by Henry James
“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.
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 inadeq
uate, 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.”