The Trespasser

'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.