The Trespasser | Page 5

garment
before him, to reveal the white moon-glitter brilliant as living flesh.
Mechanically, overcast with the reality of the moonlight, he took his
seat in the train, and watched the moving of things. He was in a kind of
trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. The train slid out
amongst lights and dark places. Siegmund watched the endless
movement, fascinated.
This was one of the crises of his life. For years he had suppressed his
soul, in a kind of mechanical despair doing his duty and enduring the
rest. Then his soul had been softly enticed from its bondage. Now he
was going to break free altogether, to have at least a few days purely
for his own joy. This, to a man of his integrity, meant a breaking of
bonds, a severing of blood-ties, a sort of new birth. In the excitement of
this last night his life passed out of his control, and he sat at the
carriage-window, motionless, watching things move.
He felt busy within him a strong activity which he could not help.
Slowly the body of his past, the womb which had nourished him in one
fashion for so many years, was casting him forth. He was trembling in
all his being, though he knew not with what. All he could do now was
to watch the lights go by, and to let the translation of himself continue.
When at last the train ran out into the full, luminous night, and
Siegmund saw the meadows deep in moonlight, he quivered with a low
anticipation. The elms, great grey shadows, seemed to loiter in their

cloaks across the pale fields. He had not seen them so before. The
world was changing.
The train stopped, and with a little effort he rose to go home. The night
air was cool and sweet. He drank it thirstily. In the road again he lifted
his face to the moon. It seemed to help him; in its brilliance amid the
blonde heavens it seemed to transcend fretfulness. It would front the
waves with silver as they slid to the shore, and Helena, looking along
the coast, waiting, would lift her white hands with sudden joy. He
laughed, and the moon hurried laughing alongside, through the black
masses of the trees.
He had forgotten he was going home for this night. The chill wetness of
his little white garden-gate reminded him, and a frown came on his face.
As he closed the door, and found himself in the darkness of the hall, the
sense of his fatigue came fully upon him. It was an effort to go to bed.
Nevertheless, he went very quietly into the drawing-room. There the
moonlight entered, and he thought the whiteness was Helena. He held
his breath and stiffened, then breathed again. 'Tomorrow,' he thought,
as he laid his violin-case across the arms of a wicker chair. But he had a
physical feeling of the presence of Helena: in his shoulders he seemed
to be aware of her. Quickly, half lifting his arms, he turned to the
moonshine. 'Tomorrow!' he exclaimed quietly; and he left the room
stealthily, for fear of disturbing the children.
In the darkness of the kitchen burned a blue bud of light. He quickly
turned up the gas to a broad yellow flame, and sat down at table. He
was tired, excited, and vexed with misgiving. As he lay in his arm-chair,
he looked round with disgust.
The table was spread with a dirty cloth that had great brown stains
betokening children. In front of him was a cup and saucer, and a small
plate with a knife laid across it. The cheese, on another plate, was
wrapped in a red-bordered, fringed cloth, to keep off the flies, which
even then were crawling round, on the sugar, on the loaf, on the
cocoa-tin. Siegmund looked at his cup. It was chipped, and a stain had
gone under the glaze, so that it looked like the mark of a dirty mouth.
He fetched a glass of water.

The room was drab and dreary. The oil-cloth was worn into a hole near
the door. Boots and shoes of various sizes were scattered over the floor,
while the sofa was littered with children's clothing. In the black stove
the ash lay dead; on the range were chips of wood, and newspapers, and
rubbish of papers, and crusts of bread, and crusts of bread-and-jam. As
Siegmund walked across the floor, he crushed two sweets underfoot.
He had to grope under sofa and dresser to find his slippers; and he was
in evening dress.
It would be the same, while ever Beatrice was Beatrice and Siegmund
her husband. He ate his bread and cheese mechanically, wondering why
he was miserable, why he was not looking forward with joy to the