Page:The Trespasser, Lawrence, 1912.djvu/262

254 on the landing to recover breath. She dreaded the combat with him. Suddenly controlling herself, she said loudly at Siegmund’s door, her voice coldly hostile:

“Aren’t you going to get up?”

There was not the faintest sound in the house. Beatrice stood in the gloom of the landing, her heart thudding in her ears.

“It’s after half-past ten—aren’t you going to get up?”she called.

She waited again. Two letters lay unopened on a small table. Suddenly she put down her pail and went into the bathroom. The pot of shaving-water stood untouched on the shelf, just as she had left it. She returned and knocked swiftly at her husband’s door, not speaking. She waited, then she knocked again, loudly, a long time. Something in the sound of her knocking made her afraid to try again. The noise was dull and thudding: it did not resound through the house with a natural ring, so she thought. She ran downstairs in terror, fled out into the front garden, and there looked up at his room. The window-door was open—everything seemed quiet.

Beatrice stood vacillating. She picked up a few tiny pebbles and flung them in a handful at his door. Some spattered on the panes sharply; some dropped dully in the room. One clinked on the wash-hand bowl. There was no response. Beatrice was terribly excited. She ran, with her black eyes blazing, and wisps of her black hair flying about her thin temples, out on to the road. By a mercy she saw the window-cleaner just pushing his ladder out of the passage of a house a little further down the road. She hurried to him.