Collected Stories by Henry James
‘Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!’ Mrs Mavis exclaimed. Then smiling at Mrs Nettlepoint she added, ‘It would have saved me a worry, an acquaintance already begun.’
‘Ah, my son’s acquaintances—!’ Mrs Nettlepoint murmured.
‘Yes, and my daughter’s too!’ cried Mrs Mavis, jovially. ‘Mrs Allen didn’t tell us you were going,’ she continued, to the young man.
‘She would have been clever if she had been able to!’ Mrs Nettlepoint ejaculated.
‘Dear mother, I have my telegram,’ Jasper remarked, looking at Grace Mavis.
‘I know you very little,’ the girl said, returning his observation.
‘I’ve danced with you at some ball – for some sufferers by something or other.’
‘I think it was an inundation,’ she replied, smiling. ‘But it was a long time ago – and I haven’t seen you since.’
‘I have been in far countries – to my loss. I should have said it was for a big fire.’
‘It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn’t remember your name,’ said Grace Mavis.
‘That is very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink dress.’
‘Oh, I remember that dress – you looked lovely in it!’ Mrs Mavis broke out. ‘You must get another just like it – on the other side.’
‘Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,’ said Jasper Nettlepoint. Then he added to the girl – ‘Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.’
‘It came back to me – seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.’
‘Well, I confess it isn’t, much. Oh, there are some drinks!’ Jasper went on, approaching the tray and its glasses.
‘Indeed there are and quite delicious,’ Mrs Mavis declared.
‘Won’t you have another then? – a pink one, like your daughter’s gown.’
‘With pleasure, sir. Oh, do see them over,’ Mrs Mavis continued, accepting from the young man’s hand a third tumbler.
‘My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,’ said Jasper Nettlepoint.
‘But my daughter – she has a claim as an old friend.’
‘Jasper, what does your telegram say?’ his mother interposed.
He gave no heed to her question: 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 looked at me. The next minute he asked of the young lady – ‘Do you mean you are going to Europe?’
‘Yes, to-morrow; in the same ship as your mother.’
‘That’s what we’ve come here for, to see all about it,’ said Mrs Mavis.
‘My son, take pity on me and tell me what light your telegram throws,’ Mrs Nettlepoint went on.
‘I will, dearest, when I’ve quenched my thirst.’ And Jasper slowly drained his glass.
‘Well, you’re worse than Gracie,’ Mrs Mavis commented. ‘She was first one thing and then the other – but only about up to three o’clock yesterday.’
‘Excuse me – won’t you take something?’ Jasper inquired of Gracie; who however declined, as if to make up for her mother’s copious consommation. I made privately the reflection that the two ladies ought to take leave, the question of Mrs Nettlepoint’s goodwill being so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so near at hand; and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay, with their hostess visibly in a fidget, was a sign of a want of breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in spite of Mrs Mavis’s imbibing her glass of syrup in little interspaced sips, as if to make it last as long as possible. I watched the girl with an increasing curiosity; I could not help asking myself a question or two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way) that there were some complications in her position. Was it not a complication that she should have wished to remain long enough to assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to sail? Had not something particular passed between them on the occasion or at the period to which they had covertly alluded, and did she really not know that her mother was bringing her to his mother’s, though she apparently had thought it well not to mention the circumstance? Such things were complications on the part of a young lady betrothed to that curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr Porterfield. But I am bound to add that she gave me no further warrant for suspecting them than by the simple fact of her encouraging her mother, by her immobility, to linger. Somehow I had a sense that she knew better. I got up myself to go, but Mrs Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement would not be taken as a hint, and I perceived she wished me not to leave my fellow-visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room – one ought to be out in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother, whom he had not yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen people. She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.
‘It will be nice and cool to-morrow, when we steam into the great ocean,’ said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before. Mrs Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss Mavis – ‘Won’t you come with me and see if it’s pleasant?’
‘Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!’ her mother exclaimed, but without moving. The girl moved, after a moment’s hesitation; she rose and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising (I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so, and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs Mavis to go, so that I myself might go; and Mrs Nettlepoint was waiting for her to go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady’s absence appear to us longer than it really was – it was probably very brief. Her mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment. Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze was from that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler, that from my hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs Nettlepoint said – ‘Well, if it’s so pleasant there we had better go ourselves.’ So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together. (There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent events more curious. ‘We must go, mother,’ Miss Mavis immediately said; and a moment later, 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 gone out Mrs Nettlepoint exclaimed – ‘Ah, but she’ll be a bore – she’ll be a bore!’
‘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!’
‘I don’t know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very handsome.’
‘So much the bet
‘She will be under Jasper’s,’ I remarked.
‘Ah, he won’t go – I want it too much.’
‘I have an idea he will go.’
‘Why didn’t he tell me so then – when he came in?’
‘He was diverted by Miss Mavis – a beautiful unexpected girl sitting there.’
‘Diverted from his mother – trembling for his decision?’
‘She’s an old friend; it was a meeting after a long separation.’
‘Yes, such a lot of them as he knows!’ said Mrs Nettlepoint.
‘Such a lot of them?’
‘He has so many female friends – in the most varied circles.’
‘Well, we can close round her then – for I on my side knew, or used to know, her young man.’
‘Her young man?’
‘The fiancé, the intended, the one she is going out to. He can’t by the way be very young now.’
‘How odd it sounds!’ said Mrs Nettlepoint.
I was going to reply that it was not odd if you knew Mr Porterfield, but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my companion briefly who he was – that I had met him in the old days in Paris, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint, when I lived with the jeunesse des écoles, and her comment on this was simply – ‘Well, he had better have come out for her!’
‘Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if she might change her mind at the last moment.’
‘About her marriage?’
‘About sailing. But she won’t change now.’
Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. ‘Well, are you going?’
‘Yes, I shall go,’ he said, smiling. ‘I have got my telegram.’
‘Oh, your telegram!’ I ventured to exclaim. ‘That charming girl is your telegram.’
He gave me a look, but in the dusk I could not make out very well what it conveyed. Then he bent over his mother, kissing her. ‘My news isn’t particularly satisfactory. I am going for you.’
‘Oh, you humbug!’ she rejoined. But of course she was delighted.
II
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 such 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, looking back at the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-passengers and our prospects, and then I said – ‘I think you mentioned last night a name I know – that of Mr Porterfield.’
‘Oh no, I never uttered it,’ she replied, smiling at me through her closely-drawn veil.
‘Then it was your mother.’
‘Very likely it was my mother.’ And she continued to smile, as if I ought to have known the difference.
‘I venture to allude to him because I have an idea I used to know him,’ I went on.
‘Oh, I see.’ Beyond this remark she manifested no interest in my having known him.
‘That is if it’s the same one.’ It seemed to me it would be silly to say nothing more; so I added, ‘My Mr Porterfield was called David.’
‘Well, so is ours.’ ‘Ours’ struck me as clever.
‘I suppose I shall see him again if he is to meet you at Liverpool,’ I continued.
‘Well, it will be bad if he doesn’t.’
It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did: that only came later. So I remarked that I had not seen him for so many years that it was very possible I should not know him.
‘Well, I have not seen him for a great many years, but I expect I shall know him all the same.’
‘Oh, with you it’s different,’ I rejoined, smiling at her. ‘Hasn’t he been back since those days?’
‘I don’t know what days you mean.’
‘When I knew him in Paris – ages ago. He was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture.’
‘Well, he is studying it still,’ said Grace Mavis.
‘Hasn’t he learned it yet?’
‘I don’t know what he has learned. I shall see.’ Then she added: ‘Architecture is very difficult and he is tremendously thorough.’
‘Oh, yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have become quite a foreigner, if it’s so many years since he has been at home.’
‘Oh, he is not changeable. If he were changeable—’ But here my interlocutress paused. I suspect she had been going to say that if he were changeable he would have given her up long ago. After an instant she went on: ‘He wouldn’t have stuck so to his profession. You can’t make much by it.’
‘You can’t make much?’
‘It doesn’t make you rich.’
‘Oh, of course you have got to practise it – and to practise it long.’
‘Yes – so Mr Porterfield says.’
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh – they were so serene an implication that the gentleman in question did not live up to his principles. But I checked myself, asking my companion if she expected to remain in Europe long – to live there.
‘Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it has taken me to go out.’
‘And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit.’
Miss Mavis looked at me a moment. ‘Didn’t mother talk!’
‘It was all very interesting.’
She continued to look at me. ‘You don’t think that.’
‘What have I to gain by saying it if I don’t?’
‘Oh, men have always something to gain.’
‘You make me feel a terrible failure, then! I hope at any rate that it gives you pleasure – the idea of seeing foreign lands.’
‘Mercy – I should think so.’
‘It’s a pity our ship is not one of the fast ones, if you are impatient.’
She was silent a moment; then she exclaimed, ‘Oh, I guess it will be fast enough!’
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 lay upon her sofa in a becoming dressing-gown and cap, resting from her labours. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her cabin, which smelt good (such was the refinement of her art), and she had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation (we promised to lend each other books and I assured her familiarly that I should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day), and pitied me for having to mingle in society. She judged this to be a limited privilege, for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our fellow-passengers.
‘Oh, I’m an inveterate, almost a professional observer,’ I replied, ‘and with that vice I am as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her knitting. It puts it in my power, in any situation, to see things. I shall see them even here and I shall come down very often and tell you about them. You are not interested to-day, but you will be to-morrow, for a ship is a great school of gossip. You won’t believe the number of researches and problems you will be engaged in by the middle of the voyage.’
‘I? Never in the world – lying here with my
‘You will participate at second hand. You will see through my eyes, hang upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and indignations. I have an idea that your young lady is the person on board who will interest me most.’
‘Mine, indeed! She has not been near me since we left the dock.’
‘Well, she is very curious.’
‘You have such cold-blooded terms,’ Mrs Nettlepoint murmured. ‘Elle ne sait pas se conduire; she ought to have come to ask about me.’
‘Yes, since you are under her care,’ I said, smiling. ‘As for her not knowing how to behave – well, that’s exactly what we shall see.’
‘You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.’
‘Don’t say that – don’t say that.’
Mrs Nettlepoint looked at me a moment. ‘Why do you speak so solemnly?’
In return I considered her. ‘I will tell you before we land. And have you seen much of your son?’
‘Oh yes, he has come in several times. He seems very much pleased. He has got a cabin to himself.’
‘That’s great luck,’ I said, ‘but I have an idea he is always in luck. I was sure I should have to offer him the second berth in my room.’
‘And you wouldn’t have enjoyed that, because you don’t like him,’ Mrs Nettlepoint took upon herself to say.
‘What put that into your head?’
‘It isn’t in my head – it’s in my heart, my cœur de mère. We guess those things. You think he’s selfish – I could see it last night.’