"What?"
"Out there."
"Where?"
"There!"
Lady Poynting Mallow scanned the sea as if it were some curious new
object. "It's an amphibious outlook for the family," she said after
reflection. "But even then--if she doesn't care for society and it makes
Harry 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 the
sunlit offing for a space.
"I don't see why it shouldn't be managed for all that," she considered
after 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 affairs
it'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 wanted
him to visit her people."
"They are pagan demigods, I believe, and live in some mythological way
in the Mediterranean."
"Dear Harry's a pagan himself--so that doesn't matter, and as for being
mythological--all good families are. He could even wear a diving dress
if 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 Poynting
Mallow with an air of vast experience.
She continued the conversation. "If it's sea water she wants it would
be quite easy to fit up a tank wherever they lived, and she could
easily 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 her
bath chair on the Leas, and I'm certain I've never seen any one who
looked so worthy of dear Harry. _Never!_"
"Well, well," said Melville. "Apart from any other considerations, you
know, 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 she
ought 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. Those
old 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 Miss
Glendower.... 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 turned
upon him.
"I'm greatly obliged to you for coming, Mr. Milvain," she said; "and
very 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 a
friend 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. It
is so obviously the best thing for him."
"There's Miss Glendower."
"If Miss Glendower is a womanly woman, she will be ready to make any
sacrifice for his good."
And with that they parted.
In the course of another minute Melville found himself on the side of
the road opposite the lift station, regarding the ascending car. The
boldly trimmed bonnet, vivid, erect, assertive, went gliding upward, a
perfect embodiment of sound common sense. His mind was lapsing once
again into disorder; he was stunned, as it were, by the vigour of her
ladyship's view. Could any one not absolutely right be quite so clear
and emphatic? And if so, what became of all that oppression of
foreboding, that sinister promise of an escape, that whisper of "other
dreams," that had dominated his mind only a short half-hour before?
He turned his face back to Sandgate, his mind a theatre of warring
doubts. Quite vividly he could see the Sea Lady as Lady Poynting Mallow
saw her, as something pink and solid and smart and wealthy, and, indeed,
quite abominably vulgar, and yet quite as vividly he recalled her as she
had talked to him in the garden, her face full of shadows, her eyes of
deep mystery, and the whisper that made all the world about him no more
than a flimsy, thin curtain before vague and wonderful, and hitherto,
quite unsuspected things.
V
Chatteris was leaning against the railings. He started violently at
Melville'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 some
one."
There was a brief silence.
They stood side by side--looking down upon the harbour. Behind, the
evening band played remotely and the black little promenaders went to
and fro under the tall electric lights. I think Chatteris decided to be
very 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 to
tell you----"
"I know all that," said Chatteris with the shoulder towards Melville
becoming 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 paced
westward, 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 there
is 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-up
goes--there is a certain amount of blame attaches to our outspoken
friend Mrs. Bunting."
"I'm afraid there is," Melville admitted.
"You know there are times when one is under the necessity of having
moods. 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 sea
lady at a very early stage. Mrs. Bunting overruled her. Afterwards when
there 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 "private
affairs."
They found themselves drawing near the band and already on the
outskirts of its territory of votaries. Its cheerful rhythms became
insistent. 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 the
ratatoo-tat, ratatoo-tat of a popular air. Voices, detached fragments
of conversation, came to our talkers and mingled impertinently with
their thoughts.
"I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'im, not after that," said a young person
to 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 some
steps that led down the declivity. In a few moments it was as if those
imposing fronts of stucco, those many-windowed hotels, the electric
lights on the tall masts, the band-stand and miscellaneous holiday
British public, had never existed. It is one of Folkestone's best
effects, that black quietness under the very feet of a crowd. They no
longer heard the band even, only a remote suggestion of music filtered
to them over the brow. The black-treed slopes fell from them to the surf
below, and out at sea were the lights of many ships. Away to the
westward like a swarm of fire-flies hung the lights of Hythe. The two
men 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. He
murmured in a meditative undertone, "I wouldn't 'ave no truck with 'im
not after that."
"I will admit by every standard," he said aloud, "that I have been
flappy and feeble and wrong. Very. In these things there is a prescribed
and definite course. To hesitate, to have two points of view, is
condemned by all right-thinking people.... Still--one has the two points
of 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 hesitated
at 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, you
know, but not--winning. But this time, she seemed ... rather splendid."
"She is," said Chatteris, "she is."
He sat forward and began flicking imaginary ash from the end of his
cigar.
"She _is_ splendid," he admitted. "You--only begin to imagine. You
don'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 human
being I have ever met. She believes so firmly, she does right so
simply, there is a sort of queenly benevolence, a sort of integrity of
benevolence----"
He left the sentence unfinished, as if unfinished it completely
expressed his thought.
"She wants you to go back to her," said Melville bluntly.
"I know," said Chatteris and flicked again at that ghostly ash. "She
has written that.... That's just where her complete magnificence comes
in. She doesn't fence and fool about, as the she-women do. She doesn't
squawk and say, 'You've insulted me and everything's at an end;' and
she 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.' She
writes--straight. I don't believe, Melville, I half knew her until
all this business came up. She comes out.... Before that it was, as
you said, and I quite perceive--I perceived all along--a little
too--statistical."
He became meditative, and his cigar glow waned and presently vanished
altogether.
"You are going back?"
"By Jove! _Yes._"
Melville stirred slightly and then they both sat rigidly quiet for a
space. Then abruptly Chatteris flung away his extinct cigar. He seemed
to fling many other things away with that dim gesture. "Of course," he
said, "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 got
into 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 are
indefined and distressing just now--I don't attach blame--anywhere."
"You're open-minded," said Chatteris. "That's just your way. And I can
imagine how all this upset and discomfort distresses you. You're awfully
good to keep so open-minded and not to consider me an utter outcast, an
ill-regulated disturber of the order of the world."
"It's a distressing state of affairs," said Melville. "But perhaps I
understand 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--this
being--come into my life, as she has done, if it _is_ so simple? What is
there 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 mental
conflict. Why am I pulled about? She has got into my imagination. How? I
haven'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 a
different way."
"Yes, but that's only the name for the effect. _Why_ is she very
beautiful?"
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, that
is."
"Why do we?"
"We see--finer."
"Do we? Is it finer? Why should it be finer to see beauty where it is
fatal to us to see it? Why? Unless we are to believe there is no reason
in things, why should this--impossibility, be beautiful to any one
anyhow? Put it as a matter of reason, Melville. Why should _her_ smile
be so sweet to me, why should _her_ voice move me! Why her's and not
Adeline's? Adeline has straight eyes and clear eyes and fine eyes, and
all the difference there can be, what is it? An infinitesimal curving of
the lid, an infinitesimal difference in the lashes--and it shatters
everything--in this way. Who could measure the difference, who could
tell the quality that makes me _swim_ in the sound of her voice.... The
difference? After all, it's a visible thing, it's a material thing! It's
in my eyes. By Jove!" he laughed abruptly. "Imagine old Helmholtz trying
to gauge it with a battery of resonators, or Spencer in the light of
Evolution 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 just
now."
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 promises
you vague somethings.... She is a snare, she is deception. She is the
beautiful 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--why
should the mask of death be beautiful? After all-- We get our duty by
good hard reasoning. Why should reason and justice carry everything?
Perhaps after all there are things beyond our reason, perhaps after all
desire has a claim on us?"
He stopped interrogatively and Melville was profound. "I think," said
my 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 minds
growing out of ourselves. We reach downward into the beautiful
wonderland of matter, and upward to something--" He stopped, from sheer
dissatisfaction with the image. "In another direction, anyhow," he tried
feebly. He jumped at something that was not quite his meaning. "Man is a
sort 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 and
flowers, a few things that come within your means. Art--in moderation,
and a few kindly acts of the pleasanter sort, a certain respect for
truth; duty--also in moderation. Eh? It's just that even balance that I
cannot contrive. I cannot sit down to the oatmeal of this daily life and
wash it down with a temperate draught of beauty and water. Art!... I
suppose 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, and
reasonable things.... It's not my way."