The Girl on the Boat
Jane Hubbard pushed him gently into the nest of bedclothes, and tucked
him in with strong, calm hands. She was a very different person from
the girl who so short a while before had sobbed on the carpet. Love is
a wonderful thing.
“You mustn’t excite yourself,” she said. “You’ll be getting a
temperature. Lie down and try to get to sleep.” She kissed his bulbous
face. “You have made me so happy, Eustace darling.”
“That’s good,” said Eustace cordially. “But it’s going to be an awful
jar for mother!”
“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll break the news to your mother. I’m
sure she will be quite reasonable about it.”
Eustace opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“Lie back quite comfortably, and don’t worry,” said Jane Hubbard. “I’m
going to my room to get a book to read you to sleep. I shan’t be five
minutes. And forget about your mother. I’ll look after her.”
Eustace closed his eyes. After all, this girl had fought lions, tigers,
pumas, cannibals, and alligators in her time with a good deal of
success. There might be a sporting chance of victory for her when she
moved a step up in the animal kingdom and tackled his mother. He was
not unduly optimistic, for he thought she was going out of her class;
but he felt faintly hopeful. He allowed himself to drift into pleasant
meditation.
There was a scrambling sound outside the door. The handle turned.
“Hullo! Back already?” said Eustace, opening his eyes.
The next moment he opened them wider. His mouth gaped slowly like a
hole in a sliding cliff. Mrs. Horace Hignett was standing at his
bedside.
§ 3
In the moment which elapsed before either of the two could calm their
agitated brains to speech, Eustace became aware, as never before, of
the truth of that well-known line—“Peace, perfect peace, with loved
ones far away.” There was certainly little hope of peace with loved
ones in his bedroom. Dully, he realised that in a few minutes Jane
Hubbard would be returning with her book, but his imagination refused
to envisage the scene which would then occur.
“Eustace!”
Mrs. Hignett gasped, hand on heart.
“Eustace!” For the first time Mrs. Hignett seemed to become aware that
it was a changed face that confronted hers. “Good gracious! How stout
you’ve grown!”
“It’s mumps.”
“Mumps!”
“Yes, I’ve got mumps.”
Mrs. Hignett’s mind was too fully occupied with other matters to allow
her to dwell on this subject.
“Eustace, there are men in the house!”
This fact was just what Eustace had been wondering how to break to her.
“I know,” he said uneasily.
“You know!” Mrs. Hignett stared. “Did you hear them?”
“Hear them?” said Eustace, puzzled.
“The drawing-room window was left open, and there are two burglars in
the hall!”
“Oh, I say, no! That’s rather rotten!” said Eustace.
“I saw them and heard them! I—oh!” Mrs. Hignett’s sentence trailed off
into a suppressed shriek, as the door opened and Jane Hubbard came in.
Jane Hubbard was a girl who by nature and training was well adapted to
bear shocks. Her guiding motto in life was that helpful line of
Horace—_Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem_. (For the
benefit of those who have not, like myself, enjoyed an expensive
classical education,—memento—Take my tip—servare—preserve—aequam—an
unruffled—mentem—mind—rebus in arduis—in every crisis). She had only
been out of the room a few minutes, and in that brief period a
middle-aged lady of commanding aspect had apparently come up through a
trap. It would have been enough to upset most girls, but Jane Hubbard
bore it calmly. All through her vivid life her bedroom had been a sort
of cosy corner for murderers, alligators, tarantulas, scorpions, and
every variety of snake, so she accepted the middle-aged lady without
comment.
“Good evening,” she said placidly.
Mrs. Hignett, having rallied from her moment of weakness, glared at the
new arrival dumbly. She could not place Jane. From the airy way in
which she had strolled into the room, she appeared to be some sort of a
nurse; but she wore no nurse’s uniform.
“Who are you?” she asked stiffly.
“Who are _you?_” asked Jane.
“I,” said Mrs. Hignett portentously, “am the owner of this house, and I
should be glad to know what you are doing in it. I am Mrs. Horace
Hignett.”
A charming smile spread itself over Jane’s finely-cut face.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said. “I have heard so much about you.”
“Indeed?” said Mrs. Hignett coldly. “And now I should like to hear a
little about you.”
“I’ve read all your books,” said Jane. “I think they’re wonderful.”
In spite of herself, in spite of a feeling that this young woman was
straying from the point, Mrs. Hignett could not check a slight influx
of amiability. She was an authoress who received a good deal of incense
from admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most
of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the
country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She
melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk,
but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.
“My favourite,” said Jane, who for a week had been sitting daily in a
chair in the drawing-room adjoining the table on which the authoress’s
complete works were assembled, “is ‘The Spreading Light.’ I _do_ like
‘The Spreading Light!’”
“It was written some years ago,” said Mrs. Hignett with something
approaching cordiality, “and I have since revised some of the views I
state in it, but I still consider it quite a good text-book.”
“Of course, I can see that ‘What of the Morrow?’ is more profound,”
said Jane. “But I read ‘The Spreading Light’ first, and of course that
makes a difference.”
“I can quite see that it would,” agreed Mrs. Hignett. “One’s first step
across the threshold of a new mind, one’s first glimpse....”
“Yes, it makes you feel....”
“Like some watcher of the skies,” said Mrs. Hignett, “when a new planet
swims into his ken, or like....”
“Yes, doesn’t it!” said Jane.
Eustace, who had been listening to the conversation with every muscle
tense, in much the same mental attitude as that of a peaceful citizen
in a Wild West Saloon who holds himself in readiness to dive under a
table directly the shooting begins, began to relax. What he had
shrinkingly anticipated would be the biggest thing since the
Dempsey-Carpentier fight seemed to be turning into a pleasant social
and literary evening not unlike what he imagined a meeting of old
Girton students must be. For the first time since his mother had come
into the room he indulged in the luxury of a deep breath.
“But what are you doing here?” asked Mrs. Hignett, returning almost
reluctantly to the main issue.
Eustace perceived that he had breathed too soon. In an unobtrusive way
he subsided into the bed and softly pulled the sheets over his head,
following the excellent tactics of the great Duke of Wellington in his
Peninsular campaign. “When in doubt,” the Duke used to say, “retire and
dig yourself in.”
“I’m nursing dear Eustace,” said Jane.
Mrs. Hignett quivered, and cast an eye on the hump in the bedclothes
which represented dear Eustace. A cold fear had come upon her.
“‘Dear Eustace!’” she repeated mechanically.
“We’re engaged,” said Jane.
“Engaged! Eustace, is this true?”
“Yes,” said a muffled voice from the interior of the bed.
“And poor Eustace is so worried,” continued Jane, “about the house.”
She went on quickly. “He doesn’t want to deprive you of it, because he
knows what it means to you. So he is hoping—we are both hoping—that you
will accept it as a present when we are married. We really shan’t want
it, you know. We are going to live in London. So you will take it,
won’t you—to please us?”
We all of us, even the greatest of us, have our moments of weakness.
Only a short while back, in this very room, we have seen Jane Hubbard,
that indomitable girl, sobbing brokenly on the carpet. Let us then not
express any surprise at the sudden collapse of one of the world’s
greatest female thinkers. As the meaning of this speech smote on Mrs.
Horace Hignett’s understanding, she sank weeping into a chair. The
ever-present fear that had haunted her had been exorcised. Windles was
hers in perpetuity. The relief was too great. She sat in her chair and
gulped; and Eustace, greatly encouraged, emerged slowly from the
bedclothes like a worm after a thunderstorm.
How long this poignant scene would have lasted, one cannot say. It is a
pity that it was cut short, for I should have liked to dwell upon it.
But at this moment, from the regions downstairs, there suddenly burst
upon the silent night such a whirlwind of sound as effectually
dissipated the tense emotion in the room. Somebody appeared to have
touched off the orchestrion in the drawing-room, and that willing
instrument had begun again in the middle of a bar at the point where
Jane Hubbard had switched it off four afternoons ago. Its wailing
lament for the passing of Summer filled the whole house.
“That’s too bad!” said Jane, a little annoyed. “At this time of night!”
“It’s the burglars!” quavered Mrs. Hignett. In the stress of recent
events she had completely forgotten the existence of those enemies of
Society. “They were dancing in the hall when I arrived, and now they’re
playing the orchestrion!”
“Light-hearted chaps!” said Eustace, admiring the sang-froid of the
criminal world. “Full of spirits!”
“This won’t do,” said Jane Hubbard, shaking her head. “We can’t have
this sort of thing. I’ll go and fetch my gun.”
“They’ll murder you, dear!” panted Mrs. Hignett, clinging to her arm.
Jane Hubbard laughed.
“Murder _me!_” she said amusedly. “I’d like to catch them at it!”
Mrs. Hignett stood staring at the door as Jane closed it softly behind
her.
“Eustace,” she said solemnly, “that is a wonderful girl!”
“Yes! She once killed a panther—or a puma, I forget which—with a
hat-pin!” said Eustace with enthusiasm.
“I could wish you no better wife!” said Mrs. Hignett.
She broke off with a sharp wail. Out in the passage something like a
battery of artillery had roared.
The door opened and Jane Hubbard appeared, slipping a fresh cartridge
into the elephant-gun.
“One of them was popping about outside here,” she announced. “I took a
shot at him, but I’m afraid I missed. The visibility was bad. At any
rate he went away.”
In this last statement she was perfectly accurate. Bream Mortimer, who
had been aroused by the orchestrion and who had come out to see what
was the matter, had gone away at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He
had been creeping down the passage when he found himself suddenly
confronted by a dim figure which, without a word, had attempted to slay
him with an enormous gun. The shot had whistled past his ears and gone
singing down the corridor. This was enough for Bream. He had returned
to his room in three strides, and was now under the bed. The burglars
might take everything in the house and welcome, so that they did not
molest his privacy. That was the way Bream looked at it. And very
sensible of him, too, I consider.
“We’d better go downstairs,” said Jane. “Bring the candle. Not you,
Eustace darling. You stay where you are or you may catch a chill. Don’t
stir out of bed!”
“I won’t,” said Eustace obediently.
§ 4
Of all the leisured pursuits, there are few less attractive to the
thinking man than sitting in a dark cupboard waiting for a house-party
to go to bed; and Sam, who had established himself in the one behind
the piano at a quarter to eight, soon began to feel as if he had been
there for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in
which he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so