Part 3

“Well, I declare you’re worse than Gracie,” Mrs. Mavis commented. “She was first one thing and then the other—but only about up to three o’clock yesterday.”

“Excuse me—won’t you take something?” Jasper inquired of Gracie; who however still declined, as if to make up for her mother’s copious consommation. I found myself quite aware that the two ladies would do well to take leave, the question of Mrs. Nettlepoint’s good will being so satisfactorily settled and the meeting of the morrow at the ship so near at hand and I went so far as to judge that their protracted stay, with their hostess visibly in a fidget, gave the last proof of their want of breeding. Miss Grace after all then was not such an improvement on her mother, for she easily might have taken the initiative of departure, in spite of Mrs. Mavis’s evident “game” of making her own absorption of refreshment last as long as possible. I watched the girl with increasing interest; I couldn’t help asking myself a question or two about her and even perceiving already (in a dim and general way) that rather marked embarrassment, or at least anxiety attended her. Wasn’t it complicating that she should have needed, by remaining long enough, to assuage a certain suspense, to learn whether or no Jasper were going to sail? Hadn’t something particular passed between them on the occasion or at the period to which we had caught their allusion, and didn’t she really not know her mother was bringing her to his mother’s, though she apparently had thought it well not to betray knowledge? Such things were symptomatic—though indeed one scarce knew of what—on the part of a young lady betrothed to that curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add that she gave me no further warrant for wonder than was conveyed in her all tacitly and covertly encouraging her mother to linger. Somehow I had a sense that she was conscious of the indecency of this. I got up myself to go, but Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement wouldn’t be taken as a hint, and I felt she wished me not to leave my fellow visitors on her hands. Jasper complained of the closeness of the room, said that it was not a night to sit in a room—one ought to be out in the air, under the sky. He denounced the windows that overlooked the water for not opening upon a balcony or a terrace, until his mother, whom he hadn’t yet satisfied about his telegram, reminded him that there was a beautiful balcony in front, with room for a dozen people. She assured him we would go and sit there if it would please him.

“It will be nice and cool tomorrow, when we steam into the great ocean,” said Miss Mavis, expressing with more vivacity than she had yet thrown into any of her utterances my own thought of half an hour before. Mrs. Nettlepoint replied that it would probably be freezing cold, and her son murmured that he would go and try the drawing-room balcony and report upon it. Just as he was turning away he said, smiling, to Miss Mavis: “Won’t you come with me and see if it’s pleasant?”

“Oh well, we had better not stay all night!” her mother exclaimed, but still without moving. The girl moved, after a moment’s hesitation;—she rose and accompanied Jasper to the other room. I saw how her slim tallness showed to advantage as she walked, and that she looked well as she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising—I scarcely knew why, for the act in itself was simple enough—in her acceptance of such a plea, and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go, so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to go so that I mightn’t. This doubtless made the young lady’s absence appear to us longer than it really was—it was probably very brief. Her mother moreover, I think, had now a vague lapse from ease. Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to serve his companion with our lucent syrup, and he took occasion to remark that it was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze being from that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler, that from my hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs. Nettlepoint said: “Well, if it’s so pleasant there we had better go ourselves.” So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two young people coming in from the balcony. I was to wonder, in the light of later things, exactly how long they had occupied together a couple of the set of cane chairs garnishing the place in summer. If it had been but five minutes that only made subsequent events more curious. “We must go, mother,” Miss Mavis immediately said; and a moment after, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with them to the door and as soon as they had got off Mrs. Nettlepoint quite richly exhaled her impression. “Ah but’ll she be a bore—she’ll be a bore of bores!”

“Not through talking too much, surely.”

“An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular pose; it’s coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea—that will act on one’s nerves!”

“I don’t know what she tries to be, but she succeeds in being very handsome.”

“So much the better for you. I’ll leave her to you, for I shall be shut up. I like her being placed under my ‘care’!” my friend cried.

“She’ll be under Jasper’s,” I remarked.

“Ah he won’t go,” she wailed—“I want it too much!”

“But I didn’t see it that way. I have an idea he’ll go.”

“Why didn’t he tell me so then—when he came in?”

“He was diverted by that young woman—a beautiful unexpected girl sitting there.”

“Diverted from his mother and her fond hope?—his mother trembling for his decision?”

“Well”—I pieced it together—“she’s an old friend, older than we know. It was a meeting after a long separation.”

“Yes, such a lot of them as he does know!” Mrs. Nettlepoint sighed.

“Such a lot of them?”

“He has so many female friends—in the most varied circles.”

“Well, we can close round her then,” I returned; “for I on my side know, or used to know, her young man.”

“Her intended?”—she had a light of relief for this.

“The very one she’s going out to. He can’t, by the way,” it occurred to me, “be very young now.”

“How odd it sounds—her muddling after him!” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

I was going to reply that it wasn’t odd if you knew Mr. Porterfield, but I reflected that that perhaps only made it odder. I told my companion briefly who he was—that I had met him in the old Paris days, when I believed for a fleeting hour that I could learn to paint, when I lived with the jeunesse des écoles; and her comment on this was simply: “Well, he had better have come out for her!”

“Perhaps so. She looked to me as she sat there as if, she might change her mind at the last moment.”

“About her marriage?

“About sailing. But she won’t change now.”

Jasper came back, and his mother instantly challenged him. “Well, are you going?”

“Yes, I shall go”—he was finally at peace about it. “I’ve got my telegram.”