The afternoon of the blazing day passed drowsily. Lying close together
on the beach, Siegmund and Helena let the day exhale its hours like
perfume, unperceived. Siegmund slept, a light evanescent sleep irised
with dreams and with suffering: nothing definite, the colour of dreams
without shape. Helena, as usual, retained her consciousness much more
clearly. She watched the far-off floating of ships, and the near wading
of children through the surf. Endless trains of thoughts, like little
waves, rippled forward and broke on the shore of her drowsiness. But
each thought-ripple, though it ran lightly, was tinged with
copper-coloured gleams as from a lurid sunset. Helena felt that the sun
was setting on her and Siegmund. The hour was too composed, spell-bound,
for grief or anxiety or even for close perception. She was merely aware
that the sun was wheeling down, tangling Siegmund and her in the traces,
like overthrown charioteers. So the hours passed.
After tea they went eastwards on the downs. Siegmund was animated, so
that Helena caught his mood. It was very rare that they spoke of the
time preceding their acquaintance, Helena knew little or nothing of
Siegmund's life up to the age of thirty, whilst he had never learned
anything concerning her childhood. Somehow she did not encourage him to
self-discovery. Today, however, the painful need of lovers for
self-revelation took hold on him.
'It is awfully funny,' he said. 'I was _so_ gone on Beatrice when I
married her. She had only just come back from Egypt. Her father was an
army officer, a very handsome man, and, I believe, a bit of a rake.
Beatrice is really well connected, you know. But old FitzHerbert ran
through all his money, and through everything else. He was too hot for
the rest of the family, so they dropped him altogether.
'He came to live at Peckham when I was sixteen. I had just left school,
and was to go into father's business. Mrs FitzHerbert left cards, and
very soon we were acquainted. Beatrice had been a good time in a French
convent school. She had only knocked about with the army a little while,
but it had brought her out. I remember I thought she was miles above
me--which she was. She wasn't bad-looking, either, and you know men all
like her. I bet she'd marry again, in spite of the children.
'At first I fluttered round her. I remember I'd got a little, silky
moustache. They all said I looked older than sixteen. At that time I was
mad on the violin, and she played rather well. Then FitzHerbert went off
abroad somewhere, so Beatrice and her mother half lived at our house.
The mother was an invalid.