text:
The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 6

Ships' concerts are given in aid of the Seamen's Orphans and Widows, and, after one has been present at a few of them, one seems to feel that any right-thinking orphan or widow would rather jog along and take a chance of starvation than be the innocent cause of such things. They open with a long speech from the master of the ceremonies—so long, as a rule, that it is only the thought of what is going to happen afterwards that enables the audience to bear it with fortitude. This done, the amateur talent is unleashed, and the grim work begins.

It was not till after the all too brief intermission for rest and recuperation that the newly-formed team of Marlowe and Hignett was scheduled to appear. Previous to this there had been dark deeds done in the quiet saloon. The lecturer on deep-sea fish had fulfilled his threat and spoken at great length on a subject which, treated by a master of oratory, would have palled on the audience after ten or fifteen minutes; and at the end of fifteen minutes this speaker had only just got past the haddocks and was feeling his way tentatively through the shrimps. "The Rosary" had been sung and there was an uneasy doubt as to whether it was not going to be sung again after the interval—the latest rumour being that the second of the rival lady singers had proved adamant to all appeals and intended to fight the thing out on the lines she had originally chosen if they put her in irons.

A young man had recited "Gunga Din" and, wilfully misinterpreting the gratitude of the audience that it was over for a desire for more, had followed it with "Fuzzy-Wuzzy." His sister—these things run in families—had sung "My Little Gray Home in the West"—rather sombrely, for she had wanted to sing "The Rosary," and, with the same obtuseness which characterised her brother, had come back and rendered plantation songs. The audience was now examining its programmes in the interval of silence in order to ascertain the duration of the sentence still remaining unexpired.

It was shocked to read the following:—

7. A Little Imitation......S. Marlowe.

All over the saloon you could see fair women and brave men wilting in their seats. Imitation...! The word, as Keats would have said, was like a knell! Many of these people were old travellers and their minds went back wincingly, as one recalls forgotten wounds, to occasions when performers at ships' concerts had imitated whole strings of Dickens' characters or, with the assistance of a few hats and a little false hair, had endeavoured to portray Napoleon, Bismarck, Shakespeare, and other of the famous dead. In this printed line on the programme there was nothing to indicate the nature or scope of the imitation which this S. Marlowe proposed to inflict upon them. They could only sit and wait and hope that it would be short.

There was a sinking of hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships' concerts. They stared at Hignett apprehensively. There seemed to be something ominous in the man's very aspect. His face was very pale and set, the face of one approaching a task at which his humanity shudders. They could not know that the pallor of Eustace Hignett was due entirely to the slight tremor which, even on the calmest nights, the engines of an ocean liner produce in the flooring of a dining saloon, and to that faint, yet well-defined, smell of cooked meats which clings to a room where a great many people have recently been eating a great many meals. A few beads of cold perspiration were clinging to Eustace Hignett's brow. He looked straight before him with unseeing eyes. He was thinking hard of the Sahara.

So tense was Eustace's concentration that he did not see Billie Bennett, seated in the front row. Billie had watched him enter with a little thrill of embarrassment. She wished that she had been content with one of the seats at the back. But Jane Hubbard had insisted on the front row. She always had a front-row seat at witch dances in Africa, and the thing had become a habit.

In order to avoid recognition for as long as possible, Billie now put up her fan and turned to Jane. She was surprised to see that her friend was staring eagerly before her with a fixity almost equal to that of Eustace. Under her breath she muttered an exclamation of surprise in one of the lesser-known dialects of Northern Nigeria.

"Billie!" she whispered sharply.

"What is the matter, Jane?"

"Who is that man at the piano? Do you know him?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," said Billie. "His name is Hignett. Why?"

"It's the man I met on the Subway!" She breathed a sigh. "Poor little fellow, how miserable he looks!"

At this moment their conversation was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord, and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with the feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than even they had looked for.

The figure was richly clad in some scarlet material. Its face was a grisly black and below the nose appeared what seemed a horrible gash. It advanced towards them, smoking a cigar.

"Hullo, Ernest," it said.

And then it seemed to pause expectantly, as though desiring some reply. Dead silence reigned in the saloon.

"Hullo, Ernest!"

Those nearest the piano—and nobody more quickly than Jane Hubbard—now observed that the white face of the man on the stool had grown whiter still. His eyes gazed out glassily from under his damp brow. He looked like a man who was seeing some ghastly sight. The audience sympathised with him. They felt like that, too.

In all human plans there is ever some slight hitch, some little miscalculation which just makes all the difference. A moment's thought should have told Eustace Hignett that a half-smoked cigar was one of the essential properties to any imitation of the eminent Mr. Tinney; but he had completely overlooked the fact. The cigar came as an absolute surprise to him and it could not have affected him more powerfully if it had been a voice from the tomb. He stared at it pallidly, like Macbeth at the ghost of Banquo. It was a strong, lively young cigar, and its curling smoke played lightly about his nostrils. His jaw fell. His eyes protruded. He looked for a long moment like one of those deep-sea fishes concerning which the recent lecturer had spoken so searchingly. Then with the cry of a stricken animal, he bounded from his seat and fled for the deck.

There was a rustle at Billie's side as Jane Hubbard rose and followed him. Jane was deeply stirred. Even as he sat, looking so pale and piteous, at the piano, her big heart had gone out to him, and now, in his moment of anguish, he seemed to bring to the surface everything that was best and manliest in her nature. Thrusting aside with one sweep of her powerful arm a steward who happened to be between her and the door, she raced in pursuit.

Sam Marlowe had watched his cousin's dash for the open with a consternation so complete that his senses seemed to have left him. A general, deserted by his men on some stricken field, might have felt something akin to his emotion. Of all the learned professions, the imitation of Mr. Frank Tinney is the one which can least easily be carried through single-handed. The man at the piano, the leader of the orchestra, is essential. He is the life-blood of the entertainment. Without him, nothing can be done.

For an instant Sam stood there, gaping blankly. Then the open door of the saloon seemed to beckon an invitation. He made for it, reached it, passed through it. That concluded his efforts in aid of the Seamen's Orphans and Widows.

The spell which had lain on the audience broke. This imitation seemed to them to possess in an extraordinary measure the one quality which renders amateur imitations tolerable, that of brevity. They had seen many amateur imitations, but never one as short as this. The saloon echoed with their applause.

It brought no balm to Samuel Marlowe. He did not hear it. He had fled for refuge to his state-room and was lying in the lower berth, chewing the pillow, a soul in torment.

title: The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 6


text:
The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 7

There was a tap at the door. Sam sat up dizzily. He had lost all count of time.

"Who's that?"

"I have a note for you, sir."

It was the level voice of J. B. Midgeley, the steward. The stewards of the White Star Line, besides being the civillest and most obliging body of men in the world, all have soft and pleasant voices. A White Star steward, waking you up at six-thirty, to tell you that your bath is ready, when you wanted to sleep on till twelve, is the nearest human approach to the nightingale.

"A what?"

"A note, sir."

Sam jumped up and switched on the light. He went to the door and took the note from J. B. Midgeley, who, his mission accomplished, retired in an orderly manner down the passage. Sam looked at the letter with a thrill. He had never seen the handwriting before, but, with the eye of love, he recognised it. It was just the sort of hand he would have expected Billie to write, round and smooth and flowing, the writing of a warm-hearted girl. He tore open the envelope.

"Please come up to the top deck. I want to speak to you."

Sam could not disguise it from himself that he was a little disappointed. I don't know if you see anything wrong with the letter, but the way Sam looked at it was that, for a first love-letter, it might have been longer and perhaps a shade warmer. And, without running any risk of writer's cramp, she might have signed it.

However, these were small matters. No doubt the dear girl had been in a hurry and so forth. The important point was that he was going to see her. When a man's afraid, sings the bard, a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see; and the same truth holds good when a man has made an exhibition of himself at a ship's concert. A woman's gentle sympathy, that was what Samuel Marlowe wanted more than anything else at the moment. That, he felt, was what the doctor ordered. He scrubbed the burnt cork off his face with all possible speed and changed his clothes and made his way to the upper deck. It was like Billie, he felt, to have chosen this spot for their meeting. It would be deserted and it was hallowed for them both by sacred associations.

She was standing at the rail, looking out over the water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam's head against an overhanging stanchion announced his approach, that she turned.

"Oh, is that you?"

"Yes."

"You've been a long time."

"It wasn't an easy job," explained Sam, "getting all that burnt cork off. You've no notion how the stuff sticks. You have to use butter...."

She shuddered.

"Don't!"

"But I did. You have to with burnt cork."

"Don't tell me these horrible things." Her voice rose almost hysterically. "I never want to hear the words burnt cork mentioned again as long as I live."

"I feel exactly the same." Sam moved to her side. "Darling," he said in a low voice, "it was like you to ask me to meet you here. I know what you were thinking. You thought that I should need sympathy. You wanted to pet me, to smooth my wounded feelings, to hold me in your arms and tell me that, as we loved each other, what did anything else matter?"

"I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"No, I didn't."

"Oh, you didn't? I thought you did!" He looked at her wistfully. "I thought," he said, "that possibly you might have wished to comfort me. I have been through a great strain. I have had a shock...."

"And what about me?" she demanded passionately. "Haven't I had a shock?"

He melted at once.

"Have you had a shock too? Poor little thing! Sit down and tell me all about it."

She looked away from him, her face working.

"Can't you understand what a shock I have had? I thought you were the perfect knight."

"Yes, isn't it?"

"Isn't what?"

"I thought you said it was a perfect night."

"I said I thought you were the perfect knight."

"Oh, ah!"

A sailor crossed the deck, a dim figure in the shadows, went over to a sort of raised summerhouse with a brass thingummy in it, fooled about for a moment, and went away again. Sailors earn their money easily.

"Yes?" said Sam when he had gone.

"I forget what I was saying."

"Something about my being the perfect knight."

"Yes. I thought you were."

"That's good."

"But you're not!"

"No?"

"No!"

"Oh!"

Silence fell. Sam was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white mouse into chapel.

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease, Un-something, something, something, please. When tiddly-umpty umpty brow, A something something something thou!" He had forgotten the exact words, but the gist of it had been that Woman, however she might treat a man in times of prosperity, could be relied on to rally round and do the right thing when he was in trouble. How little the poet had known woman.

"Why not?" he said huffily.

She gave a little sob.

"I put you on a pedestal and I find you have feet of clay. You have blurred the image which I formed of you. I can never think of you again without picturing you as you stood in that saloon, stammering and helpless...."

"Well, what can you do when your pianist runs out on you?"

"You could have done something!" The words she had spoken only yesterday to Jane Hubbard came back to her. "I can't forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Oh, what, what," she cried, "induced you to try to give an imitation of Bert Williams?"

Sam started, stung to the quick.

"It wasn't Bert Williams. It was Frank Tinney!"

"Well, how was I to know?"

"I did my best," said Sam sullenly.

"That is the awful thought."

"I did it for your sake."

"I know. It gives me a horrible sense of guilt." She shuddered again. Then suddenly, with the nervous quickness of a woman unstrung, thrust a small black golliwog into his hand. "Take it!"

"What's this?"

"You bought it for me yesterday at the barber's shop. It is the only present which you have given me. Take it back."

"I don't want it. I shouldn't know what to do with it."

"You must take it," she said in a low voice. "It is a symbol."

"A what?"

"A symbol of our broken love."

"I don't see how you make that out. It's a golliwog."

"I can never marry you now."

"What! Good heavens! Don't be absurd."

"I can't!"

"Oh, go on, have a dash at it," he said encouragingly, though his heart was sinking.

She shook her head.

"No, I couldn't."

"Oh, hang it all!"

"I couldn't. I'm a very strange girl...."

"You're a very silly girl...."

"I don't see what right you have to say that," she flared.

"I don't see what right you have to say you can't marry me and try to load me up with golliwogs," he retorted with equal heat.

"Oh, can't you understand?"

"No, I'm dashed if I can."

She looked at him despondently.

"When I said I would marry you, you were a hero to me. You stood to me for everything that was noble and brave and wonderful. I had only to shut my eyes to conjure up the picture of you as you dived off the rail that morning. Now—" her voice trembled "—if I shut my eyes now, I can only see a man with a hideous black face making himself the laughing stock of the ship. How could I marry you, haunted by that picture?"

"But, good heavens, you talk as though I made a habit of blacking up! You talk as though you expected me to come to the altar smothered in burnt cork."

"I shall always think of you as I saw you to-night." She looked at him sadly. "There's a bit of black still on your left ear."

He tried to take her hand. But she drew it away. He fell back as if struck.

"So this is the end," he muttered.

"Yes. It's partly on your ear and partly on your cheek."

"So this is the end," he repeated.

"You had better go below and ask your steward to give you some more butter."

He laughed bitterly.

"Well, I might have expected it. I might have known what would happen! Eustace warned me. Eustace was right. He knows women—as I do now. Women! What mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was't betrayed the what's-its-name? A woman! Who lost ... lost ... who lost ... who—er—and so on? A woman.... So all is over! There is nothing to be said but good-bye?"

"No."

"Good-bye, then, Miss Bennett!"

"Good-bye," said Billie sadly. "I—I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it!"

"You do understand, don't you?"

"You have made everything perfectly clear."

"I hope—I hope you won't be unhappy."

"Unhappy!" Sam produced a strangled noise from his larynx like the cry of a shrimp in pain. "Unhappy! Ha! ha! I'm not unhappy! Whatever gave you that idea? I'm smiling! I'm laughing! I feel I've had a merciful escape. Oh, ha, ha!"

"It's very unkind and rude of you to say that."

"It reminds me of a moving picture I saw in New York. It was called 'Saved from the Scaffold.'"

"Oh!"

"I'm not unhappy! What have I got to be unhappy about? What on earth does any man want to get married for? I don't. Give me my gay bachelor life! My Uncle Charlie used to say 'It's better luck to get married than it is to be kicked in the head by a mule.' But he was a man who always looked on the bright side. Good-night, Miss Bennett. And good-bye—for ever."

He turned on his heel and strode across the deck. From a white heaven the moon still shone benignantly down, mocking him. He had spoken bravely; the most captious critic could not but have admitted that he had made a good exit. But already his heart was aching.

As he drew near to his state-room, he was amazed and disgusted to hear a high tenor voice raised in song proceeding from behind the closed door.

"I fee-er naw faw in shee-ining arr-mor, Though his lance be sharrrp and—er keen; But I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour Therough thy der-rooping lashes seen: I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour...." Sam flung open the door wrathfully. That Eustace Hignett should still be alive was bad—he had pictured him hurling himself overboard and bobbing about, a pleasing sight in the wake of the vessel; that he should be singing was an outrage. Remorse, Sam felt, should have stricken Eustace Hignett dumb. Instead of which, here he was comporting himself like a blasted linnet. It was all wrong. The man could have no conscience whatever.

"Well," he said sternly, "so there you are!"

Eustace Hignett looked up brightly, even beamingly. In the brief interval which had elapsed since Sam had seen him last, an extraordinary transformation had taken place in this young man. His wan look had disappeared. His eyes were bright. His face wore that beastly self-satisfied smirk which you see in pictures advertising certain makes of fine-mesh underwear. If Eustace Hignett had been a full-page drawing in a magazine with "My dear fellow, I always wear Sigsbee's Super-fine Featherweight!" printed underneath him, he could not have looked more pleased with himself.

"Hullo!" he said. "I was wondering where you had got to."

"Never mind," said Sam coldly, "where I had got to! Where did you get to and why? You poor, miserable worm," he went on in a burst of generous indignation, "what have you to say for yourself? What do you mean by dashing away like that and killing my little entertainment?"

"Awfully sorry, old man. I hadn't foreseen the cigar. I was bearing up tolerably well till I began to sniff the smoke. Then everything seemed to go black—I don't mean you, of course. You were black already—and I got the feeling that I simply must get on deck and drown myself."

"Well, why didn't you?" demanded Sam with a strong sense of injury. "I might have forgiven you then. But to come down here and find you singing...."

A soft light came into Eustace Hignett's eyes.

"I want to tell you all about that," he said.

"It's the most astonishing story. A miracle, you might almost call it. Makes you believe in Fate and all that kind of thing. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York...."

He broke off while Sam cursed him, the Subway, and the city of New York in the order named.

"My dear chap, what is the matter?"

"What is the matter? Ha!"

"Something is the matter," persisted Eustace Hignett. "I can tell it by your manner. Something has happened to disturb and upset you. I know you so well that I can pierce the mask. What is it? Tell me!"

"Ha, ha!"

"You surely can't still be brooding on that concert business? Why, that's all over. I take it that after my departure you made the most colossal ass of yourself, but why let that worry you? These things cannot affect one permanently."

"Can't they? Let me tell you that, as a result of that concert, my engagement is broken off."

Eustace sprang forward with outstretched hand.

"Not really? How splendid! Accept my congratulations! This is the finest thing that could possibly have happened. These are not idle words. As one who has been engaged to the girl himself, I speak feelingly. You are well out of it, Sam."

Sam thrust aside his hand. Had it been his neck he might have clutched it eagerly, but he drew the line at shaking hands with Eustace Hignett.

"My heart is broken," he said with dignity.

"That feeling will pass, giving way to one of devout thankfulness. I know. I've been there. After all ... Wilhelmina Bennett ... what is she? A rag and a bone and a hank of hair!"

"She is nothing of the kind," said Sam, revolted.

"Pardon me," said Eustace firmly, "I speak as an expert. I know her and I repeat, she is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!"

"She is the only girl in the world, and, owing to your idiotic behaviour, I have lost her."

"You speak of the only girl in the world," said Eustace blithely. "If you want to hear about the only girl in the world, I will tell you. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York...."

"I'm going to bed," said Sam brusquely.

"All right. I'll tell you while you're undressing."

"I don't want to listen."

"A week ago," said Eustace Hignett, "I will ask you to picture me seated after some difficulty in a carriage in the New York Subway. I got into conversation with a girl with an elephant gun."

Sam revised his private commination service in order to include the elephant gun.

"She was my soul-mate," proceeded Eustace with quiet determination. "I didn't know it at the time, but she was. She had grave brown eyes, a wonderful personality, and this elephant gun."

"Did she shoot you with it?"

"Shoot me? What do you mean? Why, no!"

"The girl must have been a fool!" said Sam bitterly. "The chance of a lifetime and she missed it. Where are my pyjamas?"

"I haven't seen your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, we parted at Sixty-sixth Street, and, strange as it may seem, I forgot all about her."

"Do it again!"

"Tell it again?"

"Good heavens, no! Forget all about her again."

"Nothing," said Eustace Hignett gravely, "could make me do that. Our souls have blended. Our beings have called to one another from their deepest depths, saying.... There are your pyjamas, over in the corner ... saying 'You are mine!' How could I forget her after that? Well, as I was saying, we parted. Little did I know that she was sailing on this very boat! But just now she came to me as I writhed on the deck...."

"Did you writhe?" asked Sam with a flicker of moody interest.

"I certainly did!"

"That's good!"

"But not for long."

"That's bad!"

"She came to me and healed me. Sam, that girl is an angel."

"Switch off the light when you've finished."

"She seemed to understand without a word how I was feeling. There are some situations which do not need words. She went away and returned with a mixture of some description in a glass. I don't know what it was. It had Worcester Sauce in it. She put it to my lips. She made me drink it. She said it was what she always used in Africa for bull-calves with the staggers. Well, believe me or believe me not ... are you asleep?"

"Yes."

"Believe me or believe me not, in under two minutes I was not merely freed from the nausea caused by your cigar. I was smoking myself! I was walking the deck with her without the slightest qualm. I was even able to look over the side from time to time and comment on the beauty of the moon on the water.... I have said some mordant things about women since I came on board this boat. I withdraw them unreservedly. They still apply to girls like Wilhelmina Bennett, but I have ceased to include the whole sex in my remarks. Jane Hubbard has restored my faith in Woman. Sam! Sam!"

"What?"

"I said that Jane Hubbard had restored my faith in Woman."

"Oh, all right."

Eustace Hignett finished undressing and got into bed. With a soft smile on his face he switched off the light. There was a long silence, broken only by the distant purring of the engines.

At about twelve-thirty a voice came from the lower berth.

"Sam!"

"What is it now?"

"There is a sweet womanly strength about her, Sam. She was telling me she once killed a panther with a hat-pin."

Sam groaned and tossed on his mattress.

Silence fell again.

"At least I think it was a panther," said Eustace Hignett at a quarter past one. "Either a panther or a puma."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 7


text:
The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 8

A week after the liner "Atlantic" had docked at Southampton Sam Marlowe might have been observed—and was observed by various of the residents—sitting on a bench on the esplanade of that rising watering-place, Bingley-on-the-Sea, in Sussex. All watering-places on the south coast of England are blots on the landscape, but though I am aware that by saying it I shall offend the civic pride of some of the others—none are so peculiarly foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalte on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the asphalte on other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel Magnificent, where Sam was stopping, are in a class of bungling incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The very waves that break on its shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if it revolted them to have to come to such a place.

Why, then, was Sam Marlowe visiting this ozone-swept Gehenna? Why, with all the rest of England at his disposal, had he chosen to spend a week at breezy, blighted Bingley?

Simply because he had been disappointed in love.

Nothing is more curious than the myriad ways in which reaction from an unfortunate love-affair manifests itself in various men. No two males behave in the same way under the spur of female fickleness. Archilochum, for instance, according to the Roman writer, proprio rabies armavit iambo. It is no good pretending out of politeness that you know what that means, so I will translate. Rabies—his grouch—armavit—armed—Archilochum—Archilochus—iambo—with the iambic—proprio—his own invention. In other words, when the poet Archilochus was handed his hat by the lady of his affections, he consoled himself by going off and writing satirical verse about her in a new metre which he had thought up immediately after leaving the house. That was the way the thing affected him.

On the other hand, we read in a recent issue of a London daily paper that John Simmons (31), a meat-salesman, was accused of assaulting an officer while in the discharge of his duty, at the same time using profane language whereby the officer went in fear of his life. Constable Riggs deposed that on the evening of the eleventh instant while he was on his beat, prisoner accosted him and, after offering to fight him for fourpence, drew off his right boot and threw it at his head. Accused, questioned by the magistrate, admitted the charge and expressed regret, pleading that he had had words with his young woman, and it had upset him.

Neither of these courses appealed to Samuel Marlowe. He had sought relief by slinking off alone to the Hotel Magnificent at Bingley-on-the-Sea. It was the same spirit which has often moved other men in similar circumstances to go off to the Rockies to shoot grizzlies.

To a certain extent the Hotel Magnificent had dulled the pain. At any rate, the service and cooking there had done much to take his mind off it. His heart still ached, but he felt equal to going to London and seeing his father, which of course he ought to have done seven days before.

He rose from his bench—he had sat down on it directly after breakfast—and went back to the hotel to inquire about trains. An hour later he had begun his journey and two hours after that he was at the door of his father's office.

The offices of the old-established firm of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby are in Ridgeway's Inn, not far from Fleet Street. The brass plate, let into the woodwork of the door, is misleading. Reading it, you get the impression that on the other side quite a covey of lawyers await your arrival. The name of the firm leads you to suppose that there will be barely standing-room in the office. You picture Thorpe jostling you aside as he makes for Prescott to discuss with him the latest case of demurrer, and Winslow and Appleby treading on your toes, deep in conversation on replevin. But these legal firms dwindle. The years go by and take their toll, snatching away here a Prescott, there an Appleby, till, before you know where you are, you are down to your last lawyer. The only surviving member of the firm of Marlowe, Thorpe—what I said before—was, at the time with which this story deals, Sir Mallaby Marlowe, son of the original founder of the firm and father of the celebrated black-face comedian, Samuel of that ilk; and the outer office, where callers were received and parked till Sir Mallaby could find time for them, was occupied by a single clerk.

When Sam opened the door this clerk, John Peters by name, was seated on a high stool, holding in one hand a half-eaten sausage, in the other an extraordinarily large and powerful-looking revolver. At the sight of Sam he laid down both engines of destruction and beamed. He was not a particularly successful beamer, being hampered by a cast in one eye which gave him a truculent and sinister look; but those who knew him knew that he had a heart of gold and were not intimidated by his repellent face. Between Sam and himself there had always existed terms of great cordiality, starting from the time when the former was a small boy and it had been John Peters' mission to take him now to the Zoo, now to the train back to school.

"Why, Mr. Samuel!"

"Hullo, Peters!"

"We were expecting you back a week ago."

"Oh, I had something to see to before I came to town," said Sam carelessly.

"So you got back safe!" said John Peters.

"Safe! Why, of course."

Peters shook his head.

"I confess that, when there was this delay in your coming here, I sometimes feared something might have happened to you. I recall mentioning it to the young lady who recently did me the honour to promise to become my wife."

"Ocean liners aren't often wrecked nowadays."

"I was thinking more of the brawls on shore. America's a dangerous country. But perhaps you were not in touch with the underworld?"

"I don't think I was."

"Ah!" said John Peters significantly.

He took up the revolver, gave it a fond and almost paternal look, and replaced it on the desk.

"What on earth are you doing with that thing?" asked Sam.

Mr. Peters lowered his voice.

"I'm going to America myself in a few days' time, Mr. Samuel. It's my annual holiday, and the guv'nor's sending me over with papers in connection with The People v. Schultz and Bowen. It's a big case over there. A client of ours is mixed up in it, an American gentleman. I am to take these important papers to his legal representative in New York. So I thought it best to be prepared."

The first smile that he had permitted himself for nearly two weeks flitted across Sam's face.

"What on earth sort of place do you think New York is?" he asked. "It's safer than London."

"Ah, but what about the Underworld? I've seen these American films that they send over here, Mr. Samuel. Did you ever see 'Wolves of the Bowery?' There was a man in that in just my position, carrying important papers, and what they didn't try to do to him! No, I'm taking no chances, Mr. Samuel!"

"I should have said you were, lugging that thing about with you."

Mr. Peters seemed wounded.

"Oh, I understand the mechanism perfectly, and I am becoming a very fair shot. I take my little bite of food in here early and go and practise at the Rupert Street Rifle Range during my lunch hour. You'd be surprised how quickly one picks it up. When I get home of a night I try how quickly I can draw. You have to draw like a flash of lightning, Mr. Samuel. If you'd ever seen a film called 'Two-Gun-Thomas,' you'd realise that. You haven't time to wait loitering about."

Mr. Peters picked up a speaking-tube and blew down it.

"Mr. Samuel to see you, Sir Mallaby. Yes, sir, very good. Will you go right in, Mr. Samuel?"

Sam proceeded to the inner office, and found his father dictating into the attentive ear of Miss Milliken, his elderly and respectable stenographer, replies to his morning mail.

Sir Mallaby Marlowe was a dapper little man, with a round, cheerful face and a bright eye. His morning coat had been cut by London's best tailor, and his trousers perfectly creased by a sedulous valet. A pink carnation in his buttonhole matched his healthy complexion. His golf handicap was twelve. His sister, Mrs. Horace Hignett, considered him worldly.

"Dear Sirs,—We are in receipt of your favour and in reply beg to state that nothing will induce us ... will induce us ... where did I put that letter? Ah!... nothing will induce us ... oh, tell 'em to go to blazes, Miss Milliken."

"Very well, Sir Mallaby."

"That's that. Ready? Messrs. Brigney, Goole and Butterworth. What infernal names these people have. Sirs,—On behalf of our client ... oh, hullo, Sam!"

"Good morning, father."

"Take a seat. I'm busy, but I'll be finished in a moment. Where was I, Miss Milliken?"

"'On behalf of our client....'"

"Oh, yes. On behalf of our client Mr. Wibblesley Eggshaw.... Where these people get their names I'm hanged if I know. Your poor mother wanted to call you Hyacinth, Sam. You may not know it, but in the 'nineties when you were born, children were frequently christened Hyacinth. Well, I saved you from that."

His attention now diverted to his son, Sir Mallaby seemed to remember that the latter had just returned from a long journey and that he had not seen him for many weeks. He inspected him with interest.

"Very glad you're back, Sam. So you didn't win?"

"No, I got beaten in the semi-finals."

"American amateurs are a very hot lot, the best ones. I suppose you were weak on the greens. I warned you about that. You'll have to rub up your putting before next year."

At the idea that any such mundane pursuit as practising putting could appeal to his broken spirit now, Sam uttered a bitter laugh. It was as if Dante had recommended some lost soul in the Inferno to occupy his mind by knitting jumpers.

"Well, you seem to be in great spirits," said Sir Mallaby approvingly. "It's pleasant to hear your merry laugh again. Isn't it, Miss Milliken?"

"Extremely exhilarating," agreed the stenographer, adjusting her spectacles and smiling at Sam, for whom there was a soft spot in her heart.

A sense of the futility of life oppressed Sam. As he gazed in the glass that morning, he had thought, not without a certain gloomy satisfaction, how remarkably pale and drawn his face looked. And these people seemed to imagine that he was in the highest spirits. His laughter, which had sounded to him like the wailing of a demon, struck Miss Milliken as exhilarating.

"On behalf of our client, Mr. Wibblesley Eggshaw," said Sir Mallaby, swooping back to duty once more, "we beg to state that we are prepared to accept service ... what time did you dock this morning?"

"I landed nearly a week ago."

"A week ago! Then what the deuce have you been doing with yourself? Why haven't I seen you?"

"I've been down at Bingley-on-the-Sea."

"Bingley! What on earth were you doing at that God-forsaken place?"

"Wrestling with myself," said Sam with simple dignity.

Sir Mallaby's agile mind had leaped back to the letter which he was answering.

"We should be glad to meet you.... Wrestling, eh? Well, I like a boy to be fond of manly sports. Still, life isn't all athletics. Don't forget that. Life is real! Life is ... how does it go, Miss Milliken?"

Miss Milliken folded her hands and shut her eyes, her invariable habit when called upon to recite.

"Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul. Art is long and time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still like muffled drums are beating, Funeral marches to the grave. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footsteps on the sands of Time. Let us then ..." said Miss Milliken respectfully, ... "be up and doing...."

"All right, all right, all right!" said Sir Mallaby. "I don't want it all. Life is real! Life is earnest, Sam. I want to speak to you about that when I've finished answering these letters. Where was I? 'We should be glad to meet you at any time, if you will make an appointment....' Bingley-on-the-Sea! Good heavens! Why Bingley-on-the-Sea? Why not Margate while you were about it?"

"Margate is too bracing. I did not wish to be braced. Bingley suited my mood. It was grey and dark and it rained all the time, and the sea slunk about in the distance like some baffled beast...."

He stopped, becoming aware that his father was not listening. Sir Mallaby's attention had returned to the letter.

"Oh, what's the good of answering the dashed thing at all?" said Sir Mallaby. "Brigney, Goole and Butterworth know perfectly well that they've got us in a cleft stick. Butterworth knows it better than Goole, and Brigney knows it better than Butterworth. This young fool, Eggshaw, Sam, admits that he wrote the girl twenty-three letters, twelve of them in verse, and twenty-one specifically asking her to marry him, and he comes to me and expects me to get him out of it. The girl is suing him for ten thousand."

"How like a woman!"

Miss Milliken bridled reproachfully at this slur on her sex. Sir Mallaby took no notice of it whatever.

"... if you will make an appointment, when we can discuss the matter without prejudice. Get those typed, Miss Milliken. Have a cigar, Sam. Miss Milliken, tell Peters as you go out that I am occupied with a conference and can see nobody for half an hour."

When Miss Milliken had withdrawn Sir Mallaby occupied ten seconds of the period which he had set aside for communion with his son in staring silently at him.

"I'm glad you're back, Sam," he said at length. "I want to have a talk with you. You know, it's time you were settling down. I've been thinking about you while you were in America and I've come to the conclusion that I've been letting you drift along. Very bad for a young man. You're getting on. I don't say you're senile, but you're not twenty-one any longer, and at your age I was working like a beaver. You've got to remember that life is—dash it! I've forgotten it again." He broke off and puffed vigorously into the speaking tube. "Miss Milliken, kindly repeat what you were saying just now about life.... Yes, yes, that's enough!" He put down the instrument. "Yes, life is real, life is earnest," he said, gazing at Sam seriously, "and the grave is not our goal. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. In fact, it's time you took your coat off and started work."

"I am quite ready, father."

"You didn't hear what I said," exclaimed Sir Mallaby, with a look of surprise. "I said it was time you began work."

"And I said I was quite ready."

"Bless my soul! You've changed your views a trifle since I saw you last."

"I have changed them altogether."

Long hours of brooding among the red plush settees in the lounge of the Hotel Magnificent at Bingley-on-the-Sea had brought about this strange, even morbid, attitude of mind in Samuel Marlowe. Work, he had decided, was the only medicine for his sick soul. Here, he felt, in this quiet office, far from the tumult and noise of the world, in a haven of torts and misdemeanours and Vic. I. cap. 3's, and all the rest of it, he might find peace. At any rate, it was worth taking a stab at it.

"Your trip has done you good," said Sir Mallaby approvingly. "The sea air has given you some sense. I'm glad of it. It makes it easier for me to say something else that I've had on my mind for a good while. Sam, it's time you got married."

Sam barked bitterly. His father looked at him with concern.

"Swallow some smoke the wrong way?"

"I was laughing," explained Sam with dignity.

Sir Mallaby shook his head.

"I don't want to discourage your high spirits, but I must ask you to approach this matter seriously. Marriage would do you a world of good, Sam. It would brace you up. You really ought to consider the idea. I was two years younger than you are when I married your poor mother, and it was the making of me. A wife might make something of you."

"Impossible!"

"I don't see why she shouldn't. There's lots of good in you, my boy, though you may not think so."

"When I said it was impossible," said Sam coldly, "I was referring to the impossibility of the possibility.... I mean, that it was impossible that I could possibly ... in other words, father, I can never marry. My heart is dead."

"Your what?"

"My heart."

"Don't be a fool. There's nothing wrong with your heart. All our family have had hearts like steam-engines. Probably you have been feeling a sort of burning. Knock off cigars and that will soon stop."

"You don't understand me. I mean that a woman has treated me in a way that has finished her whole sex as far as I am concerned. For me, women do not exist."

"You didn't tell me about this," said Sir Mallaby, interested. "When did this happen? Did she jilt you?"

"Yes."

"In America, was it?"

"On the boat."

Sir Mallaby chuckled heartily.

"My dear boy, you don't mean to tell me that you're taking a shipboard flirtation seriously? Why, you're expected to fall in love with a different girl every time you go on a voyage. You'll get over this in a 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."

title: The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 8


text:
The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 9

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 decanter.

"How many English young men have you met?"

Billie met his eye squarely and steadily. "Well, now that I come to think of it, not many. In fact, very few. As a matter of fact, only...."

"Only?"

"Well, very few," said Billie. "Yes," she said meditatively, "I suppose I really have been rather unjust. I should not have condemned a class simply because ... I mean, I suppose there are young Englishmen who are not rude and ridiculous?"

"I suppose there are American girls who have hearts."

"Oh, plenty."

"I'll believe that when I meet one."

Sam paused. Cold aloofness was all very well, but this conversation was developing into a vulgar brawl. The ghosts of dead and gone Marlowes, all noted for their courtesy to the sex, seemed to stand beside his chair, eyeing him reprovingly. His work, they seemed to whisper, was becoming raw. It was time to jerk the interchange of thought back into the realm of distant civility.

"Are you making a long stay in London, Miss Bennett?"

"No, not long. We are going down to the country almost immediately. I told you my father and Mr. Mortimer had taken a house there."

"You will enjoy that."

"I'm sure I shall. Mr. Mortimer's son Bream will be there. That will be nice."

"Why?" said Sam, backsliding.

There was a pause.

"He isn't rude and ridiculous, eh?" said Sam gruffly.

"Oh, no. His manners are perfect, and he has such a natural dignity," she went on, looking affectionately across the table at the heir of the Mortimers, who, finding Mr. Bennett's medical confidences a trifle fatiguing, was yawning broadly, and absently balancing his wine glass on a fork.

"Besides," said Billie in a soft and dreamy voice, "we are engaged to be married!"

Sam didn't care, of course. We, who have had the privilege of a glimpse into his iron soul, know that. He was not in the least upset by the news—just surprised. He happened to be raising his glass at the moment, and he registered a certain amount of restrained emotion by snapping the stem in half and shooting the contents over the tablecloth: but that was all.

"Good heavens, Sam!" ejaculated Sir Mallaby, aghast. His wine glasses were an old and valued set.

Sam blushed as red as the stain on the cloth.

"Awfully sorry, father! Don't know how it happened."

"Something must have given you a shock," suggested Billie kindly.

The old retainer rallied round with napkins, and Sir Mallaby, who was just about to dismiss the affair with the polished ease of a good host, suddenly became aware of the activities of Bream. That young man, on whose dreamy calm the accident had made no impression whatever, had successfully established the equilibrium of the glass and the fork, and was now cautiously inserting beneath the latter a section of a roll, the whole forming a charming picture in still life.

"If that glass is in your way...." said Sir Mallaby as soon as he had hitched up his drooping jaw sufficiently to enable him to speak. He was beginning to feel that he would be lucky if he came out of this dinner-party with a mere remnant of his precious set.

"Oh, Sir Mallaby," said Billie, casting an adoring glance at the juggler, "you needn't be afraid that Bream will drop it. He isn't clumsy! He is wonderful at that sort of thing, simply wonderful! I think it's so splendid," said Billie, "when men can do things like that. I'm always trying to get Bream to do some of his tricks for people, but he's so modest, he won't."

"Refreshingly different," Sir Mallaby considered, "from the average drawing-room entertainer."

"Yes," said Billie emphatically. "I think the most terrible thing in the world is a man who tries to entertain when he can't. Did I tell you about the man on board ship, father, at the ship's concert? Oh, it was the most awful thing you ever saw. Everybody was talking about it!" She beamed round the table, and there was a note of fresh girlish gaiety in her voice. "This man got up to do an imitation of somebody—nobody knows to this day who it was meant to be—and he came into the saloon and directly he saw the audience he got stage fright. He just stood there gurgling and not saying a word, and then suddenly his nerve failed him altogether and he turned and tore out of the room like a rabbit. He absolutely ran! And he hadn't said a word! It was the most ridiculous exhibition I've ever seen!"

The anecdote went well. Of course there will always be a small minority in any audience which does not appreciate a funny story, and there was one in the present case. But the bulk of the company roared with laughter.

"Do you mean," cried Sir Mallaby, choking, "the poor idiot just stood there dumb?"

"Well, he made a sort of yammering noise," said Billie, "but that only made him look sillier."

"Deuced good!" chuckled Sir Mallaby.

"Funniest thing I ever heard in my life!" gurgled Mr. Bennett, swallowing a digestive capsule.

"May have been half-witted," suggested Mr. Mortimer.

Sam leaned across the table with a stern set face. He meant to change the conversation if he had to do it with a crowbar.

"I hear you have taken a house in the country, Mr. Mortimer," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. Mortimer. He turned to Sir Mallaby. "We have at last succeeded in persuading your sister, Mrs. Hignett, to let us rent her house for the summer."

Sir Mallaby gasped.

"Windles! You don't mean to tell me that my sister has let you have Windles!"

Mr. Mortimer nodded triumphantly.

"Yes. I had completely resigned myself to the prospect of spending the summer in some other house, when yesterday I happened to run into your nephew, young Eustace Hignett, on the street, and he said he was just coming round to see me about that very thing. To cut a long story short, he said that it would be all right and that we could have the house." Mr. Mortimer took a sip of burgundy. "He's a curious boy, young Hignett. Very nervous in his manner."

"Chronic dyspepsia," said Mr. Bennett authoritatively, "I can tell it at a glance."

"Is Windles a very lovely place, Sir Mallaby?" asked Billie.

"Charming. Quite charming. Not large, of course, as country houses go. Not a castle, I mean, with hundreds of acres of park land. But nice and compact and comfortable and very picturesque."

"We do not require a large place," said Mr. Mortimer. "We shall be quite a small party. Bennett and myself, Wilhelmina, Bream...."

"Don't forget," said Billie, "that you have promised to invite Jane Hubbard down there."

"Ah, yes. Wilhelmina's friend, Miss Hubbard. She is coming. That will be all, except young Hignett himself."

"Hignett!" cried Mr. Bennett.

"Mr. Hignett!" exclaimed Billie.

There was an almost imperceptible pause before Mr. Mortimer spoke again, and for an instant the demon of embarrassment hovered, unseen but present, above the dinner table. Mr. Bennett looked sternly at Billie; Billie turned a shade pinker and gazed at the tablecloth; Bream started nervously. Even Mr. Mortimer seemed robbed for a moment of his legal calm.

"I forgot to tell you that," he said. "Yes, one of the stipulations—to which I personally was perfectly willing to agree—was that Eustace Hignett was to remain on the premises during our tenancy. Such a clause in the agreement was, I am quite aware, unusual, and, had the circumstances been other than they were, I would have had a good deal to say about it. But we wanted the place, and we couldn't get it except by agreeing, so I agreed. I'm sure you will think that I acted rightly, Bennett, considering the peculiar circumstances."

"Well," said Mr. Bennett reluctantly, "I certainly did want that house...."

"And we couldn't have had it otherwise," said Mr. Mortimer, "so that is all there is to it."

"Well, it need make no difference to you," said Sir Mallaby. "I am sure you will find my nephew Eustace most unobtrusive. He may even be an entertaining companion. I believe he has a nice singing voice. With that and the juggling of our friend here and my sister's late husband's orchestrion, you will have no difficulty in amusing yourselves during the evenings. You remember the orchestrion, Sam?" said Sir Mallaby, on whom his son's silence had been weighing rather heavily for some time.

"Yes," said Sam, and returned to the silence once more.

"The late Mr. Hignett had it put in. He was very fond of music. It's a thing you turn on by pressing a button in the wall," continued Sir Mallaby. "How you stop it, I don't know. When I was down there last it never seemed to stop. You mustn't miss the orchestrion!"

"I certainly shall," said Mr. Bennett decidedly. "Music of that description happens to be the one thing which jars unendurably on my nerves. My nervous system is thoroughly out of tune."

"So is the orchestrion," said Sir Mallaby. "I remember once when I was down there...."

"I hope you will come down there again, Sir Mallaby," said Mr. Mortimer, "during our occupancy of the house. And you, too," he said, addressing Sam.

"I am afraid," said Sam frigidly, "that my time will be very much occupied for the next few months. Thank you very much," he added, after a moment's pause.

"Sam's going to work," said Sir Mallaby.

"Yes," said Sam with dark determination. "Work is the only thing in life that matters!"

"Oh, come, Sam!" said Sir Mallaby. "At your age I used to think love was fairly important, too!"

"Love!" said Sam. He jabbed at his soufflé with a spoon. You could see by the scornful way he did it that he did not think much of love.

§ 4

Sir Mallaby, the last cigar of the night between his lips, broke a silence which had lasted a quarter of an hour. The guests had gone, and he and Sam were alone together.

"Sam," he said, "do you know what I think?"

"No," said Sam.

Sir Mallaby removed his cigar and spoke impressively. "I've been turning the whole thing over in my mind, and the conclusion I have come to is that there is more in this Windles business than meets the eye. I've known your Aunt Adeline all my life, and I tell you it isn't in that woman to change her infernal pig-headed mind, especially about letting her house. She is a monomaniac on that subject. If you want to know my opinion, I am quite certain that your cousin Eustace has let the place to these people without her knowledge, and intends to pocket the cheque and not say a word about it. What do you think?"

"Eh?" said Sam absently.

"I said, what do you think?"

"What do I think about what?"

"About Eustace Hignett and Windles."

"What about them?"

Sir Mallaby regarded him disprovingly. "I'm hanged if I know what's the matter with you to-night, Sam. You seem to have unhitched your brain and left it in the umbrella stand. You hadn't a word to say for yourself all through dinner. You might have been a Trappist monk. And with that delightful girl Miss Bennett, there, too. She must have thought you infernally dull."

"I'm sorry."

"It's no good being sorry now. The mischief's done. She has gone away thinking you an idiot. Do you realise," said Sir Mallaby warmly, "that when she told that extremely funny story about the man who made such a fool of himself on board the ship, you were the only person at the table who was not amused? She must have thought you had no sense of humour!"

Sam rose. "I think I'll be going," he said. "Good night!"

A man can bear just so much.

title: The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 9


text:
The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 10

Mr. Rufus Bennett stood at the window of the drawing-room of Windles, looking out. From where he stood he could see all those natural and artificial charms which had made the place so desirable to him when he first beheld them. Immediately below, flower beds, bright with assorted blooms, pressed against the ivied stone wall of the house. Beyond, separated from these by a gravel pathway, a smooth lawn, whose green and silky turf rivalled the lawns of Oxford colleges, stretched to a picturesque shrubbery, not so dense as to withhold altogether from the eye of the observer an occasional silvery glimpse of the lake that lay behind it. To the left, through noble trees, appeared a white suggestion of old stable yards; while to the right, bordering on the drive as it swept round to a distant gate, nothing less than a fragment of a ruined castle reared itself against a background of firs.

It had been this sensational fragment of Old England which had definitely captured Mr. Bennett on his first visit to the place. He could not have believed that the time would ever come when he could gaze on it without any lightening of the spirits.

The explanation of his gloom was simple. In addition to looking at the flower beds, the lawn, the shrubbery, the stable yard, and the castle, Mr. Bennett was also looking at the fifth heavy shower that had fallen since breakfast. This was the third afternoon of his tenancy. The first day it had rained all the time. The second day it had rained from eight till twelve-fifteen, from twelve-thirty till four, and from five till eleven. And on this, the third day, there had been no intermission longer than ten minutes. It was a trying Summer. Even the writers in the daily papers seemed mildly surprised, and claimed that England had seen finer Julys. Mr. Bennett, who had lived his life in a country of warmth and sunshine, the thing affected in much the same way as the early days of the Flood must have affected Noah. A first startled resentment had given place to a despair too militant to be called resignation. And with the despair had come a strong distaste for his fellow human beings, notably and in particular his old friend Mr. Mortimer, who at this moment broke impatiently in on his meditations.

"Come along, Bennett. It's your deal. It's no good looking at the rain. Looking at it won't stop it."

Mr. Mortimer's nerves also had become a little frayed by the weather.

Mr. Bennett returned heavily to the table, where, with Mr. Mortimer as partner he was playing one more interminable rubber of bridge against Bream and Billie. He was sick of bridge, but there was nothing else to do.

Mr. Bennett sat down with a grunt, and started to deal. Half-way through the operation the sound of rather stertorous breathing began to proceed from beneath the table. Mr. Bennett glanced agitatedly down, and curled his legs round his chair.

"I have fourteen cards," said Mr. Mortimer. "That's the third time you've mis-dealt."

"I don't care how many cards you've got!" said Mr. Bennett with heat. "That dog of yours is sniffing at my ankles!"

He looked malignantly at a fine bulldog which now emerged from its cover and, sitting down, beamed at the company. He was a sweet-tempered dog, handicapped by the outward appearance of a canine plug-ugly. Murder seemed the mildest of the desires that lay behind that rugged countenance. As a matter of fact, what he wanted was cake. His name was Smith, and Mr. Mortimer had bought him just before leaving London to serve the establishment as a watch-dog.

"He won't hurt you," said Mr. Mortimer carelessly.

"You keep saying that!" replied Mr. Bennett pettishly. "How do you know? He's a dangerous beast, and if I had had any notion that you were buying him, I would have had something to say about it!"

"Whatever you might have said would have made no difference. I am within my legal rights in purchasing a dog. You have a dog. At least, Wilhelmina has."

"Yes, and Pinky-Boodles gets on splendidly with Smith," said Billie. "I've seen them playing together."

Mr. Bennett subsided. He was feeling thoroughly misanthropic. He disliked everybody, with perhaps the exception of Billie, for whom a faint paternal fondness still lingered. He disliked Mr. Mortimer. He disliked Bream, and regretted that Billie had become engaged to him, though for years such an engagement had been his dearest desire. He disliked Jane Hubbard, now out walking in the rain with Eustace Hignett. And he disliked Eustace.

Eustace, he told himself, he disliked rather more than any of the others. He resented the young man's presence in the house; and he resented the fact that, being in the house, he should go about, pale and haggard, as though he were sickening for something. Mr. Bennett had the most violent objection to associating with people who looked as though they were sickening for something.

He got up and went to the window. The rain leaped at the glass like a frolicking puppy. It seemed to want to get inside and play with Mr. Bennett.

§ 2

Mr. Bennett slept late on the following morning. He looked at his watch on the dressing table when he got up, and found that it was past ten. Taking a second look to assure himself that he had really slumbered to this unusual hour, he suddenly became aware of something bright and yellow resting beside the watch, and paused, transfixed, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand. If he had not been in England, he would have said that it was a patch of sunshine.

Mr. Bennett stared at the yellow blob with the wistful mistrust of a traveller in a desert who has been taken in once or twice by mirages. It was not till he had pulled up the blind and was looking out on a garden full of brightness and warmth and singing birds that he definitely permitted himself to accept the situation.

It was a superb morning. It was as if some giant had uncorked a great bottle full of the distilled scent of grass, trees, flowers, and hay. Mr. Bennett rang the bell joyfully, and presently there entered a grave, thin, intellectual-looking man who looked like a duke, only more respectable. This was Webster, Mr. Bennett's valet. He carried in one hand a small mug of hot water, reverently, as if it were a present of jewellery.

"Good morning, sir."

"Morning, Webster," said Mr. Bennett. "Rather late, eh?"

"It is" replied Webster precisely, "a little late, sir. I would have awakened you at the customary hour, but it was Miss Bennett's opinion that a rest would do you good."

Mr. Bennett's sense of well-being deepened. What more could a man want in this world than fine weather and a dutiful daughter?

"She did, eh?"

"Yes, sir. She desired me to inform you that, having already breakfasted, she proposed to drive Mr. Mortimer and Mr. Bream Mortimer into Southampton in the car. Mr. Mortimer senior wished to buy a panama hat."

"A panama hat!" exclaimed Mr. Bennett.

"A panama hat, sir."

Mr. Bennett's feeling of satisfaction grew still greater. It was a fine day; he had a dutiful daughter; and he was going to see Henry Mortimer in a panama hat. Providence was spoiling him.

The valet withdrew like a duke leaving the Royal Presence, not actually walking backwards but giving the impression of doing so; and Mr. Bennett, having decanted the mug of water into the basin, began to shave himself.

Having finished shaving, he opened the drawer in the bureau where lay his white flannel trousers. Here at last was a day worthy of them. He drew them out, and as he did so, something gleamed pinkly up at him from a corner of the drawer. His salmon-coloured bathing-suit.

Mr. Bennett started. He had not contemplated such a thing, but, after all, why not? There was the lake, shining through the trees, a mere fifty yards away. What could be more refreshing? He shed his pyjamas, and climbed into the bathing-suit. And presently, looking like the sun on a foggy day, he emerged from the house and picked his way with gingerly steps across the smooth surface of the lawn.

At this moment, from behind a bush where he had been thriftily burying a yesterday's bone, Smith the bulldog waddled out on to the lawn. He drank in the exhilarating air through an upturned nose which his recent excavations had rendered somewhat muddy. Then he observed Mr. Bennett, and moved gladly towards him. He did not recognise Mr. Bennett, for he remembered his friends principally by their respective bouquets, so he cantered silently across the turf to take a sniff at him. He was half-way across the lawn when some of the mud which he had inhaled when burying the bone tickled his lungs and he paused to cough.

Mr. Bennett whirled round; and then with a sharp exclamation picked up his pink feet from the velvet turf and began to run. Smith, after a momentary pause of surprise, lumbered after him, wheezing contentedly. This man, he felt, was evidently one of the right sort, a merry playfellow.

Mr. Bennett continued to run; but already he had begun to pant and falter, when he perceived looming upon his left the ruins of that ancient castle which had so attracted him on his first visit. On that occasion, it had made merely an aesthetic appeal to Mr. Bennett; now he saw in a flash that its practical merits also were of a sterling order. He swerved sharply, took the base of the edifice in his stride, clutched at a jutting stone, flung his foot at another, and, just as his pursuer arrived and sat panting below, pulled himself on to a ledge, where he sat with his feet hanging well out of reach. The bulldog Smith, gazed up at him expectantly. The game was a new one to Smith, but it seemed to have possibilities. He was a dog who was always perfectly willing to try anything once.

Mr. Bennett now began to address himself in earnest to the task of calling for assistance. His physical discomfort was acute. Insects, some winged, some without wings but—through Nature's wonderful law of compensation—equipped with a number of extra pairs of legs, had begun to fit out exploring expeditions over his body. They roamed about him as if he were some newly opened recreation ground, strolled in couples down his neck, and made up jolly family parties on his bare feet. And then, first dropping like the gentle dew upon the place beneath, then swishing down in a steady flood, it began to rain again.

It was at this point that Mr. Bennett's manly spirit broke and time ceased to exist for him.

Aeons later, a voice spoke from below.

"Hullo!" said the voice.

Mr. Bennett looked down. The stalwart form of Jane Hubbard was standing beneath him, gazing up from under a tam o'shanter cap. Smith, the bulldog, gambolled about her shapely feet.

"Whatever are you doing up there?" said Jane. "I say, do you know if the car has come back?"

"No. It has not."

"I've got to go to the doctor's. Poor little Mr. Hignett is ill. Oh, well, I'll have to walk. Come along, Smith!" She turned towards the drive, Smith caracoling at her side.

Mr. Bennett, though free now to move, remained where he was, transfixed. That sinister word "ill" held him like a spell. Eustace Hignett was ill! He had thought all along that the fellow was sickening for something, confound him!

"What's the matter with him?" bellowed Mr. Bennett after Jane Hubbard's retreating back.

"Eh?" queried Jane, stopping.

"What's the matter with Hignett?"

"I don't know."

"Is it infectious?"

"I expect so."

"Great Heavens!" cried Mr. Bennett, and, lowering himself cautiously to the ground, squelched across the dripping grass.

In the hall, Webster the valet, dry and dignified, was tapping the barometer with the wrist action of an ambassador knocking on the door of a friendly monarch.

"A sharp downpour, sir," he remarked.

"Have you been in the house all the time?" demanded Mr. Bennett.

"Yes, sir."

"Didn't you hear me shouting?"

"I did fancy I heard something, sir."

"Then why the devil didn't you come to me?"

"I supposed it to be the owls, sir, a bird very frequent in this locality. They make a sort of harsh, hooting howl, sir. I have 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 vanished childhood. "Go on! I dare you!"

"I've a perfect legal right.... Oh well," he said, "there are lots of other things I can do!"

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Mr. Bennett, alarmed.

"Never mind!" said Mr. Mortimer, taking up a book.

Mr. Bennett went back to bed in an uneasy frame of mind.

He brooded for half an hour, and, at the expiration of that period, rang for Webster and requested that Billie should be sent to him.

"I want you to go to London," he said, when she appeared. "I must have legal advice. I want you to go and see Sir Mallaby Marlowe. Tell him that Henry Mortimer is annoying me in every possible way and sheltering himself behind his knowledge of the law, so that I can't get at him. Ask Sir Mallaby to come down here. And, if he can't come himself, tell him to send someone who can advise me. His son would do, if he knows anything about the business."

"Oh, I'm sure he does!"

"Eh? How do you know?"

"Well, I mean, he looks as if he does!" said Billie hastily. "He looks so clever!"

"I didn't notice it myself. Well, he'll do, if Sir Mallaby's too busy to come himself. I want you to go up to-night, so that you can see him first thing to-morrow morning. You can stop the night at the Savoy. I've sent Webster to look out a train."

"There's a splendid train in about an hour. I'll take that."

"It's giving you a lot of trouble," said Mr. Bennett, with belated consideration.

"Oh, no!" said Billie. "I'm only too glad to be able to do this for you, father dear!"

title: The Girl on the Boat/Chapter 10


text:
Wikisource:DjVu vs. PDF

The ProofreadPage Extension is the backbone of Wikisource's workspace (the Index namespace and the Page namespace) in which proofreading takes place. This uses a scanned file of a physical work to create an Index page, from which Page pages are created, which are eventually transcluded into the main namespace for anyone to read.

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DjVu
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 * Less external support: The DjVu format is not as widely supported as PDF. There is less software available for creating and editing files in this format.

PDF
In the early days of Wikimedia, PDFs were not allowed to be hosted on Commons or Wikisource because it was not an open standard. This ended in 2008 when the format was released by Adobe. Following this change, PDFs can be freely uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and the ProofreadPage extension has been adapted to be compatible with this format.

Advantages

 * Higher resolution: PDFs have a higher resolution than DjVus. This may not make much difference with text which just needs to be legible to be used for transcription by Wikisource, unless the text is particularly small or on the borderline of legibility, in which case PDFs are clearer.  This might be an advantage for illustrations and other images, if the images are being extracted from the file.
 * Wider external support: PDFs are more widely known and supported than DjVu files. Many users can find it easier to create and edit PDFs for this reason and PDFs may be easier to acquire than DjVu files.

Disadvantages

 * Bugs: As a later addition to the original software, PDF-support is more likely to exhibit "buggy" behaviour and less likely to be as fully tested as DjVu support. Known bugs include:
 * The inability of the ProofreadPage Extension to recognise accents and diacritics in PDFs.
 * Some recent versions of PDF cannot be read properly by Wikimedia's Ghostscript software. In these cases, all pages appear blank when viewed on a Wikimedia website.
 * Larger file size: PDFs are generally larger than an equivalent DjVu file. Wikimedia Commons had a 100MB filesize limit, which may be a problem with very large documents (and certainly was a problem in the past when this limit was much smaller).
 * Expensive software: Editing a PDF can still require more expensive, proprietary software, whereas DjVu is free in both senses of the word.

Other options
In some cases, Index pages can be created without a single source but with individual page images. This only really has the advantage of being able to make use of resources available without having to convert them to a different format. The Index page itself will be more difficult to set up for no real advantage. This is not recommended for works with more than a small handful of pages.

title: Wikisource:DjVu vs. PDF