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 beyond 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.