Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (105 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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Page 625
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 worldlying here with my nose in a book and never seeing anything.
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 ot have come to ask about me.
Yes, since you are under her care, I said, smiling. As for her not knowing how to behavewell, that's exactly what we shall see.
You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her.
Don't say thtdon'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 headit's in my heart, my
cur de mère.
We guess those things. You think he's selfishI could see it last night.
Dear lady, I said, I have no general ideas about him at all. He is just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very fine young man. However, I added,
 
Page 626
since you have mentioned last night I will admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with your suspense.
Why, he came at the last just to please me, said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
I was silent a moment. Are you sure it was for your sake?
Ah, perhaps it was for yours!
When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to come, I continued.
Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him?
I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he will tell mefor he will never tell me anything: he is not one of those who tell.
If she didn't ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her, said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
Yes, if she didn't. But you say that to protect Jasper, not to protect her, I continued, smiling.
You
are
cold-bloodedit's uncanny! my companion exclaimed.
Ah, this is nothing yet! Wait a whileyou'll see. At sea in general I'm awfulI pass the limits. If I have outraged her in thought I will 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 suppose between them, said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
Nothing but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends.
He met her at some promiscuous partyI asked him about it afterwards. She is not a person he could ever think of seriously.
That's exactly what I believe.
You don't observeyou imagine, Mrs. Nettlepoint pursued. How do you reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool on an errand of love?
I don't for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment. She is going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that is not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one who
 
Page 627
happens to have had a personal impression of the gentleman she is engaged to.
Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her capableon no evidenceof violating them.
Ah, you don't understand the shades of things, I rejoined. Decencies and violationsthere is no need for such heavy artillery! I can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in wordsI'm in dreadful spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant for you too.
And why is she in dreadful spirits?
She isn't! I replied, laughing.
What is she doing?
She is walking with your son.
Mrs. Nettlepoint said nothing for a moment; then she broke out, inconsequentlyAh, she's horrid!
No, she's charming! I protested.
You mean she's curious?
Well, for me it's the same thing!
This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was cold-blooded. On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit. She knew nothing about anything, but her intentions were good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous. And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the exclamation Poor young thing!
You think she is a good deal to be pitied, then?
Well, her story sounds drearyshe told me a great deal of it. She fell to talking little by little and went from one thing to another. She's in that situation when a girl
must
open her-selfto some woman.
Hasn't she got Jasper? I inquired.
He isn't a woman. You strike me as jealous of him, my companion added.
I daresay
he
thinks soor will before the end. Ah noah no! And I asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if our young lady struck her as a flirt. She gave me no answer, but went on to remark
 
Page 628
that it was odd and interesting to her to see the way a girl like Grace Mavis resembled the girls of the kind she herself knew better, the girls of society, at the same time that she differed from them; and the way the differences and resemblances were mixed up, so that on certain questions you couldn't tell where you would find her. You would think she would feel as you did because you had found her feeling so, and then suddenly, in regard to some other matter (which was yet quite the same) she would be terribly wanting. Mrs. Nettlepoint proceeded to observe (to such idle speculations does the vanity of a sea-voyage 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 is true that if you are
very
well brought up you are not ordinary, said Mrs. Nettlepoint, smelling her strong salts. You are a lady, at any rate.
C'est toujours ça.
And Miss Mavis isn't oneis that what you mean?
Wellyou have seen her mother.
Yes, but I think your contention would be that among such people the mother doesn't count.
Precisely; and that's bad.
I see what you mean. But isn't it rather hard? If your mother doesn't know anything it is better you should be independent of her, and yet if you are that constitutes a bad note. I added that Mrs. Mavis had appeared to count sufficiently two nights before. She had said and done everything she wanted, while the girl sat silent and respectful. Grace's attitude (so far as her mother was concerned) had been eminently decent.
Yes, but she couldn't bear it, said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
Ah, if you know it I may confess that she has told me as much.
Mrs. Nettlepoint stared. Told you? There's one of the things they do!
Well, it was only a word. Won't you let me know whether you think she's a flirt?
Find out for yourself, since you pretend to study folks.
 
Page 629
Oh, your judgment would probably not at all determine mine. It's in regard to yourself that I ask it.
In regard to myself?
To see the length of maternal immorality.
Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to repeat my words. Maternal immorality?
You desire your son to have every possible distraction on his voyage, and if you can make up your mind in the sense I refer to that will make it all right. He will have no responsibility.
Heavens, how you analyse! I haven't in the least your passion for making up my mind.
Then if you chance it you'll be more immoral still.
Your reasoning is strange, said the poor lady; when it was you who tried to put it into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.
Yes, but in good faith.
How do you mean in good faith?
Why, as girls of that sort do. Their allowance and measure in such matters is much larger than that of young ladies who have been, as you say,
very
well brought up; and yet I am not sure that on the whole I don't think them 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 goes on, 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.
Well, if there is no harm from it what are you talking about and why am I immoral?
I hesitated, laughing. I retractyou are sane and clear. I am sure she thinks there won't be any harm, I added. That's the great point.
The great point?
I mean, to be settled.
Mercy, we are not trying them! How can
we
settle it?
I mean of course in our minds. There will be nothing more interesting for the next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.
 
Page 630
They will get very tired of it, said Mrs. Nettlepoint.
No, no, because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken. It can't help it. She looked at me as if she thought me slightly Mephistophelean, and I went onSo she told you everything in her life was dreary?
Not everything but most things. And she didn't tell me so much as I guessed it. She'll tell me more the next time. She will behave properly now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.
I am glad of that, I said. Keep her with you as much as possible.
I don't follow you much, Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, but so far as I do I don't think your remarks are in very good taste.
I'm too excited, I lose my head, cold-blooded as you think me. Doesn't she like Mr. Porterfield?
Yes, that's the worst of it.
The worst of it?
He's so goodthere's no fault to be found with him. Otherwise she would have thrown it all up. It has dragged on since she was eighteen: she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study. It was one of those childish muddles which parents in America might prevent so much more than they do. The thing is to insist on one's daughter's waiting, on the engagement's being long; and then after you have got that started to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possibleto make it die out. You can easily tire it out. However, Mr. Porterfield has taken it seriously for some years. He has done his part to keep it alive. She says he adores her.
His part? Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.
He has absolutely no money.
He ought to have got some, in seven years.
So I think she thinks. There are some sorts of poverty that are contemptible. But he has a little more now. That's why he won't wait any longer. His mother has come out, she has somethinga littleand she is able to help him. She will live with them and bear some of the expenses, and after her death the son will have what there is.
How old is she? I asked, cynically.

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