Melville, I think, said nothing to that. He was distracted from the
immediate topic by the discussion of his own way of living. He was lost
in egotistical comparisons. No doubt he was on the verge of saying, as
most of us would have been under the circumstances: "I don't think you
quite understand my position."
"But, after all, what is the good of talking in this way?" exclaimed
Chatteris abruptly. "I am simply trying to elevate the whole business by
dragging in these wider questions. It's justification, when I didn't
mean to justify. I have to choose between life with Adeline and this
woman out of the sea."
"Who is Death."
"How do I know she is Death?"
"But you said you had made your choice!"
"I have."
He seemed to recollect.
"I have," he corroborated. "I told you. I am going back to see Miss
Glendower to-morrow.
"Yes." He recalled further portions of what I believe was some prepared
and ready-phrased decision--some decision from which the conversation had
drifted. "The need of my life is discipline, the habit of persistence,
of ignoring side issues and wandering thoughts. Discipline!"
"And work."
"Work, if you like to put it so; it's the same thing. The trouble so far
has been I haven't worked hard enough. I've stopped to speak to the
woman by the wayside. I've paltered with compromise, and the other thing
has caught me.... I've got to renounce it, that is all."
"It isn't that your work is contemptible."
"By Jove! No. It's--arduous. It has its dusty moments. There are places
to climb that are not only steep but muddy----"
"The world wants leaders. It gives a man of your class a great deal.
Leisure. Honour. Training and high traditions----"
"And it expects something back. I know. I am wrong--have been wrong
anyhow. This dream has taken me wonderfully. And I must renounce it.
After all it is not so much--to renounce a dream. It's no more than
deciding to live. There are big things in the world for men to do."
Melville produced an elaborate conceit. "If there is no Venus
Anadyomene," he said, "there is Michael and his Sword."
"The stern angel in armour! But then he had a good palpable dragon to
slash and not his own desires. And our way nowadays is to do a deal with
the dragons somehow, raise the minimum wage and get a better housing for
the working classes by hook or by crook."
Melville does not think that was a fair treatment of his suggestion.
"No," said Chatteris, "I've no doubt about the choice. I'm going to fall
in--with the species; I'm going to take my place in the ranks in that
great battle for the future which is the meaning of life. I want a moral
cold bath and I mean to take one. This lax dalliance with dreams and
desires must end. I will make a time table for my hours and a rule for
my life, I will entangle my honour in controversies, I will give myself
to service, as a man should do. Clean-handed work, struggle, and
performance."
"And there is Miss Glendower, you know."
"Rather!" said Chatteris, with a faint touch of insincerity. "Tall and
straight-eyed and capable. By Jove! if there's to be no Venus
Anadyomene, at any rate there will be a Pallas Athene. It is she who
plays the reconciler."