The Girl on the Boat quotes

Hignett the Mrs. Hignett, the world-famous writer on Theosophy, the author of “The Spreading Light,” “What of the Morrow,” and all the rest of that well-known series? I’m glad you asked me. Yes, she was. She had come over to America on a lecturing tour.

About this time there was a good deal of suffering in the United States, for nearly every boat that arrived from England was bringing a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country.

Novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herd instinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages.

Windles was as the breath of life to her. Its shady walks, its silver lake, its noble elms, the old grey stone of its walls—these were bound up with her very being.

She felt that she belonged to Windles, and Windles to her. Unfortunately, as a matter of cold, legal accuracy, it did not.

She did but hold it in trust for her son, Eustace, until such time as he should marry and take possession of it himself. There were times when the thought of Eustace marrying and bringing a strange woman to Windles chilled Mrs.

Bream Mortimer was tall and thin. He had small bright eyes and a sharply curving nose.

He looked much more like a parrot than most parrots do.

It gave strangers a momentary shock of surprise when they saw Bream Mortimer in restaurants, eating roast beef. They had the feeling that he would have preferred sunflower seeds.

Mrs. Hignett was never a very patient woman.

“Let us take all your negative qualities for granted,” she said curtly.

“I have no doubt that there are many things which you do not do. Let us confine ourselves to issues of definite importance.

“Well, you’ve taken a weight off my mind.”

“A mind, I should imagine, scarcely constructed to bear great weights.”

“I’ll be going. Haven’t had breakfast yet. Too worried to eat breakfast. Relieved now. This is where three eggs and a rasher of ham get cut off in their prime. I feel I can rely on you.”

“He won’t have forgotten you,” said Bream Mortimer, confidently. He did not see how it was humanly possible for anyone to forget this woman.

She was like a celebrated chewing-gum. The taste lingered.

Mrs. Hignett was a woman of instant and decisive action. Even while her late visitor was speaking, schemes had begun to form in her mind like bubbles rising to the surface of a rushing river.

… the midriff of some obstructing male, now courteously lifting some stout female off his feet, he had succeeded in struggling to within a few yards of his goal, when suddenly a sharp pain shot through his right arm, and he spun round with a cry.

It seemed to Sam that he had been bitten, and this puzzled him, for New York crowds, though they may shove and jostle, rarely bite.

He found himself face to face with an extraordinarily pretty girl.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Samuel Marlowe was a susceptible young man, and for many a long month his heart had been lying empty, all swept and garnished, with “Welcome” on the mat. This girl seemed to rush in and fill it.

She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was the third prettiest.

He had an orderly mind, one capable of classifying and docketing girls. But there was a subtle something about her, a sort of how-shall-one-put-it, which he had never encountered before. He swallowed convulsively.

… the passenger-office, with the gentlemanly clerk drawing rings round them in pencil, they seem so vast that you get the impression that, after stowing away all your trunks, you will have room left over to do a bit of entertaining—possibly an informal dance or something.

When you go on board, you find that the place has shrunk to the dimensions of an undersized cupboard in which it would be impossible to swing a cat.

And then, about the second day out, it suddenly expands again. For one reason or another the necessity for swinging cats does not arise, and you find yourself quite comfortable.

“Yes. It seemed to make things worse.

She said that she could forgive a man anything except being ridiculous.

”

In the brief interval of time which Marlowe had spent in the state-room chatting with Eustace about the latter’s bruised soul, some rather curious things had been happening above. Not extraordinary, perhaps, but curious. These must now be related.

A story, if it is to grip the reader, should, I am aware, go always forward. It should march.

It should leap from crag to crag like the chamois of the Alps.

“Pa, this gen’man wants to be took aboard the boat at quarantine. He’ll give you fifty berries.”

The wrath died out of the skipper’s face like the slow turning down of a lamp.

The fishing had been poor, and so far he had only managed to secure a single two-dollar bill. In a crisis like the one which had so suddenly arisen you cannot do yourself justice with a boat-hook.

Sam had been feeling a good deal of a fellow already, but at the sight of her welcoming smile his self-esteem almost caused him to explode.

What magic there is in a girl’s smile! It is the raisin which, dropped in the yeast of male complacency, induces fermentation.

“Oh, there you are, Mr. Marlowe!”

He trotted along.

There are moments when a man feels that all he needs in order to be a delivery wagon is a horse and a driver.

Bream Mortimer was experiencing such a moment.

“It makes all the difference on board ship if the weather is fine.”

How strange it is that the great emotional scenes of history, one of which is coming along almost immediately, always begin in this prosaic way.

Shakespeare tries to conceal the fact, but there can be little doubt that Romeo and Juliet edged into their balcony scene with a few remarks on the pleasantness of the morning.

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 state-room, waking Eustace Hignett from an uneasy dose.

I’m beginning to want to settle down.

After all there are other things for a woman to do in this life besides travelling and big-game hunting. I should like to go into Parliament.

And, if I did that, I should practically have to marry. I mean, I should have to have a man to look after the social end of life and arrange parties and receptions and so on, and sit ornamentally at the head of my table.

His eyes gazed out glassily from under his damp brow. He looked like a man who was seeing some ghastly sight. The audience sympathised with him. They felt like that, too.

In all human plans there is ever some slight hitch, some little miscalculation which just makes all the difference.

A moment’s thought should have told Eustace Hignett that a half-smoked cigar was one of the essential properties to any imitation of the eminent Mr. Tinney; but he had completely overlooked the fact.

The spell which had lain on the audience broke.

This imitation seemed to them to possess in an extraordinary measure the one quality which renders amateur imitations tolerable, that of brevity.

They had seen many amateur imitations, but never one as short as this. The saloon echoed with their applause.

It was the level voice of J. B. Midgeley, the steward. The stewards of the White Star Line, besides being the civillest and most obliging body of men in the world, all have soft and pleasant voices.

A White Star steward, waking you up at six-thirty, to tell you that your bath is ready, when you wanted to sleep on till twelve, is the nearest human approach to the nightingale.

Sam jumped up and switched on the light. He went to the door and took the note from J. B. Midgeley, who, his mission accomplished, retired in an orderly manner down the passage. Sam looked at the letter with a thrill.

For dreariness of aspect Bingley-on-the-Sea stands alone.

The very waves that break on its shingle seem to creep up the beach reluctantly, as if it revolted them to have to come to such a place.

Why, then, was Sam Marlowe visiting this ozone-swept Gehenna? Why, with all the rest of England at his disposal, had he chosen to spend a week at breezy, blighted Bingley?

Nothing is more curious than the myriad ways in which reaction from an unfortunate love-affair manifests itself in various men.

No two males behave in the same way under the spur of female fickleness.

Archilochum, for instance, according to the Roman writer, proprio rabies armavit iambo. It is no good pretending out of politeness that you know what that means, so I will translate. Rabies—his grouch—armavit—armed—Archilochum— Archilochus—iambo—with the iambic—proprio—his own invention.

At the idea that any such mundane pursuit as practising putting could appeal to his broken spirit now, Sam uttered a bitter laugh.

It was as if Dante had recommended some lost soul in the Inferno to occupy his mind by knitting jumpers.

“Well, you seem to be in great spirits,” said Sir Mallaby approvingly. “It’s pleasant to hear your merry laugh again. Isn’t it, Miss Milliken?”

To bring this last scene about, Fate had had to permit herself a slight coincidence, but she did not jib at that.

What we call coincidences are merely the occasions when Fate gets stuck in a plot and has to invent the next situation in a hurry.

Sam Marlowe felt sulky and defiant. This girl had treated him shamefully and he wanted to have nothing more to do with her. If he had had his wish, he would never have met her again.

Sam rose. “I think I’ll be going,” he said. “Good night!”

A man can bear just so much.

He looked malignantly at a fine bulldog which now emerged from its cover and, sitting down, beamed at the company. He was a sweet-tempered dog, handicapped by the outward appearance of a canine plug-ugly.

Murder seemed the mildest of the desires that lay behind that rugged countenance. As a matter of fact, what he wanted was cake.

His name was Smith, and Mr. Mortimer had bought him just before leaving London to serve the establishment as a watch-dog.

He got up and went to the window.

The rain leaped at the glass like a frolicking puppy. It seemed to want to get inside and play with Mr. Bennett.

Mr. Bennett slept late on the following morning. He looked at his watch on the dressing table when he got up, and found that it was past ten.

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

Mr. Bennett’s sense of well-being deepened.

What more could a man want in this world than fine weather and a dutiful daughter?

“Yes, sir. She desired me to inform you that, having already breakfasted, she proposed to drive Mr. Mortimer and Mr. Bream Mortimer into Southampton in the car. Mr. Mortimer senior wished to buy a panama hat.”

The bulldog Smith, gazed up at him expectantly. The game was a new one to Smith, but it seemed to have possibilities.

He was a dog who was always perfectly willing to try anything once.

Mr. Bennett now began to address himself in earnest to the task of calling for assistance. His physical discomfort was acute.

“You will find that you have to. It is a legal precedent.”

There is something about a legal precedent which gives pause to the angriest man. Mr. Bennett felt, as every layman feels when arguing with a lawyer, as if he were in the coils of a python.

“Say, Mr. Bennett....” began Bream at his elbow.

Fortunately, none of his acts were irreparable. He could undo them. He could make amends.

The small hours of the morning are not perhaps the most suitable time for making amends, but Mr. Bennett was too remorseful to think of that.

Do It Now had ever been his motto, so he started by ringing the bell for Webster.

What steps Mr. Bennett would have taken at this juncture, one cannot say.

Probably he would have given the thing up in despair and retired, for it is weary work forgiving a sleeping man.

But, as he bent above his slumbering friend, a drop of warm grease detached itself from the candle and fell into Mr. Mortimer’s exposed ear. The sleeper wakened.

For a moment he was strongly tempted to try the restorative effects of candle-grease once more, but, just as he was on the point of succumbing, a shooting pain, as if somebody had run a red-hot needle into his tongue, reminded him of his situation.

A dying man cannot pass his last hours dropping candle-grease into people’s ears.

After all, it was perhaps a little late, and there would be plenty of time to become reconciled to Mr. Mortimer to-morrow. His task now was to seek out Bream and bring him the glad news of his renewed engagement.

“I know. That’s the trouble.

People oughtn’t to be allowed to read medical books.

”

and consequently she had not thought out any plan for coping with such a situation. A grave error.

In this world one should be prepared for everything, or where is one?

“I’ve brought the revolver,” said Mr. Peters.

I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule.

His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse.

He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No!

She was telling herself that her relations with Sam were an idyll; for, being young and romantic, she enjoyed this freshet of surreptitious meetings which had come to enliven the stream of her life.

It was pleasant to go warily into deep lanes where forbidden love lurked.

She cast a swift side-glance at her father—the unconscious ogre in her fairy-story. What would he say if he knew? But Mr. Bennett did not know, and consequently continued to meditate peacefully on ham.

His heart had moved from its proper place and was now beating in his throat. He swallowed once or twice to remove the obstruction, but without success. A kind of pall had descended on the landscape, blotting out the sun.

Of all the rotten sensations in this world, the worst is the realisation that a thousand-to-one chance has come off, and caused our wrong-doing to be detected.

There had seemed no possibility of that little ruse of his being discovered, and yet here was Billie in full possession of the facts. It almost made the thing worse that she did not say how she had come into possession of them.

“Why, yes, sir, I think I may say that I have grasped the position of affairs. And, if you will permit me to say so, sir, you have my respectful sympathy.”

Dignity is a sensitive plant which nourishes only under the fairest conditions.

Sam’s had perished in the bleak east wind of Billie’s note. In other circumstances he might have resented this intrusion of a stranger into his most intimate concerns. His only emotion now, was one of dull but distinct gratitude.

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.

Eustace closed his eyes. After all, this girl had fought lions, tigers, pumas, cannibals, and alligators in her time with a good deal of success.

There might be a sporting chance of victory for her when she moved a step up in the animal kingdom and tackled his mother.

He was not unduly optimistic, for he thought she was going out of her class; but he felt faintly hopeful. He allowed himself to drift into pleasant meditation.

Besides, most of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She melted quite perceptibly.

She did not cease to look like a basilisk, but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.

“My favourite,” said Jane, who for a week had been sitting daily in a chair in the drawing-room adjoining the table on which the authoress’s complete works were assembled, “is ‘The Spreading Light.’ I do like ‘The Spreading Light!’”

I think she was wrong, mind you. It is not my place to criticise the little group of people whose simple annals I am relating—my position is merely that of a reporter—; but personally I think highly of Bream’s sturdy common-sense.

If somebody loosed off an elephant-gun at me in a dark corridor, I would climb on to the roof and pull it up after me.

Still, rightly or wrongly, that was how Billie felt; and it flashed across her mind that Samuel Marlowe, scoundrel though he was, would not have behaved like this. And for a moment a certain wistfulness added itself to the varied emotions then engaging her mind.

“I’m going,” said Billie resolutely.

It occurred to her, as it has occurred to so many women before her, how helpless men are in a crisis.

The temporary withdrawal of Jane Hubbard had had the effect which the removal of the rudder has on a boat. “It’s the only thing to do. I shall be back in no time.”

Billie cast a glance of contempt at him out of the corner of her eyes. She hardly knew why she had spoken to him except that, as all motorists are aware, the impulse to say rude things about their battery is almost irresistible.

To a motorist the art of conversation consists in rapping out scathing remarks either about the battery or the oiling-system.

Billie switched on the head-lights and turned the car down the dark drive. She was feeling thoroughly upset. Her idealistic nature had received a painful shock on the discovery of the yellow streak in Bream.

Bennett’s Twin-Six Complex was not one of them. It stopped as if it had been waiting for the signal.... The noise of the engine died away. The wheels ceased to revolve.

The car did everything except lie down.

It was a particularly pig-headed car and right from the start it had been unable to see the sense in this midnight expedition.

The art of cranking a car is one that is not given to all men. Some of our greatest and wisest stand helpless before the task.

It is a job towards the consummation of which a noble soul and a fine brain help not at all.

A man may have all the other gifts and yet be unable to accomplish a task which the fellow at the garage does with one quiet flick of the wrist without even bothering to remove his chewing gum.

Then throwing in the clutch, he drove at an ever-increasing speed down the drive and out into the silent road.

Strange creatures of the night came and went in the golden glow of the head-lights.

“Put me down,” said Billie.