Three Men and a Maid Part 8

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

"I believe she did play. The subject came up once and she seemed rather enthusiastic. 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 to Wilhelmina Bennett about either, I should imagine."

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

"Well, of course, there was always the matter of that dog of hers. She had a dog, you know, a snappy brute of a Pekingese. If there was ever any shadow of disagreement between us, it had to do with that dog. I made rather a point of it that I would not have it about the home after we 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 day before we-Wilhelmina and I, I mean-were to have been married. It is some satisfaction to me in my broken state to remember that I got home on the little beast with considerable juiciness and lifted him clean over the Chesterfield."

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 a.s.signment? 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.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Do be a darling and take this great heavy coat of mine down to my state-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 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!"

"h.e.l.lo?"

"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 wors.h.i.+p 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?"