Pelham Wodehouse - The Girl on the Boat

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."

"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?"