The Trespasser Read online

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  THE TRESPASSER

  By D. H. Lawrence

  1912

  _Chapter 1_

  'Take off that mute, do!' cried Louisa, snatching her fingers from thepiano keys, and turning abruptly to the violinist.

  Helena looked slowly from her music.

  'My dear Louisa,' she replied, 'it would be simply unendurable.' Shestood tapping her white skirt with her bow in a kind of a patheticforbearance.

  'But I can't understand it,' cried Louisa, bouncing on her chair withthe exaggeration of one who is indignant with a beloved. 'It is onlylately you would even submit to muting your violin. At one time youwould have refused flatly, and no doubt about it.'

  'I have only lately submitted to many things,' replied Helena, whoseemed weary and stupefied, but still sententious. Louisa drooped fromher bristling defiance.

  'At any rate,' she said, scolding in tones too naked with love, I don'tlike it.'

  '_Go on from Allegro_,' said Helena, pointing with her bow to the placeon Louisa's score of the Mozart sonata. Louisa obediently took thechords, and the music continued.

  A young man, reclining in one of the wicker arm-chairs by the fire,turned luxuriously from the girls to watch the flames poise and dancewith the music. He was evidently at his ease, yet he seemed a strangerin the room.

  It was the sitting-room of a mean house standing in line with hundredsof others of the same kind, along a wide road in South London. Now andagain the trams hummed by, but the room was foreign to the trams and tothe sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she wasresponsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage;the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a squareof grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplacewere smooth white. There was no other colouring.

  The furniture, excepting the piano, had a transitory look; two lightwicker arm-chairs by the fire, the two frail stands of dark, polishedwood, the couple of flimsy chairs, and the case of books in therecess--all seemed uneasy, as if they might be tossed out to leave theroom clear, with its green floor and walls, and its white rim ofskirting-board, serene.

  On the mantlepiece were white lustres, and a small soapstone Buddha fromChina, grey, impassive, locked in his renunciation. Besides these, twotablets of translucent stone beautifully clouded with rose and blood,and carved with Chinese symbols; then a litter of mementoes,rock-crystals, and shells and scraps of seaweed.

  A stranger, entering, felt at a loss. He looked at the bare wall-spacesof dark green, at the scanty furniture, and was assured of hisunwelcome. The only objects of sympathy in the room were the white lampthat glowed on a stand near the wall, and the large, beautiful fern,with narrow fronds, which ruffled its cloud of green within the gloom ofthe window-bay. These only, with the fire, seemed friendly.

  The three candles on the dark piano burned softly, the music flutteredon, but, like numbed butterflies, stupidly. Helena played mechanically.She broke the music beneath her bow, so that it came lifeless, veryhurting to hear. The young man frowned, and pondered. Uneasily, heturned again to the players.

  The violinist was a girl of twenty-eight. Her white dress, high-waisted,swung as she forced the rhythm, determinedly swaying to the time as ifher body were the white stroke of a metronome. It made the young manfrown as he watched. Yet he continued to watch. She had a very strong,vigorous body. Her neck, pure white, arched in strength from the finehollow between her shoulders as she held the violin. The long white laceof her sleeve swung, floated, after the bow.

  Byrne could not see her face, more than the full curve of her cheek. Hewatched her hair, which at the back was almost of the colour of thesoapstone idol, take the candlelight into its vigorous freedom in frontand glisten over her forehead.

  Suddenly Helena broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritableresignation. Louisa looked round from the piano, surprised.

  'Why,' she cried, 'wasn't it all right?'

  Helena laughed wearily.

  'It was all wrong,' she answered, as she put her violin tenderly torest.

  'Oh, I'm sorry I did so badly,' said Louisa in a huff. She loved Helenapassionately.

  'You didn't do badly at all,' replied her friend, in the same tired,apathetic tone. 'It was I.'

  When she had closed the black lid of her violin-case, Helena stood amoment as if at a loss. Louisa looked up with eyes full of affection,like a dog that did not dare to move to her beloved. Getting noresponse, she drooped over the piano. At length Helena looked at herfriend, then slowly closed her eyes. The burden of this excessiveaffection was too much for her. Smiling faintly, she said, as if shewere coaxing a child:

  'Play some Chopin, Louisa.'

  'I shall only do that all wrong, like everything else,' said the elderplaintively. Louisa was thirty-five. She had been Helena's friendfor years.

  'Play the mazurkas,' repeated Helena calmly.

  Louisa rummaged among the music. Helena blew out her violin-candle, andcame to sit down on the side of the fire opposite to Byrne. The musicbegan. Helena pressed her arms with her hands, musing.

  'They are inflamed still' said the young man.

  She glanced up suddenly, her blue eyes, usually so heavy and tired,lighting up with a small smile.

  'Yes,' she answered, and she pushed back her sleeve, revealing a fine,strong arm, which was scarlet on the outer side from shoulder to wrist,like some long, red-burned fruit. The girl laid her cheek on thesmarting soft flesh caressively.

  'It is quite hot,' she smiled, again caressing her sun-scalded arm withpeculiar joy.

  'Funny to see a sunburn like that in mid-winter,' he replied, frowning.'I can't think why it should last all these months. Don't you ever putanything on to heal it?'

  She smiled at him again, almost pitying, then put her mouth lovingly onthe burn.

  'It comes out every evening like this,' she said softly, with curiousjoy.

  'And that was August, and now it's February!' he exclaimed. 'It must bepsychological, you know. You make it come--the smart; you invoke it.'

  She looked up at him, suddenly cold.

  'I! I never think of it,' she answered briefly, with a kind of sneer.

  The young man's blood ran back from her at her acid tone. But themortification was physical only. Smiling quickly, gently--'

  'Never?' he re-echoed.

  There was silence between them for some moments, whilst Louisa continuedto play the piano for their benefit. At last:

  'Drat it,' she exclaimed, flouncing round on the piano-stool.

  The two looked up at her.

  'Ye did run well--what hath hindered you?' laughed Byrne.

  'You!' cried Louisa. 'Oh, I can't play any more,' she added, droppingher arms along her skirt pathetically. Helena laughed quickly.

  'Oh I can't, Helen!' pleaded Louisa.

  'My dear,' said Helena, laughing briefly, 'you are really under _no_obligation _whatever_.'

  With the little groan of one who yields to a desire contrary to herself-respect, Louisa dropped at the feet of Helena, laid her arm and herhead languishingly on the knee of her friend. The latter gave no sign,but continued to gaze in the fire. Byrne, on the other side of thehearth, sprawled in his chair, smoking a reflective cigarette.

  The room was very quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside,the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But thisvulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remainedindifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly as on an altar,glistening yellow on the dark piano. The lamp was blown out, and theflameless fire, a red rubble, dwindled in the grate, so that the yellowglow of the candles seemed to shine even on the embers. Still noone spoke.<
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  At last Helena shivered slightly in her chair, though did not change herposition. She sat motionless.

  'Will you make coffee, Louisa?' she asked. Louisa lifted herself, lookedat her friend, and stretched slightly.

  'Oh!' she groaned voluptuously. 'This is so comfortable!'

  'Don't trouble then, I'll go. No, don't get up,' said Helena, trying todisengage herself. Louisa reached and put her hands on Helena's wrists.

  'I will go,' she drawled, almost groaning with voluptuousness andappealing love.

  Then, as Helena still made movements to rise, the elder woman got upslowly, leaning as she did so all her weight on her friend.

  'Where is the coffee?' she asked, affecting the dullness of lethargy.She was full of small affectations, being consumed with uneasy love.

  'I think, my dear,' replied Helena, 'it is in its usual place.'

  'Oh--o-o-oh!' yawned Louisa, and she dragged herself out.

  The two had been intimate friends for years, had slept together, andplayed together and lived together. Now the friendship was coming toan end.

  'After all,' said Byrne, when the door was closed, 'if you're aliveyou've got to live.'

  Helena burst into a titter of amusement at this sudden remark.

  'Wherefore?' she asked indulgently.

  'Because there's no such thing as passive existence,' he replied,grinning.

  She curled her lip in amused indulgence of this very young man.

  'I don't see it at all,' she said.

  'You can't, he protested, 'any more than a tree can help budding inApril--it can't help itself, if it's alive; same with you.'

  'Well, then'--and again there was the touch of a sneer--'if I can't helpmyself, why trouble, my friend?'

  'Because--because I suppose _I_ can't help myself--if it bothers me, itdoes. You see, I'--he smiled brilliantly--'am April.'

  She paid very little attention to him, but began in a peculiar reedy,metallic tone, that set his nerves quivering:

  'But I am not a bare tree. All my dead leaves, they hang to me--and--andgo through a kind of _danse macabre_--'

  'But you bud underneath--like beech,' he said quickly.

  'Really, my friend,' she said coldly, 'I am too tired to bud.'

  'No,' he pleaded, 'no!' With his thick brows knitted, he surveyed heranxiously. She had received a great blow in August, and she still wasstunned. Her face, white and heavy, was like a mask, almost sullen. Shelooked in the fire, forgetting him.

  'You want March,' he said--he worried endlessly over her--'to rip offyour old leaves. I s'll have to be March,' he laughed.

  She ignored him again because of his presumption. He waited awhile, thenbroke out once more.

  'You must start again--you must. Always you rustle your red leaves of ablasted summer. You are not dead. Even if you want to be, you're not.Even if it's a bitter thing to say, you have to say it: you arenot dead....'

  Smiling a peculiar, painful smile, as if he hurt her, she turned to gazeat a photograph that hung over the piano. It was the profile of ahandsome man in the prime of life. He was leaning slightly forward, asif yielding beneath a burden of life, or to the pull of fate. He lookedout musingly, and there was no hint of rebellion in the contours of theregular features. The hair was brushed back, soft and thick, straightfrom his fine brow. His nose was small and shapely, his chin rounded,cleft, rather beautifully moulded. Byrne gazed also at the photo. Hislook became distressed and helpless.

  'You cannot say you are dead with Siegmund,' he cried brutally. Sheshuddered, clasped her burning arms on her breast, and looked into thefire. 'You are not dead with Siegmund,' he persisted, 'so you can't sayyou live with him. You may live with his memory. But Siegmund is dead,and his memory is not he--himself,' He made a fierce gesture ofimpatience. 'Siegmund now--he is not a memory--he is not your dead redleaves--he is Siegmund Dead! And you do not know him, because you arealive, like me, so Siegmund Dead is a stranger to you.'

  With her head bowed down, cowering like a sulky animal, she looked athim under her brows. He stared fiercely back at her, but beneath hersteady, glowering gaze he shrank, then turned aside.

  'You stretch your hands blindly to the dead; you look backwards. No, younever touch the thing,' he cried.

  'I have the arms of Louisa always round my neck,' came her voice, likethe cry of a cat. She put her hands on her throat as if she must relievean ache. He saw her lip raised in a kind of disgust, a revulsion fromlife. She was very sick after the tragedy.

  He frowned, and his eyes dilated.

  'Folk are good; they are good for one. You never have looked at them.You would linger hours over a blue weed, and let all the people down theroad go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'

  She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and hispassionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, whenmoving from her torpor was painful. At last--

  'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.

  'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughedsoftly, wearily.

  For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photographover the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the timebeing, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignoredthe simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than sheto the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.

  'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with greatintensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. Hissanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt. He,also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant withher own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for thearrival of Louisa with the coffee.