They decided to find their way through the lanes to Alum Bay, and then,
keeping the cross in sight, to return over the downs, with the moon-path
broad on the water before them. For the moon was rising late. Twilight,
however, rose more rapidly than they had anticipated. The lane twisted
among meadows and wild lands and copses--a wilful little lane, quite
incomprehensible. So they lost their distant landmark, the white cross.
Darkness filtered through the daylight. When at last they came to a
signpost, it was almost too dark to read it. The fingers seemed to
withdraw into the dusk the more they looked.
'We must go to the left,' said Helena.
To the left rose the downs, smooth and grey near at hand, but higher
black with gorse, like a giant lying asleep with a bearskin over his
shoulders.
Several pale chalk-tracks ran side by side through the turf. Climbing,
they came to a disused chalk-pit, which they circumvented. Having passed
a lonely farmhouse, they mounted the side of the open down, where was a
sense of space and freedom.
'We can steer by the night,' said Siegmund, as they trod upwards
pathlessly. Helena did not mind whither they steered. All places in that
large fair night were home and welcome to her. They drew nearer to the
shaggy cloak of furze.
'There will be a path through it,' said Siegmund.
But when they arrived there was no path. They were confronted by a tall,
impenetrable growth of gorse, taller than Siegmund.
'Stay here,' said he, 'while I look for a way through. I am afraid you
will be tired.' She stood alone by the walls of gorse. The lights that had flickered
into being during the dusk grew stronger, so that a little farmhouse
down the hill glowed with great importance on the night, while the
far-off in visible sea became like a roadway, large and mysterious, its
specks of light moving slowly, and its bigger lamps stationed out amid
the darkness. Helena wanted the day-wanness to be quite wiped off the
west. She asked for the full black night, that would obliterate
everything save Siegmund. Siegmund it was that the whole world meant.
The darkness, the gorse, the downs, the specks of light, seemed only to
bespeak him. She waited for him to come back. She could hardly endure
the condition of intense waiting.
He came, in his grey clothes almost invisible. But she felt him coming.
'No good,' he said, 'no vestige of a path. Not a rabbit-run.' 'Then we will sit down awhile,' said she calmly.