Three Men and a Maid Part 26

"No, no, no!"

"At any rate," said Mr. Peters, disappointed but hopeful, "he made love to you before witnesses?"

"Never! Never! There is no man at Ealing West! There never was a man at Ealing West!"

It was at this point that Jno. Peters began for the first time to entertain serious doubts of the girl's mental balance. The most elementary acquaintance with the latest census was enough to tell him that there were any number of men at Ealing West. The place was full of them. Would a sane woman have made an a.s.sertion to the contrary? He thought not, and he was glad that he had the revolver with him. She had done nothing as yet actively violent, but it was nice to feel prepared. He took it out and laid it nonchalantly in his lap.

The sight of the weapon acted on Billie electrically. She flung out her hands, in a gesture of pa.s.sionate appeal, and played her last card.

"I love you!" she cried. She wished she could have remembered his first name. It would have rounded off the sentence neatly. In such a moment she could hardly call him 'Mr. Peters.' "You are the only man I love."

"My gracious goodness!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Peters, and nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting: and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently. And yet, even in that moment of consternation, he could not check a certain thrill. No man ever thinks he is as homely as he really is, but Jno. Peters had always come fairly near to a correct estimate of his charms, and it had always seemed to him, that, in inducing his fiancee to accept him, he had gone some. He now began to wonder if he were not really rather a devil of a chap after all. There must, he felt, be precious few men going about capable of inspiring devotion like this on the strength of about six and a half minutes casual conversation.

Calmer thoughts succeeded this little flicker of complacency. The girl was mad. That was the fact of the matter. He got up and began to edge towards the door. Mr. Samuel would be returning shortly, and he ought to be warned.

"So that's all right, isn't it!" said Billie.

"Oh, quite, quite!" said Mr. Peters. "Er-thank you very much!"

"I thought you would be pleased," said Billie, relieved, but puzzled. For a man of volcanic pa.s.sions, as Sam Marlowe had described him, he seemed to be taking the thing very calmly. She had antic.i.p.ated a strenuous scene.

"Oh, it's a great compliment," Mr. Peters a.s.sured her.

At this point Sam came in, interrupting the conversation at a moment when it had reached a somewhat difficult stage. He had finished the instalment of the serial story in Home Whispers, and, looking at his watch he fancied that he had allowed sufficient time to elapse for events to have matured along the lines which his imagination had indicated.

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 rea.s.suring 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."

"Good-bye, Mr. Samuel."

"When did you say you were sailing?"

"Next Sat.u.r.day, 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. Good-bye, 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 G.o.d 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 subst.i.tuted 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 G.o.dfrey!" 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 gra.s.s, 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.