H. G. Wells

“ Melville is very insistent upon and rather envious of that unlimited leisure. A picture of a mermaid swinging in a hammock of woven seaweed, with what bishops call a "latter-day" novel in one hand and a sixteen candle-power phosphorescent fish in the other, may jar upon one's preconceptions, but it is certainly far more in accordance with the picture of the abyss she printed on his mind. Everywhere Change works her will on things. Everywhere, and even among the immortals, Modernity spreads. ”

“ So he turned very suddenly on a meditative waiter for not removing our plates.
"Had any golf lately?" I said to Micklethwaite, when the plates and the remains of the waiter had gone away. Golf always does Micklethwaite good except when he is actually playing. Then, I am told— If I were Mrs. Bunting I should break off and raise my eyebrows and both hands at this point, to indicate how golf acts on Micklethwaite when he is playing.
I turned my mind to feigning an interest in golf—a game that in truth I despise and hate as I despise and hate nothing else in this world. ”

“ She smiled at him.
"No!" she said, "I sha'n't marry him and go about in a bath chair. And grow old as all earthly women must. (It's the dust, I think, and the dryness of the air, and the way you begin and end.) You burn too fast, you flare and sink and die. This life of yours!—the illnesses and the growing old! When the skin wears shabby, and the light is out of the hair, and the teeth— Not even for love would I face it. No. . . . But then you know—" Her voice sank to a low whisper. "There are better dreams."
"What dreams?" rebelled Melville. ”

“ My cousin looked distressed. She abandoned the ink-spot.
"Your life, I tell you, is a dream—a dream, and you can't wake out of it——"
"And if so, why do you tell me?"
She made no answer for a space.
"Why do you tell me?" he insisted.
He heard the rustle of her movement as she bent towards him.
She came warmly close to him. She spoke in gently confidential undertone, as one who imparts a secret that is not to be too lightly given. "Because," she said, "there are better dreams." ”

“ He sees nothing of that traffic. He sees the little sea garden at Sandgate and that little group of people very small and bright and something—something hanging over them. "It isn't fair on them—or me—or anybody!"
Then you know, quite suddenly, I imagine him swearing.
I imagine him at his luncheon, a meal he usually treats with a becoming gravity. I imagine the waiter marking the kindly self-indulgence of his clean-shaven face, and advancing with that air of intimate participation the good waiter shows to such as he esteems. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 appetite 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.
"No," he said suddenly, "I am not mawbid either. I take the gifts the gods will give me. ”

“ Bunting, "she must come among nice people and in a nice way. One can understand her feeling like that. But imagine her difficulties! To be a mere cause of public excitement, and silly paragraphs in the silly season, to be made a sort of show of, in fact—she doesn't want any of it," added Mrs. Bunting, with the emphasis of both hands.
"What does she want?" asked my cousin Melville.
"She wants to be treated exactly like a human being, to be a human being, just like you or me. And she asks to stay with us, to be one of our family, and to learn how we live. ”

“ And it really seems these poor creatures are Immortal, Mr. Melville—at least within limits—creatures born of the elements and resolved into the elements again—and just as it is in the story—there’s always a something—they have no Souls! No Souls at all! Nothing! And the poor child feels it. She feels it dreadfully. But in order to get souls, Mr. Melville, you know they have to come into the world of men. ”

“ Outside the front of the hotel, which is one of a great array of pallid white façades, stands this little black figure of a hall-porter, staring stupidly into the warm and luminous mystery of the night that has swallowed Sea Lady and Chatteris together. And he is the sole living thing in the picture. ”

“ Melville, I suppose, and why Fred goes about neglecting Mabel——"
"My dear!" said Mrs. Bunting.
"I wouldn't have her canvassing with us for anything," said Miss Glendower. "She'd spoil everything. She is frivolous and satirical. She looks at you with incredulous eyes, she seems to blight all one's earnestness. . . . I don't think you quite understand, dear Mrs. Bunting, what this election and my studies mean to me—and Harry. She comes across all that—like a contradiction." ”

“ Chatteris said something that struck Melville as having somehow been said before. “Election, progress, good of humanity, public spirit. None of these [184] things interest me really,” he said. “At least, not just now.”
Melville waited.
“One gets brought up in an atmosphere in which it’s always being whispered that one should go for a career. You learn it at your mother’s knee. They never give you time to find out what you really want, they keep on shoving you at that. They form your character. They rule your mind. They rush you into it.” ”

“ She is the beautiful mask of death.”
“Yes,” said Chatteris. “I know.”
And then again, “I know.
“There is nothing for me to learn about that,” he said. “But why—why should the mask of death be beautiful? After all— We get our duty by good hard reasoning. Why should reason and justice carry everything? Perhaps after all there are things beyond our reason, perhaps after all desire has a claim on us?”
He stopped interrogatively and Melville [275] was profound. “I think,” said my cousin at last, “Desire has a claim on us. Beauty, at any rate——
“I mean,” he explained, “we are human beings. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Bunting. “Think of that poor girl upstairs. Think of us all.”
“Exactly,” said Melville, thinking of Chatteris and staring despondently out of the window.
“Bunting, I gather——”
“It is you or no one,” said Mrs. Bunting, sailing over his unspoken words. “Fred is too young, and Randolph—! He’s not diplomatic. He—he hectors.”
“Does he?” exclaimed Melville.
“You should see him abroad. Often—many times I have had to interfere.... No, it is you. You know Harry so well. He trusts you. You can say things to him—no one else could say.” ”

“ Bunting had been something of a mother, ever since Mrs. Glendower's death.
The two Miss Glendowers were half sisters, and gentle beyond dispute, a county family race that had only for a generation stooped to trade, and risen at once Antæus-like, refreshed and enriched. The elder, Adeline, was the rich one—the heiress, with the commercial blood in her veins. She was really very rich, and she had dark hair and grey eyes and serious views, and when her father died, which he did a little before her step-mother, she had only the later portion of her later youth left to her. ”

“ I must confess I envy the freedom of the novelist who can take you behind such a locked door as this and give you all that such persons say and do. But with the strongest will in the world to blend the little scraps of fact I have into a continuous sequence of events, I falter at this occasion. After all, I never saw Adeline at all until after all these things were over, and what is she now? A rather tall, a rather restless and active woman, very keen and obvious in public affairs—with something gone out of her. Melville once saw a gleam of that, but for the most part Melville never liked her ”

“ This modern world is a world where the wonderful is utterly commonplace. We are bred to show a quiet freedom from amazement, and why should we boggle at material Mermaids, with Dewars solidifying all sorts of impalpable things and Marconi waves spreading everywhere? To the Buntings she was as matter of fact, as much a matter of authentic and reasonable motives and of sound solid sentimentality, as everything else in the Bunting world. ”

“ Do we? Is it finer? Why should it be finer to see beauty where it is fatal to us to see it? Why? Unless we are to believe there is no reason in things, why should this—impossibility, be beautiful to any one anyhow? Put it as a matter of [273] reason, Melville. Why should her smile be so sweet to me, why should her voice move me! Why her’s and not Adeline’s? Adeline has straight eyes and clear eyes and fine eyes, and all the difference there can be, what is it? ”

“ Melville restrained a movement of impatience, he tells me, at that. [281]
Then Chatteris, he says, broke into a sort of speech. “The case is tried,” he said, “the judgment has been given. I am that I am. I’ve been through it all and worked it out. I am a man and I must go a man’s way. There is Desire, the light and guide of the world, a beacon on a headland blazing out. Let it burn! Let it burn! The road runs near it and by it—and past.... I’ve made my choice. I’ve got to be a man, I’ve got to live a man and die a man and carry the burden of my class and time. ”

“ He was surprised to see Chatteris, startled and just faintly alarmed, and Chatteris it was evident was surprised and disconcerted to see him. Chatteris stood in as awkward an attitude as he was capable of, staring unfavourably, and for a moment or so he gave no sign of recognition. Then he nodded and came forward reluctantly. His every movement suggested the will without the wit to escape. "You here?" he said.
"What are you doing away from Hythe at this time?" asked Melville. ”

“ Imagine a great fat creature like Micklethwaite, a creature who ought to wear a turban and a long black robe to hide his grossness, whacking a little white ball for miles and miles with a perfect surgery of instruments, whacking it either with a babyish solemnity or a childish rage as luck may have decided, whacking away while his country goes to the devil, and incidentally training an innocent-eyed little boy to swear and be a tip-hunting loafer. That’s golf! ”

“ Adeline, he asserts, was absolutely built on her. She was always attempting to be the incarnation of Marcella. It was he who had perverted Mrs. Bunting's mind to adopt this fancy. But I don't believe for a moment in this idea of girls building themselves on heroines in fiction. These are matters of elective affinity, and unless some bullying critic or preacher sends us astray, we take each to our own novelist as the souls in the Swedenborgian system take to their hells. Adeline took to the imaginary Marcella. There was, Melville says, the strongest likeness in their mental atmosphere. ”

“ 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 fiancée, who is not only rich and beautiful—she is beautiful!—but also the best of all possible helpers for him. ”

“ And the neighbour's ladder was drifting quietly out to sea.
Of course it was one of those positions that have an air of being conspicuous.
Indeed it was conspicuous. It was some way below high water and the group stood out perhaps thirty yards down the beach. Nobody, as Mrs. Bunting told my cousin Melville, knew a bit what to, do and they all had even an exaggerated share of the national hatred of being seen in a puzzle. The mermaid seemed content to remain a beautiful problem clinging to Fred, and by all accounts she was a reasonable burthen for a man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He gives me an impression of a very strange world indeed, a green luminous fluidity in which these beings float, a world lit by great shining monsters that drift athwart it, and by waving forests of nebulous luminosity amidst which the little fishes drift like netted stars. It is a world with neither sitting, nor standing, nor going, nor coming, through which its inhabitants float and drift as one floats and drifts in dreams. And the way they live there! "My dear man!" said Melville, "it must be like a painted ceiling! ”

“ Why am I pulled about? She has got into my imagination. How? I haven’t the remotest idea.”
“She’s beautiful,” meditated Melville.
“She’s beautiful certainly. But so is Miss Glendower.” [272]
“She’s very beautiful. I’m not blind, Chatteris. She’s beautiful in a different way.”
“Yes, but that’s only the name for the effect. Why is she very beautiful?”
Melville shrugged his shoulders.
“She’s not beautiful to every one.”
“You mean?”
“Bunting keeps calm.”
“Oh—he——!”
“And other people don’t seem to see it—as I do.”
“Some people seem to see no beauty at all, as we do. With emotion, that is.” ”

“ Probably Chatteris remained in this attitude for a considerable time—half an hour, perhaps, or more. Slowly, it would seem, his mood underwent a change. At some definite moment it must have been that his lethargic meditation gave way to a strange activity, to a sort of hysterical reaction against all his resolves and renunciations. His first action seems to me grotesque—and grotesquely pathetic. He went into his dressing-room, and in the morning “his clo’es,” said the valet, “was shied about as though ’e’d lost a ticket.” This poor worshipper of beauty and the dream shaved! ”

“ My life is made for me—and it's a very good life. It's better than I deserve."
"Heaps," said Melville.
"Much," said Chatteris defiantly.
"Ever so much," endorsed Melville.
"Let's talk of other things," said Chatteris. "It's what even the street boys call mawbid nowadays to doubt for a moment the absolute final all-this-and-nothing-else-in-the-worldishness of whatever you happen to be doing."
My cousin Melville, however, could think of no other sufficiently interesting topic. "You left them all right at Sandgate?" he asked, after a pause.
"Except little Bunting." ”

“ Her dream! Of serious things!—a rout of phantoms pursuing a phantom ignis fatuus—the afterglow of a mirage. Vanity of vanities——"
"It's real enough to her."
"As real as she can make it, you know. But she isn't real herself. She begins badly."
"And he, you know——"
"He doesn't believe in it."
"I'm not so sure."
"I am—now."
"He's a complicated being."
"He will ravel out," said the Sea Lady.
"I think you misjudge him about that work of his, anyhow," said Melville. "He's a man rather divided against himself." He added abruptly, "We all are." He recovered himself from the generality. ”