“Had any golf lately?” I said to Micklethwaite, when the plates and the remains of the waiter had gone away. Golf always does Micklethwaite good except when he is actually playing. Then, I am told— If I were Mrs. Bunting I should break off and raise my eyebrows and both hands at this point, to indicate how golf acts on Micklethwaite when he is playing.
I turned my mind to feigning an interest in golf—a game that in truth I despise and hate as I despise and hate nothing else in this world. Imagine a great fat creature like Micklethwaite, a creature who ought to wear a turban and a long black robe to hide his grossness, whacking a little white ball for miles and miles with a perfect surgery of instruments, whacking it either with a babyish solemnity or a childish rage as luck may have decided, whacking away while his country goes to the devil, and incidentally training an innocent-eyed little boy to swear and be a tip-hunting loafer. That’s golf! However, I controlled my all too facile sneer and talked of golf and the relative merits of golf links as I might talk to a child about buns or distract a puppy with the whisper of “rats,” and when at last I could look at the rising young journalist again our lunch had come to an end.
I saw that he was talking with a greater air of freedom than it is usual to display to club waiters, to the man who held his coat. The man looked incredulous but respectful, and was answering shortly but politely.
When we went out this little conversation was still going on. The waiter was holding the rising young journalist’s soft felt hat and the rising young journalist was fumbling in his coat pocket with a thick mass of papers.
“It’s tremendous. I’ve got most of it here,” he was saying as we went by. “I don’t know if you’d care——”
“I get very little time for reading, sir,” the waiter was replying.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE QUALITY OF PARKER
I
So far I have been very full, I know, and verisimilitude has been my watchword rather than the true affidavit style. But if I have made it clear to the reader just how the Sea Lady landed and just how it was possible for her to land and become a member of human society without any considerable excitement on the part of that society, such poor pains as I have taken to tint and shadow and embellish the facts at my disposal will not have been taken in vain. She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings. Within a fortnight she had really settled down so thoroughly that, save for her exceptional beauty and charm and the occasional faint touches of something a little indefinable in her smile, she had become a quite passable and credible human being. She was a cripple, indeed, and her lower limb was most pathetically swathed and put in a sort of case, but it was quite generally understood—I am afraid at Mrs. Bunting’s initiative—that presently they—Mrs. Bunting said “they,” which was certainly almost as far or even a little farther than legitimate prevarication may go—would be as well as ever.
She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Bunting, “she will never be able to bicycle again——”
That was the sort of glamour she threw about it.
II
In Parker it is indisputable that the Sea Lady found—or at least had found for her by Mrs. Bunting—a treasure of the richest sort. Parker was still fallaciously young, but she had been maid to a lady from India who had been in a “case” and had experienced and overcome cross-examination. She had also been deceived by a young man, whom she had fancied greatly, only to find him walking out with another—contrary to her inflexible sense of correctness—in the presence of which all other things are altogether vain. Life she had resolved should have no further surprises for her. She looked out on its (largely improper) pageant with an expression of alert impartiality in her hazel eyes, calm, doing her specific duty, and entirely declining to participate further. She always kept her elbows down by her side and her hands always just in contact, and it was impossible for the most powerful imagination to conceive her under any circumstances as being anything but absolutely straight and clean and neat. And her voice was always under all circumstances low and wonderfully distinct—just to an infinitesimal degree indeed “mincing.”
Mrs. Bunting had been a little nervous when it came to the point. It was Mrs. Bunting of course who engaged her, because the Sea Lady was so entirely without experience. But certainly Mrs. Bunting’s nervousness was thrown away.
“You understand,” said Mrs. Bunting, taking a plunge at it, “that—that she is an invalid.”
“I didn’t, Mem,” replied Parker respectfully, and evidently quite willing to understand anything as part of her duty in this world.
“In fact,” said Mrs. Bunting, rubbing the edge of the tablecloth daintily with her gloved finger and watching the operation with interest, “as a matter of fact, she has a mermaid’s tail.”
“Mermaid’s tail! Indeed, Mem! And is it painful at all?”
“Oh, dear, no, it involves no inconvenience—nothing. Except—you understand, there is a need of—discretion.”
“Of course, Mem,” said Parker, as who should say, “there always is.”
“We particularly don’t want the servants——”
“The lower servants— No, Mem.”
“You understand?” and Mrs. Bunting looked up again and regarded Parker calmly.
“Precisely, Mem!” said Parker, with a face unmoved, and so they came to the question of terms. “It all passed off most satisfactorily,” said Mrs. Bunting, taking a deep breath at the mere memory of that moment. And it is clear that Parker was quite of her opinion.
She was not only discreet but really clever and handy. From the very outset she grasped the situation, unostentatiously but very firmly. It was Parker who contrived the sort of violin case for It, and who made the tea gown extension that covered the case’s arid contours. It was Parker who suggested an invalid’s chair for use indoors and in the garden, and a carrying chair for the staircase. Hitherto Fred Bunting had been on hand, at last even in excessive abundance, whenever the Sea Lady lay in need of masculine arms. But Parker made it clear at once that that was not at all in accordance with her ideas, and so earned the lifelong gratitude of Mabel Glendower. And Parker too spoke out for drives, and suggested with an air of rightness that left nothing else to be done, the hire of a carriage and pair for the season—to the equal delight of the Buntings and the Sea Lady. It was Parker who dictated the daily drive up to the eastern end of the Leas and the Sea Lady’s transfer, and the manner of the Sea Lady’s transfer, to the bath chair in which she promenaded the Leas. There seemed to be nowhere that it was pleasant and proper for the Sea Lady to go that Parker did not swiftly and correctly indicate it and the way to get to it, and there seems to have been nothing that it was really undesirable the Sea Lady should do and anywhere that it was really undesirable that she should go, that Parker did not at once invisibly but effectively interpose a bar. It was Parker who released the Sea Lady from being a sort of private and peculiar property in the Bunting household and carried her off to a becoming position in the world, when the crisis came. In little things as in great she failed not. It was she who made it luminous that the Sea Lady’s card plate was not yet engraved and printed (“Miss Doris Thalassia Waters” was the pleasant and appropriate name with which the Sea Lady came primed), and who replaced the box of the presumably dank and drowned and dripping “Tom” by a jewel case, a dressing bag and the first of the Sea Lady’s trunks.