The Sea Lady Part 21

"Oh, it wouldn't help matters," said Fred, adding with an air of conclusiveness, "There it is!" Then adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity, and replacing his long extinct large pipe between his teeth, he went on his way. The tail of his blanket followed him reluctantly through the door. His bare feet padded across the hall and became inaudible on the carpet of the stairs.

"Fred!" said Melville, going doorward with a sudden afterthought for fuller particulars.

But Fred had gone.

Instead, Mrs. Bunting appeared.

II

She appeared with traces of recent emotion. "I telegraphed," she said.

"We are in dreadful trouble."

"Miss Waters, I gather----"

"She's gone."

She went towards the bell and stopped. "They'll get luncheon as usual,"

she said. "You will be wanting your luncheon."

She came towards him with rising hands. "You can _not_ imagine," she said. "That poor child!"

"You must tell me," said Melville.

"I simply do not know what to do. I don't know where to turn." She came nearer to him. She protested. "All that I did, Mr. Melville, I did for the best. I saw there was trouble. I could see that I had been deceived, and I stood it as long as I could. I _had_ to speak at last."

My cousin by leading questions and interrogative silences developed her story a little.

"And every one," she said, "blames me. Every one."

"Everybody blames everybody who does anything, in affairs of this sort,"

said Melville. "You mustn't mind that."

"I'll try not to," she said bravely. "_You_ know, Mr. Melville----"

He laid his hand on her shoulder for a moment. "Yes," he said very impressively, and I think Mrs. Bunting felt better.

"We all look to you," she said. "I don't know what I should do without you."

"That's it," said Melville. "How do things stand? What am I to do?"

"Go to him," said Mrs. Bunting, "and put it all right."

"But suppose--" began Melville doubtfully.

"Go to her. Make her see what it would mean for him and all of us."

He tried to get more definite instructions. "Don't make difficulties,"

implored Mrs. Bunting. "Think of that poor girl upstairs. Think of us all."

"Exactly," said Melville, thinking of Chatteris and staring despondently out of the window.

"Bunting, I gather----"

"It is you or no one," said Mrs. Bunting, sailing over his unspoken words. "Fred is too young, and Randolph--! He's not diplomatic. He--he hectors."

"Does he?" exclaimed Melville.

"You should see him abroad. Often--many times I have had to interfere.... No, it is you. You know Harry so well. He trusts you.

You can say things to him--no one else could say."

"That reminds me. Does _he_ know----"

"We don't know. How can we know? We know he is infatuated, that is all.

He is up there in Folkestone, and she is in Folkestone, and they may be meeting----"

My cousin sought counsel with himself.

"Say you will go?" said Mrs. Bunting, with a hand upon his arm.

"I'll go," said Melville, "but I don't see what I can do!"

And Mrs. Bunting clasped his hand in both of her own plump shapely hands and said she knew all along that he would, and that for coming down so promptly to her telegram she would be grateful to him so long as she had a breath to draw, and then she added, as if it were part of the same remark, that he must want his luncheon.

He accepted the luncheon proposition in an incidental manner and reverted to the question in hand.

"Do you know what his att.i.tude----"

"He has written only to Addy."

"It isn't as if he had brought about this crisis?"

"It was Addy. He went away and something in his manner made her write and ask him the reason why. So soon as she had his letter saying he wanted to rest from politics for a little, that somehow he didn't seem to find the interest in life he thought it deserved, she divined everything----"

"Everything? Yes, but just what _is_ everything?"

"That _she_ had led him on."

"Miss Waters?"

"Yes."

My cousin reflected. So that was what they considered to be everything!

"I wish I knew just where he stood," he said at last, and followed Mrs. Bunting luncheonward. In the course of that meal, which was _tete-a-tete_, it became almost unsatisfactorily evident what a great relief Melville's consent to interview Chatteris was to Mrs. Bunting.

Indeed, she seemed to consider herself relieved from the greater portion of her responsibility in the matter, since Melville was bearing her burden. She sketched out her defence against the accusations that had no doubt been levelled at her, explicitly and implicitly.

"How was _I_ to know?" she asked, and she told over again the story of that memorable landing, but with new, extenuating details. It was Adeline herself who had cried first, "She must be saved!" Mrs. Bunting made a special point of that. "And what else was there for me to do?"

she asked.