The Trespasser

He irritably read a few more lines, then jerked up his head in sudden

decision, glared at the open door of the house, and called: 'Amy! Amy!' No answer was forthcoming. He flung down the paper and strode off

indoors, his mien one of wrathful resolution. His voice was heard

calling curtly from the dining-room. There was a jingle of crockery as

he bumped the table leg in sitting down.

'He is in a bad temper,' laughed Siegmund.

'Breakfast is late,' said Helena with contempt.

'Look!' said Siegmund.

An elderly lady in black and white striped linen, a young lady in

holland, both carrying some wild flowers, hastened towards the garden

gate. Their faces were turned anxiously to the house. They were hot with

hurrying, and had no breath for words. The girl pressed forward, opened

the gate for the lady in striped linen, who hastened over the lawn. Then

the daughter followed, and vanished also under the shady veranda.

There was a quick sound of women's low, apologetic voices, overridden by

the resentful abuse of the man.

The lovers moved out of hearing.

'Imagine that breakfast-table!' said Siegmund.

'I feel,' said Helena, with a keen twang of contempt in her voice, 'as

if a fussy cock and hens had just scuffled across my path.' 'There are many such roosts,' said Siegmund pertinently.

Helena's cold scorn was very disagreeable to him. She talked to him

winsomely and very kindly as they crossed the open down to meet the next

incurving of the coast, and Siegmund was happy. But the sense of

humiliation, which he had got from her the day before, and which had

fixed itself, bled him secretly, like a wound. This haemorrhage of

self-esteem tortured him to the end.

Helena had rejected him. She gave herself to her fancies only. For some

time she had confused Siegmund with her god. Yesterday she had cried to

her ideal lover, and found only Siegmund. It was the spear in the side

of his tortured self-respect.

'At least,' he said, in mortification of himself--'at least, someone

must recognize a strain of God in me--and who does? I don't believe in

it myself.' And, moreover, in the intense joy and suffering of his realized passion,

the island, with its sea and sky, had fused till, like a brilliant bead,

all their beauty ran together out of the common ore, and Siegmund saw it

naked, saw the beauty of everything naked in the shifting magic of this

bead. The island would be gone tomorrow: he would look for the beauty

and find the dirt. What was he to do?