Part 19

“He comes and goes—it’s the same thing.”

“He goes more than he comes. But n’en parlons plus; I haven’t gained anything. I don’t admire the sea at all—what is it but a magnified water-tank? I shan’t come up again.”

“I’ve an idea she’ll stay in her cabin now,” I said. “She tells me she has one to herself.” Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that she might do as she liked, and I repeated to her the little conversation I had had with Jasper.

She listened with interest, but “Marry her? Mercy!” she exclaimed. “I like the fine freedom with which you give my son away.”

“You wouldn’t accept that?”

“Why in the world should I?”

“Then I don’t understand your position.”

“Good heavens, I have none! It isn’t a position to be tired of the whole thing.”

“You wouldn’t accept it even in the case I put to him—that of her believing she had been encouraged to throw over poor Porterfield?”

“Not even—not even. Who can know what she believes?”

It brought me back to where we had started from. “Then you do exactly what I said you would—you show me a fine example of maternal immorality.”

“Maternal fiddlesticks! It was she who began it.”

“Then why did you come up today?” I asked.

“To keep you quiet.”

Mrs. Nettlepoint’s dinner was served on deck, but I went into the saloon. Jasper was there, but not Grace Mavis, as I had half-expected. I sought to learn from him what had become of her, if she were ill—he must have thought I had an odious pertinacity—and he replied that he knew nothing whatever about her. Mrs. Peck talked to me—or tried to—of Mrs. Nettlepoint, expatiating on the great interest it had been to see her; only it was a pity she didn’t seem more sociable. To this I made answer that she was to be excused on the score of health.

“You don’t mean to say she’s sick on this pond?”

“No, she’s unwell in another way.”

“I guess I know the way!” Mrs. Peck laughed. And then she added: “I suppose she came up to look after her pet.”

“Her pet?” I set my face.

“Why Miss Mavis. We’ve talked enough about that.”

“Quite enough. I don’t know what that has had to do with it. Miss Mavis, so far as I’ve noticed, hasn’t been above today.”

“Oh it goes on all the same.”

“It goes on?”

“Well, it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“Well, you’ll see. There’ll be a row.”

This wasn’t comforting, but I didn’t repeat it on deck. Mrs. Nettlepoint returned early to her cabin, professing herself infinitely spent. I didn’t know what “went on,” but Grace Mavis continued not to show. I looked in late, for a good-night to my friend, and learned from her that the girl hadn’t been to her. She had sent the stewardess to her room for news, to see if she were ill and needed assistance, and the stewardess had come back with mere mention of her not being there. I went above after this; the night was not quite so fair and the deck almost empty. In a moment Jasper Nettlepoint and our young lady moved past me together. “I hope you’re better!” I called after her; and she tossed me over her shoulder—“Oh yes, I had a headache; but the air now does me good!”

I went down again—I was the only person there but they, and I wanted not to seem to dog their steps—and, returning to Mrs. Nettlepoint’s room, found (her door was open to the little passage) that she was still sitting up.