A little while after the return of Chatteris, my cousin Melville
and the Sea Lady were under the ilex at the end of the sea garden
and--disregarding Parker (as every one was accustomed to do), who was
in a garden chair doing some afternoon work at a proper distance--there
was nobody with them at all. Fred and the girls were out cycling--Fred
had gone with them at the Sea Lady's request--and Miss Glendower and
Mrs. Bunting were at Hythe calling diplomatically on some rather horrid
local people who might be serviceable to Harry in his electioneering.
Mr. Bunting was out fishing. He was not fond of fishing, but he was in
many respects an exceptionally resolute little man, and he had taken to
fishing every day in the afternoon after luncheon in order to break
himself of what Mrs. Bunting called his "ridiculous habit" of getting
sea-sick whenever he went out in a boat. He said that if fishing from a
boat with pieces of mussels for bait after luncheon would not break the
habit nothing would, and certainly it seemed at times as if it were
going 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 evergreen
oak, and Melville, I imagine, was in those fine faintly patterned
flannels that in the year 1899 combined correctness with ease. He was no
doubt looking at the shaded face of the Sea Lady, framed in a frame of
sunlit yellow-green lawn and black-green ilex leaves--at least so my
impulse for verisimilitude conceives it--and she at first was pensive
and downcast that afternoon and afterwards she was interested and looked
into his eyes. Either she must have suggested that he might smoke or
else he asked. Anyhow, his cigarettes were produced. She looked at them
with an arrested gesture, and he hung for a moment, doubtful, on her
gesture.
"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," she
said, "it's just one of the things-- You will understand we get nothing
but saturated tobacco. Some of the mermen-- There's something they have
picked up from the sailors. Quids, I think they call it. But that's too
horrid for words!"
She dismissed the unpleasant topic by a movement, and lapsed into
thought.
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 it
improper."
"There's nobody else," said the Sea Lady, glancing at Parker, and my
cousin lit the match.
My cousin has an indirect habit of mind. With all general and all
personal things his desperation to get at them obliquely amounts almost
to a passion; he could no more go straight to a crisis than a cat could
to a stranger. He came off at a tangent now as he was sitting forward
and scrutinising her first very creditable efforts to draw. "I just
wonder," 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 of
thing," she said, as if she felt she had answered him perhaps a little
below his deserts. Her gesture indicated the house and the lawn and--my
cousin 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 do
you 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't
that enough?"
Melville's cigarette had failed to light. He regarded its blighted
career 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 the
air 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 to
explain----"
"To a being without one?"
"To any one," said my cousin Melville, suddenly admitting his
difficulty.
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 you
know-- 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 and
then threw it away. The phrase may have awakened some reminiscence.
"It's an extra," he said. "It's a sort of flourish.... And sometimes
it's like leaving cards by footmen--a substitute for the real presence."
There came a gap. He remained downcast, trying to find a way towards
whatever it was that was in his mind to say. Conceivably, he did not
clearly know what that might be until he came to it. The Sea Lady
abandoned 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 an
unprecedented intimacy. Melville was suddenly direct. It was a discovery
that it seemed he ought to have made all along. He felt quite
unaccountably bitter; he spoke with a twitch of the mouth and his voice
had 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 was
within 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?"