And as she talked, the problem before my cousin a.s.sumed graver and yet graver proportions. He perceived more and more clearly the complexity of the situation with which he was entrusted. In the first place it was not at all clear that Miss Glendower was willing to receive back her lover except upon terms, and the Sea Lady, he was quite sure, did not mean to release him from any grip she had upon him. They were preparing to treat an elemental struggle as if it were an individual case. It grew more and more evident to him how entirely Mrs. Bunting overlooked the essentially abnormal nature of the Sea Lady, how absolutely she regarded the business as a mere every-day vacillation, a commonplace outbreak of that jilting spirit which dwells, covered deep, perhaps, but never entirely eradicated, in the heart of man; and how confidently she expected him, with a little tactful remonstrance and pressure, to restore the _status quo ante_.
As for Chatteris!--Melville shook his head at the cheese, and answered Mrs. Bunting abstractedly.
III
"She wants to speak to you," said Mrs. Bunting, and Melville with a certain trepidation went upstairs. He went up to the big landing with the seats, to save Adeline the trouble of coming down. She appeared dressed in a black and violet tea gown with much lace, and her dark hair was done with a simple carefulness that suited it. She was pale, and her eyes showed traces of tears, but she had a certain dignity that differed from her usual bearing in being quite unconscious.
She gave him a limp hand and spoke in an exhausted voice.
"You know--all?" she asked.
"All the outline, anyhow."
"Why has he done this to me?"
Melville looked profoundly sympathetic through a pause.
"I feel," she said, "that it isn"t coa.r.s.eness."
"Certainly not," said Melville.
"It is some mystery of the imagination that I cannot understand. I should have thought--his career at any rate--would have appealed...."
She shook her head and regarded a pot of ferns fixedly for a s.p.a.ce.
"He has written to you?" asked Melville.
"Three times," she said, looking up.
Melville hesitated to ask the extent of that correspondence, but she left no need for that.
"I had to ask him," she said. "He kept it all from me, and I had to force it from him before he would tell."
"Tell!" said Melville, "what?"
"What he felt for her and what he felt for me."
"But did he----?"
"He has made it clearer. But still even now. No, I don"t understand."
She turned slowly and watched Melville"s face as she spoke: "You know, Mr. Melville, that this has been an enormous shock to me. I suppose I never really knew him. I suppose I--idealised him. I thought he cared for--our work at any rate.... He _did_ care for our work. He believed in it. Surely he believed in it."
"He does," said Melville.
"And then-- But how can he?"
"He is--he is a man with rather a strong imagination."
"Or a weak will?"
"Relatively--yes."
"It is so strange," she sighed. "It is so inconsistent. It is like a child catching at a new toy. Do you know, Mr. Melville"--she hesitated--"all this has made me feel old. I feel very much older, very much wiser than he is. I cannot help it. I am afraid it is for all women ... to feel that sometimes."
She reflected profoundly. "For _all_ women-- The child, man! I see now just what Sarah Grand meant by that."
She smiled a wan smile. "I feel just as if he had been a naughty child.
And I--I worshipped him, Mr. Melville," she said, and her voice quivered.
My cousin coughed and turned about to stare hard out of the window. He was, he perceived, much more shockingly inadequate even than he had expected to be.
"If I thought she could make him happy!" she said presently, leaving a hiatus of generous self-sacrifice.
"The case is--complicated," said Melville.
Her voice went on, clear and a little high, resigned, impenetrably a.s.sured.
"But she would not. All his better side, all his serious side-- She would miss it and ruin it all."
"Does he--" began Melville and repented of the temerity of his question.
"Yes?" she said.
"Does he--ask to be released?"
"No.... He wants to come back to me."
"And you----"
"He doesn"t come."
"But do you--do you want him back?"
"How can I say, Mr. Melville? He does not say certainly even that he wants to come back."
My cousin Melville looked perplexed. He lived on the superficies of emotion, and these complexities in matters he had always a.s.sumed were simple, put him out.
"There are times," she said, "when it seems to me that my love for him is altogether dead.... Think of the disillusionment--the shock--the discovery of such weakness."
My cousin lifted his eyebrows and shook his head in agreement.
"His feet--to find his feet were of clay!"
There came a pause.
"It seems as if I have never loved him. And then--and then I think of all the things that still might be."
Her voice made him look up, and he saw that her mouth was set hard and tears were running down her cheeks.