The Girl on the Boat

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"Oh, it's a great compliment!" Mr. Peters assured her.

At this point Sam came in, interrupting the conversation at a moment
when it had reached a somewhat difficult stage. He had finished the
instalment of the serial story in _Home Whispers_, and, looking at his
watch, he fancied that he had allowed sufficient time to elapse for
events to have matured along the lines which his imagination had
indicated.

The atmosphere of the room seemed to him, as he entered, a little
strained. Billie looked pale and agitated. Mr. Peters looked rather
agitated, too. Sam caught Billie's eye. It had an unspoken appeal in it.
He gave an imperceptible nod, a reassuring nod, the nod of a man who
understood all and was prepared to handle the situation.

"Come, Peters," he said in a deep, firm, quiet voice, laying a hand on
the clerk's arm. "It's time that you went."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Samuel! Yes, yes, indeed!"

"I'll see you out," said Sam soothingly, and led him through the outer
office and on to the landing outside. "Well, good luck, Peters," he
said, as they stood at the head of the stairs. "I hope you have a
pleasant trip. Why, what's the matter? You seem upset."

"That girl, Mr. Samuel! I really think--really, she cannot be quite
right in her head."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" said Sam firmly. "She's all right! Well,
good-bye."

"Good-bye, Mr. Samuel."

"When did you say you were sailing?"

"Next Saturday, Mr. Samuel. But I fear I shall have no opportunity of
seeing you again before then. I have packing to do and I have to see
this gentleman down in the country...."

"All right. Then we'll say good-bye now. Good-bye, Peters. Mind you have
a good time in America. I'll tell my father you called."

Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his
way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair
which Jno. Peters had occupied. She sprang to her feet.

"Has he really gone?"

"Yes. He's gone this time."

"Was he--was he violent?"

"A little," said Sam. "A little. But I calmed him down." He looked at
her gravely. "Thank God I was in time!"

"Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!" cried Billie, and, burying
her face in her hands, burst into tears.

"There, there!" said Sam. "There, there! Come, come! It's all right now!
There, there, there!"

He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted
her hands.

"There, there, there!" he said.

I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed
page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be
as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by
now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army
mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied
through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright
she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had
caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low,
bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact
that he had erased for ever from Billie's mind that undignified picture
of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which
showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact
that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had just allowed him to kiss
her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said
that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or
some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe
was.

His face was very close to Billie's, who had cheered up wonderfully by
this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into
her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway.

"Great Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from
this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet
face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had
become slightly soluble. "Great Heavens above! Number four!"

CHAPTER XIV

STRONG REMARKS BY A FATHER

Mr. Bennett advanced shakily into the room, and supported himself with
one hand on the desk, while with the other he still plied the
handkerchief on his over-heated face. Much had occurred to disturb him
this morning. On top of a broken night he had had an affecting
reconciliation scene with Mr. Mortimer, at the conclusion of which he
had decided to take the first train to London in the hope of
intercepting Billie before she reached Sir Mallaby's office on her
mission of war. The local train-service kept such indecently early hours
that he had been compelled to bolt his breakfast, and, in the absence of
Billie, the only member of the household who knew how to drive the car,
to walk to the station, a distance of nearly two miles, the last hundred
yards of which he had covered at a rapid gallop, under the erroneous
impression that an express whose smoke he had seen in the distance was
the train he had come to catch. Arrived on the platform, he had had a
trying wait, followed by a slow journey to Waterloo. The cab which he
had taken at Waterloo had kept him in a lively state of apprehension all
the way to the Savoy, owing to an apparent desire to climb over
motor-omnibuses when it could not get round them. At the Savoy he found
that Billie had already left, which had involved another voyage through
the London traffic under the auspices of a driver who appeared to be
either blind or desirous of committing suicide. He had three flights of
stairs to negotiate. And, finally, arriving at the office, he had found
his daughter in the circumstances already described.

"Why, father!" said Billie. "I didn't expect you."

As an explanation of her behaviour this might, no doubt, have been
considered sufficient, but as an excuse for it Mr. Bennett thought it
inadequate and would have said so, had he had enough breath. This
physical limitation caused him to remain speechless and to do the best
he could in the way of stern fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal
after a long dive in search of fish.

Having done this, he became aware that Sam Marlowe was moving towards
him with outstretched hand. It took a lot to disconcert Sam, and he was
the calmest person present. He gave evidence of this in a neat speech.
He did not in so many words congratulate Mr. Bennett on the piece of
luck which had befallen him, but he tried to make him understand by his
manner that he was distinctly to be envied as the prospective
father-in-law of such a one as himself.

"I am delighted to see you, Mr. Bennett," said Sam. "You could not have
come at a more fortunate moment. You see for yourself how things are.
There is no need for a long explanation. You came to find a daughter,
Mr. Bennett, and you have found a son!"

And he would like to see the man, thought Sam, who could have put it
more cleverly and pleasantly and tactfully than that.

"What are you talking about?" said Mr. Bennett, recovering breath. "I
haven't got a son."

"I will be a son to you! I will be the prop of your declining years...."

"What the devil do you mean, my declining years?" demanded Mr. Bennett
with asperity.

"He means when they do decline, father dear," said Billie.

"Of course, of course," said Sam. "When they do decline. Not till then,
of course. I wouldn't dream of it. But, once they do decline, count on
me! And I should like to say for my part," he went on handsomely, "what
an honour I think it, to become the son-in-law of a man like Mr.
Bennett. Bennett of New York!" he added spaciously, not so much because
he knew what he meant, for he would have been the first to admit that he
did not, but because it sounded well.

"Oh!" said Mr. Bennett. "You do, do you?"

Mr. Bennett sat down. He put away his handkerchief, which had certainly
earned a rest. Then he fastened a baleful stare upon his
newly-discovered son. It was not the sort of look a proud and happy
father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It
was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to
have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge
at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious
murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the
tail end of it, but it was enough to create a misgiving.

"Oh, father! You aren't angry!"

"Angry!"

"You _can't_ be angry!"

"Why can't I be angry?" declared Mr. Bennett, with that sense of injury
which comes to self-willed men when their whims are thwarted. "Why the
devil shouldn't I be angry? I _am_ angry! I come here and find you
like--like this, and you seem to expect me to throw my hat in the air
and give three rousing cheers! Of course I'm angry! You are engaged to
be married to an excellent young man of the highest character, one of
the finest young men I have ever known...."

"Oh, well!" said Sam, straightening his tie modestly. "It's awfully good
of you...."

"But that's all over, father."

"What's all over?"

"You told me yourself that you had broken off my engagement to Bream."

"Well--er--yes, I did," said Mr. Bennett, a little taken aback. "That
is--to a certain extent--so. But," he added, with restored firmness,
"it's on again!"

"But I don't want to marry Bream!"

"Naturally!" said Sam. "Naturally! Quite out of the question. In a few
days we'll all be roaring with laughter at the very idea."

"It doesn't matter what you want! A girl who gets engaged to a dozen men
in three weeks...."

"It wasn't a dozen!"

"Well, four--five--six--you can't expect me not to lose count.... I say
a girl who does that does not know what she wants, and older and more
prudent heads must decide for her. You are going to marry Bream
Mortimer!"

"All wrong! All wrong!" said Sam, with a reproving shake of the head.
"All wrong! She's going to marry me."

Mr. Bennett scorched him with a look compared with which his earlier
effort had been a loving glance.

"Wilhelmina," he said, "go into the outer office."

"But, father, Sam saved my life!"

"Go into the outer office and wait for me there."

"There was a lunatic in here...."

"There will be another if you don't go."

"He had a pistol."

"Go into the outer office!"

"I shall always love you, Sam!" said Billie, pausing mutinously at the
door.

"I shall always love _you_!" said Sam cordially.

"Nobody can keep us apart!"

"They're wasting their time, trying."

"You're the most wonderful man in the world!"

"There never was another girl like you!"

"Get _out_!" bellowed Mr. Bennett, on whose equanimity this love-scene,
which I think beautiful, was jarring profoundly. "Now, sir!" he said to
Sam, as the door closed.

"Yes, let's talk it over calmly," said Sam.

"I will not talk it over calmly!"

"Oh, come! You can do it if you try. In the first place, whatever put
this silly idea into your head about that sweet girl marrying Bream
Mortimer?"

"Bream Mortimer is the son of Henry Mortimer."

"I know," said Sam. "And, while it is no doubt unfair to hold that
against him, it's a point you can't afford to ignore. Henry Mortimer!
You and I have Henry Mortimer's number. We know what Henry Mortimer is
like! A man who spends his time thinking up ways of annoying you. You
can't seriously want to have the Mortimer family linked to you by
marriage."

"Henry Mortimer is my oldest friend."

"That makes it all the worse. Fancy a man who calls himself your friend
treating you like that!"

"The misunderstanding to which you allude has been completely smoothed
over. My relations with Mr. Mortimer are thoroughly cordial."

"Well, have it your own way. Personally, I wouldn't trust a man like
that. And, as for letting my daughter marry his son...!"

"I have decided once and for all...."

"If you'll take my advice, you will break the thing off."

"I will not take your advice."

"I wouldn't expect to charge you for it," explained Sam reassuringly. "I
give it you as a friend, not as a lawyer. Six-and-eightpence to others,
free to you."

"Will you understand that my daughter is going to marry Bream Mortimer?
What are you giggling about?"

"It sounds so silly. The idea of anyone marrying Bream Mortimer, I
mean."

"Let me tell you he is a thoroughly estimable young man."

"And there you put the whole thing in a nutshell. Your daughter is a
girl of spirit. She would hate to be tied for life to an estimable young
man."

"She will do as I tell her."

Sam regarded him sternly.

"Have you no regard for her happiness?"

"I am the best judge of what is best for her."

"If you ask me," said Sam candidly, "I think you're a rotten judge."

"I did not come here to be insulted!"

"I like that! You have been insulting me ever since you arrived. What
right have you to say that I'm not fit to marry your daughter?"

"I did not say that."

"You've implied it. And you've been looking at me as if I were a leper
or something the Pure Food Committee had condemned. Why? That's what I
ask you," said Sam, warming up. This he fancied, was the way Widgery
would have tackled a troublesome client. "Why? Answer me that!"

"I...."

Sam rapped sharply on the desk.

"Be careful, sir. Be very careful!" He knew that this was what lawyers
always said. Of course, there is a difference in position between a
miscreant whom you suspect of an attempt at perjury and the father of
the girl you love, whose consent to the match you wish to obtain, but
Sam was in no mood for these nice distinctions. He only knew that
lawyers told people to be very careful, so he told Mr. Bennett to be
very careful.

"What do you mean, be very careful?" said Mr. Bennett.

"I'm dashed if I know," said Sam frankly. The question struck him as a
mean attack. He wondered how Widgery would have met it. Probably by
smiling quietly and polishing his spectacles. Sam had no spectacles. He
endeavoured, however, to smile quietly.

"Don't laugh at me!" roared Mr. Bennett.

"I'm not laughing at you."

"You are!"

"I'm not! I'm smiling quietly."

"Well, don't then!" said Mr. Bennett. He glowered at his young
companion. "I don't know why I'm wasting my time, talking to you. The
position is clear to the meanest intelligence. I have no objection to
you personally...."

"Come, this is better!" said Sam.

"I don't know you well enough to have any objection to you or any
opinion of you at all. This is only the second time I have ever met you
in my life."

"Mark you," said Sam, "I think I am one of those fellows who grow on
people...."

"As far as I am concerned, you simply do not exist. You may be the
noblest character in London or you may be wanted by the police. I don't
know. And I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. You mean nothing in my
life. I don't know you."

"You must persevere," said Sam. "You must buckle to and get to know me.
Don't give the thing up in this half-hearted way. Everything has to have
a beginning. Stick to it, and in a week or two you will find yourself
knowing me quite well."

"I don't want to know you!"

"You say that now, but wait!"

"And thank goodness I have not got to!" exploded Mr. Bennett, ceasing to
be calm and reasonable with a suddenness which affected Sam much as
though half a pound of gunpowder had been touched off under his chair.
"For the little I have seen of you has been quite enough! Kindly
understand that my daughter is engaged to be married to another man, and
that I do not wish to see or hear anything of you again! I shall try to
forget your very existence, and I shall see to it that Wilhelmina does
the same! You're an impudent scoundrel, sir! An impudent scoundrel! I
don't like you! I don't wish to see you again! If you were the last man
in the world I wouldn't allow my daughter to marry you! If that is
quite clear, I will wish you good morning!"

Mr. Bennett thundered out of the room, and Sam, temporarily stunned by
the outburst, remained where he was, gaping. A few minutes later life
began to return to his palsied limbs. It occurred to him that Mr.
Bennett had forgotten to kiss him good-bye, and he went into the outer
office to tell him so. But the outer office was empty. Sam stood for a
moment in thought, then he returned to the inner office, and, picking up
a time-table, began to look out trains to the village of Windlehurst in
Hampshire, the nearest station to his aunt Adeline's charming old-world
house, Windles.

CHAPTER XV

DRAMA AT A COUNTRY HOUSE

As I read over the last few chapters of this narrative, I see that I
have been giving the reader rather too jumpy a time. To almost a painful
degree I have excited his pity and terror; and, though that is what
Aristotle says one ought to do, I feel that a little respite would not
be out of order. The reader can stand having his emotions tortured up to
a certain point; after that he wants to take it easy for a bit. It is
with pleasure, therefore, that I turn now to depict a quiet, peaceful
scene in domestic life. It won't last long--three minutes, perhaps, by a
good stop-watch--but that is not my fault. My task is to record facts as
they happened.

The morning sunlight fell pleasantly on the garden of Windles, turning
it into the green and amber Paradise which Nature had intended it to be.
A number of the local birds sang melodiously in the undergrowth at the
end of the lawn, while others, more energetic, hopped about the grass
in quest of worms. Bees, mercifully ignorant that, after they had worked
themselves to the bone gathering honey, the proceeds of their labour
would be collared and consumed by idle humans, buzzed industriously to
and fro and dived head foremost into flowers. Winged insects danced
sarabands in the sunshine. In a deck-chair under the cedar-tree Billie
Bennett, with a sketching-block on her knee, was engaged in drawing a
picture of the ruined castle. Beside her, curled up in a ball, lay her
Pekinese dog, Pinky-Boodles. Beside Pinky-Boodles slept Smith, the
bulldog. In the distant stable-yard, unseen but audible, a boy in
shirt-sleeves was washing the car and singing as much as a treacherous
memory would permit of a popular sentimental ballad.

You may think that was all. You may suppose that nothing could be added
to deepen the atmosphere of peace and content. Not so. At this moment,
Mr. Bennett emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room, clad in
white flannels and buckskin shoes, supplying just the finishing touch
that was needed.

Mr. Bennett crossed the lawn, and sat down beside his daughter. Smith,
the bulldog, raising a sleepy head, breathed heavily; but Mr. Bennett
did not quail. Since their last unfortunate meeting, relations of
distant, but solid, friendship had come to exist between pursuer and
pursued. Sceptical at first, Mr. Bennett had at length allowed himself
to be persuaded of the mildness of the animal's nature and the essential
purity of his motives; and now it was only when they encountered each
other unexpectedly round sharp corners that he ever betrayed the
slightest alarm. So now, while Smith slept on the grass, Mr. Bennett
reclined in the chair. It was the nearest thing modern civilisation has
seen to the lion lying down with the lamb.

"Sketching?" said Mr. Bennett.

"Yes," said Billie, for there were no secrets between this girl and her
father. At least, not many. She occasionally omitted to tell him some
such trifle as that she had met Samuel Marlowe on the previous morning
in a leafy lane, and intended to meet him again this afternoon, but
apart from that her mind was an open book.

"It's a great morning," said Mr. Bennett.

"So peaceful," said Billie.

"The eggs you get in the country in England," said Mr. Bennett, suddenly
striking a lyrical note, "are extraordinary. I had three for breakfast
this morning which defied competition, simply defied competition. They
were large and brown, and as fresh as new-mown hay!"

He mused for a while in a sort of ecstasy.

"And the hams!" he went on. "The ham I had for breakfast was what I call
ham! I don't know when I've had ham like that. I suppose it's something
they feed the pigs on!" he concluded, in soft meditation. And he gave a
little sigh. Life was very beautiful.

Silence fell, broken only by the snoring of Smith. Billie was thinking
of Sam, and of what Sam had said to her in the lane yesterday; of his
clean-cut face, and the look in his eyes--so vastly superior to any
look that ever came into the eyes of Bream Mortimer. She was telling
herself that her relations with Sam were an idyll; for, being young and
romantic, she enjoyed this freshet of surreptitious meetings which had
come to enliven the stream of her life. It was pleasant to go warily
into deep lanes where forbidden love lurked. She cast a swift
side-glance at her father--the unconscious ogre in her fairy-story. What
would he say if he knew? But Mr. Bennett did not know, and consequently
continued to meditate peacefully on ham.

They had sat like this for perhaps a minute--two happy mortals lulled by
the gentle beauty of the day--when from the window of the drawing-room
there stepped out a white-capped maid. And one may just as well say at
once--and have done with it--that this is the point where the quiet,
peaceful scene in domestic life terminates with a jerk, and pity and
terror resume work at the old stand.

The maid--her name, not that it matters, was Susan, and she was engaged
to be married, though the point is of no importance, to the second
assistant at Green's Grocery Stores in Windlehurst--approached Mr.
Bennett.

"Please, sir, a gentleman to see you."

"Eh?" said Mr. Bennett, torn from a dream of large pink slices edged
with bread-crumbed fat.

"A gentleman to see you, sir. In the drawing-room. He says you are
expecting him."

"Of course, yes. To be sure."

Mr. Bennett heaved himself out of the deck-chair. Beyond the French
windows he could see an indistinct form in a grey suit, and remembered
that this was the morning on which Sir Mallaby Marlowe's clerk--who was
taking those Schultz and Bowen papers for him to America--had written
that he would call. To-day was Friday; no doubt the man was sailing from
Southampton to-morrow.

He crossed the lawn, entered the drawing-room, and found Mr. Jno. Peters
with an expression on his ill-favoured face, which looked like one of
consternation, of uneasiness, even of alarm.

"Morning, Mr. Peters," said Mr. Bennett. "Very good of you to run down.
Take a seat, and I'll just go through the few notes I have made about
the matter."

"Mr. Bennett," exclaimed Jno. Peters. "May--may I speak?"

"What do you mean? Eh? What? Something to say? What is it?"

Mr. Peters cleared his throat awkwardly. He was feeling embarrassed at
the unpleasantness of the duty which he had to perform, but it was a
duty, and he did not intend to shrink from performing it. Ever since,
gazing appreciatively through the drawing-room windows at the charming
scene outside, he had caught sight of the unforgettable form of Billie,
seated in her chair with the sketching-block on her knee, he had
realised that he could not go away in silence, leaving Mr. Bennett
ignorant of what he was up against.

One almost inclines to fancy that there must have been a curse of some
kind on this house of Windles. Certainly everybody who entered it seemed
to leave his peace of mind behind him. Jno. Peters had been feeling
notably happy during his journey in the train from London, and the
subsequent walk from the station. The splendour of the morning had
soothed his nerves, and the faint wind that blew inshore from the sea
spoke to him hearteningly of adventure and romance. There was a jar of
pot-pourri on the drawing-room table, and he had derived considerable
pleasure from sniffing at it. In short, Jno. Peters was in the pink,
without a care in the world, until he had looked out of the window and
seen Billie.

"Mr. Bennett," he said, "I don't want to do anybody any harm, and, if
you know all about it, and she suits you, well and good; but I think it
is my duty to inform you that your stenographer is not quite right in
her head. I don't say she's dangerous, but she isn't compos. She
decidedly is _not_ compos, Mr. Bennett!"

Mr. Bennett stared at his well-wisher dumbly for a moment. The thought
crossed his mind that, if ever there was a case of the pot calling the
kettle black, this was it. His opinion of Jno. Peters' sanity went down
to zero.

"What are you talking about? My stenographer? What stenographer?"

It occurred to Mr. Peters that a man of the other's wealth and business
connections might well have a troupe of these useful females. He
particularised.

"I mean the young lady out in the garden there, to whom you were
dictating just now. The young lady with the writing-pad on her knee."

"What! What!" Mr. Bennett spluttered. "Do you know who that is?" he
exclaimed.

"Oh, yes, indeed!" said Jno. Peters. "I have only met her once, when she
came into our office to see Mr. Samuel, but her personality and
appearance stamped themselves so forcibly on my mind, that I know I am
not mistaken. I am sure it is my duty to tell you exactly what happened
when I was left alone with her in the office. We had hardly exchanged a
dozen words, Mr. Bennett, when--"--here Jno. Peters, modest to the core,
turned vividly pink--"when she told me--she told me that I was the only
man she loved!"

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