29 Three Men and a Maid Read online

  “Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Art is long and time is fleeting. And our hearts though stout and brave, Still like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footsteps on the sands of Time. Let us then …” said Miss Milliken respectfully … “be up and doing….”

  “All right, all right, all right!” said Sir Mallaby. “I don’t want it all. Life is real! Life is earnest, Sam. I want to speak to you about that when I’ve finished answering these infernal letters. Where was I? ‘We should be glad to meet you at any time, if you will make an appointment…’ Bingley-on-the-Sea! Good heavens! Why Bingley-on-the-Sea? Why not Margate, while you are about it?”

  “Margate is too bracing. I did not wish to be braced. Bingley suited my mood. It was gray and dark, and it rained all the time, and the sea slunk about in the distance like some baffled beast….”

  He stopped, becoming aware that his father was not listening. Sir Mallaby’s attention had returned to the letter.

  “Oh, what’s the good of answering the dashed thing at all?” said Sir Mallaby. “Brigney, Goole and Butterworth know perfectly well that they have got us in a cleft stick. Butterworth knows it better than Goole, and Brigney knows it better than Butterworth. This young fool, Eggshaw, Sam, admits that he wrote the girl twenty-three letters, twelve of them in verse, and twenty-one specifically asking her to marry him, and he comes to me and expects me to get him out of it. The girl is suing him for ten thousand.”

  “How like a woman!”

  Miss Milliken bridled reproachfully at this slur on her sex. Sir Mallaby took no notice of it whatever.

  “… If you will make an appointment, when we can discuss the matter without prejudice. Get those typed, Miss Milliken. Have a cigar, Sam. Miss Milliken, tell Peters as you go out that I am occupied with a conference and can see nobody for half an hour.”

  When Miss Milliken had withdrawn, Sir Mallaby occupied ten seconds of the period which he had set aside for communion with his son in staring silently at him.

  “I’m glad you’re back, Sam,” he said at length. “I want to have a talk with you. You know, it’s time you were settling down. I’ve been thinking about you while you were in America, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve been letting you drift along. Very bad for a young man. You’re getting on. I don’t say you’re senile, but you’re not twenty-one any longer, and at your age I was working like a beaver. You’ve got to remember that life is—dash it! I’ve forgotten it again.”

  He broke off and puffed vigorously into the speaking tube. “Miss Milliken, kindly repeat what you were saying just now about life…. Yes, yes, that’s enough!” He put down the instrument. “Yes, life is real, life is earnest,” he said, gazing at Sam seriously, “and the grave is not our goal. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime. In fact, it’s time you took your coat off and started work.”

  “I am quite ready, father.”

  “You didn’t hear what I said,” exclaimed Sir Mallaby with a look of surprise. “I said it was time you began work.”

  “And I said I was quite ready.”

  “Bless my soul! You’ve changed your views a trifle since I saw you last.”

  “I have changed them altogether.”

  Long hours of brooding among the red plush settees in the lounge of the Hotel Magnificent at Bingley-on-the-Sea had brought about this strange, even morbid, attitude of mind in Samuel Marlowe. Work, he had decided even before his conversation with Eustace, was the only medicine for his sick soul. Here, he felt, in this quiet office, far from the tumult and noise of the world, in a haven of torts and misdemeanours and Vic. I Cap 3’s, and all the rest of it, he might find peace. At any rate, it was worth taking a stab at it.

  “Your trip has done you good,” said Sir Mallaby approvingly, “The sea air has given you some sense. I’m glad of it. It makes it easier for me to say something else that I’ve had on my mind for a good while. Sam, it’s time you got married.”

  Sam barked bitterly. His father looked at him with concern.

  “Swallow some smoke the wrong way?”

  “I was laughing,” explained Sam with dignity.

  Sir Mallaby shook his head.

  “I don’t want to discourage your high spirit, but I must ask you to approach this matter seriously. Marriage would do you a world of good, Sam. It would brace you up. You really ought to consider the idea. I was two years younger than you are when I married your poor mother, and it was the making of me. A wife might make something of you.”

  “Impossible!”

  “I don’t see why she shouldn’t. There’s lots of good in you, my boy, though you may not think so.”

  “When I said it was impossible,” said Sam coldly, “I was referring to the impossibility of the possibility…. I mean, that it was impossible that I could possibly … in other words, father, I can never marry. My heart is dead.”

  “Your what?”

  “My heart.”

  “Don’t be a fool. There’s nothing wrong with your heart. All our family have had hearts like steam-engines. Probably you have been feeling a sort of burning. Knock off cigars and that will soon stop.”

  “You don’t understand me. I mean that a woman has treated me in a way that has finished her whole sex as far as I am concerned. For me, women do not exist.”

  “You didn’t tell me about this,” said Sir Mallaby, interested. “When did this happen? Did she jilt you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In America was it?”

  “On the boat.”

  Sir Mallaby chuckled heartily.

  “My dear boy, you don’t mean to tell me that you’re taking a shipboard flirtation seriously. Why, you’re expected to fall in love with a different girl every time you go on a voyage. You’ll get over this in a week. You’d have got over it now if you hadn’t gone and buried yourself in a depressing place like Bingley-on-the-Sea.”

  The whistle of the speaking-tube blew. Sir Mallaby put the instrument to his ear.

  “All right,” he turned to Sam. “I shall have to send you away now, Sam. Man waiting to see me. Goodbye.”

  Miss Milliken intercepted Sam as he made for the door.

  “Oh, Mr. Sam!”

  “Yes?”

  “Excuse me, but will you be seeing Sir Mallaby again to-day? If so, would you—I don’t like to disturb him now, when he is busy—would you mind telling him that I inadvertently omitted a stanza. It runs,” said Miss Milliken, closing her eyes, “‘Trust no future, howe’er pleasant. Let the dead past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present, Heart within and God o’erhead!’ Thank you so much. Good afternoon.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  At about the time when Sam Marlowe was having the momentous interview with his father, described in the last chapter, Mr. Rufus Bennett woke from an after-luncheon nap in Mrs. Hignett’s delightful old-world mansion, Windles, in the county of Hampshire. He had gone to his room after lunch, because there seemed nothing else to do. It was still raining hard, so that a ramble in the picturesque garden was impossible, and the only alternative to sleep, the society of Mr. Henry Mortimer, had become peculiarly distasteful to Mr. Bennett.

  Much has been written of great friendships between man and man, friendships which neither woman can mar nor death destroy. Rufus Bennett had always believed that his friendship for Mr. Mortimer was of this order. They had been boys together in the same small town, and had kept together in after years. They had been Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan. But never till now had they been cooped up together in an English country-house in the middle of a bad patch of English summer weather. So this afternoon Mr. Bennett, in order to avoid his life-long friend, had gone to bed.

  He awoke now with a start, and a moment later realized what it was that had aroused him. There was music in the air. The room wa
s full of it. It seemed to be coming up through the floor and rolling about in chunks all round his bed. He blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability.

  He rang the bell violently, and presently there entered a grave, thin, intellectual man who looked like a duke, only more respectable. This was Webster, Mr. Bennett’s English valet.

  “Is that Mr. Mortimer?” he barked, as the door opened.

  “No, sir. It is I—Webster.” Not even the annoyance of being summoned like this from an absorbing game of penny nap in the housekeeper’s room had the power to make the valet careless of his grammar. “I fancied that I heard your bell ring, sir.”

  “I wonder you could hear anything with that infernal noise going on,” snapped Mr. Bennett, “Is Mr. Mortimer playing that—that damned gas-engine in the drawing-room?”

  “Yes, sir. Tosti’s Goodbye. A charming air, sir.”

  “Charming air be—! Tell him to stop it.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The valet withdrew like a duke leaving the royal presence, not actually walking backwards, but giving the impression of doing so. Mr. Bennett lay in bed and fumed. Presently the valet returned. The music still continued to roll about the room.

  “I am sorry to have to inform you, sir,” said Webster, “that Mr. Mortimer declines to accede to your request.”

  “Oh, he said that, did he!”

  “That is the gist of his remarks, sir.”

  “Did you tell him I was trying to get to sleep?”

  “Yes, sir. I understood him to reply that he should worry and get a pain in the neck.”

  “Go down again and say that I insist on his stopping the thing. It’s an outrage.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  In a few minutes, Webster, like the dove despatched from the Ark, was back again.

  “I fear my mission has been fruitless, sir. Mr. Mortimer appears adamant on the point at issue.”

  “You gave him my message?”

  “Verbatim, sir. In reply Mr. Mortimer desired me to tell you that, if you did not like it, you could do the other thing. I quote the exact words, sir.”

  “He did, did he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good! Webster!”

  “Sir?”

  “When is the next train to London?”

  “I will ascertain, sir. Cook, I believe has a time-table.”

  “Go and see, then. I want to know. And send Miss Wilhelmina to me,”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Somewhat consoled by the thought that he was taking definite action, Mr. Bennett lay back and waited for Billie.

  “I want you to go to London,” he said, when she appeared.

  “To London? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” said Mr. Bennett vehemently. “Because of that pest Mortimer. I must have legal advice. I want you to go and see Sir Mallaby Marlowe. Here’s his address. Tell him the whole story. Tell him that this man is annoying me in every possible way and ask if he can’t be stopped. If you can’t see Sir Mallaby himself, see someone else in the firm. Go up to-night, so that you can see him first thing in the morning. You can stop the night at the Savoy. I’ve sent Webster to look out a train.”

  “There’s a splendid train in about an hour. I’ll take that.”

  “It’s giving you a lot of trouble,” said Mr. Bennett with belated consideration.

  “Oh no!” said Billie. “I’m only too glad to be able to do something for you, father dear. This noise is a terrible nuisance, isn’t it.”

  “You’re a good girl,” said Mr. Bennett.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “That’s right!” said Sir Mallaby Marlowe. “Work while you’re young, Sam, work while you’re young.” He regarded his son’s bent head with affectionate approval. “What’s the book to-day?”

  “Widgery on Nisi prius Evidence,” said Sam, without looking up.

  “Capital!” said Sir Mallaby. “Highly improving and as interesting as a novel—some novels. There’s a splendid bit on, I think, page two hundred and fifty-four where the hero finds out all about Copyhold and Customary Estates. It’s a wonderfully powerful situation. It appears—but I won’t spoil it for you. Mind you don’t skip to see how it all comes out in the end!” Sir Mallaby suspended conversation while he addressed an imaginary ball with the mashie which he had taken out of his golf-bag. For this was the day when he went down to Walton Heath for his weekly foursome with three old friends. His tubby form was clad in tweed of a violent nature, with knickerbockers and stockings. “Sam!”

  “Well?”

  “Sam, a man at the club showed me a new grip the other day. Instead of overlapping the little finger of the right hand … Oh, by the way, Sam.”

  “Yes?”

  “I should lock up the office to-day if I were you, or anxious clients will be coming in and asking for advice, and you’ll find yourself in difficulties. I shall be gone, and Peters is away on his holiday. You’d better lock the outer door.”

  “All right,” said Sam absently. He was finding Widgery stiff reading. He had just got to the bit about Raptu Haeredis, which, as of course you know, is a writ for taking away an heir holding insocage.

  Sir Mallaby looked at his watch.

  “Well, I’ll have to be going. See you later, Sam.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Sir Mallaby went out, and Sam, placing both elbows on the desk and twining his fingers in his hair, returned with a frown of concentration to his grappling with Widgery. For perhaps ten minutes the struggle was an even one, then gradually Widgery got the upper hand. Sam’s mind, numbed by constant batterings against the stony ramparts of legal phraseology, weakened, faltered, and dropped away; and a moment later his thoughts, as so often happened when he was alone, darted off and began to circle round the image of Billie Bennett.

  Since they had last met, Sam had told himself perhaps a hundred times that he cared nothing about Billie, that she had gone out of his life and was dead to him; but unfortunately he did not believe it. A man takes a deal of convincing on a point like this, and Sam had never succeeded in convincing himself for more than two minutes at a time. It was useless to pretend that he did not still love Billie more than ever, because he knew he did; and now, as the truth swept over him for the hundred and first time, he groaned hollowly and gave himself up to the gray despair which is the almost inseparable companion of young men in his position.

  So engrossed was he in his meditation that he did not hear the light footstep in the outer office, and it was only when it was followed by a tap on the door of the inner office that he awoke with a start to the fact that clients were in his midst. He wished that he had taken his father’s advice and locked up the office. Probably this was some frightful bore who wanted to make his infernal will or something, and Sam had neither the ability nor the inclination to assist him.

  Was it too late to escape? Perhaps if he did not answer the knock, the blighter might think there was nobody at home. But suppose he opened the door and peeped in? A spasm of Napoleonic strategy seized Sam. He dropped silently to the floor and concealed himself under the desk. Napoleon was always doing that sort of thing.

  There was another tap. Then, as he had anticipated, the door opened, Sam, crouched like a hare in its form, held his breath. It seemed to him that he was going to bring this delicate operation off with success. He felt he had acted just as Napoleon would have done in a similar crisis. And so, no doubt, he had to a certain extent; only Napoleon would have seen to it that his boots and about eighteen inches of trousered legs were not sticking out, plainly visible to all who entered.

  “Good morning,” said a voice.

  Sam thrilled from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. It was the voice which had been ringing in his ears through all his waking hours.

  “Are you busy, Mr. Marlowe?” asked Billie, addressing the boots.

  Sam wriggled out from under the desk like a disconcerted torto
ise.

  “Dropped my pen,” he mumbled, as he rose to the surface.

  He pulled himself with an effort that was like a physical exercise. He stared at Billie dumbly. Then, recovering speech, he invited her to sit down, and seated himself at the desk.

  “Dropped my pen!” he gurgled again.

  “Yes?” said Billie.

  “Fountain-pen,” babbled Sam, “with a broad nib.”

  “Yes?”

  “A broad gold nib,” went on Sam, with the painful exactitude which comes only from embarrassment or the early stages of intoxication.

  “Really?” said Billie, and Sam blinked and told himself resolutely that this would not do. He was not appearing to advantage. It suddenly occurred to him that his hair was standing on end as the result of his struggle with Widgery. He smoothed it down hastily, and felt a trifle more composed. The old fighting spirit of the Marlowes now began to assert itself to some extent. He must make an effort to appear as little of a fool as possible in this girl’s eyes. And what eyes they were! Golly! Like stars! Like two bright planets in….

  However, that was neither here nor there. He pulled down his waistcoat and became cold and business-like—the dry young lawyer.

  “Er—how do you do, Miss Bennett?” he said with a question in his voice, raising his eyebrows in a professional way. He modelled this performance on that of lawyers he had seen on the stage, and wished he had some snuff to take or something to tap against his front teeth. “Miss Bennett, I believe?”

  Billie drew herself up stiffly.

  “Yes,” she replied. “How clever of you to remember me.”

  “I have a good memory.”

  “How nice! So have I!”

  There was a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out beneath her hat and … However!

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked in the sort of voice Widgery might have used. Sam always pictured Widgery as a small man with bushy eyebrows, a thin face, and a voice like a rusty file.