“There is no need to be indelicate,” said Sam stiffly. “A man must take these chances.”
“Give her the miss in baulk,” pleaded Hignett. “Stay down here for the rest of the voyage. You can easily dodge her when you get to Southampton. And, if she sends messages, say you’re ill and can’t be disturbed.”
Sam gazed at him, revolted. More than ever he began to understand how it was that a girl with ideals had broken off her engagement with this man. He finished dressing, and, after a satisfying breakfast, went on deck.
*
It was, as he had said, a glorious morning. The sample which he had had through the porthole had not prepared him for the magic of it. The ship swam in a vast bowl of the purest blue on an azure carpet flecked with silver. It was a morning which impelled a man to great deeds, a morning which shouted to him to chuck his chest out and be romantic. The sight of Billie Bennett, trim and gleaming in a pale green sweater and a white skirt had the effect of causing Marlowe to alter the programme which he had sketched out. Proposing to this girl was not a thing to be put off till after lunch. It was a thing to be done now and at once. The finest efforts of the finest cooks in the world could not put him in better form than he felt at present.
“Good morning, Miss Bennett.”
“Good morning, Mr. Marlowe.”
“Isn’t it a perfect day?”
“Wonderful!”
“It makes all the difference on board ship if the weather is fine.”
“Yes, doesn’t it?”
“Shall we walk round?” said Billie.
Sam glanced about him. It was the time of day when the promenade deck was always full. Passengers in cocoons of rugs lay on chairs, waiting in a dull trance till the steward should arrive with the eleven o’clock soup. Others, more energetic, strode up and down. From the point of view of a man who wished to reveal his most sacred feelings to a beautiful girl, the place was practically Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street.
“It’s so crowded,” he said. “Let’s go on to the upper deck.”
“All right. You can read to me. Go and fetch your Tennyson.”
Sam felt that fortune was playing into his hands. His four-days’ acquaintance with the bard had been sufficient to show him that the man was there forty ways when it came to writing about love. You could open his collected works almost anywhere and shut your eyes and dab down your finger on some red-hot passage. A proposal of marriage is a thing which it is rather difficult to bring neatly into the ordinary run of conversation. It wants leading up to. But, if you once start reading poetry, especially Tennyson’s, almost anything is apt to give you your cue. He bounded light-heartedly into the stateroom, waking Eustace Hignett from an uneasy dose.
“Now what?” said Eustace.
“Where’s that copy of Tennyson you gave me? I left it—ah, here it is. Well, see you later!”
“Wait! What are you going to do?”
“Oh, that girl I told you about,” said Sam making for the door. “She wants me to read Tennyson to her on the upper deck.”
“Tennyson?”
“Yes.”
“On the upper deck?”
“That’s the spot.”
“This is the end,” said Eustace Hignett, turning his face to the wall.
Sam raced up the companion-way as far as it went; then, going out on deck, climbed a flight of steps and found himself in the only part of the ship which was ever even comparatively private. The main herd of passengers preferred the promenade deck, two layers below.
He threaded his way through a maze of boats, ropes, and curious-shaped steel structures which the architect of the ship seemed to have tacked on at the last moment in a spirit of sheer exuberance. Above him towered one of the funnels, before him a long, slender mast. He hurried on, and presently came upon Billie sitting on a garden seat, backed by the white roof of the smoke-room; beside this was a small deck which seemed to have lost its way and strayed up here all by itself. It was the deck on which one could occasionally see the patients playing an odd game with long sticks and bits of wood—not shuffleboard but something even lower in the mental scale. This morning, however, the devotees of this pastime were apparently under proper restraint, for the deck was empty.