§ 4
Billie Bennett stood in front of the mirror in her state-room dreamily brushing the glorious red hair that fell in a tumbled mass about her shoulders. On the lounge beside her, swathed in a business-like grey kimono, Jane Hubbard watched her, smoking a cigarette.
Jane Hubbard was a splendid specimen of bronzed, strapping womanhood. Her whole appearance spoke of the open air and the great wide spaces and all that sort of thing. She was a thoroughly wholesome, manly girl, about the same age as Billie, with a strong chin and an eye that had looked leopards squarely in the face and caused them to withdraw abashed into the undergrowth, or wherever it is that leopards withdraw when abashed. One could not picture Jane Hubbard flirting lightly at garden parties, but one could picture her very readily arguing with a mutinous native bearer, or with a firm touch putting sweetness and light into the soul of a refractory mule. Boadicea in her girlhood must have been rather like Jane Hubbard.
She smoked contentedly. She had rolled her cigarette herself with one hand, a feat beyond the powers of all but the very greatest. She was pleasantly tired after walking eighty-five times round the promenade deck. Soon she would go to bed and fall asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. But meanwhile she lingered here, for she felt that Billie had something to confide in her.
“Jane,” said Billie, “have you ever been in love?”
Jane Hubbard knocked the ash off her cigarette.
“Not since I was eleven,” she said in her deep musical voice. “He was my music-master. He was forty-seven and completely bald, but there was an appealing weakness in him which won my heart. He was afraid of cats, I remember.”
Billie gathered her hair into a molten bundle and let it run through her fingers.
“Oh, Jane!” she exclaimed. “Surely you don’t like weak men. I like a man who is strong and brave and wonderful.”
“I can’t stand brave men,” said Jane, “it makes them so independent. I could only love a man who would depend on me in everything. Sometimes, when I have been roughing it out in the jungle,” she went on rather wistfully, “I have had my dreams of some gentle clinging man who would put his hand in mine and tell me all his poor little troubles and let me pet and comfort him and bring the smiles back to his face. I’m beginning to want to settle down. After all there are other things for a woman to do in this life besides travelling and big-game hunting. I should like to go into Parliament. And, if I did that, I should practically have to marry. I mean, I should have to have a man to look after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table. I can’t imagine anything jollier than marriage under conditions like that. When I came back a bit done up after a long sitting at the House, he would mix me a whisky-and-soda and read poetry to me or prattle about all the things he had been doing during the day.... Why, it would be ideal!”
Jane Hubbard gave a little sigh. Her fine eyes gazed dreamily at a smoke ring which she had sent floating towards the ceiling.
“Jane,” said Billie. “I believe you’re thinking of somebody definite. Who is he?”
The big-game huntress blushed. The embarrassment which she exhibited made her look manlier than ever.
“I don’t know his name.”
“But there is really someone?”
“Yes.”
“How splendid! Tell me about him.”
Jane Hubbard clasped her strong hands and looked down at the floor.
“I met him on the Subway a couple of days before I left New York. You know how crowded the Subway is at the rush hour. I had a seat, of course, but this poor little fellow—so good-looking, my dear! he reminded me of the pictures of Lord Byron—was hanging from a strap and being jerked about till I thought his poor little arms would be wrenched out of their sockets. And he looked so unhappy, as though he had some secret sorrow. I offered him my seat, but he wouldn’t take it. A couple of stations later, however, the man next to me got out and he sat down and we got into conversation. There wasn’t time to talk much. I told him I had been down-town fetching an elephant-gun which I had left to be mended. He was so prettily interested when I showed him the mechanism. We got along famously. But—oh, well, it was just another case of ships that pass in the night—I’m afraid I’ve been boring you.”
“Oh, Jane! You haven’t! You see ... you see, I’m in love myself.”
“I had an idea you were,” said her friend looking at her critically. “You’ve been refusing your oats the last few days, and that’s a sure sign. Is he that fellow that’s always around with you and who looks like a parrot?”
“Bream Mortimer? Good gracious, no!” cried Billie indignantly. “As if I should fall in love with Bream!”
“When I was out in British East Africa,” said Miss Hubbard, “I had a bird that was the living image of Bream Mortimer. I taught him to whistle ‘Annie Laurie’ and to ask for his supper in three native dialects. Eventually he died of the pip, poor fellow. Well, if it isn’t Bream Mortimer, who is it?”
“His name is Marlowe. He’s tall and handsome and very strong-looking. He reminds me of a Greek god.”
“Ugh!” said Miss Hubbard.
“Jane, we’re engaged.”
“No!” said the huntress, interested. “When can I meet him?”
“I’ll introduce you to-morrow I’m so happy.”
“That’s fine!”
“And yet, somehow,” said Billie, plaiting her hair, “do you ever have presentiments? I can’t get rid of an awful feeling that something’s going to happen to spoil everything.”
“What could spoil everything?”
“Well, I think him so wonderful, you know. Suppose he were to do anything to blur the image I have formed of him.”
“Oh, he won’t. You said he was one of those strong men, didn’t you? They always run true to form. They never do anything except be strong.”
Billie looked meditatively at her reflection in the glass.
“You know I thought I was in love once before, Jane.”
“Yes?”
“We were going to be married and I had actually gone to the church. And I waited and waited and he didn’t come; and what do you think had happened?”
“What?”
“His mother had stolen his trousers.”
Jane Hubbard laughed heartily.
“It’s nothing to laugh at,” said Billie seriously “It was a tragedy. I had always thought him romantic, and when this happened the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. I saw that I had made a mistake.”
“And you broke off the engagement?”
“Of course!”
“I think you were hard on him. A man can’t help his mother stealing his trousers.”
“No. But when he finds they’re gone, he can ’phone to the tailor for some more or borrow the janitor’s or do something. But he simply stayed where he was and didn’t do a thing. Just because he was too much afraid of his mother to tell her straight out that he meant to be married that day.”
“Now that,” said Miss Hubbard, “is just the sort of trait in a man which would appeal to me. I like a nervous, shrinking man.”
“I don’t. Besides, it made him seem so ridiculous, and—I don’t know why it is—I can’t forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Thank goodness, my darling Sam couldn’t look ridiculous, even if he tried. He’s wonderful, Jane. He reminds me of a knight of the Round Table. You ought to see his eyes flash.”
Miss Hubbard got up and stretched herself with a yawn.
“Well, I’ll be on the promenade deck after breakfast to-morrow. If you can arrange to have him flash his eyes then—say between nine-thirty and ten—I shall be delighted to watch them.”
CHAPTER V.
PERSECUTION OF EUSTACE
“Good God!” cried Eustace Hignett.
He stared at the figure which loomed above him in the fading light which came through the porthole of the state-room. The hour was seven-thirty, and he had just woken from a troubled doze, full of strange nightmares, and for the moment he thought that he must still be dreaming, for the figure before him could have walked straight into any nightmare and no questions asked. Then suddenly he became aware that it was his cousin, Samuel Marlowe. As in the historic case of father in the pigstye, he could tell him by his hat. But why was he looking like that? Was it simply some trick of the uncertain light, or was his face really black and had his mouth suddenly grown to six times its normal size and become a vivid crimson?
Sam turned. He had been looking at himself in the mirror with a satisfaction which, to the casual observer, his appearance would not have seemed to justify. Hignett had not been suffering from a delusion. His cousin’s face was black; and, even as he turned, he gave it a dab with a piece of burnt cork and made it blacker.
“Hullo! You awake?” he said, and switched on the light.
Eustace Hignett shied like a startled horse. His friend’s profile, seen dimly, had been disconcerting enough. Full face, he was a revolting object. Nothing that Eustace Hignett had encountered in his recent dreams—and they had included such unusual fauna as elephants in top hats and running shorts—had affected him so profoundly. Sam’s appearance smote him like a blow. It seemed to take him straight into a different and a dreadful world.
“What ... what ... what...?” he gurgled.
Sam squinted at himself in the glass and added a touch of black to his nose.
“How do I look?”
Eustace Hignett began to fear that his cousin’s reason must have become unseated. He could not conceive of any really sane man, looking like that, being anxious to be told how he looked.
“Are my lips red enough? It’s for the ship’s concert, you know. It starts in half-an-hour, though I believe I’m not on till the second part. Speaking as a friend, would you put a touch more black round the ears, or are they all right?”
Curiosity replaced apprehension in Hignett’s mind.
“What on earth are you doing performing at the ship’s concert?”
“Oh, they roped me in. It got about somehow that I was a valuable man, and they wouldn’t take no.” Sam deepened the colour of his ears. “As a matter of fact,” he said casually, “my fiancée made rather a point of my doing something.”
A sharp yelp from the lower berth proclaimed the fact that the significance of the remark had not been lost on Eustace.
“Your fiancée?”
“The girl I’m engaged to. Didn’t I tell you about that? Yes, I’m engaged.”
Eustace sighed heavily.
“I feared the worst. Tell me, who is she?”
“Didn’t I tell you her name?”
“No.”
“Curious! I must have forgotten.” He hummed an airy strain as he blackened the tip of his nose. “It’s rather a curious coincidence, really. Her name is Bennett.”
“She may be a relation.”
“That’s true. Of course, girls do have relations.”
“What is her first name?”
“That is another rather remarkable thing. It’s Wilhelmina.”
“Wilhelmina!”
“Of course, there must be hundreds of girls in the world called Wilhelmina Bennett, but still it is a coincidence.”
“What colour is her hair?” demanded Eustace Hignett in a hollow voice. “Her hair! What colour is it?”
“Her hair? Now, let me see. You ask me what colour is her hair. Well, you might call it auburn ... or russet ... or you might call it Titian....”
“Never mind what I might call it. Is it red?”
“Red? Why, yes. That is a very good description of it. Now that you put it to me like that, it is red.”
“Has she a trick of grabbing at you suddenly, when she gets excited, like a kitten with a ball of wool?”
“Yes. Yes, she has.”
Eustace Hignett uttered a sharp cry.
“Sam,” he said, “can you bear a shock?”
“I’ll have a dash at it.”
“Brace up!”
“I’m ready.”
“The girl you are engaged to is the same girl who promised to marry me.”
“Well, well!” said Sam.
There was a silence.
“Awfully sorry, of course, and all that,” said Sam.
“Don’t apologise to me!” said Eustace. “My poor old chap, my only feeling towards you is one of the purest and profoundest pity.” He reached out and pressed Sam’s hand. “I regard you as a toad beneath the harrow!”
“Well, I suppose that’s one way of offering congratulations and cheery good wishes.”
“And on top of that,” went on Eustace, deeply moved, “you have got to sing at the ship’s concert.”
“Why shouldn’t I sing at the ship’s concert?”
“My dear old man, you have many worthy qualities, but you must know that you can’t sing. You can’t sing for nuts! I don’t want to discourage you, but, long ago as it is, you can’t have forgotten what an ass you made of yourself at that house-supper at school. Seeing you up against it like this, I regret that I threw a lump of butter at you on that occasion, though at the time it seemed the only course to pursue.”
Sam started.
“Was it you who threw that bit of butter?”
“It was.”
“I wish I’d known! You silly chump, you ruined my collar.”
“Ah, well, it’s seven years ago. You would have had to send it to the wash anyhow by this time. But don’t let us brood on the past. Let us put our heads together and think how we can get you out of this terrible situation.”
“I don’t want to get out of it. I confidently expect to be the hit of the evening.”
“The hit of the evening! You! Singing!”
“I’m not going to sing. I’m going to do that imitation of Frank Tinney which I did at the Trinity smoker. You haven’t forgotten that? You were at the piano taking the part of the conductor of the orchestra. What a riot I was—we were! I say, Eustace, old man, I suppose you don’t feel well enough to come up now and take your old part? You could do it without a rehearsal. You remember how it went.... ‘Hullo, Ernest!’ ‘Hullo, Frank!’ Why not come along?”
“The only piano I will ever sit at will be one firmly fixed on a floor that does not heave and wobble under me.”
“Nonsense! The boat’s as steady as a rock now. The sea’s like a mill-pond.”
“Nevertheless, thanking you for your suggestion, no!”
“Oh, well, then I shall have to get on as best I can with that fellow Mortimer. We’ve been rehearsing all the afternoon, and he seems to have the hang of the thing. But he won’t be really right. He has no pep, no vim. Still, if you won’t ... well, I think I’ll be getting along to his state-room. I told him I would look in for a last rehearsal.”
The door closed behind Sam, and Eustace Hignett, lying on his back, gave himself up to melancholy meditation. He was deeply disturbed by his cousin’s sad story. He knew what it meant being engaged to Wilhelmina Bennett. It was like being taken aloft in a balloon and dropped with a thud on the rocks.
His reflections were broken by the abrupt opening of the door. Sam rushed in. Eustace peered anxiously out of his berth. There was too much burnt cork on his cousin’s face to allow of any real registering of emotion, but he could tell from his manner that all was not well.
“What’s the matter?”
Sam sank down on the lounge.
“The bounder has quit!”
“The bounder? What bounder?”
“There is only one! Bream Mortimer, curse him! There may be others whom thoughtless critics rank as bounders, but he is the only man really deserving of the title. He refuses to appear! He has walked out on the act! He has left me flat! I went into his state-room just now, as arranged, and the man was lying on his bunk, groaning.”
“I thought you said the sea was like a mill-pond.”
“It wasn’t that! He’s perfectly fit. But it seems that the silly ass took it into his head to propose to Billie just before dinner—apparently he’s loved her for years in a silent, self-effacing way—and of course she told him that she was engaged to me, and the thing upset him to such an extent that he says the idea of sitting down at a piano and helping me give an imitation of Frank Tinney revolts him. He says he intends to spend the evening in bed, reading Schopenhauer. I hope it chokes him!”
“But this is splendid! This lets you out.”
“What do you mean? Lets me out?”
“Why, now you won’t be able to appear. Oh, you will be thankful for this in years to come.”
“Won’t I appear! Won’t I dashed well appear! Do you think I’m going to disappoint that dear girl when she is relying on me? I would rather die.”
“But you can’t appear without a pianist.”
“I’ve got a pianist.”
“You have?”
“Yes. A little undersized shrimp of a fellow with a green face and ears like water-wings.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“Yes, you do. He’s you!”
“Me!”
“Yes, you. You are going to sit at the piano to-night.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it’s impossible. I gave you my views on the subject just now.”
“You’ve altered them.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, you soon will, and I’ll tell you why. If you don’t get up out of that damned berth you’ve been roosting in all your life, I’m going to ring for J. B. Midgeley and I’m going to tell him to bring me a bit of dinner in here and I’m going to eat it before your eyes.”
“But you’ve had dinner.”
“Well, I’ll have another. I feel just ready for a nice fat pork chop....”
“Stop! Stop!”
“A nice fat pork chop with potatoes and lots of cabbage,” repeated Sam firmly. “And I shall eat it here on this very lounge. Now how do we go?”
“You wouldn’t do that!” said Eustace piteously.
“I would and will.”
“But I shouldn’t be any good at the piano. I’ve forgotten how the thing used to go.”
“You haven’t done anything of the kind. I come in and say ‘Hullo, Ernest!’ and you say ‘Hullo, Frank!’ and then you help me tell the story about the Pullman car. A child could do your part of it.”
“Perhaps there is some child on board....”
“No. I want you. I shall feel safe with you. We’ve done it together before.”
“But, honestly, I really don’t think ... it isn’t as if....”
Sam rose and extended a finger towards the bell.
“Stop! Stop!” cried Eustace Hignett. “I’ll do it!”
Sam withdrew his finger.
“Good!” he said. “We’ve just got time for a rehearsal while you’re dressing. ‘Hullo, Ernest!’”
“‘Hullo, Frank,’” said Eustace Hignett brokenly as he searched for his unfamiliar trousers.
CHAPTER VI.
SCENE AT A SHIP’S CONCERT
Ships’ concerts are given in aid of the Seamen’s Orphans and Widows, and, after one has been present at a few of them, one seems to feel that any right-thinking orphan or widow would rather jog along and take a chance of starvation than be the innocent cause of such things. They open with a long speech from the master of the ceremonies—so long, as a rule, that it is only the thought of what is going to happen afterwards that enables the audience to bear it with fortitude. This done, the amateur talent is unleashed, and the grim work begins.
It was not till after the all too brief intermission for rest and recuperation that the newly-formed team of Marlowe and Hignett was scheduled to appear. Previous to this there had been dark deeds done in the quiet saloon. The lecturer on deep-sea fish had fulfilled his threat and spoken at great length on a subject which, treated by a master of oratory, would have palled on the audience after ten or fifteen minutes; and at the end of fifteen minutes this speaker had only just got past the haddocks and was feeling his way tentatively through the shrimps. “The Rosary” had been sung and there was an uneasy doubt as to whether it was not going to be sung again after the interval—the latest rumour being that the second of the rival lady singers had proved adamant to all appeals and intended to fight the thing out on the lines she had originally chosen if they put her in irons.
A young man had recited “Gunga Din” and, wilfully misinterpreting the gratitude of the audience that it was over for a desire for more, had followed it with “Fuzzy-Wuzzy.” His sister—these things run in families—had sung “My Little Gray Home in the West”—rather sombrely, for she had wanted to sing “The Rosary,” and, with the same obtuseness which characterised her brother, had come back and rendered plantation songs. The audience was now examining its programmes in the interval of silence in order to ascertain the duration of the sentence still remaining unexpired.
It was shocked to read the following:—
7. A Little Imitation......S. Marlowe.
All over the saloon you could see fair women and brave men wilting in their seats. Imitation...! The word, as Keats would have said, was like a knell! Many of these people were old travellers and their minds went back wincingly, as one recalls forgotten wounds, to occasions when performers at ships’ concerts had imitated whole strings of Dickens’ characters or, with the assistance of a few hats and a little false hair, had endeavoured to portray Napoleon, Bismarck, Shakespeare, and other of the famous dead. In this printed line on the programme there was nothing to indicate the nature or scope of the imitation which this S. Marlowe proposed to inflict upon them. They could only sit and wait and hope that it would be short.
There was a sinking of hearts as Eustace Hignett moved down the room and took his place at the piano. A pianist! This argued more singing. The more pessimistic began to fear that the imitation was going to be one of those imitations of well-known opera artistes which, though rare, do occasionally add to the horrors of ships’ concerts. They stared at Hignett apprehensively. There seemed to be something ominous in the man’s very aspect. His face was very pale and set, the face of one approaching a task at which his humanity shudders. They could not know that the pallor of Eustace Hignett was due entirely to the slight tremor which, even on the calmest nights, the engines of an ocean liner produce in the flooring of a dining saloon, and to that faint, yet well-defined, smell of cooked meats which clings to a room where a great many people have recently been eating a great many meals. A few beads of cold perspiration were clinging to Eustace Hignett’s brow. He looked straight before him with unseeing eyes. He was thinking hard of the Sahara.
So tense was Eustace’s concentration that he did not see Billie Bennett, seated in the front row. Billie had watched him enter with a little thrill of embarrassment. She wished that she had been content with one of the seats at the back. But Jane Hubbard had insisted on the front row. She always had a front-row seat at witch dances in Africa, and the thing had become a habit.
In order to avoid recognition for as long as possible, Billie now put up her fan and turned to Jane. She was surprised to see that her friend was staring eagerly before her with a fixity almost equal to that of Eustace. Under her breath she muttered an exclamation of surprise in one of the lesser-known dialects of Northern Nigeria.
“Billie!” she whispered sharply.
“What is the matter, Jane?”
“Who is that man at the piano? Do you know him?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” said Billie. “His name is Hignett. Why?”
“It’s the man I met on the Subway!” She breathed a sigh. “Poor little fellow, how miserable he looks!”
At this moment their conversation was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord, and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with the feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than even they had looked for.
The figure was richly clad in some scarlet material. Its face was a grisly black and below the nose appeared what seemed a horrible gash. It advanced towards them, smoking a cigar.
“Hullo, Ernest,” it said.
And then it seemed to pause expectantly, as though desiring some reply. Dead silence reigned in the saloon.
“Hullo, Ernest!”
Those nearest the piano—and nobody more quickly than Jane Hubbard—now observed that the white face of the man on the stool had grown whiter still. His eyes gazed out glassily from under his damp brow. He looked like a man who was seeing some ghastly sight. The audience sympathised with him. They felt like that, too.
In all human plans there is ever some slight hitch, some little miscalculation which just makes all the difference. A moment’s thought should have told Eustace Hignett that a half-smoked cigar was one of the essential properties to any imitation of the eminent Mr. Tinney; but he had completely overlooked the fact. The cigar came as an absolute surprise to him and it could not have affected him more powerfully if it had been a voice from the tomb. He stared at it pallidly, like Macbeth at the ghost of Banquo. It was a strong, lively young cigar, and its curling smoke played lightly about his nostrils. His jaw fell. His eyes protruded. He looked for a long moment like one of those deep-sea fishes concerning which the recent lecturer had spoken so searchingly. Then with the cry of a stricken animal, he bounded from his seat and fled for the deck.
There was a rustle at Billie’s side as Jane Hubbard rose and followed him. Jane was deeply stirred. Even as he sat, looking so pale and piteous, at the piano, her big heart had gone out to him, and now, in his moment of anguish, he seemed to bring to the surface everything that was best and manliest in her nature. Thrusting aside with one sweep of her powerful arm a steward who happened to be between her and the door, she raced in pursuit.
Sam Marlowe had watched his cousin’s dash for the open with a consternation so complete that his senses seemed to have left him. A general, deserted by his men on some stricken field, might have felt something akin to his emotion. Of all the learned professions, the imitation of Mr. Frank Tinney is the one which can least easily be carried through single-handed. The man at the piano, the leader of the orchestra, is essential. He is the life-blood of the entertainment. Without him, nothing can be done.
For an instant Sam stood there, gaping blankly. Then the open door of the saloon seemed to beckon an invitation. He made for it, reached it, passed through it. That concluded his efforts in aid of the Seamen’s Orphans and Widows.
The spell which had lain on the audience broke. This imitation seemed to them to possess in an extraordinary measure the one quality which renders amateur imitations tolerable, that of brevity. They had seen many amateur imitations, but never one as short as this. The saloon echoed with their applause.
It brought no balm to Samuel Marlowe. He did not hear it. He had fled for refuge to his state-room and was lying in the lower berth, chewing the pillow, a soul in torment.
CHAPTER VII.
SUNDERED HEARTS
There was a tap at the door. Sam sat up dizzily. He had lost all count of time.
“Who’s that?”
“I have a note for you, sir.”
It was the level voice of J. B. Midgeley, the steward. The stewards of the White Star Line, besides being the civillest and most obliging body of men in the world, all have soft and pleasant voices. A White Star steward, waking you up at six-thirty, to tell you that your bath is ready, when you wanted to sleep on till twelve, is the nearest human approach to the nightingale.
“A what?”
“A note, sir.”
Sam jumped up and switched on the light. He went to the door and took the note from J. B. Midgeley, who, his mission accomplished, retired in an orderly manner down the passage. Sam looked at the letter with a thrill. He had never seen the handwriting before, but, with the eye of love, he recognised it. It was just the sort of hand he would have expected Billie to write, round and smooth and flowing, the writing of a warm-hearted girl. He tore open the envelope.
“Please come up to the top deck. I want to speak to you.”
Sam could not disguise it from himself that he was a little disappointed. I don’t know if you see anything wrong with the letter, but the way Sam looked at it was that, for a first love-letter, it might have been longer and perhaps a shade warmer. And, without running any risk of writer’s cramp, she might have signed it.
However, these were small matters. No doubt the dear girl had been in a hurry and so forth. The important point was that he was going to see her. When a man’s afraid, sings the bard, a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see; and the same truth holds good when a man has made an exhibition of himself at a ship’s concert. A woman’s gentle sympathy, that was what Samuel Marlowe wanted more than anything else at the moment. That, he felt, was what the doctor ordered. He scrubbed the burnt cork off his face with all possible speed and changed his clothes and made his way to the upper deck. It was like Billie, he felt, to have chosen this spot for their meeting. It would be deserted and it was hallowed for them both by sacred associations.
She was standing at the rail, looking out over the water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam’s head against an overhanging stanchion announced his approach, that she turned.
“Oh, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been a long time.”
“It wasn’t an easy job,” explained Sam, “getting all that burnt cork off. You’ve no notion how the stuff sticks. You have to use butter....”
She shuddered.
“Don’t!”
“But I did. You have to with burnt cork.”
“Don’t tell me these horrible things.” Her voice rose almost hysterically. “I never want to hear the words burnt cork mentioned again as long as I live.”
“I feel exactly the same.” Sam moved to her side. “Darling,” he said in a low voice, “it was like you to ask me to meet you here. I know what you were thinking. You thought that I should need sympathy. You wanted to pet me, to smooth my wounded feelings, to hold me in your arms and tell me that, as we loved each other, what did anything else matter?”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, you didn’t? I thought you did!” He looked at her wistfully. “I thought,” he said, “that possibly you might have wished to comfort me. I have been through a great strain. I have had a shock....”
“And what about me?” she demanded passionately. “Haven’t I had a shock?”
He melted at once.
“Have you had a shock too? Poor little thing! Sit down and tell me all about it.”
She looked away from him, her face working.
“Can’t you understand what a shock I have had? I thought you were the perfect knight.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t what?”
“I thought you said it was a perfect night.”
“I said I thought you were the perfect knight.”
“Oh, ah!”
A sailor crossed the deck, a dim figure in the shadows, went over to a sort of raised summerhouse with a brass thingummy in it, fooled about for a moment, and went away again. Sailors earn their money easily.
“Yes?” said Sam when he had gone.
“I forget what I was saying.”
“Something about my being the perfect knight.”
“Yes. I thought you were.”
“That’s good.”
“But you’re not!”
“No?”
“No!”
“Oh!”
Silence fell. Sam was feeling hurt and bewildered. He could not understand her mood. He had come up expecting to be soothed and comforted and she was like a petulant iceberg. Cynically, he recalled some lines of poetry which he had had to write out a hundred times on one occasion at school as a punishment for having introduced a white mouse into chapel.
“Oh, woman, in our hours of ease,
Un-something, something, something, please.
When tiddly-umpty umpty brow,
A something something something thou!”
He had forgotten the exact words, but the gist of it had been that Woman, however she might treat a man in times of prosperity, could be relied on to rally round and do the right thing when he was in trouble. How little the poet had known woman.
“Why not?” he said huffily.
She gave a little sob.
“I put you on a pedestal and I find you have feet of clay. You have blurred the image which I formed of you. I can never think of you again without picturing you as you stood in that saloon, stammering and helpless....”
“Well, what can you do when your pianist runs out on you?”
“You could have done something!” The words she had spoken only yesterday to Jane Hubbard came back to her. “I can’t forgive a man for looking ridiculous. Oh, what, what,” she cried, “induced you to try to give an imitation of Bert Williams?”
Sam started, stung to the quick.
“It wasn’t Bert Williams. It was Frank Tinney!”
“Well, how was I to know?”
“I did my best,” said Sam sullenly.
“That is the awful thought.”
“I did it for your sake.”
“I know. It gives me a horrible sense of guilt.” She shuddered again. Then suddenly, with the nervous quickness of a woman unstrung, thrust a small black golliwog into his hand. “Take it!”
“What’s this?”
“You bought it for me yesterday at the barber’s shop. It is the only present which you have given me. Take it back.”
“I don’t want it. I shouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“You must take it,” she said in a low voice. “It is a symbol.”
“A what?”
“A symbol of our broken love.”
“I don’t see how you make that out. It’s a golliwog.”
“I can never marry you now.”
“What! Good heavens! Don’t be absurd.”
“I can’t!”
“Oh, go on, have a dash at it,” he said encouragingly, though his heart was sinking.
She shook her head.
“No, I couldn’t.”
“Oh, hang it all!”
“I couldn’t. I’m a very strange girl....”
“You’re a very silly girl....”
“I don’t see what right you have to say that,” she flared.
“I don’t see what right you have to say you can’t marry me and try to load me up with golliwogs,” he retorted with equal heat.
“Oh, can’t you understand?”
“No, I’m dashed if I can.”
She looked at him despondently.
“When I said I would marry you, you were a hero to me. You stood to me for everything that was noble and brave and wonderful. I had only to shut my eyes to conjure up the picture of you as you dived off the rail that morning. Now—” her voice trembled “—if I shut my eyes now, I can only see a man with a hideous black face making himself the laughing stock of the ship. How could I marry you, haunted by that picture?”
“But, good heavens, you talk as though I made a habit of blacking up! You talk as though you expected me to come to the altar smothered in burnt cork.”
“I shall always think of you as I saw you to-night.” She looked at him sadly. “There’s a bit of black still on your left ear.”
He tried to take her hand. But she drew it away. He fell back as if struck.
“So this is the end,” he muttered.
“Yes. It’s partly on your ear and partly on your cheek.”
“So this is the end,” he repeated.
“You had better go below and ask your steward to give you some more butter.”
He laughed bitterly.
“Well, I might have expected it. I might have known what would happen! Eustace warned me. Eustace was right. He knows women—as I do now. Women! What mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was’t betrayed the what’s-its-name? A woman! Who lost ... lost ... who lost ... who—er—and so on? A woman.... So all is over! There is nothing to be said but good-bye?”
“No.”
“Good-bye, then, Miss Bennett!”
“Good-bye,” said Billie sadly. “I—I’m sorry.”
“Don’t mention it!”
“You do understand, don’t you?”
“You have made everything perfectly clear.”
“I hope—I hope you won’t be unhappy.”
“Unhappy!” Sam produced a strangled noise from his larynx like the cry of a shrimp in pain. “Unhappy! Ha! ha! I’m not unhappy! Whatever gave you that idea? I’m smiling! I’m laughing! I feel I’ve had a merciful escape. Oh, ha, ha!”
“It’s very unkind and rude of you to say that.”
“It reminds me of a moving picture I saw in New York. It was called ‘Saved from the Scaffold.’”
“Oh!”
“I’m not unhappy! What have I got to be unhappy about? What on earth does any man want to get married for? I don’t. Give me my gay bachelor life! My Uncle Charlie used to say ‘It’s better luck to get married than it is to be kicked in the head by a mule.’ But he was a man who always looked on the bright side. Good-night, Miss Bennett. And good-bye—for ever.”
He turned on his heel and strode across the deck. From a white heaven the moon still shone benignantly down, mocking him. He had spoken bravely; the most captious critic could not but have admitted that he had made a good exit. But already his heart was aching.
As he drew near to his state-room, he was amazed and disgusted to hear a high tenor voice raised in song proceeding from behind the closed door.
“I fee-er naw faw in shee-ining arr-mor,
Though his lance be sharrrp and—er keen;
But I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour
Therough thy der-rooping lashes seen:
I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour....”
Sam flung open the door wrathfully. That Eustace Hignett should still be alive was bad—he had pictured him hurling himself overboard and bobbing about, a pleasing sight in the wake of the vessel; that he should be singing was an outrage. Remorse, Sam felt, should have stricken Eustace Hignett dumb. Instead of which, here he was comporting himself like a blasted linnet. It was all wrong. The man could have no conscience whatever.
“Well,” he said sternly, “so there you are!”
Eustace Hignett looked up brightly, even beamingly. In the brief interval which had elapsed since Sam had seen him last, an extraordinary transformation had taken place in this young man. His wan look had disappeared. His eyes were bright. His face wore that beastly self-satisfied smirk which you see in pictures advertising certain makes of fine-mesh underwear. If Eustace Hignett had been a full-page drawing in a magazine with “My dear fellow, I always wear Sigsbee’s Super-fine Featherweight!” printed underneath him, he could not have looked more pleased with himself.
“Hullo!” he said. “I was wondering where you had got to.”
“Never mind,” said Sam coldly, “where I had got to! Where did you get to and why? You poor, miserable worm,” he went on in a burst of generous indignation, “what have you to say for yourself? What do you mean by dashing away like that and killing my little entertainment?”
“Awfully sorry, old man. I hadn’t foreseen the cigar. I was bearing up tolerably well till I began to sniff the smoke. Then everything seemed to go black—I don’t mean you, of course. You were black already—and I got the feeling that I simply must get on deck and drown myself.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” demanded Sam with a strong sense of injury. “I might have forgiven you then. But to come down here and find you singing....”
A soft light came into Eustace Hignett’s eyes.
“I want to tell you all about that,” he said.
“It’s the most astonishing story. A miracle, you might almost call it. Makes you believe in Fate and all that kind of thing. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York....”
He broke off while Sam cursed him, the Subway, and the city of New York in the order named.
“My dear chap, what is the matter?”
“What is the matter? Ha!”
“Something is the matter,” persisted Eustace Hignett. “I can tell it by your manner. Something has happened to disturb and upset you. I know you so well that I can pierce the mask. What is it? Tell me!”
“Ha, ha!”
“You surely can’t still be brooding on that concert business? Why, that’s all over. I take it that after my departure you made the most colossal ass of yourself, but why let that worry you? These things cannot affect one permanently.”
“Can’t they? Let me tell you that, as a result of that concert, my engagement is broken off.”
Eustace sprang forward with outstretched hand.
“Not really? How splendid! Accept my congratulations! This is the finest thing that could possibly have happened. These are not idle words. As one who has been engaged to the girl himself, I speak feelingly. You are well out of it, Sam.”
Sam thrust aside his hand. Had it been his neck he might have clutched it eagerly, but he drew the line at shaking hands with Eustace Hignett.
“My heart is broken,” he said with dignity.
“That feeling will pass, giving way to one of devout thankfulness. I know. I’ve been there. After all ... Wilhelmina Bennett ... what is she? A rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“She is nothing of the kind,” said Sam, revolted.
“Pardon me,” said Eustace firmly, “I speak as an expert. I know her and I repeat, she is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!”
“She is the only girl in the world, and, owing to your idiotic behaviour, I have lost her.”
“You speak of the only girl in the world,” said Eustace blithely. “If you want to hear about the only girl in the world, I will tell you. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York....”
“I’m going to bed,” said Sam brusquely.
“All right. I’ll tell you while you’re undressing.”
“I don’t want to listen.”
“A week ago,” said Eustace Hignett, “I will ask you to picture me seated after some difficulty in a carriage in the New York Subway. I got into conversation with a girl with an elephant gun.”
Sam revised his private commination service in order to include the elephant gun.
“She was my soul-mate,” proceeded Eustace with quiet determination. “I didn’t know it at the time, but she was. She had grave brown eyes, a wonderful personality, and this elephant gun.”
“Did she shoot you with it?”
“Shoot me? What do you mean? Why, no!”
“The girl must have been a fool!” said Sam bitterly. “The chance of a lifetime and she missed it. Where are my pyjamas?”
“I haven’t seen your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, we parted at Sixty-sixth Street, and, strange as it may seem, I forgot all about her.”
“Do it again!”
“Tell it again?”
“Good heavens, no! Forget all about her again.”
“Nothing,” said Eustace Hignett gravely, “could make me do that. Our souls have blended. Our beings have called to one another from their deepest depths, saying.... There are your pyjamas, over in the corner ... saying ‘You are mine!’ How could I forget her after that? Well, as I was saying, we parted. Little did I know that she was sailing on this very boat! But just now she came to me as I writhed on the deck....”
“Did you writhe?” asked Sam with a flicker of moody interest.
“I certainly did!”
“That’s good!”
“But not for long.”
“That’s bad!”
“She came to me and healed me. Sam, that girl is an angel.”
“Switch off the light when you’ve finished.”
“She seemed to understand without a word how I was feeling. There are some situations which do not need words. She went away and returned with a mixture of some description in a glass. I don’t know what it was. It had Worcester Sauce in it. She put it to my lips. She made me drink it. She said it was what she always used in Africa for bull-calves with the staggers. Well, believe me or believe me not ... are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Believe me or believe me not, in under two minutes I was not merely freed from the nausea caused by your cigar. I was smoking myself! I was walking the deck with her without the slightest qualm. I was even able to look over the side from time to time and comment on the beauty of the moon on the water.... I have said some mordant things about women since I came on board this boat. I withdraw them unreservedly. They still apply to girls like Wilhelmina Bennett, but I have ceased to include the whole sex in my remarks. Jane Hubbard has restored my faith in Woman. Sam! Sam!”
“What?”
“I said that Jane Hubbard had restored my faith in Woman.”
“Oh, all right.”
Eustace Hignett finished undressing and got into bed. With a soft smile on his face he switched off the light. There was a long silence, broken only by the distant purring of the engines.
At about twelve-thirty a voice came from the lower berth.
“Sam!”
“What is it now?”
“There is a sweet womanly strength about her, Sam. She was telling me she once killed a panther with a hat-pin.”
Sam groaned and tossed on his mattress.
Silence fell again.
“At least I think it was a panther,” said Eustace Hignett at a quarter past one. “Either a panther or a puma.”