The Girl on the Boat
got the feeling that I simply must get on deck and drown myself.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” demanded Sam with a strong sense of injury. “I
might have forgiven you then. But to come down here and find you
singing....”
A soft light came into Eustace Hignett’s eyes.
“I want to tell you all about that,” he said.
“It’s the most astonishing story. A miracle, you might almost call it.
Makes you believe in Fate and all that kind of thing. A week ago I was
on the Subway in New York....”
He broke off while Sam cursed him, the Subway, and the city of New York
in the order named.
“My dear chap, what is the matter?”
“What is the matter? Ha!”
“Something is the matter,” persisted Eustace Hignett. “I can tell it by
your manner. Something has happened to disturb and upset you. I know
you so well that I can pierce the mask. What is it? Tell me!”
“Ha, ha!”
“You surely can’t still be brooding on that concert business? Why,
that’s all over. I take it that after my departure you made the most
colossal ass of yourself, but why let that worry you? These things
cannot affect one permanently.”
“Can’t they? Let me tell you that, as a result of that concert, my
engagement is broken off.”
Eustace sprang forward with outstretched hand.
“Not really? How splendid! Accept my congratulations! This is the
finest thing that could possibly have happened. These are not idle
words. As one who has been engaged to the girl himself, I speak
feelingly. You are well out of it, Sam.”
Sam thrust aside his hand. Had it been his neck he might have clutched
it eagerly, but he drew the line at shaking hands with Eustace Hignett.
“My heart is broken,” he said with dignity.
“That feeling will pass, giving way to one of devout thankfulness. I
know. I’ve been there. After all ... Wilhelmina Bennett ... what is
she? A rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“She is nothing of the kind,” said Sam, revolted.
“Pardon me,” said Eustace firmly, “I speak as an expert. I know her and
I repeat, she is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“She is the only girl in the world, and, owing to your idiotic
behaviour, I have lost her.”
“You speak of the only girl in the world,” said Eustace blithely. “If
you want to hear about the only girl in the world, I will tell you. A
week ago I was on the Subway in New York....”
“I’m going to bed,” said Sam brusquely.
“All right. I’ll tell you while you’re undressing.”
“I don’t want to listen.”
“A week ago,” said Eustace Hignett, “I will ask you to picture me
seated after some difficulty in a carriage in the New York Subway. I
got into conversation with a girl with an elephant gun.”
Sam revised his private commination service in order to include the
elephant gun.
“She was my soul-mate,” proceeded Eustace with quiet determination. “I
didn’t know it at the time, but she was. She had grave brown eyes, a
wonderful personality, and this elephant gun.”
“Did she shoot you with it?”
“Shoot me? What do you mean? Why, no!”
“The girl must have been a fool!” said Sam bitterly. “The chance of a
lifetime and she missed it. Where are my pyjamas?”
“I haven’t seen your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun,
and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a
hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes,
and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how
she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at
the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only
a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been
broken off. Well, we parted at Sixty-sixth Street, and, strange as it
may seem, I forgot all about her.”
“Do it again!”
“Tell it again?”
“Good heavens, no! Forget all about her again.”
“Nothing,” said Eustace Hignett gravely, “could make me do that. Our
souls have blended. Our beings have called to one another from their
deepest depths, saying.... There are your pyjamas, over in the corner
... saying ‘You are mine!’ How could I forget her after that? Well, as
I was saying, we parted. Little did I know that she was sailing on this
very boat! But just now she came to me as I writhed on the deck....”
“Did you writhe?” asked Sam with a flicker of moody interest.
“I certainly did!”
“That’s good!”
“But not for long.”
“That’s bad!”
“She came to me and healed me. Sam, that girl is an angel.”
“Switch off the light when you’ve finished.”
“She seemed to understand without a word how I was feeling. There are
some situations which do not need words. She went away and returned
with a mixture of some description in a glass. I don’t know what it
was. It had Worcester Sauce in it. She put it to my lips. She made me
drink it. She said it was what she always used in Africa for
bull-calves with the staggers. Well, believe me or believe me not ...
are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Believe me or believe me not, in under two minutes I was not merely
freed from the nausea caused by your cigar. I was smoking myself! I was
walking the deck with her without the slightest qualm. I was even able
to look over the side from time to time and comment on the beauty of
the moon on the water.... I have said some mordant things about women
since I came on board this boat. I withdraw them unreservedly. They
still apply to girls like Wilhelmina Bennett, but I have ceased to
include the whole sex in my remarks. Jane Hubbard has restored my faith
in Woman. Sam! Sam!”
“What?”
“I said that Jane Hubbard had restored my faith in Woman.”
“Oh, all right.”
Eustace Hignett finished undressing and got into bed. With a soft smile
on his face he switched off the light. There was a long silence, broken
only by the distant purring of the engines.
At about twelve-thirty a voice came from the lower berth.
“Sam!”
“What is it now?”
“There is a sweet womanly strength about her, Sam. She was telling me
she once killed a panther with a hat-pin.”
Sam groaned and tossed on his mattress.
Silence fell again.
“At least I think it was a panther,” said Eustace Hignett at a quarter
past one. “Either a panther or a puma.”
CHAPTER VIII.
SIR MALLABY OFFERS A SUGGESTION
§ 1
A week after the liner “Atlantic” had docked at Southampton Sam Marlowe
might have been observed—and was observed by various of the
residents—sitting on a bench on the esplanade of that rising
watering-place, Bingley-on-the-Sea, in Sussex. All watering-places on
the south coast of England are blots on the landscape, but though I am
aware that by saying it I shall offend the civic pride of some of the
others—none are so peculiarly foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalte
on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the
asphalte on other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel
Magnificent, where Sam was stopping, are in a class of bungling
incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss
waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For
dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The very waves
that break on its shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if
it revolted them to have to come to such a place.
Why, then, was Sam Marlowe visiting this ozone-swept Gehenna? Why, with
all the rest of England at his disposal, had he chosen to spend a week
at breezy, blighted Bingley?
Simply because he had been disappointed in love.
Nothing is more curious than the myriad ways in which reaction from an
unfortunate love-affair manifests itself in various men. No two males
behave in the same way under the spur of female fickleness.
_Archilochum_, for instance, according to the Roman writer, _proprio
rabies armavit iambo_. It is no good pretending out of politeness that
you know what that means, so I will translate. _Rabies_—his
grouch—_armavit_—armed—_Archilochum_— Archilochus—_iambo_—with the
iambic—_proprio_—his own invention. In other words, when the poet
Archilochus was handed his hat by the lady of his affections, he
consoled himself by going off and writing satirical verse about her in
a new metre which he had thought up immediately after leaving the
house. That was the way the thing affected him.
On the other hand, we read in a recent issue of a London daily paper
that John Simmons (31), a meat-salesman, was accused of assaulting an
officer while in the discharge of his duty, at the same time using
profane language whereby the officer went in fear of his life.
Constable Riggs deposed that on the evening of the eleventh instant
while he was on his beat, prisoner accosted him and, after offering to
fight him for fourpence, drew off his right boot and threw it at his
head. Accused, questioned by the magistrate, admitted the charge and
expressed regret, pleading that he had had words with his young woman,
and it had upset him.
Neither of these courses appealed to Samuel Marlowe. He had sought
relief by slinking off alone to the Hotel Magnificent at
Bingley-on-the-Sea. It was the same spirit which has often moved other
men in similar circumstances to go off to the Rockies to shoot
grizzlies.
To a certain extent the Hotel Magnificent had dulled the pain. At any
rate, the service and cooking there had done much to take his mind off
it. His heart still ached, but he felt equal to going to London and
seeing his father, which of course he ought to have done seven days
before.
He rose from his bench—he had sat down on it directly after
breakfast—and went back to the hotel to inquire about trains. An hour
later he had begun his journey and two hours after that he was at the
door of his father’s office.
The offices of the old-established firm of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott,
Winslow and Appleby are in Ridgeway’s Inn, not far from Fleet Street.
The brass plate, let into the woodwork of the door, is misleading.
Reading it, you get the impression that on the other side quite a covey
of lawyers await your arrival. The name of the firm leads you to
suppose that there will be barely standing-room in the office. You
picture Thorpe jostling you aside as he makes for Prescott to discuss
with him the latest case of demurrer, and Winslow and Appleby treading
on your toes, deep in conversation on replevin. But these legal firms
dwindle. The years go by and take their toll, snatching away here a
Prescott, there an Appleby, till, before you know where you are, you
are down to your last lawyer. The only surviving member of the firm of
Marlowe, Thorpe—what I said before—was, at the time with which this
story deals, Sir Mallaby Marlowe, son of the original founder of the
firm and father of the celebrated black-face comedian, Samuel of that
ilk; and the outer office, where callers were received and parked till
Sir Mallaby could find time for them, was occupied by a single clerk.
When Sam opened the door this clerk, John Peters by name, was seated on
a high stool, holding in one hand a half-eaten sausage, in the other an
extraordinarily large and powerful-looking revolver. At the sight of
Sam he laid down both engines of destruction and beamed. He was not a
particularly successful beamer, being hampered by a cast in one eye
which gave him a truculent and sinister look; but those who knew him
knew that he had a heart of gold and were not intimidated by his
repellent face. Between Sam and himself there had always existed terms
of great cordiality, starting from the time when the former was a small
boy and it had been John Peters’ mission to take him now to the Zoo,
now to the train back to school.
“Why, Mr. Samuel!”
“Hullo, Peters!”
“We were expecting you back a week ago.”
“Oh, I had something to see to before I came to town,” said Sam
carelessly.
“So you got back safe!” said John Peters.
“Safe! Why, of course.”