' she whispered--'Monday,' meaning that on Monday she should
receive a letter from him. He nodded, turned, hesitated, looked at her,
turned and walked away. She remained at the window watching him depart.
'Now, dear, we are manless,' said Olive in a whisper. But her attempt at
a joke fell dead. Everybody was silent and uneasy.
_Chapter 27_
He hurried down the platform, wincing at every stride, from the memory
of Helena's last look of mute, heavy yearning. He gripped his fists till
they trembled; his thumbs were again closed under his fingers. Like a
picture on a cloth before him he still saw Helena's face, white,
rounded, in feature quite mute and expressionless, just made terrible by
the heavy eyes, pleading dumbly. He thought of her going on and on,
still at the carriage window looking out; all through the night rushing
west and west to the land of Isolde. Things began to haunt Siegmund like
a delirium. He knew not where he was hurrying. Always in front of him,
as on a cloth, was the face of Helena, while somewhere behind the cloth
was Cornwall, a far-off lonely place where darkness came on intensely.
Sometimes he saw a dim, small phantom in the darkness of Cornwall, very
far off. Then the face of Helena, white, inanimate as a mask, with heavy
eyes, came between again.
He was almost startled to find himself at home, in the porch of his
house. The door opened. He remembered to have heard the quick thud of
feet. It was Vera. She glanced at him, but said nothing. Instinctively
she shrank from him. He passed without noticing her. She stood on the
door-mat, fastening the door, striving to find something to say to him.
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