29 Three Men and a Maid

by Unknown

  The atmosphere of the room seemed to him, as he entered, a little strained. Billie looked pale and agitated. Mr. Peters looked rather agitated too. Sam caught Billie’s eye. It had an unspoken appeal in it. He gave an imperceptible nod, a reassuring nod, the nod of a man who understood all and was prepared to handle the situation.

  “Come, Peters,” he said in a deep, firm, quiet voice, laying a hand on the clerk’s arm. “It’s time that you went.”

  “Yes, indeed, Mr. Samuel! yes, yes, indeed!”

  “I’ll see you out,” said Sam soothingly, and led him through the outer office and on to the landing outside. “Well, good luck, Peters,” he said, as they stood at the head of the stairs. “I hope you have a pleasant trip. Why, what’s the matter? You seem upset.”

  “That girl, Mr. Samuel! I really think—really, she cannot be quite right in her head.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense!” said Sam firmly. “She’s all right! Well, good-bye.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Samuel.”

  “When did you say you were sailing?”

  “Next Saturday, Mr. Samuel. But I fear I shall have no opportunity of seeing you again before then. I have packing to do and I have to see this gentleman down in the country….”

  “All right. Then we’ll say good-bye now. Goodbye, Peters. Mind you have a good time in America. I’ll tell my father you called.”

  Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair which Jno. Peters had occupied.. She sprang to her feet.

  “Has he really gone?”

  “Yes, he’s gone this time.”

  “Was he—was he violent?”

  “A little,” said Sam, “a little. But I calmed him down.” He looked at her gravely. “Thank God I was in time!”

  “Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!” cried Billie, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.

  “There, there!” said Sam. “There, there! Come come! It’s all right now! There, there, there!”

  He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted her hands.

  I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie’s mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had allowed him to kiss her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe was.

  His face was very close to Billie’s, who had cheered up wonderfully by this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway.

  “Great Godfrey!” exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. “Great Heavens above!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Remarkable as the apparition of Mr. Bennett appeared to his daughter, the explanation of his presence at that moment in the office of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow, and Appleby was simple. He had woken early that morning, and, glancing at his watch on the dressing-table, he had suddenly become aware of something bright and yellow beside it, and had paused, transfixed, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand. If he had not been in England, he would have said it was a patch of sunshine. Hardly daring to hope, he pulled up the shades and looked out on the garden.

  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 sniffed luxuriantly. Gone was the gloom of the past days, swept away in a great exhilaration.

  Breakfast had deepened his content. Henry Mortimer, softened by the same balmy influence, had been perfectly charming. All their little differences had melted away in the genial warmth. And then suddenly Mr. Bennett remembered that he had sent Billie up to London to enlist the aid of the Law against his old friend, and remorse gripped him. Half an hour later he was in the train, on his way to London to intercept her and cancel her mission. He had arrived, breathless at Sir Mallaby’s office, and the first thing he had seen was his daughter in the arms of a young man who was a total stranger to him. The shock took away his breath again just as it was coming back. He advanced shakily into the room, and supported himself with one hand on the desk, while with the other he plied the handkerchief on his super-heated face.

  Billie was the first to speak.

  “Why, father,” she said, “I didn’t expect you!”

  As an explanation of her behaviour this might, no doubt, have been considered sufficient, but as an excuse for it Mr. Bennett thought it inadequate. He tried to convey a fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal after a long dive in search of fish.

  “This is Sam,” proceeded Billie. “Sam Marlowe.”

  Mr. Bennett became aware that the young man was moving towards him with outstretched hand. It took a lot to disconcert Sam, and he was the calmest person present. He gave evidence of this in a neat speech. He did not in so many words congratulate Mr. Bennett on the piece of luck which had befallen him, but he tried to make him understand by his manner that he was distinctly to be envied as the prospective father-in-law of such a one as himself.

  Mr. Bennett stared in a frozen sort of way at the hand. He had placed Sam by now. He knew that Sir Mallaby had a son. This, presumably, was he. But the discovery did not diminish his indignation.

  “I am delighted to meet you, Mr. Bennett,” said Sam. “You could not have come at a more fortunate moment. You see for yourself how things are. There is no need for a long explanation. You came to find a daughter, Mr. Bennett, and you have found a son!”

  And he would like to see the man, thought Sam, who could have put it more cleverly and pleasantly and tactfully than that.

  “What are you talking about?” said Mr. Bennett, recovering breath. “I haven’t got a son.”

  “I will be a son to you! I will be the prop of your declining years….”

  “What the devil do you mean, my declining years?” demanded Mr. Bennett with asperity.

  “He means when they do decline, father dear,” said Billie.

  “Of course, of course,” said Sam. “When they do decline. Not till then, of course! I wouldn’t dream of it. But, once they do decline, count on me! And I should like to say for my part,” he went on handsomely, “what an honour I think it, to become the son-in-law of a man like Mr. Bennett. Bennett of New York!” he added spaciously, not so much because he knew what he meant, for he would have been the first to admit that he did not, but because it sounded well.

  “Oh!” said Mr. Bennett “You do, do you?”

  Mr. Bennett sat down. He put away his handkerchief, which had certainly earned a rest. Then he fastened a baleful stare upon his newly-discovered son. It was not the sort of look a proud and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to create a misgiving.<
br />
  “Oh, father! You aren’t angry.”

  “Angry!”

  “You can’t be angry!”

  “Why can’t I be angry!” demanded Mr. Bennett, with that sense of injury which comes to self-willed men when their whims are thwarted. “Why the devil shouldn’t I be angry? I am angry! I come here and find you like—like this, and you seem to expect me to throw my hat in the air and give three rousing cheers! Of course I’m angry! You are engaged to be married to an excellent young man of the highest character, one of the finest young men I have ever met….”

  “Oh, well!” said Sam, straightening his tie modestly. “Of course, if you say so … It’s awfully good of you….”

  “But, father,” cried Billie, “I never really loved Bream. I like him very much, but I could never love him. I only got engaged to him because you were so anxious for it, and because … because I had quarrelled with the man I really loved … I don’t want to marry Bream.”

  “Naturally!” said Sam. “Naturally! Quite out of the question. In a few days we’ll all be roaring with laughter at the very idea.”

  Mr. Bennett scorched him with a look compared with which his earlier effort had been a loving glance.

  “Wilhelmina,” he said, “go into the outer office.”

  “But, father, you don’t understand. You don’t realise that Sam has just saved my life.”

  “Saved your life? What do you mean?”

  “There was a lunatic in here with a pistol, and Sam saved me.”

  “It was nothing,” said Sam modestly. “Nothing.”

  “Go into the outer office!” thundered Mr. Bennett, quite unmoved by this story.

  “Very well,” said Billie. “I shall always love you, Sam,” she said, pausing mutinously at the door.

  “I shall always love you,” said Sam.

  “Nobody can keep us apart.”

  “They’re wasting their time, trying,” said Sam.

  “You’re the most wonderful man in the world.”

  “There never was a girl like you!”

  “Get out!” bellowed Mr. Bennett, on whose equanimity this love-scene, which I think beautiful, was jarring profoundly.

  “Now, sir!” he said to Sam, as the door closed.

  “Yes, let’s talk it over calmly,” said Sam.

  “I will not talk it over calmly!”

  “Oh, come! You can do it if you try.”

  “Bream Mortimer is the son of Henry Mortimer.”

  “I know,” said Sam. “And, while it is no doubt unfair to hold that against him, it’s a point you can’t afford to ignore. Henry Mortimer! You and I have Henry Mortimer’s number. We know what Henry Mortimer is like! A man who spends his time thinking up ways of annoying you. You can’t seriously want to have the Mortimer family linked to you by marriage.”

  “Henry Mortimer is my oldest friend.”

  “That makes it all the worse. Fancy a man who calls himself your friend treating you like that!”

  “The misunderstanding to which you allude has been completely smoothed over. My relations with Mr. Mortimer are thoroughly cordial.”

  “Well, have it your own way. Personally, I wouldn’t trust a man like that. And, as for letting my daughter marry his son…!”

  “I have decided once and for all….”

  “If you’ll take my advice, you will break the thing off.”

  “I will not take your advice.”

  “I wouldn’t expect to charge you for it,” explained Sam, reassuringly. “I give it you as a friend, not as a lawyer. Six-and-eightpence to others, free to you.”

  “Will you understand that my daughter is going to marry Bream Mortimer? What are you giggling about?”

  “It sounds so silly. The idea of anyone marrying Bream Mortimer, I mean.”

  “Let me tell you he is a thoroughly estimable young man.”

  “And there you put the whole thing in a nutshell. Your daughter is a girl of spirit. She would hate to be tied for life to an estimable young man.”

  “She will do as I tell her.”

  Sam regarded him sternly.

  “Have you no regard for her happiness?”

  “I am the best judge of what is best for her,”

  “If you ask me,” said Sam candidly, “I think you’re a rotten judge.”

  “I did not come here to be insulted!”

  “I like that! You have been insulting me ever since you arrived. What right have you to say that I’m not fit to marry your daughter?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You’ve implied it. And you’ve been looking at me as if I were a leper or something the Pure Food Committee has condemned. Why? That’s what I ask you,” said Sam, warming up. This, he fancied, was the way Widgery would have tackled a troublesome client. “Why? Answer me that!”

  “I….”

  Sam rapped sharply on the desk.

  “Be careful, sir. Be very careful!” He knew that this was what lawyers always said. Of course, there is a difference in position between a miscreant whom you suspect of an attempt at perjury and the father of the girl you love, whose consent to the match you wish to obtain, but Sam was in no mood for these nice distinctions. He only knew that lawyers told people to be very careful, so he told Mr. Bennett to be very careful.

  “What do you mean, be very careful?” said Mr. Bennett.

  “I’m dashed if I know,” said Sam frankly. The question struck him as a mean attack. He wondered how Widgery would have met it. Probably by smiling quietly and polishing his spectacles. Sam had no spectacles. He endeavoured, however, to smile quietly.

  “Don’t laugh at me!” roared Mr. Bennett.

  “I’m not laughing at you.”

  “You are!”

  “I’m not!”

  “Well, don’t then!” said Mr. Bennett. He glowered at his young companion. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time, talking to you. The position is clear to the meanest intelligence. You cannot have any difficulty in understanding it. I have no objection to you personally….”

  “Come, this is better!” said Sam.

  “I don’t know you well enough to have any objection to you or any opinion of you at all. This is the first time I have ever met you in my life.”

  “Mark you,” said Sam. “I think I am one of those fellows who grow on people….”

  “As far as I am concerned, you simply do not exist. You may be the noblest character in London or you may be wanted by the police. I don’t know. And I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. You mean nothing in my life. I don’t know you.”

  “You must persevere,” said Sam. “You must buckle to and get to know me. Don’t give the thing up in this half-hearted way. Everything has to have a beginning. Stick to it, and in a week or two you will find yourself knowing me quite well.”

  “I don’t want to know you!”

  “You say that now, but wait!”

  “And thank goodness I have not got to!” exploded Mr. Bennett, ceasing to be calm and reasonable with a suddenness which affected Sam much as though half a pound of gunpowder had been touched off under his chair. “For the little I have seen of you has been quite enough! Kindly understand that my daughter is engaged to be married to another man, and that I do not wish to see or hear anything of you again! I shall try to forget your very existence, and I shall see to it that Wilhelmina does the same! You’re an impudent scoundrel, sir! An impudent scoundrel! I don’t like you! I don’t wish to see you again! If you were the last man in the world I wouldn’t allow my daughter to marry you! If that is quite clear, I will wish you good morning!”

  Mr. Bennett thundered out of the room, and Sam, temporarily stunned by the outburst, remained where he was, gaping. A few minutes later life began to return to his palsied limbs. It occurred to him that Mr. Bennett had forgotten to kiss him good-bye, and he went into the outer office to tell him so. But the outer office was empty. Sam stood for a moment in thought, then he returned to the inner office, and, pickin
g up a time-table, began to look out trains to the village of Windlehurst in Hampshire, the nearest station to his aunt Adeline’s charming old-world house, Windles.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As I read over the last few chapters of this narrative, I see that I have been giving the reader a rather too jumpy time. To almost a painful degree I have excited his pity and terror; and, though that is what Aristotle tells one ought to do, I feel that a little respite would not be out of order. The reader can stand having his emotions churned up to a certain point; after that he wants to take it easy. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I turn now to depict a quiet, peaceful scene in domestic life. It won’t last long—three minutes, perhaps, by a stop-watch—but that is not my fault. My task is to record facts as they happened.

  The morning sunlight fell pleasantly on the garden of Windles, turning it into the green and amber Paradise which Nature had intended it to be. A number of the local birds sang melodiously in the under-growth at the end of the lawn, while others, more energetic, hopped about the grass in quest of worms. Bees, mercifully ignorant that, after they had worked themselves to the bone gathering honey, the proceeds of their labour would be collared and consumed by idle humans, buzzed industriously to and fro and dived head foremost into flowers. Winged insects danced sarabands in the sunshine. And in a deck-chair under the cedar-tree Billie Bennett, with a sketching-block on her knee, was engaged in drawing a picture of the ruined castle. Beside her, curled up in a ball, lay her Pekinese dog, Pinky-Boodles. Beside Pinky-Boodles slept Smith, the bulldog. In the distant stable-yard, unseen but audible, a boy in shirt sleeves was washing the car and singing as much as treacherous memory would permit of a popular sentimental ballad.

  You may think that was all. You may suppose that nothing could be added to deepen the atmosphere of peace and content. Not so. At this moment, Mr. Bennett emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room, clad in white flannels and buckskin shoes, supplying just the finishing touch that was needed.