The Girl on the Boat
he had been doing during the day.... Why, it would be ideal!”
Jane Hubbard gave a little sigh. Her fine eyes gazed dreamily at a
smoke ring which she had sent floating towards the ceiling.
“Jane,” said Billie. “I believe you’re thinking of somebody definite.
Who is he?”
The big-game huntress blushed. The embarrassment which she exhibited
made her look manlier than ever.
“I don’t know his name.”
“But there is really someone?”
“Yes.”
“How splendid! Tell me about him.”
Jane Hubbard clasped her strong hands and looked down at the floor.
“I met him on the Subway a couple of days before I left New York. You
know how crowded the Subway is at the rush hour. I had a seat, of
course, but this poor little fellow—_so_ good-looking, my dear! he
reminded me of the pictures of Lord Byron—was hanging from a strap and
being jerked about till I thought his poor little arms would be
wrenched out of their sockets. And he looked so unhappy, as though he
had some secret sorrow. I offered him my seat, but he wouldn’t take it.
A couple of stations later, however, the man next to me got out and he
sat down and we got into conversation. There wasn’t time to talk much.
I told him I had been down-town fetching an elephant-gun which I had
left to be mended. He was so prettily interested when I showed him the
mechanism. We got along famously. But—oh, well, it was just another
case of ships that pass in the night—I’m afraid I’ve been boring you.”
“Oh, Jane! You haven’t! You see ... you see, I’m in love myself.”
“I had an idea you were,” said her friend looking at her critically.
“You’ve been refusing your oats the last few days, and that’s a sure
sign. Is he that fellow that’s always around with you and who looks
like a parrot?”
“Bream Mortimer? Good gracious, no!” cried Billie indignantly. “As if I
should fall in love with Bream!”
“When I was out in British East Africa,” said Miss Hubbard, “I had a
bird that was the living image of Bream Mortimer. I taught him to
whistle ‘Annie Laurie’ and to ask for his supper in three native
dialects. Eventually he died of the pip, poor fellow. Well, if it isn’t
Bream Mortimer, who is it?”
“His name is Marlowe. He’s tall and handsome and very strong-looking.
He reminds me of a Greek god.”
“Ugh!” said Miss Hubbard.
“Jane, we’re engaged.”
“No!” said the huntress, interested. “When can I meet him?”
“I’ll introduce you to-morrow I’m so happy.”
“That’s fine!”
“And yet, somehow,” said Billie, plaiting her hair, “do you ever have
presentiments? I can’t get rid of an awful feeling that something’s
going to happen to spoil everything.”
“What could spoil everything?”
“Well, I think him so wonderful, you know. Suppose he were to do
anything to blur the image I have formed of him.”
“Oh, he won’t. You said he was one of those strong men, didn’t you?
They always run true to form. They never do anything except be strong.”
Billie looked meditatively at her reflection in the glass.
“You know I thought I was in love once before, Jane.”
“Yes?”
“We were going to be married and I had actually gone to the church. And
I waited and waited and he didn’t come; and what do you think had
happened?”
“What?”
“His mother had stolen his trousers.”
Jane Hubbard laughed heartily.
“It’s nothing to laugh at,” said Billie seriously “It was a tragedy. I
had always thought him romantic, and when this happened the scales
seemed to fall from my eyes. I saw that I had made a mistake.”
“And you broke off the engagement?”
“Of course!”
“I think you were hard on him. A man can’t help his mother stealing his
trousers.”
“No. But when he finds they’re gone, he can ’phone to the tailor for
some more or borrow the janitor’s or do _something_. But he simply
stayed where he was and didn’t do a thing. Just because he was too much
afraid of his mother to tell her straight out that he meant to be
married that day.”
“Now that,” said Miss Hubbard, “is just the sort of trait in a man
which would appeal to me. I like a nervous, shrinking man.”
“I don’t. Besides, it made him seem so ridiculous, and—I don’t know why
it is—I can’t forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Thank goodness, my
darling Sam couldn’t look ridiculous, even if he tried. He’s wonderful,
Jane. He reminds me of a knight of the Round Table. You ought to see
his eyes flash.”
Miss Hubbard got up and stretched herself with a yawn.
“Well, I’ll be on the promenade deck after breakfast to-morrow. If you
can arrange to have him flash his eyes then—say between nine-thirty and
ten—I shall be delighted to watch them.”
CHAPTER V.
PERSECUTION OF EUSTACE
“Good God!” cried Eustace Hignett.
He stared at the figure which loomed above him in the fading light
which came through the porthole of the state-room. The hour was
seven-thirty, and he had just woken from a troubled doze, full of
strange nightmares, and for the moment he thought that he must still be
dreaming, for the figure before him could have walked straight into any
nightmare and no questions asked. Then suddenly he became aware that it
was his cousin, Samuel Marlowe. As in the historic case of father in
the pigstye, he could tell him by his hat. But why was he looking like
that? Was it simply some trick of the uncertain light, or was his face
really black and had his mouth suddenly grown to six times its normal
size and become a vivid crimson?
Sam turned. He had been looking at himself in the mirror with a
satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not
have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion.
His cousin’s face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab
with a piece of burnt cork and made it blacker.
“Hullo! You awake?” he said, and switched on the light.
Eustace Hignett shied like a startled horse. His friend’s profile, seen
dimly, had been disconcerting enough. Full face, he was a revolting
object. Nothing that Eustace Hignett had encountered in his recent
dreams—and they had included such unusual fauna as elephants in top
hats and running shorts—had affected him so profoundly. Sam’s
appearance smote him like a blow. It seemed to take him straight into a
different and a dreadful world.
“What ... what ... what...?” he gurgled.
Sam squinted at himself in the glass and added a touch of black to his
nose.
“How do I look?”
Eustace Hignett began to fear that his cousin’s reason must have become
unseated. He could not conceive of any really sane man, looking like
that, being anxious to be told how he looked.
“Are my lips red enough? It’s for the ship’s concert, you know. It
starts in half-an-hour, though I believe I’m not on till the second
part. Speaking as a friend, would you put a touch more black round the
ears, or are they all right?”
Curiosity replaced apprehension in Hignett’s mind.
“What on earth are you doing performing at the ship’s concert?”
“Oh, they roped me in. It got about somehow that I was a valuable man,
and they wouldn’t take no.” Sam deepened the colour of his ears. “As a
matter of fact,” he said casually, “my fiancée made rather a point of
my doing something.”
A sharp yelp from the lower berth proclaimed the fact that the
significance of the remark had not been lost on Eustace.
“Your fiancée?”
“The girl I’m engaged to. Didn’t I tell you about that? Yes, I’m
engaged.”
Eustace sighed heavily.
“I feared the worst. Tell me, who is she?”
“Didn’t I tell you her name?”
“No.”
“Curious! I must have forgotten.” He hummed an airy strain as he
blackened the tip of his nose. “It’s rather a curious coincidence,
really. Her name is Bennett.”
“She may be a relation.”
“That’s true. Of course, girls do have relations.”
“What is her first name?”
“That is another rather remarkable thing. It’s Wilhelmina.”
“Wilhelmina!”
“Of course, there must be hundreds of girls in the world called
Wilhelmina Bennett, but still it is a coincidence.”
“What colour is her hair?” demanded Eustace Hignett in a hollow voice.
“Her hair! What colour is it?”
“Her hair? Now, let me see. You ask me what colour is her hair. Well,
you might call it auburn ... or russet ... or you might call it
Titian....”
“Never mind what I might call it. Is it red?”
“Red? Why, yes. That is a very good description of it. Now that you put
it to me like that, it _is_ red.”
“Has she a trick of grabbing at you suddenly, when she gets excited,
like a kitten with a ball of wool?”
“Yes. Yes, she has.”
Eustace Hignett uttered a sharp cry.
“Sam,” he said, “can you bear a shock?”
“I’ll have a dash at it.”
“Brace up!”
“I’m ready.”
“The girl you are engaged to is the same girl who promised to marry
_me_.”
“Well, well!” said Sam.
There was a silence.
“Awfully sorry, of course, and all that,” said Sam.
“Don’t apologise to _me!_” said Eustace. “My poor old chap, my only
feeling towards you is one of the purest and profoundest pity.” He
reached out and pressed Sam’s hand. “I regard you as a toad beneath the
harrow!”
“Well, I suppose that’s one way of offering congratulations and cheery
good wishes.”
“And on top of that,” went on Eustace, deeply moved, “you have got to
sing at the ship’s concert.”
“Why shouldn’t I sing at the ship’s concert?”
“My dear old man, you have many worthy qualities, but you must know
that you can’t sing. You can’t sing for nuts! I don’t want to
discourage you, but, long ago as it is, you can’t have forgotten what
an ass you made of yourself at that house-supper at school. Seeing you
up against it like this, I regret that I threw a lump of butter at you
on that occasion, though at the time it seemed the only course to
pursue.”
Sam started.
“Was it you who threw that bit of butter?”
“It was.”
“I wish I’d known! You silly chump, you ruined my collar.”
“Ah, well, it’s seven years ago. You would have had to send it to the
wash anyhow by this time. But don’t let us brood on the past. Let us
put our heads together and think how we can get you out of this
terrible situation.”
“I don’t want to get out of it. I confidently expect to be the hit of
the evening.”
“The hit of the evening! You! Singing!”
“I’m not going to sing. I’m going to do that imitation of Frank Tinney
which I did at the Trinity smoker. You haven’t forgotten that? You were
at the piano taking the part of the conductor of the orchestra. What a
riot I was—we were! I say, Eustace, old man, I suppose you don’t feel
well enough to come up now and take your old part? You could do it
without a rehearsal. You remember how it went.... ‘Hullo, Ernest!’
‘Hullo, Frank!’ Why not come along?”
“The only piano I will ever sit at will be one firmly fixed on a floor
that does not heave and wobble under me.”
“Nonsense! The boat’s as steady as a rock now. The sea’s like a
mill-pond.”
“Nevertheless, thanking you for your suggestion, no!”
“Oh, well, then I shall have to get on as best I can with that fellow
Mortimer. We’ve been rehearsing all the afternoon, and he seems to have
the hang of the thing. But he won’t be really right. He has no pep, no
vim. Still, if you won’t ... well, I think I’ll be getting along to his
state-room. I told him I would look in for a last rehearsal.”
The door closed behind Sam, and Eustace Hignett, lying on his back,
gave himself up to melancholy meditation. He was deeply disturbed by
his cousin’s sad story. He knew what it meant being engaged to
Wilhelmina Bennett. It was like being taken aloft in a balloon and
dropped with a thud on the rocks.
His reflections were broken by the abrupt opening of the door. Sam
rushed in. Eustace peered anxiously out of his berth. There was too
much burnt cork on his cousin’s face to allow of any real registering