The Sea Lady Part 5

"Well, they won't put mine in," said her sister. "It's horrid. I shall go right off now and have it taken again."

"They'll interview the Ded!"

"No, no," said Mr. Bunting terrified. "Your mother----"

"It's your place, my dear," said Mrs. Bunting.

"But the Ded--" said Fred.

"I couldn't," said Mr. Bunting.

"Well, some one'll have to tell 'em anyhow," said Mrs. Bunting. "You know, they will----"

"But it isn't at all what I wanted," wailed the Sea Lady, with the _Daily Gunfire_ in her hand. "Can't it be stopped?"

"You don't know our journalists," said Fred.

The tact of my cousin Melville saved the situation. He had dabbled in journalism and talked with literary fellows like myself. And literary fellows like myself are apt at times to be very free and outspoken about the press. He heard of the Buntings' shrinking terror of publicity as soon as he arrived, a perfect clamour--an almost exultant clamour indeed, of shrinking terror, and he caught the Sea Lady's eye and took his line there and then.

"It's not an occasion for sticking at trifles, Mrs. Bunting," he said.

"But I think we can save the situation all the same. You're too hopeless. We must put our foot down at once; that's all. Let _me_ see these reporter fellows and write to the London dailies. I think I can take a line that will settle them."

"Eh?" said Fred.

"I can take a line that will stop it, trust me."

"What, altogether?"

"Altogether."

"How?" said Fred and Mrs. Bunting. "You're not going to bribe them!"

"Bribe!" said Mr. Bunting. "We're not in France. You can't bribe a British paper."

(A sort of subdued cheer went around from the a.s.sembled Buntings.)

"You leave it to me," said Melville, in his element.

And with earnestly expressed but not very confident wishes for his success, they did.

He managed the thing admirably.

"What's this about a mermaid?" he demanded of the local journalists when they returned. They travelled together for company, being, so to speak, emergency journalists, compositors in their milder moments, and unaccustomed to these higher aspects of journalism. "What's this about a mermaid?" repeated my cousin, while they waived precedence dumbly one to another.

"I believe some one's been letting you in," said my cousin Melville.

"Just imagine!--a mermaid!"

"That's what we thought," said the younger of the two emergency journalists. "We knew it was some sort of hoax, you know. Only the _New Paper_ giving it a headline----"

"I'm amazed even Banghurst--" said my cousin Melville.

"It's in the _Daily Gunfire_ as well," said the older of the two emergency journalists.

"What's one more or less of these ha'penny fever rags?" cried my cousin with a ringing scorn. "Surely you're not going to take your Folkestone news from mere London papers."

"But how did the story come about?" began the older emergency journalist.

"That's not my affair."

The younger emergency journalist had an inspiration. He produced a note book from his breast pocket. "Perhaps, sir, you wouldn't mind suggesting to us something we might say----"

My cousin Melville complied.

II

The rising young journalist who had first got wind of the business--who must not for a moment be confused with the two emergency journalists heretofore described--came to Banghurst next night in a state of strange exultation. "I've been through with it and I've seen her," he panted. "I waited about outside and saw her taken into the carriage. I've talked to one of the maids--I got into the house under pretence of being a telephone man to see their telephone--I spotted the wire--and it's a fact. A positive fact--she's a mermaid with a tail--a proper mermaid's tail. I've got here----"

He displayed sheets.

"Whaddyer talking about?" said Banghurst from his littered desk, eyeing the sheets with apprehensive animosity.

"The mermaid--there really _is_ a mermaid. At Folkestone."

Banghurst turned away from him and pawed at his pen tray. "Whad if there is!" he said after a pause.

"But it's proved. That note you printed----"

"That note I printed was a mistake if there's anything of that sort going, young man." Banghurst remained an obstinate expansion of back.

"How?"

"We don't deal in mermaids here."

"But you're not going to let it drop?"

"I am."

"But there she is!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Stuff that the public won't believe aren't facts."]

"Let her be." He turned on the rising young journalist, and his ma.s.sive face was unusually ma.s.sive and his voice fine and full and fruity. "Do you think we're going to make our public believe anything simply because it's true? They know perfectly well what they are going to believe and what they aren't going to believe, and they aren't going to believe anything about mermaids--you bet your hat. I don't care if the whole d.a.m.ned beach was littered with mermaids--not the whole d.a.m.ned beach!

We've got our reputation to keep up. See?... Look here!--you don't learn journalism as I hoped you'd do. It was you what brought in all that stuff about a discovery in chemistry----"

"It's true."

"Ugh!"