Three Men and a Maid Read online

  CHAPTER THREE

  For some moments Sam remained where he was staring after the girl asshe flitted down the passage. He felt dizzy. Mental acrobatics alwayshave an unsettling effect, and a young man may be excused for feeling alittle dizzy when he is called upon suddenly and without any warning toreadjust all his preconceived views on any subject. Listening toEustace Hignett's story of his blighted romance, Sam had formed anunflattering opinion of this Wilhelmina Bennett who had broken off herengagement simply because on the day of the marriage his cousin hadbeen short of the necessary wedding garment. He had, indeed, thought alittle smugly how different his goddess of the red hair was from theobject of Eustace Hignett's affections. And how they had proved to beone and the same. It was disturbing. It was like suddenly finding thevampire of a five-reel feature film turn into the heroine.

  Some men, on making the discovery of this girl's identity, might havefelt that Providence had intervened to save them from a disastrousentanglement. This point of view never occurred to Samuel Marlowe. Theway he looked at it was that he had been all wrong about WilhelminaBennett. Eustace, he felt, had been to blame throughout. If this girl hadmaltreated Eustace's finer feelings, then her reason for doing so musthave been excellent and praiseworthy.

  After all ... poor old Eustace ... quite a good fellow, no doubt in manyways ... but, coming down to brass tacks, what was there about Eustacethat gave him any license to monopolise the affections of a wonderfulgirl? Where, in a word, did Eustace Hignett get off? He made atremendous grievance of the fact that she had broken off theengagement, but what right had he to go about the place expecting herto be engaged to him? Eustace Hignett, no doubt, looked upon the poorgirl as utterly heartless. Marlowe regarded her behaviour as thoroughlysensible. She had made a mistake, and, realising this at the eleventhhour, she had had the force of character to correct it. He was sorryfor poor old Eustace, but he really could not permit the suggestionthat Wilhelmina Bennett--her friends called her Billie--had not behavedin a perfectly splendid way throughout. It was women like WilhelminaBennett--Billie to her intimates--who made the world worth living in.

  Her friends called her Billie. He did not blame them. It was adelightful name and suited her to perfection. He practised it a fewtimes. "Billie ... Billie ... Billie...." It certainly ran pleasantly offthe tongue. "Billie Bennett." Very musical. "Billie Marlowe." Stillbetter. "We noticed among those present the charming and popular Mrs.'Billie' Marlowe."

  A consuming desire came over him to talk about the girl to someone.Obviously indicated as the party of the second part was EustaceHignett. If Eustace was still capable of speech--and after all the boatwas hardly rolling at all--he would enjoy a further chat about hisruined life. Besides, he had another reason for seeking Eustace'ssociety. As a man who had been actually engaged to marry this supremegirl, Eustace Hignett had an attraction for Sam akin to that of somegreat public monument. He had become a sort of shrine. He had taken ona glamour. Sam entered the state-room almost reverentially withsomething of the emotions of a boy going into his first dime museum.

  The exhibit was lying on his back staring at the roof of the berth. Bylying absolutely still and forcing himself to think of purely inlandscenes and objects he had contrived to reduce the green in hiscomplexion to a mere tinge. But it would be paltering with the truth tosay that he felt _debonair_. He received Sam with a wan austerity.

  "Sit down!" he said. "Don't stand there swaying like that. I can't bearit."

  "Why, we aren't out of the harbour yet. Surely you aren't going to besea-sick already."

  "I can issue no positive guarantee. Perhaps if I can keep my mind offit ... I have had good results for the last ten minutes by thinkingsteadily of the Sahara. There," said Eustace Hignett with enthusiasm,"is a place for you! That is something like a spot! Miles and miles ofsand and not a drop of water anywhere!"

  Sam sat down on the lounge.

  "You're quite right. The great thing is to concentrate your mind onother topics. Why not, for instance, tell me some more about yourunfortunate affair with that girl--Billie Bennett I think you said hername was."

  "Wilhelmina Bennett. Where on earth did you get the idea that her namewas Billie?"

  "I had a notion that girls called Wilhelmina were sometimes Billie totheir friends."

  "I never call her anything but Wilhelmina. But I really cannot talkabout it. The recollection tortures me."

  "That's just what you want. It's the counter-irritation principle.Persevere and you'll soon forget that you're on board ship at all."

  "There's something in that," admitted Eustace reflectively. "It's verygood of you to be so sympathetic and interested."

  "My dear fellow ... anything that I can do ... where did you meet herfirst, for instance?"

  "At a dinner...." Eustace Hignett broke off abruptly. He had a goodmemory and he had just recollected the fish they had served at thatdinner--a flabby and exhausted looking fish, half sunk beneath thesurface of a thick white sauce.

  "And what struck you most forcibly about her at first? Her lovely hair,I suppose?"

  "How did you know she had lovely hair?"

  "My dear chap, I naturally assumed that any girl with whom you fell inlove would have nice hair."

  "Well, you are perfectly right, as it happens. Her hair was remarkablybeautiful. It was red...."

  "Like autumn leaves with the sun on them!" said Marlowe ecstatically.

  "What an extraordinary thing! That is an absolutely exact description.Her eyes were a deep blue...."

  "Or, rather, green."

  "Blue."

  "Green. There is a shade of green that looks blue."

  "What the devil do you know about the colour of her eyes?" demandedEustace heatedly. "Am I telling you about her, or are you telling me?"

  "My dear old man, don't get excited. Don't you see I am trying toconstruct this girl in my imagination, to visualise her? I don'tpretend to doubt your special knowledge, but after all green eyesgenerally do go with red hair and there are all shades of green. Thereis the bright green of meadow grass, the dull green of the uncutemerald, the faint yellowish green of your face at the presentmoment...."

  "Don't talk about the colour of my face! Now you've gone and remindedme just when I was beginning to forget."

  "Awfully sorry! Stupid of me! Get your mind off it again--quick! Whatwere you saying? Oh, yes, this girl. I always think it helps one toform a mental picture of people if one knows something about theirtastes--what sort of things they are interested in, their favouritetopics of conversation, and so on. This Miss Bennett now, what did shelike talking about?"

  "Oh, all sorts of things."

  "Yes, but what?"

  "Well, for one thing she was very fond of poetry. It was that whichfirst drew us together."

  "Poetry!" Sam's heart sank a little. He had read a certain amount ofpoetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings andsixpence for the last line of a limerick in a competition in a weeklypaper, but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not hislong suit. Still there was a library on board ship and no doubt itwould be possible to borrow the works of some standard poet and bonethem up from time to time.

  "Any special poet?"

  "Well, she seemed to like my stuff. You never read my sonnet-sequenceon Spring, did you?"

  "No. What other poets did she like besides you?"

  "Tennyson principally," said Eustace Hignett with a reminiscent quiverin his voice. "The hours we have spent together reading the Idylls ofthe King!"

  "The which of what?" enquired Sam, taking a pencil from his pocket andshooting out a cuff.

  "The Idylls of the King. My good man, I know you have a soul whichwould be considered inadequate by a common earthworm, but you havesurely heard of Tennyson's Idylls of the King?"

  "Oh, _those_! Why, my dear old chap; Tennyson's Idylls of theKing! Well, I should say! Have I heard of Tennyson's Idylls of theKing? Well, really! I suppose you haven't a copy with you on board byany chance?"r />
  "There is a copy in my kit-bag. The very one we used to read together.Take it and keep it or throw it overboard. I don't want to see itagain."

  Sam prospected among the shirts, collars and trousers in the bag andpresently came upon a morocco-bound volume. He laid it beside himon the lounge.

  "Little by little, bit by bit," he said, "I am beginning to form a sortof picture of this girl, this--what was her name again? Bennett--thisMiss Bennett. You have a wonderful knack of description. You make herseem so real and vivid. Tell me some more about her. She wasn't keen ongolf, by any chance, I suppose?"

  "I believe she did play. The subject came up once and she seemed ratherenthusiastic. Why?"

  "Well, I'd much sooner talk to a girl about golf than poetry."

  "You are hardly likely to be in a position to have to talk toWilhelmina Bennett about either, I should imagine."

  "No, there's that, of course. I was thinking of girls in general. Somegirls bar golf, and then it's rather difficult to know how to startconversation. But, tell me, were there any topics which got on MissBennett's nerves, if you know what I mean? It seems to me that at onetime or another you may have said something that offended her. I mean,it seems curious that she should have broken off the engagement ifyou had never disagreed or quarrelled about anything."

  "Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. Shehad a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekingese. If there was everany shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. Imade rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home afterwe were married."

  "I see!" said Sam. He shot his cuff once more and wrote on it:"Dog-conciliate."

  "Yes, of course, that must have wounded her."

  "Not half so much as he wounded me! He pinned me by the ankle the daybefore we--Wilhelmina and I, I mean--were to have been married. It issome satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got homeon the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him cleanover the Chesterfield."

  Sam shook his head reprovingly.

  "You shouldn't have done that!" he said. He extended his cuff and addedthe words "Vitally important" to what he had just written. "It wasprobably that which decided her."

  "Well, I hate dogs," said Eustace Hignett querulously. "I rememberWilhelmina once getting quite annoyed with me because I refused to stepin and separate a couple of the brutes, absolute strangers to me, whowere fighting in the street. I reminded her that we were all fightersnow-a-days, that life itself was in a sense a fight: but she wouldn'tbe reasonable about it. She said that Sir Galahad would have done itlike a shot. I thought not. We have no evidence whatsoever that SirGalahad was ever called upon to do anything half as dangerous. And,anyway, he wore armour. Give me a suit of mail reaching well down overthe ankles, and I will willingly intervene in a hundred dog fights. Butin thin flannel trousers no!"

  Sam rose. His heart was light. He had never, of course, supposed thatthe girl was anything but perfect; but it was nice to find his highopinion of her corroborated by one who had no reason to exhibit her ina favourable light. He understood her point of view and sympathisedwith it. An idealist, how could she trust herself to Eustace Hignett?How could she be content with a craven who, instead of scouring theworld in the quest for deeds of daring do, had fallen down solamentably on his first assignment? There was a specious attractivenessabout poor old Eustace which might conceivably win a girl's heart for atime; 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 therewas to it. He simply didn't add up right. The man a girl like WilhelminaBennett 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 ondeck 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 enhancefeminine charms, and was striding along the deck with the breezeplaying 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 sightof 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, droppedin the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation.

  "Oh, there you are, Mr. Marlowe!"

  "Oh, _there_ you are," said Bream Mortimer, with a slightlydifferent 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 mystate-room 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 andput 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 needsin 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'smight 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. Hedoes appreciate it so!"

  Bream disappeared. It is not always easy to interpret emotion from aglance at a man's back; but Bream's back looked like that of a man towhom the thought has occurred that, given a couple of fiddles and apiano, 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--didyou ever hear her name--Jane Hubbard--she's a rather well-known big-gamehunter and she fixed up some sort of a mixture for Pinky which didhim a world of good. I don't know what was in it except WorcesterSauce, but she said she always gave it to her mules in Africa when theyhad the botts ... it's very nice of you to speak so affectionately ofpoor Pinky when he bit you."

  "Animal spirits!" said Sam tolerantly. "Pure animal spirits! I like tosee 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 dogfights."

  "I do admire a man who knows what to do at a dog fight. I'm afraid I'mrather 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 hiscuff--"those Idylls of the King! I do not like to think what an oceanvoyage 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, whileothers call it a day when they've written something that runs to acouple of verses, but where Tennyson had the bulge was that his longgame was just as good as his short. He was great off the tee and amarvel with his chip-shots."

  "That sounds as though you played golf."

  "When I am not reading Tennyson, you can generally find me out on thelinks. 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 buglesounded.

  "Oh, dear!" she cried. "I must rush. But we shall see one another againup 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."