THE PATAGONIA
by Henry James
CHAPTER I
The houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of
Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened
desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front,
projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I
passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of
billiard-balls. As "every one" was out of town perhaps the servants,
in the extravagance of their leisure, were profaning the tables. The
heat was insufferable and I thought with joy of the morrow, of the
deck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the sense of getting out
to sea. I was even glad of what I had learned in the afternoon at
the office of the company--that at the eleventh hour an old ship with
a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the vessel in
which I had taken my passage. America was roasting, England might
very well be stuffy, and a slow passage (which at that season of the
year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or
twelve days of fresh air.
I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could
see through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse
was peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint's house--
she lived in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been
changes) on the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the
Public Garden terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would
be spending the night in Boston if it were true that, as had been
mentioned to me a few days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark
on the morrow for Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance
confirmed by a light above her door and in two or three of her
windows, and I determined to ask for her, having nothing to do till
bedtime. I had come out simply to pass an hour, leaving my hotel to
the blaze of its gas and the perspiration of its porters; but it
occurred to me that my old friend might very WELL not know of the
substitution of the Patagonia for the Scandinavia, so that I should
be doing her a service to prepare her mind. Besides, I could offer
to help her, to look after her in the morning: lone women are
grateful for support in taking ship for far countries.
It came to me indeed as I stood on her door-step that as she had a
son she might not after all be so lone; yet I remembered at the same
time that Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon,
having--as I at least supposed--a life of his own and tastes and
habits which had long since diverted him from the maternal side. If
he did happen just now to be at home my solicitude would of course
seem officious; for in his many wanderings--I believed he had roamed
all over the globe--he would certainly have learned how to manage.
None the less, in fine, I was very glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I
thought of her. With my long absence I had lost sight of her; but I
had liked her of old, she had been a good friend to my sisters, and I
had in regard to her that sense which is pleasant to those who in
general have gone astray or got detached, the sense that she at least
knew all about me. I could trust her at any time to tell people I
was respectable. Perhaps I was conscious of how little I deserved
this indulgence when it came over me that I hadn't been near her for
ages. The measure of that neglect was given by my vagueness of mind
about Jasper. However, I really belonged nowadays to a different
generation; I was more the mother's contemporary than the son's.
Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home: I found her in her back drawing-room,
where the wide windows opened to the water. The room was dusky--it
was too hot for lamps--and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking
out on the little arm of the sea which is so pretty at night,
reflecting the lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown. I supposed
she was musing on the loved ones she was to leave behind, her married
daughters, her grandchildren; but she struck a note more specifically
Bostonian as she said to me, pointing with her fan to the Back Bay:
"I shall see nothing more charming than that over there, you know!"
She made me very welcome, but her son had told her about the
Patagonia, for which she was sorry, as this would mean a longer
voyage. She was a poor creature in any boat and mainly confined to
her cabin even in weather extravagantly termed fine--as if any
weather could be fine at sea.
"Ah then your son's going with you?" I asked.
"Here he comes, he'll tell you for himself much better than I can
pretend to." Jasper Nettlepoint at that moment joined us, dressed in
white flannel and carrying a large fan. "Well, my dear, have you
decided?" his mother continued with no scant irony. "He hasn't yet
made up his mind, and we sail at ten o'clock!"
"What does it matter when my things are put up?" the young man said.
"There's no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I'm
waiting for a telegram--that will settle it. I just walked up to the
club to see if it was come--they'll send it there because they
suppose this house unoccupied. Not yet, but I shall go back in
twenty minutes."
"Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!" the poor lady
exclaimed while I reflected that it was perhaps HIS billiard-balls I
had heard ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.
"Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommon easy."
"Ah I'm bound to say you do!" Mrs. Nettlepoint returned with
inconsequence. I guessed at a certain tension between the pair and a
want of consideration on the young man's part, arising perhaps from
selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting to be at
rest as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or be
obliged to struggle alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly
moving his fan he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact
wouldn't sit too heavily. He was of the type of those whom other
people worry about, not of those who worry about other people. Tall
and strong, he had a handsome face, with a round head and close-
curling hair; the whites of his eyes and the enamel of his teeth,
under his brown moustache, gleamed vaguely in the lights of the Back
Bay. I made out that he was sunburnt, as if he lived much in the
open air, and that he looked intelligent but also slightly brutal,
though not in a morose way. His brutality, if he had any, was bright
and finished. I had to tell him who I was, but even then I saw how
little he placed me and that my explanations gave me in his mind no
great identity or at any rate no great importance. I foresaw that he
would in intercourse make me feel sometimes very young and sometimes
very old, caring himself but little which. He mentioned, as if to
show our companion that he might safely be left to his own devices,
that he had once started from London to Bombay at three quarters of
an hour's notice.
"Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!"
"Oh the people I was with--!" he returned; and his tone appeared to
signify that such people would always have to come off as they could.
He asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no
iced syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to
be kept going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they
WERE kept going he went on: "Oh yes, I had various things there; but
you know I've walked down the hill since. One should have something
at either end. May I ring and see?" He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint
observed that with the people they had in the house, an establishment
reduced naturally at such a moment to its simplest expression--they
were burning up candle-ends and there were no luxuries--she wouldn't
answer for the service. The matter ended in her leaving the room in
quest of cordials with the female domestic who had arrived in
response to the bell and in whom Jasper's appeal aroused no visible
intelligence.
She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was
sociable but desultory and kept moving over the place, always with
his fan, as if he were properly impatient. Sometimes he seated
himself an instant on the window-sill, and then I made him out in
fact thoroughly good-looking--a fine brown clean young athlete. He
failed to tell me on what special contingency his decision depended;
he only alluded familiarly to an expected telegram, and I saw he was
probably fond at no time of the trouble of explanations. His
mother's absence was a sign that when it might be a question of
gratifying him she had grown used to spare no pains, and I fancied
her rummaging in some close storeroom, among old preserve-pots, while
the dull maid-servant held the candle awry. I don't know whether
this same vision was in his own eyes; at all events it didn't prevent
his saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch, that I must excuse
him--he should have to go back to the club. He would return in half
an hour--or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone,
conscious, on the dark dismantled simplified scene, in the deep
silence that rests on American towns during the hot season--there was
now and then a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the
tinkle of the bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the
suffocating night--of the strange influence, half-sweet, half-sad,
that abides in houses uninhabited or about to become so, in places
muffled and bereaved, where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered
tables seem (like the disconcerted dogs, to whom everything is alike
sinister) to recognise the eve of a journey.
After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of
dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to denote the
return of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden with the refection
prepared for her son. What I saw however was two other female forms,
visitors apparently just admitted, and now ushered into the room.
They were not announced--the servant turned her back on them and
rambled off to our hostess. They advanced in a wavering tentative
unintroduced way--partly, I could see, because the place was dark and
partly because their visit was in its nature experimental, a flight
of imagination or a stretch of confidence. One of the ladies was
stout and the other slim, and I made sure in a moment that one was
talkative and the other reserved. It was further to be discerned
that one was elderly and the other young, as well as that the fact of
their unlikeness didn't prevent their being mother and daughter.
Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes, but the interval
had sufficed to establish a communication--really copious for the
occasion--between the strangers and the unknown gentleman whom they
found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was not my doing--
for what had I to go upon?--and still less was it the doing of the
younger and the more indifferent, or less courageous, lady. She
spoke but once--when her companion informed me that she was going out
to Europe the next day to be married. Then she protested "Oh
mother!" in a tone that struck me in the darkness as doubly odd,
exciting my curiosity to see her face.
It had taken the elder woman but a moment to come to that, and to
various other things, after I had explained that I myself was waiting
for Mrs. Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.
"Well, she won't know me--I guess she hasn't ever heard much about
me," the good lady said; "but I've come from Mrs. Allen and I guess
that will make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?"
I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented
vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen's emissary was good-humoured
and familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that
if her friend HAD found time to come in the afternoon--she had so
much to do, being just up for the day, that she couldn't be sure--it
would be all right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac
Avenue (they had come all the way from there) my imagination had
associated her with that indefinite social limbo known to the
properly-constituted Boston mind as the South End--a nebulous region
which condenses here and there into a pretty face, in which the
daughters are an "improvement" on the mothers and are sometimes
acquainted with gentlemen more gloriously domiciled, gentlemen whose
wives and sisters are in turn not acquainted with them.
When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by
a tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool
tinkling, I was in a position to officiate as master of the
ceremonies, to introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to
represent that Mrs. Allen had recommended them--nay, had urged them--
just to come that way, informally and without fear; Mrs. Allen who
had been prevented only by the pressure of occupations so
characteristic of her (especially when up from Mattapoisett for a few
hours' desperate shopping) from herself calling in the course of the
day to explain who they were and what was the favour they had to ask
of her benevolent friend. Good-natured women understand each other
even when so divided as to sit residentially above and below the
salt, as who should say; by which token our hostess had quickly
mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen's visit that morning in Merrimac
Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber's great idea, the classes at the public
schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to that
of Mrs. Mavis--even in such weather!--in those of the South End) for
games and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children
out of the streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been
settled almost from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for
Liverpool, Mr. Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a
little holiday; his mother was with him, they had come over from
Paris to see some of the celebrated old buildings in England, and he
had telegraphed to say that if Grace would start right off they would
just finish it up and be married. It often happened that when things
had dragged on that way for years they were all huddled up at the
end. Of course in such a case she, Mrs. Mavis, had had to fly round.
Her daughter's passage was taken, but it seemed too dreadful she
should make her journey all alone, the first time she had ever been
at sea, without any companion or escort. SHE couldn't go--Mr. Mavis
was too sick: she hadn't even been able to get him off to the
seaside.
"Well, Mrs. Nettlepoint's going in that ship," Mrs. Allen had said;
and she had represented that nothing was simpler than to give her the
girl in charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that this was all very
well but that she didn't know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that
that didn't make a speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind
enough for anything. It was easy enough to KNOW her, if that was all
the trouble! All Mrs. Mavis would have to do would be to go right up
to her next morning, when she took her daughter to the ship (she
would see her there on the deck with her party) and tell her fair and
square what she wanted. Mrs. Nettlepoint had daughters herself and
would easily understand. Very likely she'd even look after Grace a
little on the other side, in such a queer situation, going out alone
to the gentleman she was engaged to: she'd just help her, like a
good Samaritan, to turn round before she was married. Mr.
Porterfield seemed to think they wouldn't wait long, once she was
there: they would have it right over at the American consul's. Mrs.
Allen had said it would perhaps be better still to go and see Mrs.
Nettlepoint beforehand, that day, to tell her what they wanted: then
they wouldn't seem to spring it on her just as she was leaving. She
herself (Mrs. Allen) would call and say a word for them if she could
save ten minutes before catching her train. If she hadn't come it
was because she hadn't saved her ten minutes but she had made them
feel that they must come all the same. Mrs. Mavis liked that better,
because on the ship in the morning there would be such a confusion.
She didn't think her daughter would be any trouble--conscientiously
she didn't. It was just to have some one to speak to her and not
sally forth like a servant-girl going to a situation.
"I see, I'm to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,"
Mrs. Nettlepoint obligingly said. Kind enough in fact for anything,
she showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her.
There is notoriously nothing less desirable than an imposed
aggravation of effort at sea, but she accepted without betrayed
dismay the burden of the young lady's dependence and allowed her, as
Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself on. She evidently had the habit of
patience, and her reception of her visitors' story reminded me
afresh--I was reminded of it whenever I returned to my native land--
that my dear compatriots are the people in the world who most freely
take mutual accommodation for granted. They have always had to help
themselves, and have rather magnanimously failed to learn just where
helping others is distinguishable from that. In no country are there
fewer forms and more reciprocities.
It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue
shouldn't feel they were importunate: what was striking was that
Mrs. Nettlepoint didn't appear to suspect it. However, she would in
any case have thought it inhuman to show this--though I could see
that under the surface she was amused at everything the more
expressive of the pilgrims from the South End took for granted. I
scarce know whether the attitude of the younger visitor added or not
to the merit of her good nature. Mr. Porterfield's intended took no
part in the demonstration, scarcely spoke, sat looking at the Back
Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She declined the lemonade and
the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint's request, I offered
her, while her mother partook freely of everything and I reflected--
for I as freely drained a glass or two in which the ice tinkled--that
Mr. Jasper had better hurry back if he wished to enjoy these
luxuries.
Was the effect of the young woman's reserve meanwhile ungracious, or
was it only natural that in her particular situation she shouldn't
have a flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs.
Nettlepoint looked at her often, and certainly though she was
undemonstrative Miss Mavis was interesting. The candlelight enabled
me to see that though not in the very first flower of her youth she
was still fresh and handsome. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face
was pale, and she held up her head as if, with its thick braids and
everything else involved in it, it were an appurtenance she wasn't
ashamed of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not
common--not at least flagrantly so--and perhaps also not excellent.
At all events she wouldn't be, in appearance at least, a dreary
appendage; which in the case of a person "hooking on" was always
something gained. Was it because something of a romantic or pathetic
interest usually attaches to a good creature who has been the victim
of a "long engagement" that this young lady made an impression on me
from the first--favoured as I had been so quickly with this glimpse
of her history? I could charge her certainly with no positive
appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected
whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit
within her was dead--the spirit of that promise of which she found
herself doomed to carry out the letter.
What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which
gathered vividness as I listened to it--a mental association evoked
by the name of Mr. Porterfield. Surely I had a personal impression,
over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at
Liverpool, or who presently would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint's
protegee. I had met him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow,
on the other side. Wasn't he studying something, very hard,
somewhere--probably in Paris--ten years before, and didn't he make
extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and architectural? Didn't he
go to a table d'hote, at two francs twenty-five, in the Rue
Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn't he wear spectacles and
a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say "I've
trustworthy information that that's the way they do it in the
Highlands"? Wasn't he exemplary to positive irritation, and very
poor, poor to positive oppression, so that I supposed he had no
overcoat and his tartan would be what he slept under at night?
Wasn't he working very hard still, and wouldn't he be, in the natural
course, not yet satisfied that he had found his feet or knew enough
to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations--Miss Mavis's
white face seemed to speak to one of that. It struck me that if I
had been in love with her I shouldn't have needed to lay such a train
for the closer approach. Architecture was his line and he was a
pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. This reminiscence grew so much
more vivid with me that at the end of ten minutes I had an odd sense
of knowing--by implication--a good deal about the young lady.
Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything
possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and
telling how "low" Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl's
silence struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she
deprecated her mother's free flow--she was enough of an "improvement"
to measure that--and partly because she was too distressed by the
idea of leaving her infirm, her perhaps dying father. It wasn't
indistinguishable that they were poor and that she would take out a
very small purse for her trousseau. For Mr. Porterfield to make up
the sum his own case would have had moreover greatly to change. If
he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his profession
I had encountered no edifice he had reared--his reputation hadn't
come to my ears.
Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very
inactive person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with
Miss Mavis, but not prepared to pace the deck with her, to struggle
with her, to accompany her to meals. To this the girl replied that
she would trouble her little, she was sure: she was convinced she
should prove a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her
mother scoffed at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a
lovely time, and I interposed to the effect that if I might be
trusted, as a tame bachelor fairly sea-seasoned, I should be
delighted to give the new member of our party an arm or any other
countenance whenever she should require it. Both the ladies thanked
me for this--taking my professions with no sort of abatement--and the
elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a sociable
group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She asked Mrs.
Nettlepoint if there were any one else in our party, and when our
hostess mentioned her son--there was a chance of his embarking but
(wasn't it absurd?) he hadn't decided yet--she returned with
extraordinary candour: "Oh dear, I do hope he'll go: that would be
so lovely for Grace."
Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield's tartan,
especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment.
His mother at once challenged him: it was ten o'clock; had he by
chance made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her,
being in the first place surprised at the strange ladies and then
struck with the fact that one of them wasn't strange. The young man,
after a slight hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and a
"Oh good-evening, how do you do?" He didn't utter her name--which I
could see he must have forgotten; but she immediately pronounced his,
availing herself of the American girl's discretion to "present" him
to her mother.
"Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!" that lady
jovially cried. Then she had an equal confidence for Mrs.
Nettlepoint. "It would have saved me a worry--an acquaintance
already begun."
"Ah my son's acquaintances!" our hostess murmured.
"Yes, and my daughter's too!" Mrs. Mavis gaily echoed. "Mrs. Allen
didn't tell us YOU were going," she continued to the young man.
"She'd have been clever if she had been able to!" Mrs. Nettlepoint
sighed.
"Dear mother, I have my telegram," Jasper remarked, looking at Grace
Mavis.
"I know you very little," the girl said, returning his observation.
"I've danced with you at some ball--for some sufferers by something
or other."
"I think it was an inundation or a big fire," she a little languidly
smiled. "But it was a long time ago--and I haven't seen you since."
"I've been in far countries--to my loss. I should have said it was a
big fire."
"It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn't remember your name,"
said Grace Mavis.
"That's very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink
dress."
"Oh I remember that dress--your strawberry tarletan: you looked
lovely in it!" Mrs. Mavis broke out. "You must get another just like
it--on the other side."
"Yes, your daughter looked charming in it," said Jasper Nettlepoint.
Then he added to the girl: "Yet you mentioned my name to your
mother."
"It came back to me--seeing you here. I had no idea this was your
home."
"Well, I confess it isn't, much. Oh there are some drinks!"--he
approached the tray and its glasses.
"Indeed there are and quite delicious"--Mrs. Mavis largely wiped her
mouth.
"Won't you have another then?--a pink one, like your daughter's
gown."
"With pleasure, sir. Oh do see them over," Mrs. Mavis continued,
accepting from the young man's hand a third tumbler.
"My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of
themselves," he freely pleaded.
"Then my daughter--she has a claim as an old friend."
But his mother had by this time interposed. "Jasper, what does your
telegram say?"
He paid her no heed: he stood there with his glass in his hand,
looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.
"Ah leave her to me, madam; I'm quite competent," I said to Mrs.
Mavis.
Then the young man gave me his attention. The next minute he asked
of the girl: "Do you mean you're going to Europe?"
"Yes, tomorrow. In the same ship as your mother."
"That's what we've come here for, to see all about it," said Mrs.
Mavis.
"My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram
throws," Mrs. Nettlepoint went on.
"I will, dearest, when I've quenched my thirst." And he slowly
drained his glass.
"Well, I declare you're worse than Gracie," Mrs. Mavis commented.
"She was first one thing and then the other--but only about up to
three o'clock yesterday."
"Excuse me--won't you take something?" Jasper inquired of Gracie; who
however still declined, as if to make up for her mother's copious
consommation. I found myself quite aware that the two ladies would
do well to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint's good will
being so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the
ship so near at hand and I went so far as to judge that their
protracted stay, with their hostess visibly in a fidget, gave the
last proof of their want of breeding. Miss Grace after all then was
not such an improvement on her mother, for she easily might have
taken the initiative of departure, in spite of Mrs. Mavis's evident
"game" of making her own absorption of refreshment last as long as
possible. I watched the girl with increasing interest; I couldn't
help asking myself a question or two about her and even perceiving
already (in a dim and general way) that rather marked embarrassment,
or at least anxiety attended her. Wasn't it complicating that she
should have needed, by remaining long enough, to assuage a certain
suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to sail? Hadn't
something particular passed between them on the occasion or at the
period to which we had caught their allusion, and didn't she really
not know her mother was bringing her to HIS mother's, though she
apparently had thought it well not to betray knowledge? Such things
were symptomatic--though indeed one scarce knew of what--on the part
of a young lady betrothed to that curious cross-barred phantom of a
Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add that she gave me no further
warrant for wonder than was conveyed in her all tacitly and covertly
encouraging her mother to linger. Somehow I had a sense that SHE was
conscious of the indecency of this. I got up myself to go, but Mrs.
Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement wouldn't be
taken as a hint, and I felt she wished me not to leave my fellow
visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the
room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room--one ought to be
out in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that
overlooked the water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace,
until his mother, whom he hadn't yet satisfied about his telegram,
reminded him that there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room
for a dozen people. She assured him we would go and sit there if it
would please him.
"It will be nice and cool tomorrow, when we steam into the great
ocean," said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had
yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour
before. Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing
cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room
balcony and report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said,
smiling, to Miss Mavis: "Won't you come with me and see if it's
pleasant?"
"Oh well, we had better not stay all night!" her mother exclaimed,
but still without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's
hesitation;--she rose and accompanied Jasper to the other room. I
saw how her slim tallness showed to advantage as she walked, and that
she looked well as she passed, with her head thrown back, into the
darkness of the other part of the house. There was something rather
marked, rather surprising--I scarcely knew why, for the act in itself
was simple enough--in her acceptance of such a plea, and perhaps it
was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat stiffly
silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go, so
that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to
go so that I mightn't. This doubtless made the young lady's absence
appear to us longer than it really was--it was probably very brief.
Her mother moreover, I think, had now a vague lapse from ease.
Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to
serve his companion with our lucent syrup, and he took occasion to
remark that it was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air,
the breeze being from that quarter. I remembered, as he went away
with his tinkling tumbler, that from MY hand, a few minutes before,
Miss Mavis had not been willing to accept this innocent offering. A
little later Mrs. Nettlepoint said: "Well, if it's so pleasant there
we had better go ourselves." So we passed to the front and in the
other room met the two young people coming in from the balcony. I
was to wonder, in the light of later things, exactly how long they
had occupied together a couple of the set of cane chairs garnishing
the place in summer. If it had been but five minutes that only made
subsequent events more curious. "We must go, mother," Miss Mavis
immediately said; and a moment after, with a little renewal of
chatter as to our general meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken
leave. Jasper went down with them to the door and as soon as they
had got off Mrs. Nettlepoint quite richly exhaled her impression.
"Ah but'll she be a bore--she'll be a bore of bores!"
"Not through talking too much, surely."
"An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular pose;
it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like
everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea--that will
act on one's nerves!"
"I don't know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very
handsome."
"So much the better for you. I'll leave her to you, for I shall be
shut up. I like her being placed under my 'care'!" my friend cried.
"She'll be under Jasper's," I remarked.
"Ah he won't go," she wailed--"I want it too much!"
"But I didn't see it that way. I have an idea he'll go."
"Why didn't he tell me so then--when he came in?"
"He was diverted by that young woman--a beautiful unexpected girl
sitting there."
"Diverted from his mother and her fond hope?--his mother trembling
for his decision?"
"Well"--I pieced it together--"she's an old friend, older than we
know. It was a meeting after a long separation."
"Yes, such a lot of them as he does know!" Mrs. Nettlepoint sighed.
"Such a lot of them?"
"He has so many female friends--in the most varied circles."
"Well, we can close round her then," I returned; "for I on my side
know, or used to know, her young man."
"Her intended?"--she had a light of relief for this.
"The very one she's going out to. He can't, by the way," it occurred
to me, "be very young now."
"How odd it sounds--her muddling after him!" said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
I was going to reply that it wasn't odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield,
but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my
companion briefly who he was--that I had met him in the old Paris
days, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to
paint, when I lived with the jeunesse des ecoles; and her comment on
this was simply: "Well, he had better have come out for her!"
"Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if, she might
change her mind at the last moment."
"About her marriage?
"About sailing. But she won't change now."
Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. "Well,
ARE you going?"
"Yes, I shall go"--he was finally at peace about it. "I've got my
telegram."
"Oh your telegram!"--I ventured a little to jeer.
"That charming girl's your telegram."
He gave me a look, but in the dusk I couldn't make out very well what
it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. "My news
isn't particularly satisfactory. I'm going for YOU."
"Oh you humbug!" she replied. But she was of course delighted.
