The Girl on the Boat
sometimes wondered,” said Webster, pursuing a not uninteresting train
of thought, “whether that might be the reason of the name.”
Before Mr. Bennett could join him in the region of speculation into
which he had penetrated, there was a grinding of brakes on the gravel
outside, and the wettest motor car in England drew up at the front
door.
§ 3
From Windles to Southampton is a distance of about twenty miles; and
the rain had started to fall when the car, an open one lacking even the
poor protection of a cape hood, had accomplished half the homeward
journey. For the last ten miles Mr. Mortimer had been nursing a sullen
hatred for all created things; and, when entering the house, he came
upon Mr. Bennett hopping about in the hall, endeavouring to detain him
and tell him some long and uninteresting story, his venom concentrated
itself upon his erstwhile friend.
“Oh, get out of the way!” he snapped, shaking off the other’s hand.
“Can’t you see I’m wet?”
“Wet! Wet!” Mr. Bennett’s voice quivered with self-pity. “So am I wet!”
“Father dear,” said Billie reprovingly, “you really oughtn’t to have
come into the house after bathing without drying yourself. You’ll spoil
the carpet.”
“I’ve _not_ been bathing! I’m trying to tell you....”
“Hullo!” said Bream, with amiable innocence, coming in at the tail-end
of the party. “Been having a jolly bathe?”
Mr. Bennett danced with silent irritation, and, striking a bare toe
against the leg of a chair, seized his left foot and staggered into the
arms of Webster, who had been preparing to drift off to the servants’
hall. Linked together, the two proceeded across the carpet in a
movement which suggested in equal parts the careless vigour of the
cake-walk and the grace of the old-fashioned mazurka.
“What the devil are you doing, you fool?” cried Mr. Bennett.
“Nothing, sir. And I should be glad if you would accept my week’s
notice,” replied Webster calmly.
“What’s that?”
“My notice sir, to take effect at the expiration of the current week. I
cannot acquiesce in being cursed and sworn at.”
“Oh, go to blazes!”
“Very good, sir.” Webster withdrew like a plenipotentiary who has been
handed his papers on the declaration of war, and Mr. Bennett, sprang to
intercept Mr. Mortimer, who had slipped by and was making for the
stairs.
“Mortimer!”
“Oh, what _is_ it?”
“That infernal dog of yours. I insist on your destroying it.”
“What’s it been doing?”
“The savage brute chased me all over the garden and kept me sitting up
on that damned castle the whole of the morning!”
“Father darling,” interposed Billie, pausing on her way up the stairs,
“you mustn’t get excited. You know it’s bad for you. I don’t expect
poor old Smith meant any harm,” she added pacifically, as she
disappeared in the direction of the landing.
“Of course he didn’t,” snapped Mr. Mortimer. “He’s as quiet as a lamb.”
“I tell you he chased me from one end of the garden to the other! I had
to run like a hare!”
The unfortunate Bream, whose sense of the humorous was simple and
childlike, was not proof against the picture thus conjured up.
“C’k!” giggled Bream helplessly. “C’k, c’k, c’k!”
Mr. Bennett turned on him. “Oh, it strikes you as funny, does it? Well,
let me tell you that if you think you can laugh at me with—with—er—with
one hand and—and—marry my daughter with the other, you’re wrong! You
can consider your engagement at an end.”
“Oh, I say!” ejaculated Bream, abruptly sobered.
“Mortimer!” bawled Mr. Bennett, once more arresting the other as he was
about to mount the stairs. “Do you or do you not intend to destroy that
dog?”
“I do not.”
“I insist on your doing so. He is a menace.”
“He is nothing of the kind. On your own showing he didn’t even bite you
once. And every dog is allowed one bite by law. The case of Wilberforce
_v._ Bayliss covers that point thoroughly.”
“I don’t care about the case of Wilberforce and Bayliss....”
“You will find that you have to. It is a legal precedent.”
There is something about a legal precedent which gives pause to the
angriest man. Mr. Bennett felt, as every layman feels when arguing with
a lawyer, as if he were in the coils of a python.
“Say, Mr. Bennett....” began Bream at his elbow.
“Get out!” snarled Mr. Bennett.
“Yes, but, say...!”
The green baize door at the end of the hall opened, and Webster
appeared.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Webster, “but luncheon will be served
within the next few minutes. Possibly you may wish to make some change
of costume.”
“Bring me my lunch on a tray in my room,” said Mr. Bennett. “I am going
to bed.”
“Very good, sir.”
“But, say, Mr. Bennett....” resumed Bream.
“Grrh!” replied his ex-prospective-father-in-law, and bounded up the
stairs like a portion of the sunset which had become detached from the
main body.
§ 4
Even into the blackest days there generally creeps an occasional ray of
sunshine, and there are few crises of human gloom which are not
lightened by a bit of luck. It was so with Mr. Bennett in his hour of
travail. There were lobsters for lunch, and his passion for lobsters
had made him the talk of three New York clubs. He was feeling a little
happier when Billie came in to see how he was getting on.
“Hullo, father. Had a nice lunch?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Bennett, cheering up a little at the recollection.
“There was nothing wrong with the lunch.”
How little we fallible mortals know! Even as he spoke, a tiny fragment
of lobster shell, which had been working its way silently into the tip
of his tongue, was settling down under the skin and getting ready to
cause him the most acute mental distress which he had ever known.
“The lunch,” said Mr. Bennett, “was excellent. Lobsters!” He licked his
lips appreciatively.
“And, talking of lobsters,” he went on, “I suppose that boy Bream has
told you that I have broken off your engagement?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem very upset,” said Mr. Bennett, who was in the mood for
a dramatic scene and felt a little disappointed.
“Oh, I’ve become a fatalist on the subject of my engagements.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Well, I mean, they never seem to come to anything.” Billie gazed
wistfully at the counterpane. “Do you know, father, I’m beginning to
think that I’m rather impulsive. I wish I didn’t do silly things in
such a hurry.”
“I don’t see where the hurry comes in as regards that Mortimer boy. You
took ten years to make up your mind.”
“I was not thinking of Bream. Another man.”
“Great Heavens! Are you still imagining yourself in love with young
Hignett?”
“Oh, no! I can see now that I was never in love with poor Eustace. I
was thinking of a man I got engaged to on the boat!”
Mr. Bennett sat bolt upright in bed, and stared incredulously at his
surprising daughter. His head was beginning to swim.
“Of course I’ve misunderstood you,” he said. “There’s a catch somewhere
and I haven’t seen it. But for a moment you gave me the impression that
you had promised to marry some man on the boat!”
“I did!”
“But...!” Mr. Bennett was doing sums on his fingers. “Do you mean to
tell me,” he demanded, having brought out the answer to his
satisfaction, “do you mean to tell me that you have been engaged to
three men in three weeks?”
“Yes,” said Billie in a small voice.
“Great Godfrey! Er——?”
“No, only three.”
Mr. Bennett sank back on to his pillow with a snort.
“The trouble is,” continued Billie, “one does things and doesn’t know
how one is going to feel about it afterwards. You can do an awful lot
of thinking afterwards, father.”
“I’m doing a lot of thinking now,” said Mr. Bennett with austerity.
“You oughtn’t to be allowed to go around loose!”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I shall never get engaged again. I shall
never love anyone again.”
“Don’t tell me you are still in love with this boat man?”
Billie nodded miserably. “I didn’t realise it till we came down here.
But, as I sat and watched the rain, it suddenly came over me that I had
thrown away my life’s happiness. It was as if I had been offered a
wonderful jewel and had refused it. I seemed to hear a voice
reproaching me and saying, ‘You have had your chance. It will never
come again!’”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Mr. Bennett.
Billie stiffened. She had thought she had been talking rather well.
Mr. Bennett was silent for a moment. Then he started up with an
exclamation. The mention of Eustace Hignett had stirred his memory.
“What’s young Hignett got wrong with him?” he asked.
“Mumps.”
“Mumps! Good God! Not mumps!” Mr. Bennett quailed. “I’ve never had
mumps! One of the most infectious ... this is awful!... Oh, heavens!
Why did I ever come to this lazar-house!” cried Mr. Bennett, shaken to
his depths.
“There isn’t the slightest danger, father, dear. Don’t be silly. If I
were you, I should try to get a good sleep. You must be tired after
this morning.”
“Sleep! If I only could!” said Mr. Bennett, and did so five minutes
after the door had closed.
He awoke half an hour later with a confused sense that something was
wrong. He had been dreaming that he was walking down Fifth Avenue at
the head of a military brass band, clad only in a bathing suit. As he
sat up in bed, blinking in the dazed fashion of the half-awakened, the
band seemed to be playing still. There was undeniably music in the air.
The room was full of it. It seemed to be coming up through the floor
and rolling about in chunks all round his bed.
Mr. Bennett blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and
became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one
instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the
orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled,
his room was situated.
He rang the bell for Webster.
“Is Mr. Mortimer playing that—that damned gas-engine in the
drawing-room?”
“Yes, sir. Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ A charming air, sir.”
“Go and tell him to stop it!”
“Very good, sir.”
Mr. Bennett lay in bed and fumed. Presently the valet returned. The
music still continued to roll about the room.
“I am sorry to have to inform you, sir,” said Webster, “that Mr.
Mortimer declines to accede to your request.”
“Oh, he said that, did he?”
“That is the gist of his remarks, sir.”
“Very good! Then give me my dressing-gown!”
Webster swathed his employer in the garment indicated, and returned to
the kitchen, where he informed the cook that, in his opinion, the
guv’nor was not a force, and that, if he were a betting man, he would
put his money in the forthcoming struggle on Consul, the
Almost-Human—by which affectionate nickname Mr. Mortimer senior was
generally alluded to in the servants’ hall.
Mr. Bennett, meanwhile, had reached the drawing-room, and found his
former friend lying at full length on a sofa, smoking a cigar, a full
dozen feet away from the orchestrion, which continued to thunder out
its dirge on the passing of Summer.
“Will you turn that infernal thing off!” said Mr. Bennett.
“No!” said Mr. Mortimer.
“Now, now, now!” said a voice.
Jane Hubbard was standing in the doorway with a look of calm reproof on
her face.
“We can’t have this, you know!” said Jane Hubbard. “You’re disturbing
my patient.”
She strode without hesitation to the instrument, explored its ribs with
a firm finger, pushed something, and the orchestrion broke off in the
middle of a bar. Then, walking serenely to the door, she passed out and
closed it behind her.
The baser side of his nature urged Mr. Bennett to triumph over the
vanquished.
“Now, what about it!” he said, ungenerously.
“Interfering girl!” mumbled Mr. Mortimer, chafing beneath defeat. “I’ve
a good mind to start it again.”
“I dare you!” whooped Mr. Bennett, reverting to the phraseology of his