Herbert Wells - The Sea Lady

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 Métropole 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.