Helena looked up a train. She was quite sure by this time that something
fatal awaited her.
The next morning she bade her friends a temporary good-bye, saying she
would return in the evening. Immediately the train had gone, Louisa
rushed into the little waiting-room of the station and wept. Olive shed
tears for sympathy and self-pity. She pitied herself that she should be
let in for so dismal a holiday. Louisa suddenly stopped crying and
sat up: 'Oh, I know I'm a pig, dear, am I not?' she exclaimed. 'Spoiling your
holiday. But I couldn't help it, dear, indeed I could not.' 'My dear Lou!' cried Olive in tragic contralto. 'Don't refrain for my
sake. The bargain's made; we can't help what's in the bundle.' The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to
their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same
thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything
more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is
throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour
after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All
the time Helena's heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in
London, for she believed he was ill and needed her.
'Promise me,' she had said, 'if ever I were sick and wanted you, you
would come to me.' 'I would come to you from hell!' Siegmund had replied.
'And if you were ill--you would let me come to you?' she had added.
'I promise,' he answered.
Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could
be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across
her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did
what it could.
That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena's life. In it there
is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear
of suspense.
Towards six o'clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that
this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the
platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the
great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had
planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she
could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had
prearranged everything minutely.
After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
'The funeral took place, at two o'clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of
----. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a
holiday on the South Coast....' The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.