The Sea Lady Read online

  Produced by Malcolm Farmer, eagkw and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive/American Libraries.)

  THE SEA LADY

  "Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea Lady. (See page 150.)]

  THE SEA LADY

  BY H. G. WELLS

  _ILLUSTRATED_

 

  NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1902

  COPYRIGHT, 1902 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

  _Published September, 1902_

  Copyright 1901 by H. G. Wells

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE

  I.--THE COMING OF THE SEA LADY 1

  II.--SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS 30

  III.--THE EPISODE OF THE VARIOUS JOURNALISTS 71

  IV.--THE QUALITY OF PARKER 90

  V.--THE ABSENCE AND RETURN OF MR. HARRY CHATTERIS 101

  VI.--SYMPTOMATIC 133

  VII.--THE CRISIS 204

  VIII.--MOONSHINE TRIUMPHANT 285

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  FACING PAGE

  "Am I doing it right?" asked the Sea Lady _Frontispiece_

  "Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts" 81

  She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings 90

  A little group about the Sea Lady's bath chair 134

  "Why not?" 160

  The waiter retires amazed 170

  They seemed never to do anything but blow and sigh and rustle papers 180

  Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity 216

  THE SEA LADY

  CHAPTER THE FIRST.

  THE COMING OF THE SEA LADY

  I

  Such previous landings of mermaids as have left a record, have all aflavour of doubt. Even the very circumstantial account of that BrugesSea Lady, who was so clever at fancy work, gives occasion to thesceptic. I must confess that I was absolutely incredulous of such thingsuntil a year ago. But now, face to face with indisputable facts in myown immediate neighbourhood, and with my own second cousin Melville (ofSeaton Carew) as the chief witness to the story, I see these old legendsin a very different light. Yet so many people concerned themselves withthe hushing up of this affair, that, but for my sedulous enquiries, I amcertain it would have become as doubtful as those older legends in acouple of score of years. Even now to many minds----

  The difficulties in the way of the hushing-up process were no doubtexceptionally great in this case, and that they did contrive to do somuch, seems to show just how strong are the motives for secrecy in allsuch cases. There is certainly no remoteness nor obscurity about thescene of these events. They began upon the beach just east of SandgateCastle, towards Folkestone, and they ended on the beach near Folkestonepier not two miles away. The beginning was in broad daylight on a brightblue day in August and in full sight of the windows of half a dozenhouses. At first sight this alone is sufficient to make the popular wantof information almost incredible. But of that you may think differentlylater.

  Mrs. Randolph Bunting's two charming daughters were bathing at the timein company with their guest, Miss Mabel Glendower. It is from the latterlady chiefly, and from Mrs. Bunting, that I have pieced together theprecise circumstances of the Sea Lady's arrival. From Miss Glendower,the elder of two Glendower girls, for all that she is a principal inalmost all that follows, I have obtained, and have sought to obtain, noinformation whatever. There is the question of the lady's feelings--andin this case I gather they are of a peculiarly complex sort. Quitenaturally they would be. At any rate, the natural ruthlessness of theliterary calling has failed me. I have not ventured to touch them....

  The villa residences to the east of Sandgate Castle, you mustunderstand, are particularly lucky in having gardens that run rightdown to the beach. There is no intervening esplanade or road or pathsuch as cuts off ninety-nine out of the hundred of houses that face thesea. As you look down on them from the western end of the Leas, you seethem crowding the very margin. And as a great number of high groinsstand out from the shore along this piece of coast, the beach ispractically cut off and made private except at very low water, whenpeople can get around the ends of the groins. These houses areconsequently highly desirable during the bathing season, and it is thecustom of many of their occupiers to let them furnished during thesummer to persons of fashion and affluence.

  The Randolph Buntings were such persons--indisputably. It is true ofcourse that they were not Aristocrats, or indeed what an unpaid heraldwould freely call "gentle." They had no right to any sort of arms. Butthen, as Mrs. Bunting would sometimes remark, they made no pretence ofthat sort; they were quite free (as indeed everybody is nowadays) fromsnobbery. They were simple homely Buntings--Randolph Buntings--"goodpeople" as the saying is--of a widely diffused Hampshire stock addictedto brewing, and whether a suitably remunerated herald could or could nothave proved them "gentle" there can be no doubt that Mrs. Bunting wasquite justified in taking in the _Gentlewoman_, and that Mr. Bunting andFred were sedulous gentlemen, and that all their ways and thoughts weredelicate and nice. And they had staying with them the two MissGlendowers, to whom Mrs. Bunting had been something of a mother, eversince Mrs. Glendower's death.

  The two Miss Glendowers were half sisters, and gentle beyond dispute, acounty family race that had only for a generation stooped to trade, andrisen at once Antaeus-like, refreshed and enriched. The elder, Adeline,was the rich one--the heiress, with the commercial blood in her veins.She was really very rich, and she had dark hair and grey eyes andserious views, and when her father died, which he did a little beforeher step-mother, she had only the later portion of her later youth leftto her. She was nearly seven-and-twenty. She had sacrificed her earlieryouth to her father's infirmity of temper in a way that had alwaysreminded her of the girlhood of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But afterhis departure for a sphere where his temper has no doubt a widerscope--for what is this world for if it is not for the Formation ofCharacter?--she had come out strongly. It became evident she had alwayshad a mind, and a very active and capable one, an accumulated fund ofenergy and much ambition. She had bloomed into a clear and criticalsocialism, and she had blossomed at public meetings; and now she wasengaged to that really very brilliant and promising but ratherextravagant and romantic person, Harry Chatteris, the nephew of an earland the hero of a scandal, and quite a possible Liberal candidate forthe Hythe division of Kent. At least this last matter was underdiscussion and he was about, and Miss Glendower liked to feel she wassupporting him by being about too, and that was chiefly why the Buntingshad taken a house in Sandgate for the summer. Sometimes he would comeand stay a night or so with them, sometimes he would be off uponaffairs, for he was known to be a very versatile, brilliant, first-classpolitical young man--and Hythe very lucky to have a bid for him, allthings considered. And Fred Bunting was engaged to Miss Glendower's lessdistinguished, much less wealthy, seventeen-year old and possiblyaltogether more ordinary half-sister, Mabel Glendower, who had discernedlong since when they were at school together that it wasn't any goodtrying to be clear when Adeline was about.

  The Buntings did not bathe "mixed," a thing indeed that was still onlyvery doubtful
ly decent in 1898, but Mr. Randolph Bunting and his sonFred came down to the beach with them frankly instead of hiding away orgoing for a walk according to the older fashion. (This, notwithstandingthat Miss Mabel Glendower, Fred's _fiancee_ to boot, was of the bathingparty.) They formed a little procession down under the evergreen oaks inthe garden and down the ladder and so to the sea's margin.

  Mrs. Bunting went first, looking as it were for Peeping Tom with herglasses, and Miss Glendower, who never bathed because it made her feelundignified, went with her--wearing one of those simple, costly "art"morning costumes Socialists affect. Behind this protecting van came, oneby one, the three girls, in their beautiful Parisian bathing dresses andheaddresses--though these were of course completely muffled up in hugehooded gowns of towelling--and wearing of course stockings andshoes--they bathed in stockings and shoes. Then came Mrs. Bunting's maidand the second housemaid and the maid the Glendower girls had brought,carrying towels, and then at a little interval the two men carryingropes and things. (Mrs. Bunting always put a rope around each of herdaughters before ever they put a foot in the water and held it untilthey were safely out again. But Mabel Glendower would not have a rope.)

  Where the garden ends and the beach begins Miss Glendower turned asideand sat down on the green iron seat under the evergreen oak, and havingfound her place in "Sir George Tressady"--a book of which she wasnaturally enough at that time inordinately fond--sat watching the othersgo on down the beach. There they were a very bright and very pleasantgroup of prosperous animated people upon the sunlit beach, and beyondthem in streaks of grey and purple, and altogether calm save for apattern of dainty little wavelets, was that ancient mother of surprises,the Sea.

  As soon as they reached the high-water mark where it is no longerindecent to be clad merely in a bathing dress, each of the young ladieshanded her attendant her wrap, and after a little fun and laughter Mrs.Bunting looked carefully to see if there were any jelly fish, and thenthey went in. And after a minute or so, it seems Betty, the elder MissBunting, stopped splashing and looked, and then they all looked, andthere, about thirty yards away was the Sea Lady's head, as if she wereswimming back to land.

  Naturally they concluded that she must be a neighbour from one of theadjacent houses. They were a little surprised not to have noticed hergoing down into the water, but beyond that her apparition had no shadowof wonder for them. They made the furtive penetrating observations usualin such cases. They could see that she was swimming very gracefully andthat she had a lovely face and very beautiful arms, but they could notsee her wonderful golden hair because all that was hidden in afashionable Phrygian bathing cap, picked up--as she afterwards admittedto my second cousin--some nights before upon a Norman _plage_. Nor couldthey see her lovely shoulders because of the red costume she wore.

  They were just on the point of feeling their inspection had reached thelimit of really nice manners and Mabel was pretending to go on splashingagain and saying to Betty, "She's wearing a red dress. I wish I couldsee--" when something very terrible happened.

  The swimmer gave a queer sort of flop in the water, threw up her armsand--vanished!

  It was the sort of thing that seems for an instant to freeze everybody,just one of those things that everyone has read of and imagined and veryfew people have seen.

  For a space no one did anything. One, two, three seconds passed and thenfor an instant a bare arm flashed in the air and vanished again.

  Mabel tells me she was quite paralysed with horror, she did nothing allthe time, but the two Miss Buntings, recovering a little, screamed out,"Oh, she's drowning!" and hastened to get out of the sea at once, aproceeding accelerated by Mrs. Bunting, who with great presence of mindpulled at the ropes with all her weight and turned about and continuedto pull long after they were many yards from the water's edge and indeedcowering in a heap at the foot of the sea wall. Miss Glendower becameaware of a crisis and descended the steps, "Sir George Tressady" in onehand and the other shading her eyes, crying in her clear resolute voice,"She must be saved!" The maids of course were screaming--as becamethem--but the two men appear to have acted with the greatest presence ofmind. "Fred, Nexdoors ledder!" said Mr. Randolph Bunting--for thenext-door neighbour instead of having convenient stone steps had a highwall and a long wooden ladder, and it had often been pointed out by Mr.Bunting if ever an accident should happen to anyone there was _that_! Ina moment it seems they had both flung off jacket and vest, collar, tieand shoes, and were running the neighbour's ladder out into the water.

  "Where did she go, Ded?" said Fred.

  "Right out hea!" said Mr. Bunting, and to confirm his word there flashedagain an arm and "something dark"--something which in the light of allthat subsequently happened I am inclined to suppose was an unintentionalexposure of the Lady's tail.

  Neither of the two gentlemen are expert swimmers--indeed so far as I cangather, Mr. Bunting in the excitement of the occasion forgot almosteverything he had ever known of swimming--but they waded out valiantlyone on each side of the ladder, thrust it out before them and committedthemselves to the deep, in a manner casting no discredit upon our nationand race.

  Yet on the whole I think it is a matter for general congratulation thatthey were not engaged in the rescue of a genuinely drowning person. Atthe time of my enquiries whatever soreness of argument that may oncehave obtained between them had passed, and it is fairly clear that whileFred Bunting was engaged in swimming hard against the long side of theladder and so causing it to rotate slowly on its axis, Mr. Bunting hadalready swallowed a very considerable amount of sea-water and waskicking Fred in the chest with aimless vigour. This he did, as heexplains, "to get my legs down, you know. Something about that ladder,you know, and they _would_ go up!"

  And then quite unexpectedly the Sea Lady appeared beside them. Onelovely arm supported Mr. Bunting about the waist and the other was overthe ladder. She did not appear at all pale or frightened or out ofbreath, Fred told me when I cross-examined him, though at the time hewas too violently excited to note a detail of that sort. Indeed shesmiled and spoke in an easy pleasant voice.

  "Cramp," she said, "I have cramp." Both the men were convinced of that.

  Mr. Bunting was on the point of telling her to hold tight and she wouldbe quite safe, when a little wave went almost entirely into his mouthand reduced him to wild splutterings.

  "_We'll_ get you in," said Fred, or something of that sort, and so theyall hung, bobbing in the water to the tune of Mr. Bunting's trouble.

  They seem to have rocked so for some time. Fred says the Sea Ladylooked calm but a little puzzled and that she seemed to measure thedistance shoreward. "You _mean_ to save me?" she asked him.

  He was trying to think what could be done before his father drowned."We're saving you now," he said.

  "You'll take me ashore?"

  As she seemed so cool he thought he would explain his plan ofoperations, "Trying to get--end of ladder--kick with my legs. Only a fewyards out of our depth--if we could only----"

  "Minute--get my breath--moufu' sea-water," said Mr. Bunting. _Splash!_wuff!...

  And then it seemed to Fred that a little miracle happened. There was aswirl of the water like the swirl about a screw propeller, and hegripped the Sea Lady and the ladder just in time, as it seemed to him,to prevent his being washed far out into the Channel. His fathervanished from his sight with an expression of astonishment just formingon his face and reappeared beside him, so far as back and legs areconcerned, holding on to the ladder with a sort of death grip. And thenbehold! They had shifted a dozen yards inshore, and they were in lessthan five feet of water and Fred could feel the ground.

  At its touch his amazement and dismay immediately gave way to the purestheroism. He thrust ladder and Sea Lady before him, abandoned the ladderand his now quite disordered parent, caught her tightly in his arms, andbore her up out of the water. The young ladies cried "Saved!" the maidscried "Saved!" Distant voices echoed "Saved, Hooray!" Everybody in factcried "Saved!" except Mrs. Bunting, who
was, she says, under theimpression that Mr. Bunting was in a fit, and Mr. Bunting, who seems tohave been under an impression that all those laws of nature by which,under Providence, we are permitted to float and swim, were in suspenseand that the best thing to do was to kick very hard and fast until theend should come. But in a dozen seconds or so his head was up again andhis feet were on the ground and he was making whale and walrus noises,and noises like a horse and like an angry cat and like sawing, and waswiping the water from his eyes; and Mrs. Bunting (except that now andthen she really _had_ to turn and say "_Ran_dolph!") could give herattention to the beautiful burthen that clung about her son.

  And it is a curious thing that the Sea Lady was at least a minute out ofthe water before anyone discovered that she was in any way differentfrom--other ladies. I suppose they were all crowding close to her andlooking at her beautiful face, or perhaps they imagined that she waswearing some indiscreet but novel form of dark riding habit or somethingof that sort. Anyhow not one of them noticed it, although it must havebeen before their eyes as plain as day. Certainly it must have blendedwith the costume. And there they stood, imagining that Fred had rescueda lovely lady of indisputable fashion, who had been bathing from someneighbouring house, and wondering why on earth there was nobody on thebeach to claim her. And she clung to Fred and, as Miss Mabel Glendowersubsequently remarked in the course of conversation with him, Fred clungto her.

  "I had cramp," said the Sea Lady, with her lips against Fred's cheek andone eye on Mrs. Bunting. "I am sure it was cramp.... I've got it still."

  "I don't see anybody--" began Mrs. Bunting.

  "Please carry me in," said the Sea Lady, closing her eyes as if she wereill--though her cheek was flushed and warm. "Carry me in."

  "Where?" gasped Fred.

  "Carry me into the house," she whispered to him.

  "Which house?"

  Mrs. Bunting came nearer.

  "_Your_ house," said the Sea Lady, and shut her eyes for good and becameoblivious to all further remarks.

  "She-- But I don't understand--" said Mrs. Bunting, addressingeverybody....

  And then it was they saw it. Nettie, the younger Miss Bunting, saw itfirst. She pointed, she says, before she could find words to speak. Thenthey all saw it! Miss Glendower, I believe, was the person who was lastto see it. At any rate it would have been like her if she had been.

  "Mother," said Nettie, giving words to the general horror. "_Mother!_She has a _tail_!"

  And then the three maids and Mabel Glendower screamed one after theother. "Look!" they cried. "A tail!"

  "Of all--" said Mrs. Bunting, and words failed her.

  "_Oh!_" said Miss Glendower, and put her hand to her heart.

  And then one of the maids gave it a name. "It's a mermaid!" screamed themaid, and then everyone screamed, "It's a mermaid."

  Except the mermaid herself; she remained quite passive, pretending to beinsensible partly on Fred's shoulder and altogether in his arms.

  II

  That, you know, is the tableau so far as I have been able to piece ittogether again. You must imagine this little knot of people upon thebeach, and Mr. Bunting, I figure, a little apart, just wading out of thewater and very wet and incredulous and half drowned. And the neighbour'sladder was drifting quietly out to sea.

  Of course it was one of those positions that have an air of beingconspicuous.

  Indeed it was conspicuous. It was some way below high water and thegroup stood out perhaps thirty yards down the beach. Nobody, as Mrs.Bunting told my cousin Melville, knew a bit _what_ to do and they allhad even an exaggerated share of the national hatred of being seen in apuzzle. The mermaid seemed content to remain a beautiful problemclinging to Fred, and by all accounts she was a reasonable burthen fora man. It seems that the very large family of people who were stoppingat the house called Koot Hoomi had appeared in force, and they were allstaring and gesticulating. They were just the sort of people theBuntings did not want to know--tradespeople very probably. Presently oneof the men--the particularly vulgar man who used to shoot at thegulls--began putting down their ladder as if he intended to offeradvice, and Mrs. Bunting also became aware of the black glare of thefield glasses of a still more horrid man to the west.

  Moreover the popular author who lived next door, an irascible darksquare-headed little man in spectacles, suddenly turned up and beganbawling from his inaccessible wall top something foolish about hisladder. Nobody thought of his silly ladder or took any trouble about it,naturally. He was quite stupidly excited. To judge by his tone andgestures he was using dreadful language and seemed disposed every momentto jump down to the beach and come to them.

  And then to crown the situation, over the westward groin appeared LowExcursionists!

  First of all their heads came, and then their remarks. Then they beganto clamber the breakwater with joyful shouts.

  "Pip, Pip," said the Low Excursionists as they climbed--it was the yearof "pip, pip"--and, "What HO she bumps!" and then less generally,"What's up _'ere_?"

  And the voices of other Low Excursionists still invisible answered,"Pip, Pip."

  It was evidently a large party.

  "Anything wrong?" shouted one of the Low Excursionists at a venture.

  "My _dear_!" said Mrs. Bunting to Mabel, "what _are_ we to do?" And inher description of the affair to my cousin Melville she used always tomake that the _clou_ of the story. "My DEAR! What ARE we to do?"

  I believe that in her desperation she even glanced at the water. But ofcourse to have put the mermaid back then would have involved the mostterrible explanations....

  It was evident there was only one thing to be done. Mrs. Bunting said asmuch. "The only thing," said she, "is to carry her indoors."

  And carry her indoors they did!...

  One can figure the little procession. In front Fred, wet and astonishedbut still clinging and clung to, and altogether too out of breath forwords. And in his arms the Sea Lady. She had a beautiful figure, Iunderstand, until that horrible tail began (and the fin of it, Mrs.Bunting told my cousin in a whispered confidence, went up and down andwith pointed corners for all the world like a mackerel's). It floppedand dripped along the path--I imagine. She was wearing a very nice andvery long-skirted dress of red material trimmed with coarse white lace,and she had, Mabel told me, a _gilet_, though that would scarcely showas they went up the garden. And that Phrygian cap hid all her goldenhair and showed the white, low, level forehead over her sea-blue eyes.From all that followed, I imagine her at the moment scanning the verandaand windows of the house with a certain eagerness of scrutiny.

  Behind this staggering group of two I believe Mrs. Bunting came. ThenMr. Bunting. Dreadfully wet and broken down Mr. Bunting must have beenby then, and from one or two things I have noticed since, I can't helpimagining him as pursuing his wife with, "Of course, my dear, _I_couldn't tell, you know!"

  And then, in a dismayed yet curious bunch, the girls in their wraps oftowelling and the maids carrying the ropes and things and, as ifinadvertently, as became them, most of Mr. and Fred Bunting's clothes.

  And then Miss Glendower, for once at least in no sort of pose whatever,clutching "Sir George Tressady" and perplexed and disturbed beyondmeasure.

  And then, as it were pursuing them all, "Pip, pip," and the hat andraised eyebrows of a Low Excursionist still anxious to know "What's up?"from the garden end.

  So it was, or at least in some such way, and to the accompaniment of thewildest ravings about some ladder or other heard all too distinctly overthe garden wall--("Overdressed Snobbs take my _rare old Englishadjective_ ladder...!")--that they carried the Sea Lady (who appearedserenely insensible to everything) up through the house and laid herdown upon the couch in Mrs. Bunting's room.

  And just as Miss Glendower was suggesting that the very best thing theycould do would be to send for a doctor, the Sea Lady with a beautifulnaturalness sighed and came to.