‘No,’ said he pitiably to himself, ‘it is impossible it should have hurt me. I suppose I was careless.’
Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the sea-shore played together.
‘Surely,’ said Siegmund, ‘they take no notice of me; they do not care a jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.’
He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on the cliffs.
‘I was mistaken,’ he said. ‘It was an illusion.’
He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit or comrade.
‘They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena, after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do I matter?’
Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
We are not long for music and laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think we have no portion in them after
We pass the gate.
‘Why should I be turned out of the game?’ he asked himself, rebelling. He frowned, and answered: ‘Oh, Lord! — the old argument!’
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,