The Girl on the Boat
had closed behind Bream Mortimer she had at her disposal no fewer than
seven, all good. It took her but a moment to select the best and
simplest. She tiptoed softly to her son’s room. Rhythmic snores greeted
her listening ears. She opened the door and went noiselessly in.
CHAPTER II.
GALLANT RESCUE BY WELL-DRESSED YOUNG MAN
§ 1
The White Star liner “Atlantic” lay at her pier with steam up and
gangway down, ready for her trip to Southampton. The hour of departure
was near, and there was a good deal of mixed activity going on. Sailors
fiddled about with ropes. Junior officers flitted to and fro.
White-jacketed stewards wrestled with trunks. Probably the captain,
though not visible, was also employed on some useful work of a nautical
nature and not wasting his time. Men, women, boxes, rugs, dogs,
flowers, and baskets of fruits were flowing on board in a steady
stream.
The usual drove of citizens had come to see the travellers off. There
were men on the passenger-list who were being seen off by fathers, by
mothers, by sisters, by cousins, and by aunts. In the steerage, there
was an elderly Jewish lady who was being seen off by exactly
thirty-seven of her late neighbours in Rivington Street. And two men in
the second cabin were being seen off by detectives, surely the crowning
compliment a great nation can bestow. The cavernous Customs sheds were
congested with friends and relatives, and Sam Marlowe, heading for the
gang-plank, was only able to make progress by employing all the muscle
and energy which Nature had bestowed upon him, and which during the
greater part of his life he had developed by athletic exercise.
However, after some minutes of silent endeavour, now driving his
shoulder into the midriff of some obstructing male, now courteously
lifting some stout female off his feet, he had succeeded in struggling
to within a few yards of his goal, when suddenly a sharp pain shot
through his right arm, and he spun round with a cry.
It seemed to Sam that he had been bitten, and this puzzled him, for New
York crowds, though they may shove and jostle, rarely bite.
He found himself face to face with an extraordinarily pretty girl.
She was a red-haired girl, with the beautiful ivory skin which goes
with red hair. Her eyes, though they were under the shadow of her hat,
and he could not be certain, he diagnosed as green, or may be blue, or
possibly grey. Not that it mattered, for he had a catholic taste in
feminine eyes. So long as they were large and bright, as were the
specimens under his immediate notice, he was not the man to quibble
about a point of colour. Her nose was small, and on the very tip of it
there was a tiny freckle. Her mouth was nice and wide, her chin soft
and round. She was just about the height which every girl ought to be.
Her figure was trim, her feet tiny, and she wore one of those dresses
of which a man can say no more than that they look pretty well all
right.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Samuel Marlowe was a susceptible young man, and
for many a long month his heart had been lying empty, all swept and
garnished, with “Welcome” on the mat. This girl seemed to rush in and
fill it. She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the
third prettiest. He had an orderly mind, one capable of classifying and
docketing girls. But there was a subtle something about her, a sort of
how-shall-one-put-it, which he had never encountered before. He
swallowed convulsively. His well-developed chest swelled beneath its
covering of blue flannel and invisible stripe. At last, he told
himself, he was in love, really in love, and at first sight, too, which
made it all the more impressive. He doubted whether in the whole course
of history anything like this had ever happened before to anybody. Oh,
to clasp this girl to him and....
But she had bitten him in the arm. That was hardly the right spirit.
That, he felt, constituted an obstacle.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she cried.
Well, of course, if she regretted her rash act.... After all, an
impulsive girl might bite a man in the arm in the excitement of the
moment and still have a sweet, womanly nature....
“The crowd seems to make Pinky-Boodles so nervous.”
Sam might have remained mystified, but at this juncture there proceeded
from a bundle of rugs in the neighbourhood of the girl’s lower ribs, a
sharp yapping sound, of such a calibre as to be plainly audible over
the confused noise of Mamies who were telling Sadies to be sure and
write, of Bills who were instructing Dicks to look up old Joe in Paris
and give him their best, and of all the fruit-boys, candy-boys,
magazine-boys, American-flag-boys, and telegraph boys who were honking
their wares on every side.
“I hope he didn’t hurt you much. You’re the third person he’s bitten
to-day.” She kissed the animal in a loving and congratulatory way on
the tip of his black nose. “Not counting waiters at the hotel, of
course,” she added. And then she was swept from him in the crowd, and
he was left thinking of all the things he might have said—all those
graceful, witty, ingratiating things which just make a bit of
difference on these occasions.
He had said nothing. Not a sound, exclusive of the first sharp yowl of
pain, had proceeded from him. He had just goggled. A rotten exhibition!
Perhaps he would never see this girl again. She looked the sort of girl
who comes to see friends off and doesn’t sail herself. And what memory
of him would she retain? She would mix him up with the time when she
went to visit the deaf-and-dumb hospital.
§ 2
Sam reached the gang-plank, showed his ticket, and made his way through
the crowd of passengers, passengers’ friends, stewards, junior
officers, and sailors who infested the deck. He proceeded down the main
companion-way, through a rich smell of india-rubber and mixed pickles,
as far as the dining saloon; then turned down the narrow passage
leading to his state-room.
State-rooms on ocean liners are curious things. When you see them on
the chart in the passenger-office, with the gentlemanly clerk drawing
rings round them in pencil, they seem so vast that you get the
impression that, after stowing away all your trunks, you will have room
left over to do a bit of entertaining—possibly an informal dance or
something. When you go on board, you find that the place has shrunk to
the dimensions of an undersized cupboard in which it would be
impossible to swing a cat. And then, about the second day out, it
suddenly expands again. For one reason or another the necessity for
swinging cats does not arise, and you find yourself quite comfortable.
Sam, balancing himself on the narrow, projecting ledge which the chart
in the passenger-office had grandiloquently described as a lounge,
began to feel the depression which marks the second phase. He almost
wished now that he had not been so energetic in having his room changed
in order to enjoy the company of his cousin Eustace. It was going to be
a tight fit. Eustace’s bag was already in the cabin, and it seemed to
take up the entire fairway. Still, after all, Eustace was a good sort,
and would be a cheerful companion. And Sam realised that if the girl
with the red hair was not a passenger on the boat, he was going to have
need of diverting society.
A footstep sounded in the passage outside. The door opened.
“Hullo, Eustace!” said Sam.
Eustace Hignett nodded listlessly, sat down on his bag, and emitted a
deep sigh. He was a small, fragile-looking young man with a pale,
intellectual face. Dark hair fell in a sweep over his forehead. He
looked like a man who would write _vers libre_, as indeed he did.
“Hullo!” he said, in a hollow voice.
Sam regarded him blankly. He had not seen him for some years, but,
going by his recollections of him at the University, he had expected
something cheerier than this. In fact, he had rather been relying on
Eustace to be the life and soul of the party. The man sitting on the
bag before him could hardly have filled that role at a gathering of
Russian novelists.
“What on earth’s the matter?” said Sam.
“The matter?” Eustace Hignett laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, nothing.
Nothing much. Nothing to signify. Only my heart’s broken.” He eyed with
considerable malignity the bottle of water in the rack above his head,
a harmless object provided by the White Star Company for clients who
might desire to clean their teeth during the voyage.
“If you would care to hear the story...?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“It is quite short.”
“That’s good.”
“Soon after I arrived in America, I met a girl....”
“Talking of girls,” said Sam with enthusiasm, “I’ve just seen the only
one in the world that really amounts to anything. It was like this. I
was shoving my way through the mob on the dock, when suddenly....”
“Shall I tell you my story, or will you tell yours?”
“Oh, sorry! Go ahead.”
Eustace Hignett scowled at the printed notice on the wall, informing
occupants of the state-room that the name of their steward was J. B.
Midgeley.
“She was an extraordinarily pretty girl....”
“So was mine! I give you my honest word I never in all my life saw
such....”
“Of course, if you prefer that I postponed my narrative?” said Eustace
coldly.
“Oh, sorry! Carry on.”
“She was an extraordinarily pretty girl....”
“What was her name?”
“Wilhelmina Bennett. She was an extraordinarily pretty girl, and highly
intelligent. I read her all my poems, and she appreciated them
immensely. She enjoyed my singing. My conversation appeared to interest
her. She admired my....”
“I see. You made a hit. Now get on with the story.”
“Don’t bustle me,” said Eustace querulously.
“Well, you know, the voyage only takes eight days.”
“I’ve forgotten where I was.”
“You were saying what a devil of a chap she thought you. What happened?
I suppose, when you actually came to propose, you found she was engaged
to some other johnny?”
“Not at all! I asked her to be my wife and she consented. We both
agreed that a quiet wedding was what we wanted—she thought her father
might stop the thing if he knew, and I was dashed sure my mother
would—so we decided to get married without telling anybody. By now,”
said Eustace, with a morose glance at the porthole, “I ought to have
been on my honeymoon. Everything was settled. I had the licence and the
parson’s fee. I had been breaking in a new tie for the wedding.”
“And then you quarrelled?”
“Nothing of the kind. I wish you would stop trying to tell me the
story. I’m telling _you_. What happened was this: somehow—I can’t make
out how—mother found out. And then, of course, it was all over. She
stopped the thing.”
Sam was indignant. He thoroughly disliked his Aunt Adeline, and his
cousin’s meek subservience to her revolted him.
“Stopped it? I suppose she said ‘Now, Eustace, you mustn’t!’ and you
said ‘Very well, mother!’ and scratched the fixture?”
“She didn’t say a word. She never has said a word. As far as that goes,
she might never have heard anything about the marriage.”
“Then how do you mean she stopped it?”
“She pinched my trousers!”
“Pinched your trousers!”
Eustace groaned. “All of them! The whole bally lot! She gets up long
before I do, and she must have come into my room and cleaned it out
while I was asleep. When I woke up and started to dress, I couldn’t
find a single damned pair of bags in the whole place. I looked
everywhere. Finally, I went into the sitting-room where she was writing
letters and asked if she had happened to see any anywhere. She said she
had sent them all to be pressed. She said she knew I never went out in
the mornings—I don’t as a rule—and they would be back at lunch-time. A
fat lot of use that was! I had to be at the church at eleven. Well, I