The Complete Works of Henry James, page 583
‘One of the other ships?’
‘We should be there now, or at any rate to-morrow.’
‘Well then, I’m glad it isn’t one of the others,’ I said, smiling at the young lady on my arm. My remark offered her a chance to say something appreciative and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace Mavis took advantage of the opportunity. What they did do, I perceived, was to look at each other for an instant; after which Miss Mavis turned her eyes silently to the sea. She made no movement and uttered no word, contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility. We remained standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the touch of her arm did not suggest that I should give her up, neither did it intimate that we had better pass on. I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the things that I seemed to discover just then in Jasper’s physiognomy was an imperturbable implication that she was his property. His eye met mine for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me, ‘I know what you think, but I don’t care a rap.’ What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little revelation. Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always conceited, and, after all, when it is combined with health and good parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing) was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity. These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this was the one that was most to the point. There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was doubtless not in the least with him.
‘How is your mother this morning?’ I asked.
‘You had better go down and see.’
‘Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me.’
She said nothing to this and I made her walk again. For some minutes she remained silent; then, rather unexpectedly, she began: ‘I’ve seen you talking to that lady who sits at our table—the one who has so many children.’
‘Mrs. Peck? Oh yes, I have talked with her.’
‘Do you know her very well?’
‘Only as one knows people at sea. An acquaintance makes itself. It doesn’t mean very much.’
‘She doesn’t speak to me—she might if she wanted.’
‘That’s just what she says of you—that you might speak to her.’
‘Oh, if she’s waiting for that–-!’ said my companion, with a laugh. Then she added—’She lives in our street, nearly opposite.’
‘Precisely. That’s the reason why she thinks you might speak; she has seen you so often and seems to know so much about you.’
‘What does she know about me?’
‘Ah, you must ask her—I can’t tell you!’
‘I don’t care what she knows,’ said my young lady. After a moment she went on—’She must have seen that I’m not very sociable.’ And then—’What are you laughing at?’
My laughter was for an instant irrepressible—there was something so droll in the way she had said that.
‘Well, you are not sociable and yet you are. Mrs. Peck is, at any rate, and thought that ought to make it easy for you to enter into conversation with her.’
‘Oh, I don’t care for her conversation—I know what it amounts to.’ I made no rejoinder—I scarcely knew what rejoinder to make—and the girl went on, ‘I know what she thinks and I know what she says.’ Still I was silent, but the next moment I saw that my delicacy had been wasted, for Miss Mavis asked, ‘Does she make out that she knows Mr. Porterfield?’
‘No, she only says that she knows a lady who knows him.’
‘Yes, I know—Mrs. Jeremie. Mrs. Jeremie’s an idiot!’ I was not in a position to controvert this, and presently my young lady said she would sit down. I left her in her chair—I saw that she preferred it—and wandered to a distance. A few minutes later I met Jasper again, and he stopped of his own accord and said to me—
‘We shall be in about six in the evening, on the eleventh day—they promise it.’
‘If nothing happens, of course.’
‘Well, what’s going to happen?’
‘That’s just what I’m wondering!’ And I turned away and went below with the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking that I had mystified him.
IV
‘I don’t know what to do, and you must help me,’ Mrs. Nettlepoint said to me that evening, as soon as I went in to see her.
‘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 about the weather and the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and little commonplaces like that, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she sat there, à propos of nothing, she burst into tears. I asked her what ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn’t explain; she only said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of leaving home. I asked her if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether she found as that drew near that her heart was not in it; I told her that she mustn’t be nervous, that I could enter into that—in short I said what I could. All that she replied was that she was 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 had been crying?’ Mrs. Nettlepoint asked.
‘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 shall go upstairs.’
‘And is that where you want me to help you?’
‘Oh, your arm and that sort of thing, yes. But 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 upon me that way. You always pay for it, there are always tiresome complications. What I am 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. Voyez-vous ça?’
I listened respectfully to this and then I said: ‘You are afraid of your son.’
‘Afraid of him?’
‘There are things you might say to him—and with your manner; because you have one when you choose.’
‘Very likely, but what is my manner to his? Besides, I have said everything to him. That is I have said the great thing, that he is making her immensely talked about.’
‘And of course in answer to that he has asked you how you know, and you have told him I have told you.’
‘I had to; and he says it’s none of your business.’
‘I wish he would say that 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 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,’ I replied, laughing.
‘Oh, it isn’t a joke.’
‘That’s exactly what I told you at first.’
‘Yes, but don’t exult; I hate people who exult. Jasper wants to know 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 come upstairs.
I looked for Jasper above that same evening, but circumstances did not favour my quest. I found him—that is I discovered that 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 no look of an uncomfortable consciousness. When I had finished my breakfast I found him smoking on the forward-deck and I immediately began: ‘I am going to say something that you won’t at all like; to ask you a question that you will think impertinent.’
‘Impertinent? that’s bad.’
‘I am a good deal older than you and I am 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. For the rest, my inquiry will speak for itself.’
‘Why so many preliminaries?’ the young man asked, smiling.
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 am 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 is so good as to say so—to oblige you.’
‘She would oblige me a great deal more by reassuring me. I am aware that you know I have 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 is in a false position.’
Jasper puffed his cigar, with his eyes on the horizon. ‘I don’t know whether it’s your business, what you are attempting to discuss; but it really appears to me it is 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 you are very ungrateful. The tattle of a pack of old women has this importance, that she suspects or knows that it exists, and that nice 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 have taken the liberty to call your attention to.’
‘In love with me in six days, just like that?’ said Jasper, smoking.
‘There is 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 have nothing to say.’
‘I don’t see what you mean,’ Jasper went on.
‘Surely you ought to have thought of that by this time. She’s engaged to be married and the gentleman she is engaged to is to meet her at Liverpool. The whole ship knows it (I didn’t tell them!) and the whole ship is watching her. It’s impertinent if you like, just as I am, but we make a little world here together and we can’t blink its conditions. What I ask you is whether you are prepared to allow her to give up the gentleman I have just mentioned for your sake.’
‘For my sake?’
‘To marry her if she breaks with him.’
Jasper turned his eyes from the horizon to my own, and I found a strange expression in them. ‘Has Miss Mavis commissioned you to make this inquiry?’
‘Never in the world.’
‘Well then, I don’t understand it.’
‘It isn’t from another I make it. Let it come from yourself—to yourself.’
‘Lord, you must think I lead myself a life! That’s a question the young lady may put to me any moment that 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 have enumerated you have no reason to expect I will tell you.’ He turned away and I exclaimed, sincerely, ‘Poor girl!’ At this he faced me again and, looking at me from head to foot, demanded: ‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘I told your mother that you ought to go to bed.’
‘You had better do that yourself!’
This time he walked off, and I reflected rather dolefully that the only clear result of my experiment 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 that 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 had not observed that she had as yet been absent from the deck for so long a period. Jasper went away, but he came back at intervals to see how his mother got on, and when she asked him where Miss Mavis was he said he had not the least idea. I sat with Mrs. Nettlepoint at her particular request: she told me she knew that if I left her Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Gotch would come to speak to her. She was flurried and fatigued at having to make an effort, 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 complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint’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 meditated an approach, 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 is like the bucket in the well. When I come up that girl goes down.’
‘Yes, but you’ve succeeded, 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 have 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 manner in which you give my son away.’
‘You wouldn’t accept that.’
‘Never in the world.’
‘Then I don’t understand your position.’
‘Good heavens, I have none! It isn’t a position to be bored to death.’
‘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 knows what she believes?’
