Meadows and woods appeared, houses crowded down to the shore to meet
him; he was in the quay, and the ride was over. Siegmund regretted it.
But Helena was on the island, which rode like an anchored ship under
the fleets of cloud that had launched whilst Siegmund was on water. As
he watched the end of the pier loom higher, large ponderous trains of
cloud cast over him the shadows of their bulk, and he shivered in the
chill wind.
His travelling was very slow. The sky’s dark shipping pressed closer
and closer, as if all the clouds had come to harbour. Over the flat
lands near Newport the wind moaned like the calling of many
violoncellos. All the sky was grey. Siegmund waited drearily on Newport
station, where the wind swept coldly. It was Sunday, and the station
and the island were desolate, having lost their purposes.
Siegmund put on his overcoat and sat down. All his morning’s blaze of
elation was gone, though there still glowed a great hope. He had slept
only two hours of the night. An empty man, he had drunk joy, and now
the intoxication was dying out.
At three o’clock of the afternoon he sat alone in the second-class
carriage, looking out. A few raindrops struck the pane, then the
blurred dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs
and the reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a
chilly torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart
was thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain
felt dead.
The train slowed down: Yarmouth! One more station, then. Siegmund
watched the platform, shiny with rain, slide past. On the dry grey
under the shelter, one white passenger was waiting. Suddenly Siegmund’s
heart leaped up, wrenching wildly. He burst open the door, and caught
hold of Helena. She dilated, gave a palpitating cry as he dragged her
into the carriage.
“You _here!_” he exclaimed, in a strange tone. She was shivering with
cold. Her almost naked arms were blue. She could not answer Siegmund’s
question, but lay clasped against him, shivering away her last chill as
his warmth invaded her. He laughed in his heart as she nestled in to
him.
“Is it a dream now, dear?” he whispered. Helena clasped him tightly,
shuddering because of the delicious suffusing of his warmth through
her.
Almost immediately they heard the grinding of the brakes.
“Here we are, then!” exclaimed Helena, dropping into her conventional,
cheerful manner at once. She put straight her hat, while he gathered
his luggage.
Until tea-time there was a pause in their progress. Siegmund was
tingling with an exquisite vividness, as if he had taken some rare
stimulant. He wondered at himself. It seemed that every fibre in his
body was surprised with joy, as each tree in a forest at dawn utters
astonished cries of delight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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