Герберт Джордж Уэллс
The Sea Lady
“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.
IV
After this interview it was right and proper that Melville should have gone at once to Chatteris, but the course of events in the world does occasionally display a lamentable disregard for what is right and proper. Points of view were destined to crowd upon him that day – for the most part entirely unsympathetic points of view. He found Mrs. Bunting in the company of a boldly trimmed bonnet in the hall, waiting, it became clear, to intercept him.
As he descended, in a state of extreme preoccupation, the boldly trimmed bonnet revealed beneath it a white-faced, resolute person in a duster and sensible boots. This stranger, Mrs. Bunting made apparent, was Lady Poynting Mallow, one of the more representative of the Chatteris aunts. Her ladyship made a few enquiries about Adeline with an eye that took Melville’s measure, and then, after agreeing to a number of the suggestions Mrs. Bunting had to advance, proposed that he should escort her back to her hotel. He was much too exercised with Adeline to discuss the proposal. “I walk,” she said. “And we go along the lower road.”
He found himself walking.
She remarked, as the Bunting door closed behind them, that it was always a comfort to have to do with a man; and there was a silence for a space.
I don’t think at that time Melville completely grasped the fact that he had a companion. But presently his meditations were disturbed by her voice. He started.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“That Bunting woman is a fool,” repeated Lady Poynting Mallow.
There was a slight interval for consideration.
“She’s an old friend of mine,” said Melville.
“Quite possibly,” said Lady Poynting Mallow.
The position seemed a little awkward to Melville for a moment. He flicked a fragment of orange peel into the road. “I want to get to the bottom of all this,” said Lady Poynting Mallow. “Who is this other woman?”
“What other woman?”
“Tertium quid,” said Lady Poynting Mallow, with a luminous incorrectness.
“Mermaid, I gather,” said Melville.
“What’s the objection to her?”
“Tail.”
“Fin and all?”
“Complete.”
“You’re sure of it?”
“Certain.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m certain,” repeated Melville with a quite unusual testiness.
The lady reflected.
“Well, there are worse things in the world than a fishy tail,” she said at last.
Melville saw no necessity for a reply. “H’m,” said Lady Poynting Mallow, apparently by way of comment on his silence, and for a space they went on.
“That Glendower girl is a fool too,” she added after a pause.
My cousin opened his mouth and shut it again. How can one answer when ladies talk in this way? But if he did not answer, at any rate his preoccupation was gone. He was now acutely aware of the determined person at his side.
“She has means?” she asked abruptly.
“Miss Glendower?”
“No. I know all about her. The other?”
“The mermaid?”
“Yes, the mermaid. Why not?”
“Oh, she – Very considerable means. Galleons. Phœnician treasure ships, wrecked frigates, submarine reefs – ”
“Well, that’s all right. And now will you tell me, Mr. Melville, why shouldn’t Harry have her? What if she is a mermaid? It’s no worse than an American silver mine, and not nearly so raw and ill-bred.”
“In the first place there’s his engagement – ”
“Oh, that!”
“And in the next there’s the Sea Lady.”
“But I thought she – ”
“She’s a mermaid.”
“It’s no objection. So far as I can see, she’d make an excellent wife for him. And, as a matter of fact, down here she’d be able to help him in just the right way. The member here – he’ll be fighting – this Sassoon man – makes a lot of capital out of deep-sea cables. Couldn’t be better. Harry could dish him easily. That’s all right. Why shouldn’t he have her?”
She stuck her hands deeply into the pockets of her dust-coat, and a china-blue eye regarded Melville from under the brim of the boldly trimmed bonnet.
“You understand clearly she is a properly constituted mermaid with a real physical tail?”
“Well?” said Lady Poynting Mallow.
“Apart from any question of Miss Glendower – ”
“That’s understood.”
“I think that such a marriage would be impossible.”
“Why?”
My cousin played round the question. “She’s an immortal, for example, with a past.”
“Simply makes her more interesting.”
Melville tried to enter into her point of view. “You think,” he said, “she would go to London for him, and marry at St. George’s, Hanover Square, and pay for a mansion in Park Lane and visit just anywhere he liked?”
“That’s precisely what she would do. Just now, with a Court that is waking up – ”
“It’s precisely what she won’t do,” said Melville.
“But any woman would do it who had the chance.”
“She’s a mermaid.”
“She’s a fool,” said Lady Poynting Mallow.
“She doesn’t even mean to marry him; it doesn’t enter into her code.”
“The hussy! What does she mean?”
My cousin made a gesture seaward. “That!” he said. “She’s a mermaid.”
“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.”
He repeated, “It’s not my way.”
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.”
And then he said these words: “It won’t be so bad, you know.”
Melville restrained a movement of impatience, he tells me, at that.
Then Chatteris, he says, broke into a sort of speech. “The case is tried,” he said, “the judgment has been given. I am that I am. I’ve been through it all and worked it out. I am a man and I must go a man’s way. There is Desire, the light and guide of the world, a beacon on a headland blazing out. Let it burn! Let it burn! The road runs near it and by it – and past… I’ve made my choice. I’ve got to be a man, I’ve got to live a man and die a man and carry the burden of my class and time. There it is! I’ve had the dream, but you see I keep hold of reason. Here, with the flame burning, I renounce it. I make my choice… Renunciation! Always – renunciation! That is life for all of us. We have desires, only to deny them, senses that we all must starve. We can live only as a part of ourselves. Why should I be exempt. For me, she is evil. For me she is death… Only why have I seen her face? Why have I heard her voice?..”
VI
They walked out of the shadows and up a long sloping path until Sandgate, as a little line of lights, came into view below. Presently they came out upon the brow and walked together (the band playing with a remote and sweetening indistinctness far away behind them) towards the cliff at the end. They stood for a little while in silence looking down. Melville made a guess at his companion’s thoughts.
“Why not come down to-night?” he asked.
“On a night like this!” Chatteris turned about suddenly and regarded the moonlight and the sea. He stood quite still for a space, and that cold white radiance gave an illusory strength and decision to his face. “No,” he said at last, and the word was almost a sigh.
“Go down to the girl below there. End the thing. She will be there, thinking of you – ”
“No,” said Chatteris, “no.”
“It’s not ten yet,” Melville tried again.
Chatteris thought. “No,” he answered, “not to-night. To-morrow, in the light of everyday.
“I want a good, gray, honest day,” he said, “with a south-west wind… These still, soft nights! How can you expect me to do anything of that sort to-night?”
And then he murmured as if he found the word a satisfying word to repeat, “Renunciation.”
“By Jove!” he said with the most astonishing transition, “but this is a night out of fairyland! Look at the lights of those windows below there and then up – up into this enormous blue of sky. And there, as if it were fainting with moonlight – shines one star.”
