'This is a good bed,' he said. 'And the sheets are very fresh.' He lay for a little while with his head bending forwards, looking from
his pillow out at the stars, then he went to sleep.
At half past six in the morning he suddenly opened his eyes.
'What is it?' he asked, and almost without interruption answered: 'Well,
I've got to go through it.' His sleep had shaped him perfect premonition, which, like a dream, he
forgot when he awoke. Only this naïve question and answer betrayed what
had taken place in his sleep. Immediately he awoke this subordinate
knowledge vanished.
Another fine day was striding in triumphant. The first thing Siegmund
did was to salute the morning, because of its brightness. The second
thing was to call to mind the aspect of that bay in the Isle of Wight.
'What would it just be like now?' said he to himself. He had to give his
heart some justification for the peculiar pain left in it from his sleep
activity, so he began poignantly to long for the place which had been
his during the last mornings. He pictured the garden with roses and
nasturtiums; he remembered the sunny way down the shore, and all the
expanse of sea hung softly between the tall white cliffs.
'It is impossible it is gone!' he cried to himself. 'It can't be gone. I
looked forward to it as if it never would come. It can't be gone now.
Helena is not lost to me, surely.' Then he began a long pining for the
departed beauty of his life. He turned the jewel of memory, and facet by
facet it wounded him with its brilliant loveliness. This pain, though it
was keen, was half pleasure.
Presently he heard his wife stirring. She opened the door of the room
next to his, and he heard her: 'Frank, it's a quarter to eight. You _will_ be late.' 'All right, Mother. Why didn't you call me sooner?' grumbled the lad.
'I didn't wake myself. I didn't go to sleep till morning, and then I
slept.' She went downstairs. Siegmund listened for his son to get out of bed.
The minutes passed.
'The young donkey, why doesn't he get out?' said Siegmund angrily to
himself. He turned over, pressing himself upon the bed in anger and
humiliation, because now he had no authority to call to his son and keep
him to his duty. Siegmund waited, writhing with anger, shame, and
anxiety. When the suave, velvety 'Pan-n-n! pan-n-n-n!' of the clock was
heard striking, Frank stepped with a thud on to the floor. He could be
heard dressing in clumsy haste. Beatrice called from the bottom of
the stairs: 'Do you want any hot water?' 'You know there isn't time for me to shave now,' answered her son,
lifting his voice to a kind of broken falsetto.