‘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.
Siegmund lay in the bright light, with his eyes closed, never moving. His face was inflamed, but fixed like a mask.
Helena waited, until the terror of the passing of the hour was too strong for her. She lifted his hand, which lay swollen with heat on the sand, and she tried gently to draw him.
‘We shall be too late,’ she said in distress.
He sighed and sat up, looking out over the water.
Helena could not bear to see him look so vacant and expressionless. She put her arm round his neck, and pressed his head against her skirt.
Siegmund knew he was making it unbearable for her. Pulling himself together, he bent his head from the sea, and said:
‘Why, what time is it?’
He took out his watch, holding it in his hand. Helena still held his left hand, and had one arm round his neck.
‘I can’t see the figures,’ he said. ‘Everything is dimmed, as if it were coming dark.’
‘Yes,’ replied Helena, in that reedy, painful tone of hers. ‘My eyes were the same. It is the strong sunlight.’
‘I can’t,’ he repeated, and he was rather surprised —‘I can’t see the time. Can you?’
She stooped down and looked.
‘It is half past one,’ she said.
Siegmund hated her voice as she spoke. There was still sufficient time to catch the train. He stood up, moved inside his clothing, saying: ‘I feel almost stunned by the heat. I can hardly see, and all my feeling in my body is dulled.’
‘Yes,’ answered Helena, ‘I am afraid it will do you harm.’
‘At any rate,’ he smiled as if sleepily, ‘I have had enough. If it’s too much — what is too much?’
They went unevenly over the sand, their eyes sun-dimmed.
‘We are going back — we are going back!’ the heart of Helena seemed to run hot, beating these words.
They climbed the cliff path toilsomely. Standing at the top, on the edge of the grass, they looked down the cliffs at the beach and over the sea. The strand was wide, forsaken by the sea, forlorn with rocks bleaching in the sun, and sand and seaweed breathing off their painful scent upon the heat. The sea crept smaller, farther away; the sky stood still. Siegmund and Helena looked hopelessly out on their beautiful, incandescent world. They looked hopelessly at each other, Siegmund’s mood was gentle and forbearing. He smiled faintly at Helena, then turned, and, lifting his hand to his mouth in a kiss for the beauty he had enjoyed, ‘Addio!’ he said.
He turned away, and, looking from Helena landwards, he said, smiling peculiarly:
‘It reminds me of Traviata — an “Addio“ at every verse-end.’
She smiled with her mouth in acknowledgement of his facetious irony; it jarred on her. He was pricked again by her supercilious reserve. ‘Addi-i-i-i-o, Addi-i-i-o!’ he whistled between his teeth, hissing out the Italian’s passion-notes in a way that made Helena clench her fists.
‘I suppose,’ she said, swallowing, and recovering her voice to check this discord —‘I suppose we shall have a fairly easy journey — Thursday.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Siegmund.
‘There will not be very many people,’ she insisted.
‘I think,’ he said, in a very quiet voice, ‘you’d better let me go by the South-Western from Portsmouth while you go on by the Brighton.’
‘But why?’ she exclaimed in astonishment.
‘I don’t want to sit looking at you all the way,’ he said.
‘But why should you?’ she exclaimed.
He laughed.
‘Indeed, no!’ she said. ‘We shall go together.’
‘Very well,’ he answered.
They walked on in silence towards the village. As they drew near the little post office, he said:
‘I suppose I may as well wire them that I shall be home tonight.’