The Girl on the Boat
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Pelham Grenville Wodehouse >> The Girl on the Boat
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"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."
Sec. 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."
CHAPTER IX
ROUGH WORK AT A DINNER TABLE
Sec. 1
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.
Sec. 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 fiance, "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.
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