Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsPan Magazine, March 1921
Synopsis of Preceding Instalment
Eustace Hignett, a sad-eyed poet, while sojourning in New York, falls in love with Wilhelmina Bennett, a charming red-haired girl, otherwise known as “Billie.” Bream Mortimer, a parrot-faced young man, who is also in love with Billie, informs Mrs. Hignett, author of “The Spreading Light” and other heavy matter, that her son Eustace has arranged a secret marriage with Billie. With characteristic promptitude Mrs. Hignett squashes the marriage arrangements and makes Eustace so ridiculous that the affair is terminated. Mrs. Hignett decides to send Eustace to England to protect Windles, her country home, from the invasion of some American visitors who are very anxious to lease it. She happens to meet her nephew, Sam Marlowe, a lad of brawn rather than brain, who is returning from a golfing tour in the States. Sam arranges to share a cabin on the Atlantic with Eustace.
While the passengers are hurrying on board the Atlantic, a pom, belonging to a pretty girl with red hair, effects an introduction between Sam and his mistress by annexing a small portion of the former’s arm. In the cabin Eustace gloomily narrates the tragedy of his love affair and announces his intention of being thoroughly sea-sick throughout the entire voyage. Sam goes on deck to scout for the red-haired girl and finds her among a crowd of excited passengers gazing at a man struggling in the water. Sam secures a seat on the rail to view the tragedy and is jostled head first into the sea.
In the brief interval of time which Marlowe had spent in the stateroom chatting with Eustace about the latter’s bruised soul, some rather curious things had been happening above. Not extraordinary, perhaps, but curious. These must now be related. A story, if it is to grip the reader, should, I am aware, go always forward. It should march. It should leap from crag to crag like the chamois of the Alps. If there is one thing I hate, it is a novel which gets you interested in the hero in chapter one and then cuts back in chapter two to tell you all about his grandfather. Nevertheless, at this point we must go back a space. We must return to the moment when, having deposited her Pekinese dog in her state-room, the girl with the red hair came out again on deck. This happened just about the time when Eustace Hignett was beginning his narrative.
By now the bustle which precedes the departure of an ocean liner was at its height. Hoarse voices were crying, “All for the shore!” The gangway was thronged with friends of passengers returning to land. The crowd on the pier waved flags and handkerchiefs and shouted unintelligibly. Members of the crew stood alertly by the gang-plank ready to draw it in as soon as the last seer-off had crossed it.
The girl went to the rail and gazed earnestly at the shore. There was an anxious expression on her face. She had the air of one who was waiting for someone to appear. Her demeanour was that of Mariana at the Moated Grange. “He cometh not!” she seemed to be saying. She glanced at her wrist-watch, then scanned the dock once more.
There was a rattle as the gang-plank moved in-board and was deposited on the deck. The girl uttered a little cry of dismay. Then suddenly her face brightened and she began to wave her arm to attract the attention of an elderly man with a red face made redder by exertion, who had just forced his way to the edge of the dock and was peering up at the passenger-lined rail.
The boat had now begun to move slowly out of its slip, backing into the river. Ropes had been cast off, and an ever widening strip of water appeared between the vessel and the shore. It was now that the man on the dock sighted the girl. She gesticulated at him. He gesticulated at her. She appeared helpless and baffled, but he showed himself a person of resource, of the stuff of which great generals are made. Foch was just like that, a bird at changing pre-conceived plans to suit the exigencies of the moment.
The man on the dock took from his pocket a pleasantly rotund wad of currency bills. He produced a handkerchief, swiftly tied up the bills in it, backed to give himself room, and then, with all the strength of his arm, he hurled the bills in the direction of the deck. The action was greeted by cheers from a warm-hearted populace. Your New York crowd loves a liberal provider.
One says that the man hurled the bills in the direction of the deck, and that was exactly what he did. But the years had robbed his pitching-arm of the limber strength which, forty summers back, had made him the terror of opposing boys’ baseball teams. He still retained a fair control but he lacked steam. The handkerchief with its precious contents shot in a graceful arc towards the deck, fell short by a good six feet and dropped into the water, where it unfolded like a lily, sending twenty-dollar bills, ten-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, and an assortment of ones floating out over the wavelets. The cheers of the citizenry changed to cries of horror. The girl uttered a plaintive shriek. The boat moved on.
It was at this moment that Mr. Oscar Swenson, one of the thriftiest souls who ever came out of Sweden, perceived that the chance of a lifetime had arrived for adding substantially to his little savings. By profession he was one of those men who eke out a precarious livelihood by rowing dreamily about the waterfront in skiffs. He was doing so now; and, as he sat meditatively in his skiff, having done his best to give the liner a good send-off by paddling round her in circles, the pleading face of a twenty-dollar bill peered up at him. Mr. Swenson was not the man to resist the appeal. He uttered a sharp bark of ecstasy, pressed his Derby hat firmly upon his brow and dived in. A moment later he had risen to the surface and was gathering up money with both hands.
He was still busy with this congenial task when a tremendous splash at his side sent him under again; and, rising for a second time, he observed with not a little chagrin that he had been joined by a young man in a blue flannel suit with an invisible stripe.
“Svensk!” exclaimed Mr. Swenson, or whatever it is that natives of Sweden exclaim in moments of justifiable annoyance. He resented the advent of this newcomer. He had been getting along fine and had had the situation well in hand. To him Sam Marlowe represented Competition, and Mr. Swenson desired no competitors in his treasure-seeking enterprise. He travels, thought Mr. Swenson, the fastest who travels alone.
Sam Marlowe had a touch of the philosopher in him. He had the ability to adapt himself to circumstances. It had been no part of his plans to come whizzing down off the rail into this singularly soup-like water which tasted in equal parts of oil and dead rats; but, now that he was here he was prepared to make the best of the situation. Swimming, it happened, was one of the things he did best, and somewhere among his belongings at home was a tarnished pewter cup which he had won at school in the “Saving Life” competition. He knew exactly what to do. You get behind the victim and grab him firmly under his arms, and then you start swimming on your back. A moment later the astonished Mr. Swenson, who, being practically amphibious, had not anticipated that anyone would have the cool impertinence to try to save him from drowning, found himself seized from behind and towed vigorously away from a ten-dollar bill which he had almost succeeded in grasping. The spiritual agony caused by this assault rendered him mercifully dumb; though, even had he contrived to utter the rich Swedish oaths which occurred to him, his remarks could scarcely have been heard, for the crowd on the dock was cheering as one man. They had often paid good money to see far less gripping sights in the movies. They roared applause. The liner, meanwhile, continued to move stodgily out into mid-river.
The only drawback to these life-saving competitions at school, considered from the standpoint of fitting the competitors for the problems of after-life, is that the object saved on such occasions is a leather dummy, and of all things in this world a leather dummy is perhaps the most placid and phlegmatic. It differs in many respects from an emotional Swedish gentleman, six foot high and constructed throughout of steel and indiarubber, who is being lugged away from cash which he has been regarding in the light of a legacy. Indeed, it would be hard to find a respect in which it does not differ. So far from lying inert in Sam’s arms and allowing himself to be saved in a quiet and orderly manner, Mr. Swenson betrayed all the symptoms of one who feels that he has fallen among murderers. Mr. Swenson, much as he disliked competition, was ready to put up with it, provided that it was fair competition. This pulling your rival away from the loot so that you could grab it yourself—thus shockingly had the man misinterpreted Sam’s motives—was another thing altogether and his stout soul would have none of it. He began immediately to struggle with all the violence at his disposal. His large, hairy hands came out of the water and swung hopefully in the direction where he assumed his assailant’s face to be.
Sam was not unprepared for this display. His researches in the art of life-saving had taught him that your drowning man frequently struggled against his best interests. In which case, cruel to be kind, one simply stunned the blighter. He decided to stun Mr. Swenson, though, if he had known that gentleman more intimately and had been aware that he had the reputation of possessing the thickest head on the waterfront he would have realised the magnitude of the task. Friends of Mr. Swenson, in convivial moments, had frequently endeavoured to stun him with bottles, boots and bits of lead piping and had gone away depressed by failure. Sam, ignorant of this, attempted to do the job with clenched fist, which he brought down as smartly as possible on the crown of the other’s Derby hat.
It was the worst thing he could have done. Mr. Swenson thought highly of his hat and this brutal attack upon it confirmed his gloomiest apprehensions. Now thoroughly convinced that the only thing to do was to sell his life dearly he wrenched himself round, seized his assailant by the neck, twined his arms about his middle, and accompanied him below the surface.
By the time he had swallowed his first pint and was beginning his second, Sam was reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that this was the end. The thought irritated him unspeakably. This, he felt, was just the silly, contrary way things always happened. Why should it be he who was perishing like this? Why not Eustace Hignett? Now there was a fellow whom this sort of thing would just have suited. Broken-hearted Eustace Hignett would have looked on all this as a merciful release.
He paused in his reflections to try to disentangle the more prominent of Mr. Swenson’s limbs from about him. By this time he was sure that he had never met anyone he disliked so intensely as Mr. Swenson—not even his aunt Adeline. The man was a human octopus. Sam could count seven distinct legs twined round him and at least as many arms. It seemed to him that he was being done to death in his prime by a solid platoon of Swedes. He put his whole soul into one last effort . . . something seemed to give . . . he was free. Pausing only to try to kick Mr. Swenson in the face Sam shot to the surface. Something hard and sharp prodded him in the head. Then something caught the collar of his coat; and, finally, spouting like a whale, he found himself dragged upwards and over the side of a boat.
The time which Sam had spent with Mr. Swenson below the surface had been brief, but it had been long enough to enable the whole floating population of the North River to converge on the scene in scows, skiffs, launches, tugs and other vessels. The fact that the water in that vicinity was crested with currency had not escaped the notice of these navigators and they had gone to it as one man. First in the race came the tug Reuben S. Watson, the skipper of which, following a famous precedent, had taken his little daughter to bear him company. It was to this fact that Marlowe really owed his rescue. Women have often a vein of sentiment in them where men can only see the hard business side of a situation; and it was the skipper’s daughter who insisted that the family boat-hook, then in use as a harpoon for spearing dollar bills, should be devoted to the less profitable but humane end of extricating the young man from a watery grave.
The skipper had grumbled a bit at first, but had given way—he always spoiled the girl—with the result that Sam found himself sitting on the deck of the tug engaged in the complicated process of restoring his faculties to the normal. In a sort of dream he perceived Mr. Swenson rise to the surface some feet away, adjust his Derby hat, and, after one long look of dislike in his direction, swim off rapidly to intercept a five which was floating under the stern of a near-by skiff.
Sam sat on the deck and panted. He played on the boards like a public fountain. At the back of his mind there was a flickering thought that he wanted to do something, a vague feeling that he had some sort of an appointment which he must keep; but he was unable to think what it was. Meanwhile, he conducted tentative experiments with his breath. It was so long since he had last breathed that he had lost the knack of it.
“Well, aincher wet?” said a voice.
The skipper’s daughter was standing beside him, looking down commiseratingly. Of the rest of the family all he could see was the broad blue seats of their trousers as they leaned hopefully over the side in the quest for wealth.
“Yessir! You sure are wet! Gee! I never seen anyone so wet! I seen wet guys, but I never seen anyone so wet as you. Yessir, you’re certainly wet!”
“I am wet,” admitted Sam.
“Yessir, you’re wet! Wet’s the word all right. Good and wet, that’s what you are!”
“It’s the water,” said Sam. His brain was still clouded; he wished he could remember what that appointment was. “That’s what has made me wet.”
“It’s sure made you wet all right,” agreed the girl. She looked at him interestedly. “Wotcha do it for?” she asked.
“Do it for?”
“Yes, wotcha do it for? How come? Wotcha do a Brodie for off’n that ship? I didn’t see it myself, but pa says you come walloping down off’n the deck like a sack of potatoes.”
Sam uttered a sharp cry. He had remembered.
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“The liner.”
“She’s off down the river, I guess. She was swinging round, the last I seen of her.”
“She’s not gone!”
“Sure she’s gone. Wotcha expect her to do? She’s gotta to get over to the other side, ain’t she? Cert’nly she’s gone.” She looked at him interested. “Do you want to be on board her?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then, for the love of Pete, wotcha doin’ walloping off’n her like a sack of potatoes?”
“I slipped. I was pushed or something.” Sam sprang to his feet and looked wildly about him. “I must get back. Isn’t there any way of getting back?”
“Well, you could catch up with her at quarantine out in the bay. She’ll stop to let the pilot off.”
“Can you take me to quarantine?”
The girl glanced doubtfully at the seat of the nearest pair of trousers.
“Well, we could,” she said. “But pa’s kind of set in his ways, and right now he’s fishing for dollar bills with the boat-hook. He’s apt to get sorta mad if he’s interrupted.”
“I’ll give him fifty dollars if he’ll put me on board.”
“Got it on you?” inquired the nymph coyly. She had her share of sentiment, but she was her father’s daughter and inherited from him the business sense.
“Here it is.” He pulled out his pocketbook. The book was dripping, but the contents were only fairly moist.
“Pa!” said the girl.
The trouser-seat remained where it was—deaf to its child’s cry.
“Pa! Commere! Wantcha!”
The trousers did not even quiver. But this girl was a girl of decision. There was some nautical implement resting in a rack convenient to her hand. It was long, solid, and constructed of one of the harder forms of wood. Deftly extracting this from its place she smote her inoffensive parent on the only visible portion of him. He turned sharply, exhibiting a red, bearded face.
“Pa, this gen’man wants to be took aboard the boat at quarantine. He’ll give you fifty berries.”
The wrath died out of the skipper’s face like the slow turning down of a lamp. The fishing had been poor, and so far he had only managed to secure a single two-dollar bill. In a crisis like the one which had so suddenly arisen you cannot do yourself justice with a boat-hook.
“Fifty berries!”
“Fifty seeds!” the girl assured him. “Are you on?”
“Queen,” said the skipper simply, “you said a mouthful!”
Twenty minutes later Sam was climbing up the side of the liner as it lay towering over the tug like a mountain. His clothes hung about him clammily. He squelched as he walked.
A kindly looking old gentleman who was smoking a cigar by the rail regarded him with open eyes.
“My dear sir, you’re very wet,” he said.
Sam passed him with a cold face and hurried through the door leading to the companion-way.
“Mummie, why is that man wet?” cried the clear voice of a little child.
Sam whizzed by leaping down the stairs.
“Good Lord, sir! You’re very wet!” said a steward in the doorway of the dining-saloon.
“You are wet,” said a stewardess in the passage.
Sam raced for his state-room. He bolted in and sank on the lounge. In the lower berth Eustace Hignett was lying with closed eyes. He opened them languidly—then stared.
“Hullo!” he said. “I say! You’re wet!”
Sam removed his clinging garments and hurried into a new suit. He was in no mood for conversation, and Eustace Hignett’s frank curiosity jarred upon him. Happily, at this point, a sudden shivering of the floor and a creaking of woodwork proclaimed the fact that the vessel was under way again, and his cousin, turning pea-green, rolled over on his side with a hollow moan. Sam finished buttoning his waistcoat and went out.
He was passing the Enquiry Bureau on the C-Deck, striding along with bent head and scowling brow, when a sudden exclamation caused him to look up, and the scowl was wiped from his brow as with a sponge. For there stood the girl he had met on the dock. With her was a superfluous young man who looked like a parrot.
“Oh, how are you?” asked the girl breathlessly.
“Splendid, thanks,” said Sam.
“Didn’t you get very wet?”
“I did get a little damp.”
“I thought you would,” said the young man who looked like a parrot. “Directly I saw you go over the side I said to myself: ‘That fellow’s going to get wet!’ ”
There was a pause.
“Oh!” said the girl, “may I——Mr.——?”
“Marlowe.”
“Mr. Marlowe. Mr. Bream Mortimer.”
Sam smirked at the young man. The young man smirked at Sam.
“Nearly got left behind,” said Bream Mortimer.
“Yes, nearly.”
“No joke getting left behind.”
“No.”
“Have to take the next boat. Lose a lot of time,” said Mr. Mortimer, driving home his point.
The girl had listened to these intellectual exchanges with impatience. She now spoke again.
“Oh, Bream!”
“Hello?”
“Do be a dear and run down to the saloon and see if it’s all right about our places for lunch.”
“It is all right. The table steward said so.”
“Yes, but go and make certain.”
“All right.”
He hopped away and the girl turned to Sam with shining eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Marlowe, you oughtn’t to have done it! Really, you oughtn’t! You might have been drowned! But I never saw anything so wonderful. It was like the stories of knights who used to jump into lions’ dens after gloves!”
“Yes?” said Sam, a little vaguely. The resemblance had not struck him. It seemed a silly hobby and rough on the lions, too.
“It was the sort of thing Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad would have done! But you shouldn’t have bothered, really! It’s all right now.”
“Oh, it’s all right now?”
“Yes. I’d quite forgotten that Mr. Mortimer was to be on board. He has given me all the money I shall need. You see it was this way. I had to sail on this boat in rather a hurry. Father’s head clerk was to have gone to the bank and got some money and met me on board and given it to me, but the silly old man was late, and when he got to the dock they had just pulled in the gang-plank. So he tried to throw the money to me in a handkerchief and it fell into the water. But you shouldn’t have dived in after it.”
“Oh, well!” said Sam, straightening his tie, with a quiet brave smile. He had never expected to feel grateful to that obese bounder who had shoved him off the rail, but now he would have liked to seek him out and offer him his bank-roll.
“You really are the bravest man I ever met!”
“Oh, no!”
“How modest you are! But I suppose all brave men are modest!”
“I was only too delighted at what looked like a chance of doing you a service.”
“It was the extraordinary quickness of it that was so wonderful. I do admire presence of mind. You didn’t hesitate for a second. You just shot over the side as though propelled by some irresistible force!”
“It was nothing, nothing really. One just happens to have the knack of keeping one’s head and acting quickly on the spur of the moment. Some people have it, some haven’t.”
“And just think! As Bream was saying . . .”
“It is all right,” said Mr. Mortimer, reappearing suddenly. “I saw a couple of the stewards, and they both said it was all right. So it’s all right.”
“Splendid,” said the girl. “Oh, Bream!”
“Hello?”
“Do be an angel and run along to my state-room and see if Pinky-Boodles is quite comfortable.”
“Bound to be.”
“Yes. But do go. He may be feeling lonely. Chirrup to him a little.”
“Chirrup?”
“Yes, to cheer him up.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Run along!”
Mr. Mortimer ran along. He had the air of one who feels that he only needs a peaked cap and a uniform two sizes too small for him to be a properly equipped messenger boy.
“And, as Bream was saying,” resumed the girl, “you might have been left behind.”
“That,” said Sam, edging a step closer, “was the thought that tortured me, the thought that a friendship so delightfully begun . . .”
“But it hadn’t begun. We have never spoken to each other before now.”
“Have you forgotten? On the dock . . .”
Sudden enlightenment came into her eyes.
“Oh, you are the man poor Pinky-Boodles bit!”
“The lucky man!”
Her face clouded.
“Poor Pinky is feeling the motion of the boat a little. It’s his first voyage.”
“I shall always remember that it was Pinky who first brought us together. Would you care for a stroll on deck?”
“Not just now, thanks. I must be getting back to my room to finish unpacking. After lunch, perhaps.”
“I will be there. By the way, you know my name, but . . .”
“Oh, mine?” She smiled brightly. “It’s funny that a person’s name is the last thing one thinks of asking. Mine is Bennett.”
“Bennett!”
“Wilhelmina Bennett. My friends,” she said softly as she turned away, “call me Billie!”
Chapter III
For some moments Sam remained where he was, staring after the girl as she flitted down the passage. He felt dizzy. Mental acrobatics always have an unsettling effect, and a young man may be excused for feeling a little dizzy when he is called upon suddenly and without any warning to readjust all his preconceived views on any subject. Listening to Eustace Hignett’s story of his blighted romance, Sam had formed an unflattering opinion of this Wilhelmina Bennett who had broken off her engagement simply because on the day of the marriage his cousin had been short of the necessary wedding garment. He had, indeed, thought a little smugly how different his goddess of the red hair was from the object of Eustace Hignett’s affections. And now they had proved to be one and the same. It was disturbing. It was like suddenly finding the vampire of a five-reel feature film turn into the heroine.
Some men, on making the discovery of this girl’s identity, might have felt that Providence had intervened to save them from a disastrous entanglement. This point of view never occurred to Samuel Marlowe. The way he looked at it was that he had been all wrong about Wilhelmina Bennett. Eustace, he felt, had been to blame throughout. If this girl had maltreated Eustace’s finer feelings, then her reason for doing so must have been excellent and praiseworthy.
After all . . . poor old Eustace . . . quite a good fellow, no doubt in many ways . . . but, coming down to brass tacks, what was there about Eustace that gave him any licence to monopolise the affections of a wonderful girl? Where, in a word, did Eustace Hignett get off? He made a tremendous grievance of the fact that she had broken off the engagement, but what right had he to go about the place expecting her to be engaged to him? Eustace Hignett, no doubt, looked upon the poor girl as utterly heartless. Marlowe regarded her behaviour as thoroughly sensible. She had made a mistake, and, realising this at the eleventh hour, she had had the force of character to correct it. He was sorry for poor old Eustace, but he really could not permit the suggestion that Wilhelmina Bennett—her friends called her Billie—had not behaved in a perfectly splendid way throughout. It was women like Wilhelmina Bennett—Billie to her intimates—who made the world worth living in.
Her friends called her Billie. He did not blame them. It was a delightful name and suited her to perfection. He practised it a few times. “Billie . . . Billie . . . Billie . . .” It certainly ran pleasantly off the tongue. “Billie Bennett.” Very musical. “Billie Marlowe.” Still better. “We noticed among those present the charming and popular Mrs. ‘Billie’ Marlowe.”
A consuming desire came over him to talk about the girl to someone. Obviously indicated as the party of the second part was Eustace Hignett. If Eustace was still capable of speech—and after all the boat was hardly rolling at all—he would enjoy a further chat about his ruined life. Besides, he had another reason for seeking Eustace’s society. As a man who had been actually engaged to marry this supreme girl, Eustace Hignett had an attraction for Sam akin to that of some great public monument. He had become a sort of shrine. He had taken on a glamour. Sam entered the state-room almost reverentially with something of the emotions of a boy going into his first dime museum.
The exhibit was lying on his back staring at the roof of the berth. By lying absolutely still and forcing himself to think of purely inland scenes and objects he had contrived to reduce the green in his complexion to a mere tinge. But it would be paltering with the truth to say that he felt debonair. He received Sam with a wan austerity.
“Sit down!” he said. “Don’t stand there swaying like that. I can’t bear it.”
“Why, we aren’t out of the harbour yet. Surely you aren’t going to be seasick already.”
“I can issue no positive guarantee. Perhaps if I can keep my mind off it . . . I have had good results for the last ten minutes by thinking steadily of the Sahara. There,” said Eustace Hignett with enthusiasm, “is a place for you! That is something like a spot! Miles and miles of sand and not a drop of water anywhere!”
Sam sat down on the lounge.
“You’re quite right. The great thing is to concentrate your mind on other topics. Why not, for instance, tell me some more about your unfortunate affair with that girl—Billie Bennett I think you said her name was.”
“Wilhelmina Bennett. Where on earth did you get the idea that her name was Billie?”
“I had a notion that girls called Wilhelmina were sometimes Billie to their friends.”
“I never call her anything but Wilhelmina. But I really cannot talk about it. The recollection tortures me.”
“That’s just what you want. It’s the counter-irritation principle. Persevere and you’ll soon forget that you’re on board ship at all.”
“There’s something in that,” admitted Eustace reflectively. “It’s very good of you to be so sympathetic and interested.”
“My dear fellow . . . anything that I can do . . . where did you meet her first, for instance?”
“At a dinner . . .” Eustace Hignett broke off abruptly. He had a good memory and he had just recollected the fish they had served at that dinner—a flabby and exhausted looking fish, half sunk beneath the surface of a thick white sauce.
“And what struck you most forcibly about her at first? Her lovely hair, I suppose?”
“How did you know she had lovely hair?”
“My dear chap, I naturally assumed that any girl with whom you fell in love would have nice hair.”
“Well, you are perfectly right, as it happens. Her hair was remarkably beautiful. It was red . . .”
“Like autumn leaves with the sun on them!” said Marlowe ecstatically.
“What an extraordinary thing! That is an absolutely exact description. Her eyes were a deep blue. . .”
“Or, rather, green.”
“Blue.”
“Green. There is a shade of green that looks blue.”
“What the devil do you know about the colour of her eyes?” demanded Eustace heatedly. “Am I telling you about her, or are you telling me?”
“My dear old man, don’t get excited. Don’t you see I am trying to construct this girl in my imagination, to visualise her? I don’t pretend to doubt your special knowledge, but after all green eyes generally do go with red hair and there are all shades of green. There is the bright green of meadow grass, the dull green of the uncut emerald, the faint yellowish green of your face at the present moment . . .”
“Don’t talk about the colour of my face! Now you’ve gone and reminded me just when I was beginning to forget.”
“Awfully sorry! Stupid of me! Get your mind off it again—quick! What were we saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one to form a mental picture of people if one knows something about their tastes—what sort of things they are interested in, their favourite topics of conversation, and so on. This Miss Bennett now, what did she like talking about?”
“Oh, all sorts of things.”
“Yes, but what?”
“Well, for one thing she was very fond of poetry. It was that which first drew us together.”
“Poetry!” Sam’s heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a limerick in a competition in a weekly paper; but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board the ship and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard poet and bone them up from time to time.
“Any special poet?”
“Well, she seemed to like my stuff. You never read my sonnet-sequence on Spring, did you?”
“No. What other poets did she like besides you?”
“Tennyson principally,” said Eustace Hignett with a reminiscent quiver in his voice. “The hours we have spent together reading the Idylls of the King!”
“The which of what?” enquired Sam, taking a pencil from his pocket and shooting out a cuff.
“The Idylls of the King. My good man, I know you have a soul which would be considered inadequate by a common earthworm, but you have surely heard of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King?”
“Oh, those! Why, my dear old chap; Tennyson’s Idylls of the King! Well, I should say! Have I heard of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King? Well, really! I suppose you haven’t a copy with you on board by any chance?”
“There is a copy in my kit-bag. The very one we used to read together. Take it and keep it or throw it overboard. I don’t want to see it again.”
Sam prospected among the shirts, collars and trousers in the bag and presently came upon a morocco-bound volume. He laid it beside him on the lounge.
“Little by little, bit by bit,” he said, “I am beginning to form a sort of picture of this girl, this—what was her name again? Bennett—this Miss Bennett. You have a wonderful knack of description. You make her seem so real and vivid. Tell me some more about her. She wasn’t keen on golf, by any chance, I suppose?”
“I believe she did play. The subject came up once and she seemed rather enthusiastic. Why?”
“Well, I’d much sooner talk to a girl about golf than poetry.”
“You are hardly likely to be in a position to have to talk to Wilhelmina Bennett about either, I should imagine.”
“No, there’s that, of course. I was thinking of girls in general. Some girls bar golf, and then it’s rather difficult to know how to start conversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on Miss Bennett’s nerves, if you know what I mean? It seems to me that at one time or another you may have said something that offended her. I mean, it seems curious that she should have broken off the engagement if you had never disagreed or quarrelled about anything.”
“Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. She had a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekingese. If there was ever any shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. I made rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home after we were married.”
“I see!” said Sam. He shot his cuff once more and wrote on it: “Dog-conciliate.” “Yes, of course, that must have wounded her.”
“Not half so much as he wounded me! He pinned me by the ankle the day before we—Wilhelmina and I, I mean—were to have been married. It is some satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got home on the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him clean over the Chesterfield.”
Sam shook his head reprovingly.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” he said. He extended his cuff and added the words “Vitally Important” to what he had just written. “It was probably that which decided her.”
“Well, I hate dogs,” said Eustace Hignett querulously. “I remember Wilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to step in and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, who were fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fighters nowadays, that life itself was in a sense a fight; but she wouldn’t be reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done it like a shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that Sir Galahad was ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And, anyway, he wore armour. Give me a suit of mail, reaching well down over the ankles, and I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. But in thin flannel trousers no!”
Sam rose. His heart was light. He had never, of course, supposed that the girl was anything but perfect; but it was nice to find his high opinion of her corroborated by one who had no reason to exhibit her in a favourable light. He understood her point of view and sympathised with it. An idealist, how could she trust herself to Eustace Hignett? How could she be content with a craven who, instead of scouring the world in the quest for deeds of derring do, had fallen down so lamentably on his first assignment? There was a specious attractiveness about poor old Eustace which might conceivably win a girl’s heart for a time; he wrote poetry, talked well, and had a nice singing voice; but, as a partner for life . . . well, he simply wouldn’t do. That was all there was to it. He simply didn’t add up right. The man a girl like Wilhelmina Bennett required for a husband was somebody entirely different . . . somebody, felt Samuel Marlowe, much more like Samuel Marlowe.
Swelled almost to bursting-point with these reflections, he went on deck to join the ante-luncheon promenade. He saw Billie almost at once. She had put on one of these nice sacky sport-coats which so enhance feminine charms, and was striding along the deck with the breeze playing in her vivid hair like the female equivalent of a Viking. Beside her walked young Mr. Bream Mortimer.
Sam had been feeling a good deal of a fellow already, but at the sight of her welcoming smile his self-esteem almost caused him to explode. What magic there is in a girl’s smile! It is the raisin which, dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation.
“Oh, there you are, Mr. Marlowe!”
“Oh, there you are,” said Bream Mortimer, with a slightly different inflection.
“I thought I’d like a breath of fresh air before lunch,” said Sam.
“Oh, Bream!” said the girl.
“Hello?”
“Do be a darling and take this great heavy coat of mine down to my state-room, will you? I had no idea it was so warm.”
“I’ll carry it,” said Bream.
“Nonsense! I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with it. Trot along and put it on the berth. It doesn’t matter about folding it up.”
“All right,” said Bream moodily.
He trotted along. There are moments when a man feels that all he needs in order to be a delivery wagon is a horse and a driver.
“He had better chirrup to the dog while he’s there, don’t you think?” suggested Sam. He felt that a resolute man with legs as long as Bream’s might well deposit a cloak on a berth and be back under the half-minute.
“Oh, yes! Bream!”
“Hello?”
“While you’re down there just chirrup a little more to poor Pinky. He does appreciate it so!”
Bream disappeared. It is not always easy to interpret emotion from a glance at a man’s back; but Bream’s back looked like that of a man to whom the thought has occurred that, given a couple of fiddles and a piano, he would have made a good hired orchestra.
“How is your dear little dog, by the way?” enquired Sam solicitously, as he fell into step by her side.
“Much better now, thanks. I’ve made friends with a girl on board—did you ever hear her name—Jane Hubbard—she’s a rather well-known big-game hunter and she fixed up some sort of a mixture for Pinky which did him a world of good. I don’t know what was in it except Worcester Sauce, but she said she always gave it to her mules in Africa when they had the botts . . . it’s very nice of you to speak so affectionately of poor Pinky when he bit you.”
“Animal spirits!” said Sam tolerantly. “Pure animal spirits! I like to see them. But, of course, I love all dogs.”
“Oh, do you? So do I!”
“I only wish they didn’t fight so much. I’m always stopping dog fights.”
“I do admire a man who knows what to do at a dog fight. I’m afraid I’m rather helpless myself. There never seems anything to catch hold of.” She looked down. “Have you been reading? What is the book?”
“It’s a volume of Tennyson.”
“Are you fond of Tennyson?”
“I worship him,” said Sam reverently. “Those—” he glanced at his cuff—“those Idylls of the King! I do not like to think what an ocean voyage would be if I had not my Tennyson with me.”
“We must read him together. He is my favourite poet!”
“We will! There is something about Tennyson . . .”
“Yes, isn’t there! I’ve felt that myself so often!”
“Some poets are whales at epics and all that sort of thing, while others call it a day when they’ve written something that runs to a couple of verses, but where Tennyson had the bulge was that his long game was just as good as his short. He was great off the tee and a marvel with his chip-shots.”
“That sounds as though you played golf.”
“When I am not reading Tennyson, you can generally find me out on the links. Do you play?”
“I love it. How extraordinary that we should have so much in common. We really ought to be great friends.”
He was pausing to select the best of three replies when the lunch bugle sounded.
“Oh, dear!” she cried. “I must rush. But we shall see one another again up here afterwards?”
“We will,” said Sam.
“We’ll sit and read Tennyson.”
“Fine! Er—you and I and Mortimer?”
“Oh, no, Bream is going to sit down below and look after poor Pinky.”
“Does he—does he know he is?”
“Not yet,” said Billie. “I’m going to tell him at lunch.”
(To be continued)
Notes:
Text printed in green above is also present in US editions, but is missing from the UK version The Girl on the Boat.
Only phrases of a few words or more are thus marked; simple word substitutions are not shown by colors here.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine omitted commas in "Swimming, it happened, was"; "where he was, staring"; "dear chap, I naturally"; "there you are, Mr. Marlowe"
Magazine omitted period in "sank a little. He had read"
Magazine had “Now come!”; corrected to match US book “How come?”