"I suppose the young ass tried to make love to her. He's fool enough for anything," said Jimmy. But he reverted. "I still can't see why you took the car out. Anybody but an idiot would have known it was going to rain."
BOOK III
HIS BOOK
XII
At this period, and even now when I go back to it, I am completely puzzled by Jevons. Here was a man who professed to understand his wife, to know what she was feeling and thinking in every moment of her existence; he would tell you that a man was a fool if he couldn't get the woman he wanted; and yet, having got her, he didn't seem to know in the most elementary way how to keep her. He didn't seem to care. He adored her, and yet he didn't seem to care. I believe he knew that she was leaving him, that she had left him; and yet, here he was, treating her departure as if it didn't matter, as if it were the most natural and reasonable thing in the world, and lashing himself into a fury about his wretched motor-car. And he was treating the dangerous element in the case, Charlie Thesiger, as if it didn't matter either; as if it didn't exist. He must have known we'd taken his car out to bring his wife back—he knew we wouldn't have touched the beastly thing for anything short of saving her life or his honour; and yet he had flown into a passion and sworn at his chauffeur because we'd taken it. He adored his wife and yet he behaved as if she were of no importance compared with the god he'd made of his motor-car.
All that evening, I remember, he was absorbed in the solitary problem of how he could save his god from further outrages. He settled it towards midnight by saying that he'd buy another car that we could do what we damn-pleased with—a car that wouldn't matter—that you could take out in all weathers.
"I'll not have that black-and-white car used as it was used this afternoon," he said. And after lashing himself up again he ended quite sweetly by saying, "It's my fault, Furny. I ought to have had two cars all along."
I said it would be a good plan, if a black-and-white car was only to be looked at.
He admitted (with a recrudescence of his old childlike innocence) that he liked looking at it. I've no doubt he said it made him feel something, but I forget what.
But when the morning came he wouldn't hear of my going. I was to stay out my fortnight. It was a fine day and the dust was laid; perhaps he could take me for a spin across the Downs to the coast or somewhere. He'd send Parker up to town to look after Nurse and Baby and the luggage. He didn't want, he said, to be left alone.