"No. I know all about her. The other?"
"The mermaid?"
"Yes, the mermaid. Why not?"
"Oh, _she_--Very considerable means. Galleons. Phoenician treasure ships, wrecked frigates, submarine reefs----"
"Well, that"s all right. And now will you tell me, Mr. Melville, why shouldn"t Harry have her? What if she is a mermaid? It"s no worse than an American silver mine, and not nearly so raw and ill-bred."
"In the first place there"s his engagement----"
"Oh, _that_!"
"And in the next there"s the Sea Lady."
"But I thought she----"
"She"s a mermaid."
"It"s no objection. So far as I can see, she"d make an excellent wife for him. And, as a matter of fact, down here she"d be able to help him in just the right way. The member here--he"ll be fighting--this Sa.s.soon man--makes a lot of capital out of deep-sea cables. Couldn"t be better.
Harry could dish him easily. That"s all right. Why shouldn"t he have her?"
She stuck her hands deeply into the pockets of her dust-coat, and a china-blue eye regarded Melville from under the brim of the boldly trimmed bonnet.
"You understand clearly she is a properly const.i.tuted mermaid with a real physical tail?"
"Well?" said Lady Poynting Mallow.
"Apart from any question of Miss Glendower----"
"That"s understood."
"I think that such a marriage would be impossible."
"Why?"
My cousin played round the question. "She"s an immortal, for example, with a past."
"Simply makes her more interesting."
Melville tried to enter into her point of view. "You think," he said, "she would go to London for him, and marry at St. George"s, Hanover Square, and pay for a mansion in Park Lane and visit just anywhere he liked?"
"That"s precisely what she would do. Just now, with a Court that is waking up----"
"It"s precisely what she won"t do," said Melville.
"But any woman would do it who had the chance."
"She"s a mermaid."
"She"s a fool," said Lady Poynting Mallow.
"She doesn"t even mean to marry him; it doesn"t enter into her code."
"The hussy! What does she mean?"
My cousin made a gesture seaward. "That!" he said. "She"s a mermaid."
"What?"
"Out there."
"Where?"
"There!"
Lady Poynting Mallow scanned the sea as if it were some curious new object. "It"s an amphibious outlook for the family," she said after reflection. "But even then--if she doesn"t care for society and it makes Harry happy--and perhaps after they are tired of--rusticating----"
"I don"t think you fully realise that she is a mermaid," said Melville; "and Chatteris, you know, breathes air."
"That _is_ a difficulty," admitted Lady Poynting Mallow, and studied the sunlit offing for a s.p.a.ce.
"I don"t see why it shouldn"t be managed for all that," she considered after a pause.
"It can"t be," said Melville with arid emphasis.
"She cares for him?"
"She"s come to fetch him."
"If she wants him badly he might make terms. In these affairs it"s always one or other has to do the buying. She"d have to _marry_--anyhow."
My cousin regarded her impenetrably satisfied face.
"He could have a yacht and a diving bell," she suggested; "if she wanted him to visit her people."
"They are pagan demiG.o.ds, I believe, and live in some mythological way in the Mediterranean."
"Dear Harry"s a pagan himself--so that doesn"t matter, and as for being mythological--all good families are. He could even wear a diving dress if one could be found to suit him."
"I don"t think that anything of the sort is possible for a moment."
"Simply because you"ve never been a woman in love," said Lady Poynting Mallow with an air of vast experience.
She continued the conversation. "If it"s sea water she wants it would be quite easy to fit up a tank wherever they lived, and she could easily have a bath chair like a sitz bath on wheels.... Really, Mr.
Milvain----"
"Melville."