"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.
IV
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 ill.u.s.trative 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 a.s.surances, 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?"