She appeared with traces of recent emotion. "I telegraphed," she said.
"We are in dreadful trouble."
"Miss Waters, I gather----"
"She's gone."
She went towards the bell and stopped. "They'll get luncheon as usual,"
she said. "You will be wanting your luncheon."
She came towards him with rising hands. "You can _not_ imagine," she
said. "That poor child!"
"You must tell me," said Melville.
"I simply do not know what to do. I don't know where to turn." She came
nearer to him. She protested. "All that I did, Mr. Melville, I did for
the best. I saw there was trouble. I could see that I had been
deceived, and I stood it as long as I could. I _had_ to speak at last."
My cousin by leading questions and interrogative silences developed her
story a little.
"And every one," she said, "blames me. Every one."
"Everybody blames everybody who does anything, in affairs of this sort,"
said Melville. "You mustn't mind that."
"I'll try not to," she said bravely. "_You_ know, Mr. Melville----"
He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment. "Yes," he said very
impressively, and I think Mrs. Bunting felt better.
"We all look to you," she said. "I don't know what I should do without
you."
"That's it," said Melville. "How do things stand? What am I to do?"
"Go to him," said Mrs. Bunting, "and put it all right."
"But suppose--" began Melville doubtfully.
"Go to her. Make her see what it would mean for him and all of us."
He tried to get more definite instructions. "Don't make difficulties,"
implored Mrs. 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."
"That reminds me. Does _he_ know----"
"We don't know. How can we know? We know he is infatuated, that is all.
He is up there in Folkestone, and she is in Folkestone, and they may be
meeting----"
My cousin sought counsel with himself.
"Say you will go?" said Mrs. Bunting, with a hand upon his arm.
"I'll go," said Melville, "but I don't see what I can do!"
And Mrs. Bunting clasped his hand in both of her own plump shapely hands
and said she knew all along that he would, and that for coming down so
promptly to her telegram she would be grateful to him so long as she had
a breath to draw, and then she added, as if it were part of the same
remark, that he must want his luncheon.
He accepted the luncheon proposition in an incidental manner and
reverted to the question in hand.
"Do you know what his attitude----"
"He has written only to Addy."
"It isn't as if he had brought about this crisis?"
"It was Addy. He went away and something in his manner made her write
and ask him the reason why. So soon as she had his letter saying he
wanted to rest from politics for a little, that somehow he didn't seem
to find the interest in life he thought it deserved, she divined
everything----"
"Everything? Yes, but just what _is_ everything?"
"That _she_ had led him on."
"Miss Waters?"
"Yes."
My cousin reflected. So that was what they considered to be everything!
"I wish I knew just where he stood," he said at last, and followed
Mrs. Bunting luncheonward. In the course of that meal, which was
_tete-a-tete_, it became almost unsatisfactorily evident what a great
relief Melville's consent to interview Chatteris was to Mrs. Bunting.
Indeed, she seemed to consider herself relieved from the greater portion
of her responsibility in the matter, since Melville was bearing her
burden. She sketched out her defence against the accusations that had no
doubt been levelled at her, explicitly and implicitly.
"How was _I_ to know?" she asked, and she told over again the story of
that memorable landing, but with new, extenuating details. It was
Adeline herself who had cried first, "She must be saved!" Mrs. Bunting
made a special point of that. "And what else was there for me to do?"
she asked.
And as she talked, the problem before my cousin assumed graver and yet
graver proportions. He perceived more and more clearly the complexity
of the situation with which he was entrusted. In the first place it was
not at all clear that Miss Glendower was willing to receive back her
lover except upon terms, and the Sea Lady, he was quite sure, did not
mean to release him from any grip she had upon him. They were preparing
to treat an elemental struggle as if it were an individual case. It grew
more and more evident to him how entirely Mrs. Bunting overlooked the
essentially abnormal nature of the Sea Lady, how absolutely she regarded
the business as a mere every-day vacillation, a commonplace outbreak of
that jilting spirit which dwells, covered deep, perhaps, but never
entirely eradicated, in the heart of man; and how confidently she
expected him, with a little tactful remonstrance and pressure, to
restore the _status quo ante_.
As for Chatteris!--Melville shook his head at the cheese, and answered
Mrs. Bunting abstractedly.