The Girl on the Boat
“We have known each other all our lives,” continued Billie. “Father
thinks a tremendous lot of Bream. I suppose it was because Bream was
sailing by her that father insisted on my coming over on this boat. I’m
in disgrace, you know. I was cabled for and had to sail at a few days’
notice. I....”
“Oh, hello!”
“Why, Bream!” said Billie looking at him as he stood on the old spot in
the same familiar attitude with rather less affection than the son of
her father’s best friend might have expected. “I thought you said you
were going down to the promenade deck.
“I did go down to the promenade deck. And I’d hardly got there when a
fellow who’s getting up the ship’s concert to-morrow night nobbled me
to do something for it. I said I could only do conjuring tricks and
juggling and so on, and he said all right, do conjuring tricks and
juggling, then. He wanted to know if I knew anyone else who would help.
I came up to ask you,” he said to Sam, “if you would do something.”
“No,” said Sam. “I won’t.”
“He’s got a man who’s going to lecture on deep-sea fish and a couple of
women who both want to sing ‘The Rosary’ but he’s still a turn or two
short. Sure you won’t rally round?”
“Quite sure.”
“Oh, all right.” Bream Mortimer hovered wistfully above them. “It’s a
great morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Sam.
“Oh, Bream!” said Billie.
“Hello?”
“Do be a pet and go and talk to Jane Hubbard. I’m sure she must be
feeling lonely. I left her all by herself down on the next deck.”
A look of alarm spread itself over Bream’s face.
“Jane Hubbard! Oh, say, have a heart!”
“She’s a very nice girl.”
“She’s so darned dynamic. She looks at you as if you were a giraffe or
something and she would like to take a pot at you with a rifle.”
“Nonsense! Run along. Get her to tell you some of her big-game hunting
experiences. They are most interesting.”
Bream drifted sadly away.
“I don’t blame Miss Hubbard,” said Sam.
“What do you mean?”
“Looking at him as if she wanted to pot at him with a rifle. I should
like to do it myself.”
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about Bream. Read me some Tennyson.”
Sam opened the book very willingly. Infernal Bream Mortimer had
absolutely shot to pieces the spell which had begun to fall on them at
the beginning of their conversation. Only by reading poetry, it seemed
to him, could it be recovered. And when he saw the passage at which the
volume had opened he realised that his luck was in. Good old Tennyson!
He was all right. He had the stuff. You could rely on him every time.
He cleared his throat.
“Oh let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.
Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite quite sure
That there is one to love me....”
This was absolutely topping. It was like diving off a spring-board. He
could see the girl sitting with a soft smile on her face, her eyes, big
and dreamy, gazing out over the sunlit sea. He laid down the book and
took her hand.
“There is something,” he began in a low voice, “which I have been
trying to say ever since we met, something which I think you must have
read in my eyes.”
Her head was bent. She did not withdraw her hand.
“Until this voyage began,” he went on, “I did not know what life meant.
And then I saw you! It was like the gate of heaven opening. You’re the
dearest girl I ever met, and you can bet I’ll never forget....” He
stopped. “I’m not trying to make it rhyme,” he said apologetically.
“Billie, don’t think me silly ... I mean ... if you had the merest
notion, dearest ... I don’t know what’s the matter with me ... Billie,
darling, you are the only girl in the world! I have been looking for
you for years and years and I have found you at last, my soul-mate.
Surely this does not come as a surprise to you? That is, I mean, you
must have seen that I’ve been keen.... There’s that damned Walt Mason
stuff again!” His eyes fell on the volume beside him and he uttered an
exclamation of enlightenment. “It’s those poems!” he cried. “I’ve been
boning them up to such an extent that they’ve got me doing it too. What
I’m trying to say is, Will you marry me?”
She was drooping towards him. Her face was very sweet and tender, her
eyes misty. He slid an arm about her waist. She raised her lips to his.
§ 3
Suddenly she drew herself away, a cloud on her face.
“Darling,” she said, “I’ve a confession to make.”
“A confession? You? Nonsense!”
“I can’t get rid of a horrible thought. I was wondering if this will
last.”
“Our love? Don’t be afraid that it will fade ... I mean ... why, it’s
so vast, it’s bound to last ... that is to say, of course it will.”
She traced a pattern on the deck with her shoe.
“I’m afraid of myself. You see, once before—and it was not so very long
ago,—I thought I had met my ideal, but....”
Sam laughed heartily.
“Are you worrying about that absurd business of poor old Eustace
Hignett?”
She started violently.
“You know!”
“Of course! He told me himself.”
“Do you know him? Where did you meet him?”
“I’ve known him all my life. He’s my cousin. As a matter of fact, we
are sharing a state-room on board now.”
“Eustace is on board! Oh, this is awful! What shall I do when I meet
him?”
“Oh, pass it off with a light laugh and a genial quip. Just say: ‘Oh,
here you are!’ or something. You know the sort of thing.”
“It will be terrible.”
“Not a bit of it. Why should you feel embarrassed? He must have
realised by now that you acted in the only possible way. It was absurd
his ever expecting you to marry him. I mean to say, just look at it
dispassionately ... Eustace ... poor old Eustace ... and _you!_ The
Princess and the Swineherd!”
“Does Mr. Hignett keep pigs?” she asked, surprised.
“I mean that poor old Eustace is so far below you, darling, that, with
the most charitable intentions, one can only look on his asking you to
marry him in the light of a record exhibition of pure nerve. A dear,
good fellow, of course, but hopeless where the sterner realities of
life are concerned. A man who can’t even stop a dog-fight! In a world
which is practically one seething mass of fighting dogs, how could you
trust yourself to such a one? Nobody is fonder of Eustace Hignett than
I am, but ... well, I mean to say!”
“I see what you mean. He really wasn’t my ideal.”
“Not by a mile!”
She mused, her chin in her hand.
“Of course, he was quite a dear in a lot of ways.”
“Oh, a splendid chap,” said Sam tolerantly.
“Have you ever heard him sing? I think what first attracted me to him
was his beautiful voice. He really sings extraordinarily well.”
A slight but definite spasm of jealousy afflicted Sam. He had no
objection to praising poor old Eustace within decent limits, but the
conversation seemed to him to be confining itself too exclusively to
one subject.
“Yes?” he said. “Oh yes, I’ve heard him sing. Not lately. He does
drawing-room ballads and all that sort of thing still, I suppose?”
“Have you ever heard him sing ‘My love is like a glowing tulip that in
an old-world garden grows’?”
“I have not had that advantage,” replied Sam stiffly. “But anyone can
sing a drawing-room ballad. Now something funny, something that will
make people laugh, something that really needs putting across ...
that’s a different thing altogether.”
“Do you sing that sort of thing?”
“People have been good enough to say....”
“Then,” said Billie decidedly, “you must certainly do something at the
ship’s concert to-morrow! The idea of your trying to hide your light
under a bushel! I will tell Bream to count on you. He is an excellent
accompanist. He can accompany you.”
“Yes, but ... well, I don’t know,” said Sam doubtfully. He could not
help remembering that the last time he had sung in public had been at a
house-supper at school, seven years before, and that on that occasion
somebody whom it was a lasting grief to him that he had been unable to
identify had thrown a pat of butter at him.
“Of course you must sing,” said Billie. “I’ll tell Bream when I go down
to lunch. What will you sing?”
“Well—er—”
“Well, I’m sure it will be wonderful whatever it is. You are so
wonderful in every way. You remind me of one of the heroes of old!”
Sam’s discomposure vanished. In the first place, this was much more the
sort of conversation which he felt the situation indicated. In the
second place he had remembered that there was no need for him to sing
at all. He could do that imitation of Frank Tinney which had been such
a hit at the Trinity smoker. He was on safe ground there. He knew he
was good. He clasped the girl to him and kissed her sixteen times.
§ 4
Billie Bennett stood in front of the mirror in her state-room dreamily
brushing the glorious red hair that fell in a tumbled mass about her
shoulders. On the lounge beside her, swathed in a business-like grey
kimono, Jane Hubbard watched her, smoking a cigarette.
Jane Hubbard was a splendid specimen of bronzed, strapping womanhood.
Her whole appearance spoke of the open air and the great wide spaces
and all that sort of thing. She was a thoroughly wholesome, manly girl,
about the same age as Billie, with a strong chin and an eye that had
looked leopards squarely in the face and caused them to withdraw
abashed into the undergrowth, or wherever it is that leopards withdraw
when abashed. One could not picture Jane Hubbard flirting lightly at
garden parties, but one could picture her very readily arguing with a
mutinous native bearer, or with a firm touch putting sweetness and
light into the soul of a refractory mule. Boadicea in her girlhood must
have been rather like Jane Hubbard.
She smoked contentedly. She had rolled her cigarette herself with one
hand, a feat beyond the powers of all but the very greatest. She was
pleasantly tired after walking eighty-five times round the promenade
deck. Soon she would go to bed and fall asleep the moment her head
touched the pillow. But meanwhile she lingered here, for she felt that
Billie had something to confide in her.
“Jane,” said Billie, “have you ever been in love?”
Jane Hubbard knocked the ash off her cigarette.
“Not since I was eleven,” she said in her deep musical voice. “He was
my music-master. He was forty-seven and completely bald, but there was
an appealing weakness in him which won my heart. He was afraid of cats,
I remember.”
Billie gathered her hair into a molten bundle and let it run through
her fingers.
“Oh, Jane!” she exclaimed. “Surely you don’t like weak men. I like a
man who is strong and brave and wonderful.”
“I can’t stand brave men,” said Jane, “it makes them so independent. I
could only love a man who would depend on me in everything. Sometimes,
when I have been roughing it out in the jungle,” she went on rather
wistfully, “I have had my dreams of some gentle clinging man who would
put his hand in mine and tell me all his poor little troubles and let
me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face. I’m
beginning to want to settle down. After all there are other things for
a woman to do in this life besides travelling and big-game hunting. I
should like to go into Parliament. And, if I did that, I should
practically have to marry. I mean, I should have to have a man to look
after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so
on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can’t imagine
anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I came
back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a
whisky-and-soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things