'Look!' cried Helena, catching hold of Siegmund. He was already
watching. Suddenly the steamer bell clanged. The gentleman looked up,
with startled, sunburned face; then he leaped to the stern. The launch
veered. It and the steamer closed together like a pair of scissors. The
lady, still holding the boy, looked up with an expressionless face at
the high sweeping chisel of the steamer's bows; the husband stood rigid,
staring ahead. No sound was to be heard save the rustling of water under
the bows. The scissors closed, the launch skelped forward like a dog
from in front of the traffic. It escaped by a yard or two. Then, like a
dog, it seemed to look round. The gentleman in the stern glanced back
quickly. He was a handsome, dark-haired man with dark eyes. His face was
as if carven out of oak, set and grey-brown. Then he looked to the
steering of his boat. No one had uttered a sound. From the tiny boat
coursing low on the water, not a sound, only tense waiting. The launch
raced out of danger towards the yacht. The gentleman, with a brief
gesture, put his man in charge again, whilst he himself went forward to
the lady. He was a handsome man, very proud in his movements; and she,
in her bearing, was prouder still. She received him almost with
indifference.
Helena turned to Siegmund. He took both her hands and pressed them,
whilst she looked at him with eyes blind with emotion. She was white to
the lips, and heaving like the buoy in the wake of the steamer. The
noise of life had suddenly been hushed, and each heart had heard for a
moment the noiselessness of death. How everyone was white and gasping!
They strove, on every hand, to fill the day with noise and the colour of
life again.
'By Jove, that was a near thing!' 'Ah, that has made me feel bad!' said a woman.
'A French yacht,' said somebody.
Helena was waiting for the voice of Siegmund. But he did not know what
to say. Confused, he repeated: 'That was a close shave.' Helena clung to him, searching his face. She felt his difference from
herself. There was something in his experience that made him different,
quiet, with a peculiar expression as if he were pained.
'Ah, dear Lord!' he was saying to himself. 'How bright and whole the day
is for them! If God had suddenly put His hand over the sun, and
swallowed us up in a shadow, they could not have been more startled.
That man, with his fine, white-flannelled limbs and his dark head, has
no suspicion of the shadow that supports it all. Between the blueness of
the sea and the sky he passes easy as a gull, close to the fine white
seamew of his mate, amid red flowers of flags, and soft birds of ships,
and slow-moving monsters of steamboats.