Jasper puffed his cigar, with his eyes on the horizon. ‘I don’t know whether it’s your business, what you are attempting to discuss; but it really appears to me it is none of mine. What have I to do with the tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being sea-sick?’
‘Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?’
‘Drivelling.’
‘Then you are very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old women has this importance, that she suspects or knows that it exists, and that nice girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort of thing. To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a reason, and the reason must be the one I have taken the liberty to call your attention to.’
‘In love with me in six days, just like that?’ said Jasper, smoking.
‘There is no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent to sixty on land. I don’t want to make you too proud. Of course if you recognise your responsibility it’s all right and I have nothing to say.’
‘I don’t see what you mean,’ Jasper went on.
‘Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She’s engaged to be married and the gentleman she is engaged to is to meet her at Liverpool. The whole ship knows it (I didn’t tell them!) and the whole ship is watching her. It’s impertinent if you like, just as I am, but we make a little world here together and we can’t blink its conditions. What I ask you is whether you are prepared to allow her to give up the gentleman I have just mentioned for your sake.’
‘For my sake?’
‘To marry her if she breaks with him.’
Jasper turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange expression in them. ‘Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to make this inquiry?’
‘Never in the world.’
‘Well then, I don’t understand it.’
‘It isn’t from another I make it. Let it come from yourself – to yourself.’
‘Lord, you must think I lead myself a life! That’s a question the young lady may put to me any moment that it pleases her.’
‘Let me then express the hope that she will. But what will you answer?’
‘My dear sir, it seems to me that in spite of all the titles you have enumerated you have no reason to expect I will tell you.’ He turned away and I exclaimed, sincerely, ‘Poor girl!’ At this he faced me again and, looking at me from head to foot, demanded: ‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘I told your mother that you ought to go to bed.’
‘You had better do that yourself!’
This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only clear result of my experiment would probably have been to make it vivid to him that she was in love with him. Mrs Nettlepoint came up as she had announced, but the day was half over: it was nearly three o’clock. She was accompanied by her son, who established her on deck, arranged her chair and her shawls, saw that she was protected from sun and wind, and for an hour was very properly attentive. While this went on Grace Mavis was not visible, nor did she reappear during the whole afternoon. I had not observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so long a period. Jasper went away, but he came back at intervals to see how his mother got on, and when she asked him where Miss Mavis was he said he had not the least idea. I sat with Mrs Nettlepoint at her particular request: she told me she knew that if I left her Mrs Peck and Mrs Gotch would come to speak to her. She was flurried and fatigued at having to make an effort, and I think that Grace Mavis’s choosing this occasion for retirement suggested to her a little that she had been made a fool of. She remarked that the girl’s not being there showed her complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end of it. I could see that Mrs Nettlepoint’s advent quickened the speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs Peck plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this danger that Mrs Nettlepoint averted her face.
‘It’s just as we said,’ she remarked to me as we sat there. ‘It is like the bucket in the well. When I come up that girl goes down.’
‘Yes, but you’ve succeeded, since Jasper remains here.’
‘Remains? I don’t see him.’
‘He comes and goes – it’s the same thing.’
‘He goes more than he comes. But n’en parlons plus; I haven’t gained anything. I don’t admire the sea at all – what is it but a magnified water-tank? I shan’t come up again.’
‘I have an idea she’ll stay in her cabin now,’ I said. ‘She tells me she has one to herself.’ Mrs Nettlepoint replied that she might do as she liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with Jasper.
She listened with interest, but ‘Marry her? mercy!’ she exclaimed. ‘I like the manner in which you give my son away.’
‘You wouldn’t accept that?’
‘Never in the world.’
‘Then I don’t understand your position.’
‘Good Heavens, I have none! It isn’t a position to be bored to death.’
‘You wouldn’t accept it even in the case I put to him – that of her believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?’
‘Not even – not even. Who knows what she believes?’
‘Then you do exactly what I said you would – you show me a fine example of maternal immorality.’
‘Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she began it.’
‘Then why did you come up to-day?’
‘To keep you quiet.’
Mrs Nettlepoint’s dinner was served on deck, but I went into the saloon. Jasper was there but not Grace Mavis, as I had half expected. I asked him what had become of her, if she were ill (he must have thought I had an ignoble pertinacity), and he replied that he knew nothing whatever about her. Mrs Peck talked to me about Mrs Nettlepoint and said it had been a great interest to her to see her; only it was a pity she didn’t seem more sociable. To this I replied that she had to beg to be excused – she was not well.
‘You don’t mean to say she’s sick, on this pond?’
‘No, she’s unwell in another way.’
‘I guess I know the way!’ Mrs Peck laughed. And then she added, ‘I suppose she came up to look after her charge.’
‘Her charge?’
‘Why, Miss Mavis. We’ve talked enough about that.’
‘Quite enough. I don’t know what that had to do with it. Miss Mavis hasn’t been there to-day.’
‘Oh, it goes on all the same.’
‘It goes on?’
‘Well, it’s too late.’
‘Too late?’
‘Well, you’ll see. There’ll be a row.’
This was not comforting, but I did not repeat it above. Mrs Nettlepoint returned early to her cabin, professing herself much tired. I know not what ‘went on’, but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I went in late, to bid Mrs Nettlepoint good-night, and learned from her that the girl had not been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for news, to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess came back with the information that she was not there. I went above after this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck was almost empty. In a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together. ‘I hope you are better!’ I called after her; and she replied, over her shoulder –
‘Oh, yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!’ I went down again – I was the only person there but they, and I wished to not appear to be watching them – and returning to Mrs Nettlepoint’s room found (her door was open into the little passage) that she was still sitting up.
‘She’s all right!’ I said. ‘She’s on the deck with Jasper.’
The old lady looked up at me from her book. ‘I didn’t know you called that all right.’
‘Well, it’s
better than something else.’
‘Something else?’
‘Something I was a little afraid of.’ Mrs Nettlepoint continued to look at me; she asked me what that was. ‘I’ll tell you when we are ashore,’ I said.
The next day I went to see her, at the usual hour of my morning visit, and found her in considerable agitation. ‘The scenes have begun,’ she said; ‘you know I told you I shouldn’t get through without them! You made me nervous last night – I haven’t the least idea what you meant; but you made me nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the courage to say to her, “I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell you frankly that I have been scolding my son about you.” Of course she asked me what I meant by that, and I said – “It seems to me he drags you about the ship too much, for a girl in your position. He has the air of not remembering that you belong to some one else. There is a kind of want of taste and even of want of respect in it.” That produced an explosion; she became very violent.’
‘Do you mean angry?’
‘Not exactly angry, but very hot and excited – at my presuming to think her relations with my son were not the simplest in the world. I might scold him as much as I liked – that was between ourselves; but she didn’t see why I should tell her that I had done so. Did I think she allowed him to treat her with disrespect? That idea was not very complimentary to her! He had treated her better and been kinder to her than most other people – there were very few on the ship that hadn’t been insulting. She should be glad enough when she got off it, to her own people, to some one whom no one would have a right to say anything about. What was there in her position that was not perfectly natural? what was the idea of making a fuss about her position? Did I mean that she took it too easily – that she didn’t think as much as she ought about Mr Porterfield? Didn’t I believe she was attached to him – didn’t I believe she was just counting the hours until she saw him? That would be the happiest moment of her life. It showed how little I knew her, if I thought anything else.’
‘All that must have been rather fine – I should have liked to hear it,’ I said. ‘And what did you reply?’
‘Oh, I grovelled; I told her that I accused her (as regards my son) of nothing worse than an excess of good nature. She helped him to pass his time – he ought to be immensely obliged. Also that it would be a very happy moment for me too when I should hand her over to Mr Porterfield.’
‘And will you come up to-day?’
‘No indeed – she’ll do very well now.’
I gave a sigh of relief. ‘All’s well that ends well!’
Jasper, that day, spent a great deal of time with his mother. She had told me that she really had had no proper opportunity to talk over with him their movements after disembarking. Everything changes a little, the last two or three days of a voyage; the spell is broken and new combinations take place. Grace Mavis was neither on deck nor at dinner, and I drew Mrs Peck’s attention to the extreme propriety with which she now conducted herself. She had spent the day in meditation and she judged it best to continue to meditate.
‘Ah, she’s afraid,’ said my implacable neighbour.
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Well, that we’ll tell tales when we get there.’
‘Whom do you mean by “we”?’
‘Well, there are plenty, on a ship like this.’
‘Well then, we won’t.’
‘Maybe we won’t have the chance,’ said the dreadful little woman.
‘Oh, at that moment a universal geniality reigns.’
‘Well, she’s afraid, all the same.’
‘So much the better.’
‘Yes, so much the better.’
All the next day, too, the girl remained invisible and Mrs Nettlepoint told me that she had not been in to see her. She had inquired by the stewardess if she would receive her in her own cabin, and Grace Mavis had replied that it was littered up with things and unfit for visitors: she was packing a trunk over. Jasper made up for his devotion to his mother the day before by now spending a great deal of his time in the smoking-room. I wanted to say to him ‘This is much better,’ but I thought it wiser to hold my tongue. Indeed I had begun to feel the emotion of prospective arrival (I was delighted to be almost back in my dear old Europe again) and had less to spare for other matters. It will doubtless appear to the critical reader that I had already devoted far too much to the little episode of which my story gives an account, but to this I can only reply that the event justified me. We sighted land, the dim yet rich coast of Ireland, about sunset and I leaned on the edge of the ship and looked at it. ‘It doesn’t look like much, does it?’ I heard a voice say, beside me; and turning, I found Grace Mavis was there. Almost for the first time she had her veil up, and I thought her very pale.
‘It will be more to-morrow,’ I said.
‘Oh yes, a great deal more.’
‘The first sight of land, at sea, changes everything,’ I went on. ‘I always think it’s like waking up from a dream. It’s a return to reality.’
For a moment she made no response to this; then she said, ‘It doesn’t look very real yet.’
‘No, and meanwhile, this lovely evening, the dream is still present.’
She looked up at the sky, which had a brightness, though the light of the sun had left it and that of the stars had not come out. ‘It is a lovely evening.’
‘Oh yes, with this we shall do.’
She stood there a while longer, while the growing dusk effaced the line of the land more rapidly than our progress made it distinct. She said nothing more, she only looked in front of her; but her very quietness made me want to say something suggestive of sympathy and service. I was unable to think what to say – some things seemed too wide of the mark and others too importunate. At last, unexpectedly, she appeared to give me my chance. Irrelevantly, abruptly she broke out:
‘Didn’t you tell me that you knew Mr Porterfield?’
‘Dear me, yes – I used to see him. I have often wanted to talk to you about him.’
She turned her face upon me and in the deepened evening I fancied she looked whiter. ‘What good would that do?’
‘Why, it would be a pleasure,’ I replied, rather foolishly.
‘Do you mean for you?’
‘Well, yes – call it that,’ I said, smiling.
‘Did you know him so well?’
My smile became a laugh and I said – ‘You are not easy to make speeches to.’
‘I hate speeches!’ The words came from her lips with a violence that surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder at it she went on – ‘Shall you know him when you see him?’
‘Perfectly, I think.’ Her manner was so strange that one had to notice it in some way, and it appeared to me the best way was to notice it jocularly; so I added, ‘Shan’t you?’
‘Oh, perhaps you’ll point him out!’ And she walked quickly away. As I looked after her I had a singular, a perverse and rather an embarrassed sense of having, during the previous days, and especially in speaking to Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation to her loss. I had a sort of pang in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I could not have kept my hands off. I had seen Jasper in the smoking-room more than once that day, as I passed it, and half an hour before this I had observed, through the open door, that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she had a bereaved, forsaken air. It was better, no doubt, but superficially it made her rather pitiable. Mrs Peck would have told me that their separation was gammon; they didn’t show together on deck and in the saloon, but they made it up elsewhere. The secret places on shipboard are not numerous; Mrs Peck’s ‘elsewhere’ would have been vague and I know not what licence her imagination took. It was distinct that Jasper had fallen off, but of course what had passed between them on this subject was not so and could never be. Later, through his mother, I had his version of that, but I may remark that I didn’t believe it
. Poor Mrs Nettlepoint did, of course. I was almost capable, after the girl had left me, of going to my young man and saying, ‘After all, do return to her a little, just till we get in! It won’t make any difference after we land.’ And I don’t think it was the fear he would tell me I was an idiot that prevented me. At any rate the next time I passed the door of the smoking-room I saw that he had left it. I paid my usual visit to Mrs Nettlepoint that night, but I troubled her no further about Miss Mavis. She had made up her mind that everything was smooth and settled now, and it seemed to me that I had worried her and that she had worried herself enough. I left her to enjoy the foretaste of arrival, which had taken possession of her mind. Before turning in I went above and found more passengers on deck than I had ever seen so late. Jasper was walking about among them alone, but I forebore to join him. The coast of Ireland had disappeared, but the night and the sea were perfect. On the way to my cabin, when I came down, I met the stewardess in one of the passages and the idea entered my head to say to her – ‘Do you happen to know where Miss Mavis is?’
‘Why, she’s in her room, sir, at this hour.’
‘Do you suppose I could speak to her?’ It had come into my mind to ask her why she had inquired of me whether I should recognise Mr Porterfield.
‘No, sir,’ said the stewardess; ‘she has gone to bed.’
‘That’s all right.’ And I followed the young lady’s excellent example.
The next morning, while I was dressing, the steward of my side of the ship came to me as usual to see what I wanted. But the first thing he said to me was – ‘Rather a bad job, sir – a passenger missing.’
‘A passenger – missing?’
‘A lady, sir. I think you knew her. Miss Mavis, sir.’
‘Missing?’ I cried – staring at him, horror-stricken.
‘She’s not on the ship. They can’t find her.’
‘Then where to God is she?’
I remember his queer face. ‘Well sir, I suppose you know that as well as I.’
‘Do you mean she has jumped overboard?’
‘Some time in the night, sir – on the quiet. But it’s beyond every one, the way she escaped notice. They usually sees ’em, sir. It must have been about half-past two. Lord, but she was clever, sir. She didn’t so much as make a splash. They say she ’ad come against her will, sir.’