The Trespasser by D.H. Lawrence
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D.H. Lawrence >> The Trespasser
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_Chapter 29_
Helena was dozing down in the cove at Tintagel. She and Louisa and Olive
lay on the cool sands in the shadow, and steeped themselves in rest, in
a cool, sea-fragrant tranquillity.
The journey down had been very tedious. After waiting for half an hour
in the midnight turmoil of an August Friday in Waterloo station, they
had seized an empty carriage, only to be followed by five
north-countrymen, all of whom were affected by whisky. Olive, Helena,
Louisa, occupied three corners of the carriage. The men were distributed
between them. The three women were not alarmed. Their tipsy travelling
companions promised to be tiresome, but they had a frank honesty of
manner that placed them beyond suspicion. The train drew out westward.
Helena began to count the miles that separated her from Siegmund. The
north-countrymen began to be jolly: they talked loudly in their uncouth
English; they sang the music-hall songs of the day; they furtively drank
whisky. Through all this they were polite to the girls. As much could
hardly be said in return of Olive and Louisa. They leaned forward
whispering one to another. They sat back in their seats laughing, hiding
their laughter by turning their backs on the men, who were a trifle
disconcerted by this amusement.
The train spun on and on. Little homely clusters of lamps, suggesting
the quiet of country life, turned slowly round through the darkness. The
men dropped into a doze. Olive put a handkerchief over her face and went
to sleep. Louisa gradually nodded and jerked into slumber. Helena sat
weariedly and watched the rolling of the sleeping travellers and the
dull blank of the night sheering off outside. Neither the men nor the
women looked well asleep. They lurched and nodded stupidly. She thought
of Bazarof in _Fathers and Sons_, endorsing his opinion on the
appearance of sleepers: all but Siegmund. Was Siegmund asleep? She
imagined him breathing regularly on the pillows; she could see the under
arch of his eyebrows, the fine shape of his nostrils, the curve of his
lips, as she bent in fancy over his face.
The dawn came slowly. It was rather cold. Olive wrapped herself in rugs
and went to sleep again. Helena shivered, and stared out of the window.
There appeared a wanness in the night, and Helena felt inexpressibly
dreary. A rosiness spread out far away. It was like a flock of
flamingoes hovering over a dark lake. The world vibrated as the sun
came up.
Helena waked the tipsy men at Exeter, having heard them say that there
they must change. Then she walked the platform, very jaded. The train
rushed on again. It was a most, most wearisome journey. The fields were
very flowery, the morning was very bright, but what were these to her?
She wanted dimness, sleep, forgetfulness. At eight o'clock,
breakfast-time, the 'dauntless three' were driving in a waggonette amid
blazing, breathless sunshine, over country naked of shelter, ungracious
and harsh.
'Why am I doing this?' Helena asked herself.
The three friends, washed, dressed, and breakfasted. It was too hot to
rest in the house, so they trudged to the coast, silently, each feeling
in an ill humour.
When Helena was really rested, she took great pleasure in Tintagel. In
the first place, she found that the cove was exactly, almost identically
the same as the Walhalla scene in _Walkuere_; in the second place,
_Tristan_ was here, in the tragic country filled with the flowers of a
late Cornish summer, an everlasting reality; in the third place, it was
a sea of marvellous, portentous sunsets, of sweet morning baths, of
pools blossomed with life, of terrible suave swishing of foam which
suggested the Anadyomene. In sun it was the enchanted land of divided
lovers. Helena for ever hummed fragments of _Tristan_. As she stood on
the rocks she sang, in her little, half-articulate way, bits of Isolde's
love, bits of Tristan's anguish, to Siegmund.
She had not received her letter on Sunday. That had not very much
disquieted her, though she was disappointed. On Monday she was miserable
because of Siegmund's silence, but there was so much of enchantment in
Tintagel, and Olive and Louisa were in such high spirits, that she
forgot most whiles.
On Monday night, towards two o'clock, there came a violent storm of
thunder and lightning. Louisa started up in bed at the first clap,
waking Helena. The room palpitated with white light for two seconds; the
mirror on the dressing-table glared supernaturally. Louisa clutched her
friend. All was dark again, the thunder clapping directly.
'There, wasn't that lovely!' cried Louisa, speaking of the lightning.
'Oo, wasn't it magnificent!--glorious!'
The door clicked and opened: Olive entered in her long white nightgown.
She hurried to the bed.
'I say, dear!' she exclaimed, 'may I come into the fold? I prefer the
shelter of your company, dear, during this little lot.'
'Don't you like it?' cried Louisa. 'I think it's _lovely_--lovely!'
There came another slash of lightning. The night seemed to open and
shut. It was a pallid vision of a ghost-world between the clanging
shutters of darkness. Louisa and Olive clung to each other
spasmodically.
'There!' exclaimed the former, breathless. 'That was fine! Helena, did
you see that?'
She clasped ecstatically the hand of her friend, who was lying down.
Helena's answer was extinguished by the burst of thunder.
'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Olive, taking a place in the
bed. 'I can't say I'm struck on lightning. What about you, Helena?'
'I'm not struck yet,' replied Helena, with a sarcastic attempt at a
jest.
'Thank you, dear,' said Olive; 'you do me the honour of catching hold.'
Helena laughed ironically.
'Catching what?' asked Louisa, mystified.
'Why, dear,' answered Olive, heavily condescending to explain, 'I
offered Helena the handle of a pun, and she took it. What a flash! You
know, it's not that I'm afraid....'
The rest of her speech was overwhelmed in thunder.
Helena lay on the edge of the bed, listening to the ecstatics of one
friend and to the impertinences of the other. In spite of her ironical
feeling, the thunder impressed her with a sense of fatality. The night
opened, revealing a ghostly landscape, instantly to shut again with
blackness. Then the thunder crashed. Helena felt as if some secret were
being disclosed too swiftly and violently for her to understand. The
thunder exclaimed horribly on the matter. She was sure something
had happened.
Gradually the storm, drew away. The rain came down with a rush,
persisted with a bruising sound upon the earth and the leaves.
'What a deluge!' exclaimed Louisa.
No one answered her. Olive was falling asleep, and Helena was in no mood
to reply. Louisa, disconsolate, lay looking at the black window, nursing
a grievance, until she, too, drifted into sleep. Helena was awake; the
storm had left her with a settled sense of calamity. She felt bruised.
The sound of the heavy rain bruising the ground outside represented her
feeling; she could not get rid of the bruised sense of disaster.
She lay wondering what it was, why Siegmund had not written, what could
have happened to him. She imagined all of them terrible, and endued with
grandeur, for she had kinship with Hedda Gabler.
'But no,' she said to herself, 'it is impossible anything should have
happened to him--I should have known. I should have known the moment his
spirit left his body; he would have come to me. But I slept without
dreams last night, and today I am sure there has been no crisis. It is
impossible it should have happened to him: I should have known.'
She was very certain that in event of Siegmund's death, she would have
received intelligence. She began to consider all the causes which might
arise to prevent his writing immediately to her.
'Nevertheless,' she said at last, 'if I don't hear tomorrow I will go
and see.'
She had written to him on Monday. If she should receive no answer by
Wednesday morning she would return to London. As she was deciding this
she went to sleep.
The next day passed without news. Helena was in a state of distress. Her
wistfulness touched the other two women very keenly. Louisa waited upon
her, was very tender and solicitous. Olive, who was becoming painful by
reason of her unsatisfied curiosity, had to be told in part of the state
of affairs.
Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
fatal awaited her.
The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
sat up:
'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.'
'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.'
The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
would come to me.'
'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
'I promise,' he answered.
Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
what it could.
That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
of suspense.
Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
prearranged everything minutely.
After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
holiday on the South Coast....'
The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
'Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy
was expressed for the widow and children.'
Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print.
Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where
she was going.
'That was what I got,' she said, months afterwards; 'and it was like a
brick, it was like a brick.'
She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy
lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either
side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund's house
standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she
stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking
at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of no use her going
anywhere; the whole wide world was opened, but in it she had no
destination, and there was no direction for her to take. As if marooned
in the world, she stood desolate, looking from the house of Siegmund
over the fields and the hills. Siegmund was gone; why had he not taken
her with him?
The evening was drawing on; it was nearly half past seven when Helena
looked at her watch, remembering Louisa, who would be waiting for her to
return to Cornwall.
'I must either go to her, or wire to her. She will be in a fever of
suspense,' said Helena to herself, and straightway she hurried to catch
a tramcar to return to the station. She arrived there at a quarter to
eight; there was no train down to Tintagel that night. Therefore she
wired the news:
'Siegmund dead. No train tonight. Am going home.'
* * * * *
This done, she took her ticket and sat down to wait. By the strength of
her will everything she did was reasonable and accurate. But her mind
was chaotic.
'It was like a brick,' she reiterated, and that brutal simile was the
only one she could find, months afterwards, to describe her condition.
She felt as if something had crashed into her brain, stunning and
maiming her.
As she knocked at the door of home she was apparently quite calm. Her
mother opened to her.
'What, are you alone?' cried Mrs. Verden.
'Yes. Louisa did not come up,' replied Helena, passing into the
dining-room. As if by instinct she glanced on the mantelpiece to see if
there was a letter. There was a newspaper cutting. She went forward and
took it. It was from one of the London papers.
'Inquest was held today upon the body of ----.'
Helena read it, read it again, folded it up and put it in her purse. Her
mother stood watching her, consumed with distress and anxiety.
'How did you get to know?' she asked.
'I went to Wimbledon and bought a local paper,' replied the daughter, in
her muted, toneless voice.
'Did you go to the house?' asked the mother sharply.
'No,' replied Helena.
'I was wondering whether to send you that paper,' said her mother
hesitatingly.
Helena did not answer her. She wandered about the house mechanically,
looking for something. Her mother followed her, trying very gently
to help her.
For some time Helena sat at table in the dining-room staring before her.
Her parents moved restlessly in silence, trying not to irritate her by
watching her, praying for something to change the fixity of her look.
They acknowledged themselves helpless; like children, they felt
powerless and forlorn, and were very quiet.
'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' asked the father at last. He was an
unobtrusive, obscure man, whose sympathy was very delicate, whose
ordinary attitude was one of gentle irony.
'Won't you go to rest, Nellie?' he repeated.
Helena shivered slightly.
'Do, my dear,' her mother pleaded. 'Let me take you to bed.'
Helena rose. She had a great horror of being fussed or petted, but this
night she went dully upstairs, and let her mother help her to undress.
When she was in bed the mother stood for some moments looking at her,
yearning to beseech her daughter to pray to God; but she dared not.
Helena moved with a wild impatience under her mother's gaze.
'Shall I leave you the candle?' said Mrs Verden.
'No, blow it out,' replied the daughter. The mother did so, and
immediately left the room, going downstairs to her husband. As she
entered the dining-room he glanced up timidly at her. She was a tall,
erect woman. Her brown eyes, usually so swift and searching, were
haggard with tears that did not fall. He bowed down, obliterating
himself. His hands were tightly clasped.
'Will she be all right if you leave her?' he asked.
'We must listen,' replied the mother abruptly.
The parents sat silent in their customary places. Presently Mrs. Verden
cleared the supper table, sweeping together a few crumbs from the floor
in the place where Helena had sat, carefully putting her pieces of
broken bread under the loaf to keep moist. Then she sat down again. One
could see she was keenly alert to every sound. The father had his hand
to his head; he was thinking and praying.
Mrs. Verden suddenly rose, took a box of matches from the mantelpiece,
and hurrying her stately, heavy tread, went upstairs. Her husband
followed in much trepidation, hovering near the door of his daughter's
room. The mother tremblingly lit the candle. Helena's aspect distressed
and alarmed her. The girl's face was masked as if in sleep, but
occasionally it was crossed by a vivid expression of fear or horror. Her
wide eyes showed the active insanity of her brain. From time to time she
uttered strange, inarticulate sounds. Her mother held her hands and
soothed her. Although she was hardly aware of the mother's presence,
Helena was more tranquil. The father went downstairs and turned out the
light. He brought his wife a large shawl, which he put on the bed-rail,
and silently left the room. Then he went and kneeled down by his own
bedside, and prayed.
Mrs Verden watched her daughter's delirium, and all the time, in a kind
of mental chant, invoked the help of God. Once or twice the girl came to
herself, drew away her hand on recognizing the situation, and turned
from her mother, who patiently waited until, upon relapse, she could
soothe her daughter again. Helena was glad of her mother's presence, but
she could not bear to be looked at.
Towards morning the girl fell naturally asleep. The mother regarded her
closely, lightly touched her forehead with her lips, and went away,
having blown out the candle. She found her husband kneeling in his
nightshirt by the bed. He muttered a few swift syllables, and looked up
as she entered.
'She is asleep,' whispered the wife hoarsely.
'Is it a--a natural sleep?' hesitated the husband.
'Yes. I think it is. I think she will be all right.'
'Thank God!' whispered the father, almost inaudibly.
He held his wife's hand as she lay by his side. He was the comforter.
She felt as if now she might cry and take comfort and sleep. He, the
quiet, obliterated man, held her hand, taking the responsibility
upon himself.
_Chapter 30_
Beatrice was careful not to let the blow of Siegmund's death fall with
full impact upon her. As it were, she dodged it. She was afraid to meet
the accusation of the dead Siegmund, with the sacred jury of memories.
When the event summoned her to stand before the bench of her own soul's
understanding, she fled, leaving the verdict upon herself eternally
suspended.
When the neighbours had come, alarmed by her screaming, she had allowed
herself to be taken away from her own house into the home of a
neighbour. There the children were brought to her. There she wept, and
stared wildly about, as if by instinct seeking to cover her mind with
confusion. The good neighbour controlled matters in Siegmund's house,
sending for the police, helping to lay out the dead body. Before Vera
and Frank came home, and before Beatrice returned to her own place, the
bedroom of Siegmund was locked.
Beatrice avoided seeing the body of her husband; she gave him one swift
glance, blinded by excitement; she never saw him after his death. She
was equally careful to avoid thinking of him. Whenever her thoughts
wandered towards a consideration of how he must have felt, what his
inner life must have been, during the past six years, she felt herself
dilate with terror, and she hastened to invoke protection.
'The children!' she said to herself--'the children. I must live for the
children; I must think for the children.'
This she did, and with much success. All her tears and her wildness rose
from terror and dismay rather than from grief. She managed to fend back
a grief that would probably have broken her. Vera was too
practical-minded, she had too severe a notion of what ought to be and
what ought not, ever to put herself in her father's place and try to
understand him. She concerned herself with judging him sorrowfully,
exonerating him in part because Helena, that other, was so much more to
blame. Frank, as a sentimentalist, wept over the situation, not over the
personae. The children were acutely distressed by the harassing
behaviour of the elders, and longed for a restoration of equanimity. By
common consent no word was spoken of Siegmund. As soon as possible after
the funeral Beatrice moved from South London to Harrow. The memory of
Siegmund began to fade rapidly.
Beatrice had had all her life a fancy for a more open, public form of
living than that of a domestic circle. She liked strangers about the
house; they stimulated her agreeably. Therefore, nine months after the
death of her husband, she determined to carry out the scheme of her
heart, and take in boarders. She came of a well-to-do family, with whom
she had been in disgrace owing to her early romantic but degrading
marriage with a young lad who had neither income nor profession. In the
tragic, but also sordid, event of his death, the Waltons returned again
to the aid of Beatrice. They came hesitatingly, and kept their gloves
on. They inquired what she intended to do. She spoke highly and
hopefully of her future boarding-house. They found her a couple of
hundred pounds, glad to salve their consciences so cheaply. Siegmund's
father, a winsome old man with a heart of young gold, was always ready
further to diminish his diminished income for the sake of his
grandchildren. So Beatrice was set up in a fairly large house in
Highgate, was equipped with two maids, and gentlemen were invited to
come and board in her house. It was a huge adventure, wherein Beatrice
was delighted. Vera was excited and interested; Frank was excited, but
doubtful and grudging; the children were excited, elated, wondering. The
world was big with promise.
Three gentlemen came, before a month was out, to Beatrice's
establishment. She hoped shortly to get a fourth or a fifth. Her plan
was to play hostess, and thus bestow on her boarders the inestimable
blessing of family life. Breakfast was at eight-thirty, and everyone
attended. Vera sat opposite Beatrice, Frank sat on the maternal right
hand; Mr MacWhirter, who was _superior_, sat on the left hand; next him
sat Mr Allport, whose opposite was Mr Holiday. All were young men of
less than thirty years. Mr MacWhirter was tall, fair, and stoutish; he
was very quietly spoken, was humorous and amiable, yet extraordinarily
learned. He never, by any chance, gave himself away, maintaining always
an absolute reserve amid all his amiability. Therefore Frank would have
done anything to win his esteem, while Beatrice was deferential to him.
Mr Allport was tall and broad, and thin as a door; he had also a
remarkably small chin. He was naive, inclined to suffer in the first
pangs of disillusionment; nevertheless, he was waywardly humorous,
sometimes wistful, sometimes petulant, always gallant. Therefore Vera
liked him, whilst Beatrice mothered him. Mr Holiday was short, very
stout, very ruddy, with black hair. He had a disagreeable voice, was
vulgar in the grain, but officiously helpful if appeal were made to him.
Therefore Frank hated him. Vera liked his handsome, lusty appearance,
but resented bitterly his behaviour. Beatrice was proud of the superior
and skilful way in which she handled him, clipping him into shape
without hurting him.
One evening in July, eleven months after the burial of Siegmund,
Beatrice went into the dining-room and found Mr Allport sitting with his
elbow on the window-sill, looking out on the garden. It was half-past
seven. The red rents between the foliage of the trees showed the sun was
setting; a fragrance of evening-scented stocks filtered into the room
through the open window; towards the south the moon was budding out of
the twilight.
'What, you here all alone!' exclaimed Beatrice, who had just come from
putting the children to bed. 'I thought you had gone out.'
'No--o! What's the use,' replied Mr Allport, turning to look at his
landlady, 'of going out? There's nowhere to go.'
'Oh, come! There's the Heath, and the City--and you must join a tennis
club. Now I know just the thing--the club to which Vera belongs.'
'Ah, yes! You go down to the City--but there's nothing there--what I
mean to say--you want a pal--and even then--well'--he drawled the
word--'we-ell, it's merely escaping from yourself--killing time.'
'Oh, don't say that!' exclaimed Beatrice. 'You want to enjoy life.'
'Just so! Ah, just so!' exclaimed Mr Allport. 'But all the same--it's
like this--you only get up to the same thing tomorrow. What I mean to
say--what's the good, after all? It's merely living because you've
got to.'
'You are too pessimistic altogether for a young man. I look at it
differently myself; yet I'll be bound I have more cause for grumbling.
What's the trouble now?'
'We-ell--you can't lay your finger on a thing like that! What I mean to
say--it's nothing very definite. But, after all--what is there to do but
to hop out of life as quickly as possible? That's the best way.'
Beatrice became suddenly grave.
'You talk in that way, Mr. Allport,' she said. 'You don't think of the
others.'
'I don't know,' he drawled. 'What does it matter? Look here--who'd care?
What I mean to say--for long?'
'That's all very easy, but it's cowardly,' replied Beatrice gravely.
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