Herbert Wells - The Sea Lady

“Naturally,” said Melville, rather inconsecutively. “And he doesn’t?”

“Doesn’t stir.”

“Does he see—the other lady?”

“We don’t know. We can’t watch him. But if he does he’s clever——”

“Why?”

“There’s about a hundred blessed relatives of his in the place—came like crows for a corpse. I never saw such a lot. Talk about a man of good old family—it’s decaying! I never saw such a high old family in my life. Aunts they are chiefly.”

“Aunts?”

“Aunts. Say, they’ve rallied round him. How they got hold of it I don’t know. Like vultures. Unless the mater— But they’re here. They’re all at him—using their influence with him, threatening to cut off legacies and all that. There’s one old girl at Bate’s, Lady Poynting Mallow—least bit horsey, but about as all right as any of ’em—who’s been down here twice. Seems a trifle disappointed in Adeline. And there’s two aunts at Wampach’s—you know the sort that stop at Wampach’s—regular hothouse flowers—a watering-potful of real icy cold water would kill both of ’em. And there’s one come over from the Continent, short hair, short skirts—regular terror—she’s at the Pavilion. They’re all chasing round saying, ‘Where is this woman-fish sort of thing? Let me peek!’”

“Does that constitute the hundred relatives?”

“Practically. The Wampachers are sending for a Bishop who used to be his schoolmaster——”

“No stone unturned, eh?”

“None.”

“And has he found out yet——”

“That she’s a mermaid? I don’t believe he has. The pater went up to tell him. Of course, he was a bit out of breath and embarrassed. And Chatteris cut him down. ‘At least let me hear nothing against her,’ he said. And the pater took that and came away. Good old pater. Eh?”

“And the aunts?”

“They’re taking it in. Mainly they grasp the fact that he’s going to jilt Adeline, just as he jilted the American girl. The mermaid side they seem to boggle at. Old people like that don’t take to a new idea all at once. The Wampach ones are shocked—but curious. They don’t believe for a moment she really is a mermaid, but they want to know all about it. And the one down at the Pavilion simply said, ‘Bosh! How can she breathe under water? Tell me that, Mrs. Bunting. She’s some sort of person you have picked up, I don’t know how, but mermaid she cannot be.’ They’d be all tremendously down on the mater, I think, for picking her up, if it wasn’t that they can’t do without her help to bring Addy round again. Pretty mess all round, eh?”

“I suppose the aunts will tell him?”

“What?”

“About the tail.”

“I suppose they will.”

“And what then?”

“Heaven knows! Just as likely they won’t.”

My cousin meditated on the veranda tiles for a space.

“It amuses me,” said Fred Bunting.

“Look here,” said my cousin Melville, “what am I supposed to do? Why have I been asked to come?”

“I don’t know. Stir it up a bit, I expect. Everybody do a bit—like the Christmas pudding.”

“But—” said Melville.

“I’ve been bathing,” said Fred. “Nobody asked me to take a hand and I didn’t. It won’t be a good pudding without me, but there you are! There’s only one thing I can see to do——”

“It might be the right thing. What is it?”

“Punch Chatteris’s head.”

“I don’t see how that would help matters.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t help matters,” said Fred, adding with an air of conclusiveness, “There it is!” Then adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity, and replacing his long extinct large pipe between his teeth, he went on his way. The tail of his blanket followed him reluctantly through the door. His bare feet padded across the hall and became inaudible on the carpet of the stairs.

Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity.

“Fred!” said Melville, going doorward with a sudden afterthought for fuller particulars.

But Fred had gone.

Instead, Mrs. Bunting appeared.

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——”