The Sea Lady Part 23

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed.

"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 s.p.a.ce. 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 att.i.tude, 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 a.n.a.logy. 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_----"