The Patagonia

“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 I found 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.  And if things get very bad you’ve one resource left,” I added.

She wondered.  “To lock her up in her cabin?”

“No—to come out of yours.”

“Ah never, never!  If it takes that to save her she must be lost.  Besides, what good would it do?  If I were to go above she could come below.”

“Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you.”

“Could I?” Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded in the manner of a woman who knew her son.

In the saloon the next day, after dinner, over the red cloth of the tables, beneath the swinging lamps and the racks of tumblers, decanters and wine-glasses, we sat down to whist, Mrs. Peck, to oblige, taking a hand in the game.  She played very badly and talked too much, and when the rubber was over assuaged her discomfiture (though not mine—we had been partners) with a Welsh rabbit and a tumbler of something hot.  We had done with the cards, but while she waited for this refreshment she sat with her elbows on the table shuffling a pack.

“She hasn’t spoken to me yet—she won’t do it,” she remarked in a moment.

“Is it possible there’s any one on the ship who hasn’t spoken to you?”

“Not that girl—she knows too well!” Mrs. Peck looked round our little circle with a smile of intelligence—she had familiar communicative eyes.  Several of our company had assembled, according to the wont, the last thing in the evening, of those who are cheerful at sea, for the consumption of grilled sardines and devilled bones.

“What then does she know?”

“Oh she knows I know.”

“Well, we know what Mrs. Peck knows,” one of the ladies of the group observed to me with an air of privilege.

“Well, you wouldn’t know if I hadn’t told you—from the way she acts,” said our friend with a laugh of small charm.

“She’s going out to a gentleman who lives over there—he’s waiting there to marry her,” the other lady went on, in the tone of authentic information.  I remember that her name was Mrs. Gotch and that her mouth looked always as if she were whistling.

“Oh he knows—I’ve told him,” said Mrs. Peck.

“Well, I presume every one knows,” Mrs. Gotch contributed.

“Dear madam, is it every one’s business?” I asked.

“Why, don’t you think it’s a peculiar way to act?”—and Mrs. Gotch was evidently surprised at my little protest.

“Why it’s right there—straight in front of you, like a play at the theatre—as if you had paid to see it,” said Mrs. Peck.  “If you don’t call it public!”

“Aren’t you mixing things up?  What do you call public?”

“Why the way they go on.  They’re up there now.”

“They cuddle up there half the night,” said Mrs. Gotch.  “I don’t know when they come down.  Any hour they like.  When all the lights are out they’re up there still.”

“Oh you can’t tire them out.  They don’t want relief—like the ship’s watch!” laughed one of the gentlemen.

“Well, if they enjoy each other’s society what’s the harm?” another asked.  “They’d do just the same on land.”

“They wouldn’t do it on the public streets, I presume,” said Mrs. Peck.  “And they wouldn’t do it if Mr. Porterfield was round!”

“Isn’t that just where your confusion comes in?” I made answer.  “It’s public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together, but it isn’t in the least public that she’s going to be married.”

“Why how can you say—when the very sailors know it!  The Captain knows it and all the officers know it.  They see them there, especially at night, when they’re sailing the ship.”

“I thought there was some rule—!” submitted Mrs. Gotch.

“Well, there is—that you’ve got to behave yourself,” Mrs. Peck explained.  “So the Captain told me—he said they have some rule.  He said they have to have, when people are too undignified.”

“Is that the term he used?” I inquired.

“Well, he may have said when they attract too much attention.”

I ventured to discriminate.  “It’s we who attract the attention—by talking about what doesn’t concern us and about what we really don’t know.”

“She said the Captain said he’d tell on her as soon as ever we arrive,” Mrs. Gotch none the less serenely pursued.

“She said—?” I repeated, bewildered.

“Well, he did say so, that he’d think it his duty to inform Mr. Porterfield when he comes on to meet her—if they keep it up in the same way,” said Mrs. Peck.

“Oh they’ll keep it up, don’t you fear!” one of the gentlemen exclaimed.

“Dear madam, the Captain’s having his joke on you,” was, however, my own congruous reply.

“No, he ain’t—he’s right down scandalised.  He says he regards us all as a real family and wants the family not to be downright coarse.”  I felt Mrs. Peck irritated by my controversial tone: she challenged me with considerable spirit.  “How can you say I don’t know it when all the street knows it and has known it for years—for years and years?”  She spoke as if the girl had been engaged at least for twenty.  “What’s she going out for if not to marry him?”

“Perhaps she’s going to see how he looks,” suggested one of the gentlemen.

“He’d look queer—if he knew.”

“Well, I guess he’ll know,” said Mrs. Gotch.

“She’d tell him herself—she wouldn’t be afraid,” the gentleman went on.

“Well she might as well kill him.  He’ll jump overboard,” Mrs. Peck could foretell.

“Jump overboard?” cried Mrs. Gotch as if she hoped then that Mr. Porterfield would be told.

“He has just been waiting for this—for long, long years,” said Mrs. Peck.

“Do you happen to know him?” I asked.

She replied at her convenience.  “No, but I know a lady who does.  Are you going up?”

I had risen from my place—I had not ordered supper.  “I’m going to take a turn before going to bed.”

“Well then you’ll see!”

Outside the saloon I hesitated, for Mrs. Peck’s admonition made me feel for a moment that if I went up I should have entered in a manner into her little conspiracy.  But the night was so warm and splendid that I had been intending to smoke a cigar in the air before going below, and I didn’t see why I should deprive myself of this pleasure in order to seem not to mind Mrs. Peck.  I mounted accordingly and saw a few figures sitting or moving about in the darkness.  The ocean looked black and small, as it is apt to do at night, and the long mass of the ship, with its vague dim wings, seemed to take up a great part of it.  There were more stars than one saw on land and the heavens struck one more than ever as larger than the earth.  Grace Mavis and her companion were not, so far as I perceived at first, among the few passengers who lingered late, and I was glad, because I hated to hear her talked about in the manner of the gossips I had left at supper.  I wished there had been some way to prevent it, but I could think of none but to recommend her privately to reconsider her rule of discretion.  That would be a very delicate business, and perhaps it would be better to begin with Jasper, though that would be delicate too.  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; for though I had taken due note of them, as will already have been gathered, I had taken really no such ferocious, or at least such competent, note as Mrs. Peck.  Nevertheless the probability was that they knew what was thought of them—what naturally would be—and simply didn’t care.  That made our heroine out rather perverse and even rather shameless; and yet somehow if these were her leanings I didn’t dislike her for them.  I don’t know what strange secret excuses I found for her.  I presently indeed encountered, on the spot, a need for any I might have at call, since, just as I was on the point of going below again, after several restless turns and—within the limit where smoking was allowed—as many puffs at a cigar as I cared for, I became aware of a couple of figures settled together behind one of the lifeboats that rested on the deck.  They were so placed as to be visible only to a person going close to the rail and peering a little sidewise.  I don’t think I peered, but as I stood a moment beside the rail my eye was attracted by a dusky object that protruded beyond the boat and that I saw at a second glance to be the tail of a lady’s dress.  I bent forward an instant, but even then I saw very little more; that scarcely mattered however, as I easily concluded that the persons tucked away in so snug a corner were Jasper Nettlepoint and Mr. Porterfield’s intended.  Tucked away was the odious right expression, and I deplored the fact so betrayed for the pitiful bad taste in it.  I immediately turned away, and the next moment found myself face to face with our vessel’s skipper.  I had already had some conversation with him—he had been so good as to invite me, as he had invited Mrs. Nettlepoint and her son and the young lady travelling with them, and also Mrs. Peck, to sit at his table—and had observed with pleasure that his seamanship had the grace, not universal on the Atlantic liners, of a fine-weather manner.

“They don’t waste much time—your friends in there,” he said, nodding in the direction in which he had seen me looking.

“Ah well, they haven’t much to lose.”

“That’s what I mean.  I’m told she hasn’t.”

I wanted to say something exculpatory, but scarcely knew what note to strike.  I could only look vaguely about me at the starry darkness and the sea that seemed to sleep.  “Well, with these splendid nights and this perfect air people are beguiled into late hours.”

“Yes, we want a bit of a blow,” the Captain said.

I demurred.  “How much of one?”

“Enough to clear the decks!”

He was after all rather dry and he went about his business.  He had made me uneasy, and instead of going below I took a few turns more.  The other walkers dropped off pair by pair—they were all men—till at last I was alone.  Then after a little I quitted the field.  Jasper and his companion were still behind their lifeboat.  Personally I greatly preferred our actual conditions, but as I went down I found myself vaguely wishing, in the interest of I scarcely knew what, unless it had been a mere superstitious delicacy, that we might have half a gale.

Miss Mavis turned out, in sea-phrase, early; for the next morning I saw her come up only a short time after I had finished my breakfast, a ceremony over which I contrived not to dawdle.  She was alone and Jasper Nettlepoint, by a rare accident, was not on deck to help her.  I went to meet her—she was encumbered as usual with her shawl, her sun-umbrella and a book—and laid my hands on her chair, placing it near the stern of the ship, where she liked best to be.  But I proposed to her to walk a little before she sat down, and she took my arm after I had put her accessories into the chair.  The deck was clear at that hour and the morning light gay; one had an extravagant sense of good omens and propitious airs.  I forget what we spoke of first, but it was because I felt these things pleasantly; and not to torment my companion nor to test her, that I couldn’t help exclaiming cheerfully after a moment, as I have mentioned having done the first day: “Well, we’re getting on, we’re getting on!”

“Oh yes, I count every hour.”

“The last days always go quicker,” I said, “and the last hours—!”

“Well, the last hours?” she asked; for I had instinctively checked myself.

“Oh one’s so glad then that it’s almost the same as if one had arrived.  Yet we ought to be grateful when the elements have been so kind to us,” I added.  “I hope you’ll have enjoyed the voyage.”

She hesitated ever so little.  “Yes, much more than I expected.”

“Did you think it would be very bad?”

“Horrible, horrible!”

The tone of these words was strange, but I hadn’t much time to reflect upon it, for turning round at that moment I saw Jasper Nettlepoint come toward us.  He was still distant by the expanse of the white deck, and I couldn’t help taking him in from head to foot as he drew nearer.  I don’t know what rendered me on this occasion particularly sensitive to the impression, but it struck me that I saw him as I had never seen him before, saw him, thanks to the intense sea-light, inside and out, in his personal, his moral totality.  It was a quick, a vivid revelation; if it only lasted a moment it had a simplifying certifying effect.  He was intrinsically a pleasing apparition, with his handsome young face and that marked absence of any drop in his personal arrangements which, more than any one I’ve ever seen, he managed to exhibit on shipboard.  He had none of the appearance of wearing out old clothes that usually prevails there, but dressed quite straight, as I heard some one say.  This gave him an assured, almost a triumphant air, as of a young man who would come best out of any awkwardness.  I expected to feel my companion’s hand loosen itself on my arm, as an indication that now she must go to him, and I was almost surprised she didn’t drop me.  We stopped as we met and Jasper bade us a friendly good-morning.  Of course the remark that we had another lovely day was already indicated, and it led him to exclaim, in the manner of one to whom criticism came easily, “Yes, but with this sort of thing consider what one of the others would do!”

“One of the other ships?”

“We should be there now, or at any rate tomorrow.”

“Well then I’m glad it isn’t one of the others”—and I smiled at the young lady on my arm.  My words offered her a chance to say something appreciative, and gave him one even more; but neither Jasper nor Grace Mavis took advantage of the occasion.  What they did do, I noticed, was to look at each other rather fixedly an instant; after which she turned her eyes silently to the sea.  She made no movement and uttered no sound, contriving to give me the sense that she had all at once become perfectly passive, that she somehow declined responsibility.  We remained standing there with Jasper in front of us, and if the contact of her arm didn’t suggest I should give her up, neither did it intimate that we had better pass on.  I had no idea of giving her up, albeit one of the things I seemed to read just then into Jasper’s countenance was a fine implication that she was his property.  His eyes met mine for a moment, and it was exactly as if he had said to me “I know what you think, but I don’t care a rap.” What I really thought was that he was selfish beyond the limits: that was the substance of my little revelation.  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.  These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to prevail.  He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him—that was in his type; but he wasn’t in the least in love with Grace Mavis.  Among the reflexions I quickly made this was the one that was most to the point.  There was a degree of awkwardness, after a minute, in the way we were planted there, though the apprehension of it was doubtless not in the least with himself.  To dissimulate my own share in it, at any rate, I asked him how his mother might be.

His answer was unexpected.  “You had better go down and see.”

“Not till Miss Mavis is tired of me.”

She said nothing to this and I made her walk again.  For some minutes she failed to speak; then, rather abruptly, she began: “I’ve seen you talking to that lady who sits at our table—the one who has so many children.”

“Mrs. Peck?  Oh yes, one has inevitably talked with Mrs. Peck.”

“Do you know her very well?”

“Only as one knows people at sea.  An acquaintance makes itself.  It doesn’t mean very much.”

“She doesn’t speak to me—she might if she wanted.”

“That’s just what she says of you—that you might speak to her.”

“Oh if she’s waiting for that!” said my companion with a laugh.  Then she added: “She lives in our street, nearly opposite.”

“Precisely.  That’s the reason why she thinks you coy or haughty.  She has seen you so often and seems to know so much about you.”