The Trespasser

Siegmund sat up straight: his body was re-animated. He felt the pillow

and the groove where he had lain. It was quite wet and clammy. There was

a scent of sweat on the bed, not really unpleasant, but he wanted

something fresh and cool.

Siegmund sat in the doorway that gave on to the small veranda. The air

was beautifully cool. He felt his chest again to make sure it was not

clammy. It was smooth as silk. This pleased him very much. He looked out

on the night again, and was startled. Somewhere the moon was shining

duskily, in a hidden quarter of sky; but straight in front of him, in

the northwest, silent lightning was fluttering. He waited breathlessly

to see if it were true. Then, again, the pale lightning jumped up into

the dome of the fading night. It was like a white bird stirring

restlessly on its nest. The night was drenching thinner, greyer. The

lightning, like a bird that should have flown before the arm of day,

moved on its nest in the boughs of darkness, raised itself, flickered

its pale wings rapidly, then sank again, loath to fly. Siegmund watched

it with wonder and delight.

The day was pushing aside the boughs of darkness, hunting. The poor moon

would be caught when the net was flung. Siegmund went out on the balcony

to look at it. There it was, like a poor white mouse, a half-moon,

crouching on the mound of its course. It would run nimbly over to the

western slope, then it would be caught in the net, and the sun would

laugh, like a great yellow cat, as it stalked behind playing with its

prey, flashing out its bright paws. The moon, before making its last

run, lay crouched, palpitating. The sun crept forth, laughing to itself

as it saw its prey could not escape. The lightning, however, leaped low

off the nest like a bird decided to go, and flew away. Siegmund no

longer saw it opening and shutting its wings in hesitation amid the

disturbance of the dawn. Instead there came a flush, the white lightning

gone. The brief pink butterflies of sunrise and sunset rose up from the

mown fields of darkness, and fluttered low in a cloud. Even in the west

they flew in a narrow, rosy swarm. They separated, thinned, rising

higher. Some, flying up, became golden. Some flew rosy gold across the

moon, the mouse-moon motionless with fear. Soon the pink butterflies had

gone, leaving a scarlet stretch like a field of poppies in the fens. As

a wind, the light of day blew in from the east, puff after puff filling

with whiteness the space which had been the night. Siegmund sat watching

the last morning blowing in across the mown darkness, till the whole

field of the world was exposed, till the moon was like a dead mouse

which floats on water.