"It's the most astonishing story. A miracle, you might almost call it. Makes you believe in Fate and all that kind of thing. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York...."
He broke off while Sam cursed him, the Subway, and the city of New York in the order named.
"My dear chap, what is the matter?"
"What is the matter? Ha!"
"Something is the matter," persisted Eustace Hignett. "I can tell it by your manner. Something has happened to disturb and upset you. I know you so well that I can pierce the mask. What is it? Tell me!"
"Ha, ha!"
"You surely can't still be brooding on that concert business? Why, that's all over. I take it that after my departure you made the most colossal ass of yourself, but why let that worry you? These things cannot affect one permanently."
"Can't they? Let me tell you that, as a result of that concert, my engagement is broken off."
Eustace sprang forward with outstretched hand.
"Not really? How splendid! Accept my congratulations! This is the finest thing that could possibly have happened. These are not idle words. As one who has been engaged to the girl himself, I speak feelingly. You are well out of it, Sam."
Sam thrust aside his hand. Had it been his neck he might have clutched it eagerly, but he drew the line at shaking hands with Eustace Hignett.
"My heart is broken," he said with dignity.
"That feeling will pass, giving way to one of devout thankfulness. I know. I've been there. After all ... Wilhelmina Bennett ... what is she? A rag and a bone and a hank of hair!"
"She is nothing of the kind," said Sam, revolted.
"Pardon me," said Eustace firmly, "I speak as an expert. I know her and I repeat, she is a rag and a bone and a hank of hair!"
"She is the only girl in the world, and, owing to your idiotic behaviour, I have lost her."
"You speak of the only girl in the world," said Eustace blithely. "If you want to hear about the only girl in the world, I will tell you. A week ago I was on the Subway in New York...."
"I'm going to bed," said Sam brusquely.
"All right. I'll tell you while you're undressing."
"I don't want to listen."
"A week ago," said Eustace Hignett, "I will ask you to picture me seated after some difficulty in a carriage in the New York Subway. I got into conversation with a girl with an elephant gun."
Sam revised his private commination service in order to include the elephant gun.
"She was my soul-mate," proceeded Eustace with quiet determination. "I didn't know it at the time, but she was. She had grave brown eyes, a wonderful personality, and this elephant gun."
"Did she shoot you with it?"
"Shoot me? What do you mean? Why, no!"
"The girl must have been a fool!" said Sam bitterly. "The chance of a lifetime and she missed it. Where are my pyjamas?"
"I haven't seen your pyjamas. She talked to me about this elephant gun, and explained its mechanism. She told me the correct part of a hippopotamus to aim at, how to make a nourishing soup out of mangoes, and what to do when bitten by a Borneo wire-snake. You can imagine how she soothed my aching heart. My heart, if you recollect, was aching at the moment—quite unnecessarily if I had only known—because it was only a couple of days since my engagement to Wilhelmina Bennett had been broken off. Well, we parted at Sixty-sixth Street, and, strange as it may seem, I forgot all about her."
"Do it again!"
"Tell it again?"
"Good heavens, no! Forget all about her again."
"Nothing," said Eustace Hignett gravely, "could make me do that. Our souls have blended. Our beings have called to one another from their deepest depths, saying.... There are your pyjamas, over in the corner ... saying 'You are mine!' How could I forget her after that? Well, as I was saying, we parted. Little did I know that she was sailing on this very boat! But just now she came to me as I writhed on the deck...."
"Did you writhe?" asked Sam with a flicker of moody interest.
"I certainly did!"
"That's good!"
"But not for long."
"That's bad!"
"She came to me and healed me. Sam, that girl is an angel."
"Switch off the light when you've finished."
"She seemed to understand without a word how I was feeling. There are some situations which do not need words. She went away and returned with a mixture of some description in a glass. I don't know what it was. It had Worcester Sauce in it. She put it to my lips. She made me drink it. She said it was what she always used in Africa for bull-calves with the staggers. Well, believe me or believe me not ... are you asleep?"
"Yes."
"Believe me or believe me not, in under two minutes I was not merely freed from the nausea caused by your cigar. I was smoking myself! I was walking the deck with her without the slightest qualm. I was even able to look over the side from time to time and comment on the beauty of the moon on the water.... I have said some mordant things about women since I came on board this boat. I withdraw them unreservedly. They still apply to girls like Wilhelmina Bennett, but I have ceased to include the whole sex in my remarks. Jane Hubbard has restored my faith in Woman. Sam! Sam!"
"What?"
"I said that Jane Hubbard had restored my faith in Woman."
"Oh, all right."
Eustace Hignett finished undressing and got into bed. With a soft smile on his face he switched off the light. There was a long silence, broken only by the distant purring of the engines.
At about twelve-thirty a voice came from the lower berth.
"Sam!"
"What is it now?"
"There is a sweet womanly strength about her, Sam. She was telling me she once killed a panther with a hat-pin."
Sam groaned and tossed on his mattress.
Silence fell again.
"At least I think it was a panther," said Eustace Hignett at a quarter past one. "Either a panther or a puma."
CHAPTER VIII
SIR MALLABY OFFERS A SUGGESTION
§ 1
A week after the liner "Atlantic" had docked at Southampton Sam Marlowe might have been observed—and was observed by various of the residents—sitting on a bench on the esplanade of that rising watering-place, Bingley-on-the-Sea, in Sussex. All watering-places on the south coast of England are blots on the landscape, but though I am aware that by saying it I shall offend the civic pride of some of the others—none are so peculiarly foul as Bingley-on-the-Sea. The asphalte on the Bingley esplanade is several degrees more depressing than the asphalte on other esplanades. The Swiss waiters at the Hotel Magnificent, where Sam was stopping, are in a class of bungling incompetence by themselves, the envy and despair of all the other Swiss waiters at all the other Hotels Magnificent along the coast. For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone. The very waves that break on its shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if it revolted them to have to come to such a place.
Why, then, was Sam Marlowe visiting this ozone-swept Gehenna? Why, with all the rest of England at his disposal, had he chosen to spend a week at breezy, blighted Bingley?
Simply because he had been disappointed in love.
Nothing is more curious than the myriad ways in which reaction from an unfortunate love-affair manifests itself in various men. No two males behave in the same way under the spur of female fickleness. Archilochum, for instance, according to the Roman writer, proprio rabies armavit iambo. It is no good pretending out of politeness that you know what that means, so I will translate. Rabies—his grouch—armavit—armed—Archilochum—Archilochus—iambo—with the iambic—proprio—his own invention. In other words, when the poet Archilochus was handed his hat by the lady of his affections, he consoled himself by going off and writing satirical verse about her in a new metre which he had thought up immediately after leaving the house. That was the way the thing affected him.