The Trespasser

'But what did you go for?' she asked, goading him suspiciously.

'To see the sea and the ships and the fighting ships with cannons--' 'You _might_ have taken me,' said the child reproachfully.

'Yes, I ought to have done, oughtn't I?' he said, as if regretful.

Gwen still looked full at him.

'You _are_ red,' she said.

He glanced quickly in the glass, and replied: 'That is the sun. Hasn't it been hot?' 'Mm! It made my nose all peel. Vera said she would scrape me like a new

potato.' The child laughed and turned shyly away.

'Come here,' said Siegmund. 'I believe you've got a tooth out, haven't

you?' He was very cautious and gentle. The child drew back. He hesitated, and

she drew away from him, unwilling.

'Come and let me look,' he repeated.

She drew farther away, and the same constrained smile appeared on her

face, shy, suspicious, condemning.

'Aren't you going to get your chocolate?' he asked, as the child

hesitated in the doorway.

She glanced into his room, and answered: 'I've got to go to mam and have my hair done.' Her awkwardness and her lack of compliance insulted him. She went

downstairs without going into his room.

Siegmund, rebuffed by the only one in the house from whom he might have

expected friendship, proceeded slowly to shave, feeling sick at heart.

He was a long time over his toilet. When he stripped himself for the

bath, it seemed to him he could smell the sea. He bent his head and

licked his shoulder. It tasted decidedly salt.

'A pity to wash it off,' he said.

As he got up dripping from the cold bath, he felt for the moment

exhilarated. He rubbed himself smooth. Glancing down at himself, he

thought: 'I look young. I look as young as twenty-six.' He turned to the mirror. There he saw himself a mature, complete man of

forty, with grave years of experience on his countenance.

'I used to think that, when I was forty,' he said to himself, 'I should

find everything straight as the nose on my face, walking through my

affairs as easily as you like. Now I am no more sure of myself, have no

more confidence than a boy of twenty. What can I do? It seems to me a

man needs a mother all his life. I don't feel much like a lord of

creation.' Having arrived at this cynicism, Siegmund prepared to go downstairs. His

sensitiveness had passed off; his nerves had become callous. When he was

dressed he went down to the kitchen without hesitation. He was

indifferent to his wife and children. No one spoke to him as he sat to

the table. That was as he liked it; he wished for nothing to touch him.

He ate his breakfast alone, while his wife bustled about upstairs and

Vera bustled about in the dining-room. Then he retired to the solitude

of the drawing-room. As a reaction against his poetic activity, he felt

as if he were gradually becoming more stupid and blind. He remarked

nothing, not even the extravagant bowl of grasses placed where he would

not have allowed it--on his piano; nor his fiddle, laid cruelly on the

cold, polished floor near the window. He merely sat down in an

arm-chair, and felt sick.