Part 6 (1/2)
”Oh it's none of my business!” I easily made out, leaving the terrible little woman and going above. This profession, I grant, was not perfectly attuned to my real idea, or rather my real idea was not quite in harmony with my profession. The very first thing I did on reaching the deck was to notice that Miss Mavis was pacing it on Jasper Nettlepoint's arm and that whatever beauty she might have lost, according to Mrs. Peck's insinuation, she still kept enough to make one's eyes follow her. She had put on a crimson hood, which was very becoming to her and which she wore for the rest of the voyage. She walked very well, with long steps, and I remember that at this moment the sea had a gentle evening swell which made the great s.h.i.+p dip slowly, rhythmically, giving a movement that was graceful to graceful pedestrians and a more awkward one to the awkward. It was the loveliest hour of a fine day, the clear early evening, with the glow of the sunset in the air and a purple colour on the deep. It was always present to me that so the waters ploughed by the Homeric heroes must have looked. I became conscious on this particular occasion moreover that Grace Mavis would for the rest of the voyage be the most visible thing in one's range, the figure that would count most in the composition of groups. She couldn't help it, poor girl; nature had made her conspicuous--important, as the painters say.
She paid for it by the corresponding exposure, the danger that people would, as I had said to Mrs. Peck, enter into her affairs.
Jasper Nettlepoint went down at certain times to see his mother, and I watched for one of these occasions--on the third day out--and took advantage of it to go and sit by Miss Mavis. She wore a light blue veil drawn tightly over her face, so that if the smile with which she greeted me rather lacked intensity I could account for it partly by that.
”Well, we're getting on--we're getting on,” I said cheerfully, looking at the friendly twinkling sea.
”Are we going very fast?”
”Not fast, but steadily. _Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_--do you know German?”
”Well, I've studied it--some.”
”It will be useful to you over there when you travel.”
”Well yes, if we do. But I don't suppose we shall much. Mr. Nettlepoint says we ought,” my young woman added in a moment.
”Ah of course _he_ thinks so. He has been all over the world.”
”Yes, he has described some of the places. They must be wonderful. I didn't know I should like it so much.”
”But it isn't 'Europe' yet!” I laughed.
Well, she didn't care if it wasn't. ”I mean going on this way. I could go on for ever--for ever and ever.”
”Ah you know it's not always like this,” I hastened to mention.
”Well, it's better than Boston.”
”It isn't so good as Paris,” I still more portentously noted.
”Oh I know all about Paris. There's no freshness in that. I feel as if I had been there all the time.”
”You mean you've heard so much of it?”
”Oh yes, nothing else for ten years.”
I had come to talk with Miss Mavis because she was attractive, but I had been rather conscious of the absence of a good topic, not feeling at liberty to revert to Mr. Porterfield. She hadn't encouraged me, when I spoke to her as we were leaving Boston, to go on with the history of my acquaintance with this gentleman; and yet now, unexpectedly, she appeared to imply--it was doubtless one of the disparities mentioned by Mrs.
Nettlepoint--that he might be glanced at without indelicacy.
”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 rea.s.suringly.
”Why Mr. Nettlepoint says it's regular mean.”
”And to what does he apply that expression?”