That, you know, is the tableau so far as I have been able to piece it
together again. You must imagine this little knot of people upon the
beach, and Mr. Bunting, I figure, a little apart, just wading out of the
water and very wet and incredulous and half drowned. 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. It seems that the very large family of people who were stopping
at the house called Koot Hoomi had appeared in force, and they were all
staring and gesticulating. They were just the sort of people the
Buntings did not want to know--tradespeople very probably. Presently one
of the men--the particularly vulgar man who used to shoot at the
gulls--began putting down their ladder as if he intended to offer
advice, and Mrs. Bunting also became aware of the black glare of the
field glasses of a still more horrid man to the west.
Moreover the popular author who lived next door, an irascible dark
square-headed little man in spectacles, suddenly turned up and began
bawling from his inaccessible wall top something foolish about his
ladder. Nobody thought of his silly ladder or took any trouble about it,
naturally. He was quite stupidly excited. To judge by his tone and
gestures he was using dreadful language and seemed disposed every moment
to jump down to the beach and come to them.
And then to crown the situation, over the westward groin appeared Low
Excursionists!
First of all their heads came, and then their remarks. Then they began
to clamber the breakwater with joyful shouts.
"Pip, Pip," said the Low Excursionists as they climbed--it was the year
of "pip, pip"--and, "What HO she bumps!" and then less generally,
"What's up _'ere_?"
And the voices of other Low Excursionists still invisible answered,
"Pip, Pip."
It was evidently a large party.
"Anything wrong?" shouted one of the Low Excursionists at a venture.
"My _dear_!" said Mrs. Bunting to Mabel, "what _are_ we to do?" And in
her description of the affair to my cousin Melville she used always to
make that the _clou_ of the story. "My DEAR! What ARE we to do?"
I believe that in her desperation she even glanced at the water. But of
course to have put the mermaid back then would have involved the most
terrible explanations....
It was evident there was only one thing to be done. Mrs. Bunting said as
much. "The only thing," said she, "is to carry her indoors."
And carry her indoors they did!...
One can figure the little procession. In front Fred, wet and astonished
but still clinging and clung to, and altogether too out of breath for
words. And in his arms the Sea Lady. She had a beautiful figure, I
understand, until that horrible tail began (and the fin of it, Mrs.
Bunting told my cousin in a whispered confidence, went up and down and
with pointed corners for all the world like a mackerel's). It flopped
and dripped along the path--I imagine. She was wearing a very nice and
very long-skirted dress of red material trimmed with coarse white lace,
and she had, Mabel told me, a _gilet_, though that would scarcely show
as they went up the garden. And that Phrygian cap hid all her golden
hair and showed the white, low, level forehead over her sea-blue eyes.
From all that followed, I imagine her at the moment scanning the veranda
and windows of the house with a certain eagerness of scrutiny.
Behind this staggering group of two I believe Mrs. Bunting came. Then
Mr. Bunting. Dreadfully wet and broken down Mr. Bunting must have been
by then, and from one or two things I have noticed since, I can't help
imagining him as pursuing his wife with, "Of course, my dear, _I_
couldn't tell, you know!"
And then, in a dismayed yet curious bunch, the girls in their wraps of
towelling and the maids carrying the ropes and things and, as if
inadvertently, as became them, most of Mr. and Fred Bunting's clothes.
And then Miss Glendower, for once at least in no sort of pose whatever,
clutching "Sir George Tressady" and perplexed and disturbed beyond
measure.
And then, as it were pursuing them all, "Pip, pip," and the hat and
raised eyebrows of a Low Excursionist still anxious to know "What's up?"
from the garden end.
So it was, or at least in some such way, and to the accompaniment of the
wildest ravings about some ladder or other heard all too distinctly over
the garden wall--("Overdressed Snobbs take my _rare old English
adjective_ ladder...!")--that they carried the Sea Lady (who appeared
serenely insensible to everything) up through the house and laid her
down upon the couch in Mrs. Bunting's room.
And just as Miss Glendower was suggesting that the very best thing they
could do would be to send for a doctor, the Sea Lady with a beautiful
naturalness sighed and came to.