The Sea Lady Part 28

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 a.s.s. 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 a.s.sure 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce. 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."