The Girl on the Boat Part 19

"You must take it," she said in a low voice. "It is a symbol."

"A what?"

"A symbol of our broken love."

"I don't see how you make that out. It's a golliwog."

"I can never marry you now."

"What! Good heavens! Don't be absurd."

"I can't!"

"Oh, go on, have a dash at it," he said encouragingly, though his heart was sinking.

She shook her head.

"No, I couldn't."

"Oh, hang it all!"

"I couldn't. I'm a very strange girl...."

"You're a very silly girl...."

"I don't see what right you have to say that," she flared.

"I don't see what right you have to say you can't marry me and try to load me up with golliwogs," he retorted with equal heat.

"Oh, can't you understand?"

"No, I'm dashed if I can."

She looked at him despondently.

"When I said I would marry you, you were a hero to me. You stood to me for everything that was n.o.ble and brave and wonderful. I had only to shut my eyes to conjure up the picture of you as you dived off the rail that morning. Now--" her voice trembled "--if I shut my eyes now, I can only see a man with a hideous black face making himself the laughing stock of the s.h.i.+p. How could I marry you, haunted by that picture?"

"But, good heavens, you talk as though I made a habit of blacking up!

You talk as though you expected me to come to the altar smothered in burnt cork."

"I shall always think of you as I saw you to-night." She looked at him sadly. "There's a bit of black still on your left ear."

He tried to take her hand. But she drew it away. He fell back as if struck.

"So this is the end," he muttered.

"Yes. It's partly on your ear and partly on your cheek."

"So this is the end," he repeated.

"You had better go below and ask your steward to give you some more b.u.t.ter."

He laughed bitterly.

"Well, I might have expected it. I might have known what would happen!

Eustace warned me. Eustace was right. He knows women--as I do now.

Women! What mighty ills have not been done by woman? Who was't betrayed the what's-its-name? A woman! Who lost ... lost ... who lost ...

who--er--and so on? A woman.... So all is over! There is nothing to be said but good-bye?"

"No."

"Good-bye, then, Miss Bennett!"

"Good-bye," said Billie sadly. "I--I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it!"

"You do understand, don't you?"

"You have made everything perfectly clear."

"I hope--I hope you won't be unhappy."

"Unhappy!" Sam produced a strangled noise from his larynx like the cry of a shrimp in pain. "Unhappy! Ha! ha! I'm not unhappy! Whatever gave you that idea? I'm smiling! I'm laughing! I feel I've had a merciful escape. Oh, ha, ha!"

"It's very unkind and rude of you to say that."

"It reminds me of a moving picture I saw in New York. It was called 'Saved from the Scaffold.'"

"Oh!"

"I'm not unhappy! What have I got to be unhappy about? What on earth does any man want to get married for? I don't. Give me my gay bachelor life! My Uncle Charlie used to say 'It's better luck to get married than it is to be kicked in the head by a mule.' But _he_ was a man who always looked on the bright side. Good-night, Miss Bennett. And good-bye--for ever."

He turned on his heel and strode across the deck. From a white heaven the moon still shone benignantly down, mocking him. He had spoken bravely; the most captious critic could not but have admitted that he had made a good exit. But already his heart was aching.

As he drew near to his state-room, he was amazed and disgusted to hear a high tenor voice raised in song proceeding from behind the closed door.

"I fee-er naw faw in shee-ining arr-mor, Though his lance be sharrrp and--er keen; But I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour Therough thy der-rooping lashes seen: I fee-er, I fee-er the glah-mour...."

Sam flung open the door wrathfully. That Eustace Hignett should still be alive was bad--he had pictured him hurling himself overboard and bobbing about, a pleasing sight in the wake of the vessel; that he should be singing was an outrage. Remorse, Sam felt, should have stricken Eustace Hignett dumb. Instead of which, here he was comporting himself like a blasted linnet. It was all wrong. The man could have no conscience whatever.

"Well," he said sternly, "so there you are!"

Eustace Hignett looked up brightly, even beamingly. In the brief interval which had elapsed since Sam had seen him last, an extraordinary transformation had taken place in this young man. His wan look had disappeared. His eyes were bright. His face wore that beastly self-satisfied smirk which you see in pictures advertising certain makes of fine-mesh underwear. If Eustace Hignett had been a full-page drawing in a magazine with "My dear fellow, I always wear Sigsbee's Super-fine Featherweight!" printed underneath him, he could not have looked more pleased with himself.

"Hullo!" he said. "I was wondering where you had got to."