I know about Siegfried, because of going to the opera. He was a German.
He still is, in the form of Siegfried Wagner, and I daresay of others;
and once somebody told me that when Germans wished to indulge their
disrespect for the Kaiser freely--he was not at that time yet an
ex-Kaiser---without being run in for _lèse majesté_, they loudly and
openly abused him under the name of Siegfried Meyer, whose initials,
S.M., also represent _Seine Majestät_; by which simple methods everybody
was able to be pleased and nobody was able to be hurt. So that when my
sleeping guest murmured Siegfried, I couldn't but conclude she was
dreaming of a German; and when at the same time she laid her cheek on my
hand, I was forced to realise that she was dreaming of him
affectionately. Which astonished me.
Imbued with patriotism--the accumulated patriotism of weeks spent out of
England--I felt that this English lady should instantly be roused from a
dream that did her no credit. She herself, I felt sure, would be the
first to deplore such a dream. So I drew my hand away from beneath her
cheek--even by mistake I didn't like it to be thought the hand of
somebody called Siegfried and, stooping down, said quite loud and
distinctly in her ear, 'Won't you come to tea?'
This, at last, did wake her. She sat up with a start, and looked at me
for a moment in surprise.
'Oh,' she said, confused, 'have I been asleep?'
'I'm very glad you have,' I said, smiling at her, for she was already
again smiling at me. 'Your climb this morning was enough to kill you.'
'Oh, but,' she murmured, getting up quickly and straightening her hair,
'how dreadful to come to your house and go to sleep--'
And she turned to the elder one, and again astonished me by, with one
swift movement, twitching the handkerchief off her face and saying
exactly as one says when playing the face-and-handkerchief game with
one's baby, 'Peep bo.' Then she turned back to me and smiled and said
nothing more, for I suppose she knew the elder one, roused thus
competently, would now do all the talking; as indeed she did, being as I
feared greatly upset and horrified when she found she had not only been
asleep but been it for two hours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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