Certain supplementary aspects of the Sea Lady's first conversation with
Mrs. Bunting I got from that lady herself afterwards.
The Sea Lady had made one queer mistake. "Your four charming daughters,"
she said, "and your two sons."
"My dear!" cried Mrs. Bunting--they had got through their preliminaries
by then--"I've only two daughters and one son!"
"The young man who carried--who rescued me?"
"Yes. And the other two girls are friends, you know, visitors who are
staying with me. On land one has visitors----"
"I know. So I made a mistake?"
"Oh yes."
"And the other young man?"
"You don't mean Mr. Bunting."
"Who is Mr. Bunting?"
"The other gentleman who----"
"_No!_"
"There was no one----"
"But several mornings ago?"
"Could it have been Mr. Melville?... _I_ know! You mean Mr. Chatteris! I
remember, he came down with us one morning. A tall young man with
fair--rather curlyish you might say--hair, wasn't it? And a rather
thoughtful face. He was dressed all in white linen and he sat on the
beach."
"I fancy he did," said the Sea Lady.
"He's not my son. He's--he's a friend. He's engaged to Adeline, to the
elder Miss Glendower. He was stopping here for a night or so. I daresay
he'll come again on his way back from Paris. Dear me! Fancy _my_ having
a son like that!"
The Sea Lady was not quite prompt in replying.
"What a stupid mistake for me to make!" she said slowly; and then with
more animation, "Of course, now I think, he's much too old to be your
son!"
"Well, he's thirty-two!" said Mrs. Bunting with a smile.
"It's preposterous."
"I won't say _that_."
"But I saw him only at a distance, you know," said the Sea Lady; and
then, "And so he is engaged to Miss Glendower? And Miss Glendower----?"
"Is the young lady in the purple robe who----"
"Who carried a book?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Bunting, "that's the one. They've been engaged three
months."
"Dear me!" said the Sea Lady. "She seemed-- And is he very much in love
with her?"
"Of course," said Mrs. Bunting.
"_Very_ much?"
"Oh--of _course_. If he wasn't, he wouldn't----"
"Of course," said the Sea Lady thoughtfully.
"And it's such an excellent match in every way. Adeline's just in the
very position to help him----"
And Mrs. Bunting it would seem briefly but clearly supplied an
indication of the precise position of Mr. Chatteris, not omitting even
that he was the nephew of an earl, as indeed why should she omit
it?--and the splendid prospects of his alliance with Miss Glendower's
plebeian but extensive wealth. The Sea Lady listened gravely. "He is
young, he is able, he may still be anything--anything. And she is so
earnest, so clever herself--always reading. She even reads Blue
Books--government Blue Books I mean--dreadful statistical schedulely
things. And the condition of the poor and all those things. She knows
more about the condition of the poor than any one I've ever met; what
they earn and what they eat, and how many of them live in a room. So
dreadfully crowded, you know--perfectly shocking.... She is just the
helper he needs. So dignified--so capable of giving political parties
and influencing people, so earnest! And you know she can talk to workmen
and take an interest in trades unions, and in quite astonishing things.
_I_ always think she's just _Marcella_ come to life."
And from that the good lady embarked upon an illustrative but involved
anecdote of Miss Glendower's marvellous blue-bookishness....
"He'll come here again soon?" the Sea Lady asked quite carelessly in the
midst of it.
The query was carried away and lost in the anecdote, so that later the
Sea Lady repeated her question even more carelessly.
But Mrs. Bunting did not know whether the Sea Lady sighed at all or not.
She thinks not. She was so busy telling her all about everything that I
don't think she troubled very much to see how her information was
received.
What mind she had left over from her own discourse was probably centred
on the tail.
V
Even to Mrs. Bunting's senses--she is one of those persons who take
everything (except of course impertinence or impropriety) quite
calmly--it must, I think, have been a little astonishing to find herself
sitting in her boudoir, politely taking tea with a real live legendary
creature. They were having tea in the boudoir, because of callers, and
quite quietly because, in spite of the Sea Lady's smiling assurances,
Mrs. Bunting would have it she _must_ be tired and unequal to the
exertions of social intercourse. "After _such_ a journey," said Mrs.
Bunting. There were just the three, Adeline Glendower being the third;
and Fred and the three other girls, I understand, hung about in a
general sort of way up and down the staircase (to the great annoyance of
the servants who were thus kept out of it altogether) confirming one
another's views of the tail, arguing on the theory of mermaids,
revisiting the garden and beach and trying to invent an excuse for
seeing the invalid again. They were forbidden to intrude and pledged to
secrecy by Mrs. Bunting, and they must have been as altogether unsettled
and miserable as young people can be. For a time they played croquet in
a half-hearted way, each no doubt with an eye on the boudoir window.
(And as for Mr. Bunting, he was in bed.)
I gather that the three ladies sat and talked as any three ladies all
quite resolved to be pleasant to one another would talk. Mrs. Bunting
and Miss Glendower were far too well trained in the observances of good
society (which is as every one knows, even the best of it now, extremely
mixed) to make too searching enquiries into the Sea Lady's status and
way of life or precisely where she lived when she was at home, or whom
she knew or didn't know. Though in their several ways they wanted to
know badly enough. The Sea Lady volunteered no information, contenting
herself with an entertaining superficiality of touch and go, in the most
ladylike way. She professed herself greatly delighted with the sensation
of being in air and superficially quite dry, and was particularly
charmed with tea.
"And don't you have _tea_?" cried Miss Glendower, startled.
"How can we?"
"But do you really mean----?"
"I've never tasted tea before. How do you think we can boil a kettle?"
"What a strange--what a wonderful world it must be!" cried Adeline. And
Mrs. Bunting said: "I can hardly _imagine_ it without tea. It's worse
than-- I mean it reminds me--of abroad."
Mrs. Bunting was in the act of refilling the Sea Lady's cup. "I
suppose," she said suddenly, "as you're not used to it-- It won't affect
your diges--" She glanced at Adeline and hesitated. "But it's China
tea."
And she filled the cup.
"It's an inconceivable world to me," said Adeline. "Quite."
Her dark eyes rested thoughtfully on the Sea Lady for a space.
"Inconceivable," she repeated, for, in that unaccountable way in which a
whisper will attract attention that a turmoil fails to arouse, the tea
had opened her eyes far more than the tail.
The Sea Lady looked at her with sudden frankness. "And think how
wonderful all this must seem to _me_!" she remarked.
But Adeline's imagination was aroused for the moment and she was not to
be put aside by the Sea Lady's terrestrial impressions. She pierced--for
a moment or so--the ladylike serenity, the assumption of a terrestrial
fashion of mind that was imposing so successfully upon Mrs. Bunting. "It
must be," she said, "the strangest world." And she stopped invitingly....
She could not go beyond that and the Sea Lady would not help her.
There was a pause, a silent eager search for topics. Apropos of the
Niphetos roses on the table they talked of flowers and Miss Glendower
ventured: "You have your anemones too! How beautiful they must be amidst
the rocks!"
And the Sea Lady said they were very pretty--especially the cultivated
sorts....
"And the fishes," said Mrs. Bunting. "How wonderful it must be to see
the fishes!"
"Some of them," volunteered the Sea Lady, "will come and feed out of
one's hand."
Mrs. Bunting made a little coo of approval. She was reminded of
chrysanthemum shows and the outside of the Royal Academy exhibition and
she was one of those people to whom only the familiar is really
satisfying. She had a momentary vision of the abyss as a sort of
diverticulum of Piccadilly and the Temple, a place unexpectedly rational
and comfortable. There was a kink for a time about a little matter of
illumination, but it recurred to Mrs. Bunting only long after. The Sea
Lady had turned from Miss Glendower's interrogative gravity of
expression to the sunlight.
"The sunlight seems so golden here," said the Sea Lady. "Is it always
golden?"
"You have that beautiful greenery-blue shimmer I suppose," said Miss
Glendower, "that one catches sometimes ever so faintly in aquaria----"
"One lives deeper than that," said the Sea Lady. "Everything is
phosphorescent, you know, a mile or so down, and it's like--I hardly
know. As towns look at night--only brighter. Like piers and things like
that."
"Really!" said Mrs. Bunting, with the Strand after the theatres in her
head. "Quite bright?"
"Oh, quite," said the Sea Lady.
"But--" struggled Adeline, "is it never put out?"
"It's so different," said the Sea Lady.
"That's why it is so interesting," said Adeline.
"There are no nights and days, you know. No time nor anything of that
sort."
"Now that's very queer," said Mrs. Bunting with Miss Glendower's teacup
in her hand--they were both drinking quite a lot of tea absent-mindedly,
in their interest in the Sea Lady. "But how do you tell when it's
Sunday?"
"We don't--" began the Sea Lady. "At least not exactly--" And then--"Of
course one hears the beautiful hymns that are sung on the passenger
ships."
"Of course!" said Mrs. Bunting, having sung so in her youth and quite
forgetting something elusive that she had previously seemed to catch.
But afterwards there came a glimpse of some more serious divergence--a
glimpse merely. Miss Glendower hazarded a supposition that the sea
people also had their Problems, and then it would seem the natural
earnestness of her disposition overcame her proper attitude of ladylike
superficiality and she began to ask questions. There can be no doubt
that the Sea Lady was evasive, and Miss Glendower, perceiving that she
had been a trifle urgent, tried to cover her error by expressing a
general impression.
"I can't see it," she said, with a gesture that asked for sympathy. "One
wants to see it, one wants to _be_ it. One needs to be born a
mer-child."
"A mer-child?" asked the Sea Lady.
"Yes-- Don't you call your little ones----?"
"_What_ little ones?" asked the Sea Lady.
She regarded them for a moment with a frank wonder, the undying wonder
of the Immortals at that perpetual decay and death and replacement which
is the gist of human life. Then at the expression of their faces she
seemed to recollect. "Of course," she said, and then with a transition
that made pursuit difficult, she agreed with Adeline. "It _is_
different," she said. "It _is_ wonderful. One feels so alike, you know,
and so different. That's just where it _is_ so wonderful. Do I look--?
And yet you know I have never had my hair up, nor worn a dressing gown
before today."
"What do you wear?" asked Miss Glendower. "Very charming things, I
suppose."
"It's a different costume altogether," said the Sea Lady, brushing away
a crumb.
Just for a moment Mrs. Bunting regarded her visitor fixedly. She had, I
fancy, in that moment, an indistinct, imperfect glimpse of pagan
possibilities. But there, you know, was the Sea Lady in her wrapper, so
palpably a lady, with her pretty hair brought up to date and such a
frank innocence in her eyes, that Mrs. Bunting's suspicions vanished as
they came.
(But I am not so sure of Adeline.)