"No," he said suddenly, "I am not _mawbid_ either. I take the gifts the G.o.ds will give me. I try to make myself happy, and a few other people happy, too, to do a few little duties decently, and that is enough for me. I don"t look too deeply into things, and I don"t look too widely about things. A few old simple ideals----
"H"m.
"Chatteris is a dreamer, with an impossible, extravagant discontent.
What does he dream of?... Three parts he is a dreamer and the fourth part--spoiled child."
"Dreamer...."
"Other dreams...."
"What other dreams could she mean?"
My cousin fell into profound musings. Then he started, looked about him, saw the time by his Rathbone clock, got up suddenly and went to bed.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
THE CRISIS
I
The crisis came about a week from that time--I say about because of Melville"s conscientious inexactness in these matters. And so far as the crisis goes, I seem to get Melville at his best. He was keenly interested, keenly observant, and his more than average memory took some excellent impressions. To my mind, at any rate, two at least of these people come out, fuller and more convincingly than anywhere else in this painfully disinterred story. He has given me here an Adeline I seem to believe in, and something much more like Chatteris than any of the broken fragments I have had to go upon, and amplify and fudge together so far. And for all such transient lucidities in this mysterious story, the reader no doubt will echo my Heaven be thanked!
Melville was called down to partic.i.p.ate in the crisis at Sandgate by a telegram from Mrs. Bunting, and his first exponent of the situation was Fred Bunting.
"_Come down. Urgent. Please_," was the irresistible message from Mrs.
Bunting. My cousin took the early train and arrived at Sandgate in the forenoon.
He was told that Mrs. Bunting was upstairs with Miss Glendower and that she implored him to wait until she could leave her charge. "Miss Glendower not well, then?" said Melville. "No, sir, not at all well,"
said the housemaid, evidently awaiting a further question. "Where are the others?" he asked casually. The three younger young ladies had gone to Hythe, said the housemaid, with a marked omission of the Sea Lady.
Melville has an intense dislike of questioning servants on points at issue, so he asked nothing at all concerning Miss Waters. This general absence of people from the room of familiar occupation conveyed the same suggested warning of crisis as the telegram. The housemaid waited an instant longer and withdrew.
He stood for a moment in the drawing-room and then walked out upon the veranda. He perceived a richly caparisoned figure advancing towards him.
It was Fred Bunting. He had been taking advantage of the general desertion of home to bathe from the house. He was wearing an umbrageous white cotton hat and a striped blanket, and a more aggressively manly pipe than any fully adult male would ever dream of smoking, hung from the corner of his mouth.
"h.e.l.lo!" he said. "The mater sent for you?"
Melville admitted the truth of this theory.
"There"s ructions," said Fred, and removed the pipe. The act offered conversation.
"Where"s Miss Waters?"
"Gone."
"Back?"
"Lord, no! Catch her! She"s gone to Lummidge"s Hotel. With her maid.
Took a suite."
"Why----"
"The mater made a row with her."
"Whatever for?"
"Harry."
My cousin stared at the situation.
"It broke out," said Fred.
"What broke out?"
"The row. Harry"s gone daft on her, Addy says."
"On Miss Waters?"
"Rather. Mooney. Didn"t care for his electioneering--didn"t care for his ordinary nourishment. Loose ends. Didn"t mention it to Adeline, but she began to see it. Asked questions. Next day, went off. London. She asked what was up. Three days" silence. Then--wrote to her."
Fred intensified all this by raising his eyebrows, pulling down the corners of his mouth and nodding portentously. "Eh?" he said, and then to make things clearer: "Wrote a letter."
"He didn"t write to her about Miss Waters?"
"Don"t know what he wrote about. Don"t suppose he mentioned her name, but I dare say he made it clear enough. All I know is that everything in the house felt like elastic pulled tighter than it ought to be for two whole days--everybody in a sort of complicated twist--and then there was a snap. All that time Addy was writing letters to him and tearing "em up, and no one could quite make it out. Everyone looked blue except the Sea Lady. She kept her own lovely pink. And at the end of that time the mater began asking things, Adeline chucked writing, gave the mater half a hint, mater took it all in in an instant and the thing burst."
"Miss Glendower didn"t----?"
"No, the mater did. Put it pretty straight too--as the mater can....
_She_ didn"t deny it. Said she couldn"t help herself, and that he was as much hers as Adeline"s. I _heard_ that," said Fred shamelessly. "Pretty thick, eh?--considering he"s engaged. And the mater gave it her pretty straight. Said, "I"ve been very much deceived in you, Miss Waters--very much indeed." I heard her...."
"And then?"
"Asked her to go. Said she"d requited us ill for taking her up when n.o.body but a fisherman would have looked at her."
"She said that?".
"Well, words to that effect."
"And Miss Waters went?"
"In a first-cla.s.s cab, maid and boxes in another, all complete. Perfect lady.... Couldn"t have believed if I hadn"t seen it--the tail, I mean."
"And Miss Glendower?"
"Addy? Oh, she"s been going it. Comes downstairs and does the pale-faced heroine and goes upstairs and does the broken-hearted part. _I_ know.