The Girl on the Boat

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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 bowler 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.

"Yes, sir! 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? 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 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 ketch 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 pocket book. 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! Cummere! 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 inattentive
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!"

Sec. 4

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 inquiry 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
shake him by the hand.

"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

SAM PAVES THE WAY

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
re-adjust 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 claim 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
sea-sick 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 called 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.

Hignett started.

"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 bard 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?" inquired 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 the
conversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on this
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 Pekinese. 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 those 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. Bream Mortimer
was experiencing such a moment.

"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?" inquired 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."

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