by Unknown
“Pa, this gen’man wants to be took aboard the boat at quarantine. He’ll give you fifty berries.”
The wrath died out of the skipper’s face like the slow turning down of a lamp. The fishing had been poor, and so far he had only managed to secure a single two-dollar bill. In a crisis like the one which had so suddenly arisen you cannot do yourself justice with a boat-hook.
“Fifty berries!”
“Fifty seeds!” the girl assured him, “Are you on?”
“Queen,” said the skipper simply, “you said a mouthful!”
Twenty minutes later Sam was climbing up the side of the liner as it lay towering over the tug like a mountain. His clothes hung about him clammily. He squelched as he walked.
A kindly looking old gentleman who was smoking a cigar by the rail regarded him with open eyes.
“My dear sir, you’re very wet,” he said.
Sam passed him with a cold face and hurried through the door leading to the companion-way.
“Mummie, why is that man wet?” cried the clear voice of a little child.
Sam whizzed by, leaping down the stairs.
“Good Lord, sir! You’re very wet!” said a steward in the doorway of the dining-saloon.
“You are wet,” said a stewardess in the passage.
Sam raced for his stateroom. He bolted in and sank on the lounge. In the lower berth Eustace Hignett was lying with closed eyes. He opened them languidly—then stared.
“Hullo!” he said. “I say! You’re wet.”
Sam removed his clinging garments and hurried into a new suit. He was in no mood for conversation, and Eustace Hignett’s frank curiosity jarred upon him. Happily, at this point, a sudden shivering of the floor and a creaking of woodwork proclaimed the fact that the vessel was under way again, and his cousin, turning pea-green, rolled over on his side with a hollow moan. Sam finished buttoning his waistcoat and went out.
He was passing the Enquiry Bureau on the C-Deck, striding along with bent head and scowling brow, when a sudden exclamation caused him to look up, and the scowl was wiped from his brow as with a sponge. For there stood the girl he had met on the dock. With her was a superfluous young man who looked like a parrot.
“Oh, how are you?” asked the girl breathlessly.
“Splendid, thanks,” said Sam.
“Didn’t you get very wet?”
“I did get a little damp.”
“I thought you would,” said the young man who looked like a parrot. “Directly I saw you go over the side I said to myself: ‘That fellow’s going to get wet!’”
There was a pause.
“Oh!” said the girl, “may I—Mr.—?”
“Marlowe.”
“Mr. Marlowe. Mr. Bream Mortimer.”
Sam smirked at the young man. The young man smirked at Sam.
“Nearly got left behind,” said Bream Mortimer.
“Yes, nearly.”
“No joke getting left behind.”
“No.”
“Have to take the next boat. Lose a lot of time,” said Mr. Mortimer, driving home his point.
The girl had listened to these intellectual exchanges with impatience. She now spoke again.
“Oh, Bream!”
“Hello?”
“Do be a dear and run down to the saloon and see if it’s all right about our places for lunch.”
“It is all right. The table steward said so.”
“Yes, but go and make certain.”
“All right.”
He hopped away and the girl turned to Sam with shining eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Marlowe, you oughtn’t to have done it! Really, you oughtn’t! You might have been drowned! But I never saw anything so wonderful. It was like the stories of knights who used to jump into lions’ dens after gloves!”
“Yes?” said Sam, a little vaguely. The resemblance had not struck him. It seemed a silly hobby and rough on the lions, too.
“It was the sort of thing Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad would have done! But you shouldn’t have bothered, really! It’s all right now.”
“Oh, it’s all right now?”
“Yes. I’d quite forgotten that Mr. Mortimer was to be on board. He has given me all the money I shall need. You see it was this way. I had to sail on this boat in rather a hurry. Father’s head clerk was to have gone to the bank and got some money and met me on board and given it to me, but the silly old man was late, and when he got to the dock they had just pulled in the gang-plank. So he tried to throw the money to me in a handkerchief and it fell into the water. But you shouldn’t have dived in after it.”
“Oh, well!” said Sam, straightening his tie, with a quiet brave smile. He had never expected to feel grateful to that obese bounder who had shoved him off the rail, but now he would have liked to seek him out and offer him his bank-roll.
“You really are the bravest man I ever met!”
“Oh, no!”
“How modest you are! But I suppose all brave men are modest!”
“I was only too delighted at what looked like a chance of doing you a service.”
“It was the extraordinary quickness of it that was so wonderful. I do admire presence of mind. You didn’t hesitate for a second. You just shot over the side as though propelled by some irresistible force!”
“It was nothing, nothing really. One just happens to have the knack of keeping one’s head and acting quickly on the spur of the moment. Some people have it, some haven’t.”
“And just think! As Bream was saying….”
“It is all right,” said Mr. Mortimer, re-appearing suddenly. “I saw a couple of stewards and they both said it was all right. So it’s all right.”
“Splendid,” said the girl. “Oh, Bream!”
“Hello?”
“Do be an angel and run along to my stateroom and see if Pinky-Boodles is quite comfortable,”
“Bound to be.”
“Yes. But do go. He may be feeling lonely. Chirrup to him a little.”
“Chirrup?”
“Yes, to cheer him up.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Run along!”
Mr. Mortimer ran along. He had the air of one who feels that he only needs a peaked cap and a uniform two sizes too small for him to be a properly equipped messenger boy.
“And, as Bream was saying,” resumed the girl, “you might have been left behind.”
“That,” said Sam, edging a step closer, “was the thought that tortured me, the thought that a friendship so delightfully begun….”
“But it hadn’t begun. We have never spoken to each other before now.”
“Have you forgotten? On the dock….”
Sudden enlightenment came into her eyes,
“Oh, you are the man poor Pinky-Boodles bit!”
“The lucky man!”
Her face clouded.
“Poor Pinky is feeling the motion of the boat a little. It’s his first voyage.”
“I shall always remember that it was Pinky who first brought us together. Would you care for a stroll on deck?”
“Not just now, thanks. I must be getting back to my room to finish unpacking. After lunch, perhaps.”
“I will be there. By the way, you know my name, but….”
“Oh, mine?” She smiled brightly. “It’s funny that a person’s name is the last thing one thinks of asking. Mine is Bennett.”
“Bennett!”
“Wilhelmina Bennett. My friends,” she said softly as she turned away, “call me Billie!”
CHAPTER THREE
For some moments Sam remained where he was staring after the girl as she flitted down the passage. He felt dizzy. Mental acrobatics always have an unsettling effect, and a young man may be excused for feeling a little dizzy when he is called upon suddenly and without any warning to readjust all his preconceived views on any subject. Listening to Eustace Hignett’s story of his blighted romance, Sam had formed an unflattering opinion of this Wilhelmina Bennett who had broken off
her engagement simply because on the day of the marriage his cousin had been short of the necessary wedding garment. He had, indeed, thought a little smugly how different his goddess of the red hair was from the object of Eustace Hignett’s affections. And how they had proved to be one and the same. It was disturbing. It was like suddenly finding the vampire of a five-reel feature film turn into the heroine.
Some men, on making the discovery of this girl’s identity, might have felt that Providence had intervened to save them from a disastrous entanglement. This point of view never occurred to Samuel Marlowe. The way he looked at it was that he had been all wrong about Wilhelmina Bennett. Eustace, he felt, had been to blame throughout. If this girl had maltreated Eustace’s finer feelings, then her reason for doing so must have been excellent and praiseworthy.
After all … poor old Eustace … quite a good fellow, no doubt in many ways … but, coming down to brass tacks, what was there about Eustace that gave him any license to monopolise the affections of a wonderful girl? Where, in a word, did Eustace Hignett get off? He made a tremendous grievance of the fact that she had broken off the engagement, but what right had he to go about the place expecting her to be engaged to him? Eustace Hignett, no doubt, looked upon the poor girl as utterly heartless. Marlowe regarded her behaviour as thoroughly sensible. She had made a mistake, and, realising this at the eleventh hour, she had had the force of character to correct it. He was sorry for poor old Eustace, but he really could not permit the suggestion that Wilhelmina Bennett—her friends called her Billie—had not behaved in a perfectly splendid way throughout. It was women like Wilhelmina Bennett—Billie to her intimates—who made the world worth living in.
Her friends called her Billie. He did not blame them. It was a delightful name and suited her to perfection. He practised it a few times. “Billie … Billie … Billie….” It certainly ran pleasantly off the tongue. “Billie Bennett.” Very musical, “Billie Marlowe.” Still better. “We noticed among those present the charming and popular Mrs. ‘Billie’ Marlowe.”
A consuming desire came over him to talk about the girl to someone. Obviously indicated as the party of the second part was Eustace Hignett. If Eustace was still capable of speech—and after all the boat was hardly rolling at all—he would enjoy a further chat about his ruined life. Besides, he had another reason for seeking Eustace’s society. As a man who had been actually engaged to marry this supreme girl, Eustace Hignett had an attraction for Sam akin to that of some great public monument. He had become a sort of shrine. He had taken on a glamour. Sam entered the stateroom almost reverentially with something of the emotions of a boy going into his first dime museum.
The exhibit was lying on his back staring at the roof of the berth. By lying absolutely still and forcing himself to think of purely inland scenes and objects he had contrived to reduce the green in his complexion to a mere tinge. But it would be paltering with the truth to say that he felt debonair. He received Sam with a wan austerity.
“Sit down!” he said. “Don’t stand there swaying like that. I can’t bear it.”
“Why, we aren’t out of the harbour yet. Surely you aren’t going to be sea-sick already.”
“I can issue no positive guarantee. Perhaps if I can keep my mind off it … I have had good results for the last ten minutes by thinking steadily of the Sahara. There,” said Eustace Hignett with enthusiasm, “is a place for you! That is something like a spot! Miles and miles of sand and not a drop of water anywhere!”
Sam sat down on the lounge.
“You’re quite right. The great thing is to concentrate your mind on other topics. Why not, for instance, tell me some more about your unfortunate affair with that girl—Billie Bennett I think you said her name was.”
“Wilhelmina Bennett. Where on earth did you get the idea that her name was Billie?”
“I had a notion that girls called Wilhelmina were sometimes Billie to their friends.”
“I never call her anything but Wilhelmina. But I really cannot talk about it. The recollection tortures me.”
“That’s just what you want. It’s the counter-irritation principle. Persevere and you’ll soon forget that you’re on board ship at all.”
“There’s something in that,” admitted Eustace reflectively. “It’s very good of you to be so sympathetic and interested.”
“My dear fellow … anything that I can do … where did you meet her first, for instance?”
“At a dinner….” Eustace Hignett broke off abruptly. He had a good memory and he had just recollected the fish they had served at that dinner—a flabby and exhausted looking fish, half sunk beneath the surface of a thick white sauce.
“And what struck you most forcibly about her at first? Her lovely hair, I suppose?”
“How did you know she had lovely hair?”
“My dear chap, I naturally assumed that any girl with whom you fell in love would have nice hair.”
“Well, you are perfectly right, as it happens. Her hair was remarkably beautiful. It was red….”
“Like autumn leaves with the sun on them!” said Marlowe ecstatically.
“What an extraordinary thing! That is an absolutely exact description. Her eyes were a deep blue….”
“Or, rather, green.”
“Blue.”
“Green. There is a shade of green that looks blue.”
“What the devil do you know about the colour of her eyes?” demanded Eustace heatedly. “Am I telling you about her, or are you telling me?”
“My dear old man, don’t get excited. Don’t you see I am trying to construct this girl in my imagination, to visualise her? I don’t pretend to doubt your special knowledge, but after all green eyes generally do go with red hair and there are all shades of green. There is the bright green of meadow grass, the dull green of the uncut emerald, the faint yellowish green of your face at the present moment….”
“Don’t talk about the colour of my face! Now you’ve gone and reminded me just when I was beginning to forget.”
“Awfully sorry! Stupid of me! Get your mind off it again—quick! What were you saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one to form a mental picture of people if one knows something about their tastes—what sort of things they are interested in, their favourite topics of conversation, and so on. This Miss Bennett now, what did she like talking about?”
“Oh, all sorts of things.”
“Yes, but what?”
“Well, for one thing she was very fond of poetry. It was that which first drew us together.”
“Poetry!” Sam’s heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a limerick in a competition in a weekly paper, but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board ship and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard poet and bone them up from time to time.
“Any special poet?”
“Well, she seemed to like my stuff. You never read my sonnet-sequence on Spring, did you?”
“No. What other poets did she like besides you?”
“Tennyson principally,” said Eustace Hignett with a reminiscent quiver in his voice. “The hours we have spent together reading the Idylls of the King!”
“The which of what?” enquired Sam, taking a pencil from his pocket and shooting out a cuff.
“The Idylls of the King. My good man, I know you have a soul which would be considered inadequate by a common earthworm, but you have surely heard of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King?”
“Oh, those! Why, my dear old chap; Tennyson’s Idylls of the King! Well, I should say! Have I heard of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King? Well, really! I suppose you haven’t a copy with you on board by any chance?”
“There is a copy in my kit-bag. The very one we used to read together. Take it and keep it or throw it overboard. I don’t want to see it again.”
Sam prospect
ed among the shirts, collars and trousers in the bag and presently came upon a morocco-bound volume. He laid it beside him on the lounge.
“Little by little, bit by bit,” he said, “I am beginning to form a sort of picture of this girl, this—what was her name again? Bennett—this Miss Bennett. You have a wonderful knack of description. You make her seem so real and vivid. Tell me some more about her. She wasn’t keen on golf, by any chance, I suppose?”
“I believe she did play. The subject came up once and she seemed rather enthusiastic. Why?”
“Well, I’d much sooner talk to a girl about golf than poetry.”
“You are hardly likely to be in a position to have to talk to Wilhelmina Bennett about either, I should imagine.”
“No, there’s that, of course. I was thinking of girls in general. Some girls bar golf, and then it’s rather difficult to know how to start conversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on Miss Bennett’s nerves, if you know what I mean? It seems to me that at one time or another you may have said something that offended her. I mean, it seems curious that she should have broken off the engagement if you had never disagreed or quarrelled about anything.”
“Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. She had a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekingese. If there was ever any shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. I made rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home after we were married.”
“I see!” said Sam. He shot his cuff once more and wrote on it: “Dog-conciliate.”
“Yes, of course, that must have wounded her.”
“Not half so much as he wounded me! He pinned me by the ankle the day before we—Wilhelmina and I, I mean—were to have been married. It is some satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got home on the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him clean over the Chesterfield.”