قراءة كتاب The Sea Lady
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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——”
“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.”