The way in which the Sea Lady talked to Mrs. Bunting on that memorable
morning, when she lay all wet and still visibly fishy on the couch in
Mrs. Bunting's dressing-room, I am also able to give with some little
fulness, because Mrs. Bunting repeated it all several times, acting the
more dramatic speeches in it, to my cousin Melville in several of those
good long talks that both of them in those happy days--and particularly
Mrs. Bunting--always enjoyed so much. And with her very first speech, it
seems, the Sea Lady took her line straight to Mrs. Bunting's generous
managing heart. She sat up on the couch, drew the antimacassar modestly
over her deformity, and sometimes looking sweetly down and sometimes
openly and trustfully into Mrs. Bunting's face, and speaking in a soft
clear grammatical manner that stamped her at once as no mere mermaid
but a finished fine Sea Lady, she "made a clean breast of it," as Mrs.
Bunting said, and "fully and frankly" placed herself in Mrs. Bunting's
hands.
"Mrs. Bunting," said Mrs. Bunting to my cousin Melville, in a dramatic
rendering of the Sea Lady's manner, "do permit me to apologise for this
intrusion, for I know it _is_ an intrusion. But indeed it has almost
been _forced_ upon me, and if you will only listen to my story, Mrs.
Bunting, I think you will find--well, if not a complete excuse for
me--for I can understand how exacting your standards must be--at any
rate _some_ excuse for what I have done--for what I _must_ call, Mrs.
Bunting, my deceitful conduct towards you. Deceitful it was, Mrs.
Bunting, for I never had cramp-- But then, Mrs. Bunting"--and here Mrs.
Bunting would insert a long impressive pause--"I never had a mother!"
"And then and there," said Mrs. Bunting, when she told the story to my
cousin Melville, "the poor child burst into tears and confessed she had
been born ages and ages ago in some dreadful miraculous way in some
terrible place near Cyprus, and had no more right to a surname-- Well,
_there_--!" said Mrs. Bunting, telling the story to my cousin Melville
and making the characteristic gesture with which she always passed over
and disowned any indelicacy to which her thoughts might have tended.
"And all the while speaking with such a nice accent and moving in such a
ladylike way!"
"Of course," said my cousin Melville, "there are classes of people in
whom one excuses-- One must weigh----"
"Precisely," said Mrs. Bunting. "And you see it seems she deliberately
chose _me_ as the very sort of person she had always wanted to appeal
to. It wasn't as if she came to us haphazard--she picked us out. She had
been swimming round the coast watching people day after day, she said,
for quite a long time, and she said when she saw my face, watching the
girls bathe--you know how funny girls are," said Mrs. Bunting, with a
little deprecatory laugh, and all the while with a moisture of emotion
in her kindly eyes. "She took quite a violent fancy to me from the very
first."
"I can _quite_ believe _that_, at any rate," said my cousin Melville
with unction. I know he did, although he always leaves it out of the
story when he tells it to me. But then he forgets that I have had the
occasional privilege of making a third party in these good long talks.
"You know it's most extraordinary and exactly like the German story,"
said Mrs. Bunting. "Oom--what is it?"
"Undine?"
"Exactly--yes. 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.
At least so they believe down there. And so she has come to Folkestone.
To get a soul. Of course that's her great object, Mr. Melville, but
she's not at all fanatical or silly about it. Any more than _we_ are. Of
course _we_--people who feel deeply----"
"Of course," said my cousin Melville, with, I know, a momentary
expression of profound gravity, drooping eyelids and a hushed voice. For
my cousin does a good deal with his soul, one way and another.
"And she feels that if she comes to earth at all," said Mrs. 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. She has asked me to advise her
what books to read that are really nice, and where she can get a
dress-maker, and how she can find a clergyman to sit under who would
really be likely to understand her case, and everything. She wants me to
advise her about it all. She wants to put herself altogether in my
hands. And she asked it all so nicely and sweetly. She wants me to
advise her about it all."
"Um," said my cousin Melville.
"You should have heard her!" cried Mrs. Bunting.
"Practically it's another daughter," he reflected.
"Yes," said Mrs. Bunting, "and even that did not frighten me. She
admitted as much."
"Still----"
He took a step.
"She has means?" he inquired abruptly.
"Ample. She told me there was a box. She said it was moored at the end
of a groin, and accordingly dear Randolph watched all through luncheon,
and afterwards, when they could wade out and reach the end of the rope
that tied it, he and Fred pulled it in and helped Fitch and the
coachman carry it up. It's a curious little box for a lady to have,
well made, of course, but of wood, with a ship painted on the top and
the name of 'Tom' cut in it roughly with a knife; but, as she says,
leather simply will _not_ last down there, and one has to put up with
what one can get; and the great thing is it's _full_, perfectly full,
of gold coins and things. Yes, gold--and diamonds, Mr. Melville. You
know Randolph understands something-- Yes, well he says that box--oh!
I couldn't tell you _how_ much it isn't worth! And all the gold things
with just a sort of faint reddy touch.... But anyhow, she is rich, as
well as charming and beautiful. And really you know, Mr. Melville,
altogether-- Well, I'm going to help her, just as much as ever I can.
Practically, she's to be our paying guest. As you know--it's no great
secret between _us_--Adeline-- Yes.... She'll be the same. And I shall
bring her out and introduce her to people and so forth. It will be a
great help. And for everyone except just a few intimate friends, she is
to be just a human being who happens to be an invalid--temporarily an
invalid--and we are going to engage a good, trustworthy woman--the sort
of woman who isn't astonished at anything, you know--they're a little
expensive but they're to be got even nowadays--who will be her
maid--and make her dresses, her skirts at any rate--and we shall dress
her in long skirts--and throw something over It, you know----"
"Over----?"
"The tail, you know."
My cousin Melville said "Precisely!" with his head and eyebrows. But
that was the point that hadn't been clear to him so far, and it took his
breath away. Positively--a tail! All sorts of incorrect theories went by
the board. Somehow he felt this was a topic not to be too urgently
pursued. But he and Mrs. Bunting were old friends.
"And she really has ... a tail?" he asked.
"Like the tail of a big mackerel," said Mrs. Bunting, and he asked no
more.
"It's a most extraordinary situation," he said.
"But what else _could_ I do?" asked Mrs. Bunting.
"Of course the thing's a tremendous experiment," said my cousin
Melville, and repeated quite inadvertently, "_a tail!_"
Clear and vivid before his eyes, obstructing absolutely the advance of
his thoughts, were the shiny clear lines, the oily black, the green and
purple and silver, and the easy expansiveness of a mackerel's
termination.
"But really, you know," said my cousin Melville, protesting in the name
of reason and the nineteenth century--"a tail!"
"I patted it," said Mrs. Bunting.