The Girl on the Boat

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

Sec. 3

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

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

Sam blushed as red as the stain on the cloth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Deuced good!" chuckled Sir Mallaby.

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Mallaby gasped.

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

Mr. Mortimer nodded triumphantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hignett!" cried Mr. Bennett.

"Mr. Hignett!" exclaimed Billie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sec. 4

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

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

"No," said Sam.

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

"Eh?" said Sam absently.

"I said, what do you think?"

"What do I think about what?"

"About Eustace Hignett and Windles."

"What about them?"

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

"I'm sorry."

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

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

A man can bear just so much.

CHAPTER X

TROUBLE AT WINDLES

Sec. 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sec. 2

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

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

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

"Good morning, sir."

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

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

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

"She did, eh?"

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

"A panama hat!" exclaimed Mr. Bennett.

"A panama hat, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aeons later, a voice spoke from below.

"Hullo!" said the voice.

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

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

"No. It has not."

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

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

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

"Eh?" queried Jane, stopping.

"What's the matter with Hignett?"

"I don't know."

"Is it infectious?"

"I expect so."

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

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

"A sharp downpour, sir," he remarked.

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

"Yes, sir."

"Didn't you hear me shouting?"

"I did fancy I heard something, sir."

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

"I supposed it to be the owls, sir, a bird very frequent in this
locality. They make a sort of harsh, hooting howl, sir. I have sometimes
wondered," said Webster, pursuing a not uninteresting train of thought,
"whether that might be the reason of the name."

Before Mr. Bennett could join him in the region of speculation into
which he had penetrated, there was a grinding of brakes on the gravel
outside, and the wettest motor car in England drew up at the front door.

Sec. 3

From Windles to Southampton is a distance of about twenty miles; and the
rain had started to fall when the car, an open one lacking even the poor
protection of a cape hood, had accomplished half the homeward journey.
For the last ten miles Mr. Mortimer had been nursing a sullen hatred for
all created things; and, when entering the house, he came upon Mr.
Bennett hopping about in the hall, endeavouring to detain him and tell
him some long and uninteresting story, his venom concentrated itself
upon his erstwhile friend.

"Oh, get out of the way!" he snapped, shaking off the other's hand.
"Can't you see I'm wet?"

"Wet! Wet!" Mr. Bennett's voice quivered with self-pity. "So am I wet!"

"Father dear," said Billie reprovingly, "you really oughtn't to have
come into the house after bathing without drying yourself. You'll spoil
the carpet."

"I've _not_ been bathing! I'm trying to tell you...."

"Hullo!" said Bream, with amiable innocence, coming in at the tail-end
of the party. "Been having a jolly bathe?"

Mr. Bennett danced with silent irritation, and, striking a bare toe
against the leg of a chair, seized his left foot and staggered into the
arms of Webster, who had been preparing to drift off to the servants'
hall. Linked together, the two proceeded across the carpet in a movement
which suggested in equal parts the careless vigour of the cake-walk and
the grace of the old-fashioned mazurka.

"What the devil are you doing, you fool?" cried Mr. Bennett.

"Nothing, sir. And I should be glad if you would accept my week's
notice," replied Webster calmly.

"What's that?"

"My notice sir, to take effect at the expiration of the current week. I
cannot acquiesce in being cursed and sworn at."

"Oh, go to blazes!"

"Very good, sir." Webster withdrew like a plenipotentiary who has been
handed his papers on the declaration of war, and Mr. Bennett, sprang to
intercept Mr. Mortimer, who had slipped by and was making for the
stairs.

"Mortimer!"

"Oh, what _is_ it?"

"That infernal dog of yours. I insist on your destroying it."

"What's it been doing?"

"The savage brute chased me all over the garden and kept me sitting up
on that damned castle the whole of the morning!"

"Father darling," interposed Billie, pausing on her way up the stairs,
"you mustn't get excited. You know it's bad for you. I don't expect poor
old Smith meant any harm," she added pacifically, as she disappeared in
the direction of the landing.

"Of course he didn't," snapped Mr. Mortimer. "He's as quiet as a lamb."

"I tell you he chased me from one end of the garden to the other! I had
to run like a hare!"

The unfortunate Bream, whose sense of the humorous was simple and
childlike, was not proof against the picture thus conjured up.

"C'k!" giggled Bream helplessly. "C'k, c'k, c'k!"

Mr. Bennett turned on him. "Oh, it strikes you as funny, does it? Well,
let me tell you that if you think you can laugh at me
with--with--er--with one hand and--and--marry my daughter with the
other, you're wrong! You can consider your engagement at an end."

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