Part 30 (1/2)
Melville produced an elaborate conceit. ”If there is no Venus Anadyomene,” he said, ”there is Michael and his Sword.”
”The stern angel in armour! But then he had a good palpable dragon to slash and not his own desires. And our way nowadays is to do a deal with the dragons somehow, raise the minimum wage and get a better housing for the working cla.s.ses by hook or by crook.”
Melville does not think that was a fair treatment of his suggestion.
”No,” said Chatteris, ”I've no doubt about the choice. I'm going to fall in--with the species; I'm going to take my place in the ranks in that great battle for the future which is the meaning of life. I want a moral cold bath and I mean to take one. This lax dalliance with dreams and desires must end. I will make a time table for my hours and a rule for my life, I will entangle my honour in controversies, I will give myself to service, as a man should do. Clean-handed work, struggle, and performance.”
”And there is Miss Glendower, you know.”
”Rather!” said Chatteris, with a faint touch of insincerity. ”Tall and straight-eyed and capable. By Jove! if there's to be no Venus Anadyomene, at any rate there will be a Pallas Athene. It is she who plays the reconciler.”
And then he said these words: ”It won't be so bad, you know.”
Melville restrained a movement of impatience, he tells me, at that.
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 cla.s.s and time. There it is! I've had the dream, but you see I keep hold of reason. Here, with the flame burning, I renounce it. I make my choice.... Renunciation! Always--renunciation! That is life for all of us. We have desires, only to deny them, senses that we all must starve.
We can live only as a part of ourselves. Why should _I_ be exempt. For me, she is evil. For me she is death.... Only why have I seen her face?
Why have I heard her voice?...”
VI
They walked out of the shadows and up a long sloping path until Sandgate, as a little line of lights, came into view below. Presently they came out upon the brow and walked together (the band playing with a remote and sweetening indistinctness far away behind them) towards the cliff at the end. They stood for a little while in silence looking down.
Melville made a guess at his companion's thoughts.
”Why not come down to-night?” he asked.
”On a night like this!” Chatteris turned about suddenly and regarded the moonlight and the sea. He stood quite still for a s.p.a.ce, and that cold white radiance gave an illusory strength and decision to his face.
”No,” he said at last, and the word was almost a sigh.
”Go down to the girl below there. End the thing. She will be there, thinking of you----”
”No,” said Chatteris, ”no.”
”It's not ten yet,” Melville tried again.
Chatteris thought. ”No,” he answered, ”not to-night. To-morrow, in the light of everyday.
”I want a good, gray, honest day,” he said, ”with a south-west wind....
These still, soft nights! How can you expect me to do anything of that sort to-night?”
And then he murmured as if he found the word a satisfying word to repeat, ”Renunciation.”
”By Jove!” he said with the most astonis.h.i.+ng transition, ”but this is a night out of fairyland! Look at the lights of those windows below there and then up--up into this enormous blue of sky. And there, as if it were fainting with moonlight--s.h.i.+nes one star.”