looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss Mavis was interesting. The candlelight enabled me to see that though not in the very first flower of her youth she was still fresh and handsome. Her eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale, and she held up her head as if, with its thick braids and everything else involved in it, it were an appurtenance she wasn’t ashamed of. If her mother was excellent and common she was not common—not at least flagrantly so—and perhaps also not excellent. At all events she wouldn’t be, in appearance at least, a dreary appendage; which in the case of a person “hooking on” was always something gained. Was it because something of a romantic or pathetic interest usually attaches to a good creature who has been the victim of a “long engagement” that this young lady made an impression on me from the first—favoured as I had been so quickly with this glimpse of her history? I could charge her certainly with no positive appeal; she only held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected whatever suggestion might have forced itself upon me that the spirit within her was dead—the spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to carry out the letter.
What corrected it less, I must add, was an odd recollection which gathered vividness as I listened to it—a mental association evoked by the name of Mr. Porterfield. Surely I had a personal impression, over-smeared and confused, of the gentleman who was waiting at Liverpool, or who presently would be, for Mrs. Nettlepoint’s protégée. I had met him, known him, some time, somewhere, somehow, on the other side. Wasn’t he studying something, very hard, somewhere—probably in Paris—ten years before, and didn’t he make extraordinarily neat drawings, linear and architectural? Didn’t he go to a table d’hôte, at two francs twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn’t he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say “I’ve trustworthy information that that’s the way they do it in the Highlands”? Wasn’t he exemplary to positive irritation, and very poor, poor to positive oppression, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan would be what he slept under at night? Wasn’t he working very hard still, and wouldn’t he be, in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he had found his feet or knew enough to launch out? He would be a man of long preparations—Miss Mavis’s white face seemed to speak to one of that. It struck me that if I had been in love with her I shouldn’t have needed to lay such a train for the closer approach. Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the École des Beaux Arts. This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten minutes I had an odd sense of knowing—by implication—a good deal about the young lady.
Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and telling how “low” Mr. Mavis had been. At this period the girl’s silence struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated her mother’s free flow—she was enough of an “improvement” to measure that—and partly because she was too distressed by the idea of leaving her infirm, her perhaps dying father. It wasn’t indistinguishable that they were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau. For Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had moreover greatly to change. If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his profession I had encountered no edifice he had reared—his reputation hadn’t come to my ears.
Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive person at sea: she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis, but not prepared to pace the deck with her, to struggle with her, to accompany her to meals. To this the girl replied that she would trouble her little, she was sure: she was convinced she should prove a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back. Her mother scoffed at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I interposed to the effect that if I might be trusted, as a tame bachelor fairly sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it. Both the ladies thanked me for this—taking my professions with no sort of abatement—and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home. She asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else in our party, and when our hostess mentioned her son—there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn’t it absurd?) he hadn’t decided yet—she returned with extraordinary candour: “Oh dear, I do hope he’ll go: that would be so lovely for Grace.”
Somehow the words made me think of poor Mr. Porterfield’s tartan, especially as Jasper Nettlepoint strolled in again at that moment. His mother at once challenged him: it was ten o’clock; had he by chance made up his great mind? Apparently he failed to hear her, being in the first place surprised at the strange ladies and then struck with the fact that one of them wasn’t strange. The young man, after a slight hesitation, greeted Miss Mavis with a handshake and a “Oh good-evening, how do you do?” He didn’t utter her name—which I could see he must have forgotten; but she immediately pronounced his, availing herself of the American girl’s discretion to “present” him to her mother.
“Well, you might have told me you knew him all this time!” that lady jovially cried. Then she had an equal confidence for Mrs. Nettlepoint. “It would have saved me a worry—an acquaintance already begun.”
“Ah my son’s acquaintances!” our hostess murmured.
“Yes, and my daughter’s too!” Mrs. Mavis gaily echoed. “Mrs. Allen didn’t tell us you were going,” she continued to the young man.
“She’d have been clever if she had been able to!” Mrs. Nettlepoint sighed.
“Dear mother, I have my telegram,” Jasper remarked, looking at Grace Mavis.
“I know you very little,” the girl said, returning his observation.
“I’ve danced with you at some ball—for some sufferers by something or other.”
“I think it was an inundation or a big fire,” she a little languidly smiled. “But it was a long time ago—and I haven’t seen you since.”
“I’ve been in far countries—to my loss. I should have said it was a big fire.”
“It was at the Horticultural Hall. I didn’t remember your name,” said Grace Mavis.
“That’s very unkind of you, when I recall vividly that you had a pink dress.”
“Oh I remember that dress—your strawberry tarletan: you looked lovely in it!” Mrs. Mavis broke out. “You must get another just like it—on the other side.”
“Yes, your daughter looked charming in it,” said Jasper Nettlepoint. Then he added to the girl: “Yet you mentioned my name to your mother.”
“It came back to me—seeing you here. I had no idea this was your home.”
“Well, I confess it isn’t, much. Oh there are some drinks!”—he approached the tray and its glasses.
“Indeed there are and quite delicious”—Mrs. Mavis largely wiped her mouth.
“Won’t you have another then?—a pink one, like your daughter’s gown.”
“With pleasure, sir. Oh do see them over,” Mrs. Mavis continued, accepting from the young man’s hand a third tumbler.
“My mother and that gentleman? Surely they can take care of themselves,” he freely pleaded.
“Then my daughter—she has a claim as an old friend.”
But his mother had by this time interposed. “Jasper, what does your telegram say?”
He
