I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but Ihad 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.
"Well, it isn't as if there were any very bad ones," I answered reassuringly.
"Why Mr.Nettlepoint says it's regular mean.""And to what does he apply that expression?"She eyed me a moment as if I were elegant at her expense, but she answered my question."Up there in the Batignolles.I seem to make out it's worse than Merrimac Avenue.""Worse--in what way?"
"Why, even less where the nice people live.""He oughtn't to say that," I returned.And I ventured to back it up.
"Don't you call Mr.Porterfield a nice person?""Oh it doesn't make any difference." She watched me again a moment through her veil, the texture of which gave her look a suffused prettiness."Do you know him very little?" she asked.
"Mr.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."I'm going down--I'm tired.""Tired of me, I'm afraid."
"No, not yet."
"I'm like you," I confessed."I should like it to go on and on."She had begun to walk along the deck to the companionway and I went with her."Well, I guess _I_ wouldn't, after all!"I had taken her shawl from her to carry it, but at the top of the steps that led down to the cabins I had to give it back."Your mother would be glad if she could know," I observed as we parted.
But she was proof against my graces."If she could know what?""How well you're getting on." I refused to be discouraged."And that good Mrs.Allen.""Oh mother, mother! She made me come, she pushed me off." And almost as if not to say more she went quickly below.
I paid Mrs.Nettlepoint a morning visit after luncheon and another in the evening, before she "turned in." That same day, in the evening, she said to me suddenly: "Do you know what I've done? I've asked Jasper.""Asked him what?"
"Why, if SHE asked him, you understand."
I wondered."DO I understand?"
"If you don't it's because you 'regular' won't, as she says.If that girl really asked him--on the balcony--to sail with us.""My dear lady, do you suppose that if she did he'd tell you?"She had to recognise my acuteness."That's just what he says.But he says she didn't.""And do you consider the statement valuable?" I asked, laughing out.
"You had better ask your young friend herself."Mrs.Nettlepoint stared."I couldn't do that."On which I was the more amused that I had to explain I was only amused."What does it signify now?""I thought you thought everything signified.You were so full," she cried, "of signification!""Yes, but we're further out now, and somehow in mid-ocean everything becomes absolute.""What else CAN he do with decency?" Mrs.Nettlepoint went on."If, as my son, he were never to speak to her it would be very rude and you'd think that stranger still.Then YOU would do what he does, and where would be the difference?""How do you know what he does? I haven't mentioned him for twenty-four hours."
"Why, she told me herself.She came in this afternoon.""What an odd thing to tell you!" I commented.
"Not as she says it.She says he's full of attention, perfectly devoted--looks after her all the time.She seems to want me to know it, so that I may approve him for it.""That's charming; it shows her good conscience.""Yes, or her great cleverness."
Something in the tone in which Mrs.Nettlepoint said this caused me to return in real surprise: "Why what do you suppose she has in her mind?""To get hold of him, to make him go so far he can't retreat.To marry him perhaps.""To marry him? And what will she do with Mr.Porterfield?""She'll ask me just to make it all right to him--or perhaps you.""Yes, as an old friend"--and for a moment I felt it awkwardly possible.But I put to her seriously: "DO you see Jasper caught like that?""Well, he's only a boy--he's younger at least than she.""Precisely; she regards him as a child.She remarked to me herself today, that is, that he's so much younger."Mrs.Nettlepoint took this in."Does she talk of it with you? That shows she has a plan, that she has thought it over!"I've sufficiently expressed--for the interest of my anecdote--that Ifound an oddity in one of our young companions, but I was far from judging her capable of laying a trap for the other.Moreover my reading of Jasper wasn't in the least that he was catchable--could be made to do a thing if he didn't want to do it.Of course it wasn't impossible that he might be inclined, that he might take it--or already have taken it--into his head to go further with his mother's charge; but to believe this I should require still more proof than his always being with her.He wanted at most to "take up with her"for the voyage."If you've questioned him perhaps you've tried to make him feel responsible," I said to my fellow critic.
"A little, but it's very difficult.Interference makes him perverse.
One has to go gently.Besides, it's too absurd--think of her age.
If she can't take care of herself!" cried Mrs.Nettlepoint.
"Yes, let us keep thinking of her age, though it's not so prodigious.