But even those whom Nature has destined to be mates may misunderstand each other, and Jane, who was as modest as she was brave, had come recently to place a different interpretation on his silence. In the last few days of the voyage she had quite made up her mind that Eustace Hignett loved her and would shortly intimate as much in the usual manner; but, since coming to Windles, she had begun to have doubts. She was not blind to the fact that Billie Bennett was distinctly prettier than herself and far more the type to which the ordinary man is attracted. And, much as she loathed the weakness and despised herself for yielding to it, she had become distinctly jealous of her. True, Billie was officially engaged to Bream Mortimer, but she had had experience of the brittleness of Miss Bennett's engagements, and she could by no means regard Eustace as immune.
"Do you suppose they will be happy?" she asked.
"Eh? Who?" said Eustace, excusably puzzled, for they had only just finished talking about alligators. But there had been a pause since his last remark, and Jane's thoughts had flitted back to the subject that usually occupied them.
"Billie and Bream Mortimer."
"Oh!" said Eustace. "Yes, I suppose so."
"She's a delightful girl."
"Yes," said Eustace without much animation.
"And, of course, it's nice their fathers being so keen on the match. It doesn't often happen that way."
"No. People's people generally want people to marry people people don't want to marry," said Eustace, clothing in words a profound truth which from the earliest days of civilisation has deeply affected the youth of every country.
"I suppose your mother has got somebody picked out for you to marry?" said Jane casually.
"Mother doesn't want me to marry anybody," said Eustace with gloom. It was another obstacle to his romance.
"What, never?"
"No."
"Why ever not?"
"As far as I can make out, if I marry, I get this house and mother has to clear out. Silly business!"
"Well, you wouldn't let your mother stand in the way if you ever really fell in love?" said Jane.
"It isn't so much a question of letting her stand in the way. The tough job would be preventing her. You've never met my mother!"
"No, I'm looking forward to it!"
"You're looking forward...!" Eustace eyed her with honest amazement.
"But what could your mother do? I mean, supposing you had made up your mind to marry somebody."
"What could she do? Why, there isn't anything she wouldn't do. Why, once...." Eustace broke off. The anecdote which he had been about to tell contained information which, on reflection, he did not wish to reveal.
"Once—...?" said Jane.
"Oh, well, I was just going to show you what mother is like. I—I was going out to lunch with a man, and—and—" Eustace was not a ready improvisator—"and she didn't want me to go, so she stole all my trousers!"
Jane Hubbard started, as if, wandering through one of her favourite jungles, she had perceived a snake in her path. She was thinking hard. That story which Billie had told her on the boat about the man to whom she had been engaged, whose mother had stolen his trousers on the wedding morning ... it all came back to her with a topical significance which it had never had before. It had lingered in her memory, as stories will, but it had been a detached episode, having no personal meaning for her. But now.... "She did that just to stop you going out to lunch with a man?" she said slowly.
"Yes, rotten thing to do, wasn't it?"
Jane Hubbard moved to the foot of the bed, and her forceful gaze, shooting across the intervening counterpane, pinned Eustace to the pillow. She was in the mood which had caused spines in Somaliland to curl like withered leaves.
"Were you ever engaged to Billie Bennett?" she demanded.
Eustace Hignett licked dry lips. His face looked like a hunted melon. The flannel bandage, draped around it by loving hands, hardly supported his sagging jaw.
"Why—er—"
"Were you?" cried Jane, stamping an imperious foot. There was that in her eye before which warriors of the lower Congo had become as chewed blotting-paper. Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled with an unendurable sense of guilt.
"Well—er—yes," he mumbled weakly.
Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but she was a woman.
This sudden solution of steely strength into liquid weakness had on Eustace Hignett the stunning effects which the absence of the last stair has on the returning reveller creeping up to bed in the dark. It was as though his spiritual foot had come down hard on empty space and caused him to bite his tongue. Jane Hubbard had always been to him a rock of support. And now the rock had melted away and left him wallowing in a deep pool.
He wallowed gratefully. It had only needed this to brace him to the point of declaring his love. His awe of this girl had momentarily vanished. He felt strong and dashing. He scrambled down the bed and peered over the foot of it at her huddled form.
"Have some barley-water," he urged. "Try a little barley-water."
It was all he had to offer her except the medicine which, by the doctor's instructions, he took three times a day in a quarter of a glass of water.
"Go away!" sobbed Jane Hubbard.
The unreasonableness of this struck Eustace.
"But I can't. I'm in bed. Where could I go?"
"I hate you!"
"Oh, don't say that!"
"You're still in love with her!"
"Nonsense! I never was in love with her."
"Then why were you going to marry her?"
"Oh, I don't know. It seemed a good idea at the time."
"Oh! Oh! Oh!"
Eustace bent a little further over the end of the bed and patted her hair.
"Do have some barley-water," he said. "Just a sip!"
"You are in love with her!" sobbed Jane.
"I'm not! I love you!"
"You don't!"
"Pardon me!" said Eustace firmly. "I've loved you ever since you gave me that extraordinary drink with Worcester sauce in it on the boat."
"They why didn't you say so before?"
"I hadn't the nerve. You always seemed so—I don't know how to put it—I always seemed such a worm. I was just trying to get the courage to propose when I caught the mumps, and that seemed to me to finish it. No girl could love a man with three times the proper amount of face."
"As if that could make any difference! What does your outside matter? I have seen your inside!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I mean...."
Eustace fondled her back hair.
"Jane! Queen of my soul! Do you really love me?"
"I've loved you ever since we met on the Subway." She raised a tear-stained face. "If only I could be sure that you really loved me!"