Siegmund, also quivering, turned his face to the window, where the
rotation of the wide sea-flat helped the movement of his thought. Helena
had interrupted him. She had bewildered his thoughts from their hawking,
so that they struck here and there, wildly, among small, pitiful prey
that was useless, conclusions which only hindered the bringing home of
the final convictions.
'What will she do?' cried Siegmund, 'What will she do when I am gone?
What will become of her? Already she has no aim in life; then she will
have no object. Is it any good my going if I leave her behind? What an
inextricable knot this is! But what will she do?' It was a question she had aroused before, a question which he could
never answer; indeed, it was not for him to answer.
They wound through the pass of the South Downs. As Siegmund, looking
backward, saw the northern slope of the downs swooping smoothly, in a
great, broad bosom of sward, down to the body of the land, he warmed
with sudden love for the earth; there the great downs were, naked like a
breast, leaning kindly to him. The earth is always kind; it loves us,
and would foster us like a nurse. The downs were big and tender and
simple. Siegmund looked at the farm, folded in a hollow, and he wondered
what fortunate folk were there, nourished and quiet, hearing the vague
roar of the train that was carrying him home.
Up towards Arundel the cornfields of red wheat were heavy with gold. It
was evening, when the green of the trees went out, leaving dark shapes
proud upon the sky; but the red wheat was forged in the sunset, hot and
magnificent. Siegmund almost gloated as he smelled the ripe corn, and
opened his eyes to its powerful radiation. For a moment he forgot
everything, amid the forging of red fields of gold in the smithy of the
sunset. Like sparks, poppies blew along the railway-banks, a crimson
train. Siegmund waited, through the meadows, for the next wheat-field.
It came like the lifting of yellow-hot metal out of the gloom of
darkened grass-lands.
Helena was reassured by the glamour of evening over ripe Sussex. She
breathed the land now and then, while she watched the sky. The sunset
was stately. The blue-eyed day, with great limbs, having fought its
victory and won, now mounted triumphant on its pyre, and with white arms
uplifted took the flames, which leaped like blood about its feet. The
day died nobly, so she thought.
One gold cloud, as an encouragement tossed to her, followed the train.