“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.”
“If she didn’t ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,” said Mrs.
Nettlepoint.
“Yes, if she didn’t. But you say that to protect Jasper—not to protect
her,” I smiled.
“You _are_ cold-blooded—it’s uncanny!” my friend exclaimed.
“Ah this is nothing yet! Wait a while—you’ll see. At sea in general I’m
awful—I exceed the limits. If I’ve outraged her in thought I’ll jump
overboard. There are ways of asking—a man doesn’t need to tell a woman
that—without the crude words.”
“I don’t know what you imagine between them,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
“Well, nothing,” I allowed, “but what was visible on the surface. It
transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends.”
“He met her at some promiscuous party—I asked him about it afterwards.
She’s not a person”—my hostess was confident—“whom he could ever think of
seriously.”
“That’s exactly what I believe.”
“You don’t observe—you know—you imagine,” Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to
argue. “How do you reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going
out to Liverpool on an errand of love?”
Oh I wasn’t to be caught that way! “I don’t for an instant suppose she
laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment. She’s
going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that’s not necessarily
the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one who happens to
have had a personal impression of the gentleman she’s engaged to.”
“Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most
abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her
capable—on no evidence—of violating them.”
“Ah you don’t understand the shades of things,” I returned. “Decencies
and violations, dear lady—there’s no need for such heavy artillery! I
can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have
said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words: ‘I’m in dreadful
spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant
for you too.’”
“And why is she in dreadful spirits?”
“She isn’t!” I replied, laughing.
My poor friend wondered. “What then is she doing?”
“She’s walking with your son.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint for a moment said nothing; then she treated me to
another inconsequence. “Ah she’s horrid!”
“No, she’s charming!” I protested.
“You mean she’s ‘curious’?”
“Well, for me it’s the same thing!”
This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was
cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and
she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.
She knew nothing, poor creature, about anything, but her intentions were
good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous.
And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the sigh “Unfortunate
person!”
“You think she’s a good deal to be pitied then?”
“Well, her story sounds dreary—she told me a good deal of it. She fell
to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She’s in
that situation when a girl _must_ open herself—to some woman.”
“Hasn’t she got Jasper?” I asked.
“He isn’t a woman. You strike me as jealous of him,” my companion added.
“I daresay _he_ thinks so—or will before the end. Ah no—ah no!” And I
asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as, very grossly, a
flirt. She gave me no answer, but went on to remark that she found it
odd and interesting to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the
girls of the kind she herself knew better, the girls of “society,” at the
same time that she differed from them; and the way the differences and
resemblances were so mixed up that on certain questions you couldn’t tell
where you’d find her. You’d think she’d feel as you did because you had
found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to some other
matter—which was yet quite the same—she’d be utterly wanting. Mrs.
Nettlepoint proceeded to observe—to such idle speculations does the
vacancy of sea-hours give encouragement—that she wondered whether it were
better to be an ordinary girl very well brought up or an extraordinary
girl not brought up at all.
“Oh I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.”
“It’s true that if you’re _very_ well brought up you’re not, you can’t
be, ordinary,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. “You’re
a lady, at any rate.”
“And Miss Mavis is fifty miles out—is that what you mean?”
“Well—you’ve seen her mother.”
“Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the
mother doesn’t count.”
“Precisely, and that’s bad.”
“I see what you mean. But isn’t it rather hard? If your mother doesn’t
know anything it’s better you should be independent of her, and yet if
you are that constitutes a bad note.” I added that Mrs. Mavis had
appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done
everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace’s
attitude, so far as her parent was concerned, had been eminently decent.
“Yes, but she ‘squirmed’ for her,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
“Ah if you know it I may confess she has told me as much.”
My friend stared. “Told _you_? There’s one of the things they do!”
“Well, it was only a word. Won’t you let me know whether you do think
her a flirt?”
“Try her yourself—that’s better than asking another woman; especially as
you pretend to study folk.”
“Oh your judgement wouldn’t probably at all determine mine. It’s as
bearing on _you_ I ask it.” Which, however, demanded explanation, so
that I was duly frank; confessing myself curious as to how far maternal
immorality would go.
It made her at first but repeat my words. “Maternal immorality?”
“You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage,
and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make
it all right. He’ll have no responsibility.”
“Heavens, how you analyse!” she cried. “I haven’t in the least your
passion for making up my mind.”
“Then if you chance it,” I returned, “you’ll be more immoral still.”
“Your reasoning’s strange,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint; “when it was you who
tried to put into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.”
“Yes, but in good faith.”
“What do you mean, in such a case, by that?”
“Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such
matters,” I expounded, “is much larger than that of young persons who
have been, as you say, _very_ well brought up; and yet I’m not sure that
on the whole I don’t think them thereby the more innocent. Miss Mavis is
engaged, and she’s to be married next week, but it’s an old old story,
and there’s no more romance in it than if she were going to be
photographed. So her usual life proceeds, and her usual life
consists—and that of _ces demoiselles_ in general—in having plenty of
gentlemen’s society. Having it I mean without having any harm from it.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint had given me due attention. “Well, if there’s no harm
from it what are you talking about and why am I immoral?”
I hesitated, laughing. “I retract—you’re sane and clear. I’m sure she
thinks there won’t be any harm,” I added. “That’s the great point.”
“The great point?”
“To be settled, I mean.”
“Mercy, we’re not trying them!” cried my friend. “How can _we_ settle
it?”
“I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more interesting
these next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.”
“Then they’ll get terribly tired of it,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
“No, no—because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken. It
simply can’t _not_,” I insisted. She looked at me as if she thought me
more than Mephistophelean, and I went back to something she had lately
mentioned. “So she told you everything in her life was dreary?”
“Not everything, but most things. And she didn’t tell me so much as I
guessed it. She’ll tell me more the next time. She’ll behave properly
now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.”
“I’m glad of that,” I said. “Keep her with you as much as possible.”
“I don’t follow you closely,” Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, “but so far as I
do I don’t think your remarks in the best taste.”
“Well, I’m too excited, I lose my head in these sports,” I had to
recognise—“cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn’t she like Mr.
Porterfield?”
“Yes, that’s the worst of it.”