"I say, old man, beastly work getting back to town. Can"t you put us up for the night?"
As this occurred when every stateroom was filled, even Bee"s sacred duke being among the number of our guests, these self-invited ones remained in every instance when they knew that it would force Jimmie to sleep upon a bench in the dining-room and be seriously inconvenienced. Toward the end of the week this supreme selfishness which I have noticed so often in otherwise worthy English gentlemen annoyed me to such an extent that with one Englishman who had thus insisted upon dispossessing Jimmie for the second time I resolved to make a test. So I said to him:
"Of course it"s a little hard on Jimmie, your way of turning him out of his stateroom to sleep on the table, so, as turn about is fair play, if you"ve quite decided to remain over night, my sister and I will let you have our room and we will sleep on the benches in the dining-room.
Jimmie doesn"t get much sleep you know--we keep it up so late, and of course you always wake him up when you turn out for your swim at six o"clock in the morning, so if you will promise not to disturb us until seven, and go out through the kitchen for your swim, you can have our room for to-night."
"Oh, I say!" he replied, "that"s awfully jolly of you. It _is_ a beastly shame to turn the old man out of his bed two nights in one week, but your boat is the only one on the river where a fellow feels at home, you know. Besides that, I couldn"t get back to town before ten o"clock to-night if I started now, and where would I get my dinner? And if I wait to get my dinner here, I"d either have to sleep at Henley or be half the night in getting home. So you see I"ve got to stay, and thanks awfully for letting me have your room."
Bee, who was standing near, pushed her veil up and cleared her throat.
She looked at me.
"Did you ever in all your life?" she said.
"No, I never did," I said. "I never, never did."
"Never did what?" said the English gentleman.
"I never saw anybody like you in a book or out of it, but I suppose there are ten thousand more just as good-looking as you are; just as tall and well built and selfish."
"Selfish," he blurted out with a very red face. "What is there selfish about me, I should like to know? You offered me your room, didn"t you?"
"Yes, she offered it," said Bee, sitting on a little table and tucking her feet on a chair. "She offered it to you just to see if you"d take it--just to see how far you _would_ go. You haven"t known my sister very long, have you? Why, she"d no more let you have her room than I would let Jimmie turn himself out a second time for you. If you stay to-night _you"ll_ be the one to sleep in the dining-room on that narrow bench."
"Oh, I say," he said, turning still redder, "I can"t do that, you know.
It would be so very uncomfortable. It is very narrow."
"You can lie on your side," said Bee. "You aren"t too thick through that way, and we three women have decided to allow Jimmie to go to bed early to-night. We"ll make it as comfortable as we can for you, and you"ll get fully three hours" sleep, perhaps four. It is all Jimmie would get if he slept there."
"Why, I don"t believe that the old man will let me sleep there. I think he"d rather I had his room. He and his wife were so awfully good to me when I was in America. I stayed two months at their place and they entertained me royally."
"Where"s your wife?" I said, suddenly.
"She"s in our town house," he answered.
"And that"s in Upper Brooke Street?" said Bee.
"And where"s your sister, the Honourable Eleanor?" I said.
"What"s that got to do with it?" said our friend.
"Nothing," I said. "I just wondered if you"d noticed that, every single time we have been in London for the past two years, neither your sister nor your wife has ever called on Mrs. Jimmie; although, as you have just admitted, you stayed two months with them in America. All that you have done in return for the mountain trip that Jimmie arranged for you, taking you in a private car to hunt big game, taking you fishing and arranging for you to see everything in America that you wanted, when you know that Jimmie isn"t rich judged by the largest fortunes in America--all, all I say, that you have done for him in return for everything he did for you was to put him up at your club and take them to the races twice, and even though you saw your wife at a distance you never introduced them, although once you stopped and spoke to her. Now, what do you think of yourself?"
"I think--I think," he stammered.
"No, you don"t think," said Bee. "You flatter yourself."
He stared at us helplessly, but we were enjoying ourselves too maliciously to let up on him.
"I never was talked to so in my life," he said.
"No, perhaps not," I said, pleasantly. "But it has done you good, hasn"t it? Confess now, don"t you feel a little better?"
His face, which was very red at all times, grew a little more claret coloured, and he evidently wanted very much to get angry, but Bee and I were so very cheerful, almost affectionate in our manner of mentally skinning him, that he couldn"t seem to pull himself together.
"He"ll never stay after that," said Bee, complacently, to me afterward.
But he _did_ stay, and although Jimmie was furious, he had every intention of letting him have his bedroom again, which Bee and I so fiercely resented that we locked Jimmie in his stateroom, where, after a few feeble pounds on the door, he resigned himself to his fate and got the only night"s sleep that he had in the eight days of Henley.
Whether the Honourable Edwardes Edwardes slept on his side on the bench or on his back on the dinner-table, or stood up all night, we never knew. He was a little cross at breakfast, and complained of feeling "a bit stiff." But n.o.body petted or sympathised with him or ran for the liniment. So by luncheon time he was drinking Jimmie"s champagne again with the utmost good humour.
One of the most amusing things we did was to go after dinner in little boats and form part of the river audience in front of some other house-boat where something was going on,--crowded in between other boats, having to ship our oars and pull ourselves along by our neighbours" gunwales, getting locked for perhaps half an hour, until suddenly our Geisha girls or n.i.g.g.e.rs would start the cry "Up river,"
when away we would all go, entertainers and entertained, pulling up the river to the lights of another house-boat, enjoying the music for a few minutes and then slipping away in the darkness toward the lights of Henley village, or perhaps back to the _Lulu_.
Once or twice a boat would capsize, giving the occupants a severe wetting, but as river costumes are always washable and the river is not deep, no harm ever seemed to come of these aquatic diversions. Once, however, it was brought near home in this wise.
Jimmie invited his wife to go canoeing. I went canoeing once on the Kennebunk River with an Indian to paddle, and after watching the manoeuvres of the paddlers on the Thames and the antics of those wretched little boats, I made the solemn promise with myself never to trust any one less skilled than an Indian again. But Jimmie, while he is not more conceited than most people, is what you might call confident, and he would have been all right in this instance, if he had noticed that a race had just been rowed and that the swell from the racers was just rippling over the boom and creeping gently toward the house-boat.
The canoe was still at the house-boat steps. They were both seated comfortably and just about to paddle away when a swell came alongside and tilted the canoe in such a succession of little unexpected rolls that our two friends, in their anxiety to hold on to something which was not there to hold on to, overbalanced, and the canoe shipped enough water to submerge their legs entirely, giving them a nice cold hip bath.
Mrs. Jimmie screamed, and we all rushed down and fished her out of the boat dripping like a mermaid and thoroughly chilled. Bee took her in to warm her with a brandy and to hurry her into dry clothes, while I remained to see what I could do for Jimmie, who was very wet, very mad, and very uncommunicative.
"What a pity," I remarked, pleasantly, "that you are so thin. Shall I come down and hold the boat still while you get out? Wet flannel has such a clinging effect."
Jimmie is a good deal of a gentleman, so he made no reply. I was just turning away, resolving in a Christian spirit to order him a hot Scotch, when I heard a splash and a remark which was full of exclamation points, asterisks, and other things, and looking down I saw the canoe bottom upwards, with Jimmie clinging to it indignantly blowing a large quant.i.ty of Thames water from his mouth in a manner which led me to know that the sooner I got away from there the better it would be for me. I kept out of his way until dinner-time, and only permitted him to suspect that I saw his disappearance by politely ignoring the fact that all his and Mrs. Jimmie"s lingerie, to speak delicately, was floating about, hanging from pegs in unused portions of the house-boat. My silence was so suspicious that finally Jimmie could stand it no longer.
"Did you see me go down?" he demanded.
"I did not," I answered him, firmly, whereat he released my elbow and I edged around to the other side of the table.
"But I saw you come up," I said, pleasantly, "and I saw what you said."
"Saw?" said Jimmie. "Saw what I said?"
"Certainly! There was enough blue light around your remarks for me to have seen them in the dark."
"Well, what have you got to say about it?" he said, resigning himself.
"Only this, and that is that this afternoon"s performance in that canoe was the only instance in my life where I thoroughly approved of the workings of Providence. Ordinarily the good die young and the guilty one escapes."
"Is that all?" growled Jimmie.
"Yes," I said, hesitatingly, "I think it is. Did I mention before that I thought you were thin?"
"You certainly did," said Jimmie.
"Your legs," I went on, but just then I was interrupted by the reappearance of a little German musician, who had floated up the river two days before in a white flannel suit without change of linen and who played accompaniments of our singers so well that Jimmie permitted him to stay on without either actually inviting him or showing him that his presence was not any particular addition to our enjoyment.
Jimmie objected violently to some of his sentiments, which the German was tactless enough to keep thrusting in our faces. He was as offensive to our English friends on the subject of England as he was to us concerning America, but one of the Englishmen sang and couldn"t play a note, so Jimmie let the German stay, because Miss Wemyss wanted him to.
Although secretly I think Jimmie and I hated him, we are sometimes polite enough not to say everything we think, but at any rate there never was a moment when Jimmie and I wouldn"t leave off attacking each other, hoping for an opportunity for a fight with the German, which thus far he had escaped by the skin of his teeth.