The Girl on the Boat. P. G. Wodehouse
prefer that I postponed my narrative?" said Eustace coldly.
"Oh, sorry! Carry on."
"She was an extraordinarily pretty girl. … "
"What was her name?"
"Wilhelmina Bennett. She was an extraordinarily pretty girl, and highly intelligent. I read her all my poems, and she appreciated them immensely. She enjoyed my singing. My conversation appeared to interest her. She admired my. … "
"I see. You made a hit. Now get on with the story."
"Don't bustle me," said Eustace querulously.
"Well, you know, the voyage only takes eight days."
"I've forgotten where I was."
"You were saying what a devil of a chap she thought you. What happened? I suppose, when you actually came to propose, you found she was engaged to some other johnny?"
"Not at all! I asked her to be my wife and she consented. We both agreed that a quiet wedding was what we wanted—she thought her father might stop the thing if he knew, and I was dashed sure my mother would—so we decided to get married without telling anybody. By now," said Eustace, with a morose glance at the porthole, "I ought to have been on my honeymoon. Everything was settled. I had the licence and the parson's fee. I had been breaking in a new tie for the wedding."
"And then you quarrelled?"
"Nothing of the kind. I wish you would stop trying to tell me the story. I'm telling you. What happened was this: somehow—I can't make out how—mother found out. And then, of course, it was all over. She stopped the thing."
Sam was indignant. He thoroughly disliked his Aunt Adeline, and his cousin's meek subservience to her revolted him.
"Stopped it? I suppose she said 'Now, Eustace, you mustn't!' and you said 'Very well, mother!' and scratched the fixture?"
"She didn't say a word. She never has said a word. As far as that goes, she might never have heard anything about the marriage."
"Then how do you mean she stopped it?"
"She pinched my trousers!"
"Pinched your trousers!"
Eustace groaned. "All of them! The whole bally lot! She gets up long before I do, and she must have come into my room and cleaned it out while I was asleep. When I woke up and started to dress, I couldn't find a single damned pair of bags in the whole place. I looked everywhere. Finally, I went into the sitting-room where she was writing letters and asked if she had happened to see any anywhere. She said she had sent them all to be pressed. She said she knew I never went out in the mornings—I don't as a rule—and they would be back at lunch-time. A fat lot of use that was! I had to be at the church at eleven. Well, I told her I had a most important engagement with a man at eleven, and she wanted to know what it was, and I tried to think of something, but it sounded pretty feeble, and she said I had better telephone to the man and put it off. I did it, too. Rang up the first number in the book and told some fellow I had never seen in my life that I couldn't meet him because I hadn't any trousers! He was pretty peeved, judging from what he said about my being on the wrong number. And mother, listening all the time, and I knowing that she knew—something told me that she knew—and she knowing that I knew she knew. … I tell you, it was awful!"
"And the girl?"
"She broke off the engagement. Apparently she waited at the church from eleven till one-thirty, and then began to get impatient. She wouldn't see me when I called in the afternoon, but I got a letter from her saying that what had happened was all for the best, as she had been thinking it over and had come to the conclusion that she had made a mistake. She said something about my not being as dynamic as she had thought I was. She said that what she wanted was something more like Lancelot or Sir Galahad, and would I look on the episode as closed."
"Did you explain about the trousers?"
"Yes. It seemed to make things worse. She said that she could forgive a man anything except being ridiculous."
"I think you're well out of it," said Sam, judicially. "She can't have been much of a girl."
"I feel that now. But it doesn't alter the fact that my life is ruined. I have become a woman-hater. It's an infernal nuisance, because practically all the poetry I have ever written rather went out of its way to boost women, and now I'll have to start all over again and approach the subject from another angle. Women! When I think how mother behaved and how Wilhelmina treated me, I wonder there isn't a law against them. 'What mighty ills have not been done by Woman! Who was't betrayed the Capitol. … '"
"In Washington?" said Sam, puzzled. He had heard nothing of this. But then he generally confined his reading of the papers to the sporting page.
"In Rome, you ass! Ancient Rome."
"Oh, as long ago as that?"
"I was quoting from Thomas Otway's 'Orphan.' I wish I could write like Otway. He knew what he was talking about. 'Who was't betrayed the Capitol? A woman. Who lost Marc Anthony the world? A woman. Who was the cause of a long ten years' war and laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman! Destructive, damnable, deceitful woman!'"
"Well, of course, he may be right in a way. As regards some women, I mean. But the girl I met on the dock. … "
"Don't!" said Eustace Hignett. "If you have anything bitter and derogatory to say about women, say it and I will listen eagerly. But if you merely wish to gibber about the ornamental exterior of some dashed girl you have been fool enough to get attracted by, go and tell it to the captain or the ship's cat or J. B. Midgeley. Do try to realise that I am a soul in torment. I am a ruin, a spent force, a man without a future. What does life hold for me? Love? I shall never love again. My work? I haven't any. I think I shall take to drink."
"Talking of that," said Sam, "I suppose they open the bar directly we pass the three-mile limit. How about a small one?"
Eustace shook his head gloomily.
"Do you suppose I pass my time on board ship in gadding about and feasting? Directly the vessel begins to move, I go to bed and stay there. As a matter of fact, I think it would be wisest to go to bed now. Don't let me keep you if you want to go on deck."
"It looks to me," said Sam, "as if I had been mistaken in thinking that you were going to be a ray of sunshine on the voyage."
"Ray of sunshine!" said Eustace Hignett, pulling a pair of mauve pyjamas out of the kit-bag. "I'm going to be a volcano!"
Sam left the state-room and headed for the companion. He wanted to get on deck and ascertain if that girl was still on board. About now, the sheep would be separating from the goats; the passengers would be on deck and their friends returning to the shore. A slight tremor in the boards on which he trod told him that this separation must have already taken place. The ship was moving. He ran lightly up the companion. Was she on board or was she not? The next few minutes would decide. He reached the top of the stairs, and passed out on to the crowded deck. And, as he did so, a scream, followed by confused shouting, came from the rail nearest the shore. He perceived that the rail was black with people hanging over it. They were all looking into the water.
Samuel Marlowe was not one of those who pass aloofly by when there is excitement toward. If a horse fell down in the street, he was always among those present: and he was never too busy to stop and stare at a blank window on which were inscribed the words, "Watch this space!" In short, he was one of Nature's rubbernecks, and to dash to the rail and shove a fat man in a tweed cap to one side was with him the work of a moment. He had thus an excellent view of what was going on—a view which he improved the next instant by climbing up and kneeling on the rail.
There was a man in the water, a man whose upper section, the only one visible, was clad in a blue jersey. He wore a bowler hat, and from time to time, as he battled with the waves, he would put up a hand and adjust this more firmly on his head. A dressy swimmer.
Scarcely had he taken in this spectacle when Marlowe became