“That’s just what I’m wondering!” And I turned away and went below with the foolish but innocent satisfaction of thinking I had mystified him.
IV
“I don’t know what to do, and you must help me,” Mrs. Nettlepoint said to me, that evening, as soon as I looked in.
“I’ll do what I can—but what’s the matter?”
“She has been crying here and going on—she has quite upset me.”
“Crying? She doesn’t look like that.”
“Exactly, and that’s what startled me. She came in to see me this afternoon, as she has done before, and we talked of the weather and the run of the ship and the manners of the stewardess and other such trifles, and then suddenly, in the midst of it, as she sat there, on no visible pretext, she burst into tears. I asked her what ailed her and tried to comfort her, but she didn’t explain; she said it was nothing, the effect of the sea, of the monotony, of the excitement, of leaving home. I asked her if it had anything to do with her prospects, with her marriage; whether she finds as this draws near that her heart isn’t in it. I told her she mustn’t be nervous, that I could enter into that—in short I said what I could. All she replied was that she is nervous, very nervous, but that it was already over; and then she jumped up and kissed me and went away. Does she look as if she has been crying?” Mrs. Nettlepoint wound up.
“How can I tell, when she never quits that horrid veil? It’s as if she were ashamed to show her face.”
“She’s keeping it for Liverpool. But I don’t like such incidents,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint. “I think I ought to go above.”
“And is that where you want me to help you?”