It was a superb morning. It was as if some giant had uncorked a great bottle full of the distilled scent of grass, trees, flowers, and hay. Mr. Bennett sniffed luxuriantly. Gone was the gloom of the past days, swept away in a great exhilaration.
Breakfast had deepened his content. Henry Mortimer, softened by the same balmy influence, had been perfectly charming. All their little differences had melted away in the genial warmth. And then suddenly Mr. Bennett remembered that he had sent Billie up to London to enlist the aid of the Law against his old friend, and remorse gripped him. Half an hour later he was in the train, on his way to London to intercept her and cancel her mission. He had arrived, breathless at Sir Mallaby’s office, and the first thing he had seen was his daughter in the arms of a young man who was a total stranger to him. The shock took away his breath again just as it was coming back. He advanced shakily into the room, and supported himself with one hand on the desk, while with the other he plied the handkerchief on his super-heated face.
Billie was the first to speak.
“Why, father,” she said, “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. He tried to convey a fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal after a long dive in search of fish.
“This is Sam,” proceeded Billie. “Sam Marlowe.”
Mr. Bennett became aware that the young man 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.
Mr. Bennett stared in a frozen sort of way at the hand. He had placed Sam by now. He knew that Sir Mallaby had a son. This, presumably, was he. But the discovery did not diminish his indignation.
“I am delighted to meet 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 spaciously, 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.