CHAPTER II
People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing
themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either
so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many
days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who
appear in comparison rare men of the world. My own initiations were
rapid, as became an old sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis's,
for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her
there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling
continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted
her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-
takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a
little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and
then I said: "I think you mentioned last night a name I know--that
of Mr. Porterfield."
"Oh no I didn't!" she answered very straight while she smiled at me
through her closely-drawn veil.
"Then it was your mother."
"Very likely it was my mother." And she continued to smile as if I
ought to have known the difference.
"I venture to allude to him because I've an idea I used to know him,"
I went on.
"Oh I see." And beyond this remark she appeared to take no interest;
she left it to me to make any connexion.
"That is if it's the same one." It struck me as feeble to say
nothing more; so I added "My Mr. Porterfield was called David."
"Well, so is ours." "Ours" affected me as clever.
"I suppose I shall see him again if he's to meet you at Liverpool," I
continued.
"Well, it will be bad if he doesn't."
It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he
did: that only came later. So I remarked that, not having seen him
for so many years, it was very possible I shouldn't know him.
"Well, I've not seen him for a considerable time, but I expect I
shall know him all the same."
"Oh with you it's different," I returned with harmlessly bright
significance. "Hasn't he been back since those days?"
"I don't know," she sturdily professed, "what days you mean."
"When I knew him in Paris--ages ago. He was a pupil of the Ecole des
Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture."
"Well, he's studying it still," said Grace Mavis.
"Hasn't he learned it yet?"
"I don't know what he has learned. I shall see." Then she added for
the benefit of my perhaps undue levity: "Architecture's very
difficult and he's tremendously thorough."
"Oh yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must
have become quite a foreigner if it's so many years since he has been
at home."
She seemed to regard this proposition at first as complicated; but
she did what she could for me. "Oh he's not changeable. If he were
changeable--"
Then, however, she paused. I daresay she had been going to observe
that if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up.
After an instant she went on: "He wouldn't have stuck so to his
profession. You can't make much by it."
I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness. "It depends
on what you call much."
"It doesn't make you rich."
"Oh of course you've got to practise it--and to practise it long."
"Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says."
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were
so calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn't live up
to his principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected
to remain in Europe long--to what one might call settle.
"Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as
it has taken me to go out."
"And I think your mother said last night that it was your first
visit."
Miss Mavis, in her deliberate way, met my eyes. "Didn't mother
talk!"
"It was all very interesting."
She continued to look at me. "You don't think that," she then simply
stated.
"What have I to gain then by saying it?"
"Oh men have always something to gain."
"You make me in that case feel a terrible failure! I hope at any
rate that it gives you pleasure," I went on, "the idea of seeing
foreign lands."
"Mercy--I should think so!"
This was almost genial, and it cheered me proportionately. "It's a
pity our ship's not one of the fast ones, if you're impatient."
She was silent a little after which she brought out: "Oh I guess
it'll be fast enough!"
That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-
trunk, which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me.
It was nine o'clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had
already taken us into the latitude of the longer days. She had made
her nest admirably and now rested from her labours; she lay upon her
sofa in a dressing-gown and a cap that became her. It was her
regular practice to spend the voyage in her cabin, which smelt
positively good--such was the refinement of her art; and she had a
secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without shipping
seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the idea,
if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of
supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation-
-we promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly
that I should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day--pitying
me for having to mingle in society. She judged this a limited
privilege, for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a
view of our fellow-passengers.
"Oh I'm an inveterate, almost a professional observer," I replied,
"and with that vice I'm as well occupied as an old woman in the sun
with her knitting. It makes me, in any situation, just inordinately
and submissively SEE things. I shall see them even here and shall
come down very often and tell you about them. You're not interested
today, but you will be tomorrow, for a ship's a great school of
gossip. You won't believe the number of researches and problems
you'll be engaged in by the middle of the voyage."
"I? Never in the world!--lying here with my nose in a book and not
caring a straw."
"You'll participate at second hand. You'll see through my eyes, hang
upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and
indignations. I've an idea," I further developed, "that your young
lady's the person on board who will interest me most."
"'Mine' indeed! She hasn't been near me since we left the dock."
"There you are--you do feel she owes you something. Well," I added,
"she's very curious."
"You've such cold-blooded terms!" Mrs. Nettlepoint wailed. "Elle ne
sait pas se conduire; she ought to have come to ask about me."
"Yes, since you're under her care," I laughed. "As for her not
knowing how to behave--well, that's exactly what we shall see."
"You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her."
"Don't say that--don't say that."
Mrs. Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. "Why do you speak so
solemnly?"
In return I considered her. "I'll tell you before we land. And have
you seen much of your son?"
"Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased.
He has got a cabin to himself."
"That's great luck," I said, "but I've an idea he's always in luck.
I was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room."
"And you wouldn't have enjoyed that, because you don't like him," she
took upon herself to say.
"What put that into your head?"
"It isn't in my head--it's in my heart, my coeur de mere. We guess
those things. You think he's selfish. I could see it last night."
"Dear lady," I contrived promptly enough to reply, "I've no general
ideas about him at all. He's just one of the phenomena I am going to
observe. He seems to me a very fine young man. However," I added,
"since you've mentioned last night I'll admit that I thought he
rather tantalised you. He played with your suspense."
"Why he came at the last just to please me," said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
I was silent a little. "Are you sure it was for your sake?"
"Ah, perhaps it was for yours!"
I bore up, however, against this thrust, characteristic of perfidious
woman when you presume to side with her against a fond tormentor.
"When he went out on the balcony with that girl," I found assurance
to suggest, "perhaps she asked him to come for HERS."
"Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him--such
as she is?"
"I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he'll
tell me--for he'll never tell me anything: he's not," I consistently
opined, "one of those who tell."
"If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her," said
Mrs. Nettlepoint.
"Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper--not to
protect her," I smiled.
"You ARE cold-blooded--it's uncanny!" my friend exclaimed.
"Ah this is nothing yet! Wait a while--you'll see. At sea in
general I'm awful--I exceed the limits. If I've outraged her in
thought I'll jump overboard. There are ways of asking--a man doesn't
need to tell a woman that--without the crude words."
"I don't know what you imagine between them," said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
"Well, nothing," I allowed, "but what was visible on the surface. It
transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends."
"He met her at some promiscuous party--I asked him about it
afterwards. She's not a person"--my hostess was confident--"whom he
could ever think of seriously."
"That's exactly what I believe."
"You don't observe--you know--you imagine," Mrs. Nettlepoint
continued to argue. "How do you reconcile her laying a trap for
Jasper with her going out to Liverpool on an errand of love?"
Oh I wasn't to be caught that way! "I don't for an instant suppose
she laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment.
She's going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that's not
necessarily the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one
who happens to have had a personal impression of the gentleman she's
engaged to."
"Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most
abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her
capable--on no evidence--of violating them."
"Ah you don't understand the shades of things," I returned.
"Decencies and violations, dear lady--there's no need for such heavy
artillery! I can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty
she should have said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in
words: 'I'm in dreadful spirits, but if you come I shall feel
better, and that will be pleasant for you too.'"
"And why is she in dreadful spirits?"
"She isn't!" I replied, laughing.
My poor friend wondered. "What then is she doing?"
"She's walking with your son."
Mrs. Nettlepoint for a moment said nothing; then she treated me to
another inconsequence. "Ah she's horrid!"
"No, she's charming!" I protested.
"You mean she's 'curious'?"
"Well, for me it's the same thing!"
This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was cold-
blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and she
told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.
She knew nothing, poor creature, about anything, but her intentions
were good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and
decorous. And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the sigh
"Unfortunate person!"
"You think she's a good deal to be pitied then?"
"Well, her story sounds dreary--she told me a good deal of it. She
fell to talking little by little and went from one thing to another.
She's in that situation when a girl MUST open herself--to some
woman."
"Hasn't she got Jasper?" I asked.
"He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him," my companion
added.
"I daresay HE thinks so--or will before the end. Ah no--ah no!" And
I asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as, very
grossly, a flirt. She gave me no answer, but went on to remark that
she found it odd and interesting to see the way a girl like Grace
Mavis resembled the girls of the kind she herself knew better, the
girls of "society," at the same time that she differed from them; and
the way the differences and resemblances were so mixed up that on
certain questions you couldn't tell where you'd find her. You'd
think she'd feel as you did because you had found her feeling so, and
then suddenly, in regard to some other matter--which was yet quite
the same--she'd be utterly wanting. Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to
observe--to such idle speculations does the vacancy of sea-hours give
encouragement--that she wondered whether it were better to be an
ordinary girl very well brought up or an extraordinary girl not
brought up at all.
"Oh I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances."
It's true that if you're VERY well brought up you're not, you can't
be, ordinary," said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts.
"You're a lady, at any rate."
"And Miss Mavis is fifty miles out--is that what you mean?"
"Well--you've seen her mother."
"Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the
mother doesn't count."
"Precisely, and that's bad."
"I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother
doesn't know anything it's better you should be independent of her,
and yet if you are that constitutes a bad note." I added that Mrs.
Mavis had appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had
said and done everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and
respectful. Grace's attitude, so far as her parent was concerned,
had been eminently decent.
"Yes, but she 'squirmed' for her," said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
"Ah if you know it I may confess she has told me as much."
My friend stared. "Told YOU? There's one of the things they do!"
"Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you do
think her a flirt?"
"Try her yourself--that's better than asking another woman;
especially as you pretend to study folk."
"Oh your judgement wouldn't probably at all determine mine. It's as
bearing on YOU I ask it." Which, however, demanded explanation, so
that I was duly frank; confessing myself curious as to how far
maternal immorality would go.
It made her at first but repeat my words. "Maternal immorality?"
"You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his
voyage, and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that
will make it all right. He'll have no responsibility."
"Heavens, how you analyse!" she cried. "I haven't in the least your
passion for making up my mind."
"Then if you chance it," I returned, "you'll be more immoral still."
"Your reasoning's strange," said Mrs. Nettlepoint; "when it was you
who tried to put into my head yesterday that she had asked him to
come."
"Yes, but in good faith."
"What do you mean, in such a case, by that?"
"Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such
matters," I expounded, "is much larger than that of young persons who
have been, as you say, VERY well brought up; and yet I'm not sure
that on the whole I don't think them thereby the more innocent. Miss
Mavis is engaged, and she's to be married next week, but it's an old
old story, and there's no more romance in it than if she were going
to be photographed. So her usual life proceeds, and her usual life
consists--and that of ces demoiselles in general--in having plenty of
gentlemen's society. Having it I mean without having any harm from
it."
Mrs. Nettlepoint had given me due attention. "Well, if there's no
harm from it what are you talking about and why am I immoral?"
I hesitated, laughing. "I retract--you're sane and clear. I'm sure
she thinks there won't be any harm," I added. "That's the great
point."
"The great point?"
"To be settled, I mean."
"Mercy, we're not trying them!" cried my friend. "How can WE settle
it?"
"I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more
interesting these next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves
upon."
"Then they'll get terribly tired of it," said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
"No, no--because the interest will increase and the plot will
thicken. It simply can't NOT," I insisted. She looked at me as if
she thought me more than Mephistophelean, and I went back to
something she had lately mentioned. "So she told you everything in
her life was dreary?"
"Not everything, but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as
I guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She'll behave
properly now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to."
"I'm glad of that," I said. "Keep her with you as much as possible."
"I don't follow you closely," Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, "but so far
as I do I don't think your remarks in the best taste."
"Well, I'm too excited, I lose my head in these sports," I had to
recognise--"cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't she like Mr.
Porterfield?"
"Yes, that's the worst of it."
I kept making her stare. "The worst of it?"
"He's so good--there's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise
she'd have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was
eighteen: she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study.
It was one of those very young and perfectly needless blunders that
parents in America might make so much less possible than they do.
The thing is to insist on one's daughter waiting, on the engagement's
being long; and then, after you've got that started, to take it on
every occasion as little seriously as possible--to make it die out.
You can easily tire it to death," Mrs. Nettlepoint competently
stated. "However," she concluded, "Mr. Porterfield has taken this
one seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive.
She says he adores her."
"His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this
time."
"He has really no money." My friend was even more confidently able
to report it than I had been.
"He ought to have got some, in seven years," I audibly reflected.
"So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of helplessness that
are contemptible. However, a small difference has taken place.
That's why he won't wait any longer. His mother has come out, she
has something--a little--and she's able to assist him. She'll live
with them and bear some of the expenses, and after her death the son
will have what there is."
"How old is she?" I cynically asked.
"I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't, on his part, sound very
heroic--or very inspiring for our friend here. He hasn't been to
America since he first went out."
"That's an odd way of adoring her," I observed.
"I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She
met it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to
marry."
"That surprises me," I remarked. "But did she say," I asked, "that
SHE had had?"
"No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must
have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life.
She has three other sisters and there's very little money at home.
She has tried to make money; she has written little things and
painted little things--and dreadful little things they must have
been; too bad to think of. Her father has had a long illness and has
lost his place--he was in receipt of a salary in connexion with some
waterworks--and one of her sisters has lately become a widow, with
children and without means. And so as in fact she never has married
any one else, whatever opportunities she may have encountered, she
appears to have just made up her mind to go out to Mr. Porterfield as
the least of her evils. But it isn't very amusing."
"Well," I judged after all, "that only makes her doing it the more
honourable. She'll go through with it, whatever it costs, rather
than disappoint him after he has waited so long. It's true," I
continued, "that when a woman acts from a sense of honour--!"
"Well, when she does?" said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hung back
perceptibly.
"It's often so extravagant and unnatural a proceeding as to entail
heavy costs on some one."
"You're very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other all the
while and for each other's virtues as well as vices."
"That's precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she
steps off the ship with her little bill. I mean with her teeth
clenched."
"Her teeth are not in the least clenched. She's quite at her ease
now"--Mrs. Nettlepoint could answer for that.
"Well, we must try and keep her so," I said.
"You must take care that Jasper neglects nothing." I scarce know
what reflexions this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on the good
lady's part; the upshot of them at all events was to make her say:
"Well, I never asked her to come; I'm very glad of that. It's all
their own doing."
"'Their' own--you mean Jasper's and hers?"
"No indeed. I mean her mother's and Mrs. Allen's; the girl's too of
course. They put themselves on us by main force."
"Oh yes, I can testify to that. Therefore I'm glad too. We should
have missed it, I think."
"How seriously you take it!" Mrs. Nettlepoint amusedly cried.
"Ah wait a few days!"--and I got up to leave her.
