"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.
"There, there, there!" he said.
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 just 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! Number four!"
CHAPTER XIV
STRONG REMARKS BY A FATHER
Mr. Bennett advanced shakily into the room, and supported himself with one hand on the desk, while with the other he still plied the handkerchief on his over-heated face. Much had occurred to disturb him this morning. On top of a broken night he had had an affecting reconciliation scene with Mr. Mortimer, at the conclusion of which he had decided to take the first train to London in the hope of intercepting Billie before she reached Sir Mallaby"s office on her mission of war. The local train-service kept such indecently early hours that he had been compelled to bolt his breakfast, and, in the absence of Billie, the only member of the household who knew how to drive the car, to walk to the station, a distance of nearly two miles, the last hundred yards of which he had covered at a rapid gallop, under the erroneous impression that an express whose smoke he had seen in the distance was the train he had come to catch. Arrived on the platform, he had had a trying wait, followed by a slow journey to Waterloo. The cab which he had taken at Waterloo had kept him in a lively state of apprehension all the way to the Savoy, owing to an apparent desire to climb over motor-omnibuses when it could not get round them. At the Savoy he found that Billie had already left, which had involved another voyage through the London traffic under the auspices of a driver who appeared to be either blind or desirous of committing suicide. He had three flights of stairs to negotiate. And, finally, arriving at the office, he had found his daughter in the circ.u.mstances already described.
"Why, father!" said Billie. "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 and would have said so, had he had enough breath. This physical limitation caused him to remain speechless and to do the best he could in the way of stern fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal after a long dive in search of fish.
Having done this, he became aware that Sam Marlowe 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.
"I am delighted to see 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.
"He means when they do decline, father dear," said Billie.
"Of course, of course," said Sam. "When they do decline. Not till then, of course. I wouldn"t dream of it. But, once they do decline, count on me! And I should like to say for my part," he went on handsomely, "what an honour I think it, to become the son-in-law of a man like Mr.
Bennett. Bennett of New York!" he added s.p.a.ciously, not so much because he knew what he meant, for he would have been the first to admit that he did not, but because it sounded well.
"Oh!" said Mr. Bennett. "You do, do you?"
Mr. Bennett sat down. He put away his handkerchief, which had certainly earned a rest. Then he fastened a baleful stare upon his newly-discovered son. It was not the sort of look a proud and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to create a misgiving.
"Oh, father! You aren"t angry!"
"Angry!"
"You _can"t_ be angry!"
"Why can"t I be angry?" declared Mr. Bennett, with that sense of injury which comes to self-willed men when their whims are thwarted. "Why the devil shouldn"t I be angry? I _am_ angry! I come here and find you like--like this, and you seem to expect me to throw my hat in the air and give three rousing cheers! Of course I"m angry! You are engaged to be married to an excellent young man of the highest character, one of the finest young men I have ever known...."
"Oh, well!" said Sam, straightening his tie modestly. "It"s awfully good of you...."
"But that"s all over, father."
"What"s all over?"
"You told me yourself that you had broken off my engagement to Bream."
"Well--er--yes, I did," said Mr. Bennett, a little taken aback. "That is--to a certain extent--so. But," he added, with restored firmness, "it"s on again!"
"But I don"t want to marry Bream!"
"Naturally!" said Sam. "Naturally! Quite out of the question. In a few days we"ll all be roaring with laughter at the very idea."
"It doesn"t matter what you want! A girl who gets engaged to a dozen men in three weeks...."
"It wasn"t a dozen!"
"Well, four--five--six--you can"t expect me not to lose count.... I say a girl who does that does not know what she wants, and older and more prudent heads must decide for her. You are going to marry Bream Mortimer!"