Henry James

“ People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pass so many days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison rare men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis’s, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. ”

“ Youth is almost always selfish, just as it is almost always conceited, and, after all, when it’s 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’s a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint—if, of course, one had the intelligence for it—was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity. ”

“ The simple absence of the post, when the particular conditions enable you to enjoy the great fact by which it’s produced, becomes in itself a positive bliss, and the clean boards of the deck turn to the stage of 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 something—something moreover of which the interest is never, even in its keenness, too great to suffer you to slumber. ”

“ I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at liberty to revert to Mr. Porterfield. She hadn’t encouraged me, when I spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she appeared to imply—it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by Mrs. Nettlepoint—that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.
“I see—you mean by letters,” I remarked.
“We won’t live in a good part. I know enough to know that,” she went on. ”

“ Miss Mavis immediately said; and a moment after, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with them to the door and as soon as they had got off Mrs. Nettlepoint quite richly exhaled her impression. “Ah but’ll she be a bore—she’ll be a bore of bores!”
“Not through talking too much, surely.”
“An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular pose; it’s coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea—that will act on one’s nerves!” ”

“ It struck me that if I had been in love with her I shouldn’t have needed to lay such a train for the closer approach. Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the École des Beaux Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten minutes I had an odd sense of knowing—by implication—a good deal about the young lady.
Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and telling how “low” Mr. Mavis had been. ”

“ That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk, which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine o’clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us into the latitude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably and now rested from her labours; she lay upon her sofa in a dressing-gown and a cap that became her. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her cabin, which smelt positively good—such was the refinement of her art ”

“ Nettlepoint.
“Yes, if she didn’t. But you say that to protect Jasper—not to protect her,” I smiled.
“You are cold-blooded—it’s uncanny!” my friend exclaimed.
“Ah this is nothing yet! Wait a while—you’ll see. At sea in general I’m awful—I exceed the limits. If I’ve outraged her in thought I’ll jump overboard. There are ways of asking—a man doesn’t need to tell a woman that—without the crude words.”
“I don’t know what you imagine between them,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint. ”

“ It was one of those very young and perfectly needless blunders that parents in America might make so much less possible than they do. The thing is to insist on one’s daughter waiting, on the engagement’s being long; and then, after you’ve got that started, to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible—to make it die out. You can easily tire it to death,” Mrs. Nettlepoint competently stated. “However,” she concluded, “Mr. Porterfield has taken this one seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She says he adores her.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was just to have some one to speak to her and not sally forth like a servant-girl going to a situation.
“I see, I’m to act as a sort of bridesmaid and to give her away,” Mrs. Nettlepoint obligingly said. Kind enough in fact for anything, she showed on this occasion that it was easy enough to know her. There is notoriously nothing less desirable than an imposed aggravation of effort at sea, but she accepted without betrayed dismay the burden of the young lady’s dependence and allowed her, as Mrs. Mavis said, to hook herself on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nettlepoint proceeded to observe—to such idle speculations does the vacancy of sea-hours give encouragement—that she wondered whether it were better to be an ordinary girl very well brought up or an extraordinary girl not brought up at all.
“Oh I go in for the extraordinary girl under all circumstances.”
“It’s true that if you’re very well brought up you’re not, you can’t be, ordinary,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. “You’re a lady, at any rate.”
“And Miss Mavis is fifty miles out—is that what you mean?” ”

“ They have always had to help themselves, and have rather magnanimously failed to learn just where helping others is distinguishable from that. In no country are there fewer forms and more reciprocities.
It was doubtless not singular that the ladies from Merrimac Avenue shouldn’t feel they were importunate: what was striking was that Mrs. Nettlepoint didn’t appear to suspect it. However, she would in any case have thought it inhuman to show this—though I could see that under the surface she was amused at everything the more expressive of the pilgrims from the South End took for granted. ”

“ I easily made out, leaving the terrible little woman and going above. This profession, I grant, was not perfectly attuned to my real idea, or rather my real idea was not quite in harmony with my profession. 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 crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage. ”

“ Good-natured women understand each other even when so divided as to sit residentially above and below the salt, as who should say; by which token our hostess had quickly mastered the main facts: Mrs. Allen’s visit that morning in Merrimac Avenue to talk of Mrs. Amber’s great idea, the classes at the public schools in vacation (she was interested with an equal charity to that of Mrs. Mavis—even in such weather!—in those of the South End) for games and exercises and music, to keep the poor unoccupied children out of the streets ”

“ 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 ”

“ Surely they can take care of themselves,” he freely pleaded.
“Then my daughter—she has a claim as an old friend.”
But his mother had by this time interposed. “Jasper, what does your telegram say?”
He paid her no heed: he stood there with his glass in his hand, looking from Mrs. Mavis to Miss Grace.
“Ah leave her to me, madam; I’m quite competent,” I said to Mrs. Mavis.
Then the young man gave me his attention. The next minute he asked of the girl: “Do you mean you’re going to Europe?”
“Yes, tomorrow. In the same ship as your mother.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Porterfield?”
“No, Mr. Nettlepoint.”
“Ah very little. He’s very considerably my junior, you see.”
She had a fresh pause, as if almost again for my elegance; but she went on: “He’s younger than me too.” I don’t know what effect of the comic there could have been in it, but the turn was unexpected and it made me laugh. Neither do I know whether Miss Mavis took offence at my sensibility on this head, though I remember thinking at the moment with compunction that it had brought a flush to her cheek. At all events she got up, gathering her shawl and her books into her arm. ”

“ yet I remembered at the same time that Jasper Nettlepoint was not quite a young man to lean upon, having—as I at least supposed—a life of his own and tastes and habits which had long since diverted him from the maternal side. ”

“ I expounded, “is much larger than that of young persons who have been, as you say, very well brought up; and yet I’m not sure that on the whole I don’t think them thereby the more innocent. Miss Mavis is engaged, and she’s to be married next week, but it’s an old old story, and there’s no more romance in it than if she were going to be photographed. So her usual life proceeds, and her usual life consists—and that of ces demoiselles in general—in having plenty of gentlemen’s society. Having it I mean without having any harm from it.”
Mrs. Nettlepoint had given me due attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Then she had an equal confidence for Mrs. Nettlepoint. “It would have saved me a worry—an acquaintance already begun.”
“Ah my son’s acquaintances!” our hostess murmured.
“Yes, and my daughter’s too!” Mrs. Mavis gaily echoed. “Mrs. Allen didn’t tell us you were going,” she continued to the young man.
“She’d have been clever if she had been able to!” Mrs. Nettlepoint sighed.
“Dear mother, I have my telegram,” Jasper remarked, looking at Grace Mavis.
“I know you very little,” the girl said, returning his observation. ”

“ It makes me, in any situation, just inordinately and submissively see things. I shall see them even here and shall come down very often and tell you about them. You’re not interested today, but you will be tomorrow, for a ship’s a great school of gossip. You won’t believe the number of researches and problems you’ll be engaged in by the middle of the voyage. ”