"Why not?" demanded Mademoiselle Narron. "Is affection such a sin? How can one person help another without affection?"
Rudyard rubbed his forehead. "I don't know. I'm afraid I'm rather confused."
Mademoiselle Narron laid one mighty arm around his shoulders. In her green evening shoes, she was at least am inch taller than he was, and apart from confusing him, she made hum feel indescribably puny. Perhaps, when it came down to it, that was exactly what attracted him towards her with such irresistible strength. Perhaps, at this moment, he needed nothing more than a muscular Earth Mother, die Herrschende Erdemutter, to help him to overcome his bitter sense of loss about Toy and to reinflate his collapsed self-confidence. The only problem was, he was afraid of Mademoiselle Narron, and even more afraid of what he felt for her. We can all admire Niagara Falls, but very few of us actually want to go over them in a barrel.
"Of course you are confused," Mademoiselle Narron told him. "I am confused, too. It is desperately confusing to be rejected. But all I hope is that in our confusion we can cling to each other, and give each other comfort."
"I don't know," said Rudyard. He took out a -cigarette, tapped it on his thumbnail, and lit it, blowing the smoke out of the side of his mouth so that it wouldn't go into Mademoiselle Narron's face. "I think that it's better if we don't go on meeting each other. Better for both of us."
Beneath their feet, the Arcadia's deck was rolling—hesitating—and rolling again. There was a sense of time and destiny passing in the night. Whether the portents of astrology were true or not, the vivid stars wheeled wonderfully above the Arcadia's line of passage, and the separate fates of her passengers were changed with each rising and setting star.
Rudyard said, "I'm married, you know."
"Of course you are," said Mademoiselle Narron. "I saw your wedding-band. But marriage is all nonsense, don't you think, when you come down to it?"
"You've talking to some of our American passengers, haven't you?"
Mademoiselle Narron curled the ends of her gingery hair around her fingers. "What of it? They are mostly very sharp, very witty. They call Sir Peregrine le grand fromage."
"Le gran fromage? You mean the big cheese?" Rudyard couldn't help laughing.
"There," smiled Mademoiselle Narron. "I amused you. I cannot be so bad for you."
Rudyard, still grinning, breathed out smoke. "No, mademoiselle, I don't think that you are. Perhaps you are just what I need."
"Then you will accept my invitation to come to my stateroom for coffee and liqueurs?"
"That should be my line," said Rudyard.
Mademoiselle Narron twirled around the promenade deck with surprising lightness and style, her toes pointed like a prima ballerina's. "It doesn't matter who seduces whom," she sang. "If there is affection and honesty, then who cares?"
"You're seducing me?"
Mademoiselle Narron stopped in mid-pirouette. "Of course. Do you think that we can really help each other if we don't make love?"
Rudyard felt the Arcadia dip and roll, nosing into new currents. It was one-fifteen in the morning, and she was passing the Fastnet Rock, on the southern tip of Ireland, before heading out into open ocean. From here to New York, there was nothing but seawater. For a moment Rudyard turned away, not angrily or temperamentally, but only to hold on to the rail and let the deep thrumming of 50,000 horsepower vibrate through his fingers and his bones and his soul. This was a ship with the power and the grace of a classic racehorse. This was a ship that should have been his.
"You'll come?" asked Mademoiselle Narron.
A steward passed between them with a half-bottle of Pommery champagne and a Welsh rarebit on a silver tray. Rudyard waited until the steward was out of earshot before he said, "Louise? You don't mind if I call you Louise?"
"You'll come?"
Rudyard nodded, not speaking in case the heavens heard him committing himself. He was still under the same skies as Toy, after all; and he could still picture quite clearly the gentle flatness of her Chinese face, and her tiny dark-nippled breasts, and that childlike mound of Venus on which no hairs grew. He could still remember her saying, "Heaven and earth are not ruthful; to them, the ten thousand things are but as straw dogs." She had been quoting Lao-Tzu's Tao-te-ching. Rudyard hadn't understood a word of it, not a single word. But, while he was here on this brightly-lit promenade deck with Louise Narron, Toy was probably sleeping with her lover Laurence, and not dreaming of Rudyard even for a moment. Maybe that was justification enough for anything.
"You'll forgive my hesitation," he said. "It isn't meant as an insult."
"I am not in any position to forgive you," replied Mademoiselle Narron. "I cannot give you absolution, Rudyard, any more than I am seeking absolution in return. I am simply seeking reassurance and comfort."
Rudyard said, "Yes, well," and crushed his cigarette out underfoot. If Sir Peregrine had seen him drop a lighted cigarette on the deck, it would have meant a ten-minute lecture; and he would never have done it aboard his own Aurora. But tonight was different. Tonight was a night when the rules didn't count. At least, they didn't count if you were brave enough not to want them to.
Once inside her stateroom, Mademoiselle Narron closed the door behind them and pranced across the room to the cocktail cabinet. "I can offer you a cocktail they invented for me in Rome, in 1921, for the opening of L"Incoronazione di Poppea. I was Poppea, of course. I was wonderful that season! My voice had wings! The cocktail is called Poppea, after the pan I played. Can you guess what's in it? Peach brandy and gin, flamed with sugar."
"I'll just have a Scotch, if you've got some."
"A Scotch? That's a drink for those who want oblivion, not fun."
Rudyard loosened his bow-tie and took off his dinner jacket. "Perhaps I can find one when I'm not in pursuit of the other."
"Well," said Mademoiselle Narron teasingly, "it depends which one you are pursuing and which one you hope to find! There will be no oblivion with me, I can assure you. Raymond always used to say—well, it doesn't matter what Raymond always used to say. He will never say it again. Not to me. But I am not a passive woman, you know. It has never been my nature to take life recumbently."
Rudyard, a little uneasily, watched Mademoiselle Narron pour him him almost half a glass of straight Scotch whisky. "That's—that's quite enough," he advised her. "I'm officer of the watch at 4 am. I can't afford to have a hangover."
"If you can afford to follow your heart, you can afford anything. Do you know who said that?"
Rudyard took his drink. "I'm not sure that I do. Was it Oscar Wilde?"
Mademoiselle Narron was blithely setting fire to a jiggerful of gin and sugar. She watched the blue flames spit and crackle for a moment, then tipped the blazing spirits into a chilled pink glass of peach brandy. "Oscar Wilde would never have said anything so ridiculously romantic. It was Raymond. He said it one day when we were walking on the South Downs. If only I had known then that he would leave me."
"Don't you think there's any chance at all that he might change his mind?" asked Rudyard.
She shook her head. "I saw his face when he told me it was all over. It is worse sometimes for the person who is leaving than for the person who is left. Such pain on poor Raymond's face!" She sipped her cocktail, and then spread herself out on her sofa. "Do you want to kiss me?" she asked.
Rudyard said, "I beg your pardon?"
"Do you want to kiss me? You can kiss me, if you like."