Part 6

“What put that into your head?”

“It isn’t in my head—it’s in my heart, my cœur de mère. We guess those things. You think he’s selfish. I could see it last night.”

“Dear lady,” I contrived promptly enough to reply, “I’ve no general ideas about him at all. He’s just one of the phenomena I am going to observe. He seems to me a very fine young man. However,” I added, “since you’ve mentioned last night I’ll admit that I thought he rather tantalised you. He played with your suspense.”

“Why he came at the last just to please me,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

I was silent a little. “Are you sure it was for your sake?”

“Ah, perhaps it was for yours!”

I bore up, however, against this thrust, characteristic of perfidious woman when you presume to side with her against a fond tormentor. “When he went out on the balcony with that girl,” I found assurance to suggest, “perhaps she asked him to come for hers.”

“Perhaps she did. But why should he do everything she asks him—such as she is?”

“I don’t know yet, but perhaps I shall know later. Not that he’ll tell me—for he’ll never tell me anything: he’s not,” I consistently opined, “one of those who tell.”

“If she didn’t ask him, what you say is a great wrong to her,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“Yes, if she didn’t. But you say that to protect Jasper—not to protect her,” I smiled.

“You are cold-blooded—it’s uncanny!” my friend exclaimed.

“Ah this is nothing yet! Wait a while—you’ll see. At sea in general I’m awful—I exceed the limits. If I’ve outraged her in thought I’ll jump overboard. There are ways of asking—a man doesn’t need to tell a woman that—without the crude words.”

“I don’t know what you imagine between them,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“Well, nothing,” I allowed, “but what was visible on the surface. It transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends.”

“He met her at some promiscuous party—I asked him about it afterwards. She’s not a person”—my hostess was confident—“whom he could ever think of seriously.”

“That’s exactly what I believe.”

“You don’t observe—you know—you imagine,” Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to argue. “How do you reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool on an errand of love?”

Oh I wasn’t to be caught that way! “I don’t for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment. She’s going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that’s not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the gentleman she’s engaged to.”

“Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most abandoned of her sex would still observe. You apparently judge her capable—on no evidence—of violating them.”

“Ah you don’t understand the shades of things,” I returned. “Decencies and violations, dear lady—there’s no need for such heavy artillery! I can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words: ‘I’m in dreadful spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant for you too.’”

“And why is she in dreadful spirits?”

“She isn’t!” I replied, laughing.

My poor friend wondered. “What then is she doing?”

“She’s walking with your son.”

Mrs. Nettlepoint for a moment said nothing; then she treated me to another inconsequence. “Ah she’s horrid!”

“No, she’s charming!” I protested.

“You mean she’s ‘curious’?”