II

Transcribed from the 1922 Macmillan and Co. “Daisy Miller, Pandora, The

Patagonia and Other Tales” edition by David Price, email

ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by Jonesey and Richard Carpenter

[Picture: Book cover]

THE PATAGONIA

by Henry James

I

THE houses were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon

Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The

club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow

upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the

hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As “every one” was

out of town perhaps the servants, in the extravagance of their leisure,

were profaning the tables. The heat was insufferable and I thought with

joy of the morrow, of the deck of the steamer, the freshening breeze, the

sense of getting out to sea. I was even glad of what I had learned in

the afternoon at the office of the company—that at the eleventh hour an

old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the

vessel in which I had taken my passage. America was roasting, England

might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage (which at that season of

the year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or

twelve days of fresh air.

I strolled down the hill without meeting a creature, though I could see

through the palings of the Common that that recreative expanse was

peopled with dim forms. I remembered Mrs. Nettlepoint’s house—she lived

in those days (they are not so distant, but there have been changes) on

the water-side, a little way beyond the spot at which the Public Garden

terminates; and I reflected that like myself she would be spending the

night in Boston if it were true that, as had been mentioned to me a few

days before at Mount Desert, she was to embark on the morrow for

Liverpool. I presently saw this appearance confirmed by a light above

her door and in two or three of her windows, and I determined to ask for

her, having nothing to do till bedtime. I had come out simply to pass an

hour, leaving my hotel to the blaze of its gas and the perspiration of

its porters; but it occurred to me that my old friend might very _well_

not know of the substitution of the _Patagonia_ for the _Scandinavia_, so

that I should be doing her a service to prepare her mind. Besides, I

could offer to help her, to look after her in the morning: lone women are

grateful for support in taking ship for far countries.

It came to me indeed as I stood on her door-step that as she had a son

she might not after all be so lone; yet I remembered at the same time

that Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having—as

I at least supposed—a life of his own and tastes and habits which had

long since diverted him from the maternal side. If he did happen just

now to be at home my solicitude would of course seem officious; for in

his many wanderings—I believed he had roamed all over the globe—he would

certainly have learned how to manage. None the less, in fine, I was very

glad to show Mrs. Nettlepoint I thought of her. With my long absence I

had lost sight of her; but I had liked her of old, she had been a good

friend to my sisters, and I had in regard to her that sense which is

pleasant to those who in general have gone astray or got detached, the

sense that she at least knew all about me. I could trust her at any time

to tell people I was respectable. Perhaps I was conscious of how little

I deserved this indulgence when it came over me that I hadn’t been near

her for ages. The measure of that neglect was given by my vagueness of

mind about Jasper. However, I really belonged nowadays to a different

generation; I was more the mother’s contemporary than the son’s.

Mrs. Nettlepoint was at home: I found her in her back drawing-room, where

the wide windows opened to the water. The room was dusky—it was too hot

for lamps—and she sat slowly moving her fan and looking out on the little

arm of the sea which is so pretty at night, reflecting the lights of

Cambridgeport and Charlestown. I supposed she was musing on the loved

ones she was to leave behind, her married daughters, her grandchildren;

but she struck a note more specifically Bostonian as she said to me,

pointing with her fan to the Back Bay: “I shall see nothing more charming

than that over there, you know!” She made me very welcome, but her son

had told her about the _Patagonia_, for which she was sorry, as this

would mean a longer voyage. She was a poor creature in any boat and

mainly confined to her cabin even in weather extravagantly termed fine—as

if any weather could be fine at sea.

“Ah then your son’s going with you?” I asked.

“Here he comes, he’ll tell you for himself much better than I can pretend

to.” Jasper Nettlepoint at that moment joined us, dressed in white

flannel and carrying a large fan. “Well, my dear, have you decided?” his

mother continued with no scant irony. “He hasn’t yet made up his mind,

and we sail at ten o’clock!”

“What does it matter when my things are put up?” the young man said.

“There’s no crowd at this moment; there will be cabins to spare. I’m

waiting for a telegram—that will settle it. I just walked up to the club

to see if it was come—they’ll send it there because they suppose this

house unoccupied. Not yet, but I shall go back in twenty minutes.”

“Mercy, how you rush about in this temperature!” the poor lady exclaimed

while I reflected that it was perhaps _his_ billiard-balls I had heard

ten minutes before. I was sure he was fond of billiards.

“Rush? not in the least. I take it uncommon easy.”

“Ah I’m bound to say you do!” Mrs. Nettlepoint returned with

inconsequence. I guessed at a certain tension between the pair and a

want of consideration on the young man’s part, arising perhaps from

selfishness. His mother was nervous, in suspense, wanting to be at rest

as to whether she should have his company on the voyage or be obliged to

struggle alone. But as he stood there smiling and slowly moving his fan

he struck me somehow as a person on whom this fact wouldn’t sit too

heavily. He was of the type of those whom other people worry about, not

of those who worry about other people. Tall and strong, he had a

handsome face, with a round head and close-curling hair; the whites of

his eyes and the enamel of his teeth, under his brown moustache, gleamed

vaguely in the lights of the Back Bay. I made out that he was sunburnt,

as if he lived much in the open air, and that he looked intelligent but

also slightly brutal, though not in a morose way. His brutality, if he

had any, was bright and finished. I had to tell him who I was, but even

then I saw how little he placed me and that my explanations gave me in

his mind no great identity or at any rate no great importance. I foresaw

that he would in intercourse make me feel sometimes very young and

sometimes very old, caring himself but little which. He mentioned, as if

to show our companion that he might safely be left to his own devices,

that he had once started from London to Bombay at three quarters of an

hour’s notice.

“Yes, and it must have been pleasant for the people you were with!”

“Oh the people I was with—!” he returned; and his tone appeared to

signify that such people would always have to come off as they could. He

asked if there were no cold drinks in the house, no lemonade, no iced

syrups; in such weather something of that sort ought always to be kept

going. When his mother remarked that surely at the club they _were_ kept

going he went on: “Oh yes, I had various things there; but you know I’ve

walked down the hill since. One should have something at either end.

May I ring and see?” He rang while Mrs. Nettlepoint observed that with

the people they had in the house, an establishment reduced naturally at

such a moment to its simplest expression—they were burning up candle-ends

and there were no luxuries—she wouldn’t answer for the service. The

matter ended in her leaving the room in quest of cordials with the female

domestic who had arrived in response to the bell and in whom Jasper’s

appeal aroused no visible intelligence.

She remained away some time and I talked with her son, who was sociable

but desultory and kept moving over the place, always with his fan, as if

he were properly impatient. Sometimes he seated himself an instant on

the window-sill, and then I made him out in fact thoroughly

good-looking—a fine brown clean young athlete. He failed to tell me on

what special contingency his decision depended; he only alluded

familiarly to an expected telegram, and I saw he was probably fond at no

time of the trouble of explanations. His mother’s absence was a sign

that when it might be a question of gratifying him she had grown used to

spare no pains, and I fancied her rummaging in some close storeroom,

among old preserve-pots, while the dull maid-servant held the candle

awry. I don’t know whether this same vision was in his own eyes; at all

events it didn’t prevent his saying suddenly, as he looked at his watch,

that I must excuse him—he should have to go back to the club. He would

return in half an hour—or in less. He walked away and I sat there alone,

conscious, on the dark dismantled simplified scene, in the deep silence

that rests on American towns during the hot season—there was now and then

a far cry or a plash in the water, and at intervals the tinkle of the

bells of the horse-cars on the long bridge, slow in the suffocating

night—of the strange influence, half-sweet, half-sad, that abides in

houses uninhabited or about to become so, in places muffled and bereaved,

where the unheeded sofas and patient belittered tables seem (like the

disconcerted dogs, to whom everything is alike sinister) to recognise the

eve of a journey.

After a while I heard the sound of voices, of steps, the rustle of

dresses, and I looked round, supposing these things to denote the return

of Mrs. Nettlepoint and her handmaiden with the refection prepared for

her son. What I saw however was two other female forms, visitors

apparently just admitted, and now ushered into the room. They were not

announced—the servant turned her back on them and rambled off to our

hostess. They advanced in a wavering tentative unintroduced way—partly,

I could see, because the place was dark and partly because their visit

was in its nature experimental, a flight of imagination or a stretch of

confidence. One of the ladies was stout and the other slim, and I made

sure in a moment that one was talkative and the other reserved. It was

further to be discerned that one was elderly and the other young, as well

as that the fact of their unlikeness didn’t prevent their being mother

and daughter. Mrs. Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes, but the

interval had sufficed to establish a communication—really copious for the

occasion—between the strangers and the unknown gentleman whom they found

in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was not my doing—for what had

I to go upon?—and still less was it the doing of the younger and the more

indifferent, or less courageous, lady. She spoke but once—when her

companion informed me that she was going out to Europe the next day to be

married. Then she protested “Oh mother!” in a tone that struck me in the

darkness as doubly odd, exciting my curiosity to see her face.

It had taken the elder woman but a moment to come to that, and to various

other things, after I had explained that I myself was waiting for Mrs.

Nettlepoint, who would doubtless soon come back.

“Well, she won’t know me—I guess she hasn’t ever heard much about me,”

the good lady said; “but I’ve come from Mrs. Allen and I guess that will

make it all right. I presume you know Mrs. Allen?”

I was unacquainted with this influential personage, but I assented

vaguely to the proposition. Mrs. Allen’s emissary was good-humoured and

familiar, but rather appealing than insistent (she remarked that if her

friend _had_ found time to come in the afternoon—she had so much to do,

being just up for the day, that she couldn’t be sure—it would be all

right); and somehow even before she mentioned Merrimac Avenue (they had

come all the way from there) my imagination had associated her with that

indefinite social limbo known to the properly-constituted Boston mind as

the South End—a nebulous region which condenses here and there into a

pretty face, in which the daughters are an “improvement” on the mothers

and are sometimes acquainted with gentlemen more gloriously domiciled,

gentlemen whose wives and sisters are in turn not acquainted with them.

When at last Mrs. Nettlepoint came in, accompanied by candles and by a

tray laden with glasses of coloured fluid which emitted a cool tinkling,

I was in a position to officiate as master of the ceremonies, to

introduce Mrs. Mavis and Miss Grace Mavis, to represent that Mrs. Allen

had recommended them—nay, had urged them—just to come that way,

informally and without fear; Mrs. Allen who had been prevented only by

the pressure of occupations so characteristic of her (especially when up

from Mattapoisett for a few hours’ desperate shopping) from herself

calling in the course of the day to explain who they were and what was

the favour they had to ask of her benevolent friend. Good-natured women

understand each other even when so divided as to sit residentially above

and below the salt, as who should say; by which token our hostess had

quickly mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen’s visit that morning in

Merrimac Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber’s great idea, the classes at the

public schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to

that of Mrs. Mavis—even in such weather!—in those of the South End) for

games and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out

of the streets; then the revelation that it had suddenly been settled

almost from one hour to the other that Grace should sail for Liverpool,

Mr. Porterfield at last being ready. He was taking a little holiday; his

mother was with him, they had come over from Paris to see some of the

celebrated old buildings in England, and he had telegraphed to say that

if Grace would start right off they would just finish it up and be

married. It often happened that when things had dragged on that way for

years they were all huddled up at the end. Of course in such a case she,

Mrs. Mavis, had had to fly round. Her daughter’s passage was taken, but

it seemed too dreadful she should make her journey all alone, the first

time she had ever been at sea, without any companion or escort. _She_

couldn’t go—Mr. Mavis was too sick: she hadn’t even been able to get him

off to the seaside.

“Well, Mrs. Nettlepoint’s going in that ship,” Mrs. Allen had said; and

she had represented that nothing was simpler than to give her the girl in

charge. When Mrs. Mavis had replied that this was all very well but that

she didn’t know the lady, Mrs. Allen had declared that that didn’t make a

speck of difference, for Mrs. Nettlepoint was kind enough for anything.

It was easy enough to _know_ her, if that was all the trouble! All Mrs.

Mavis would have to do would be to go right up to her next morning, when

she took her daughter to the ship (she would see her there on the deck

with her party) and tell her fair and square what she wanted. Mrs.

Nettlepoint had daughters herself and would easily understand. Very

likely she’d even look after Grace a little on the other side, in such a

queer situation, going out alone to the gentleman she was engaged to:

she’d just help her, like a good Samaritan, to turn round before she was

married. Mr. Porterfield seemed to think they wouldn’t wait long, once

she was there: they would have it right over at the American consul’s.

Mrs. Allen had said it would perhaps be better still to go and see Mrs.

Nettlepoint beforehand, that day, to tell her what they wanted: then they

wouldn’t seem to spring it on her just as she was leaving. She herself

(Mrs. Allen) would call and say a word for them if she could save ten

minutes before catching her train. If she hadn’t come it was because she

hadn’t saved her ten minutes but she had made them feel that they must

come all the same. Mrs. Mavis liked that better, because on the ship in

the morning there would be such a confusion. She didn’t think her

daughter would be any trouble—conscientiously she didn’t. It was just to

have some one to speak to her and not sally forth like a servant-girl

going to a situation.

“I see, I’m to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,” Mrs.

Nettlepoint obligingly said. Kind enough in fact for anything, she

showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her. There is

notoriously nothing less desirable than an imposed aggravation of effort

at sea, but she accepted without betrayed dismay the burden of the young

lady’s dependence and allowed her, as Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself

on. She evidently had the habit of patience, and her reception of her

visitors’ story reminded me afresh—I was reminded of it whenever I

returned to my native land—that my dear compatriots are the people in the

world who most freely take mutual accommodation for granted. They have

always had to help themselves, and have rather magnanimously failed to

learn just where helping others is distinguishable from that. In no

country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.

It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue

shouldn’t feel they were importunate: what was striking was that Mrs.

Nettlepoint didn’t appear to suspect it. However, she would in any case

have thought it inhuman to show this—though I could see that under the

surface she was amused at everything the more expressive of the pilgrims

from the South End took for granted. I scarce know whether the attitude

of the younger visitor added or not to the merit of her good nature. Mr.

Porterfield’s intended took no part in the demonstration, scarcely spoke,

sat looking at the Back Bay and the lights on the long bridge. She

declined the lemonade and the other mixtures which, at Mrs. Nettlepoint’s

request, I offered her, while her mother partook freely of everything and

I reflected—for I as freely drained a glass or two in which the ice

tinkled—that Mr. Jasper had better hurry back if he wished to enjoy these

luxuries.

Was the effect of the young woman’s reserve meanwhile ungracious, or was

it only natural that in her particular situation she shouldn’t have a

flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint

looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss

Mavis was interesting. The candlelight enabled me to see that though not

in the very first flower of her youth she was still fresh and handsome.

Her eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale, and she held up her head

as if, with its thick braids and everything else involved in it, it were

an appurtenance she wasn’t ashamed of. If her mother was excellent and

common she was not common—not at least flagrantly so—and perhaps also not

excellent. At all events she wouldn’t be, in appearance at least, a

dreary appendage; which in the case of a person “hooking on” was always

something gained. Was it because something of a romantic or pathetic

interest usually attaches to a good creature who has been the victim of a

“long engagement” that this young lady made an impression on me from the

first—favoured as I had been so quickly with this glimpse of her history?

I could charge her certainly with no positive appeal; she only held her

tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected whatever suggestion might have

forced itself upon me that the spirit within her was dead—the spirit of

that promise of which she found herself doomed to carry out the letter.

What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which

gathered vividness as I listened to it—a mental association evoked by the

name of Mr. Porterfield. Surely I had a personal impression,

over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at Liverpool,

or who presently would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint’s protégée. I had met

him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, on the other side. Wasn’t

he studying something, very hard, somewhere—probably in Paris—ten years

before, and didn’t he make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and

architectural? Didn’t he go to a table d’hôte, at two francs

twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn’t he

wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to

say “I’ve trustworthy information that that’s the way they do it in the

Highlands”? Wasn’t he exemplary to positive irritation, and very poor,

poor to positive oppression, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and

his tartan would be what he slept under at night? Wasn’t he working very

hard still, and wouldn’t he be, in the natural course, not yet satisfied

that he had found his feet or knew enough to launch out? He would be a

man of long preparations—Miss Mavis’s white face seemed to speak to one

of that. It struck me that if I had been in love with her I shouldn’t

have needed to lay such a train for the closer approach. Architecture

was his line and he was a pupil of the École des Beaux Arts. This

reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten

minutes I had an odd sense of knowing—by implication—a good deal about

the young lady.

Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything

possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and

telling how “low” Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl’s silence

struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated

her mother’s free flow—she was enough of an “improvement” to measure

that—and partly because she was too distressed by the idea of leaving her

infirm, her perhaps dying father. It wasn’t indistinguishable that they

were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her

trousseau. For Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would

have had moreover greatly to change. If he had enriched himself by the

successful practice of his profession I had encountered no edifice he had

reared—his reputation hadn’t come to my ears.

Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive

person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis,

but not prepared to pace the deck with her, to struggle with her, to

accompany her to meals. To this the girl replied that she would trouble

her little, she was sure: she was convinced she should prove a wretched

sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed at this

picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I interposed

to the effect that if I might be trusted, as a tame bachelor fairly

sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party

an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the

ladies thanked me for this—taking my professions with no sort of

abatement—and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be

such a sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She

asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else in our party, and when

our hostess mentioned her son—there was a chance of his embarking but

(wasn’t it absurd?) he hadn’t decided yet—she returned with extraordinary

candour: “Oh dear, I do hope he’ll go: that would be so lovely for

Grace.”

Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield’s tartan,

especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His

mother at once challenged him: it was ten o’clock; had he by chance made

up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the first

place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the fact that

one of them wasn’t strange. The young man, after a slight hesitation,

greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and a “Oh good-evening, how do you

do?” He didn’t utter her name—which I could see he must have forgotten;

but she immediately pronounced his, availing herself of the American

girl’s discretion to “present” him to her mother.

“Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!” that lady

jovially cried. Then she had an equal confidence for Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“It would have saved me a worry—an acquaintance already begun.”

“Ah my son’s acquaintances!” our hostess murmured.

“Yes, and my daughter’s too!” Mrs. Mavis gaily echoed. “Mrs. Allen

didn’t tell us _you_ were going,” she continued to the young man.

“She’d have been clever if she had been able to!” Mrs. Nettlepoint

sighed.

“Dear mother, I have my telegram,” Jasper remarked, looking at Grace

Mavis.

“I know you very little,” the girl said, returning his observation.

“I’ve danced with you at some ball—for some sufferers by something or

other.”

“I think it was an inundation or a big fire,” she a little languidly

smiled. “But it was a long time ago—and I haven’t seen you since.”

“I’ve been in far countries—to my loss. I should have said it was a big

fire.”

“It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn’t remember your name,” said

Grace Mavis.

“That’s very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink

dress.”

“Oh I remember that dress—your strawberry tarletan: you looked lovely in

it!” Mrs. Mavis broke out. “You must get another just like it—on the

other side.”

“Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,” said Jasper Nettlepoint.

Then he added to the girl: “Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.”

“It came back to me—seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.”

“Well, I confess it isn’t, much. Oh there are some drinks!”—he

approached the tray and its glasses.

“Indeed there are and quite delicious”—Mrs. Mavis largely wiped her

mouth.

“Won’t you have another then?—a pink one, like your daughter’s gown.”

“With pleasure, sir. Oh do see them over,” Mrs. Mavis continued,

accepting from the young man’s hand a third tumbler.

“My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,”

he freely pleaded.

“Then my daughter—she has a claim as an old friend.”

But his mother had by this time interposed. “Jasper, what does your

telegram say?”

He paid her no heed: he stood there with his glass in his hand, looking

from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.

“Ah leave her to me, madam; I’m quite competent,” I said to Mrs. Mavis.

Then the young man gave me his attention. The next minute he asked of

the girl: “Do you mean you’re going to Europe?”

“Yes, tomorrow. In the same ship as your mother.”

“That’s what we’ve come here for, to see all about it,” said Mrs. Mavis.

“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 écoles_; 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.

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 École 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 _cœur de mère_. 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.