'And Helena--I should have nothing but mortification. When she was
asleep I could not look at her. She is such a strange, incongruous
creature. But I should be responsible for her. She believes in me as if
I had the power of God. What should I think of myself?' Siegmund leaned with his head against the window, watching the country
whirl past, but seeing nothing. He thought imaginatively, and his
imagination destroyed him. He pictured Beatrice in the country. He
sketched the morning--breakfast haphazard at a late hour; the elder
children rushing off without food, miserable and untidy, the youngest
bewildered under her swift, indifferent preparations for school. He
thought of Beatrice in the evening, worried and irritable, her bills
unpaid, the work undone, declaiming lamentably against the cruelty of
her husband, who had abandoned her to such a burden of care while he
took his pleasure elsewhere.
This line exhausted or intolerable, Siegmund switched off to the
consideration of his own life in town. He would go to America; the
agreement was signed with the theatre manager. But America would be only
a brief shutting of the eyes and closing of the mouth. He would wait for
the home-coming to Helena, and she would wait for him. It was
inevitable; then would begin--what? He would never have enough money to
keep Helena, even if he managed to keep himself. Their meetings would
then be occasional and clandestine. Ah, it was intolerable!
'If I were rich,' said Siegmund, 'all would be plain. I would give each
of my children enough, and Beatrice, and we would go away; but I am
nearly forty; I have no genius; I shall never be rich,' Round and round
went his thoughts like oxen over a threshing floor, treading out the
grain. Gradually the chaff flew away; gradually the corn of conviction
gathered small and hard upon the floor.
As he sat thinking, Helena leaned across to him and laid her hand on his
knee.
'If I have made things more difficult,' she said, her voice harsh with
pain, 'you will forgive me.' He started. This was one of the cruel cuts of pain that love gives,
filling the eyes with blood. Siegmund stiffened himself; slowly he
smiled, as he looked at her childish, plaintive lips, and her large eyes
haunted with pain.
'Forgive you?' he repeated. 'Forgive you for five days of perfect
happiness; the only real happiness I have ever known!' Helena tightened her fingers on his knee. She felt herself stinging with
painful joy; but one of the ladies was looking her curiously. She leaned
back in her place, and turned to watch at the shocks of corn strike
swiftly, in long rows, across her vision.