"Well, you do know. And the others know. Who is she?"
Melville met his eyes. "Won"t they tell you?" he asked.
"That"s just it," said Chatteris.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Why shouldn"t I know?"
"There"s a sort of promise to keep it dark."
"Keep _what_ dark?"
My cousin gestured.
"It can"t be anything wrong?" My cousin made no sign.
"She may have had experiences?"
My cousin reflected a moment on the possibilities of the deep-sea life.
"She has had them," he said.
"I don"t care, if she has."
There came a pause.
"Look here, Melville," said Chatteris, "I want to know this. Unless it"s a thing to be specially kept from me.... I don"t like being among a lot of people who treat me as an outsider. What is this something about Miss Waters?"
"What does Miss Glendower say?"
"Vague things. She doesn"t like her and she won"t say why. And Mrs.
Bunting goes about with discretion written all over her. And she herself looks at you-- And that maid of hers looks-- The thing"s worrying me."
"Why don"t you ask the lady herself?"
"How can I, till I know what it is? Confound it! I"m asking _you_ plainly enough."
"Well," said Melville, and at the moment he had really decided to tell Chatteris. But he hung upon the manner of presentation. He thought in the moment to say, "The truth is, she is a mermaid." Then as instantly he perceived how incredible this would be. He always suspected Chatteris of a capacity for being continental and romantic. The man might fly out at him for saying such a thing of a lady.
A dreadful doubt fell upon Melville. As you know, he had never seen that tail with his own eyes. In these surroundings there came to him such an incredulity of the Sea Lady as he had not felt even when first Mrs.
Bunting told him of her. All about him was an atmosphere of solid reality, such as one can breathe only in a first-cla.s.s London club.
Everywhere ponderous arm-chairs met the eye. There were ma.s.sive tables in abundance and match-boxes of solid rock. The matches were of some specially large, heavy sort. On a ponderous elephant-legged green baize table near at hand were several copies of the _Times_, the current _Punch_, an inkpot of solid bra.s.s, and a paper weight of lead. _There are other dreams!_ It seemed impossible. The breathing of an eminent person in a chair in the far corner became very distinct in that interval. It was heavy and resolute like the sound of a stone-mason"s saw. It insisted upon itself as the touchstone of reality. It seemed to say that at the first whisper of a thing so utterly improbable as a mermaid it would snort and choke.
"You wouldn"t believe me if I told you," said Melville.
"Well, tell me--anyhow."
My cousin looked at an empty chair beside him. It was evidently stuffed with the very best horse-hair that money could procure, stuffed with infinite skill and an almost religious care. It preached in the open invitation of its expanded arms that man does not live by bread alone--inasmuch as afterwards he needs a nap. An utterly dreamless chair!
Mermaids?
He felt that he was after all quite possibly the victim of a foolish delusion, hypnotised by Mrs. Bunting"s beliefs. Was there not some more plausible interpretation, some phrase that would lie out bridgeways from the plausible to the truth?
"It"s no good," he groaned at last.
Chatteris had been watching him furtively.
"Oh, I don"t care a hang," he said, and shied his second cigarette into the ma.s.sively decorated fireplace. "It"s no affair of mine."
Then quite abruptly he sprang to his feet and gesticulated with an ineffectual hand.
"You needn"t," he said, and seemed to intend to say many regrettable things. Meanwhile until his intention ripened he sawed the air with his ineffectual hand. I fancy he ended by failing to find a thing sufficiently regrettable to express the pungency of the moment. He flung about and went towards the door.
"Don"t!" he said to the back of the newspaper of the breathing member.
"If you don"t want to," he said to the respectful waiter at the door.
The hall-porter heard that he didn"t care--he was d.a.m.ned if he did!
"He might be one of these here guests," said the hall-porter, greatly shocked. "That"s what comes of lettin" "em in so young."
VI
Melville overcame an impulse to follow him.
"Confound the fellow!" said he.
And then as the whole outburst came into focus, he said with still more emphasis, "Confound the fellow!"
He stood up and became aware that the member who had been asleep was now regarding him with malevolent eyes. He perceived it was a hard and invincible malevolence, and that no petty apologetics of demeanour could avail against it. He turned about and went towards the door.
The interview had done my cousin good. His misery and distress had lifted. He was presently bathed in a profound moral indignation, and that is the very ant.i.thesis of doubt and unhappiness. The more he thought it over, the more his indignation with Chatteris grew. That sudden unreasonable outbreak altered all the perspectives of the case.
He wished very much that he could meet Chatteris again and discuss the whole matter from a new footing.
"Think of it!" He thought so vividly and so verbally that he was nearly talking to himself as he went along. It shaped itself into an outspoken discourse in his mind.
"Was there ever a more ungracious, ungrateful, unreasonable creature than this same Chatteris? He was the spoiled child of Fortune; things came to him, things were given to him, his very blunders brought more to him than other men"s successes. Out of every thousand men, nine hundred and ninety-nine might well find food for envy in this way luck had served him. Many a one has toiled all his life and taken at last gratefully the merest fraction of all that had thrust itself upon this insatiable thankless young man. Even I," thought my cousin, "might envy him--in several ways. And then, at the mere first onset of duty, nay!--at the mere first whisper of restraint, this insubordination, this protest and flight!
"Think!" urged my cousin, "of the common lot of men. Think of the many who suffer from hunger----"
(It was a painful Socialistic sort of line to take, but in his mood of moral indignation my cousin pursued it relentlessly.)
"Think of many who suffer from hunger, who lead lives of unremitting toil, who go fearful, who go squalid, and withal strive, in a sort of dumb, resolute way, their utmost to do their duty, or at any rate what they think to be their duty. Think of the chaste poor women in the world! Think again of the many honest souls who aspire to the service of their kind, and are so hemmed about and preoccupied that they may not give it! And then this pitiful creature comes, with his mental gifts, his gifts of position and opportunity, the stimulus of great ideas, and a _fiancee_, who is not only rich and beautiful--she _is_ beautiful!--but also the best of all possible helpers for him. And he turns away. It isn"t good enough. It takes no hold upon his imagination, if you please. It isn"t beautiful enough for him, and that"s the plain truth of the matter. What does the man _want_? What does he expect?..."
My cousin"s moral indignation took him the whole length of Piccadilly, and along by Rotten Row, and along the flowery garden walks almost into Kensington High Street, and so around by the Serpentine to his home, and it gave him such an appet.i.te for dinner as he had not had for many days.
Life was bright for him all that evening, and he sat down at last, at two o"clock in the morning, before a needlessly lit, delightfully fusillading fire in his flat to smoke one sound cigar before he went to bed.