The Sea Lady Read online

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  SYMPTOMATIC

  I

  My cousin Melville is never very clear about his dates. Now this isgreatly to be regretted, because it would be very illuminating indeed ifone could tell just how many days elapsed before he came upon Chatterisin intimate conversation with the Sea Lady. He was going along the frontof the Leas with some books from the Public Library that Miss Glendowerhad suddenly wished to consult, and which she, with that entireignorance of his lack of admiration for her which was part of her wantof charm for him, had bidden him bring her. It was in one of thosesheltered paths just under the brow which give such a pleasant andcharacteristic charm to Folkestone, that he came upon a little groupabout the Sea Lady's bath chair. Chatteris was seated in one of thewooden seats that are embedded in the bank, and was leaning forward andlooking into the Sea Lady's face; and she was speaking with a smile thatstruck Melville even at the time as being a little special in itsquality--and she seems to have been capable of many charming smiles.Parker was a little distance away, where a sort of bastion projects andgives a wide view of the pier and harbour and the coast of France,regarding it all with a qualified disfavour, and the bath chairman wascrumpled up against the bank lost in that wistful melancholy that theconstant perambulation of broken humanity necessarily engenders.

  A little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair.]

  My cousin slackened his pace a little and came up and joined them.The conversation hung at his approach. Chatteris sat back a little, butthere seemed no resentment and he sought a topic for the three todiscuss in the books Melville carried.

  "Books?" he said.

  "For Miss Glendower," said Melville.

  "Oh!" said Chatteris.

  "What are they about?" asked the Sea Lady.

  "Land tenure," said Melville.

  "That's hardly my subject," said the Sea Lady, and Chatteris joined inher smile as if he saw a jest.

  There was a little pause.

  "You are contesting Hythe?" said Melville.

  "Fate points that way," said Chatteris.

  "They threaten a dissolution for September."

  "It will come in a month," said Chatteris, with the inimitable tone ofone who knows.

  "In that case we shall soon be busy."

  "And _I_ may canvass," said the Sea Lady. "I never have----"

  "Miss Waters," explained Chatteris, "has been telling me she means tohelp us." He met Melville's eye frankly.

  "It's rough work, Miss Waters," said Melville.

  "I don't mind that. It's fun. And I want to help. I really do want tohelp--Mr. Chatteris."

  "You know, that's encouraging."

  "I could go around with you in my bath chair?"

  "It would be a picnic," said Chatteris.

  "I mean to help anyhow," said the Sea Lady.

  "You know the case for the plaintiff?" asked Melville.

  She looked at him.

  "You've got your arguments?"

  "I shall ask them to vote for Mr. Chatteris, and afterwards when I seethem I shall remember them and smile and wave my hand. What else isthere?"

  "Nothing," said Chatteris, and shut the lid on Melville. "I wish I hadan argument as good."

  "What sort of people are they here?" asked Melville. "Isn't there asmuggling interest to conciliate?"

  "I haven't asked that," said Chatteris. "Smuggling is over and past,you know. Forty years ago. It always has been forty years ago. Theytrotted out the last of the smugglers,--interesting old man, full ofreminiscences,--when there was a count of the Saxon Shore. He rememberedsmuggling--forty years ago. Really, I doubt if there ever was anysmuggling. The existing coast guard is a sacrifice to a vainsuperstition."

  "Why!" cried the Sea Lady. "Only about five weeks ago I saw quite nearhere----"

  She stopped abruptly and caught Melville's eye. He grasped herdifficulty.

  "In a paper?" he suggested.

  "Yes, in a paper," she said, seizing the rope he threw her.

  "Well?" asked Chatteris.

  "There is smuggling still," said the Sea Lady, with an air of some onewho decides not to tell an anecdote that is suddenly found to be halfforgotten.

  "There's no doubt it happens," said Chatteris, missing it all. "But itdoesn't appear in the electioneering. I certainly sha'n't agitate for afaster revenue cutter. However things may be in that respect, I take theline that they are very well as they are. That's my line, of course."And he looked out to sea. The eyes of Melville and the Sea Lady had anintimate moment.

  "There, you know, is just a specimen of the sort of thing we do," saidChatteris. "Are you prepared to be as intricate as that?"

  "Quite," said the Sea Lady.

  My cousin was reminded of an anecdote.

  The talk degenerated into anecdotes of canvassing, and ran shallow. Mycousin was just gathering that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Bunting had beenwith the Sea Lady and had gone into the town to a shop, when theyreturned. Chatteris rose to greet them and explained--what had been byno means apparent before--that he was on his way to Adeline, and after afew further trivialities he and Melville went on together.

  A brief silence fell between them.

  "Who is that Miss Waters?" asked Chatteris.

  "Friend of Mrs. Bunting," prevaricated Melville.

  "So I gather.... She seems a very charming person."

  "She is."

  "She's interesting. Her illness seems to throw her up. It makes apassive thing of her, like a picture or something that's--imaginary.Imagined--anyhow. She sits there and smiles and responds. Her eyes--havesomething intimate. And yet----"

  My cousin offered no assistance.

  "Where did Mrs. Bunting find her."

  My cousin had to gather himself together for a second or so.

  "There's something," he said deliberately, "that Mrs. Bunting doesn'tseem disposed----"

  "What can it be?"

  "It's bound to be all right," said Melville rather weakly.

  "It's strange, too. Mrs. Bunting is usually so disposed----"

  Melville left that to itself.

  "That's what one feels," said Chatteris.

  "What?"

  "Mystery."

  My cousin shares with me a profound detestation of that high mysticmethod of treating women. He likes women to be finite--and nice. Infact, he likes everything to be finite--and nice. So he merely grunted.

  But Chatteris was not to be stopped by that. He passed to a criticalnote. "No doubt it's all illusion. All women are impressionists, apatch, a light. You get an effect. And that is all you are meant to get,I suppose. She gets an effect. But how--that's the mystery. It's notmerely beauty. There's plenty of beauty in the world. But not of theseeffects. The eyes, I fancy."

  He dwelt on that for a moment.

  "There's really nothing in eyes, you know, Chatteris," said my cousinMelville, borrowing an alien argument and a tone of analytical cynicismfrom me. "Have you ever looked at eyes through a hole in a sheet?"

  "Oh, I don't know," said Chatteris. "I don't mean the mere physicaleye.... Perhaps it's the look of health--and the bath chair. A bolddiscord. You don't know what's the matter, Melville?"

  "How?"

  "I gather from Bunting it's a disablement--not a deformity."

  "He ought to know."

  "I'm not so sure of that. You don't happen to know the nature of herdisablement?"

  "I can't tell at all," said Melville in a speculative tone. It struckhim he was getting to prevaricate better.

  The subject seemed exhausted. They spoke of a common friend whom thesight of the Metropole suggested. Then they did not talk at all for atime, until the stir and interest of the band stand was passed. ThenChatteris threw out a thought.

  "Complex business--feminine motives," he remarked.

  "How?"

  "This canvassing. _She_ can't be interested in philanthropic Liberalism."

  "There's a difference in the type. And besides, it's a personal matter."

 
"Not necessarily, is it? Surely there's not such an intellectual gapbetween the sexes! If _you_ can get interested----"

  "Oh, I know."

  "Besides, it's not a question of principles. It's the fun ofelectioneering."

  "Fun!"

  "There's no knowing what won't interest the feminine mind," saidMelville, and added, "or what will."

  Chatteris did not answer.

  "It's the district visiting instinct, I suppose," said Melville. "Theyall have it. It's the canvassing. All women like to go into houses thatdon't belong to them."

  "Very likely," said Chatteris shortly, and failing a reply fromMelville, he gave way to secret meditations, it would seem still of afairly agreeable sort.

  The twelve o'clock gun thudded from Shornecliffe Camp.

  "By Jove!" said Chatteris, and quickened his steps.

  * * * * *

  They found Adeline busy amidst her papers. As they entered she pointedreproachfully, yet with the protrusion of a certain Marcella-likeundertone of sweetness, at the clock. The apologies of Chatteris wereeffusive and winning, and involved no mention of the Sea Lady on theLeas.

  Melville delivered his books and left them already wading deeply intothe details of the district organisation that the local Liberalorganiser had submitted.

  II

  A little while after the return of Chatteris, my cousin Melvilleand the Sea Lady were under the ilex at the end of the sea gardenand--disregarding Parker (as every one was accustomed to do), who wasin a garden chair doing some afternoon work at a proper distance--therewas nobody with them at all. Fred and the girls were out cycling--Fredhad gone with them at the Sea Lady's request--and Miss Glendower andMrs. Bunting were at Hythe calling diplomatically on some rather horridlocal people who might be serviceable to Harry in his electioneering.

  Mr. Bunting was out fishing. He was not fond of fishing, but he was inmany respects an exceptionally resolute little man, and he had taken tofishing every day in the afternoon after luncheon in order to breakhimself of what Mrs. Bunting called his "ridiculous habit" of gettingsea-sick whenever he went out in a boat. He said that if fishing from aboat with pieces of mussels for bait after luncheon would not break thehabit nothing would, and certainly it seemed at times as if it weregoing to break everything that was in him. But the habit escaped. This,however, is a digression.

  These two, I say, were sitting in the ample shade under the evergreenoak, and Melville, I imagine, was in those fine faintly patternedflannels that in the year 1899 combined correctness with ease. He was nodoubt looking at the shaded face of the Sea Lady, framed in a frame ofsunlit yellow-green lawn and black-green ilex leaves--at least so myimpulse for verisimilitude conceives it--and she at first was pensiveand downcast that afternoon and afterwards she was interested and lookedinto his eyes. Either she must have suggested that he might smoke orelse he asked. Anyhow, his cigarettes were produced. She looked at themwith an arrested gesture, and he hung for a moment, doubtful, on hergesture.

  "I suppose _you_--" he said.

  "I never learned."

  He glanced at Parker and then met the Sea Lady's regard.

  "It's one of the things I came for," she said.

  He took the only course.

  She accepted a cigarette and examined it thoughtfully. "Down there," shesaid, "it's just one of the things-- You will understand we get nothingbut saturated tobacco. Some of the mermen-- There's something they havepicked up from the sailors. Quids, I think they call it. But that's toohorrid for words!"

  She dismissed the unpleasant topic by a movement, and lapsed intothought.

  My cousin clicked his match-box.

  She had a momentary doubt and glanced towards the house. "Mrs. Bunting?"she asked. Several times, I understand, she asked the same thing.

  "She wouldn't mind--" said Melville, and stopped.

  "She won't think it improper," he amplified, "if nobody else thinks itimproper."

  "There's nobody else," said the Sea Lady, glancing at Parker, and mycousin lit the match.

  My cousin has an indirect habit of mind. With all general and allpersonal things his desperation to get at them obliquely amounts almostto a passion; he could no more go straight to a crisis than a cat couldto a stranger. He came off at a tangent now as he was sitting forwardand scrutinising her first very creditable efforts to draw. "I justwonder," he said, "exactly what it was you _did_ come for."

  She smiled at him over a little jet of smoke. "Why, this," she said.

  "And hairdressing?"

  "And dressing."

  She smiled again after a momentary hesitation. "And all this sort ofthing," she said, as if she felt she had answered him perhaps a littlebelow his deserts. Her gesture indicated the house and the lawn and--mycousin Melville wondered just exactly how much else.

  "Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea Lady.

  "Beautifully," said my cousin with a faint sigh in his voice. "What doyou think of it?"

  "It was worth coming for," said the Sea Lady, smiling into his eyes.

  "But did you really just come----?"

  She filled in his gap. "To see what life was like on land here?... Isn'tthat enough?"

  Melville's cigarette had failed to light. He regarded its blightedcareer pensively.

  "Life," he said, "isn't all--this sort of thing."

  "This sort of thing?"

  "Sunlight. Cigarette smoking. Talk. Looking nice."

  "But it's made up----"

  "Not altogether."

  "For example?"

  "Oh, _you_ know."

  "What?"

  "You know," said Melville, and would not look at her.

  "I decline to know," she said after a little pause.

  "Besides--" he said.

  "Yes?"

  "You told Mrs. Bunting--" It occurred to him that he was telling tales,but that scruple came too late.

  "Well?"

  "Something about a soul."

  She made no immediate answer. He looked up and her eyes were smiling."Mr. Melville," she said, innocently, "what _is_ a soul?"

  "Well," said my cousin readily, and then paused for a space. "A soul,"said he, and knocked an imaginary ash from his extinct cigarette.

  "A soul," he repeated, and glanced at Parker.

  "A soul, you know," he said again, and looked at the Sea Lady with theair of a man who is handling a difficult matter with skilful care.

  "Come to think of it," he said, "it's a rather complicated matter toexplain----"

  "To a being without one?"

  "To any one," said my cousin Melville, suddenly admitting hisdifficulty.

  He meditated upon her eyes for a moment.

  "Besides," he said, "you know what a soul is perfectly well."

  "No," she answered, "I don't."

  "You know as well as I do."

  "Ah! that may be different."

  "You came to get a soul."

  "Perhaps I don't want one. Why--if one hasn't one----?"

  "Ah, _there_!" And my cousin shrugged his shoulders. "But really youknow-- It's just the generality of it that makes it hard to define."

  "Everybody has a soul?"

  "Every one."

  "Except me?"

  "I'm not certain of that."

  "Mrs. Bunting?"

  "Certainly."

  "And Mr. Bunting?"

  "Every one."

  "Has Miss Glendower?"

  "Lots."

  The Sea Lady mused. She went off at a tangent abruptly.

  "Mr. Melville," she said, "what is a union of souls?"

  Melville flicked his extinct cigarette suddenly into an elbow shape andthen threw it away. The phrase may have awakened some reminiscence."It's an extra," he said. "It's a sort of flourish.... And sometimesit's like leaving cards by footmen--a substitute for the real presence."

  There came a gap. He remained downcast, trying to find a way towardswhatever it was that was in his mind to say. Conceivably, he did notclea
rly know what that might be until he came to it. The Sea Ladyabandoned an attempt to understand him in favour of a more urgent topic.

  "Do you think Miss Glendower and Mr. Chatteris----?"

  Melville looked up at her. He noticed she had hung on the latter name."Decidedly," he said. "It's just what they _would_ do."

  Then he spoke again. "Chatteris?" he said.

  "Yes," said she.

  "I thought so," said Melville.

  The Sea Lady regarded him gravely. They scrutinised each other with anunprecedented intimacy. Melville was suddenly direct. It was a discoverythat it seemed he ought to have made all along. He felt quiteunaccountably bitter; he spoke with a twitch of the mouth and his voicehad a note of accusation. "You want to talk about him."

  She nodded--still grave.

  "Well, _I_ don't." He changed his note. "But I will if you wish it."

  "I thought you would."

  "Oh, _you_ know," said Melville, discovering his extinct cigarette waswithin reach of a vindictive heel.

  She said nothing.

  "Well?" said Melville.

  "I saw him first," she apologised, "some years ago."

  "Where?"

  "In the South Seas--near Tonga."

  "And that is really what you came for?"

  This time her manner was convincing. She admitted, "Yes."

  Melville was carefully impartial. "He's sightly," he admitted, "andwell-built and a decent chap--a decent chap. But I don't see whyyou----"

  He went off at a tangent. "He didn't see you----?"

  "Oh, no."

  Melville's pose and tone suggested a mind of extreme liberality. "Idon't see why you came," he said. "Nor what you mean to do. Yousee"--with an air of noting a trifling but valid obstacle--"there's MissGlendower."

  "Is there?" she said.

  "Well, isn't there?"

  "That's just it," she said.

  "And besides after all, you know, why should you----?"

  "I admit it's unreasonable," she said. "But why reason about it? It's amatter of the imagination----"

  "For him?"

  "How should I know how it takes him? That is what I _want_ to know."

  Melville looked her in the eyes again. "You know, you're not playingfair," he said.

  "To her?"

  "To any one."

  "Why?"

  "Because you are immortal--and unincumbered. Because you can doeverything you want to do--and we cannot. I don't know why we cannot,but we cannot. Here we are, with our short lives and our little souls tosave, or lose, fussing for our little concerns. And you, out of theelements, come and beckon----"

  "The elements have their rights," she said. And then: "The elements arethe elements, you know. That is what you forget."

  "Imagination?"

  "Certainly. That's _the_ element. Those elements of your chemists----"

  "Yes?"

  "Are all imagination. There isn't any other." She went on: "And all theelements of your life, the life you imagine you are living, the littlethings you must do, the little cares, the extraordinary little duties,the day by day, the hypnotic limitations--all these things are a fancythat has taken hold of you too strongly for you to shake off. Youdaren't, you mustn't, you can't. To us who watch you----"

  "You watch us?"

  "Oh, yes. We watch you, and sometimes we envy you. Not only for the dryair and the sunlight, and the shadows of trees, and the feeling ofmorning, and the pleasantness of many such things, but because yourlives begin and end--because you look towards an end."

  She reverted to her former topic. "But you are so limited, so tied! Thelittle time you have, you use so poorly. You begin and you end, and allthe time between it is as if you were enchanted; you are afraid to dothis that would be delightful to do, you must do that, though you knowall the time it is stupid and disagreeable. Just think of thethings--even the little things--you mustn't do. Up there on the Leas inthis hot weather all the people are sitting in stuffy ugly clothes--everso much too much clothes, hot tight boots, you know, when they have themost lovely pink feet, some of them--we _see_,--and they are all withlittle to talk about and nothing to look at, and bound not to do allsorts of natural things and bound to do all sorts of preposterousthings. Why are they bound? Why are they letting life slip by them?Just as if they wouldn't all of them presently be dead! Suppose you wereto go up there in a bathing dress and a white cotton hat----"

  "It wouldn't be proper!" cried Melville.

  "Why not?"

  "It would be outrageous!"

  "But any one may see you like that on the beach!"

  "That's different."

  "It isn't different. You dream it's different. And in just the same wayyou dream all the other things are proper or improper or good or bad todo. Because you are in a dream, a fantastic, unwholesome little dream.So small, so infinitely small! I saw you the other day dreadfullyworried by a spot of ink on your sleeve--almost the whole afternoon."

  "Why not?"]

  My cousin looked distressed. She abandoned the ink-spot.

  "Your life, I tell you, is a dream--a dream, and you can't wake out ofit----"

  "And if so, why do you tell me?"

  She made no answer for a space.

  "Why do you tell me?" he insisted.

  He heard the rustle of her movement as she bent towards him.

  She came warmly close to him. She spoke in gently confidentialundertone, as one who imparts a secret that is not to be too lightlygiven. "Because," she said, "there are better dreams."

  III

  For a moment it seemed to Melville that he had been addressed bysomething quite other than the pleasant lady in the bath chair beforehim. "But how--?" he began and stopped. He remained silent with aperplexed face. She leaned back and glanced away from him, and when atlast she turned and spoke again, specific realities closed in on himonce more.

  "Why shouldn't I," she asked, "if I want to?"

  "Shouldn't what?"

  "If I fancy Chatteris."

  "One might think of obstacles," he reflected.

  "He's not hers," she said.

  "In a way, he's trying to be," said Melville.

  "Trying to be! He has to be what he is. Nothing can make him hers. Ifyou weren't dreaming you would see that." My cousin was silent. "She'snot _real_," she went on. "She's a mass of fancies and vanities. Shegets everything out of books. She gets herself out of a book. You cansee her doing it here.... What is she seeking? What is she trying todo? All this work, all this political stuff of hers? She talks of thecondition of the poor! What is the condition of the poor? A drearytossing on the bed of existence, a perpetual fear of consequences thatperpetually distresses them. Lives of anxiety they lead, because they donot know what a dream the whole thing is. Suppose they were not anxiousand afraid.... And what does she care for the condition of the poor,after all? It is only a point of departure in her dream. In her heartshe does not want their dreams to be happier, in her heart she has nopassion for them, only her dream is that she should be prominently doinggood, asserting herself, controlling their affairs amidst thanks andpraise and blessings. _Her_ dream! Of serious things!--a rout ofphantoms pursuing a phantom ignis fatuus--the afterglow of a mirage.Vanity of vanities----"

  "It's real enough to her."

  "As real as she can make it, you know. But she isn't real herself. Shebegins badly."

  "And he, you know----"

  "He doesn't believe in it."

  "I'm not so sure."

  "I am--now."

  "He's a complicated being."

  "He will ravel out," said the Sea Lady.

  "I think you misjudge him about that work of his, anyhow," saidMelville. "He's a man rather divided against himself." He addedabruptly, "We all are." He recovered himself from the generality. "It'svague, I admit, a sort of vague wish to do something decent, you know,that he has----"

  "A sort of vague wish," she conceded; "but----"

  "He means well," said Melville, clinging to his propositi
on.

  "He means nothing. Only very dimly he suspects----"

  "Yes?"

  "What you too are beginning to suspect.... That other things may beconceivable even if they are not possible. That this life of yours isnot everything. That it is not to be taken too seriously. Because ...there are better dreams!"

  The song of the sirens was in her voice; my cousin would not look at herface. "I know nothing of any other dreams," he said. "One has oneselfand this life, and that is enough to manage. What other dreams can therebe? Anyhow, we are in the dream--we have to accept it. Besides, youknow, that's going off the question. We were talking of Chatteris, andwhy you have come for him. Why should you come, why should any oneoutside come--into this world?"

  "Because we are permitted to come--we immortals. And why, if we chooseto do so, and taste this life that passes and continues, as rain thatfalls to the ground, why should we not do it? Why should we abstain?"

  "And Chatteris?"

  "If he pleases me."

  He roused himself to a Titanic effort against an oppression that wascoming over him. He tried to get the thing down to a definite smallcase, an incident, an affair of considerations. "But look here, youknow," he said. "What precisely do you mean to do if you get him? Youdon't seriously intend to keep up the game to that extent. You don'tmean--positively, in our terrestrial fashion, you know--to marry him?"

  The Sea Lady laughed at his recovery of the practical tone. "Well, whynot?" she asked.

  "And go about in a bath chair, and-- No, that's not it. What _is_ it?"

  He looked up into her eyes, and it was like looking into deep water.Down in that deep there stirred impalpable things. She smiled at him.

  "No!" she said, "I sha'n't marry him and go about in a bath chair. Andgrow old as all earthly women must. (It's the dust, I think, and thedryness of the air, and the way you begin and end.) You burn too fast,you flare and sink and die. This life of yours!--the illnesses and thegrowing old! When the skin wears shabby, and the light is out of thehair, and the teeth-- Not even for love would I face it. No.... Butthen you know--" Her voice sank to a low whisper. "_There are betterdreams._"

  "What dreams?" rebelled Melville. "What do you mean? What are you? Whatdo you mean by coming into this life--you who pretend to be a woman--andwhispering, whispering ... to us who are in it, to us who have noescape."

  "But there is an escape," said the Sea Lady.

  "How?"

  "For some there is an escape. When the whole life rushes to a moment--"And then she stopped. Now there is clearly no sense in this sentence tomy mind, even from a lady of an essentially imaginary sort, who comesout of the sea. How can a whole life rush to a moment? But whatever itwas she really did say, there is no doubt she left it half unsaid.

  He glanced up at her abrupt pause, and she was looking at the house.

  * * * * *

  "Do ... ris! Do ... ris! Are you there?" It was Mrs. Bunting's voicefloating athwart the lawn, the voice of the ascendant present, ofinvincibly sensible things. The world grew real again to Melville. Heseemed to wake up, to start back from some delusive trance that creptupon him.

  He looked at the Sea Lady as if he were already incredulous of thethings they had said, as if he had been asleep and dreamed the talk.Some light seemed to go out, some fancy faded. His eye rested upon theinscription, "Flamps, Bath Chair Proprietor," just visible under herarm.

  "We've got perhaps a little more serious than--" he said doubtfully, andthen, "What you have been saying--did you exactly mean----?"

  The rustle of Mrs. Bunting's advance became audible, and Parker movedand coughed.

  He was quite sure they had been "more serious than----"

  "Another time perhaps----"

  Had all these things really been said, or was he under some fantastichallucination?

  He had a sudden thought. "Where's your cigarette?" he asked.

  But her cigarette had ended long ago.

  "And what have you been talking about so long?" sang Mrs. Bunting, withan almost motherly hand on the back of Melville's chair.

  "Oh!" said Melville, at a loss for once, and suddenly rising from hischair to face her, and then to the Sea Lady with an artificially easysmile, "What _have_ we been talking about?"

  "All sorts of things, I dare say," said Mrs. Bunting, in what mightalmost be called an arch manner. And she honoured Melville with aspecial smile--one of those smiles that are morally almost winks.

  The waiter retires amazed.]

  My cousin caught all the archness full in the face, and for four secondshe stared at Mrs. Bunting in amazement. He wanted breath. Then theyall laughed together, and Mrs. Bunting sat down pleasantly and remarked,quite audibly to herself, "As if I couldn't guess."

  IV

  I gather that after this talk Melville fell into an extraordinary net ofdoubting. In the first place, and what was most distressing, he doubtedwhether this conversation could possibly have happened at all, and if ithad whether his memory had not played him some trick in modifying andintensifying the import of it all. My cousin occasionally dreamsconversations of so sober and probable a sort as to mingle quiteperplexingly with his real experiences. Was this one of these occasions?He found himself taking up and scrutinising, as it were, first thisremembered sentence and then that. Had she really said this thing andquite in this way? His memory of their conversation was never quite thesame for two days together. Had she really and deliberately foreshadowedfor Chatteris some obscure and mystical submergence?

  What intensified and complicated his doubts most, was the Sea Lady'ssubsequent serene freedom from allusion to anything that might or mightnot have passed. She behaved just as she had always behaved; neither anadded intimacy nor that distance that follows indiscreet confidencesappeared in her manner.

  And amidst this crop of questions arose presently quite a new set ofdoubts, as if he were not already sufficiently equipped. The Sea Ladyalleged she had come to the world that lives on land, for Chatteris.

  And then----?

  He had not hitherto looked ahead to see precisely what would happen toChatteris, to Miss Glendower, to the Buntings or any one when, as seemedhighly probable, Chatteris was "got." There were other dreams, there wasanother existence, an elsewhere--and Chatteris was to go there! So shesaid! But it came into Melville's mind with a quite disproportionateforce and vividness that once, long ago, he had seen a picture of a manand a mermaid, rushing downward through deep water.... Could it possiblybe that sort of thing in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-nine?Conceivably, if she had said these things, did she mean them, and if shemeant them, and this definite campaign of capture was in hand, what wasan orderly, sane-living, well-dressed bachelor of the world to do?

  Look on--until things ended in a catastrophe?

  One figures his face almost aged. He appears to have hovered about thehouse on the Sandgate Riviera to a scandalous extent, failing always toget a sufficiently long and intimate tete-a-tete with the Sea Lady tosettle once for all his doubts as to what really had been said and whathe had dreamed or fancied in their talk. Never had he been soexceedingly disturbed as he was by the twist this talk had taken. Neverhad his habitual pose of humorous acquiescence in life been quite sodifficult to keep up. He became positively absent-minded. "You know ifit's like that, it's serious," was the burden of his private mutterings.His condition was palpable even to Mrs. Bunting. But she misunderstoodhis nature. She said something. Finally, and quite abruptly, he set offto London in a state of frantic determination to get out of it all. TheSea Lady wished him good-bye in Mrs. Bunting's presence as if there hadnever been anything unusual between them.

  I suppose one may contrive to understand something of his disturbance.He had made quite considerable sacrifices to the world. He had, at greatpains, found his place and his way in it, he had imagined he had really"got the hang of it," as people say, and was having an interesting time.And then, you know, to encounter a voice, that subsequently insists u
ponhaunting you with "_There are better dreams_"; to hear a tale thatthreatens complications, disasters, broken hearts, and not to have thefaintest idea of the proper thing to do.

  But I do not think he would have bolted from Sandgate until he hadreally got some more definite answer to the question, "_What_ betterdreams?" until he had surprised or forced some clearer illumination fromthe passive invalid, if Mrs. Bunting one morning had not very tactfullydropped a hint.

  You know Mrs. Bunting, and you can imagine what she tactfully hinted.Just at that time, what with her own girls and the Glendower girls, herimagination was positively inflamed for matrimony; she was a matrimonialfanatic; she would have married anybody to anything just for the fun ofdoing it, and the idea of pairing off poor Melville to this mysteriousimmortal with a scaly tail seems to have appeared to her the mostnatural thing in the world.

  _Apropos_ of nothing whatever I fancy she remarked, "Your opportunity isnow, Mr. Melville."

  "My opportunity!" cried Melville, trying madly not to understand in theface of her pink resolution.

  "You've a monopoly now," she cried. "But when we go back to London withher there will be ever so many people running after her."

  I fancy Melville said something about carrying the thing too far. Hedoesn't remember what he did say. I don't think he even knew at thetime.

  However, he fled back to London in August, and was there so miserably atloose ends that he had not the will to get out of the place. On thispassage in the story he does not dwell, and such verisimilitude as maybe, must be supplied by my imagination. I imagine him in his charminglyappointed flat,--a flat that is light without being trivial, andartistic with no want of dignity or sincerity,--finding a loss ofinterest in his books, a loss of beauty in the silver he (not toovehemently) collects. I imagine him wandering into that dainty littlebed-room of his and around into the dressing-room, and there, rapt in ablank contemplation of the seven-and-twenty pairs of trousers (allcreasing neatly in their proper stretchers) that are necessary to hisconception of a wise and happy man. For every occasion he has learnt, ina natural easy progress to knowledge, the exquisitely appropriate pairof trousers, the permissible upper garment, the becoming gesture andword. He was a man who had mastered his world. And then, you know, thewhisper:--

  "_There are better dreams._"

  "What dreams?" I imagine him asking, with a defensive note. Whatevertransparence the world might have had, whatever suggestion of somethingbeyond there, in the sea garden at Sandgate, I fancy that in Melville'sapartments in London it was indisputably opaque.

  And "Damn it!" he cried, "if these dreams are for Chatteris, why shouldshe tell me? Suppose I had the chance of them-- Whatever they are----"

  He reflected, with a terrible sincerity in the nature of his will.

  "No!" And then again, "No!

  "And if one mustn't have 'em, why should one know about 'em and beworried by them? If she comes to do mischief, why shouldn't she domischief without making me an accomplice?"

  He walks up and down and stops at last and stares out of his window onthe jaded summer traffic going Haymarket way.

  He sees nothing of that traffic. He sees the little sea garden atSandgate and that little group of people very small and bright andsomething--something hanging over them. "It isn't fair on them--orme--or anybody!"

  Then you know, quite suddenly, I imagine him swearing.

  I imagine him at his luncheon, a meal he usually treats with a becominggravity. I imagine the waiter marking the kindly self-indulgence of hisclean-shaven face, and advancing with that air of intimate participationthe good waiter shows to such as he esteems. I figure the respectfulpause, the respectful enquiry.

  "Oh, anything!" cries Melville, and the waiter retires amazed.

  V

  To add to Melville's distress, as petty discomforts do add to allgenuine trouble, his club-house was undergoing an operation, and wasfull of builders and decorators; they had gouged out its windows andgagged its hall with scaffolding, and he and his like were guests of astranger club that had several members who blew. They seemed never to doanything but blow and sigh and rustle papers and go to sleep about theplace; they were like blight-spots on the handsome plant of thishost-club, and it counted for little with Melville, in the state he wasin, that all the fidgety breathers were persons of eminent position. Butit was this temporary dislocation of his world that brought himunexpectedly into a _quasi_ confidential talk with Chatteris oneafternoon, for Chatteris was one of the less eminent and amorphousmembers of this club that was sheltering Melville's club.

  They seemed never to do anything but blow and sigh andrustle papers.]

  Melville had taken up _Punch_--he was in that mood when a man takes upanything--and was reading, he did not know exactly what. Presently hesighed, looked up, and discovered Chatteris entering the room.

  He was surprised to see Chatteris, startled and just faintly alarmed,and Chatteris it was evident was surprised and disconcerted to see him.Chatteris stood in as awkward an attitude as he was capable of, staringunfavourably, and for a moment or so he gave no sign of recognition.Then he nodded and came forward reluctantly. His every movementsuggested the will without the wit to escape. "You here?" he said.

  "What are you doing away from Hythe at this time?" asked Melville.

  "I came here to write a letter," said Chatteris.

  He looked about him rather helplessly. Then he sat down beside Melvilleand demanded a cigarette. Suddenly he plunged into intimacy.

  "It is doubtful whether I shall contest Hythe," he remarked.

  "Yes?"

  "Yes."

  He lit his cigarette.

  "Would you?" he asked.

  "Not a bit of it," said Melville. "But then it's not my line."

  "Is it mine?"

  "Isn't it a little late in the day to drop it?" said Melville. "You'vebeen put up for it now. Every one's at work. Miss Glendower----"

  "I know," said Chatteris.

  "Well?"

  "I don't seem to want to go on."

  "My dear man!"

  "It's a bit of overwork perhaps. I'm off colour. Things have gone flat.That's why I'm up here."

  He did a very absurd thing. He threw away a quarter-smoked cigarette andalmost immediately demanded another.

  "You've been a little immoderate with your statistics," said Melville.

  Chatteris said something that struck Melville as having somehow beensaid before. "Election, progress, good of humanity, public spirit. Noneof these things interest me really," he said. "At least, not just now."

  Melville waited.

  "One gets brought up in an atmosphere in which it's always beingwhispered that one should go for a career. You learn it at your mother'sknee. They never give you time to find out what you really want, theykeep on shoving you at that. They form your character. They rule yourmind. They rush you into it."

  "They didn't rush me," said Melville.

  "They rushed me, anyhow. And here I am!"

  "You don't want a career?"

  "Well-- Look what it is."

  "Oh! if you look at what things are!"

  "First of all, the messing about to get into the House. These confoundedparties mean nothing--absolutely nothing. They aren't even decentfactions. You blither to damned committees of damned tradesmen whosesole idea for this world is to get overpaid for their self-respect; youwhisper and hobnob with local solicitors and get yourself seen aboutwith them; you ask about the charities and institutions, and lunch andchatter and chum with every conceivable form of human conceit andpushfulness and trickery----"

  He broke off. "It isn't as if _they_ were up to anything! They'reworking in their way, just as you are working in your way. It's the samegame with all of them. They chase a phantom gratification, they toil andquarrel and envy, night and day, in the perpetual attempt to persuadethemselves in spite of everything that they are real and a success----"

  He stopped and smoked.

  Melville was spiteful. "Yes," he a
dmitted, "but I thought _your_little movement was to be something more than party politics andself-advancement----?"

  He left his sentence interrogatively incomplete.

  "The condition of the poor," he said.

  "Well?" said Chatteris, regarding him with a sort of stony admission inhis blue eyes.

  Melville dodged the look. "At Sandgate," he said, "there was, you know,a certain atmosphere of belief----"

  "I know," said Chatteris for the second time.

  "That's the devil of it!" said Chatteris after a pause.

  "If I don't believe in the game I'm playing, if I'm left high and dry onthis shoal, with the tide of belief gone past me, it isn't _my_planning, anyhow. I know the decent thing I ought to do. I mean to doit; in the end I mean to do it; I'm talking in this way to relieve mymind. I've started the game and I must see it out; I've put my hand tothe plough and I mustn't go back. That's why I came to London--to get itover with myself. It was running up against you, set me off. You caughtme at the crisis."

  "Ah!" said Melville.

  "But for all that, the thing is as I said--none of these things interestme really. It won't alter the fact that I am committed to fight aphantom election about nothing in particular, for a party that's beendead ten years. And if the ghosts win, go into the Parliament as aconstituent spectre.... There it is--as a mental phenomenon!"

  He reiterated his cardinal article. "The interest is dead," he said,"the will has no soul."

  He became more critical. He bent a little closer to Melville's ear. "Itisn't really that I don't believe. When I say I don't believe in thesethings I go too far. I do. I know, the electioneering, the intriguing isa means to an end. There is work to be done, sound work, and importantwork. Only----"

  Melville turned an eye on him over his cigarette end.

  Chatteris met it, seemed for a moment to cling to it. He became absurdlyconfidential. He was evidently in the direst need of a confidential ear.

  "I don't want to do it. When I sit down to it, square myself down in thechair, you know, and say, now for the rest of my life this is IT--thisis your life, Chatteris; there comes a sort of terror, Melville."

  "H'm," said Melville, and turned away. Then he turned on Chatteris withthe air of a family physician, and tapped his shoulder three times as hespoke. "You've had too much statistics, Chatteris," he said.

  He let that soak in. Then he turned about towards his interlocutor, andtoyed with a club ash tray. "It's every day has overtaken you," he said."You can't see the wood for the trees. You forget the spacious designyou are engaged upon, in the heavy details of the moment. You are like apainter who has been working hard upon something very small and exactingin a corner. You want to step back and look at the whole thing."

  "No," said Chatteris, "that isn't quite it."

  Melville indicated that he knew better.

  "I keep on, stepping back and looking at it," said Chatteris. "Justlately I've scarcely done anything else. I'll admit it's a spacious andnoble thing--political work done well--only-- I admire it, but itdoesn't grip my imagination. That's where the trouble comes in."

  "What _does_ grip your imagination?" asked Melville. He was absolutelycertain the Sea Lady had been talking this paralysis into Chatteris, andhe wanted to see just how far she had gone. "For example," he tested,"are there--by any chance--other dreams?"

  Chatteris gave no sign at the phrase. Melville dismissed his suspicion."What do you mean--other dreams?" asked Chatteris.

  "Is there conceivably another way--another sort of life--some otheraspect----?"

  "It's out of the question," said Chatteris. He added, rather remarkably,"Adeline's awfully good."

  My cousin Melville acquiesced silently in Adeline's goodness.

  "All this, you know, is a mood. My life is made for me--and it's a verygood life. It's better than I deserve."

  "Heaps," said Melville.

  "Much," said Chatteris defiantly.

  "Ever so much," endorsed Melville.

  "Let's talk of other things," said Chatteris. "It's what even the streetboys call _mawbid_ nowadays to doubt for a moment the absolute finalall-this-and-nothing-else-in-the-worldishness of whatever you happen tobe doing."

  My cousin Melville, however, could think of no other sufficientlyinteresting topic. "You left them all right at Sandgate?" he asked,after a pause.

  "Except little Bunting."

  "Seedy?"

  "Been fishing."

  "Of course. Breezes and the spring tides.... And Miss Waters?"

  Chatteris shot a suspicious glance at him. He affected the offhandstyle. "_She's_ quite well," he said. "Looks just as charming as ever."

  "She really means that canvassing?"

  "She's spoken of it again."

  "She'll do a lot for you," said Melville, and left a fine wide pause.

  Chatteris assumed the tone of a man who gossips.

  "Who is this Miss Waters?" he asked.

  "A very charming person," said Melville and said no more.

  Chatteris waited and his pretence of airy gossip vanished. He becamevery much in earnest.

  "Look here," he said. "Who is this Miss Waters?"

  "How should _I_ know?" prevaricated Melville.

  "Well, you do know. And the others know. Who is she?"

  Melville met his eyes. "Won't they tell you?" he asked.

  "That's just it," said Chatteris.

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Why shouldn't I know?"

  "There's a sort of promise to keep it dark."

  "Keep _what_ dark?"

  My cousin gestured.

  "It can't be anything wrong?" My cousin made no sign.

  "She may have had experiences?"

  My cousin reflected a moment on the possibilities of the deep-sea life."She has had them," he said.

  "I don't care, if she has."

  There came a pause.

  "Look here, Melville," said Chatteris, "I want to know this. Unless it'sa thing to be specially kept from me.... I don't like being among a lotof people who treat me as an outsider. What is this something about MissWaters?"

  "What does Miss Glendower say?"

  "Vague things. She doesn't like her and she won't say why. And Mrs.Bunting goes about with discretion written all over her. And sheherself looks at you-- And that maid of hers looks-- The thing'sworrying me."

  "Why don't you ask the lady herself?"

  "How can I, till I know what it is? Confound it! I'm asking _you_plainly enough."

  "Well," said Melville, and at the moment he had really decided to tellChatteris. But he hung upon the manner of presentation. He thought inthe moment to say, "The truth is, she is a mermaid." Then as instantlyhe perceived how incredible this would be. He always suspected Chatterisof a capacity for being continental and romantic. The man might fly outat him for saying such a thing of a lady.

  A dreadful doubt fell upon Melville. As you know, he had never seen thattail with his own eyes. In these surroundings there came to him such anincredulity of the Sea Lady as he had not felt even when first Mrs.Bunting told him of her. All about him was an atmosphere of solidreality, such as one can breathe only in a first-class London club.Everywhere ponderous arm-chairs met the eye. There were massive tablesin abundance and match-boxes of solid rock. The matches were of somespecially large, heavy sort. On a ponderous elephant-legged green baizetable near at hand were several copies of the _Times_, the current_Punch_, an inkpot of solid brass, and a paper weight of lead. _Thereare other dreams!_ It seemed impossible. The breathing of an eminentperson in a chair in the far corner became very distinct in thatinterval. It was heavy and resolute like the sound of a stone-mason'ssaw. It insisted upon itself as the touchstone of reality. It seemed tosay that at the first whisper of a thing so utterly improbable as amermaid it would snort and choke.

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," said Melville.

  "Well, tell me--anyhow."

  My cousin looked at an empty chair beside him. It was evi
dently stuffedwith the very best horse-hair that money could procure, stuffed withinfinite skill and an almost religious care. It preached in the openinvitation of its expanded arms that man does not live by breadalone--inasmuch as afterwards he needs a nap. An utterly dreamlesschair!

  Mermaids?

  He felt that he was after all quite possibly the victim of a foolishdelusion, hypnotised by Mrs. Bunting's beliefs. Was there not some moreplausible interpretation, some phrase that would lie out bridgeways fromthe plausible to the truth?

  "It's no good," he groaned at last.

  Chatteris had been watching him furtively.

  "Oh, I don't care a hang," he said, and shied his second cigarette intothe massively decorated fireplace. "It's no affair of mine."

  Then quite abruptly he sprang to his feet and gesticulated with anineffectual hand.

  "You needn't," he said, and seemed to intend to say many regrettablethings. Meanwhile until his intention ripened he sawed the air with hisineffectual hand. I fancy he ended by failing to find a thingsufficiently regrettable to express the pungency of the moment. He flungabout and went towards the door.

  "Don't!" he said to the back of the newspaper of the breathing member.

  "If you don't want to," he said to the respectful waiter at the door.

  The hall-porter heard that he didn't care--he was damned if he did!

  "He might be one of these here guests," said the hall-porter, greatlyshocked. "That's what comes of lettin' 'em in so young."

  VI

  Melville overcame an impulse to follow him.

  "Confound the fellow!" said he.

  And then as the whole outburst came into focus, he said with still moreemphasis, "Confound the fellow!"

  He stood up and became aware that the member who had been asleep was nowregarding him with malevolent eyes. He perceived it was a hard andinvincible malevolence, and that no petty apologetics of demeanour couldavail against it. He turned about and went towards the door.

  The interview had done my cousin good. His misery and distress hadlifted. He was presently bathed in a profound moral indignation, andthat is the very antithesis of doubt and unhappiness. The more hethought it over, the more his indignation with Chatteris grew. Thatsudden unreasonable outbreak altered all the perspectives of the case.He wished very much that he could meet Chatteris again and discuss thewhole matter from a new footing.

  "Think of it!" He thought so vividly and so verbally that he was nearlytalking to himself as he went along. It shaped itself into an outspokendiscourse in his mind.

  "Was there ever a more ungracious, ungrateful, unreasonable creaturethan this same Chatteris? He was the spoiled child of Fortune; thingscame to him, things were given to him, his very blunders brought moreto him than other men's successes. Out of every thousand men, ninehundred and ninety-nine might well find food for envy in this way luckhad served him. Many a one has toiled all his life and taken at lastgratefully the merest fraction of all that had thrust itself upon thisinsatiable thankless young man. Even I," thought my cousin, "might envyhim--in several ways. And then, at the mere first onset of duty,nay!--at the mere first whisper of restraint, this insubordination, thisprotest and flight!

  "Think!" urged my cousin, "of the common lot of men. Think of the manywho suffer from hunger----"

  (It was a painful Socialistic sort of line to take, but in his mood ofmoral indignation my cousin pursued it relentlessly.)

  "Think of many who suffer from hunger, who lead lives of unremittingtoil, who go fearful, who go squalid, and withal strive, in a sort ofdumb, resolute way, their utmost to do their duty, or at any rate whatthey think to be their duty. Think of the chaste poor women in theworld! Think again of the many honest souls who aspire to the serviceof their kind, and are so hemmed about and preoccupied that they maynot give it! And then this pitiful creature comes, with his mentalgifts, his gifts of position and opportunity, the stimulus of greatideas, and a _fiancee_, who is not only rich and beautiful--she _is_beautiful!--but also the best of all possible helpers for him. Andhe turns away. It isn't good enough. It takes no hold upon hisimagination, if you please. It isn't beautiful enough for him, andthat's the plain truth of the matter. What does the man _want_? Whatdoes he expect?..."

  My cousin's moral indignation took him the whole length of Piccadilly,and along by Rotten Row, and along the flowery garden walks almost intoKensington High Street, and so around by the Serpentine to his home, andit gave him such an appetite for dinner as he had not had for many days.Life was bright for him all that evening, and he sat down at last, attwo o'clock in the morning, before a needlessly lit, delightfullyfusillading fire in his flat to smoke one sound cigar before he went tobed.

  "No," he said suddenly, "I am not _mawbid_ either. I take the gifts thegods will give me. I try to make myself happy, and a few other peoplehappy, too, to do a few little duties decently, and that is enough forme. I don't look too deeply into things, and I don't look too widelyabout things. A few old simple ideals----

  "H'm.

  "Chatteris is a dreamer, with an impossible, extravagant discontent.What does he dream of?... Three parts he is a dreamer and the fourthpart--spoiled child."

  "Dreamer...."

  "Other dreams...."

  "What other dreams could she mean?"

  My cousin fell into profound musings. Then he started, looked about him,saw the time by his Rathbone clock, got up suddenly and went to bed.