29 Three Men and a Maid

by Unknown

  Sam shook his head reprovingly.

  “You shouldn’t have done that!” he said. He extended his cuff and added the words “Vitally important” to what he had just written. “It was probably that which decided her.”

  “Well, I hate dogs,” said Eustace Hignett querulously. “I remember Wilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to step in and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, who were fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fighters now-a-ways, that life itself was in a sense a fight: but she wouldn’t be reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done it like a shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that Sir Galahad was ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And, anyway, he wore armour. Give me a suit of mail reaching well down over the ankles, and I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. But in thin flannel trousers no!”

  Sam rose. His heart was light. He had never, of course, supposed that the girl was anything but perfect; but it was nice to find his high opinion of her corroborated by one who had no reason to exhibit her in a favourable light. He understood her point of view and sympathised with it. An idealist, how could she trust herself to Eustace Hignett? How could she be content with a craven who, instead of scouring the world in the quest for deeds of daring do, had fallen down so lamentably on his first assignment? There was a specious attractiveness about poor old Eustace which might conceivably win a girl’s heart for a time; he wrote poetry, talked well, and had a nice singing voice; but, as a partner for life … well, he simply wouldn’t do. That was all there was to it. He simply didn’t add up right. The man a girl like Wilhelmina Bennett required for a husband was somebody entirely different … somebody, felt Samuel Marlowe, much more like Samuel Marlowe.

  Swelled almost to bursting-point with these reflections, he went on deck to join the ante-luncheon promenade. He saw Billie almost at once. She had put on one of these nice sacky sport-coats which so enhance feminine charms, and was striding along the deck with the breeze playing in her vivid hair like the female equivalent of a Viking. Beside her walked young Mr. Bream Mortimer.

  Sam had been feeling a good deal of a fellow already, but at the sight of her welcoming smile his self-esteem almost caused him to explode. What magic there is in a girl’s smile! It is the raisin which, dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation.

  “Oh, there you are, Mr. Marlowe!”

  “Oh, there you are,” said Bream Mortimer, with a slightly different inflection.

  “I thought I’d like a breath of fresh air before lunch,” said Sam.

  “Oh, Bream!” said the girl.

  “Hello?”

  “Do be a darling and take this great heavy coat of mine down to my stateroom will you? I had no idea it was so warm.”

  “I’ll carry it,” said Bream.

  “Nonsense. I wouldn’t dream of burdening you with it. Trot along and put it on the berth. It doesn’t matter about folding it up.”

  “All right,” said Bream moodily.

  He trotted along. There are moments when a man feels that all he needs in order to be a delivery wagon is a horse and a driver.

  “He had better chirrup to the dog while he’s there, don’t you think?” suggested Sam. He felt that a resolute man with legs as long as Bream’s might well deposit a cloak on a berth and be back under the half-minute.

  “Oh, yes! Bream!”

  “Hello?”

  “While you’re down there just chirrup a little more to poor Pinky. He does appreciate it so!”

  Bream disappeared. It is not always easy to interpret emotion from a glance at a man’s back; but Bream’s back looked like that of a man to whom the thought has occurred that, given a couple of fiddles and a piano, he would have made a good hired orchestra.

  “How is your dear little dog, by the way?” enquired Sam solicitously, as he fell into step by her side.

  “Much better now, thanks. I’ve made friends with a girl on board—did you ever hear her name—Jane Hubbard—she’s a rather well-known big-game hunter and she fixed up some sort of a mixture for Pinky which did him a world of good. I don’t know what was in it except Worcester Sauce, but she said she always gave it to her mules in Africa when they had the botts … it’s very nice of you to speak so affectionately of poor Pinky when he bit you.”

  “Animal spirits!” said Sam tolerantly. “Pure animal spirits! I like to see them. But, of course, I love all dogs.”

  “Oh, do you? So do I!”

  “I only wish they didn’t fight so much. I’m always stopping dog fights.”

  “I do admire a man who knows what to do at a dog fight. I’m afraid I’m rather helpless myself. There never seems anything to catch hold of.” She looked down. “Have you been reading? What is the book?”

  “It’s a volume of Tennyson.”

  “Are you fond of Tennyson?”

  “I worship him,” said Sam reverently. “Those—” he glanced at his cuff—”those Idylls of the King! I do not like to think what an ocean voyage would be if I had not my Tennyson with me.”

  “We must read him together. He is my favourite poet!”

  “We will! There is something about Tennyson….”

  “Yes, isn’t there! I’ve felt that myself so often!”

  “Some poets are whales at epics and all that sort of thing, while others call it a day when they’ve written something that runs to a couple of verses, but where Tennyson had the bulge was that his long game was just as good as his short. He was great off the tee and a marvel with his chip-shots.”

  “That sounds as though you played golf.”

  “When I am not reading Tennyson, you can generally find me out on the links. Do you play?”

  “I love it. How extraordinary that we should have so much in common. We really ought to be great friends.”

  He was pausing to select the best of three replies when the lunch bugle sounded.

  “Oh, dear!” she cried. “I must rush. But we shall see one another again up here afterwards?”

  “We will,” said Sam.

  “We’ll sit and read Tennyson.”

  “Fine! Er—you and I and Mortimer?”

  “Oh, no, Bream is going to sit down below and look after poor Pinky.”

  “Does he—does he know he is?”

  “Not yet,” said Billie. “I’m going to tell him at lunch.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was the fourth morning of the voyage. Of course, when this story is done in the movies they won’t be satisfied with a bald statement like that; they will have a Spoken Title or a Cut-Back Sub-Caption or whatever they call the thing in the low dens where motion-picture scenario-lizards do their dark work, which will run:—

  AND SO, CALM AND GOLDEN, THE DAYS WENT BY, EACH FRAUGHT WITH HOPE AND YOUTH AND SWEETNESS, LINKING TWO YOUNG HEARTS IN SILKEN FETTERS FORGED BY THE LAUGHING LOVE-GOD.

  and the males in the audience will shift their chewing gum to the other cheek and take a firmer grip of their companions’ hands and the man at the piano will play “Everybody wants a key to my cellar” or something equally appropriate, very soulfully and slowly, with a wistful eye on the half-smoked cigarette which he has parked on the lowest octave and intends finishing as soon as the picture is over. But I prefer the plain frank statement that it was the fourth day of the voyage. That is my story and I mean to stick to it.

  Samuel Marlowe, muffled in a bathrobe, came back to the stateroom from his tub. His manner had the offensive jauntiness of the man who has had a cold bath when he might just as easily have had a hot one. He looked out of the porthole at the shimmering sea. He felt strong and happy and exuberant.

  It was not merely the spiritual pride induced by a cold bath that was uplifting this young man. The fact was that, as he towelled his glowing back, he had suddenly come to the decision that this very day he would propose to Wilhelmina Bennett. Yes, he would put his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all. True
, he had only known her for four days, but what of that?

  Nothing in the way of modern progress is more remarkable than the manner in which the attitude of your lover has changed concerning proposals of marriage. When Samuel Marlowe’s grandfather had convinced himself, after about a year and a half of respectful aloofness, that the emotion which he felt towards Samuel Marlowe’s grandmother-to-be was love, the fashion of the period compelled him to approach the matter in a roundabout way. First, he spent an evening or two singing sentimental ballads, she accompanying him on the piano and the rest of the family sitting on the side-lines to see that no rough stuff was pulled. Having noted that she drooped her eyelashes and turned faintly pink when he came to the “Thee—only thee!” bit, he felt a mild sense of encouragement, strong enough to justify him in taking her sister aside next day and asking if the object of his affections ever happened to mention his name in the course of conversation. Further pour-parlers having passed with her aunt, two more sisters, and her little brother, he felt that the moment had arrived when he might send her a volume of Shelley, with some of the passages marked in pencil. A few weeks later, he interviewed her father and obtained his consent to the paying of his addresses. And finally, after writing her a letter which began “Madam! you will not have been insensible to the fact that for some time past you have inspired in my bosom feelings deeper than those of ordinary friendship….” he waylaid her in the rose-garden and brought the thing off.

  How different is the behaviour of the modern young man. His courtship can hardly be called a courtship at all. His methods are those of Sir W. S. Gilbert’s Alphonso.

  “Alphonso, who for cool assurance all creation licks, He up and said to Emily who has cheek enough for six: ‘Miss Emily, I love you. Will you marry? Say the word!’ And Emily said: ‘Certainly, Alphonso, like a bird!’”

  Sam Marlowe was a warm supporter of the Alphonso method. He was a bright young man and did not require a year to make up his mind that Wilhelmina Bennett had been set apart by Fate from the beginning of time to be his bride. He had known it from the moment he saw her on the dock, and all the subsequent strolling, reading, talking, soup-drinking, tea-drinking, and shuffleboard-playing which they had done together had merely solidified his original impression. He loved this girl with all the force of a fiery nature—the fiery nature of the Marlowes was a byword in Bruton Street, Berkeley Square—and something seemed to whisper that she loved him. At any rate she wanted somebody like Sir Galahad, and, without wishing to hurl bouquets at himself, he could not see where she could possibly get anyone liker Sir Galahad than himself. So, wind and weather permitting, Samuel Marlowe intended to propose to Wilhelmina Bennett this very day.

  He let down the trick basin which hung beneath the mirror and, collecting his shaving materials, began to lather his face.

  “I am the Bandolero!” sang Sam blithely through the soap, “I am, I am the Bandolero! Yes, yes, I am the Bandolero!”

  The untidy heap of bedclothes in the lower berth stirred restlessly.

  “Oh, God!” said Eustace Hignett thrusting out a tousled head.

  Sam regarded his cousin with commiseration. Horrid things had been happening to Eustace during the last few days, and it was quite a pleasant surprise each morning to find that he was still alive.

  “Feeling bad again, old man?”

  “I was feeling all right,” replied Hignett churlishly, “until you began the farmyard imitations. What sort of a day is it?”

  “Glorious! The sea….”

  “Don’t talk about the sea!”

  “Sorry! The sun is shining brighter than it has ever shone in the history of the race. Why don’t you get up?”

  “Nothing will induce me to get up.”

  “Well, go a regular buster and have an egg for breakfast.”

  Eustace Hignett shuddered.

  “Do you think I am an ostrich?” He eyed Sam sourly. “You seem devilish pleased with yourself this morning!”

  Sam dried the razor carefully and put it away. He hesitated. Then the desire to confide in somebody got the better of him.

  “The fact is,” he said apologetically, “I’m in love!”

  “In love!” Eustace Hignett sat up and bumped his head sharply against the berth above him. “Has this been going on long?”

  “Ever since the voyage started.”

  “I think you might have told me,” said Eustace reproachfully. “I told you my troubles. Why did you not let me know that this awful thing had come upon you?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, old man, during these last few days I had a notion that your mind was, so to speak, occupied elsewhere.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Oh, a girl I met on board.”

  “Don’t do it!” said Eustace Hignett solemnly. “As a friend I entreat you not to do it! Take my advice, as a man who knows women, and don’t do it!”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Propose to her. I can tell by the glitter in your eye that you are intending to propose to this girl—probably this morning. Don’t do it. Women are the devil, whether they marry you or jilt you. Do you realise that women wear black evening dresses that have to be hooked up in a hurry when you are late for the theatre, and that, out of sheer wanton malignity, the hooks and eyes on those dresses are also made black? Do you realise…?”

  “Oh, I’ve thought it all out.”

  “And take the matter of children. How would you like to become the father—and a mere glance around you will show you that the chances are enormously in favour of such a thing happening—of a boy with spectacles and protruding front teeth who asks questions all the time? Out of six small boys whom I saw when I came on board, four wore spectacles and had teeth like rabbits. The other two were equally revolting in different styles. How would you like to become the father…?”

  “There is no need to be indelicate,” said Sam stiffly. “A man must take these chances.”

  “Give her the miss in baulk,” pleaded Hignett. “Stay down here for the rest of the voyage. You can easily dodge her when you get to Southampton. And, if she sends messages, say you’re ill and can’t be disturbed.”

  Sam gazed at him, revolted. More than ever he began to understand how it was that a girl with ideals had broken off her engagement with this man. He finished dressing, and, after a satisfying breakfast, went on deck.

  It was, as he had said, a glorious morning. The sample which he had had through the porthole had not prepared him for the magic of it. The ship swam in a vast bowl of the purest blue on an azure carpet flecked with silver. It was a morning which impelled a man to great deeds, a morning which shouted to him to chuck his chest out and be romantic. The sight of Billie Bennett, trim and gleaming in a pale green sweater and a white skirt had the effect of causing Marlowe to alter the programme which he had sketched out. Proposing to this girl was not a thing to be put off till after lunch. It was a thing to be done now and at once. The finest efforts of the finest cooks in the world could not put him in better form than he felt at present.

  “Good morning, Miss Bennett.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Marlowe.”

  “Isn’t it a perfect day?”

  “Wonderful!”

  “It makes all the difference on board ship if the weather is fine.”

  “Yes, doesn’t it?”

  “Shall we walk round?” said Billie.

  Sam glanced about him. It was the time of day when the promenade deck was always full. Passengers in cocoons of rugs lay on chairs, waiting in a dull trance till the steward should arrive with the eleven o’clock soup. Others, more energetic, strode up and down. From the point of view of a man who wished to reveal his most sacred feelings to a beautiful girl, the place was practically Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street.

  “It’s so crowded,” he said. “Let’s go on to the upper deck.”

  “All right. You can read to me. Go and fetch your Tennyson.”

  Sam felt that fortune was playing into his ha
nds. His four-days’ acquaintance with the bard had been sufficient to show him that the man was there forty ways when it came to writing about love. You could open his collected works almost anywhere and shut your eyes and dab down your finger on some red-hot passage. A proposal of marriage is a thing which it is rather difficult to bring neatly into the ordinary run of conversation. It wants leading up to. But, if you once start reading poetry, especially Tennyson’s, almost anything is apt to give you your cue. He bounded light-heartedly into the stateroom, waking Eustace Hignett from an uneasy dose.

  “Now what?” said Eustace.

  “Where’s that copy of Tennyson you gave me? I left it—ah, here it is. Well, see you later!”

  “Wait! What are you going to do?”

  “Oh, that girl I told you about,” said Sam making for the door. “She wants me to read Tennyson to her on the upper deck.”

  “Tennyson?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the upper deck?”

  “That’s the spot.”

  “This is the end,” said Eustace Hignett, turning his face to the wall.

  Sam raced up the companion-way as far as it went; then, going out on deck, climbed a flight of steps and found himself in the only part of the ship which was ever even comparatively private. The main herd of passengers preferred the promenade deck, two layers below.

  He threaded his way through a maze of boats, ropes, and curious-shaped steel structures which the architect of the ship seemed to have tacked on at the last moment in a spirit of sheer exuberance. Above him towered one of the funnels, before him a long, slender mast. He hurried on, and presently came upon Billie sitting on a garden seat, backed by the white roof of the smoke-room; beside this was a small deck which seemed to have lost its way and strayed up here all by itself. It was the deck on which one could occasionally see the patients playing an odd game with long sticks and bits of wood—not shuffleboard but something even lower in the mental scale. This morning, however, the devotees of this pastime were apparently under proper restraint, for the deck was empty.

  “This is jolly,” he said, sitting down beside the girl and drawing a deep breath of satisfaction.