The Girl on the Boat
week. You’d have got over it by now if you hadn’t gone and buried
yourself in a depressing place like Bingley-on-the-Sea.”
The whistle of the speaking-tube blew. Sir Mallaby put the instrument
to his ear.
“All right,” he turned to Sam. “I shall have to send you away now, Sam.
Man waiting to see me. Good-bye. By the way, are you doing anything
to-night?”
“No.”
“Not got a wrestling match on with yourself, or anything like that?
Well, come to dinner at the house. Seven-thirty. Don’t be late.”
Sam went out. As he passed through the outer office, Miss Milliken
intercepted him.
“Oh, Mr. Sam!”
“Yes?”
“Excuse me, but will you be seeing Sir Mallaby again to-day?”
“I’m dining with him to-night.”
“Then would you—I don’t like to disturb him now, when he is busy—would
you mind telling him that I inadvertently omitted a stanza? It runs,”
said Miss Milliken, closing her eyes, “‘Trust no future, howe’er
pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act, act, in the living
present, Heart within and God o’erhead!’ Thank you so much. Good
afternoon.”
§ 2
Sam, reaching Bruton Street at a quarter past seven, was informed by
the butler who admitted him that his father was dressing and would be
down in a few minutes. The butler, an old retainer of the Marlowe
family, who, if he had not actually dandled Sam on his knees when an
infant, had known him as a small boy, was delighted to see him again.
“Missed you very much, Mr. Samuel, we all have,” he said
affectionately, as he preceded him to the drawing-room.
“Yes?” said Sam absently.
“Very much indeed, sir. I happened to remark only the other day that
the place didn’t seem the same without your happy laugh. It’s good to
see you back once more, looking so well and merry.”
Sam stalked into the drawing-room with the feeling that comes to all of
us from time to time, that it is hopeless to struggle. The whole damned
circle of his acquaintance seemed to have made up their minds that he
had not a care in the world, so what was the use? He lowered himself
into a deep arm-chair and lit a cigarette.
Presently the butler reappeared with a cocktail on a tray. Sam drained
it, and scarcely had the door closed behind the old retainer when an
abrupt change came over the whole outlook. It was as if he had been a
pianola and somebody had inserted a new record. Looking well and happy!
He blew a smoke ring. Well, if it came to that, why not? Why shouldn’t
he look well and happy? What had he got to worry about? He was a young
man, fit and strong, in the springtide of life, just about to plunge
into an absorbing business. Why should he brood over a sentimental
episode which had ended a little unfortunately? He would never see the
girl again. If anything in this world was certain, that was. She would
go her way, and he his. Samuel Marlowe rose from his chair a new man,
to greet his father, who came in at that moment fingering a snowy white
tie.
Sam started at his parent’s splendour in some consternation.
“Great Scot, father! Are you expecting a lot of people? I thought we
were dining alone.”
“That’s all right, my boy. A dinner-jacket is perfectly in order. We
shall be quite a small party. Six in all. You and I, a friend of mine
and his daughter, a friend of my friend’s friend and my friend’s
friend’s son.”
“Surely that’s more than six!”
“No.”
“It sounded more.”
“Six,” said Sir Mallaby firmly. He raised a shapely hand with the
fingers outspread. “Count ’em for yourself.” He twiddled his thumb.
“Number one—Bennett.”
“Who?” cried Sam.
“Bennett. Rufus Bennett. He’s an American over here for the summer.
Haven’t I ever mentioned his name to you? He’s a great fellow. Always
thinking he’s at death’s door, but keeps up a fine appetite. I’ve been
his legal representative in London for years. Then—” Sir Mallaby
twiddled his first finger—“there’s his daughter Wilhelmina, who has
just arrived in England.” A look of enthusiasm came into Sir Mallaby’s
face. “Sam, my boy, I don’t intend to say a word about Miss Wilhelmina
Bennett, because I think there’s nothing more prejudicial than singing
a person’s praises in advance. I merely remark that I fancy you will
appreciate her! I’ve only met her once, and then only for a few
minutes, but what I say is, if there’s a girl living who’s likely to
make you forget whatever fool of a woman you may be fancying yourself
in love with at the moment, that girl is Wilhelmina Bennett! The others
are Bennett’s friend, Henry Mortimer, also an American—a big lawyer, I
believe, on the other side—and his son Bream. I haven’t met either of
them. They ought to be here any moment now.” He looked at his watch.
“Ah! I think that was the front door. Yes, I can hear them on the
stairs.”
CHAPTER IX.
ROUGH WORK AT A DINNER TABLE
§ 1
After the first shock of astonishment, Sam Marlowe had listened to his
father’s harangue with a growing indignation which, towards the end of
the speech, had assumed proportions of a cold fury. If there is one
thing the which your high-spirited young man resents, it is being the
toy of Fate. He chafes at the idea that Fate had got it all mapped out
for him. Fate, thought Sam, had constructed a cheap, mushy,
sentimental, five-reel film scenario, and without consulting him had
had the cool cheek to cast him for one of the puppets. He seemed to see
Fate as a thin female with a soppy expression and pince-nez, sniffing a
little as she worked the thing out. He could picture her glutinous
satisfaction as she re-read her scenario and gloated over its sure-fire
qualities. There was not a flaw in the construction. It started off
splendidly with a romantic meeting, had ’em guessing half-way through
when the hero and heroine quarrelled and parted—apparently for ever,
and now the stage was all set for the reconciliation and the slow
fade-out on the embrace. To bring this last scene about, Fate had had
to permit herself a slight coincidence, but she did not jib at that.
What we call coincidences are merely the occasions when Fate gets stuck
in a plot and has to invent the next situation in a hurry.
Sam Marlowe felt sulky and defiant. This girl had treated him
shamefully and he wanted to have nothing more to do with her. If he had
had his wish, he would never have met her again. Fate, in her
interfering way, had forced this meeting on him and was now
complacently looking to him to behave in a suitable manner. Well, he
would show her! In a few seconds now, Billie and he would be meeting.
He would be distant and polite. He would be cold and aloof. He would
chill her to the bone, and rip a hole in the scenario six feet wide.
The door opened, and the room became full of Bennetts and Mortimers.
§ 2
Billie, looking, as Marlowe could not but admit, particularly pretty,
headed the procession. Following her came a large red-faced man whose
buttons seemed to creak beneath the strain of their duties. After him
trotted a small, thin, pale, semi-bald individual who wore glasses and
carried his nose raised and puckered as though some faintly unpleasant
smell were troubling his nostrils. The fourth member of the party was
dear old Bream.
There was a confused noise of mutual greetings and introductions, and
then Bream got a good sight of Sam and napped forward with his right
wing outstretched.
“Why, hello!” said Bream.
“How are you, Mortimer?” said Sam coldly.
“What, do you know my son?” exclaimed Sir Mallaby.
“Came over in the boat together,” said Bream.
“Capital!” said Sir Mallaby. “Old friends, eh? Miss Bennett,” he turned
to Billie, who had been staring wide-eyed at her late fiancé, “let me
present my son, Sam. Sam, this is Miss Bennett.”
“How do you do?” said Sam.
“How do you do?” said Billie.
“Bennett, you’ve never met my son, I think?”
Mr. Bennett peered at Sam with protruding eyes which gave him the
appearance of a rather unusually stout prawn.
“How _are_ you?” he asked, with such intensity that Sam unconsciously
found himself replying to a question which does not as a rule call for
any answer.
“Very well, thanks.”
Mr. Bennett shook his head moodily. “You are lucky to be able to say
so! Very few of us can assert as much. I can truthfully say that in the
last fifteen years I have not known what it is to enjoy sound health
for a single day. Marlowe,” he proceeded, swinging ponderously round on
Sir Mallaby like a liner turning in the river, “I assure you that at
twenty-five minutes past four this afternoon I was very nearly
convinced that I should have to call you up on the ’phone and cancel
this dinner engagement. When I took my temperature at twenty minutes to
six....” At this point the butler appeared at the door announcing that
dinner was served.
Sir Mallaby Marlowe’s dinner table, which, like most of the furniture
in the house had belonged to his deceased father and had been built at
a period when people liked things big and solid, was a good deal too
spacious to be really ideal for a small party. A white sea of linen
separated each diner from the diner opposite and created a forced
intimacy with the person seated next to him. Billie Bennett and Sam
Marlowe, as a consequence, found themselves, if not exactly in a
solitude of their own, at least sufficiently cut off from their kind to
make silence between them impossible. Westward, Mr. Mortimer had
engaged Sir Mallaby in a discussion on the recent case of Ouseley _v._
Ouseley, Figg, Mountjoy, Moseby-Smith and others, which though too
complicated to explain here, presented points of considerable interest
to the legal mind. To the east, Mr. Bennett was relating to Bream the
more striking of his recent symptoms. Billie felt constrained to make
at least an attempt at conversation.
“How strange meeting you here,” she said.
Sam, who had been crumbling bread in an easy and debonair manner,
looked up and met her eye. Its expression was one of cheerful
friendliness. He could not see his own eye, but he imagined and hoped
that it was cold and forbidding, like the surface of some bottomless
mountain tarn.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, how strange meeting you here. I never dreamed Sir Mallaby was
your father.”
“I knew it all along,” said Sam, and there was an interval caused by
the maid insinuating herself between them and collecting his soup
plate. He sipped sherry and felt a sombre self-satisfaction. He had, he
considered, given the conversation the right tone from the start. Cool
and distant. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Billie bite her lip.
He turned to her again. Now that he had definitely established the fact
that he and she were strangers, meeting by chance at a dinner-party, he
was in a position to go on talking.
“And how do you like England, Miss Bennett?”
Billie’s eye had lost its cheerful friendliness. A somewhat feline
expression had taken its place.
“Pretty well,” she replied.
“You don’t like it?”
“Well, the way I look at it is this. It’s no use grumbling. One has got
to realise that in England one is in a savage country, and one should
simply be thankful one isn’t eaten by the natives.”
“What makes you call England a savage country?” demanded Sam, a staunch
patriot, deeply stung.
“What would you call a country where you can’t get ice, central
heating, corn-on-the-cob, or bathrooms? My father and Mr. Mortimer have
just taken a house down on the coast and there’s just one niggly little
bathroom in the place.”
“Is that your only reason for condemning England?”
“Oh no, it has other drawbacks.”
“Such as?”
“Well, Englishmen, for instance. Young Englishmen in particular.
English young men are awful! Idle, rude, conceited, and ridiculous.”
Marlowe refused hock with a bitter intensity which nearly startled the
old retainer, who had just offered it to him, into dropping the