The Trespasser

'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.