“Thank God!” said Billie. “I’m not even engaged! It’s all been a terrible mistake!”
When two people in a small room are speaking on two distinct and different subjects and neither knows what on earth the other is driving at, there is bound to be a certain amount of mental confusion: but at this point Jno. Peters, though still not wholly equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, began to see a faint shimmer of light behind the clouds. In a nebulous kind of way he began to understand that the girl had come to consult the firm about a breach-of-promise action. Some unknown man at Ealing West had been trifling with her heart—hardened lawyer’s clerk a he was, that poignant cry “I’m not engaged!” had touched Mr. Peters—and she wished to start proceedings. Mr. Peters felt almost in his depth again. He put the revolver in his pocket, and drew out a note-book.
“I should be glad to hear the facts,” he said with professional courtesy. “In the absence of the Guv’nor….”
“I have told you the facts!”
“This man at Ealing West,” said Mr. Peters, moistening the point of his pencil, “he wrote you letters proposing marriage?”
“No, no, no!”
“At any rate,” said Mr. Peters, disappointed but hopeful, “he made love to you before witnesses?”
“Never! Never! There is no man at Ealing West! There never was a man at Ealing West!”
It was at this point that Jno. Peters began for the first time to entertain serious doubts of the girl’s mental balance. The most elementary acquaintance with the latest census was enough to tell him that there were any number of men at Ealing West. The place was full of them. Would a sane woman have made an assertion to the contrary? He thought not, and he was glad that he had the revolver with him. She had done nothing as yet actively violent, but it was nice to feel prepared. He took it out and laid it nonchalantly in his lap.
The sight of the weapon acted on Billie electrically. She flung out her hands, in a gesture of passionate appeal, and played her last card.
“I love you!” she cried. She wished she could have remembered his first name. It would have rounded off the sentence neatly. In such a moment she could hardly call him ‘Mr. Peters.’ “You are the only man I love.”
“My gracious goodness!” ejaculated Mr. Peters, and nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting: and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently. And yet, even in that moment of consternation, he could not check a certain thrill. No man ever thinks he is as homely as he really is, but Jno. Peters had always come fairly near to a correct estimate of his charms, and it had always seemed to him, that, in inducing his fiancee to accept him, he had gone some. He now began to wonder if he were not really rather a devil of a chap after all. There must, he felt, be precious few men going about capable of inspiring devotion like this on the strength of about six and a half minutes casual conversation.
Calmer thoughts succeeded this little flicker of complacency. The girl was mad. That was the fact of the matter. He got up and began to edge towards the door. Mr. Samuel would be returning shortly, and he ought to be warned.
“So that’s all right, isn’t it!” said Billie.
“Oh, quite, quite!” said Mr. Peters. “Er—thank you very much!”
“I thought you would be pleased,” said Billie, relieved, but puzzled. For a man of volcanic passions, as Sam Marlowe had described him, he seemed to be taking the thing very calmly. She had anticipated a strenuous scene.
“Oh, it’s a great compliment,” Mr. Peters assured her.
At this point Sam came in, interrupting the conversation at a moment when it had reached a somewhat difficult stage. He had finished the instalment of the serial story in Home Whispers, and, looking at his watch he fancied that he had allowed sufficient time to elapse for events to have matured along the lines which his imagination had indicated.