"She wants to speak to you," said Mrs. Bunting, and Melville with a
certain trepidation went upstairs. He went up to the big landing with
the seats, to save Adeline the trouble of coming down. She appeared
dressed in a black and violet tea gown with much lace, and her dark hair
was done with a simple carefulness that suited it. She was pale, and her
eyes showed traces of tears, but she had a certain dignity that differed
from 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. I
should 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 she
left no need for that.
"I had to ask him," she said. "He kept it all from me, and I had to
force 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 I
never really knew him. I suppose I--idealised him. I thought he cared
for--our work at any rate.... He _did_ care for our work. He believed in
it. 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 like
a child catching at a new toy. Do you know, Mr. Melville"--she
hesitated--"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 for
all women ... to feel that sometimes."
She reflected profoundly. "For _all_ women-- The child, man! I see now
just 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 voice
quivered.
My cousin coughed and turned about to stare hard out of the window. He
was, he perceived, much more shockingly inadequate even than he had
expected to be.
"If I thought she could make him happy!" she said presently, leaving a
hiatus of generous self-sacrifice.
"The case is--complicated," said Melville.
Her voice went on, clear and a little high, resigned, impenetrably
assured.
"But she would not. All his better side, all his serious side-- She
would 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 he
wants to come back."
My cousin Melville looked perplexed. He lived on the superficies of
emotion, and these complexities in matters he had always assumed were
simple, put him out.
"There are times," she said, "when it seems to me that my love for him
is altogether dead.... Think of the disillusionment--the shock--the
discovery 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 of
all the things that still might be."
Her voice made him look up, and he saw that her mouth was set hard and
tears were running down her cheeks.
It occurred to my cousin, he says, that he would touch her hand in a
sympathetic manner, and then it occurred to him that he wouldn't. Her
words rang in his thoughts for a space, and then he said somewhat
tardily, "He may still be all those things."
"I suppose he may," she said slowly and without colour. The weeping
moment had passed.
"What is she?" she changed abruptly. "What is this being, who has come
between him and all the realities of life? What is there about her--?
And why should I have to compete with her, because he--because he
doesn't know his own mind?"
"For a man," said Melville, "to know his own mind is--to have exhausted
one of the chief interests in life. After that--! A cultivated extinct
volcano--if ever it was a volcano."
He reflected egotistically for a space. Then with a secret start he came
back to consider her.
"What is there," she said, with that deliberate attempt at clearness
which was one of her antipathetic qualities for Melville--"what is there
that 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 edge
away, and walk obliquely and generally to shirk the issue. "My dear Miss
Glendower," 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 reason
and beyond describing."
"But you," she urged, "you take an attitude, you must have an
impression. Why don't you-- Don't you see, Mr. Melville, this is
very"--her voice caught for a moment--"very vital for me. It isn't kind
of you, if you have impressions-- I'm sorry, Mr. Melville, if I seem to
be 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 something
in 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 of
ways of looking at things, I don't know. If you could go so far--as to
be 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 a
way that makes things easier for her. He has--I know the thing sounds
like cant, only you know, _he_ doesn't plead it in defence--he has a
temperament, 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--is
schooling. He has something--something perhaps more worth having than
most of us have--but I think at times--it makes life harder for him than
it is for a lot of us. Life comes at him, with limitations and
regulations. He knows his duty well enough. And you-- You mustn't mind
what 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 the
wrong. Since that I've thought all sorts of things--even that you might
be 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 clear
to him what you expect him to be, and what you expect him to do. It is
like having built a house in which he is to live. For him, to go to her
is like going out of a house, a very fine and dignified house, I admit,
into something larger, something adventurous and incalculable. She
is--she has an air of being--_natural_. She is as lax and lawless as the
sunset, she is as free and familiar as the wind. She doesn't--if I may
put 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 deep
tangled places, she has the quality of the high sea. That I think is
what she is for him, she is the Great Outside. You--you have the
quality----"
He hesitated.
"Go on," she insisted. "Let us get the meaning."
"Of an edifice.... I don't sympathise with him," said Melville. "I am a
tame cat and I should scratch and mew at the door directly I got outside
of things. I don't want to go out. The thought scares me. But he is
different."
"Yes," she said, "he is different."
For a time it seemed that Melville's interpretation had hold of her. She
stood thoughtful. Slowly other aspects of the thing came into his mind.
"Of course," she said, thinking as she looked at him. "Yes. Yes. That is
the impression. That is the quality. But in reality-- There are other
things in the world beside effects and impressions. After all, that
is--an analogy. It is pleasant to go out of houses and dwellings into
the 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? What
life 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. He
may spoil everything now; he may lose his election and be forced to
start again, lower and less hopefully; he may tear his heart to
pieces----"
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 from
you--to something impossible. That generally, in an aimless way, he has
cut himself up for nothing, and made an inordinate fool of himself, and
that it's simply a business of putting everything back into place
again."
He paused and she said nothing. But her face was attentive. "What you do
not understand," he went on, "what no one seems to understand, is that
she comes----"
"Out of the sea."
"Out of some other world. She comes, whispering that this life is a
phantom life, unreal, flimsy, limited, casting upon everything a spell
of 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 at
the very fabric of this daily life."
"You mean----?"
"She is a mermaid, she is a thing of dreams and desires, a siren, a
whisper 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 infinite
solicitude, and could not find it. He blurted out at last: "There can
be 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 any
rate, if she gets him, this little world of yours-- There will be no
coming 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--I
scarcely know what I thought. I thought he was trivial and foolish to
let his thoughts go wandering. I agreed--I see your point--as to the
difference in our effect upon him. But this--this suggestion that for
him she may be something determining and final-- After all, she----"
"She is nothing," he said. "She is the hand that takes hold of him, the
shape that stands for things unseen."
"What things unseen?"
My cousin shrugged his shoulders. "Something we never find in life," he
said. "Something we are always seeking."
"But what?" she asked.
Melville made no reply. She scrutinised his face for a time, and then
looked 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 you
have made for him is a dream. But----"
"Yes?"
"He might come back--" he said, and looked at her and stopped. He tells
me he had some vague intention of startling her, rousing her, wounding
her to some display of romantic force, some insurgence of passion, that
might 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 stood
impenetrably herself, limitedly intelligent, well-meaning, imitative,
and powerless. Her pose, her face, suggested nothing but a clear and
reasonable 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 her
eyes that he had never seen before.
Melville took her hands mechanically, and for a second or so they stood
looking with a sort of discovery into each other's eyes.
"Tell him," she said, with an astounding perfection of simplicity, "to
come back to me. There can be no other thing than what I am. Tell him to
come back to me!"
"And----?"
"Tell him _that_."
"Forgiveness?"
"No! Tell him I want him. If he will not come for that he will not come
at all. If he will not come back for that"--she halted for a moment--"I
do 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 apart
again.
"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, and
stopped. "You know, Mr. Melville, all this is like a book newly opened
to me. Are you sure----?"
"Sure?"
"Sure of what you say--sure of what she is to him--sure that if he goes
on 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 has
to offer."
"You mean," she insisted, "you mean----?"
"Death," said Melville starkly, and for a space both stood without a
word.
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 her
voice--"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 he
will come to me, and if he is not-- Let him dream his dream."
Her clenched hand tightened as she spoke. He saw in her face she would
say no more, that she wanted urgently to leave it there. He turned again
towards the staircase. He glanced at her and went down.
As he looked up from the bend of the stairs she was still standing in
the light.
He was moved to proclaim himself in some manner her adherent, but he
could think of nothing better than: "Whatever I can do I will." And so,
after a curious pause, he departed, rather stumblingly, from her sight.