The Trespasser by D.H. Lawrence
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D.H. Lawrence >> The Trespasser
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But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.'
He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
that melts on the sunshine.'
Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
a joke.
'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
count; I am inconsiderable.'
He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
was arguing with himself.
'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.'
But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
was a great ignominy.
Helena, meanwhile, was bathing, for the last time, by the same sea-shore
with him. She was no swimmer. Her endless delight was to explore, to
discover small treasures. For her the world was still a great wonder-box
which hid innumerable sweet toys for surprises in all its crevices. She
had bathed in many rock-pools' tepid baths, trying first one, then
another. She had lain on the sand where the cold arms of the ocean
lifted her and smothered her impetuously, like an awful lover.
'The sea is a great deal like Siegmund,' she said, as she rose panting,
trying to dash her nostrils free from water. It was true; the sea as it
flung over her filled her with the same uncontrollable terror as did
Siegmund when he sometimes grew silent and strange in a tide of passion.
She wandered back to her rock-pools; they were bright and docile; they
did not fling her about in a game of terror. She bent over watching the
anemone's fleshy petals shrink from the touch of her shadow, and she
laughed to think they should be so needlessly fearful. The flowing tide
trickled noiselessly among the rocks, widening and deepening insidiously
her little pools. Helena retreated towards a large cave round the bend.
There the water gurgled under the bladder-wrack of the large stones; the
air was cool and clammy. She pursued her way into the gloom, bending,
though there was no need, shivering at the coarse feel of the seaweed
beneath her naked feet. The water came rustling up beneath the fucus as
she crept along on the big stones; it returned with a quiet gurgle which
made her shudder, though even that was not disagreeable. It needed, for
all that, more courage than was easy to summon before she could step off
her stone into the black pool that confronted her. It was festooned
thick with weeds that slid under her feet like snakes. She scrambled
hastily upwards towards the outlet.
Turning, the ragged arch was before heir, brighter than the brightest
window. It was easy to believe the light-fairies stood outside in a
throng, excited with fine fear, throwing handfuls of light into the
dragon's hole.
'How surprised they will be to see me!' said Helena, scrambling forward,
laughing.
She stood still in the archway, astounded. The sea was blazing with
white fire, and glowing with azure as coals glow red with heat below the
flames. The sea was transfused with white burning, while over it hung
the blue sky in a glory, like the blue smoke of the fire of God. Helena
stood still and worshipped. It was a moment of astonishment, when she
stood breathless and blinded, involuntarily offering herself for a
thank-offering. She felt herself confronting God at home in His white
incandescence, His fire settling on her like the Holy Spirit. Her lips
were parted in a woman's joy of adoration.
The moment passed, and her thoughts hurried forward in confusion.
'It is good,' said Helena; 'it is very good.' She looked again, and saw
the waves like a line of children racing hand in hand, the sunlight
pursuing, catching hold of them from behind, as they ran wildly till
they fell, caught, with the sunshine dancing upon them like a white dog.
'It is really wonderful here!' said she; but the moment had gone, she
could not see again the grand burning of God among the waves. After a
while she turned away.
As she stood dabbling her bathing-dress in a pool, Siegmund came over
the beach to her.
'You are not gone, then?' he said.
'Siegmund!' she exclaimed, looking up at him with radiant eyes, as if it
could not be possible that he had joined her in this rare place. His
face was glowing with the sun's inflaming, but Helena did not notice
that his eyes were full of misery.
'I, actually,' he said, smiling.
'I did not expect you,' she said, still looking at him in radiant
wonder. 'I could easier have expected'--she hesitated, struggled, and
continued--'Eros walking by the sea. But you are like him,' she said,
looking radiantly up into Siegmund's face. 'Isn't it beautiful this
morning?' she added.
Siegmund endured her wide, glad look for a moment, then he stooped and
kissed her. He remained moving his hand in the pool, ashamed, and full
of contradiction. He was at the bitter point of farewell; could see,
beyond the glamour around him, the ugly building of his real life.
'Isn't the sea wonderful this morning?' asked Helena, as she wrung the
water from her costume.
'It is very fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart
said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning,
and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are full of delight.'
'Yes,' said Siegmund, 'the morning is perfect.'
'It is,' assented Helena warmly. 'Have you noticed the waves? They are
like a line of children chased by a white dog.'
'Ay!' said Siegmund.
'Didn't you have a good time?' she asked, touching with her finger-tips
the nape of his neck as he stooped beside her.
'I swam to my little bay again,' he replied.
'Did you?' she exclaimed, pleased.
She sat down by the pool, in which she washed her feet free from sand,
holding them to Siegmund to dry.
'I am very hungry,' she said.
'And I,' he agreed.
'I feel quite established here,' she said gaily, something in his
position having reminded her of their departure.
He laughed.
'It seems another eternity before the three-forty-five train, doesn't
it?' she insisted.
'I wish we might never go back,' he said.
Helena sighed.
'It would be too much for life to give. We have had something,
Siegmund,' she said.
He bowed his head, and did not answer.
'It has been something, dear,' she repeated.
He rose and took her in his arms.
'Everything,' he said, his face muffled in the shoulder of her dress. He
could smell her fresh and fine from the sea. 'Everything!' he said.
She pressed her two hands on his head.
'I did well, didn't I, Siegmund?' she asked. Helena felt the
responsibility of this holiday. She had proposed it; when he had
withdrawn, she had insisted, refusing to allow him to take back his
word, declaring that she should pay the cost. He permitted her at last.
'Wonderfully well, Helena,' he replied.
She kissed his forehead.
'You are everything,' he said.
She pressed his head on her bosom.
_Chapter 18_
Siegmund had shaved and dressed, and come down to breakfast. Mrs Curtiss
brought in the coffee. She was a fragile little woman, of delicate,
gentle manner.
'The water would be warm this morning,' she said, addressing no one in
particular.
Siegmund stood on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him, swaying from
one leg to the other. He was embarrassed always by the presence of the
amiable little woman; he could not feel at ease before strangers, in his
capacity of accepted swain of Helena.
'It was,' assented Helena. 'It was as warm as new milk.'
'Ay, it would be,' said the old lady, looking in admiration upon the
experience of Siegmund and his beloved. 'And did ye see the ships of
war?' she asked.
'No, they had gone,' replied Helena.
Siegmund swayed from foot to foot, rhythmically.
'You'll be coming in to dinner today?' asked the old lady.
Helena arranged the matter.
'I think ye both look better,' Mrs. Curtiss said. She glanced at
Siegmund.
He smiled constrainedly.
'I thought ye looked so worn when you came,' she said sympathetically.
'He had been working hard,' said Helena, also glancing at him.
He bent his head, and was whistling without making any sound.
'Ay,' sympathized the little woman. 'And it's a very short time for you.
What a pity ye can't stop for the fireworks at Cowes on Monday. They are
grand, so they say.'
Helena raised her eyebrows in polite interest. 'Have you never seen
them?' she asked.
'No,' replied Mrs. Curtiss. 'I've never been able to get; but I hope to
go yet.'
'I hope you may,' said Siegmund.
The little woman beamed on him. Having won a word from him, she was
quite satisfied.
'Well,' she said brightly, 'the eggs must be done by now.'
She tripped out, to return directly.
'I've brought you,' she said, 'some of the Island cream, and some white
currants, if ye'll have them. You must think well of the Island, and
come back.'
'How could we help?' laughed Helena.
'We will,' smiled Siegmund.
When finally the door was closed on her, Siegmund sat down in relief.
Helena looked in amusement at him. She was perfectly self-possessed in
presence of the delightful little lady.
'This is one of the few places that has ever felt like home to me,' she
said. She lifted a tangled bunch of fine white currants.
'Ah!' exclaimed Siegmund, smiling at her.
'One of the few places where everything is friendly,' she said. 'And
everybody.'
'You have made so many enemies?' he asked, with gentle irony.
'Strangers,' she replied. 'I seem to make strangers of all the people I
meet.'
She laughed in amusement at this _mot_. Siegmund looked at her intently.
He was thinking of her left alone amongst strangers.
'Need we go--need we leave this place of friends?' he said, as if
ironically. He was very much afraid of tempting her.
She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and counted: 'One, two,
three, four, five hours, thirty-five minutes. It is an age yet,'
she laughed.
Siegmund laughed too, as he accepted the particularly fine bunch of
currants she had extricated for him.
_Chapter 19_
The air was warm and sweet in the little lane, remote from the sea,
which led them along their last walk. On either side the white path was
a grassy margin thickly woven with pink convolvuli. Some of the reckless
little flowers, so gay and evanescent, had climbed the trunks of an old
yew tree, and were looking up pertly at their rough host.
Helena walked along, watching the flowers, and making fancies out of
them.
'Who called them "fairies' telephones"?' she said to herself. 'They are
tiny children in pinafores. How gay they are! They are children dawdling
along the pavement of a morning. How fortunate they are! See how they
take a wind-thrill! See how wide they are set to the sunshine! And when
they are tired, they will curl daintily to sleep, and some fairies in
the dark will gather them away. They won't be here in the morning,
shrivelled and dowdy ... If only we could curl up and be gone, after
our day....'
She looked at Siegmund. He was walking moodily beside her.
'It is good when life holds no anti-climax,' she said.
'Ay!' he answered. Of course, he could not understand her meaning.
She strayed into the thick grass, a sturdy white figure that walked with
bent head, abstract, but happy.
'What is she thinking?' he asked himself. 'She is sufficient to
herself--she doesn't want me. She has her own private way of communing
with things, and is friends with them.'
'The dew has been very heavy,' she said, turning, and looking up at him
from under her brows, like a smiling witch.
'I see it has,' he answered. Then to himself he said: 'She can't
translate herself into language. She is incommunicable; she can't render
herself to the intelligence. So she is alone and a law unto herself: she
only wants me to explore me, like a rock-pool, and to bathe in me. After
a while, when I am gone, she will see I was not indispensable....'
The lane led up to the eastern down. As they were emerging, they saw on
the left hand an extraordinarily spick and span red bungalow. The low
roof of dusky red sloped down towards the coolest green lawn, that was
edged and ornamented with scarlet, and yellow, and white flowers
brilliant with dew.
A stout man in an alpaca jacket and panama hat was seated on the bare
lawn, his back to the sun, reading a newspaper. He tried in vain to
avoid the glare of the sun on his reading. At last he closed the paper
and looked angrily at the house--not at anything in particular.
He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden
decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called:
'Amy! Amy!'
No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off
indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard
calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as
he bumped the table leg in sitting down.
'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.
'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.
'Look!' said Siegmund.
An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in
holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden
gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with
hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened
the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then
the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.
There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by
the resentful abuse of the man.
The lovers moved out of hearing.
'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.
'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as
if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.'
'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.
Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him
winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next
incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of
humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had
fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of
self-esteem tortured him to the end.
Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some
time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to
her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side
of his tortured self-respect.
'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone
must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in
it myself.'
And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,
the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,
all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it
naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this
bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty
and find the dirt. What was he to do?
'You know, Domine,' said Helena--it was his old nickname she used--'you
look quite stern today.'
'I feel anything but stern,' he laughed. 'Weaker than usual, in fact.'
'Yes, perhaps so, when you talk. Then you are really surprisingly
gentle. But when you are silent, I am even afraid of you--you seem
so grave.'
He laughed.
'And shall I not be brave?' he said. 'Can't you smell _Fumum et opes
strepitumque Romae_?' He turned quickly to Helena. 'I wonder if that's
right,' he said. 'It's years since I did a line of Latin, and I thought
it had all gone.'
'In the first place, what does it mean?' said Helena calmly, 'for I can
only half translate. I have thrown overboard all my scrap-books of
such stuff.'
'Why,' said Siegmund, rather abashed, 'only "the row and the smoke of
Rome". But it is remarkable, Helena'--here the peculiar look of interest
came on his face again--'it is really remarkable that I should have
said that.'
'Yes, you look surprised,' smiled she.
'But it must be twenty'--he counted--'twenty-two or three years since I
learned that, and I forgot it--goodness knows how long ago. Like a
drowning man, I have these memories before....' He broke off, smiling
mockingly, to tease her.
'Before you go back to London,' said she, in a matter-of-fact, almost
ironical tone. She was inscrutable. This morning she could not bear to
let any deep emotion come uppermost. She wanted rest. 'No,' she said,
with calm distinctness, a few moments after, when they were climbing the
rise to the cliff's edge. 'I can't say that I smell the smoke of London.
The mist-curtain is thick yet. There it is'--she pointed to the heavy,
purple-grey haze that hung like arras on a wall, between the sloping sky
and the sea. She thought of yesterday morning's mist-curtain, thick and
blazing gold, so heavy that no wind could sway its fringe.
They lay down in the dry grass, upon the gold bits of bird's-foot
trefoil of the cliff's edge, and looked out to sea. A warm, drowsy calm
drooped over everything.
'Six hours,' thought Helena, 'and we shall have passed the mist-curtain.
Already it is thinning. I could break it open with waving my hand. I
will not wave my hand.'
She was exhausted by the suffering of the last night, so she refused to
allow any emotion to move her this morning, till she was strong.
Siegmund was also exhausted; but his thoughts laboured like ants, in
spite of himself, striving towards a conclusion.
Helena had rejected him. In his heart he felt that in this love affair
also he had been a failure. No matter how he contradicted himself, and
said it was absurd to imagine he was a failure as Helena's lover, yet he
felt a physical sensation of defeat, a kind of knot in his breast which
neither reason, nor dialectics, nor circumstance, not even Helena, could
untie. He had failed as lover to Helena.
It was not surprising his marriage with Beatrice should prove
disastrous. Rushing into wedlock as he had done, at the ripe age of
seventeen, he had known nothing of his woman, nor she of him. When his
mind and soul set to develop, as Beatrice could not sympathize with his
interests, he naturally inclined away from her, so that now, after
twenty years, he was almost a stranger to her. That was not very
surprising.
But why should he have failed with Helena?
The bees droned fitfully over the scented grass, aimlessly swinging in
the heat. Siegmund watched one gold and amber fellow lazily let go a
white clover-head, and boom in a careless curve out to sea, humming
softer and softer as he reeled along in the giddy space.
'The little fool!' said Siegmund, watching the black dot swallowed into
the light.
No ship sailed the curving sea. The light danced in a whirl upon the
ripples. Everything else watched with heavy eyes of heat enhancement the
wild spinning of the lights.
'Even if I were free,' he continued to think, 'we should only grow
apart, Helena and I. She would leave me. This time I should be the
laggard. She is young and vigorous; I am beginning to set.
'Is that why I have failed? I ought to have had her in love sufficiently
to keep her these few days. I am not quick. I do not follow her or
understand her swiftly enough. And I am always timid of compulsion. I
cannot compel anybody to follow me.
'So we are here. I am out of my depth. Like the bee, I was mad with the
sight of so much joy, such a blue space, and now I shall find no footing
to alight on. I have flown out into life beyond my strength to get back.
When can I set my feet on when this is gone?'
The sun grew stronger. Slower and more slowly went the hawks of
Siegmund's mind, after the quarry of conclusion. He lay bare-headed,
looking out to sea. The sun was burning deeper into his face and head.
'I feel as if it were burning into me,' thought Siegmund abstractedly.
'It is certainly consuming some part of me. Perhaps it is making me
ill.' Meanwhile, perversely, he gave his face and his hot black hair
to the sun.
Helena lay in what shadow he afforded. The heat put out all her
thought-activity. Presently she said:
'This heat is terrible, Siegmund. Shall we go down to the water?'
They climbed giddily down the cliff path. Already they were somewhat
sun-intoxicated. Siegmund chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on
which to lie.
'Shall we not go under the rocks?' said Helena.
'Look!' he said, 'the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more
suffocating, there.'
So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly
with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat
was dreadful.
'My arms, Siegmund,' said she. 'They feel as if they were dipped in
fire.'
Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
'Are you sure it is not bad for you--your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?'
He laughed stupidly.
'That is all right,' he said. He knew that the sun was burning through
him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxication.
As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena's mist-curtain,
he said:
'I _think_ we should be able to keep together if'--he faltered--'if only
I could have you a little longer. I have never had you ...'
Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring
of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a
savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost
beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She
would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his
lips on her cheek, he murmured:
'I should be able, shouldn't I, Helena?'
'You are always able!' she cried. 'It is I who play with you at hiding.'
'I have really had you so little,' he said.
'Can't you forget it, Siegmund?' she cried. 'Can't you forget it? It was
only a shadow, Siegmund. It was a lie, it was nothing real. Can't you
forget it, dear?'
'You can't do without me?' he asked.
'If I lose you I am lost,' answered she with swift decision. She had no
knowledge of weeping, yet her tears were wet on his face. He held her
safely; her arms were hidden under his coat.
'I will have no mercy on those shadows the next time they come between
us,' said Helena to herself. 'They may go back to hell.'
She still clung to him, craving so to have him that he could not be reft
away.
Siegmund felt very peaceful. He lay with his arms about her, listening
to the backward-creeping tide. All his thoughts, like bees, were flown
out to sea and lost.
'If I had her more, I should understand her through and through. If we
were side by side we should grow together. If we could stay here, I
should get stronger and more upright.'
This was the poor heron of quarry the hawks of his mind had struck.
Another hour fell like a foxglove bell from the stalk. There were only
two red blossoms left. Then the stem would have set to seed. Helena
leaned her head upon the breast of Siegmund, her arms clasping, under
his coat, his body, which swelled and sank gently, with the quiet of
great power.
'If,' thought she, 'the whole clock of the world could stand still now,
and leave us thus, me with the lift and fall of the strong body of
Siegmund in my arms....'
But the clock ticked on in the heat, the seconds marked off by the
falling of the waves, repeated so lightly, and in such fragile rhythm,
that it made silence sweet.
'If now,' prayed Siegmund, 'death would wipe the sweat from me, and it
were dark....'
But the waves softly marked the minutes, retreating farther, leaving the
bare rocks to bleach and the weed to shrivel.
Gradually, like the shadow on a dial, the knowledge that it was time to
rise and go crept upon them. Although they remained silent, each knew
that the other felt the same weight of responsibility, the shadow-finger
of the sundial travelling over them. The alternative was, not to return,
to let the finger travel and be gone. But then ... Helena knew she must
not let the time cross her; she must rise before it was too late, and
travel before the coming finger. Siegmund hoped she would not get up. He
lay in suspense, waiting.
At last she sat up abruptly.
'It is time, Siegmund,' she said.
He did not answer, he did not look at her, but lay as she had left him.
She wiped her face with her handkerchief, waiting. Then she bent over
him. He did not look at her. She saw his forehead was swollen and
inflamed with the sun. Very gently she wiped from it the glistening
sweat. He closed his eyes, and she wiped his cheeks and his mouth. Still
he did not look at her. She bent very close to him, feeling her heart
crushed with grief for him.
'We must go, Siegmund,' she whispered.
'All right,' he said, but still he did not move.
She stood up beside him, shook herself, and tried to get a breath of
air. She was dazzled blind by the sunshine.
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