For him, Helena was a presence. She was ambushed, fused in an aura of his love. He only saw she was white, and strong, and full fruited, he only knew her blue eyes were rather awful to him.
Outside, the sea-mist was travelling thicker and thicker inland. Their lodging was not far from the bay. As they sat together at tea, Siegmund’s eyes dilated, and he looked frowning at Helena.
‘What is it?’ he asked, listening uneasily.
Helena looked up at him, from pouring out the tea. His little anxious look of distress amused her.
‘The noise, you mean? Merely the fog-horn, dear — not Wotan’s wrath, nor Siegfried’s dragon. . . . ’
The fog was white at the window. They sat waiting. After a few seconds the sound came low, swelling, like the mooing of some great sea animal, alone, the last of the monsters. The whole fog gave off the sound for a second or two, then it died down into an intense silence. Siegmund and Helena looked at each other. His eyes were full of trouble. To see a big, strong man anxious-eyed as a child because of a strange sound amused her. But he was tired.
‘I assure you, it is only a fog-horn,’ she laughed.
‘Of course. But it is a depressing sort of sound.’
‘Is it?’ she said curiously. ‘Why? Well — yes — I think I can understand its being so to some people. It’s something like the call of the horn across the sea to Tristan.’
She hummed softly, then three times she sang the horn-call. Siegmund, with his face expressionless as a mask, sat staring out at the mist. The boom of the siren broke in upon them. To him, the sound was full of fatality. Helena waited till the noise died down, then she repeated her horn-call.
‘Yet it is very much like the fog-horn,’ she said, curiously interested.
‘This time next week, Helena!’ he said.
She suddenly went heavy, and stretched across to clasp his hand as it lay upon the table.
‘I shall be calling to you from Cornwall,’ she said.
He did not reply. So often she did not take his meaning, but left him alone with his sense of tragedy. She had no idea how his life was wrenched from its roots, and when he tried to tell her, she balked him, leaving him inwardly quite lonely.
‘There is no next week,’ she declared, with great cheerfulness. ‘There is only the present.’
At the same moment she rose and slipped across to him. Putting her arms round his neck, she stood holding his head to her bosom, pressing it close, with her hand among his hair. His nostrils and mouth were crushed against her breast. He smelled the silk of her dress and the faint, intoxicating odour of her person. With shut eyes he owned heavily to himself again that she was blind to him. But some other self urged with gladness, no matter how blind she was, so that she pressed his face upon her.
She stroked and caressed his hair, tremblingly clasped his head against her breast, as if she would never release him; then she bent to kiss his forehead. He took her in his arms, and they were still for awhile.
Now he wanted to blind himself with her, to blaze up all his past and future in a passion worth years of living.
After tea they rested by the fire, while she told him all the delightful things she had found. She had a woman’s curious passion for details, a woman’s peculiar attachment to certain dear trifles. He listened, smiling, revived by her delight, and forgetful of himself. She soothed him like sunshine, and filled him with pleasure; but he hardly attended to her words.
‘Shall we go out, or are you too tired? No, you are tired — you are very tired,’ said Helena.
She stood by his chair, looking down on him tenderly.
‘No,’ he replied, smiling brilliantly at her, and stretching his handsome limbs in relief —‘no, not at all tired now.’
Helena continued to look down on him in quiet, covering tenderness. But she quailed before the brilliant, questioning gaze of his eyes.
‘You must go to bed early tonight,’ she said, turning aside her face, ruffling his soft black hair. He stretched slightly, stiffening his arms, and smiled without answering. It was a very keen pleasure to be thus alone with her and in her charge. He rose, bidding her wrap herself up against the fog.
‘You are sure you’re not too tired?’ she reiterated.
He laughed.
Outside, the sea-mist was white and woolly. They went hand in hand. It was cold, so she thrust her hand with his into the pocket of his overcoat, while they walked together.
‘I like the mist,’ he said, pressing her hand in his pocket.
‘I don’t dislike it,’ she replied, shrinking nearer to him.
‘It puts us together by ourselves,’ he said. She plodded alongside, bowing her head, not replying. He did not mind her silence.
‘It couldn’t have happened better for us than this mist,’ he said.
She laughed curiously, almost with a sound of tears.
‘Why?’ she asked, half tenderly, half bitterly.
‘There is nothing else but you, and for you there is nothing else but me — look!’
He stood still. They were on the downs, so that Helena found herself quite alone with the man in a world of mist. Suddenly she flung herself sobbing against his breast. He held her closely, tenderly, not knowing what it was all about, but happy and unafraid.
In one hollow place the siren from the Needles seemed to bellow full in their ears. Both Siegmund and Helena felt their emotion too intense. They turned from it.
‘What is the pitch?’ asked Helena.
‘Where it is horizontal? It slides up a chromatic scale,’ said Siegmund.
‘Yes, but the settled pitch — is it about E?’
‘E!’ exclaimed Siegmund. ‘More like F.’
‘Nay, listen!’ said Helena.
They stood still and waited till there came the long booing of the fog-horn.
‘There!’ exclaimed Siegmund, imitating the sound. ‘That is not E.’ He repeated the sound. ‘It is F.’
‘Surely it is E,’ persisted Helena.
‘Even F sharp,’ he rejoined, humming the note.
She laughed, and told him to climb the chromatic scale.
‘But you agree?’ he said.
‘I do not,’ she replied.
The fog was cold. It seemed to rob them of their courage to talk.
‘What is the note in Tristan?’ Helena made an effort to ask.
‘That is not the same,’ he replied.
‘No, dear, that is not the same,’ she said in low, comforting tones. He quivered at the caress. She put her arms round him reached up her face yearningly for a kiss. He forgot they were standing in the public footpath, in daylight, till she drew hastily away. She heard footsteps down the fog.
As they climbed the path the mist grew thinner, till it was only a grey haze at the top. There they were on the turfy lip of the land. The sky was fairly clear overhead. Below them the sea was singing hoarsely to itself.
Helena drew him to the edge of the cliff. He crushed her hand, drawing slightly back. But it pleased her to feel the grip on her hand becoming unbearable. They stood right on the edge, to see the smooth cliff slope into the mist, under which the sea stirred noisily.
‘Shall we walk over, then?’ said Siegmund, glancing downwards. Helena’s