‘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.
‘You have been over an hour,’ she said, still more troubled when she found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her.
‘Ay,’ returned Siegmund.
He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head between his hands. Vera followed him nervously.
‘Will you have anything to eat?’ she asked.
He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep, querulous with trouble.
‘Aren’t you going to bed?’ she asked.
Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively:
‘Aren’t you going to bed, Father?’
Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of having to move. He looked at her confusedly.
‘Yes, I’m going,’ he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again she sat waiting.
‘Father!’ she cried at last.
He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.
‘Yes, I’m going,’ he said.
He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.
‘If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,’ she thought, but he did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.
‘I’ll pick it up in the morning,’ he said, continuing deliriously: ‘I must go to bed — I must go to bed — I am very tired.’ He stumbled over the door mat into his own room.
Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom, trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to get into bed.
‘One must sleep,’ he said