by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
THE CRISIS
I
The crisis came about a week from that time--I say about because ofMelville's conscientious inexactness in these matters. And so far as thecrisis goes, I seem to get Melville at his best. He was keenlyinterested, keenly observant, and his more than average memory took someexcellent impressions. To my mind, at any rate, two at least of thesepeople come out, fuller and more convincingly than anywhere else in thispainfully disinterred story. He has given me here an Adeline I seem tobelieve in, and something much more like Chatteris than any of thebroken fragments I have had to go upon, and amplify and fudge togetherso far. And for all such transient lucidities in this mysterious story,the reader no doubt will echo my Heaven be thanked!
Melville was called down to participate in the crisis at Sandgate by atelegram from Mrs. Bunting, and his first exponent of the situation wasFred Bunting.
"_Come down. Urgent. Please_," was the irresistible message from Mrs.Bunting. My cousin took the early train and arrived at Sandgate in theforenoon.
He was told that Mrs. Bunting was upstairs with Miss Glendower and thatshe implored him to wait until she could leave her charge. "MissGlendower not well, then?" said Melville. "No, sir, not at all well,"said the housemaid, evidently awaiting a further question. "Where arethe others?" he asked casually. The three younger young ladies had goneto Hythe, said the housemaid, with a marked omission of the Sea Lady.Melville has an intense dislike of questioning servants on points atissue, so he asked nothing at all concerning Miss Waters. This generalabsence of people from the room of familiar occupation conveyed the samesuggested warning of crisis as the telegram. The housemaid waited aninstant longer and withdrew.
He stood for a moment in the drawing-room and then walked out upon theveranda. He perceived a richly caparisoned figure advancing towards him.It was Fred Bunting. He had been taking advantage of the generaldesertion of home to bathe from the house. He was wearing an umbrageouswhite cotton hat and a striped blanket, and a more aggressively manlypipe than any fully adult male would ever dream of smoking, hung fromthe corner of his mouth.
"Hello!" he said. "The mater sent for you?"
Melville admitted the truth of this theory.
"There's ructions," said Fred, and removed the pipe. The act offeredconversation.
"Where's Miss Waters?"
"Gone."
"Back?"
"Lord, no! Catch her! She's gone to Lummidge's Hotel. With her maid.Took a suite."
"Why----"
"The mater made a row with her."
"Whatever for?"
"Harry."
My cousin stared at the situation.
"It broke out," said Fred.
"What broke out?"
"The row. Harry's gone daft on her, Addy says."
"On Miss Waters?"
"Rather. Mooney. Didn't care for his electioneering--didn't care for hisordinary nourishment. Loose ends. Didn't mention it to Adeline, but shebegan to see it. Asked questions. Next day, went off. London. She askedwhat was up. Three days' silence. Then--wrote to her."
Fred intensified all this by raising his eyebrows, pulling down thecorners of his mouth and nodding portentously. "Eh?" he said, and thento make things clearer: "Wrote a letter."
"He didn't write to her about Miss Waters?"
"Don't know what he wrote about. Don't suppose he mentioned her name,but I dare say he made it clear enough. All I know is that everything inthe house felt like elastic pulled tighter than it ought to be for twowhole days--everybody in a sort of complicated twist--and then therewas a snap. All that time Addy was writing letters to him and tearing'em up, and no one could quite make it out. Everyone looked blue exceptthe Sea Lady. She kept her own lovely pink. And at the end of that timethe mater began asking things, Adeline chucked writing, gave the materhalf a hint, mater took it all in in an instant and the thing burst."
"Miss Glendower didn't----?"
"No, the mater did. Put it pretty straight too--as the mater can...._She_ didn't deny it. Said she couldn't help herself, and that he was asmuch hers as Adeline's. I _heard_ that," said Fred shamelessly. "Prettythick, eh?--considering he's engaged. And the mater gave it her prettystraight. Said, 'I've been very much deceived in you, Miss Waters--verymuch indeed.' I heard her...."
"And then?"
"Asked her to go. Said she'd requited us ill for taking her up whennobody but a fisherman would have looked at her."
"She said that?"
"Well, words to that effect."
"And Miss Waters went?"
"In a first-class cab, maid and boxes in another, all complete. Perfectlady.... Couldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it--the tail, I mean."
"And Miss Glendower?"
"Addy? Oh, she's been going it. Comes downstairs and does the pale-facedheroine and goes upstairs and does the broken-hearted part. _I_ know.It's all very well. You never had sisters. You know----"
Fred held his pipe elaborately out of the way and protruded his face toa confidential nearness.
"I believe they half like it," said Fred, in a confidential halfwhisper. "Such a go, you know. Mabel pretty near as bad. And the girls.All making the very most they can of it. Me! I think Chatteris was theonly man alive to hear 'em. _I_ couldn't get up emotion as they do, ifmy feet were being flayed. Cheerful home, eh? For holidays."
"Where's--the principal gentleman?" asked Melville a little grimly. "InLondon?"
"Unprincipled gentleman, I call him," said Fred. "He's stopping downhere at the Metropole. Stuck."
"Down here? Stuck?"
"Rather. Stuck and set about."
My cousin tried for sidelights. "What's his attitude?" he asked.
"Slump," said Fred with intensity.
"This little blow-off has rather astonished him," he explained. "When hewrote to say that the election didn't interest him for a bit, but hehoped to pull around----"
"You said you didn't know what he wrote."
"I do that much," said Fred. "He no more thought they'd have spottedthat it meant Miss Waters than a baby. But women are so thunderingsharp, you know. They're born spotters. How it'll all end----"
"But why has he come to the Metropole?"
"Middle of the stage, I suppose," said Fred.
"What's his attitude?"
"Says he's going to see Adeline and explain everything--and doesn't doit.... Puts it off. And Adeline, as far as I can gather, says that if hedoesn't come down soon, she's hanged if she'll see him, much as herheart may be broken, and all that, if she doesn't. You know."
"Naturally," said Melville, rather inconsecutively. "And he doesn't?"
"Doesn't stir."
"Does he see--the other lady?"
"We don't know. We can't watch him. But if he does he's clever----"
"Why?"
"There's about a hundred blessed relatives of his in the place--camelike crows for a corpse. I never saw such a lot. Talk about a man ofgood old family--it's decaying! I never saw such a high old family in mylife. Aunts they are chiefly."
"Aunts?"
"Aunts. Say, they've rallied round him. How they got hold of it I don'tknow. Like vultures. Unless the mater-- But they're here. They're all athim--using their influence with him, threatening to cut off legacies andall that. There's one old girl at Bate's, Lady Poynting Mallow--leastbit horsey, but about as all right as any of 'em--who's been down heretwice. Seems a trifle disappointed in Adeline. And there's two aunts atWampach's--you know the sort that stop at Wampach's--regular hothouseflowers--a watering-potful of real icy cold water would kill both of'em. And there's one come over from the Continent, short hair, shortskirts--regular terror--she's at the Pavilion. They're all chasing roundsaying, 'Where is this woman-fish sort of thing? Let me peek!'"
"Does that constitute the hundred relatives?"
"Practically. The Wampachers are sending for a Bishop who used to be hisschoolmaster----"
"No stone unturned, eh?"
"None."<
br />
"And has he found out yet----"
"That she's a mermaid? I don't believe he has. The pater went up totell him. Of course, he was a bit out of breath and embarrassed. AndChatteris cut him down. 'At least let me hear nothing against her,' hesaid. And the pater took that and came away. Good old pater. Eh?"
"And the aunts?"
"They're taking it in. Mainly they grasp the fact that he's going tojilt Adeline, just as he jilted the American girl. The mermaid side theyseem to boggle at. Old people like that don't take to a new idea all atonce. The Wampach ones are shocked--but curious. They don't believe fora moment she really is a mermaid, but they want to know all about it.And the one down at the Pavilion simply said, 'Bosh! How can she breatheunder water? Tell me that, Mrs. Bunting. She's some sort of person youhave picked up, I don't know how, but mermaid she _cannot_ be.' They'dbe all tremendously down on the mater, I think, for picking her up, ifit wasn't that they can't do without her help to bring Addy round again.Pretty mess all round, eh?"
"I suppose the aunts will tell him?"
"What?"
"About the tail."
"I suppose they will."
"And what then?"
"Heaven knows! Just as likely they won't."
My cousin meditated on the veranda tiles for a space.
"It amuses me," said Fred Bunting.
"Look here," said my cousin Melville, "what am I supposed to do? Whyhave I been asked to come?"
"I don't know. Stir it up a bit, I expect. Everybody do a bit--like theChristmas pudding."
"But--" said Melville.
Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity.]
"I've been bathing," said Fred. "Nobody asked me to take a hand and Ididn't. It won't be a good pudding without me, but there you are!There's only one thing I can see to do----"
"It might be the right thing. What is it?"
"Punch Chatteris's head."
"I don't see how that would help matters."
"Oh, it wouldn't help matters," said Fred, adding with an air ofconclusiveness, "There it is!" Then adjusting the folds of his blanketto a greater dignity, and replacing his long extinct large pipe betweenhis teeth, he went on his way. The tail of his blanket followed himreluctantly through the door. His bare feet padded across the hall andbecame inaudible on the carpet of the stairs.
"Fred!" said Melville, going doorward with a sudden afterthought forfuller particulars.
But Fred had gone.
Instead, Mrs. Bunting appeared.
II
She appeared with traces of recent emotion. "I telegraphed," she said."We are in dreadful trouble."
"Miss Waters, I gather----"
"She's gone."
She went towards the bell and stopped. "They'll get luncheon as usual,"she said. "You will be wanting your luncheon."
She came towards him with rising hands. "You can _not_ imagine," shesaid. "That poor child!"
"You must tell me," said Melville.
"I simply do not know what to do. I don't know where to turn." She camenearer to him. She protested. "All that I did, Mr. Melville, I did forthe best. I saw there was trouble. I could see that I had beendeceived, and I stood it as long as I could. I _had_ to speak at last."
My cousin by leading questions and interrogative silences developed herstory a little.
"And every one," she said, "blames me. Every one."
"Everybody blames everybody who does anything, in affairs of this sort,"said Melville. "You mustn't mind that."
"I'll try not to," she said bravely. "_You_ know, Mr. Melville----"
He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment. "Yes," he said veryimpressively, and I think Mrs. Bunting felt better.
"We all look to you," she said. "I don't know what I should do withoutyou."
"That's it," said Melville. "How do things stand? What am I to do?"
"Go to him," said Mrs. Bunting, "and put it all right."
"But suppose--" began Melville doubtfully.
"Go to her. Make her see what it would mean for him and all of us."
He tried to get more definite instructions. "Don't make difficulties,"implored Mrs. Bunting. "Think of that poor girl upstairs. Think of usall."
"Exactly," said Melville, thinking of Chatteris and staring despondentlyout of the window.
"Bunting, I gather----"
"It is you or no one," said Mrs. Bunting, sailing over his unspokenwords. "Fred is too young, and Randolph--! He's not diplomatic. He--hehectors."
"Does he?" exclaimed Melville.
"You should see him abroad. Often--many times I have had tointerfere.... No, it is you. You know Harry so well. He trusts you.You can say things to him--no one else could say."
"That reminds me. Does _he_ know----"
"We don't know. How can we know? We know he is infatuated, that is all.He is up there in Folkestone, and she is in Folkestone, and they may bemeeting----"
My cousin sought counsel with himself.
"Say you will go?" said Mrs. Bunting, with a hand upon his arm.
"I'll go," said Melville, "but I don't see what I can do!"
And Mrs. Bunting clasped his hand in both of her own plump shapely handsand said she knew all along that he would, and that for coming down sopromptly to her telegram she would be grateful to him so long as she hada breath to draw, and then she added, as if it were part of the sameremark, that he must want his luncheon.
He accepted the luncheon proposition in an incidental manner andreverted to the question in hand.
"Do you know what his attitude----"
"He has written only to Addy."
"It isn't as if he had brought about this crisis?"
"It was Addy. He went away and something in his manner made her writeand ask him the reason why. So soon as she had his letter saying hewanted to rest from politics for a little, that somehow he didn't seemto find the interest in life he thought it deserved, she divinedeverything----"
"Everything? Yes, but just what _is_ everything?"
"That _she_ had led him on."
"Miss Waters?"
"Yes."
My cousin reflected. So that was what they considered to be everything!"I wish I knew just where he stood," he said at last, and followedMrs. Bunting luncheonward. In the course of that meal, which was_tete-a-tete_, it became almost unsatisfactorily evident what a greatrelief Melville's consent to interview Chatteris was to Mrs. Bunting.Indeed, she seemed to consider herself relieved from the greater portionof her responsibility in the matter, since Melville was bearing herburden. She sketched out her defence against the accusations that had nodoubt been levelled at her, explicitly and implicitly.
"How was _I_ to know?" she asked, and she told over again the story ofthat memorable landing, but with new, extenuating details. It wasAdeline herself who had cried first, "She must be saved!" Mrs. Buntingmade a special point of that. "And what else was there for me to do?"she asked.
And as she talked, the problem before my cousin assumed graver and yetgraver proportions. He perceived more and more clearly the complexityof the situation with which he was entrusted. In the first place it wasnot at all clear that Miss Glendower was willing to receive back herlover except upon terms, and the Sea Lady, he was quite sure, did notmean to release him from any grip she had upon him. They were preparingto treat an elemental struggle as if it were an individual case. It grewmore and more evident to him how entirely Mrs. Bunting overlooked theessentially abnormal nature of the Sea Lady, how absolutely she regardedthe business as a mere every-day vacillation, a commonplace outbreak ofthat jilting spirit which dwells, covered deep, perhaps, but neverentirely eradicated, in the heart of man; and how confidently sheexpected him, with a little tactful remonstrance and pressure, torestore the _status quo ante_.
As for Chatteris!--Melville shook his head at the cheese, and answeredMrs. Bunting abstractedly.
III
"She wants to speak to you," said Mrs. Bunting, and Melville with acertain trepidation w
ent upstairs. He went up to the big landing withthe seats, to save Adeline the trouble of coming down. She appeareddressed in a black and violet tea gown with much lace, and her dark hairwas done with a simple carefulness that suited it. She was pale, and hereyes showed traces of tears, but she had a certain dignity that differedfrom her usual bearing in being quite unconscious.
She gave him a limp hand and spoke in an exhausted voice.
"You know--all?" she asked.
"All the outline, anyhow."
"Why has he done this to me?"
Melville looked profoundly sympathetic through a pause.
"I feel," she said, "that it isn't coarseness."
"Certainly not," said Melville.
"It is some mystery of the imagination that I cannot understand. Ishould have thought--his career at any rate--would have appealed...."She shook her head and regarded a pot of ferns fixedly for a space.
"He has written to you?" asked Melville.
"Three times," she said, looking up.
Melville hesitated to ask the extent of that correspondence, but sheleft no need for that.
"I had to ask him," she said. "He kept it all from me, and I had toforce it from him before he would tell."
"Tell!" said Melville, "what?"
"What he felt for her and what he felt for me."
"But did he----?"
"He has made it clearer. But still even now. No, I don't understand."
She turned slowly and watched Melville's face as she spoke: "You know,Mr. Melville, that this has been an enormous shock to me. I suppose Inever really knew him. I suppose I--idealised him. I thought he caredfor--our work at any rate.... He _did_ care for our work. He believed init. Surely he believed in it."
"He does," said Melville.
"And then-- But how can he?"
"He is--he is a man with rather a strong imagination."
"Or a weak will?"
"Relatively--yes."
"It is so strange," she sighed. "It is so inconsistent. It is likea child catching at a new toy. Do you know, Mr. Melville"--shehesitated--"all this has made me feel old. I feel very much older,very much wiser than he is. I cannot help it. I am afraid it is forall women ... to feel that sometimes."
She reflected profoundly. "For _all_ women-- The child, man! I see nowjust what Sarah Grand meant by that."
She smiled a wan smile. "I feel just as if he had been a naughty child.And I--I worshipped him, Mr. Melville," she said, and her voicequivered.
My cousin coughed and turned about to stare hard out of the window. Hewas, he perceived, much more shockingly inadequate even than he hadexpected to be.
"If I thought she could make him happy!" she said presently, leaving ahiatus of generous self-sacrifice.
"The case is--complicated," said Melville.
Her voice went on, clear and a little high, resigned, impenetrablyassured.
"But she would not. All his better side, all his serious side-- Shewould miss it and ruin it all."
"Does he--" began Melville and repented of the temerity of his question.
"Yes?" she said.
"Does he--ask to be released?"
"No.... He wants to come back to me."
"And you----"
"He doesn't come."
"But do you--do you want him back?"
"How can I say, Mr. Melville? He does not say certainly even that hewants to come back."
My cousin Melville looked perplexed. He lived on the superficies ofemotion, and these complexities in matters he had always assumed weresimple, put him out.
"There are times," she said, "when it seems to me that my love for himis altogether dead.... Think of the disillusionment--the shock--thediscovery of such weakness."
My cousin lifted his eyebrows and shook his head in agreement.
"His feet--to find his feet were of clay!"
There came a pause.
"It seems as if I have never loved him. And then--and then I think ofall the things that still might be."
Her voice made him look up, and he saw that her mouth was set hard andtears were running down her cheeks.
It occurred to my cousin, he says, that he would touch her hand in asympathetic manner, and then it occurred to him that he wouldn't. Herwords rang in his thoughts for a space, and then he said somewhattardily, "He may still be all those things."
"I suppose he may," she said slowly and without colour. The weepingmoment had passed.
"What is she?" she changed abruptly. "What is this being, who has comebetween him and all the realities of life? What is there about her--?And why should I have to compete with her, because he--because hedoesn't know his own mind?"
"For a man," said Melville, "to know his own mind is--to have exhaustedone of the chief interests in life. After that--! A cultivated extinctvolcano--if ever it was a volcano."
He reflected egotistically for a space. Then with a secret start he cameback to consider her.
"What is there," she said, with that deliberate attempt at clearnesswhich was one of her antipathetic qualities for Melville--"what is therethat she has, that she offers, that _I_----?"
Melville winced at this deliberate proposal of appalling comparisons.All the catlike quality in his soul came to his aid. He began to edgeaway, and walk obliquely and generally to shirk the issue. "My dear MissGlendower," he said, and tried to make that seem an adequate reply.
"What _is_ the difference?" she insisted.
"There are impalpable things," waived Melville. "They are above reasonand beyond describing."
"But you," she urged, "you take an attitude, you must have animpression. Why don't you-- Don't you see, Mr. Melville, this isvery"--her voice caught for a moment--"very vital for me. It isn't kindof you, if you have impressions-- I'm sorry, Mr. Melville, if I seem tobe trying to get too much from you. I--I want to know."
It came into Melville's head for a moment that this girl had somethingin her, perhaps, that was just a little beyond his former judgments.
"I must admit, I have a sort of impression," he said.
"You are a man; you know him; you know all sorts of things--all sorts ofways of looking at things, I don't know. If you could go so far--as tobe frank."
"Well," said Melville and stopped.
She hung over him as it were, as a tense silence.
"There _is_ a difference," he admitted, and still went unhelped.
"How can I put it? I think in certain ways you contrast with her, in away that makes things easier for her. He has--I know the thing soundslike cant, only you know, _he_ doesn't plead it in defence--he has atemperament, to which she sometimes appeals more than you do."
"Yes, I know, but how?"
"Well----"
"Tell me."
"You are austere. You are restrained. Life--for a man like Chatteris--isschooling. He has something--something perhaps more worth having thanmost of us have--but I think at times--it makes life harder for him thanit is for a lot of us. Life comes at him, with limitations andregulations. He knows his duty well enough. And you-- You mustn't mindwhat I say too much, Miss Glendower--I may be wrong."
"Go on," she said, "go on."
"You are too much--the agent general of his duty."
"But surely!--what else----?"
"I talked to him in London and then I thought he was quite in thewrong. Since that I've thought all sorts of things--even that you mightbe in the wrong. In certain minor things."
"Don't mind my vanity now," she cried. "Tell me."
"You see you have defined things--very clearly. You have made it clearto him what you expect him to be, and what you expect him to do. It islike having built a house in which he is to live. For him, to go to heris like going out of a house, a very fine and dignified house, I admit,into something larger, something adventurous and incalculable. Sheis--she has an air of being--_natural_. She is as lax and lawless as thesunset, she is as free and familiar as the wind. She doesn't--if I mayput it in this way--she doesn't love and respect him when he is
this,and disapprove of him highly when he is that; she takes him altogether.She has the quality of the open sky, of the flight of birds, of deeptangled places, she has the quality of the high sea. That I think iswhat she is for him, she is the Great Outside. You--you have thequality----"
He hesitated.
"Go on," she insisted. "Let us get the meaning."
"Of an edifice.... I don't sympathise with him," said Melville. "I am atame cat and I should scratch and mew at the door directly I got outsideof things. I don't want to go out. The thought scares me. But he isdifferent."
"Yes," she said, "he is different."
For a time it seemed that Melville's interpretation had hold of her. Shestood thoughtful. Slowly other aspects of the thing came into his mind.
"Of course," she said, thinking as she looked at him. "Yes. Yes. That isthe impression. That is the quality. But in reality-- There are otherthings in the world beside effects and impressions. After all, thatis--an analogy. It is pleasant to go out of houses and dwellings intothe open air, but most of us, nearly all of us must live in houses."
"Decidedly," said Melville.
"He cannot-- What can he do with her? How can he live with her? Whatlife could they have in common?"
"It's a case of attraction," said Melville, "and not of plans."
"After all," she said, "he must come back--if I let him come back. Hemay spoil everything now; he may lose his election and be forced tostart again, lower and less hopefully; he may tear his heart topieces----"
She stopped at a sob.
"Miss Glendower," said Melville abruptly.
"I don't think you quite understand."
"Understand what?"
"You think he cannot marry this--this being who has come among us?"
"How could he?"
"No--he couldn't. You think his imagination has wandered away fromyou--to something impossible. That generally, in an aimless way, he hascut himself up for nothing, and made an inordinate fool of himself, andthat it's simply a business of putting everything back into placeagain."
He paused and she said nothing. But her face was attentive. "What you donot understand," he went on, "what no one seems to understand, is thatshe comes----"
"Out of the sea."
"Out of some other world. She comes, whispering that this life is aphantom life, unreal, flimsy, limited, casting upon everything a spellof disillusionment----"
"So that _he_----"
"Yes, and then she whispers, 'There are better dreams!'"
The girl regarded him in frank perplexity.
"She hints of these vague better dreams, she whispers of a way----"
"_What_ way?"
"I do not know what way. But it is something--something that tears atthe very fabric of this daily life."
"You mean----?"
"She is a mermaid, she is a thing of dreams and desires, a siren, awhisper and a seduction. She will lure him with her----"
He stopped.
"Where?" she whispered.
"Into the deeps."
"The deeps?"
They hung upon a long pause. Melville sought vagueness with infinitesolicitude, and could not find it. He blurted out at last: "There canbe but one way out of this dream we are all dreaming, you know."
"And that way?"
"That way--" began Melville and dared not say it.
"You mean," she said, with a pale face, half awakened to a new thought,"the way is----?"
Melville shirked the word. He met her eyes and nodded weakly.
"But how--?" she asked.
"At any rate"--he said hastily, seeking some palliative phrase--"at anyrate, if she gets him, this little world of yours-- There will be nocoming back for him, you know."
"No coming back?" she said.
"No coming back," said Melville.
"But are you sure?" she doubted.
"Sure?"
"That it is so?"
"That desire is desire, and the deep the deep--yes."
"I never thought--" she began and stopped.
"Mr. Melville," she said, "you know I don't understand. I thought--Iscarcely know what I thought. I thought he was trivial and foolish tolet his thoughts go wandering. I agreed--I see your point--as to thedifference in our effect upon him. But this--this suggestion that forhim she may be something determining and final-- After all, she----"
"She is nothing," he said. "She is the hand that takes hold of him, theshape that stands for things unseen."
"What things unseen?"
My cousin shrugged his shoulders. "Something we never find in life," hesaid. "Something we are always seeking."
"But what?" she asked.
Melville made no reply. She scrutinised his face for a time, and thenlooked out at the sunlight again.
"Do you want him back?" he said.
"I don't know."
"Do you want him back?"
"I feel as if I had never wanted him before."
"And now?"
"Yes.... But--if he will not come back?"
"He will not come back," said Melville, "for the work."
"I know."
"He will not come back for his self-respect--or any of those things."
"No."
"Those things, you know, are only fainter dreams. All the palace youhave made for him is a dream. But----"
"Yes?"
"He might come back--" he said, and looked at her and stopped. He tellsme he had some vague intention of startling her, rousing her, woundingher to some display of romantic force, some insurgence of passion, thatmight yet win Chatteris back, and then in that moment, and like a blow,it came to him how foolish such a fancy had been. There she stoodimpenetrably herself, limitedly intelligent, well-meaning, imitative,and powerless. Her pose, her face, suggested nothing but a clear andreasonable objection to all that had come to her, a critical antagonism,a steady opposition. And then, amazingly, she changed. She looked up,and suddenly held out both her hands, and there was something in hereyes that he had never seen before.
Melville took her hands mechanically, and for a second or so they stoodlooking with a sort of discovery into each other's eyes.
"Tell him," she said, with an astounding perfection of simplicity, "tocome back to me. There can be no other thing than what I am. Tell him tocome back to me!"
"And----?"
"Tell him _that_."
"Forgiveness?"
"No! Tell him I want him. If he will not come for that he will not comeat all. If he will not come back for that"--she halted for a moment--"Ido not want him. No! I do not want him. He is not mine and he may go."
His passive hold of her hands became a pressure. Then they dropped apartagain.
"You are very good to help us," she said as he turned to go.
He looked at her. "You are very good to help me," she said, and then:"Tell him whatever you like if only he will come back to me!... No!Tell him what I have said." He saw she had something more to say, andstopped. "You know, Mr. Melville, all this is like a book newly openedto me. Are you sure----?"
"Sure?"
"Sure of what you say--sure of what she is to him--sure that if he goeson he will--" She stopped.
He nodded.
"It means--" she said and stopped again.
"No adventure, no incident, but a going out from all that this life hasto offer."
"You mean," she insisted, "you mean----?"
"Death," said Melville starkly, and for a space both stood without aword.
She winced, and remained looking into his eyes. Then she spoke again.
"Mr. Melville, tell him to come back to me."
"And----?"
"Tell him to come back to me, or"--a sudden note of passion rang in hervoice--"if I have no hold upon him, let him go his way."
"But--" said Melville.
"I know," she cried, with her face set, "I know. But if he is mine hewill come to me, and if he is not-- Let him dream his dream."
Her clenched hand tightened as she spo
ke. He saw in her face she wouldsay no more, that she wanted urgently to leave it there. He turned againtowards the staircase. He glanced at her and went down.
As he looked up from the bend of the stairs she was still standing inthe light.
He was moved to proclaim himself in some manner her adherent, but hecould think of nothing better than: "Whatever I can do I will." And so,after a curious pause, he departed, rather stumblingly, from her sight.
IV
After this interview it was right and proper that Melville should havegone at once to Chatteris, but the course of events in the world doesoccasionally display a lamentable disregard for what is right andproper. Points of view were destined to crowd upon him that day--for themost part entirely unsympathetic points of view. He found Mrs. Buntingin the company of a boldly trimmed bonnet in the hall, waiting, itbecame clear, to intercept him.
As he descended, in a state of extreme preoccupation, the boldly trimmedbonnet revealed beneath it a white-faced, resolute person in a dusterand sensible boots. This stranger, Mrs. Bunting made apparent, was LadyPoynting Mallow, one of the more representative of the Chatteris aunts.Her ladyship made a few enquiries about Adeline with an eye that tookMelville's measure, and then, after agreeing to a number of thesuggestions Mrs. Bunting had to advance, proposed that he should escorther back to her hotel. He was much too exercised with Adeline to discussthe proposal. "I walk," she said. "And we go along the lower road."
He found himself walking.
She remarked, as the Bunting door closed behind them, that it was alwaysa comfort to have to do with a man; and there was a silence for a space.
I don't think at that time Melville completely grasped the fact that hehad a companion. But presently his meditations were disturbed by hervoice. He started.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
"That Bunting woman is a fool," repeated Lady Poynting Mallow.
There was a slight interval for consideration.
"She's an old friend of mine," said Melville.
"Quite possibly," said Lady Poynting Mallow.
The position seemed a little awkward to Melville for a moment. Heflicked a fragment of orange peel into the road. "I want to get to thebottom of all this," said Lady Poynting Mallow. "Who _is_ this otherwoman?"
"What other woman?"
"_Tertium quid_," said Lady Poynting Mallow, with a luminousincorrectness.
"Mermaid, I gather," said Melville.
"What's the objection to her?"
"Tail."
"Fin and all?"
"Complete."
"You're sure of it?"
"Certain."
"How do you know?"
"I'm certain," repeated Melville with a quite unusual testiness.
The lady reflected.
"Well, there are worse things in the world than a fishy tail," she saidat last.
Melville saw no necessity for a reply. "H'm," said Lady Poynting Mallow,apparently by way of comment on his silence, and for a space they wenton.
"That Glendower girl is a fool too," she added after a pause.
My cousin opened his mouth and shut it again. How can one answer whenladies talk in this way? But if he did not answer, at any rate hispreoccupation was gone. He was now acutely aware of the determinedperson at his side.
"She has means?" she asked abruptly.
"Miss Glendower?"
"No. I know all about her. The other?"
"The mermaid?"
"Yes, the mermaid. Why not?"
"Oh, _she_--Very considerable means. Galleons. Phoenician treasureships, wrecked frigates, submarine reefs----"
"Well, that's all right. And now will you tell me, Mr. Melville, whyshouldn't Harry have her? What if she is a mermaid? It's no worse thanan American silver mine, and not nearly so raw and ill-bred."
"In the first place there's his engagement----"
"Oh, _that_!"
"And in the next there's the Sea Lady."
"But I thought she----"
"She's a mermaid."
"It's no objection. So far as I can see, she'd make an excellent wifefor him. And, as a matter of fact, down here she'd be able to help himin just the right way. The member here--he'll be fighting--this Sassoonman--makes a lot of capital out of deep-sea cables. Couldn't be better.Harry could dish him easily. That's all right. Why shouldn't he haveher?"
She stuck her hands deeply into the pockets of her dust-coat, and achina-blue eye regarded Melville from under the brim of the boldlytrimmed bonnet.
"You understand clearly she is a properly constituted mermaid with areal physical tail?"
"Well?" said Lady Poynting Mallow.
"Apart from any question of Miss Glendower----"
"That's understood."
"I think that such a marriage would be impossible."
"Why?"
My cousin played round the question. "She's an immortal, for example,with a past."
"Simply makes her more interesting."
Melville tried to enter into her point of view. "You think," he said,"she would go to London for him, and marry at St. George's, HanoverSquare, and pay for a mansion in Park Lane and visit just anywhere heliked?"
"That's precisely what she would do. Just now, with a Court that iswaking up----"
"It's precisely what she won't do," said Melville.
"But any woman would do it who had the chance."
"She's a mermaid."
"She's a fool," said Lady Poynting Mallow.
"She doesn't even mean to marry him; it doesn't enter into her code."
"The hussy! What does she mean?"
My cousin made a gesture seaward. "That!" he said. "She's a mermaid."
"What?"
"Out there."
"Where?"
"There!"
Lady Poynting Mallow scanned the sea as if it were some curious newobject. "It's an amphibious outlook for the family," she said afterreflection. "But even then--if she doesn't care for society and it makesHarry happy--and perhaps after they are tired of--rusticating----"
"I don't think you fully realise that she is a mermaid," said Melville;"and Chatteris, you know, breathes air."
"That _is_ a difficulty," admitted Lady Poynting Mallow, and studied thesunlit offing for a space.
"I don't see why it shouldn't be managed for all that," she consideredafter a pause.
"It can't be," said Melville with arid emphasis.
"She cares for him?"
"She's come to fetch him."
"If she wants him badly he might make terms. In these affairsit's always one or other has to do the buying. She'd have to_marry_--anyhow."
My cousin regarded her impenetrably satisfied face.
"He could have a yacht and a diving bell," she suggested; "if she wantedhim to visit her people."
"They are pagan demigods, I believe, and live in some mythological wayin the Mediterranean."
"Dear Harry's a pagan himself--so that doesn't matter, and as for beingmythological--all good families are. He could even wear a diving dressif one could be found to suit him."
"I don't think that anything of the sort is possible for a moment."
"Simply because you've never been a woman in love," said Lady PoyntingMallow with an air of vast experience.
She continued the conversation. "If it's sea water she wants it wouldbe quite easy to fit up a tank wherever they lived, and she couldeasily have a bath chair like a sitz bath on wheels.... Really, Mr.Milvain----"
"Melville."
"Mr. Melville, I don't see where your 'impossible' comes in."
"Have you seen the lady?"
"Do you think I've been in Folkestone two days doing nothing?"
"You don't mean you've called on her?"
"Dear, no! It's Harry's place to settle that. But I've seen her in herbath chair on the Leas, and I'm certain I've never seen any one wholooked so worthy of dear Harry. _Never!_"
"Well, well," said Melville. "Apart from any other considerations, youknow
, there's Miss Glendower."
"I've never regarded her as a suitable wife for Harry."
"Possibly not. Still--she exists."
"So many people do," said Lady Poynting Mallow.
She evidently regarded that branch of the subject as dismissed.
They pursued their way in silence.
"What I wanted to ask you, Mr. Milvain----"
"Melville."
"Mr. Melville, is just precisely where you come into this business?"
"I'm a friend of Miss Glendower."
"Who wants him back."
"Frankly--yes."
"Isn't she devoted to him?"
"I presume as she's engaged----"
"She ought to be devoted to him--yes. Well, why can't she see that sheought to release him for his own good?"
"She doesn't see it's for his good. Nor do I."
"Simply an old-fashioned prejudice because the woman's got a tail. Thoseold frumps at Wampach's are quite of your opinion."
Melville shrugged his shoulders.
"And so I suppose you're going to bully and threaten on account of MissGlendower.... You'll do no good."
"May I ask what you are going to do?"
"What a good aunt always does."
"And that?"
"Let him do what he likes."
"Suppose he wants to drown himself?"
"My dear Mr. Milvain, Harry isn't a fool."
"I've told you she's a mermaid."
"Ten times."
A constrained silence fell between them.
It became apparent they were near the Folkestone Lift.
"You'll do no good," said Lady Poynting Mallow.
Melville's escort concluded at the lift station. There the lady turnedupon him.
"I'm greatly obliged to you for coming, Mr. Milvain," she said; "andvery glad to hear your views of this matter. It's a peculiar business,but I hope we're sensible people. You think over what I have said. As afriend of Harry's. You _are_ a friend of Harry's?"
"We've known each other some years."
"I feel sure you will come round to my point of view sooner or later. Itis so obviously the best thing for him."
"There's Miss Glendower."
"If Miss Glendower is a womanly woman, she will be ready to make anysacrifice for his good."
And with that they parted.
In the course of another minute Melville found himself on the side ofthe road opposite the lift station, regarding the ascending car. Theboldly trimmed bonnet, vivid, erect, assertive, went gliding upward, aperfect embodiment of sound common sense. His mind was lapsing onceagain into disorder; he was stunned, as it were, by the vigour of herladyship's view. Could any one not absolutely right be quite so clearand emphatic? And if so, what became of all that oppression offoreboding, that sinister promise of an escape, that whisper of "otherdreams," that had dominated his mind only a short half-hour before?
He turned his face back to Sandgate, his mind a theatre of warringdoubts. Quite vividly he could see the Sea Lady as Lady Poynting Mallowsaw her, as something pink and solid and smart and wealthy, and, indeed,quite abominably vulgar, and yet quite as vividly he recalled her as shehad talked to him in the garden, her face full of shadows, her eyes ofdeep mystery, and the whisper that made all the world about him no morethan a flimsy, thin curtain before vague and wonderful, and hitherto,quite unsuspected things.
V
Chatteris was leaning against the railings. He started violently atMelville's hand upon his shoulder. They made awkward greetings.
"The fact is," said Melville, "I--I have been asked to talk to you."
"Don't apologise," said Chatteris. "I'm glad to have it out with someone."
There was a brief silence.
They stood side by side--looking down upon the harbour. Behind, theevening band played remotely and the black little promenaders went toand fro under the tall electric lights. I think Chatteris decided to bevery self-possessed at first--a man of the world.
"It's a gorgeous night," he said.
"Glorious," said Melville, playing up to the key set.
He clicked his cutter on a cigar. "There was something you wanted me totell you----"
"I know all that," said Chatteris with the shoulder towards Melvillebecoming obtrusive. "I know everything."
"You have seen and talked to her?"
"Several times."
There was perhaps a minute's pause.
"What are you going to do?" asked Melville.
Chatteris made no answer and Melville did not repeat his question.
Presently Chatteris turned about. "Let's walk," he said, and they pacedwestward, side by side.
He made a little speech. "I'm sorry to give everybody all this trouble,"he said with an air of having prepared his sentences; "I suppose thereis no question that I have behaved like an ass. I am profoundly sorry.Largely it is my own fault. But you know--so far as the overt kick-upgoes--there is a certain amount of blame attaches to our outspokenfriend Mrs. Bunting."
"I'm afraid there is," Melville admitted.
"You know there are times when one is under the necessity of havingmoods. It doesn't help them to drag them into general discussion."
"The mischief's done."
"You know Adeline seems to have objected to the presence of--this sealady at a very early stage. Mrs. Bunting overruled her. Afterwards whenthere was trouble she seems to have tried to make up for it."
"I didn't know Miss Glendower had objected."
"She did. She seems to have seen--ahead."
Chatteris reflected. "Of course all that doesn't excuse me in the least.But it's a sort of excuse for _your_ being dragged into this bother."
He said something less distinctly about a "stupid bother" and "privateaffairs."
They found themselves drawing near the band and already on theoutskirts of its territory of votaries. Its cheerful rhythms becameinsistent. The canopy of the stand was a focus of bright light,music-stands and instruments sent out beams of reflected brilliance,and a luminous red conductor in the midst of the lantern guided theratatoo-tat, ratatoo-tat of a popular air. Voices, detached fragmentsof conversation, came to our talkers and mingled impertinently withtheir thoughts.
"I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'im, not after that," said a young personto her friend.
"Let's get out of this," said Chatteris abruptly.
They turned aside from the high path of the Leas to the head of somesteps that led down the declivity. In a few moments it was as if thoseimposing fronts of stucco, those many-windowed hotels, the electriclights on the tall masts, the band-stand and miscellaneous holidayBritish public, had never existed. It is one of Folkestone's besteffects, that black quietness under the very feet of a crowd. They nolonger heard the band even, only a remote suggestion of music filteredto them over the brow. The black-treed slopes fell from them to the surfbelow, and out at sea were the lights of many ships. Away to thewestward like a swarm of fire-flies hung the lights of Hythe. The twomen sat down on a vacant seat in the dimness. For a time neither spoke.Chatteris impressed Melville with an air of being on the defensive. Hemurmured in a meditative undertone, "I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'imnot after that."
"I will admit by every standard," he said aloud, "that I have beenflappy and feeble and wrong. Very. In these things there is a prescribedand definite course. To hesitate, to have two points of view, iscondemned by all right-thinking people.... Still--one has the two pointsof view.... You have come up from Sandgate?"
"Yes."
"Did you see Miss Glendower?"
"Yes."
"Talked to her?... I suppose-- What do you think of her?"
His cigar glowed into an expectant brightness while Melville hesitatedat his answer, and showed his eyes thoughtful upon Melville's face.
"I've never thought her--" Melville sought more diplomatic phrasing."I've never found her exceptionally attractive before. Handsome, youknow, but not--winning. But this time, she seemed ... rather splendid."<
br />
"She is," said Chatteris, "she is."
He sat forward and began flicking imaginary ash from the end of hiscigar.
"She _is_ splendid," he admitted. "You--only begin to imagine. Youdon't, my dear man, know that girl. She is not--quite--in your line.She is, I assure you, the straightest and cleanest and clearest humanbeing I have ever met. She believes so firmly, she does right sosimply, there is a sort of queenly benevolence, a sort of integrity ofbenevolence----"
He left the sentence unfinished, as if unfinished it completelyexpressed his thought.
"She wants you to go back to her," said Melville bluntly.
"I know," said Chatteris and flicked again at that ghostly ash. "Shehas written that.... That's just where her complete magnificence comesin. She doesn't fence and fool about, as the she-women do. She doesn'tsquawk and say, 'You've insulted me and everything's at an end;' andshe doesn't squawk and say, 'For God's sake come back to me!' _She_doesn't say, she 'won't 'ave no truck with me not after this.' Shewrites--straight. I don't believe, Melville, I half knew her untilall this business came up. She comes out.... Before that it was, asyou said, and I quite perceive--I perceived all along--a littletoo--statistical."
He became meditative, and his cigar glow waned and presently vanishedaltogether.
"You are going back?"
"By Jove! _Yes._"
Melville stirred slightly and then they both sat rigidly quiet for aspace. Then abruptly Chatteris flung away his extinct cigar. He seemedto fling many other things away with that dim gesture. "Of course," hesaid, "I shall go back.
"It is not my fault," he insisted, "that this trouble, this separation,has ever arisen. I was moody, I was preoccupied, I know--things had gotinto my head. But if I'd been left alone....
"I have been forced into this position," he summarised.
"You understand," said Melville, "that--though I think matters areindefined and distressing just now--I don't attach blame--anywhere."
"You're open-minded," said Chatteris. "That's just your way. And I canimagine how all this upset and discomfort distresses you. You're awfullygood to keep so open-minded and not to consider me an utter outcast, anill-regulated disturber of the order of the world."
"It's a distressing state of affairs," said Melville. "But perhaps Iunderstand the forces pulling at you--better than you imagine."
"They're very simple, I suppose."
"Very."
"And yet----?"
"Well?"
He seemed to hesitate at a dangerous topic. "The other," he said.
Melville's silence bade him go on.
He plunged from his prepared attitude. "What is it? Why should--thisbeing--come into my life, as she has done, if it _is_ so simple? What isthere about her, or me, that has pulled me so astray? She has, you know.Here we are at sixes and sevens! It's not the situation, it's the mentalconflict. Why am I pulled about? She has got into my imagination. How? Ihaven't the remotest idea."
"She's beautiful," meditated Melville.
"She's beautiful certainly. But so is Miss Glendower."
"She's very beautiful. I'm not blind, Chatteris. She's beautiful in adifferent way."
"Yes, but that's only the name for the effect. _Why_ is she verybeautiful?"
Melville shrugged his shoulders.
"She's not beautiful to every one."
"You mean?"
"Bunting keeps calm."
"Oh--_he_----!"
"And other people don't seem to see it--as I do."
"Some people seem to see no beauty at all, as we do. With emotion, thatis."
"Why do we?"
"We see--finer."
"Do we? Is it finer? Why should it be finer to see beauty where it isfatal to us to see it? Why? Unless we are to believe there is no reasonin things, why should this--impossibility, be beautiful to any oneanyhow? Put it as a matter of reason, Melville. Why should _her_ smilebe so sweet to me, why should _her_ voice move me! Why her's and notAdeline's? Adeline has straight eyes and clear eyes and fine eyes, andall the difference there can be, what is it? An infinitesimal curving ofthe lid, an infinitesimal difference in the lashes--and it shatterseverything--in this way. Who could measure the difference, who couldtell the quality that makes me _swim_ in the sound of her voice.... Thedifference? After all, it's a visible thing, it's a material thing! It'sin my eyes. By Jove!" he laughed abruptly. "Imagine old Helmholtz tryingto gauge it with a battery of resonators, or Spencer in the light ofEvolution and the Environment explaining it away!"
"These things are beyond measurement," said Melville.
"Not if you measure them by their effect," said Chatteris. "And anyhow,why do they take us? That is the question I can't get away from justnow."
My cousin meditated, no doubt with his hands deep in his trousers'pockets. "It is illusion," he said. "It is a sort of glamour. After all,look at it squarely. What is she? What can she give you? She promisesyou vague somethings.... She is a snare, she is deception. She is thebeautiful mask of death."
"Yes," said Chatteris. "I know."
And then again, "I know.
"There is nothing for me to learn about that," he said. "But why--whyshould the mask of death be beautiful? After all-- We get our duty bygood hard reasoning. Why should reason and justice carry everything?Perhaps after all there are things beyond our reason, perhaps after alldesire has a claim on us?"
He stopped interrogatively and Melville was profound. "I think," saidmy cousin at last, "Desire _has_ a claim on us. Beauty, at any rate----
"I mean," he explained, "we are human beings. We are matter with mindsgrowing out of ourselves. We reach downward into the beautifulwonderland of matter, and upward to something--" He stopped, from sheerdissatisfaction with the image. "In another direction, anyhow," he triedfeebly. He jumped at something that was not quite his meaning. "Man is asort of half-way house--he must compromise."
"As you do?"
"Well. Yes. I try to strike a balance."
"A few old engravings--good, I suppose--a little luxury in furniture andflowers, a few things that come within your means. Art--in moderation,and a few kindly acts of the pleasanter sort, a certain respect fortruth; duty--also in moderation. Eh? It's just that even balance that Icannot contrive. I cannot sit down to the oatmeal of this daily life andwash it down with a temperate draught of beauty and water. Art!... Isuppose I'm voracious, I'm one of the unfit--for the civilised stage.I've sat down once, I've sat down twice, to perfectly sane, secure, andreasonable things.... It's not my way."
He repeated, "It's not my way."
Melville, I think, said nothing to that. He was distracted from theimmediate topic by the discussion of his own way of living. He was lostin egotistical comparisons. No doubt he was on the verge of saying, asmost of us would have been under the circumstances: "I don't think youquite understand my position."
"But, after all, what is the good of talking in this way?" exclaimedChatteris abruptly. "I am simply trying to elevate the whole business bydragging in these wider questions. It's justification, when I didn'tmean to justify. I have to choose between life with Adeline and thiswoman out of the sea."
"Who is Death."
"How do I know she is Death?"
"But you said you had made your choice!"
"I have."
He seemed to recollect.
"I have," he corroborated. "I told you. I am going back to see MissGlendower to-morrow.
"Yes." He recalled further portions of what I believe was some preparedand ready-phrased decision--some decision from which the conversation haddrifted. "The need of my life is discipline, the habit of persistence,of ignoring side issues and wandering thoughts. Discipline!"
"And work."
"Work, if you like to put it so; it's the same thing. The trouble so farhas been I haven't worked hard enough. I've stopped to speak to thewoman by the wayside. I've paltered with compromise, and the other thinghas caught me.... I've got to renounce it, that is all."
"It isn't th
at your work is contemptible."
"By Jove! No. It's--arduous. It has its dusty moments. There are placesto climb that are not only steep but muddy----"
"The world wants leaders. It gives a man of your class a great deal.Leisure. Honour. Training and high traditions----"
"And it expects something back. I know. I am wrong--have been wronganyhow. This dream has taken me wonderfully. And I must renounce it.After all it is not so much--to renounce a dream. It's no more thandeciding to live. There are big things in the world for men to do."
Melville produced an elaborate conceit. "If there is no VenusAnadyomene," he said, "there is Michael and his Sword."
"The stern angel in armour! But then he had a good palpable dragon toslash and not his own desires. And our way nowadays is to do a deal withthe dragons somehow, raise the minimum wage and get a better housing forthe working classes by hook or by crook."
Melville does not think that was a fair treatment of his suggestion.
"No," said Chatteris, "I've no doubt about the choice. I'm going to fallin--with the species; I'm going to take my place in the ranks in thatgreat battle for the future which is the meaning of life. I want a moralcold bath and I mean to take one. This lax dalliance with dreams anddesires must end. I will make a time table for my hours and a rule formy life, I will entangle my honour in controversies, I will give myselfto service, as a man should do. Clean-handed work, struggle, andperformance."
"And there is Miss Glendower, you know."
"Rather!" said Chatteris, with a faint touch of insincerity. "Tall andstraight-eyed and capable. By Jove! if there's to be no VenusAnadyomene, at any rate there will be a Pallas Athene. It is she whoplays the reconciler."
And then he said these words: "It won't be so bad, you know."
Melville restrained a movement of impatience, he tells me, at that.
Then Chatteris, he says, broke into a sort of speech. "The case istried," he said, "the judgment has been given. I am that I am. I've beenthrough it all and worked it out. I am a man and I must go a man's way.There is Desire, the light and guide of the world, a beacon on aheadland blazing out. Let it burn! Let it burn! The road runs near itand by it--and past.... I've made my choice. I've got to be a man, I'vegot to live a man and die a man and carry the burden of my class andtime. There it is! I've had the dream, but you see I keep hold ofreason. Here, with the flame burning, I renounce it. I make mychoice.... Renunciation! Always--renunciation! That is life for all ofus. We have desires, only to deny them, senses that we all must starve.We can live only as a part of ourselves. Why should _I_ be exempt. Forme, she is evil. For me she is death.... Only why have I seen her face?Why have I heard her voice?..."
VI
They walked out of the shadows and up a long sloping path untilSandgate, as a little line of lights, came into view below. Presentlythey came out upon the brow and walked together (the band playing with aremote and sweetening indistinctness far away behind them) towards thecliff at the end. They stood for a little while in silence looking down.Melville made a guess at his companion's thoughts.
"Why not come down to-night?" he asked.
"On a night like this!" Chatteris turned about suddenly and regarded themoonlight and the sea. He stood quite still for a space, and that coldwhite radiance gave an illusory strength and decision to his face."No," he said at last, and the word was almost a sigh.
"Go down to the girl below there. End the thing. She will be there,thinking of you----"
"No," said Chatteris, "no."
"It's not ten yet," Melville tried again.
Chatteris thought. "No," he answered, "not to-night. To-morrow, in thelight of everyday.
"I want a good, gray, honest day," he said, "with a south-west wind....These still, soft nights! How can you expect me to do anything of thatsort to-night?"
And then he murmured as if he found the word a satisfying word torepeat, "Renunciation."
"By Jove!" he said with the most astonishing transition, "but this is anight out of fairyland! Look at the lights of those windows below thereand then up--up into this enormous blue of sky. And there, as if it werefainting with moonlight--shines one star."
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT
I
Just precisely what happened after that has been the most impossiblething to disinter. I have given all the things that Melville rememberedwere said, I have linked them into a conversation and checked them by mycousin's afterthoughts, and finally I have read the whole thing over tohim. It is of course no verbatim rendering, but it is, he says, closelyafter the manner of their talk, the gist was that, and things of thatsort were said. And when he left Chatteris, he fully believed that thefinal and conclusive thing was said. And then he says it came into hishead that, apart from and outside this settlement, there still remaineda tangible reality, capable of action, the Sea Lady. What was she goingto do? The thought toppled him back into a web of perplexities again. Itcarried him back into a state of inconclusive interrogation pastLummidge's Hotel.
The two men had gone back to the Metropole and had parted with a firmhandclasp outside the glare of the big doorway. Chatteris went straightin, Melville fancies, but he is not sure. I understand Melville hadsome private thinking to do on his own account, and I conceive himwalking away in a state of profound preoccupation. Afterwards the factthat the Sea Lady was not to be abolished by renunciations, cropped upin his mind, and he passed back along the Leas, as I have said. Hisinconclusive interrogations elicited at the utmost that Lummidge'sPrivate and Family Hotel is singularly like any other hotel of itsclass. Its windows tell no secrets. And there Melville's narrative ends.
With that my circumstantial record necessarily comes to an end also.There are sources, of course, and glimpses. Parker refuses,unhappily--as I explained. The chief of these sources are, first,Gooch, the valet employed by Chatteris; and, secondly, the hall-porterof Lummidge's Private and Family Hotel.
The valet's evidence is precise, but has an air of being irrelevant. Hewitnesses that at a quarter past eleven he went up to ask Chatteris ifthere was anything more to do that night, and found him seated in anarm-chair before the open window, with his chin upon his hands, staringat nothing--which, indeed, as Schopenhauer observes in his crowningpassage, is the whole of human life.
"More to do?" said Chatteris.
"Yessir," said the valet.
"Nothing," said Chatteris, "absolutely nothing." And the valet, findingthis answer quite satisfactory, wished him goodnight and departed.
Probably Chatteris remained in this attitude for a considerabletime--half an hour, perhaps, or more. Slowly, it would seem, his moodunderwent a change. At some definite moment it must have been that hislethargic meditation gave way to a strange activity, to a sort ofhysterical reaction against all his resolves and renunciations. Hisfirst action seems to me grotesque--and grotesquely pathetic. He wentinto his dressing-room, and in the morning "his clo'es," said the valet,"was shied about as though 'e'd lost a ticket." This poor worshipper ofbeauty and the dream shaved! He shaved and washed and he brushed hishair, and, his valet testifies, one of the brushes got "shied" behindthe bed. Even this throwing about of brushes seems to me to have donelittle or nothing to palliate his poor human preoccupation with thetoilette. He changed his gray flannels--which suited him very well--forhis white ones, which suited him extremely. He must deliberately andconscientiously have made himself quite "lovely," as a schoolgirl wouldhave put it.
And having capped his great "renunciation" by these proceedings, heseems to have gone straight to Lummidge's Private and Family Hotel anddemanded to see the Sea Lady.
She had retired.
This came from Parker, and was delivered in a chilling manner by thehall-porter.
Chatteris swore at the hall-porter. "Tell her I'm here," he said.
"She's retired," said the hall-porter with official severity.
"Will you tell her I'm here?" said Chatteris, suddenly white.
"What name,
sir?" said the hall-porter, in order, as he explains, "toavoid a frackass."
"Chatteris. Tell her I must see her now. Do you hear, _now_?"
The hall-porter went to Parker, and came half-way back. He wished togoodness he was not a hall-porter. The manager had gone out--it was astagnant hour. He decided to try Parker again; he raised his voice.
The Sea Lady called to Parker from the inner room. There was an intervalof tension.
I gather that the Sea Lady put on a loose wrap, and the faithful Parkereither carried her or sufficiently helped her from her bedroom to thecouch in the little sitting-room. In the meanwhile the hall-porterhovered on the stairs, praying for the manager--prayers that wentunanswered--and Chatteris fumed below. Then we have a glimpse of the SeaLady.
"I see her just in the crack of the door," said the porter, "as thatmaid of hers opened it. She was raised up on her hands, and turned sotowards the door. Looking exactly like this----"
And the hall-porter, who has an Irish type of face, a short nose, longupper lip, and all the rest of it, and who has also neglected hisdentist, projected his face suddenly, opened his eyes very wide, andslowly curved his mouth into a fixed smile, and so remained until hejudged the effect on me was complete.
Parker, a little flushed, but resolutely flattening everything to thequality of the commonplace, emerged upon him suddenly. Miss Waters couldsee Mr. Chatteris for a few minutes. She was emphatic with the "MissWaters," the more emphatic for all the insurgent stress of the goddess,protestingly emphatic. And Chatteris went up, white and resolved, tothat smiling expectant presence. No one witnessed their meeting butParker--assuredly Parker could not resist seeing that, but Parker issilent--Parker preserves a silence that rubies could not break.
All I know, is this much from the porter:
"When I said she was up there and would see him," he says, "the way herooshed up was outrageous. This is a Private Family Hotel. Of course onesees things at times even here, but----
"I couldn't find the manager to tell 'im," said the hall-porter. "Andwhat was _I_ authorised to do?
"For a bit they talked with the door open, and then it was shut. Thatmaid of hers did it--I lay."
I asked an ignoble question.
"Couldn't ketch a word," said the hall-porter. "Dropped towhispers--instanter."
II
And afterwards--
It was within ten minutes of one that Parker, conferring an amount ofdecorum on the request beyond the power of any other living being,descended to demand--of all conceivable things--the bath chair!
"I got it," said the hall-porter with inimitable profundity.
And then, having let me realise the fulness of that, he said: "Theynever used it!"
"No?"
"No! He carried her down in his arms."
"And out?"
"And out!"
He was difficult to follow in his description of the Sea Lady. She woreher wrap, it seems, and she was "like a statue"--whatever he may havemeant by that. Certainly not that she was impassive. "Only," said theporter, "she was alive. One arm was bare, I know, and her hair was down,a tossing mass of gold.
"He looked, you know, like a man who's screwed himself up.
"She had one hand holding his hair--yes, holding his hair, with herfingers in among it....
"And when she see my face she threw her head back laughing at me.
"As much as to say, '_got_ 'im!'
"Laughed at me, she did. Bubblin' over."
I stood for a moment conceiving this extraordinary picture. Then aquestion occurred to me.
"Did _he_ laugh?" I asked.
"Gord bless you, sir, laugh? _No!_"
III
The definite story ends in the warm light outside Lummidge's Private andFamily Hotel. One sees that bright solitude of the Leas stretching whiteand blank--deserted as only a seaside front in the small hours can bedeserted--and all its electric light ablaze. And then the dark line ofthe edge where the cliff drops down to the undercliff and sea. Andbeyond, moonlit, the Channel and its incessant ships. Outside the frontof the hotel, which is one of a great array of pallid white facades,stands this little black figure of a hall-porter, staring stupidly intothe warm and luminous mystery of the night that has swallowed Sea Ladyand Chatteris together. And he is the sole living thing in the picture.
There is a little shelter set in the brow of the Leas, wherein, duringthe winter season, a string band plays. Close by there are steps that godown precipitously to the lower road below. Down these it must have beenthey went together, hastening downward out of this life of ours tounknown and inconceivable things. So it is I seem to see them, andsurely though he was not in a laughing mood, there was now no doubt norresignation in his face. Assuredly now he had found himself, for a timeat least he was sure of himself, and that at least cannot be misery,though it lead straight through a few swift strides to death.
They went down through the soft moonlight, tall and white and splendid,interlocked, with his arms about her, his brow to her white shoulder andher hair about his face. And she, I suppose, smiled above him andcaressed him and whispered to him. For a moment they must have glowedunder the warm light of the lamp that is half-way down the steps there,and then the shadows closed about them. He must have crossed the roadwith her, through the laced moonlight of the tree shadows, and throughthe shrubs and bushes of the undercliff, into the shadeless moon glareof the beach. There was no one to see that last descent, to tell whetherfor a moment he looked back before he waded into the phosphorescence,and for a little swam with her, and presently swam no longer, and so wasno more to be seen by any one in this gray world of men.
Did he look back, I wonder? They swam together for a little while, theman and the sea goddess who had come for him, with the sky above themand the water about them all, warmly filled with the moonlight and setwith shining stars. It was no time for him to think of truth, nor of thehonest duties he had left behind him, as they swam together into theunknown. And of the end I can only guess and dream. Did there come asudden horror upon him at the last, a sudden perception of infiniteerror, and was he drawn down, swiftly and terribly, a bubblingrepentance, into those unknown deeps? Or was she tender and wonderful tothe last, and did she wrap her arms about him and draw him down, downuntil the soft waters closed above him into a gentle ecstasy of death?
Into these things we cannot pry or follow, and on the margin of thesoftly breathing water the story of Chatteris must end. For thetailpiece to that, let us put that policeman who in the small hoursbefore dawn came upon the wrap the Sea Lady had been wearing just asthe tide overtook it. It was not the sort of garment low peoplesometimes throw away--it was a soft and costly wrap. I seem to see himperplexed and dubious, wrap in charge over his arm and lantern in hand,scanning first the white beach and black bushes behind him and thenstaring out to sea. It was the inexplicable abandonment of a thoroughlycomfortable and desirable thing.
"What were people up to?" one figures him asking, this simple citizen ofa plain and observed world. "What do such things mean?
"To throw away such an excellent wrap...!"
In all the southward heaven there were only a planet and the sinkingmoon, and from his feet a path of quivering light must have started andrun up to the extreme dark edge before him of the sky. Ever and againthe darkness east and west of that glory would be lit by a momentarygleam of phosphorescence; and far out the lights of ships were shiningbright and yellow. Across its shimmer a black fishing smack was glidingout of mystery into mystery. Dungeness shone from the west a pin-pointof red light, and in the east the tireless glare of that great beacon onGris-nez wheeled athwart the sky and vanished and came again.
I picture the interrogation of his lantern going out for a little way, astain of faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious vast serenity ofnight.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious printer's errors have been silentlycorrected. Otherwise spelling, hyphenation, interpunction and grammarhave been preserved as i
n the original.
