The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

Marlowe,” he proceeded, swinging ponderously round
on Sir Mallaby like a liner turning in the river, “I assure
you that at twenty-five minutes past four this afternoon
I was very nearly convinced that I should have to call
you up on the ‘phone and cancel this dinner engagement.
When I took my temperature at twenty minutes
to six ….” At this point the butler appeared at the door
announcing that dinner was served.
Sir Mallaby Marlowe’s dinner table, which, like most
of the furniture in the house had belonged to his deceased
father and had been built at a period when
people liked things big and solid, was a good deal too
spacious to be really ideal for a small party. A white
sea of linen separated each diner from the diner opposite
and created a forced intimacy with the person
seated next to him. Billie Bennett and Sam Marlowe,
as a consequence, found themselves, if not exactly in a
solitude of their own, at least sufficiently cut off from
their kind to make silence between them impossible.
Westward, Mr. Mortimer had engaged Sir Mallaby in
a discussion on the recent case of Ouseley v. Ouseley,
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Girl</strong> on the Boat
96
Figg, Mountjoy, Moseby-Smith and others, which
though too complicated to explain here, presented
points of considerable interest to the legal mind. To
the east, Mr. Bennett was relating to Bream the more
striking of his recent symptoms. Billie felt constrained
to make at least an attempt at conversation.
“How strange meeting you here,” she said.
Sam, who had been crumbling bread in an easy and
debonair manner, looked up and met her eye. Its expression
was one of cheerful friendliness. He could not
see his own eye, but he imagined and hoped that it
was cold and forbidding, like the surface of some bottomless
mountain tarn.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, how strange meeting you here. I never
dreamed Sir Mallaby was your father.”
“I knew it all along,” said Sam, and there was an
interval caused by the maid insinuating herself between
them and collecting his soup plate. He sipped sherry
and felt a sombre self-satisfaction. He had, he considered,
given the conversation the right tone from the