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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (106 page)

BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 631
I haven't the least idea. But it doesn't sound very inspiring. He has not been to America since he first went out.
That's an odd way of adoring her.
I made that objection mentally, but I didn't express it to her. She met it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to marry.
That surprises me, I remarked. And did she say that
she
had had?
No, and that's one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must have had. She didn't try to make out that he had spoiled her life. She has three other sisters and there is very little money at home. She has tried to make money; she has written little things and painted little things, but her talent is apparently not in that direction. Her father has had a long illness and has lost his placehe was in receipt of a salary in connection with some waterworksand one of her sisters has lately become a widow, with children and without means. And so as in fact she never has married any one else, whatever opportunities she may have encountered, she appears to have just made up her mind to go out to Mr. Porterfield as the least of her evils. But it isn't very amusing.
That only makes it the more honourable. She will go through with it, whatever it costs, rather than disappoint him after he has waited so long. It is true, I continued, that when a woman acts from a sense of honour
Well, when she does? said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hesitated perceptibly.
It is so extravagant a course that some one has to pay for it.
You are very impertinent. We all have to pay for each other, all the while; and for each other's virtues as well as vices.
That's precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she steps off the ship with her little bill. I mean with her teeth clenched.
Her teeth are not in the least clenched. She is in perfect good-humour.
Well, we must try and keep her so, I said. You must take care that Jasper neglects nothing.
I know not what reflection this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on the good lady's part; the upshot of them at all
 
Page 632
events was to make her sayWell, I never asked her to come; I'm very glad of that. It is all their own doing.
Their ownyou mean Jasper's and hers?
No indeed. I mean her mother's and Mrs. Allen's; the girl's too of course. They put themselves upon us.
Oh yes, I can testify to that. Therefore I'm glad too. We should have missed it, I think.
How seriously you take it! Mrs. Nettlepoint exclaimed.
Ah, wait a few days! I replied, getting up to leave her.
III.
The
Patagonia
was slow, but she was spacious and comfortable, and there was a kind of motherly decency in her long, nursing rock and her rustling, old-fashioned gait. It was as if she wished not to present herself in port with the splashed eagerness of a young creature. We were not numerous enough to squeeze each other and yet we were not too few to entertainwith that familiarity and relief which figures and objects acquire on the great bare field of the ocean, beneath the great bright glass of the sky. I had never liked the sea so much before, indeed I had never liked it at all; but now I had a revelation of how, in a midsummer mood, it could please. It was darkly and magnificently blue and imperturbably quietsave for the great regular swell of its heart-beats, the pulse of its life, and there grew to be something so agreeable in the sense of floating there in infinite isolation and leisure that it was a positive satisfaction the
Patagonia
was not a racer. One had never thought of the sea as the great place of safety, but now it came over one that there is no place so safe from the land. When it does not give you trouble it takes it awaytakes away letters and telegrams and newspapers and visits and duties and efforts, all the complications, all the superfluities and superstitions that we have stuffed into our terrene life. The simple absence of the post, when the particular conditions enable you to enjoy the great fact by which it is produced, becomes in itself a kind of bliss, and the clean stage of the deck shows you a play that amuses, the personal drama of the voyage, the movement and interaction, in the strong sea-light, of figures that end by representing somethingsomething
 
Page 633
moreover of which the interest is never, even in its keenness, too great to suffer you to go to sleep. I, at any rate, dozed a great deal, lying on my rug with a French novel, and when I opened my eyes I generally saw Jasper Nettlepoint passing with his mother's
protégée
on his arm. Somehow at these moments, between sleeping and waking. I had an inconsequent sense that they were a part of the French novel. Perhaps this was because I had fallen into the trick, at the start, of regarding Grace Mavis almost as a married woman, which, as every one knows, is the necessary status of the heroine of such a work. Every revolution of our engine at any rate would contribute to the effect of making her one.
In the saloon, at meals, my neighbour on the right was a certain little Mrs. Peck, a very short and very round person whose head was enveloped in a cloud (a cloud of dirty white wool) and who promptly let me know that she was going to Europe for the education of her children. I had already perceived (an hour after we left the dock) that some energetic step was required in their interest, but as we were not in Europe yet the business could not be said to have begun. The four little Pecks, in the enjoyment of untrammelled leisure, swarmed about the ship as if they had been pirates boarding her, and their mother was as powerless to check their license as if she had been gagged and stowed away in the hold. They were especially to be trusted to run between the legs of the stewards when these attendants arrived with bowls of soup for the languid ladies. Their mother was too busy recounting to her fellow-passengers how many years Miss Mavis had been engaged. In the blank of a marine existence things that are nobody's business very soon become everybody's, and this was just one of those facts that are propagated with a mysterious and ridiculous rapidity. The whisper that carries them is very small, in the great scale of things, of air and space and progress, but it is also very safe, for there is no compression, no sounding-board, to make speakers responsible. And then repetition at sea is somehow not repetition; monotony is in the air, the mind is flat and everything recursthe bells, the meals, the stewards faces, the romp of children, the walk, the clothes, the very shoes and buttons of passengers taking their exercise. These things grow at last so insipid that, in comparison,
 
Page 634
revelations as to the personal history of one's companions have a taste, even when one cares little about the people.
Jasper Nettlepoint sat on my left hand when he was not upstairs seeing that Miss Mavis had her repast comfortably on deck. His mother's place would have been next mine had she shown herself, and then that of the young lady under her care. The two ladies, in other words, would have been between us, Jasper marking the limit of the party on that side. Miss Mavis was present at luncheon the first day, but dinner passed without her coming in, and when it was half over Jasper remarked that he would go up and look after her.
Isn't that young lady comingthe one who was here to lunch? Mrs. Peck asked of me as he left the saloon.
Apparently not. My friend tells me she doesn't like the saloon.
You don't mean to say she's sick, do you?
Oh no, not in this weather. But she likes to be above.
And is that gentleman gone up to her?
Yes, she's under his mother's care.
And is his mother up there, too? asked Mrs. Peck, whose processes were homely and direct.
No, she remains in her cabin. People have different tastes. Perhaps that's one reason why Miss Mavis doesn't come to table, I addedher chaperon not being able to accompany her.
Her chaperon?
Mrs. Nettlepointthe lady under whose protection she is.
Protection? Mrs. Peck stared at me a moment, moving some valued morsel in her mouth; then she exclaimed, familiarly, Pshaw! I was struck with this and I was on the point of asking her what she meant by it when she continued: Are we not going to see Mrs. Nettlepoint?
I am afraid not. She vows that she won't stir from her sofa.
Pshaw! said Mrs. Peck again. That's quite a disappointment.
Do you know her then?
No, but I know all about her. Then my companion addedYou don't meant to say she's any relation?
Do you mean to me?
 
Page 635
No, to Grace Mavis.
None at all. They are very new friends, as I happen to know. Then you are acquainted with our young lady? I had not noticed that any recognition passed between them at luncheon.
Is she yours too? asked Mrs. Peck, smiling at me.
Ah, when people are in the same boatliterallythey belong a little to each other.
That's so, said Mrs. Peck. I don't know Miss Mavis but I know all about herI live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue. I don't know whether you know that part.
Oh yesit's very beautiful.
The consequence of this remark was another Pshaw! But Mrs. Peck went onWhen you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you were acquainted. But she didn't take it up to-day; she didn't speak to me. She knows who I am as well as she knows her own mother.
You had better speak to her firstshe's shy, I remarked.
Shy? Why she's nearly thirty years old. I suppose you know where she's going.
Oh yeswe all take an interest in that.
That young man, I suppose, particularly.
That young man?
The handsome one, who sits there. Didn't you tell me he is Mrs. Nettlepoint's son?
Oh yes; he acts as her deputy. No doubt he does all he can to carry out her function.
Mrs. Peck was silent a moment. I had spoken jocosely, but she received my pleasantry with a serious face. Well, she might let him eat his dinner in peace! she presently exclaimed.
Oh, he'll come back! I said, glancing at his place. The repast continued and when it was finished I screwed my chair round to leave the table. Mrs. Peck performed the same movement and we quitted the saloon together. Outside of it was a kind of vestibule, with several seats, from which you could descend to the lower cabins or mount to the promenade-deck. Mrs. Peck appeared to hesitate as to her course and then solved the problem by going neither way. She dropped upon one of the benches and looked up at me.
 
Page 636
I thought you said he would come back.
Young Nettlepoint? I see he didn't. Miss Mavis then has given him half of her dinner.
It's very kind of her! She has been engaged for ages.
Yes, but that will soon be over.
So I supposeas quick as we land. Every one knows it on Merrimac Avenue. Every one there takes a great interest in it.
Ah, of course, a girl like that: she has many friends.
I mean even people who don't know her.
I see, I went on: she is so handsome that she attracts attention, people enter into her affairs.
She
used
to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything remarkable to-day. Anyhow, if she attracts attention she ought to be all the more careful what she does. You had better tell her that.
Oh, it's none of my business! I replied, leaving Mrs. Peck and going above. The exclamation. I confess, was not perfectly in accordance with my feeling, or rather my feeling was not perfectly in harmony with the exclamation. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She had put on a sort of crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the ocean had a gentle evening swell which made the great ship dip slowly, rhythmically, giving a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple colour in the sea. I always thought that the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked like that. I perceived on that particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing on the ship; the figure that would count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor girl; nature had made her conspicuousimportant, as the painters say. She paid for it by the exposure it brought with itthe danger
BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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