The Trespasser

'Father!' she cried at last.

He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling.

'Yes, I'm going,' he said.

He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind.

'If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,' she thought, but he

did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to

brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor.

'I'll pick it up in the morning,' he said, continuing deliriously: 'I

must go to bed--I must go to bed--I am very tired.' He stumbled over the

door mat into his own room.

Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the

sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom,

trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing

up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in

her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping

sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to

get into bed.

'One must sleep,' he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He

could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him

pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action

aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got

things right at last, and was in bed.

Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have

called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his

brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening

rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of

consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of

consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.

'What am I doing? What is the matter? Am I unconscious? Do I make any

noise? Do I disturb them?' he wondered, and he tried to cast back to

find the record of mechanical sense impression. He believed he could

remember the sound of inarticulate murmuring in his throat. Immediately

he remembered, he could feel his throat producing the sounds. This

frightened him. Above all things, he was afraid of disturbing the

family. He roused himself to listen. Everything was breathing in

silence. As he listened to this silence he relapsed into his sort

of sleep.

He was awakened finally by his own perspiration. He was terribly hot.

The pillow, the bedclothes, his hair, all seemed to be steaming with hot

vapour, whilst his body was bathed in sweat. It was coming light.

Immediately he shut his eyes again and lay still. He was now conscious,

and his brain was irritably active, but his body was a separate thing, a

terrible, heavy, hot thing over which he had slight control.