The Sea Lady

I do not even feel certain that it is in the sea particularly that this world of the Sea Lady is to be found. But about those saturated books and drowned scraps of paper, you say? Things are not always what they seem, and she told him all of that, we must reflect, one laughing afternoon.

She could appear, at times, he says, as real as you or I, and again came mystery all about her. There were times when it seemed to him you might have hurt her or killed her as you can hurt and kill anyone – with a penknife for example – and there were times when it seemed to him you could have destroyed the whole material universe and left her smiling still. But of this ambiguous element in the lady, more is to be told later. There are wider seas than ever keel sailed upon, and deeps that no lead of human casting will ever plumb. When it is all summed up, I have to admit, I do not know, I cannot tell. I fall back upon Melville and my poor array of collected facts. At first there was amazingly little strangeness about her for any who had to deal with her. There she was, palpably solid and material, a lady out of the sea.

This modern world is a world where the wonderful is utterly commonplace. We are bred to show a quiet freedom from amazement, and why should we boggle at material Mermaids, with Dewars solidifying all sorts of impalpable things and Marconi waves spreading everywhere? To the Buntings she was as matter of fact, as much a matter of authentic and reasonable motives and of sound solid sentimentality, as everything else in the Bunting world. So she was for them in the beginning, and so up to this day with them her memory remains.

III

The way in which the Sea Lady talked to Mrs. Bunting on that memorable morning, when she lay all wet and still visibly fishy on the couch in Mrs. Bunting’s dressing-room, I am also able to give with some little fulness, because Mrs. Bunting repeated it all several times, acting the more dramatic speeches in it, to my cousin Melville in several of those good long talks that both of them in those happy days – and particularly Mrs. Bunting – always enjoyed so much. And with her very first speech, it seems, the Sea Lady took her line straight to Mrs. Bunting’s generous managing heart. She sat up on the couch, drew the antimacassar modestly over her deformity, and sometimes looking sweetly down and sometimes openly and trustfully into Mrs. Bunting’s face, and speaking in a soft clear grammatical manner that stamped her at once as no mere mermaid but a finished fine Sea Lady, she “made a clean breast of it,” as Mrs. Bunting said, and “fully and frankly” placed herself in Mrs. Bunting’s hands.

“Mrs. Bunting,” said Mrs. Bunting to my cousin Melville, in a dramatic rendering of the Sea Lady’s manner, “do permit me to apologise for this intrusion, for I know it is an intrusion. But indeed it has almost been forced upon me, and if you will only listen to my story, Mrs. Bunting, I think you will find – well, if not a complete excuse for me – for I can understand how exacting your standards must be – at any rate some excuse for what I have done – for what I must call, Mrs. Bunting, my deceitful conduct towards you. Deceitful it was, Mrs. Bunting, for I never had cramp – But then, Mrs. Bunting” – and here Mrs. Bunting would insert a long impressive pause – “I never had a mother!”

“And then and there,” said Mrs. Bunting, when she told the story to my cousin Melville, “the poor child burst into tears and confessed she had been born ages and ages ago in some dreadful miraculous way in some terrible place near Cyprus, and had no more right to a surname – Well, there – !” said Mrs. Bunting, telling the story to my cousin Melville and making the characteristic gesture with which she always passed over and disowned any indelicacy to which her thoughts might have tended. “And all the while speaking with such a nice accent and moving in such a ladylike way!”

“Of course,” said my cousin Melville, “there are classes of people in whom one excuses – One must weigh – ”

“Precisely,” said Mrs. Bunting. “And you see it seems she deliberately chose me as the very sort of person she had always wanted to appeal to. It wasn’t as if she came to us haphazard – she picked us out. She had been swimming round the coast watching people day after day, she said, for quite a long time, and she said when she saw my face, watching the girls bathe – you know how funny girls are,” said Mrs. Bunting, with a little deprecatory laugh, and all the while with a moisture of emotion in her kindly eyes. “She took quite a violent fancy to me from the very first.”

“I can quite believe that, at any rate,” said my cousin Melville with unction. I know he did, although he always leaves it out of the story when he tells it to me. But then he forgets that I have had the occasional privilege of making a third party in these good long talks.

“You know it’s most extraordinary and exactly like the German story,” said Mrs. Bunting. “Oom – what is it?”

“Undine?”

“Exactly – yes. And it really seems these poor creatures are Immortal, Mr. Melville – at least within limits – creatures born of the elements and resolved into the elements again – and just as it is in the story – there’s always a something – they have no Souls! No Souls at all! Nothing! And the poor child feels it. She feels it dreadfully. But in order to get souls, Mr. Melville, you know they have to come into the world of men. At least so they believe down there. And so she has come to Folkestone. To get a soul. Of course that’s her great object, Mr. Melville, but she’s not at all fanatical or silly about it. Any more than we are. Of course we – people who feel deeply – ”

“Of course,” said my cousin Melville, with, I know, a momentary expression of profound gravity, drooping eyelids and a hushed voice. For my cousin does a good deal with his soul, one way and another.

“And she feels that if she comes to earth at all,” said Mrs. Bunting, “she must come among nice people and in a nice way. One can understand her feeling like that. But imagine her difficulties! To be a mere cause of public excitement, and silly paragraphs in the silly season, to be made a sort of show of, in fact – she doesn’t want any of it,” added Mrs. Bunting, with the emphasis of both hands.

“What does she want?” asked my cousin Melville.

“She wants to be treated exactly like a human being, to be a human being, just like you or me. And she asks to stay with us, to be one of our family, and to learn how we live. She has asked me to advise her what books to read that are really nice, and where she can get a dress-maker, and how she can find a clergyman to sit under who would really be likely to understand her case, and everything. She wants me to advise her about it all. She wants to put herself altogether in my hands. And she asked it all so nicely and sweetly. She wants me to advise her about it all.”

“Um,” said my cousin Melville.

“You should have heard her!” cried Mrs. Bunting.

“Practically it’s another daughter,” he reflected.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bunting, “and even that did not frighten me. She admitted as much.”

“Still – ”

He took a step.

“She has means?” he inquired abruptly.

“Ample. She told me there was a box. She said it was moored at the end of a groin, and accordingly dear Randolph watched all through luncheon, and afterwards, when they could wade out and reach the end of the rope that tied it, he and Fred pulled it in and helped Fitch and the coachman carry it up. It’s a curious little box for a lady to have, well made, of course, but of wood, with a ship painted on the top and the name of ‘Tom’ cut in it roughly with a knife; but, as she says, leather simply will not last down there, and one has to put up with what one can get; and the great thing is it’s full, perfectly full, of gold coins and things. Yes, gold – and diamonds, Mr. Melville. You know Randolph understands something – Yes, well he says that box – oh! I couldn’t tell you how much it isn’t worth! And all the gold things with just a sort of faint reddy touch… But anyhow, she is rich, as well as charming and beautiful. And really you know, Mr. Melville, altogether – Well, I’m going to help her, just as much as ever I can. Practically, she’s to be our paying guest. As you know – it’s no great secret between us – Adeline – Yes… She’ll be the same. And I shall bring her out and introduce her to people and so forth. It will be a great help. And for everyone except just a few intimate friends, she is to be just a human being who happens to be an invalid – temporarily an invalid – and we are going to engage a good, trustworthy woman – the sort of woman who isn’t astonished at anything, you know – they’re a little expensive but they’re to be got even nowadays – who will be her maid – and make her dresses, her skirts at any rate – and we shall dress her in long skirts – and throw something over It, you know – ”

“Over – ?”

“The tail, you know.”

My cousin Melville said “Precisely!” with his head and eyebrows. But that was the point that hadn’t been clear to him so far, and it took his breath away. Positively – a tail! All sorts of incorrect theories went by the board. Somehow he felt this was a topic not to be too urgently pursued. But he and Mrs. Bunting were old friends.

“And she really has … a tail?” he asked.

“Like the tail of a big mackerel,” said Mrs. Bunting, and he asked no more.

“It’s a most extraordinary situation,” he said.

“But what else could I do?” asked Mrs. Bunting.

“Of course the thing’s a tremendous experiment,” said my cousin Melville, and repeated quite inadvertently, “a tail!”

Clear and vivid before his eyes, obstructing absolutely the advance of his thoughts, were the shiny clear lines, the oily black, the green and purple and silver, and the easy expansiveness of a mackerel’s termination.

“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 – ”