“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 – ”

“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 illustrative 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 assurances, 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?”

“But do you really mean – ?”

“I’ve never tasted tea before. How do you think we can boil a kettle?”

“What a strange – what a wonderful world it must be!” cried Adeline. And Mrs. Bunting said: “I can hardly imagine it without tea. It’s worse than – I mean it reminds me – of abroad.”

Mrs. Bunting was in the act of refilling the Sea Lady’s cup. “I suppose,” she said suddenly, “as you’re not used to it – It won’t affect your diges – ” She glanced at Adeline and hesitated. “But it’s China tea.”

And she filled the cup.

“It’s an inconceivable world to me,” said Adeline. “Quite.”

Her dark eyes rested thoughtfully on the Sea Lady for a space. “Inconceivable,” she repeated, for, in that unaccountable way in which a whisper will attract attention that a turmoil fails to arouse, the tea had opened her eyes far more than the tail.

The Sea Lady looked at her with sudden frankness. “And think how wonderful all this must seem to me!” she remarked.

But Adeline’s imagination was aroused for the moment and she was not to be put aside by the Sea Lady’s terrestrial impressions. She pierced – for a moment or so – the ladylike serenity, the assumption of a terrestrial fashion of mind that was imposing so successfully upon Mrs. Bunting. “It must be,” she said, “the strangest world.” And she stopped invitingly…

She could not go beyond that and the Sea Lady would not help her.

There was a pause, a silent eager search for topics. Apropos of the Niphetos roses on the table they talked of flowers and Miss Glendower ventured: “You have your anemones too! How beautiful they must be amidst the rocks!”

And the Sea Lady said they were very pretty – especially the cultivated sorts…

“And the fishes,” said Mrs. Bunting. “How wonderful it must be to see the fishes!”

“Some of them,” volunteered the Sea Lady, “will come and feed out of one’s hand.”

Mrs. Bunting made a little coo of approval. She was reminded of chrysanthemum shows and the outside of the Royal Academy exhibition and she was one of those people to whom only the familiar is really satisfying. She had a momentary vision of the abyss as a sort of diverticulum of Piccadilly and the Temple, a place unexpectedly rational and comfortable. There was a kink for a time about a little matter of illumination, but it recurred to Mrs. Bunting only long after. The Sea Lady had turned from Miss Glendower’s interrogative gravity of expression to the sunlight.

“The sunlight seems so golden here,” said the Sea Lady. “Is it always golden?”

“You have that beautiful greenery-blue shimmer I suppose,” said Miss Glendower, “that one catches sometimes ever so faintly in aquaria – ”

“One lives deeper than that,” said the Sea Lady. “Everything is phosphorescent, you know, a mile or so down, and it’s like – I hardly know. As towns look at night – only brighter. Like piers and things like that.”

“Really!” said Mrs. Bunting, with the Strand after the theatres in her head. “Quite bright?”

“Oh, quite,” said the Sea Lady.

“But – ” struggled Adeline, “is it never put out?”

“It’s so different,” said the Sea Lady.

“That’s why it is so interesting,” said Adeline.

“There are no nights and days, you know. No time nor anything of that sort.”

“Now that’s very queer,” said Mrs. Bunting with Miss Glendower’s teacup in her hand – they were both drinking quite a lot of tea absent-mindedly, in their interest in the Sea Lady. “But how do you tell when it’s Sunday?”

“We don’t – ” began the Sea Lady. “At least not exactly – ” And then – “Of course one hears the beautiful hymns that are sung on the passenger ships.”

“Of course!” said Mrs. Bunting, having sung so in her youth and quite forgetting something elusive that she had previously seemed to catch.

But afterwards there came a glimpse of some more serious divergence – a glimpse merely. Miss Glendower hazarded a supposition that the sea people also had their Problems, and then it would seem the natural earnestness of her disposition overcame her proper attitude of ladylike superficiality and she began to ask questions. There can be no doubt that the Sea Lady was evasive, and Miss Glendower, perceiving that she had been a trifle urgent, tried to cover her error by expressing a general impression.

“I can’t see it,” she said, with a gesture that asked for sympathy. “One wants to see it, one wants to be it. One needs to be born a mer-child.”

“A mer-child?” asked the Sea Lady.

“Yes – Don’t you call your little ones – ?”

“What little ones?” asked the Sea Lady.

She regarded them for a moment with a frank wonder, the undying wonder of the Immortals at that perpetual decay and death and replacement which is the gist of human life. Then at the expression of their faces she seemed to recollect. “Of course,” she said, and then with a transition that made pursuit difficult, she agreed with Adeline. “It is different,” she said. “It is wonderful. One feels so alike, you know, and so different. That’s just where it is so wonderful. Do I look – ? And yet you know I have never had my hair up, nor worn a dressing gown before today.”

“What do you wear?” asked Miss Glendower. “Very charming things, I suppose.”