‘Her chaperone?’
‘Mrs Nettlepoint – the lady under whose protection she is.’
‘Protection?’ Mrs Peck stared at me a moment, moving some valued morsel in her mouth; then she exclaimed, familiarly, ‘Pshaw!’ I was struck with this and I was on the point of asking her what she meant by it when she continued: ‘Are we not going to see Mrs Nettlepoint?’
‘I am afraid not. She vows that she won’t stir from her sofa.’
‘Pshaw!’ said Mrs Peck again. ‘That’s quite a disappointment.’
‘Do you know her then?’
‘No, but I know all about her.’ Then my companion added – ‘You don’t mean to say she’s any relation?’
‘Do you mean to me?’
‘No, to Grace Mavis.’
‘None at all. They are very new friends, as I happen to know. Then you are acquainted with our young lady?’ I had not noticed that any recognition passed between them at luncheon.
‘Is she yours too?’ asked Mrs Peck, smiling at me.
‘Ah, when people are in the same boat – literally – they belong a little to each other.’
‘That’s so,’ said Mrs Peck. ‘I don’t know Miss Mavis but I know all about her – I live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue. I don’t know whether you know that part.’
‘Oh yes – it’s very beautiful.’
The consequence of this remark was another ‘Pshaw!’ But Mrs Peck went on – ‘When you’ve lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you were acquainted. But she didn’t take it up to-day; she didn’t speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her own mother.’
‘You had better speak to her first – she’s shy,’ I remarked.
‘Shy? Why she’s nearly thirty years old. I suppose you know where she’s going.’
‘Oh yes – we all take an interest in that.’
‘That young man, I suppose, particularly.’
‘That young man?’
‘The handsome one, who sits there. Didn’t you tell me he is Mrs Nettlepoint’s son?’
‘Oh yes; he acts as her deputy. No doubt he does all he can to carry out her function.’
Mrs Peck was silent a moment. I had spoken jocosely, but she received my pleasantry with a serious face. ‘Well, she might let him eat his dinner in peace!’ she presently exclaimed.
‘Oh, he’ll come back!’ I said, glancing at his place. The repast continued and when it was finished I screwed my chair round to leave the table. Mrs Peck performed the same movement and we quitted the saloon together. Outside of it was a kind of vestibule, with several seats, from which you could descend to the lower cabins or mount to the promenadedeck. Mrs Peck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the benches and looked up at me.
‘I thought you said he would come back.’
‘Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn’t. Miss Mavis then has given him half of her dinner.’
‘It’s very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.’
‘Yes, but that will soon be over.’
‘So I suppose – as quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.’
‘Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.’
‘I mean even people who don’t know her.’
‘I see,’ I went on: ‘she is so handsome that she attracts attention, people enter into her affairs.’
‘She used to be pretty, but I can’t say I think she’s anything remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.’
‘Oh, it’s none of my business!’ I replied, leaving Mrs Peck and going above. The exclamation, I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint’s arm and that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs Peck’s insinuation, she still kept enough to make one’s eyes follow her. She had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would count most in the composition of groups. She couldn’t help it, poor girl; nature had made her conspicuous – important as the painters say. She paid for it by the exposure it brought with it – the danger that people would, as I had said to Mrs Peck, enter into her affairs.
Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I watched for one of these occasions (on the third day out) and took advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a blue veil drawn tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me was dim I could account for it partly by that.
‘Well, we are getting on – we are getting on,’ I said, cheerfully, looking at the friendly, twinkling sea.
‘Are we going very fast?’
‘Not fast, but steadily. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast – do you know German?’
‘Well, I’ve studied it – some.’
‘It will be useful to you over there when you travel.’
‘Well yes, if we do. But I don’t suppose we shall much. Mr Nettlepoint says we ought,’ my interlocutress added in a moment.
‘Ah, of course he thinks so. He has been all over the world.’
‘Yes, he has described some of the places. That’s what I should like. I didn’t know I should like it so much.’
‘Like what so much?’
‘Going on this way. I could go on for ever, for ever and ever.’
‘Ah, you know it’s not always like this,’ I rejoined.
‘Well, it’s better than Boston.’
‘It isn’t so good as Paris,’ I said, smiling.
‘Oh, I know all about Paris. There is no freshness in that. I feel as if I had been there.’
‘You mean you have heard so much about it?’
‘Oh yes, nothing else for ten years.’
I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at liberty to revert to Mr Porterfield. She had not encouraged me, when I spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she appeared to imply (it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by Mrs Nettlepoint) that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.
‘I see, you mean by letters,’ I remarked.
‘I shan’t live in a good part. I know enough to know that,’ she went on.
‘Dear young lady, there are no bad parts,’ I answered, reassuringly.
‘Why, Mr Nettlepoint says it’s horrid.’
‘It’s horrid?’
‘Up there in the Batignolles. It’s worse than Merrimac Avenue.’
‘Worse – in what way?’
‘Why, even less where the nice people live.’
‘He oughtn’t to say that,’ I returned. ‘Don’t you call Mr Porterfield a nice person?’ I ventured to subjoin.
‘Oh, it doesn’t make any difference.’ She rested her eyes on me a moment through her veil, the texture of which gave them a suffused prettiness. ‘Do you know him very well?’ she asked.
‘Mr Porterfield?’
‘No, Mr Nettlepoint.’
‘Ah, very little. He’s a good deal younge
r than I.’
She was silent a moment; after which she said: ‘He’s younger than me, too.’ I know not what drollery there was in this but it was unexpected and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence at my laughter, though I remember thinking at the moment with compunction that it had brought a certain colour to her cheek. At all events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. ‘I’m going down – I’m tired.’
‘Tired of me, I’m afraid.’
‘No, not yet.’
‘I’m like you,’ I pursued. ‘I should like it to go on and on.’
She had begun to walk along the deck to the companion-way and I went with her. ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t, after all!’
I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps that led down to the cabins I had to give it back. ‘Your mother would be glad if she could know,’ I observed as we parted.
‘If she could know?’
‘How well you are getting on. And that good Mrs Allen.’
‘Oh, mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off.’ And almost as if not to say more she went quickly below.
I paid Mrs Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in the evening, before she ‘turned in’. That same day, in the evening, she said to me suddenly, ‘Do you know what I have done? I have asked Jasper.’
‘Asked him what?’
‘Why, if she asked him, you know.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You do perfectly. If that girl really asked him – on the balcony – to sail with us.’
‘My dear friend, do you suppose that if she did he would tell you?’
‘That’s just what he says. But he says she didn’t.’
‘And do you consider the statement valuable?’ I asked, laughing out. ‘You had better ask Miss Gracie herself.’
Mrs Nettlepoint stared. ‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘Incomparable friend, I am only joking. What does it signify now?’
‘I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full of signification!’
‘Yes, but we are farther out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute.’
‘What else can he do with decency?’ Mrs Nettlepoint went on. ‘If, as my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you would think that stranger still. Then you would do what he does, and where would be the difference?’
‘How do you know what he does? I haven’t mentioned him for twenty-four hours.’
‘Why, she told me herself: she came in this afternoon.’
‘What an odd thing to tell you!’ I exclaimed.
‘Not as she says it. She says he’s full of attention, perfectly devoted – looks after her all the while. She seems to want me to know it, so that I may commend him for it.’
‘That’s charming; it shows her good conscience.’
‘Yes, or her great cleverness.’
Something in the tone in which Mrs Nettlepoint said this caused me to exclaim in real surprise, ‘Why, what do you suppose she has in her mind?’
‘To get hold of him, to make him go so far that he can’t retreat, to marry him, perhaps.’
‘To marry him? And what will she do with Mr Porterfield?’
‘She’ll ask me just to explain to him – or perhaps you.’
‘Yes, as an old friend!’ I replied, laughing. But I asked more seriously, ‘Do you see Jasper caught like that?’
‘Well, he’s only a boy – he’s younger at least than she.’
‘Precisely; she regards him as a child.’
‘As a child?’
‘She remarked to me herself to-day that he is so much younger.’
Mrs Nettlepoint stared. ‘Does she talk of it with you? That shows she has a plan, that she has thought it over!’
I have sufficiently betrayed that I deemed Grace Mavis a singular girl, but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for our young companion. Moreover my reading of Jasper was not in the least that he was catchable – could be made to do a thing if he didn’t want to do it. Of course it was not impossible that he might be inclined, that he might take it (or already have taken it) into his head to marry Miss Mavis; but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always being with her. He wanted at most to marry her for the voyage. ‘If you have questioned him perhaps you have tried to make him feel responsible,’ I said to his mother.
‘A little, but it’s very difficult. Interference makes him perverse. One has to go gently. Besides, it’s too absurd – think of her age. If she can’t take care of herself!’ cried Mrs Nettlepoint.
‘Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it’s not so prodigious. And if things get very bad you have one resource left,’ I added.
‘What is that?’
‘You can go upstairs.’
‘Ah, never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost. Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go up she could come down here.’
‘Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.’
‘Could I?’ Mrs Nettlepoint demanded, in the manner of a woman who knew her son.
In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters and wineglasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs Peck, among others, taking a hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine – we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.
‘She hasn’t spoken to me yet – she won’t do it,’ she remarked in a moment.
‘Is it possible there is any one on the ship who hasn’t spoken to you?’
‘Not that girl – she knows too well!’ Mrs Peck looked round our little circle with a smile of intelligence – she had familiar, communicative eyes. Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.
‘What then does she know?’
‘Oh, she knows that I know.’
‘Well, we know what Mrs Peck knows,’ one of the ladies of the group observed to me, with an air of privilege.
‘Well, you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you – from the way she acts,’ said Mrs Peck, with a small laugh.
‘She is going out to a gentleman who lives over there – he’s waiting there to marry her,’ the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic information. I remember that her name was Mrs Gotch and that her mouth looked always as if she were whistling.
‘Oh, he knows – I’ve told him,’ said Mrs Peck.
‘Well, I presume every one knows,’ Mrs Gotch reflected.
‘Dear madam, is it every one’s business?’ I asked.
‘Why, don’t you think it’s a peculiar way to act?’ Mrs Gotch was evidently surprised at my little protest.
‘Why, it’s right there – straight in front of you, like a play at the theatre – as if you had paid to see it,’ said Mrs Peck. ‘If you don’t call it public—!’
‘Aren’t you mixing things up? What do you call public?’
‘Why, the way they go on. They are up there now.’
‘They cuddle up there half the night,’ said Mrs Gotch. ‘I don’t know when they come down. Any hour you like – when all the lights are out they are up there still.’
‘Oh, you can’t tire them out. They don’t want relief – like the watch!’ laughed one of the gentlemen.
‘Well, if they enjoy each other’s society what’s the harm?’ another asked. ‘They’d do just the same on land.’
‘They wouldn’t do it on the public streets, I suppose,’ said Mrs Peck. ‘And they wouldn’t do it if Mr Porterfield was round!’
‘Isn’t that just where your confusion comes in
?’ I inquired. ‘It’s public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr Nettlepoint are always together, but it isn’t in the least public that she is going to be married.’
‘Why, how can you say – when the very sailors know it! The captain knows it and all the officers know it; they see them there – especially at night, when they’re sailing the ship.’
‘I thought there was some rule—’ said Mrs Gotch.
‘Well, there is – that you’ve got to behave yourself,’ Mrs Peck rejoined. ‘So the captain told me – he said they have some rule. He said they have to have, when people are too demonstrative.’
‘Too demonstrative?’
‘When they attract so much attention.’
‘Ah, it’s we who attract the attention – by talking about what doesn’t concern us and about what we really don’t know,’ I ventured to declare.
‘She said the captain said he would tell on her as soon as we arrive,’ Mrs Gotch interposed.
‘She said—?’ I repeated, bewildered.
‘Well, he did say so, that he would think it his duty to inform Mr Porterfield, when he comes on to meet her – if they keep it up in the same way,’ said Mrs Peck.
‘Oh, they’ll keep it up, don’t you fear!’ one of the gentlemen exclaimed.
‘Dear madam, the captain is laughing at you.’
‘No, he ain’t – he’s right down scandalised. He says he regards us all as a real family and wants the family to be properly behaved.’ I could see Mrs Peck was irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me with considerable spirit. ‘How can you say I don’t know it when all the street knows it and has known it for years – for years and years?’ She spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty. ‘What is she going out for, if not to marry him?’
‘Perhaps she is going to see how he looks,’ suggested one of the gentlemen.
‘He’d look queer – if he knew.’
‘Well, I guess he’ll know,’ said Mrs Gotch.
‘She’d tell him herself – she wouldn’t be afraid,’ the gentleman went on.
‘Well, she might as well kill him. He’ll jump overboard.’
‘Jump overboard?’ cried Mrs Gotch, as if she hoped then that Mr Porterfield would be told.
‘He has just been waiting for this – for years,’ said Mrs Peck.