by Henry James
“And will you come up today?”
“No indeed—I think she’ll do beautifully now.”
I heaved this time a sigh of relief. “All’s well that ends well!”
Jasper spent that day a great deal of time with his mother. She had told me how much she had lacked hitherto 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 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.”
“Then I think,” I returned, “we won’t.”
“Maybe we won’t have the chance,” said the dreadful little woman.
“Oh at that moment”—I spoke from a full experience—”universal geniality reigns.”
Mrs. Peck however knew little of any such law. “I guess 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 she hadn’t looked in. She herself had accordingly inquired by the stewardess if she might be received in Miss Mavis’s own quarters, and the young lady had replied that they were 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—the sense of the return to Europe always kept its intensity—and had thereby the less attention for other matters. It will doubtless appear to the critical reader that my expenditure of interest had been out of proportion to the vulgar appearances of which my story gives an account, but to this I can only reply that the event was to justify me. We sighted land, the dim yet rich coast of Ireland, about sunset, and I leaned on the bulwark and took it in. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” I heard a voice say, beside me; whereupon, turning, I found Grace Mavis at hand. Almost for the first time she had her veil up, and I thought her very pale.
“It will be more tomorrow,” I said.
“Oh yes, a great deal more.”
“The first sight of land, at sea, changes everything,” I went on. “It always affects me as waking up from a dream. It’s a return to reality.”
For a moment she made me no response; then she said “It doesn’t look very real yet.”
“No, and meanwhile, this lovely evening, one can put it that the dream’s 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 hadn’t begun. “It IS a lovely evening.”
“Oh yes, with this we shall do.”
She stood some moments more, 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 prompted me to something suggestive of sympathy and service. It was difficult indeed to strike the right note—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 you knew Mr. Porterfield?”
“Dear me, yes—I used to see him. I’ve often wanted to speak to you of him.”
She turned her face on me and in the deepened evening I imagined her more pale. “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 smiled.
“Did you know him so well?”
My smile became a laugh and I lost a little my confidence. “You’re not easy to make speeches to.”
“I hate speeches!” The words came from her lips with a force that surprised me; they were loud and hard. But before I had time to wonder she went on a little differently. “Shall you know him when you see him?”
“Perfectly, I think.” Her manner was so strange that I had to notice it in some way, and I judged the best way was jocularly; so I added: “Shan’t you?”
“Oh perhaps you’ll point him out!” And she walked quickly away. As I looked after her there came to me a perverse, rather a provoking consciousness of having during the previous days, and especially in speaking to Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation in some degree to her loss. There was an odd pang for me in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I couldn’t 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 had observed, through the open door, that he was there. He had been with her so much that without him she now struck one as bereaved and forsaken. This was really better, no doubt, but superficially it moved—and I admit with the last inconsequence—one’s pity. Mrs. Peck would doubtless have assured 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 score wasn’t so and could never be. Later on, through his mother, I had HIS version of that, but I may remark that I gave it no credit. Poor Mrs. Nettlepoint, on the other hand, was of course to give it all. 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 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 I had worried her, and that she had worried herself, in sufficiency. I left her to enjoy the deepening 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 moved about among them alone, but I forbore 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 wanted to know of me if 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 dressed, 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.” And while I took I scarce know what instant chill from it, “A lady, sir,” he went on—”whom I think you knew. Poor Miss Mavis, sir.”
“MISSING?” I cried—staring at him and horror-stricken.
“She’s not on the ship. They can’t find her.”
“Then where to God is she?”
I recall 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 b
eyond every one, the way she escaped notice. They usually sees ‘em, sir. It must have been about half-past two. Lord, but she was sharp, sir. She didn’t so much as make a splash. They say she ‘AD come against her will, sir.”
I had dropped upon my sofa—I felt faint. The man went on, liking to talk as persons of his class do when they have something horrible to tell. She usually rang for the stewardess early, but this morning of course there had been no ring. The stewardess had gone in all the same about eight o’clock and found the cabin empty. That was about an hour previous. Her things were there in confusion—the things she usually wore when she went above. The stewardess thought she had been a bit odd the night before, but had waited a little and then gone back. Miss Mavis hadn’t turned up—and she didn’t turn up. The stewardess began to look for her—she hadn’t been seen on deck or in the saloon. Besides, she wasn’t dressed—not to show herself; all her clothes were in her room. There was another lady, an old lady, Mrs. Nettlepoint—I would know her—that she was sometimes with, but the stewardess had been with HER and knew Miss Mavis hadn’t come near her that morning. She had spoken to HIM and they had taken a quiet look—they had hunted everywhere. A ship’s a big place, but you did come to the end of it, and if a person wasn’t there why there it was. In short an hour had passed and the young lady was not accounted for: from which I might judge if she ever would be. The watch couldn’t account for her, but no doubt the fishes in the sea could—poor miserable pitiful lady! The stewardess and he had of course thought it their duty to speak at once to the Doctor, and the Doctor had spoken immediately to the Captain. The Captain didn’t like it—they never did, but he’d try to keep it quiet—they always did.
By the time I succeeded in pulling myself together and getting on, after a fashion, the rest of my clothes I had learned that Mrs. Nettlepoint wouldn’t yet have been told, unless the stewardess had broken it to her within the previous few minutes. Her son knew, the young gentleman on the other side of the ship—he had the other steward; my man had seen him come out of his cabin and rush above, just before he came in to me. He HAD gone above, my man was sure; he hadn’t gone to the old lady’s cabin. I catch again the sense of my dreadfully seeing something at that moment, catch the wild flash, under the steward’s words, of Jasper Nettlepoint leaping, with a mad compunction in his young agility, over the side of the ship. I hasten to add, however, that no such incident was destined to contribute its horror to poor Grace Mavis’s unwitnessed and unlighted tragic act. What followed was miserable enough, but I can only glance at it. When I got to Mrs. Nettlepoint’s door she was there with a shawl about her; the stewardess had just told her and she was dashing out to come to me. I made her go back—I said I would go for Jasper. I went for him but I missed him, partly no doubt because it was really at first the Captain I was after. I found this personage and found him highly scandalised, but he gave me no hope that we were in error, and his displeasure, expressed with seamanlike strength, was a definite settlement of the question. From the deck, where I merely turned round and looked, I saw the light of another summer day, the coast of Ireland green and near and the sea of a more charming colour than it had shown at all. When I came below again Jasper had passed back; he had gone to his cabin and his mother had joined him there. He remained there till we reached Liverpool—I never saw him. His mother, after a little, at his request, left him alone. All the world went above to look at the land and chatter about our tragedy, but the poor lady spent the day, dismally enough, in her room. It seemed to me, the dreadful day, intolerably long; I was thinking so of vague, of inconceivable yet inevitable Porterfield, and of my having to face him somehow on the morrow. Now of course I knew why she had asked me if I should recognise him; she had delegated to me mentally a certain pleasant office. I gave Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch a wide berth—I couldn’t talk to them. I could, or at least I did a little, to Mrs. Nettlepoint, but with too many reserves for comfort on either side, since I quite felt how little it would now make for ease to mention Jasper to her. I was obliged to assume by my silence that he had had nothing to do with what had happened; and of course I never really ascertained what he HAD had to do. The secret of what passed between him and the strange girl who would have sacrificed her marriage to him on so short an acquaintance remains shut up in his breast. His mother, I know, went to his door from time to time, but he refused her admission. That evening, to be human at a venture, I requested the steward to go in and ask him if he should care to see me, and the good man returned with an answer which he candidly transmitted. “Not in the least!”—Jasper apparently was almost as scandalised as the Captain.
At Liverpool, at the dock, when we had touched, twenty people came on board and I had already made out Mr. Porterfield at a distance. He was looking up at the side of the great vessel with disappointment written—for my strained eyes—in his face; disappointment at not seeing the woman he had so long awaited lean over it and wave her handkerchief to him. Every one was looking at him, every one but she—his identity flew about in a moment—and I wondered if it didn’t strike him. He used to be gaunt and angular, but had grown almost fat and stooped a little. The interval between us diminished—he was on the plank and then on the deck with the jostling agents of the Customs; too soon for my equanimity. I met him instantly, however, to save him from exposure—laid my hand on him and drew him away, though I was sure he had no impression of having seen me before. It was not till afterwards that I thought this rather characteristically dull of him. I drew him far away—I was conscious of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch, looking at us as we passed—into the empty stale smoking- room: he remained speechless, and that struck me as like him. I had to speak first, he couldn’t even relieve me by saying “Is anything the matter?” I broke ground by putting it, feebly, that she was ill. It was a dire moment.
The Path of Duty
I am glad I said to you the other night at Doubleton, inquiring—too inquiring—compatriot, that I wouldn’t undertake to tell you the story (about Ambrose Tester), but would write it out for you; inasmuch as, thinking it over since I came back to town, I see that it may really be made interesting. It is a story, with a regular development, and for telling it I have the advantage that I happened to know about it from the first, and was more or less in the confidence of every one concerned. Then it will amuse me to write it, and I shall do so as carefully and as cleverly as possible The first winter days in London are not madly gay, so that I have plenty of time; and if the fog is brown outside, the fire is red within. I like the quiet of this season; the glowing chimney-corner, in the midst of the December mirk, makes me think, as I sit by it, of all sorts of things. The idea that is almost always uppermost is the bigness and strangeness of this London world. Long as I have lived here,—the sixteenth anniversary of my marriage is only ten days off,—there is still a kind of novelty and excitement in it It is a great pull, as they say here, to have remained sensitive,—to have kept one’s own point of view. I mean it’s more entertaining,—it makes you see a thousand things (not that they are all very charming). But the pleasure of observation does not in the least depend on the beauty of what one observes. You see innumerable little dramas; in fact, almost everything has acts and scenes, like a comedy. Very often it is a comedy with tears. There have been a good many of them, I am afraid, in the case I am speaking of. It is because this history of Sir Ambrose Tester and Lady Vandeleur struck me, when you asked me about the relations of the parties, as having that kind of progression, that when I was on the point of responding, I checked myself, thinking it a pity to tell you a little when I might tell you all. I scarcely know what made you ask, inasmuch as I had said nothing to excite your curiosity. Whatever you suspected, you suspected on your own hook, as they say. You had simply noticed the pair together that evening at Doubleton. If you suspected anything in particular, it is a proof that you are rather sharp, because they are very careful about the way they behave in public. At least they think they are. The result, perhaps, doesn’t necessarily f
ollow. If I have been in their confidence you may say that I make a strange use of my privilege in serving them up to feed the prejudices of an opinionated American. You think English society very wicked, and my little story will probably not correct the impression. Though, after all, I don’t see why it should minister to it; for what I said to you (it was all I did say) remains the truth. They are treading together the path of duty. You would be quite right about its being base in me to betray them. It is very true that they have ceased to confide in me; even Joscelind has said nothing to me for more than a year. That is doubtless a sign that the situation is more serious than before, all round,—too serious to be talked about. It is also true that you are remarkably discreet, and that even if you were not it would not make much difference, inasmuch as if you were to repeat my revelations in America, no one would know whom you were talking about. But all the same, I should be base; and, therefore, after I have written out my reminiscences for your delectation, I shall simply keep them for my own. You must content yourself with the explanation I have already given you of Sir Ambrose Tester and Lady Vandeleur: they are following—hand in hand, as it were—the path of duty. This will not prevent me from telling everything; on the contrary, don’t you see?