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Updated: May 29, 2025
'Why, he came at the last just to please me, said Mrs. Nettlepoint. I was silent a moment. 'Are you sure it was for your sake? 'Ah, perhaps it was for yours! 'When he went out on the balcony with that girl perhaps she asked him to come, I continued. 'Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him? 'I don't know yet, but perhaps I shall know later.
And if things get very bad you've one resource left," I added. She wondered. "To lock her up in her cabin?" "No to come out of yours." "Ah never, never! If it takes that to save her she must be lost. Besides, what good would it do? If I were to go above she could come below." "Yes, but you could keep Jasper with you." "Could I?" Mrs. Nettlepoint demanded in the manner of a woman who knew her son.
As I looked after her there came to me a perverse, rather a provoking consciousness of having during the previous days, and especially in speaking to Jasper Nettlepoint, interfered with her situation in some degree to her loss. There was an odd pang for me in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I couldn't have kept my hands off.
Nettlepoint reappeared in a very few minutes, but the interval had sufficed to establish a communication really copious for the occasion between the strangers and the unknown gentleman whom they found in possession, hat and stick in hand. This was not my doing for what had I to go upon? and still less was it the doing of the younger and the more indifferent, or less courageous, lady.
I, at any rate, dozed a great deal, lying on my rug with a French novel, and when I opened my eyes I generally saw Jasper Nettlepoint passing with his mother's protégée on his arm. Somehow at these moments, between sleeping and waking, I had an inconsequent sense that they were a part of the French novel.
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 latitude 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's public enough that Miss Mavis and Mr. Nettlepoint are always together, but it isn't in the least public that she's going to be married." "Why how can you say when the very sailors know it! The Captain knows it and all the officers know it. They see them there, especially at night, when they're sailing the ship." "I thought there was some rule !" submitted Mrs. Gotch.
"Here he comes, he'll tell you for himself much better than I can pretend to." Jasper Nettlepoint at that moment joined us, dressed in white flannel and carrying a large fan. "Well, my dear, have you decided?" his mother continued with no scant irony. "He hasn't yet made up his mind, and we sail at ten o'clock!" "What does it matter when my things are put up?" the young man said.
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.
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 without moving.
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