"No, but I know all about her." Then my companion added: "You don't mean to say she's any real relation?""Do you mean to me?"
"No, to Grace Mavis."
"None at all.They're very new friends, as I happen to know.Then you're acquainted with our young lady?" I hadn't noticed the passage of any recognition between them at luncheon.
"Is she your young lady too?" asked Mrs.Peck with high significance.
"Ah when people are in the same boat--literally--they belong a little to each other.""That's so," said Mrs.Peck."I don't know Miss Mavis, but I know all about her--I live opposite to her on Merrimac Avenue.I don't know whether you know that part.""Oh yes--it's very beautiful."
The consequence of this remark was another "Pshaw!" But Mrs.Peck went on: "When you've lived opposite to people like that for a long time you feel as if you had some rights in them--tit for tat! But she didn't take it up today; she didn't speak to me.She knows who Iam as well as she knows her own mother."
"You had better speak to her first--she's constitutionally shy," Iremarked.
"Shy? She's constitutionally tough! Why she's thirty years old,"cried my neighbour."I suppose you know where she's going.""Oh yes--we all take an interest in that.""That young man, I suppose, particularly." And then as I feigned a vagueness: "The handsome one who sits THERE.Didn't you tell me he's 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 briefly brooded.I had spoken jocosely, but she took it with a serious face."Well, she might let him eat his dinner in peace!" she presently put forth.
"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 the usual 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 on one of the benches and looked up at me.
"I thought you said he'd come back."
"Young Nettlepoint? Yes, I see he didn't.Miss Mavis then has given him half her dinner.""It's very kind of her! She has been engaged half her life.""Yes, but that will soon be over."
"So I suppose--as quick as ever we land.Every one knows it on Merrimac Avenue," Mrs.Peck pursued."Every one there takes a great interest in it.""Ah of course--a girl like that has many friends."But my informant discriminated."I mean even people who don't know her.""I see," I went on: "she's so handsome that she attracts attention--people enter into her affairs."
Mrs.Peck spoke as from the commanding centre of these."She USED to be pretty, but I can't say I think she's anything remarkable today.
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 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.
She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the sea 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 on the deep.It was always present to me that so the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked.I became conscious on this particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing in one's range, the figure that would count most in the composition of groups.She couldn't help it, poor girl;nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say.She paid for it by the corresponding exposure, the danger that people would, as I had said to Mrs.Peck, enter into her affairs.
Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I watched for one of these occasions--on the third day out--and took advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis.She wore a light blue veil drawn tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me rather lacked intensity I could account for it partly by that.
"Well, we're getting on--we're getting on," I said cheerfully, looking at the friendly twinkling sea.
"Are we going very fast?"
"Not fast, but steadily.Ohne Hast, ohne Rast--do you know German?""Well, I've studied it--some."
"It will be useful to you over there when you travel.""Well yes, if we do.But I don't suppose we shall much.Mr.
Nettlepoint says we ought," my young woman added in a moment.
"Ah of course HE thinks so.He has been all over the world.""Yes, he has described some of the places.They must be wonderful.
I didn't know I should like it so much."
"But it isn't 'Europe' yet!" I laughed.
Well, she didn't care if it wasn't."I mean going on this way.Icould go on for ever--for ever and ever.""Ah you know it's not always like this," I hastened to mention.
"Well, it's better than Boston."
"It isn't so good as Paris," I still more portentously noted.
"Oh I know all about Paris.There's no freshness in that.I feel as if I had been there all the time.""You mean you've heard so much of it?"
"Oh yes, nothing else for ten years."