“If you don’t it’s because you ‘regular’ won’t, as she says. If that
girl really asked him—on the balcony—to sail with us.”
“My dear lady, do you suppose that if she did he’d tell you?”
She had to recognise my acuteness. “That’s just what he says. But he
says she didn’t.”
“And do you consider the statement valuable?” I asked, laughing out.
“You had better ask your young friend herself.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. “I couldn’t do that.”
On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused.
“What does it signify now?”
“I thought you thought everything signified. You were so full,” she
cried, “of signification!”
“Yes, but we’re further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything
becomes absolute.”
“What else _can_ he do with decency?” Mrs. Nettlepoint went on. “If, as
my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you’d
think that stranger still. Then _you_ would do what he does, and where
would be the difference?”
“How do you know what he does? I haven’t mentioned him for twenty-four
hours.”
“Why, she told me herself. She came in this afternoon.”
“What an odd thing to tell you!” I commented.
“Not as she says it. She says he’s full of attention, perfectly
devoted—looks after her all the time. She seems to want me to know it,
so that I may approve him for it.”
“That’s charming; it shows her good conscience.”
“Yes, or her great cleverness.”
Something in the tone in which Mrs. Nettlepoint said this caused me to
return in real surprise: “Why what do you suppose she has in her mind?”
“To get hold of him, to make him go so far he can’t retreat. To marry
him perhaps.”
“To marry him? And what will she do with Mr. Porterfield?”
“She’ll ask me just to make it all right to him—or perhaps you.”
“Yes, as an old friend”—and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible.
But I put to her seriously: “_Do_ you see Jasper caught like that?”
“Well, he’s only a boy—he’s younger at least than she.”
“Precisely; she regards him as a child. She remarked to me herself
today, that is, that he’s so much younger.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint took this in. “Does she talk of it with you? That shows
she has a plan, that she has thought it over!”
I’ve sufficiently expressed—for the interest of my anecdote—that I found
an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from judging her
capable of laying a trap for the other. Moreover my reading of Jasper
wasn’t in the least that he was catchable—could be made to do a thing if
he didn’t want to do it. Of course it wasn’t impossible that he might be
inclined, that he might take it—or already have taken it—into his head to
go further with his mother’s charge; but to believe this I should require
still more proof than his always being with her. He wanted at most to
“take up with her” for the voyage. “If you’ve questioned him perhaps
you’ve tried to make him feel responsible,” I said to my fellow critic.
“A little, but it’s very difficult. Interference makes him perverse.
One has to go gently. Besides, it’s too absurd—think of her age. If she
can’t take care of herself!” cried Mrs. Nettlepoint.
“Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it’s not so prodigious.
And if things get very bad you’ve one resource left,” I added.
She wondered. “To lock her up in her cabin?”
“No—to come out of yours.”
“Ah never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost.
Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go above she could come
below.”
“Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.”
“_Could_ I?” Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded in the manner of a woman who knew
her son.
In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the
tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters
and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, to oblige, taking a
hand in the game. She played very badly and talked too much, and when
the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine—we had
been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot. We
had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she
sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.
“She hasn’t spoken to me yet—she won’t do it,” she remarked in a moment.
“Is it possible there’s any one on the ship who hasn’t spoken to you?”
“Not that girl—she knows too well!” Mrs. Peck looked round our little
circle with a smile of intelligence—she had familiar communicative eyes.
Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the last
thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the
consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.
“What then does she know?”
“Oh she knows _I_ know.”
“Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows,” one of the ladies of the group
observed to me with an air of privilege.
“Well, you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you—from the way she acts,”
said our friend with a laugh of small charm.
“She’s going out to a gentleman who lives over there—he’s waiting there
to marry her,” the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic
information. I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth
looked always as if she were whistling.
“Oh he knows—I’ve told him,” said Mrs. Peck.
“Well, I presume every one knows,” Mrs. Gotch contributed.
“Dear madam, is it every one’s business?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you think it’s a peculiar way to act?”—and Mrs. Gotch was
evidently surprised at my little protest.
“Why it’s right there—straight in front of you, like a play at the
theatre—as if you had paid to see it,” said Mrs. Peck. “If you don’t
call it public!”
“Aren’t you mixing things up? What do you call public?”
“Why the way they go on. They’re up there now.”
“They cuddle up there half the night,” said Mrs. Gotch. “I don’t know
when they come down. Any hour they like. When all the lights are out
they’re up there still.”
“Oh you can’t tire them out. They don’t want relief—like the ship’s
watch!” laughed one of the gentlemen.
“Well, if they enjoy each other’s society what’s the harm?” another
asked. “They’d do just the same on land.”
“They wouldn’t do it on the public streets, I presume,” said Mrs. Peck.
“And they wouldn’t do it if Mr. Porterfield was round!”
“Isn’t that just where your confusion comes in?” I made answer. “It’s
public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together,
but it isn’t in the least public that she’s going to be married.”
“Why how can you say—when the very sailors know it! The Captain knows it
and all the officers know it. They see them there, especially at night,
when they’re sailing the ship.”
“I thought there was some rule—!” submitted Mrs. Gotch.
“Well, there is—that you’ve got to behave yourself,” Mrs. Peck explained.
“So the Captain told me—he said they have some rule. He said they have
to have, when people are too undignified.”
“Is that the term he used?” I inquired.
“Well, he may have said when they attract too much attention.”
I ventured to discriminate. “It’s we who attract the attention—by
talking about what doesn’t concern us and about what we really don’t
know.”
“She said the Captain said he’d tell on her as soon as ever we arrive,”
Mrs. Gotch none the less serenely pursued.
“_She_ said—?” I repeated, bewildered.
“Well, he did say so, that he’d think it his duty to inform Mr.
Porterfield when he comes on to meet her—if they keep it up in the same
way,” said Mrs. Peck.
“Oh they’ll keep it up, don’t you fear!” one of the gentlemen exclaimed.
“Dear madam, the Captain’s having his joke on you,” was, however, my own
congruous reply.
“No, he ain’t—he’s right down scandalised. He says he regards us all as
a real family and wants the family not to be downright coarse.” I felt
Mrs. Peck irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me with
considerable spirit. “How can you say I don’t know it when all the
street knows it and has known it for years—for years and years?” She
spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty. “What’s she
going out for if not to marry him?”
“Perhaps she’s going to see how he looks,” suggested one of the
gentlemen.
“He’d look queer—if he knew.”
“Well, I guess he’ll know,” said Mrs. Gotch.
“She’d tell him herself—she wouldn’t be afraid,” the gentleman went on.
“Well she might as well kill him. He’ll jump overboard,” Mrs. Peck could
foretell.
“Jump overboard?” cried Mrs. Gotch as if she hoped then that Mr.
Porterfield would be told.
“He has just been waiting for this—for long, long years,” said Mrs. Peck.
“Do you happen to know him?” I asked.
She replied at her convenience. “No, but I know a lady who does. Are
you going up?”
I had risen from my place—I had not ordered supper. “I’m going to take a
turn before going to bed.”
“Well then you’ll see!”
Outside the saloon I hesitated, for Mrs. Peck’s admonition made me feel
for a moment that if I went up I should have entered in a manner into her
little conspiracy. But the night was so warm and splendid that I had
been intending to smoke a cigar in the air before going below, and I
didn’t see why I should deprive myself of this pleasure in order to seem
not to mind Mrs. Peck. I mounted accordingly and saw a few figures
sitting or moving about in the darkness. The ocean looked black and
small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship, with
its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it. There were
more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more than ever
as larger than the earth. Grace Mavis and her companion were not, so far
as I perceived at first, among the few passengers who lingered late, and
I was glad, because I hated to hear her talked about in the manner of the
gossips I had left at supper. I wished there had been some way to
prevent it, but I could think of none but to recommend her privately to
reconsider her rule of discretion. That would be a very delicate
business, and perhaps it would be better to begin with Jasper, though
that would be delicate too. At any rate one might let him know, in a
friendly spirit, to how much remark he exposed the young lady—leaving
this revelation to work its way upon him. Unfortunately I couldn’t
altogether believe that the pair were unconscious of the observation and
the opinion of the passengers. They weren’t boy and girl; they had a
certain social perspective in their eye. I was meanwhile at any rate in
no possession of the details of that behaviour which had made
them—according to the version of my good friends in the saloon—a scandal
to the ship; for though I had taken due note of them, as will already
have been gathered, I had taken really no such ferocious, or at least
such competent, note as Mrs. Peck. Nevertheless the probability was that
they knew what was thought of them—what naturally would be—and simply
didn’t care. That made our heroine out rather perverse and even rather
shameless; and yet somehow if these were her leanings I didn’t dislike
her for them. I don’t know what strange secret excuses I found for her.
I presently indeed encountered, on the spot, a need for any I might have
at call, since, just as I was on the point of going below again, after
several restless turns and—within the limit where smoking was allowed—as
many puffs at a cigar as I cared for, I became aware of a couple of
figures settled together behind one of the lifeboats that rested on the
deck. They were so placed as to be visible only to a person going close
to the rail and peering a little sidewise. I don’t think I peered, but
as I stood a moment beside the rail my eye was attracted by a dusky
object that protruded beyond the boat and that I saw at a second glance
to be the tail of a lady’s dress. I bent forward an instant, but even
then I saw very little more; that scarcely mattered however, as I easily
concluded that the persons tucked away in so snug a corner were Jasper
Nettlepoint and Mr. Porterfield’s intended. Tucked away was the odious
right expression, and I deplored the fact so betrayed for the pitiful bad
taste in it. I immediately turned away, and the next moment found myself
face to face with our vessel’s skipper. I had already had some
conversation with him—he had been so good as to invite me, as he had
invited Mrs. Nettlepoint and her son and the young lady travelling with
them, and also Mrs. Peck, to sit at his table—and had observed with
pleasure that his seamanship had the grace, not universal on the Atlantic
liners, of a fine-weather manner.
“They don’t waste much time—your friends in there,” he said, nodding in
the direction in which he had seen me looking.
“Ah well, they haven’t much to lose.”
“That’s what I mean. I’m told _she_ hasn’t.”
I wanted to say something exculpatory, but scarcely knew what note to
strike. I could only look vaguely about me at the starry darkness and
the sea that seemed to sleep. “Well, with these splendid nights and this
perfect air people are beguiled into late hours.”
“Yes, we want a bit of a blow,” the Captain said.