"Oh you humbug!" she replied. But she was of course delighted.
CHAPTER II
People usually spend the first hours of a voyage in squeezing themselves into their cabins, taking their little precautions, either so excessive or so inadequate, wondering how they can pa.s.s so many days in such a hole and asking idiotic questions of the stewards, who appear in comparison rare men of the world. My own initiations were rapid, as became an old sailor, and so, it seemed, were Miss Mavis"s, for when I mounted to the deck at the end of half an hour I found her there alone, in the stern of the ship, her eyes on the dwindling continent. It dwindled very fast for so big a place. I accosted her, having had no conversation with her amid the crowd of leave-takers and the muddle of farewells before we put off; we talked a little about the boat, our fellow-pa.s.sengers and our prospects, and then I said: "I think you mentioned last night a name I know--that of Mr. Porterfield."
"Oh no I didn"t!" she answered very straight while she smiled at me through her closely-drawn veil.
"Then it was your mother."
"Very likely it was my mother." And she continued to smile as if I ought to have known the difference.
"I venture to allude to him because I"ve an idea I used to know him," I went on.
"Oh I see." And beyond this remark she appeared to take no interest; she left it to me to make any connexion.
"That is if it"s the same one." It struck me as feeble to say nothing more; so I added "My Mr. Porterfield was called David."
"Well, so is ours." "Ours" affected me as clever.
"I suppose I shall see him again if he"s to meet you at Liverpool," I continued.
"Well, it will be bad if he doesn"t."
It was too soon for me to have the idea that it would be bad if he did: that only came later. So I remarked that, not having seen him for so many years, it was very possible I shouldn"t know him.
"Well, I"ve not seen him for a considerable time, but I expect I shall know him all the same."
"Oh with you it"s different," I returned with harmlessly bright significance. "Hasn"t he been back since those days?"
"I don"t know," she st.u.r.dily professed, "what days you mean."
"When I knew him in Paris--ages ago. He was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He was studying architecture."
"Well, he"s studying it still," said Grace Mavis.
"Hasn"t he learned it yet?"
"I don"t know what he has learned. I shall see." Then she added for the benefit of my perhaps undue levity: "Architecture"s very difficult and he"s tremendously thorough."
"Oh yes, I remember that. He was an admirable worker. But he must have become quite a foreigner if it"s so many years since he has been at home."
She seemed to regard this proposition at first as complicated; but she did what she could for me. "Oh he"s not changeable. If he were changeable--"
Then, however, she paused. I daresay she had been going to observe that if he were changeable he would long ago have given her up. After an instant she went on: "He wouldn"t have stuck so to his profession. You can"t make much by it."
I sought to attenuate her rather odd maidenly grimness. "It depends on what you call much."
"It doesn"t make you rich."
"Oh of course you"ve got to practise it--and to practise it long."
"Yes--so Mr. Porterfield says."
Something in the way she uttered these words made me laugh--they were so calm an implication that the gentleman in question didn"t live up to his principles. But I checked myself, asking her if she expected to remain in Europe long--to what one might call settle.
"Well, it will be a good while if it takes me as long to come back as it has taken me to go out."
"And I think your mother said last night that it was your first visit."
Miss Mavis, in her deliberate way, met my eyes. "Didn"t mother talk!"
"It was all very interesting."
She continued to look at me. "You don"t think that," she then simply stated.
"What have I to gain then by saying it?"
"Oh men have always something to gain."
"You make me in that case feel a terrible failure! I hope at any rate that it gives you pleasure," I went on, "the idea of seeing foreign lands."
"Mercy--I should think so!"
This was almost genial, and it cheered me proportionately. "It"s a pity our ship"s not one of the fast ones, if you"re impatient."
She was silent a little after which she brought out: "Oh I guess it"ll be fast enough!"
That evening I went in to see Mrs. Nettlepoint and sat on her sea-trunk, which was pulled out from under the berth to accommodate me. It was nine o"clock but not quite dark, as our northward course had already taken us into the lat.i.tude of the longer days. She had made her nest admirably and now rested from her labours; she lay upon her sofa in a dressing-gown and a cap that became her. It was her regular practice to spend the voyage in her cabin, which smelt positively good--such was the refinement of her art; and she had a secret peculiar to herself for keeping her port open without shipping seas. She hated what she called the mess of the ship and the idea, if she should go above, of meeting stewards with plates of supererogatory food. She professed to be content with her situation--we promised to lend each other books and I a.s.sured her familiarly that I should be in and out of her room a dozen times a day--pitying me for having to mingle in society. She judged this a limited privilege, for on the deck before we left the wharf she had taken a view of our fellow-pa.s.sengers.
"Oh I"m an inveterate, almost a professional observer," I replied, "and with that vice I"m as well occupied as an old woman in the sun with her knitting. It makes me, in any situation, just inordinately and submissively _see_ things. I shall see them even here and shall come down very often and tell you about them. You"re not interested today, but you will be tomorrow, for a ship"s a great school of gossip. You won"t believe the number of researches and problems you"ll be engaged in by the middle of the voyage."
"I? Never in the world!--lying here with my nose in a book and not caring a straw."
"You"ll partic.i.p.ate at second hand. You"ll see through my eyes, hang upon my lips, take sides, feel pa.s.sions, all sorts of sympathies and indignations. I"ve an idea," I further developed, "that your young lady"s the person on board who will interest me most."
""Mine" indeed! She hasn"t been near me since we left the dock."
"There you are--you do feel she owes you something. Well," I added, "she"s very curious."
"You"ve such cold-blooded terms!" Mrs. Nettlepoint wailed. "Elle ne sait pas se conduire; she ought to have come to ask about me."
"Yes, since you"re under her care," I laughed. "As for her not knowing how to behave--well, that"s exactly what we shall see."
"You will, but not I! I wash my hands of her."