Sea Lady — Symptomatic, part 1
I
My cousin Melville is never very clear about his dates.
Now this is greatly to be regretted, because it would be very illuminating indeed if one could tell just how many days elapsed before he came upon Chatteris in intimate conversation with the Sea Lady.
He was going along the front of the Leas with some books from the Public Library that Miss Glendower had suddenly wished to consult, and which she, with that entire ignorance of his lack of admiration for her which was part of her want of charm for him, had bidden him bring her.
It was in one of those sheltered paths just under the brow which give such a pleasant and characteristic charm to Folkestone, that he came upon a little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair.
Chatteris was seated in one of the wooden seats that are embedded in the bank, and was leaning forward and looking into the Sea Lady's face; and she was speaking with a smile that struck Melville even at the time as being a little special in its quality--and she seems to have been capable of many charming smiles.
Parker was a little distance away, where a sort of bastion projects and gives a wide view of the pier and harbour and the coast of France, regarding it all with a qualified disfavour, and the bath chairman was crumpled up against the bank lost in that wistful melancholy that the constant perambulation of broken humanity necessarily engenders.
[Illustration: A little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair.
] My cousin slackened his pace a little and came up and joined them.
The conversation hung at his approach.
Chatteris sat back a little, but there seemed no resentment and he sought a topic for the three to discuss in the books Melville carried.
"Books?"
he said.
"For Miss Glendower," said Melville.
"Oh!"
said Chatteris.
"What are they about?"
asked the Sea Lady.
"Land tenure," said Melville.
"That's hardly my subject," said the Sea Lady, and Chatteris joined in her smile as if he saw a jest.
There was a little pause.
"You are contesting Hythe?"
said Melville.
"Fate points that way," said Chatteris.
"They threaten a dissolution for September."
"It will come in a month," said Chatteris, with the inimitable tone of one who knows.
"In that case we shall soon be busy."
"And _I_ may canvass," said the Sea Lady.
"I never have----" "Miss Waters," explained Chatteris, "has been telling me she means to help us."
He met Melville's eye frankly.
"It's rough work, Miss Waters," said Melville.
"I don't mind that.
It's fun.
And I want to help.
I really do want to help--Mr. Chatteris."
"You know, that's encouraging."
"I could go around with you in my bath chair?"
"It would be a picnic," said Chatteris.
"I mean to help anyhow," said the Sea Lady.
"You know the case for the plaintiff?"
asked Melville.
She looked at him.
"You've got your arguments?"
"I shall ask them to vote for Mr. Chatteris, and afterwards when I see them I shall remember them and smile and wave my hand.
What else is there?"
"Nothing," said Chatteris, and shut the lid on Melville.
"I wish I had an argument as good."
"What sort of people are they here?"
asked Melville.
"Isn't there a smuggling interest to conciliate?"
"I haven't asked that," said Chatteris.
"Smuggling is over and past, you know.
Forty years ago.
It always has been forty years ago.
They trotted out the last of the smugglers,--interesting old man, full of reminiscences,--when there was a count of the Saxon Shore.
He remembered smuggling--forty years ago.
Really, I doubt if there ever was any smuggling.
The existing coast guard is a sacrifice to a vain superstition."
"Why!"
cried the Sea Lady.
"Only about five weeks ago I saw quite near here----" She stopped abruptly and caught Melville's eye.
He grasped her difficulty.
"In a paper?"
he suggested.
"Yes, in a paper," she said, seizing the rope he threw her.
"Well?"
asked Chatteris.
"There is smuggling still," said the Sea Lady, with an air of some one who decides not to tell an anecdote that is suddenly found to be half forgotten.
"There's no doubt it happens," said Chatteris, missing it all.
"But it doesn't appear in the electioneering.
I certainly sha'n't agitate for a faster revenue cutter.
However things may be in that respect, I take the line that they are very well as they are.
That's my line, of course."
And he looked out to sea.
The eyes of Melville and the Sea Lady had an intimate moment.
"There, you know, is just a specimen of the sort of thing we do," said Chatteris.
"Are you prepared to be as intricate as that?"
"Quite," said the Sea Lady.
My cousin was reminded of an anecdote.
The talk degenerated into anecdotes of canvassing, and ran shallow.
My cousin was just gathering that Mrs. Bunting and Miss Bunting had been with the Sea Lady and had gone into the town to a shop, when they returned.
Chatteris rose to greet them and explained--what had been by no means apparent before--that he was on his way to Adeline, and after a few further trivialities he and Melville went on together.
A brief silence fell between them.
"Who is that Miss Waters?"
asked Chatteris.
"Friend of Mrs. Bunting," prevaricated Melville.
"So I gather....
She seems a very charming person."
"She is."
"She's interesting.
Her illness seems to throw her up.
It makes a passive thing of her, like a picture or something that's--imaginary.
Imagined--anyhow.
She sits there and smiles and responds.
Her eyes--have something intimate.
And yet----" My cousin offered no assistance.
"Where did Mrs. Bunting find her."
My cousin had to gather himself together for a second or so.
"There's something," he said deliberately, "that Mrs. Bunting doesn't seem disposed----" "What can it be?"
"It's bound to be all right," said Melville rather weakly.
"It's strange, too.
Mrs. Bunting is usually so disposed----" Melville left that to itself.
"That's what one feels," said Chatteris.
"What?"
"Mystery."
My cousin shares with me a profound detestation of that high mystic method of treating women.
He likes women to be finite--and nice.
In fact, he likes everything to be finite--and nice.
So he merely grunted.
But Chatteris was not to be stopped by that.
He passed to a critical note.
"No doubt it's all illusion.
All women are impressionists, a patch, a light.
You get an effect.
And that is all you are meant to get, I suppose.
She gets an effect.
But how--that's the mystery.
It's not merely beauty.
There's plenty of beauty in the world.
But not of these effects.
The eyes, I fancy."
He dwelt on that for a moment.
"There's really nothing in eyes, you know, Chatteris," said my cousin Melville, borrowing an alien argument and a tone of analytical cynicism from me.
"Have you ever looked at eyes through a hole in a sheet?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Chatteris.
"I don't mean the mere physical eye....
Perhaps it's the look of health--and the bath chair.
A bold discord.
You don't know what's the matter, Melville?"
"How?"
"I gather from Bunting it's a disablement--not a deformity."
"He ought to know."
"I'm not so sure of that.
You don't happen to know the nature of her disablement?"
"I can't tell at all," said Melville in a speculative tone.
It struck him he was getting to prevaricate better.
The subject seemed exhausted.
They spoke of a common friend whom the sight of the Metropole suggested.
Then they did not talk at all for a time, until the stir and interest of the band stand was passed.
Then Chatteris threw out a thought.
"Complex business--feminine motives," he remarked.
"How?"
"This canvassing.
_She_ can't be interested in philanthropic Liberalism."
"There's a difference in the type.
And besides, it's a personal matter."
"Not necessarily, is it?
Surely there's not such an intellectual gap between the sexes!
If _you_ can get interested----" "Oh, I know."
"Besides, it's not a question of principles.
It's the fun of electioneering."
"Fun!"
"There's no knowing what won't interest the feminine mind," said Melville, and added, "or what will."
Chatteris did not answer.
"It's the district visiting instinct, I suppose," said Melville.
"They all have it.
It's the canvassing.
All women like to go into houses that don't belong to them."
"Very likely," said Chatteris shortly, and failing a reply from Melville, he gave way to secret meditations, it would seem still of a fairly agreeable sort.
The twelve o'clock gun thudded from Shornecliffe Camp.
"By Jove!"
said Chatteris, and quickened his steps.
* * * * * They found Adeline busy amidst her papers.
As they entered she pointed reproachfully, yet with the protrusion of a certain Marcella-like undertone of sweetness, at the clock.
The apologies of Chatteris were effusive and winning, and involved no mention of the Sea Lady on the Leas.
Melville delivered his books and left them already wading deeply into the details of the district organisation that the local Liberal organiser had submitted.
II
A little while after the return of Chatteris, my cousin Melville and the Sea Lady were under the ilex at the end of the sea garden and--disregarding Parker (as every one was accustomed to do), who was in a garden chair doing some afternoon work at a proper distance--there was nobody with them at all.
Fred and the girls were out cycling--Fred had gone with them at the Sea Lady's request--and Miss Glendower and Mrs. Bunting were at Hythe calling diplomatically on some rather horrid local people who might be serviceable to Harry in his electioneering.
Mr. Bunting was out fishing.
He was not fond of fishing, but he was in many respects an exceptionally resolute little man, and he had taken to fishing every day in the afternoon after luncheon in order to break himself of what Mrs. Bunting called his "ridiculous habit" of getting sea-sick whenever he went out in a boat.
He said that if fishing from a boat with pieces of mussels for bait after luncheon would not break the habit nothing would, and certainly it seemed at times as if it were going to break everything that was in him.
But the habit escaped.
This, however, is a digression.
These two, I say, were sitting in the ample shade under the evergreen oak, and Melville, I imagine, was in those fine faintly patterned flannels that in the year 1899 combined correctness with ease.
He was no doubt looking at the shaded face of the Sea Lady, framed in a frame of sunlit yellow-green lawn and black-green ilex leaves--at least so my impulse for verisimilitude conceives it--and she at first was pensive and downcast that afternoon and afterwards she was interested and looked into his eyes.
Either she must have suggested that he might smoke or else he asked.
Anyhow, his cigarettes were produced.
She looked at them with an arrested gesture, and he hung for a moment, doubtful, on her gesture.
"I suppose _you_--" he said.
"I never learned."
He glanced at Parker and then met the Sea Lady's regard.
"It's one of the things I came for," she said.
He took the only course.
She accepted a cigarette and examined it thoughtfully.
"Down there," she said, "it's just one of the things-- You will understand we get nothing but saturated tobacco.
Some of the mermen-- There's something they have picked up from the sailors.
Quids, I think they call it.
But that's too horrid for words!"
She dismissed the unpleasant topic by a movement, and lapsed into thought.
My cousin clicked his match-box.
She had a momentary doubt and glanced towards the house.
"Mrs. Bunting?"
she asked.
Several times, I understand, she asked the same thing.
"She wouldn't mind--" said Melville, and stopped.
"She won't think it improper," he amplified, "if nobody else thinks it improper."
"There's nobody else," said the Sea Lady, glancing at Parker, and my cousin lit the match.
My cousin has an indirect habit of mind.
With all general and all personal things his desperation to get at them obliquely amounts almost to a passion; he could no more go straight to a crisis than a cat could to a stranger.
He came off at a tangent now as he was sitting forward and scrutinising her first very creditable efforts to draw.
"I just wonder," he said, "exactly what it was you _did_ come for."
She smiled at him over a little jet of smoke.
"Why, this," she said.
"And hairdressing?"
"And dressing."
She smiled again after a momentary hesitation.
"And all this sort of thing," she said, as if she felt she had answered him perhaps a little below his deserts.
Her gesture indicated the house and the lawn and--my cousin Melville wondered just exactly how much else.
"Am I doing it right?"
asked the Sea Lady.
"Beautifully," said my cousin with a faint sigh in his voice.
"What do you think of it?"
"It was worth coming for," said the Sea Lady, smiling into his eyes.
"But did you really just come----?"
She filled in his gap.
"To see what life was like on land here?...
Isn't that enough?"
Melville's cigarette had failed to light.
He regarded its blighted career pensively.
"Life," he said, "isn't all--this sort of thing."
"This sort of thing?"
"Sunlight.
Cigarette smoking.
Talk.
Looking nice."
"But it's made up----" "Not altogether."
"For example?"
"Oh, _you_ know."
"What?"
"You know," said Melville, and would not look at her.
"I decline to know," she said after a little pause.
"Besides--" he said.
"Yes?"
"You told Mrs. Bunting--" It occurred to him that he was telling tales, but that scruple came too late.
"Well?"
"Something about a soul."
She made no immediate answer.
He looked up and her eyes were smiling.
"Mr. Melville," she said, innocently, "what _is_ a soul?"
"Well," said my cousin readily, and then paused for a space.
"A soul," said he, and knocked an imaginary ash from his extinct cigarette.
"A soul," he repeated, and glanced at Parker.
"A soul, you know," he said again, and looked at the Sea Lady with the air of a man who is handling a difficult matter with skilful care.
"Come to think of it," he said, "it's a rather complicated matter to explain----" "To a being without one?"
"To any one," said my cousin Melville, suddenly admitting his difficulty.
He meditated upon her eyes for a moment.
"Besides," he said, "you know what a soul is perfectly well."
"No," she answered, "I don't." "You know as well as I do."
"Ah!
that may be different."
"You came to get a soul."
"Perhaps I don't want one.
Why--if one hasn't one----?"
"Ah, _there_!"
And my cousin shrugged his shoulders.
"But really you know-- It's just the generality of it that makes it hard to define."
"Everybody has a soul?"
"Every one."
"Except me?"
"I'm not certain of that."
"Mrs. Bunting?"
"Certainly."
"And Mr. Bunting?"
"Every one."
"Has Miss Glendower?"
"Lots."
The Sea Lady mused.
She went off at a tangent abruptly.
"Mr. Melville," she said, "what is a union of souls?"
Melville flicked his extinct cigarette suddenly into an elbow shape and then threw it away.
The phrase may have awakened some reminiscence.
"It's an extra," he said.
"It's a sort of flourish....
And sometimes it's like leaving cards by footmen--a substitute for the real presence."
There came a gap.
He remained downcast, trying to find a way towards whatever it was that was in his mind to say.
Conceivably, he did not clearly know what that might be until he came to it.
The Sea Lady abandoned an attempt to understand him in favour of a more urgent topic.
"Do you think Miss Glendower and Mr. Chatteris----?"
Melville looked up at her.
He noticed she had hung on the latter name.
"Decidedly," he said.
"It's just what they _would_ do."
Then he spoke again.
"Chatteris?"
he said.
"Yes," said she.
"I thought so," said Melville.
The Sea Lady regarded him gravely.
They scrutinised each other with an unprecedented intimacy.
Melville was suddenly direct.
It was a discovery that it seemed he ought to have made all along.
He felt quite unaccountably bitter; he spoke with a twitch of the mouth and his voice had a note of accusation.
"You want to talk about him."
She nodded--still grave.
"Well, _I_ don't." He changed his note.
"But I will if you wish it."
"I thought you would."
"Oh, _you_ know," said Melville, discovering his extinct cigarette was within reach of a vindictive heel.
