“I DON’T know what to do, and you must help me,” Mrs. Nettlepoint said to
me, that evening, as soon as I looked in.
“I’ll do what I can—but what’s the matter?”
“She has been crying here and going on—she has quite upset me.”
“Crying? She doesn’t look like that.”
“Exactly, and that’s what startled me. She came in to see me this
afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked of the weather and the
run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and other such trifles,
and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she sat there, on no visible
pretext, she burst into tears. I asked her what ailed her and tried to
comfort her, but she didn’t explain; she said it was nothing, the effect
of the sea, of the monotony, of the excitement, of leaving home. I asked
her if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage;
whether she finds as this draws near that her heart isn’t in it. I told
her she mustn’t be nervous, that I could enter into that—in short I said
what I could. All she replied was that she _is_ nervous, very nervous,
but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed me and
went away. Does she look as if she has been crying?” Mrs. Nettlepoint
wound up.
“How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It’s as if she
were ashamed to show her face.”
“She’s keeping it for Liverpool. But I don’t like such incidents,” said
Mrs. Nettlepoint. “I think I ought to go above.”
“And is that where you want me to help you?”
“Oh with your arm and that sort of thing, yes. But I may have to look to
you for something more. I feel as if something were going to happen.”
“That’s exactly what I said to Jasper this morning.”
“And what did he say?”
“He only looked innocent—as if he thought I meant a fog or a storm.”
“Heaven forbid—it isn’t that! I shall never be good-natured again,” Mrs.
Nettlepoint went on; “never have a girl put on me that way. You always
pay for it—there are always tiresome complications. What I’m afraid of
is after we get there. She’ll throw up her engagement; there will be
dreadful scenes; I shall be mixed up with them and have to look after her
and keep her with me. I shall have to stay there with her till she can
be sent back, or even take her up to London. Do you see all that?”
I listened respectfully; after which I observed: “You’re afraid of your
son.”
She also had a pause. “It depends on how you mean it.”
“There are things you might say to him—and with your manner; because you
have one, you know, when you choose.”
“Very likely, but what’s my manner to his? Besides, I _have_ said
everything to him. That is I’ve said the great thing—that he’s making
her immensely talked about.”
“And of course in answer to that he has asked you how you know, and
you’ve told him you have it from me.”
“I’ve had to tell him; and he says it’s none of your business.”
“I wish he’d say that,” I remarked, “to my face.”
“He’ll do so perfectly if you give him a chance. That’s where you can
help me. Quarrel with him—he’s rather good at a quarrel; and that will
divert him and draw him off.”
“Then I’m ready,” I returned, “to discuss the matter with him for the
rest of the voyage.”
“Very well; I count on you. But he’ll ask you, as he asks me, what the
deuce you want him to do.”
“To go to bed!”—and I’m afraid I laughed.
“Oh it isn’t a joke.”
I didn’t want to be irritating, but I made my point. “That’s exactly
what I told you at first.”
“Yes, but don’t exult; I hate people who exult. Jasper asks of me,” she
went on, “why he should mind her being talked about if she doesn’t mind
it herself.”
“I’ll tell him why,” I replied; and Mrs. Nettlepoint said she should be
exceedingly obliged to me and repeated that she would indeed take the
field.
I looked for Jasper above that same evening, but circumstances didn’t
favour my quest. I found him—that is I gathered he was again ensconced
behind the lifeboat with Miss Mavis; but there was a needless violence in
breaking into their communion, and I put off our interview till the next
day. Then I took the first opportunity, at breakfast, to make sure of
it. He was in the saloon when I went in and was preparing to leave the
table; but I stopped him and asked if he would give me a quarter of an
hour on deck a little later—there was something particular I wanted to
say to him. He said “Oh yes, if you like”—with just a visible surprise,
but I thought with plenty of assurance. When I had finished my breakfast
I found him smoking on the forward-deck and I immediately began: “I’m
going to say something you won’t at all like; to ask you a question
you’ll probably denounce for impertinent.”
“I certainly shall if I find it so,” said Jasper Nettlepoint.
“Well, of course my warning has meant that I don’t care if you do. I’m a
good deal older than you and I’m a friend—of many years—of your mother.
There’s nothing I like less than to be meddlesome, but I think these
things give me a certain right—a sort of privilege. Besides which my
inquiry will speak for itself.”
“Why so many damned preliminaries?” my young man asked through his smoke.
We looked into each other’s eyes a moment. What indeed was his mother’s
manner—her best manner—compared with his? “Are you prepared to be
responsible?”
“To you?”
“Dear no—to the young lady herself. I’m speaking of course of Miss
Mavis.”
“Ah yes, my mother tells me you have her greatly on your mind.”
“So has your mother herself—now.”
“She’s so good as to say so—to oblige you.”
“She’d oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I know perfectly of
your knowing I’ve told her that Miss Mavis is greatly talked about.”
“Yes, but what on earth does it matter?”
“It matters as a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“That she’s in a false position.”
Jasper puffed his cigar with his eyes on the horizon, and I had, a little
unexpectedly, the sense of producing a certain effect on him. “I don’t
know whether it’s _your_ business, what you’re attempting to discuss but
it really strikes me it’s none of mine. What have I to do with the
tattle with which a pack of old women console themselves for not being
sea-sick?”
“Do you call it tattle that Miss Mavis is in love with you?”
“Drivelling.”
“Then,” I retorted, “you’re very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old
women has this importance, that she suspects, or she knows, it exists,
and that decent girls are for the most part very sensitive to that sort
of thing. To be prepared not to heed it in this case she must have a
reason, and the reason must be the one I’ve taken the liberty to call
your attention to.”
“In love with me in six days, just like that?”—and he still looked away
through narrowed eyelids.
“There’s no accounting for tastes, and six days at sea are equivalent to
sixty on land. I don’t want to make you too proud. Of course if you
recognise your responsibility it’s all right and I’ve nothing to say.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” he presently returned.
“Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She’s engaged to
be married, and the gentleman she’s engaged to is to meet her at
Liverpool. The whole ship knows it—though _I_ didn’t tell them!—and the
whole ship’s watching her. It’s impertinent if you like, just as I am
myself, but we make a little world here together and we can’t blink its
conditions. What I ask you is whether you’re prepared to allow her to
give up the gentleman I’ve just mentioned for your sake.”
Jasper spoke in a moment as if he didn’t understand. “For my sake?”
“To marry her if she breaks with him.”
He turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange
expression in them. “Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to go into that?”
“Not in the least.”
“Well then, I don’t quite see—!”
“It isn’t as from another I make it. Let it come from yourself—_to_
yourself.”
“Lord, you must think I lead myself a life!” he cried as in compassion
for my simplicity. “That’s a question the young lady may put to me any
moment it pleases her.”
“Let me then express the hope that she will. But what will you answer?”
“My dear sir, it seems to me that in spite of all the titles you’ve
enumerated you’ve no reason to expect I’ll tell you.” He turned away,
and I dedicated in perfect sincerity a deep sore sigh to the thought of
our young woman. At this, under the impression of it, he faced me again
and, looking at me from head to foot, demanded: “What is it you want me
to do?”
“I put it to your mother that you ought to go to bed.”
“You had better do that yourself!” he replied.
This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only
clear result of my undertaking would probably have been to make it vivid
to him that she was in love with him. Mrs. Nettlepoint came up as she
had announced, but the day was half over: it was nearly three o’clock.
She was accompanied by her son, who established her on deck, arranged her
chair and her shawls, saw she was protected from sun and wind, and for an
hour was very properly attentive. While this went on Grace Mavis was not
visible, nor did she reappear during the whole afternoon. I hadn’t
observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so long a
period. Jasper left his mother, but came back at intervals to see how
she got on, and when she asked where Miss Mavis might be answered that he
hadn’t the least idea. I sat with my friend at her particular request:
she told me she knew that if I didn’t Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch would make
their approach, so that I must act as a watch-dog. She was flurried and
fatigued with her migration, and I think that Grace Mavis’s choosing this
occasion for retirement suggested to her a little that she had been made
a fool of. She remarked that the girl’s not being there showed her for
the barbarian she only could be, and that she herself was really very
good so to have put herself out; her charge was a mere bore: that was the
end of it. I could see that my companion’s advent quickened the
speculative activity of the other ladies they watched her from the
opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as
the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck
plainly had designs, and it was from this danger that Mrs. Nettlepoint
averted her face.
“It’s just as we said,” she remarked to me as we sat there. “It’s like
the buckets in the well. When I come up everything else goes down.”
“No, not at all everything else—since Jasper remains here.”
“Remains? I don’t see him.”
“He comes and goes—it’s the same thing.”
“He goes more than he comes. But _n’en parlons plus_; I haven’t gained
anything. I don’t admire the sea at all—what is it but a magnified
water-tank? I shan’t come up again.”
“I’ve an idea she’ll stay in her cabin now,” I said. “She tells me she
has one to herself.” Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that she might do as she
liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with
Jasper.
She listened with interest, but “Marry her? Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I
like the fine freedom with which you give my son away.”
“You wouldn’t accept that?”
“Why in the world should I?”
“Then I don’t understand your position.”
“Good heavens, I _have_ none! It isn’t a position to be tired of the
whole thing.”
“You wouldn’t accept it even in the case I put to him—that of her
believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?”
“Not even—not even. Who can know what she believes?”
It brought me back to where we had started from. “Then you do exactly
what I said you would—you show me a fine example of maternal immorality.”
“Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she who began it.”
“Then why did you come up today?” I asked.
“To keep you quiet.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint’s dinner was served on deck, but I went into the saloon.
Jasper was there, but not Grace Mavis, as I had half-expected. I sought
to learn from him what had become of her, if she were ill—he must have
thought I had an odious pertinacity—and he replied that he knew nothing
whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me—or tried to—of Mrs.
Nettlepoint, expatiating on the great interest it had been to see her;
only it was a pity she didn’t seem more sociable. To this I made answer
that she was to be excused on the score of health.
“You don’t mean to say she’s sick on this pond?”
“No, she’s unwell in another way.”
“I guess I know the way!” Mrs. Peck laughed. And then she added: “I
suppose she came up to look after her pet.”
“Her pet?” I set my face.
“Why Miss Mavis. We’ve talked enough about that.”
“Quite enough. I don’t know what that has had to do with it. Miss
Mavis, so far as I’ve noticed, hasn’t been above today.”
“Oh it goes on all the same.”
“It goes on?”
“Well, it’s too late.”
“Too late?”
“Well, you’ll see. There’ll be a row.”
This wasn’t comforting, but I didn’t repeat it on deck. Mrs. Nettlepoint
returned early to her cabin, professing herself infinitely spent. I
didn’t know what “went on,” but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I
looked in late, for a good-night to my friend, and learned from her that
the girl hadn’t been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for
news, to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess
had come back with mere mention of her not being there. I went above
after this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck almost empty.
In a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together.
“I hope you’re better!” I called after her; and she tossed me over her
shoulder—“Oh yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!”
I went down again—I was the only person there but they, and I wanted not
to seem to dog their steps—and, returning to Mrs. Nettlepoint’s room,
found (her door was open to the little passage) that she was still
sitting up.
“She’s all right!” I said. “She’s on the deck with Jasper.”
The good lady looked up at me from her book. “I didn’t know you called
that all right.”
“Well, it’s better than something else.”
“Than what else?”
“Something I was a little afraid of.” Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to look
at me; she asked again what that might be. “I’ll tell you when we’re
ashore,” I said.
The next day I waited on her at the usual hour of my morning visit, and
found her not a little distraught. “The scenes have begun,” she said;
“you know I told you I shouldn’t get through without them! You made me
nervous last night—I haven’t the least idea what you meant; but you made
me horribly nervous. She came in to see me an hour ago, and I had the
courage to say to her: ‘I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell you frankly
that I’ve been scolding my son about you.’ Of course she asked what I
meant by that, and I let her know. ‘It seems to me he drags you about
the ship too much for a girl in your position. He has the air of not
remembering that you belong to some one else. There’s a want of taste
and even a want of respect in it.’ That brought on an outbreak: she
became very violent.”
“Do you mean indignant?”
“Yes, indignant, and above all flustered and excited—at my presuming to
suppose her relations with my son not the very simplest in the world. I
might scold him as much as I liked—that was between ourselves; but she
didn’t see why I should mention such matters to herself. Did I think she
allowed him to treat her with disrespect? That idea wasn’t much of a
compliment to either of them! He had treated her better and been kinder
to her than most other people—there were very few on the ship who hadn’t
been insulting. She should be glad enough when she got off it, to her
own people, to some one whom nobody would have a right to speak of. What
was there in her position that wasn’t perfectly natural? what was the
idea of making a fuss about her position? Did I mean that she took it
too easily—that she didn’t think as much as she ought about Mr.
Porterfield? Didn’t I believe she was attached to him—didn’t I believe
she was just counting the hours till she saw him? That would be the
happiest moment of her life. It showed how little I knew her if I
thought anything else.”
“All that must have been rather fine—I should have liked to hear it,” I
said after quite hanging on my friend’s lips. “And what did you reply?”
“Oh I grovelled; I assured her that I accused her—as regards my son—of
nothing worse than an excess of good nature. She helped him to pass his
time—he ought to be immensely obliged. Also that it would be a very
happy moment for me too when I should hand her over to Mr. Porterfield.”
“And will you come up today?”
“No indeed—I think she’ll do beautifully now.”