"And what happened then?" asked Eustace, breathlessly.
He had raised himself on one elbow in his bed. His eyes shone excitedly from a face which was almost the exact shape of an a.s.sociation football; for he had reached the stage of mumps when the patient begins to swell as though somebody were inflating him with a bicycle-pump.
"Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went away!" said Jane Hubbard.
"You know, you"re wonderful!" cried Eustace. "Simply wonderful!"
Jane Hubbard flushed a little beneath her tan. She loved his pretty enthusiasm. He was so genuinely stirred by what were to her the merest commonplaces of life.
"Why, if an alligator got into _my_ tent," said Eustace, "I simply wouldn"t know what to do! I should be nonplussed."
"Oh, it"s just a knack," said Jane, carelessly. "You soon pick it up."
"Nail-scissors!"
"It ruined them, unfortunately. They were never any use again. For the rest of the trip I had to manicure myself with a hunting-spear."
"You"re a marvel!"
Eustace lay back in bed and gave himself up to meditation. He had admired Jane Hubbard before, but the intimacy of the sick-room and the stories which she had told him to relieve the tedium of his invalid state had set the seal on his devotion. It has always been like this since Oth.e.l.lo wooed Desdemona. For three days Jane Hubbard had been weaving her spell about Eustace Hignett, and now she monopolised his entire horizon. She had spoken, like Oth.e.l.lo, of antres vast and deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touched heaven, and of the cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear would Eustace Hignett seriously incline, and swore, in faith, "twas strange, "twas pa.s.sing strange, "twas pitiful, "twas wondrous pitiful. He loved her for the dangers she had pa.s.sed, and she loved him that he did pity them. In fact, one would have said that it was all over except buying the licence, had it not been for the fact that his very admiration served to keep Eustace from pouring out his heart. It seemed incredible to him that the queen of her s.e.x, a girl who had chatted in terms of equality with African head-hunters and who swatted alligators as though they were flies, could ever lower herself to care for a man who looked like the "after-taking" advertis.e.m.e.nt of a patent food.
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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s of water.
"Go away!" sobbed Jane Hubbard.