The Trespasser | Page 4

over a blue weed, and let all the people down
the road go by. Folks are better than a garden in full blossom--'
She watched him again. A certain beauty in his speech, and his
passionate way, roused her when she did not want to be roused, when
moving from her torpor was painful. At last--
'You are merciless, you know, Cecil,' she said.
'And I will be,' protested Byrne, flinging his hand at her. She laughed
softly, wearily.
For some time they were silent. She gazed once more at the photograph
over the piano, and forgot all the present. Byrne, spent for the time
being, was busy hunting for some life-interest to give her. He ignored
the simplest--that of love--because he was even more faithful than she
to the memory of Siegmund, and blinder than most to his own heart.
'I do wish I had Siegmund's violin,' she said quietly, but with great
intensity. Byrne glanced at her, then away. His heart beat sulkily. His
sanguine, passionate spirit dropped and slouched under her contempt.
He, also, felt the jar, heard the discord. She made him sometimes pant
with her own horror. He waited, full of hate and tasting of ashes, for the
arrival of Louisa with the coffee.

_

Chapter 2_
Siegmund's violin, desired of Helena, lay in its case beside Siegmund's
lean portmanteau in the white dust of the lumber-room in Highgate. It
was worth twenty pounds, but Beatrice had not yet roused herself to
sell it; she kept the black case out of sight.
Siegmund's violin lay in the dark, folded up, as he had placed it for the

last time, with hasty, familiar hands, in its red silk shroud. After two
dead months the first string had snapped, sharply striking the sensitive
body of the instrument. The second string had broken near Christmas,
but no one had heard the faint moan of its going. The violin lay mute in
the dark, a faint odour of must creeping over the smooth, soft wood. Its
twisted, withered strings lay crisped from the anguish of breaking,
smothered under the silk folds. The fragrance of Siegmund himself,
with which the violin was steeped, slowly changed into an odour of
must.
Siegmund died out even from his violin. He had infused it with his life,
till its fibres had been as the tissue of his own flesh. Grasping his violin,
he seemed to have his fingers on the strings of his heart and of the heart
of Helena. It was his little beloved that drank his being and turned it
into music. And now Siegmund was dead; only an odour of must
remained of him in his violin.
It lay folded in silk in the dark, waiting. Six months before it had
longed for rest; during the last nights of the season, when Siegmund's
fingers had pressed too hard, when Siegmund's passion, and joy, and
fear had hurt, too, the soft body of his little beloved, the violin had
sickened for rest. On that last night of opera, without pity Siegmund
had struck the closing phrases from the fiddle, harsh in his impatience,
wild in anticipation.
The curtain came down, the great singers bowed, and Siegmund felt the
spattering roar of applause quicken his pulse. It was hoarse, and savage,
and startling on his inflamed soul, making him shiver with anticipation,
as if something had brushed his hot nakedness. Quickly, with hands of
habitual tenderness, he put his violin away.
The theatre-goers were tired, and life drained rapidly out of the
opera-house. The members of the orchestra rose, laughing, mingling
their weariness with good wishes for the holiday, with sly warning and
suggestive advice, pressing hands warmly ere they disbanded. Other
years Siegmund had lingered, unwilling to take the long farewell of his
associates of the orchestra. Other years he had left the opera-house with
a little pain of regret. Now he laughed, and took his comrades' hands,

and bade farewells, all distractedly, and with impatience. The theatre,
awesome now in its emptiness, he left gladly, hastening like a flame
stretched level on the wind.
With his black violin-case he hurried down the street, then halted to
pity the flowers massed pallid under the gaslight of the market-hall. For
himself, the sea and the sunlight opened great spaces tomorrow. The
moon was full above the river. He looked at it as a man in abstraction
watches some clear thing; then he came to a standstill. It was useless to
hurry to his train. The traffic swung past the lamplight shone warm on
all the golden faces; but Siegmund had already left the city. His face
was silver and shadows to the moon; the river, in its soft grey, shaking
golden sequins among the folds of its shadows, fell open like a