From his expression I gathered that we could not.
I continued. I was under the unfortunate necessity of having to
condense my remarks. I was not able to let myself go as I could have
wished, for time was an important consideration. Erelong, swallowing
water at his present rate, the professor must inevitably become
waterlogged. It behooved me to be succinct.
"I have loved your daughter," I said rapidly, "ever since I first saw
her. I learned last night that she loved me. But she will not marry me
without your consent. Stretch your arms out straight from the
shoulders and fill your lungs well, and you can't sink. So I have come
this morning to ask for your consent. I know we have not been on the
best of terms lately."
"You--"
"For Heaven's sake, don't try to talk. Your one chance of remaining on
the surface is to keep your lungs well filled. The fault," I said
generously, "was mine. But when you have heard my explanation, I am
sure you will forgive me. There, I told you so."
He reappeared some few feet to the left. I swam up and resumed:
"When you left us so abruptly after our little dinner party, you put
me in a very awkward position. I was desperately in love with your
daughter, and as long as you were in the frame of mind in which you
left, I could not hope to find an opportunity of telling her so. You
see what a fix I was in, don't you? I thought for hours and hours, to
try and find some means of bringing about a reconciliation. You
wouldn't believe how hard I thought. At last, seeing you fishing one
morning when I was on the Cob, it struck me all of a sudden that the
very best way would be to arrange a little boating accident. I was
confident that I could rescue you all right."
"You young blackguard!"
He managed to slip past me, and made for the shore again.
"Strike out--but hear me," I said, swimming by his side. "Look at the
thing from the standpoint of a philosopher. The fact that the rescue
was arranged oughtn't really to influence you in the least. You didn't
know it at the time, therefore relatively it was not, and you were
genuinely saved from a watery grave."
I felt that I was becoming a shade too metaphysical, but I could not
help it. What I wanted to point out was that I had certainly pulled
him out of the water, and that the fact that I had caused him to be
pushed in had nothing to do with the case. Either a man is a gallant
rescuer or he is not a gallant rescuer. There is no middle course. I
had saved his life, for he would have drowned if he had been left to
himself, and was consequently entitled to his gratitude. And that was
all that there was to be said about it.
These things I endeavored to make plain to him as we swam along. But
whether it was that the salt water he had swallowed dulled his
intelligence or that my power of stating a case neatly was to seek,
the fact remains that he reached the beach an unconvinced man.
We faced one another, dripping.
"Then may I consider," I said, "that your objections are removed? We
have your consent?"
He stamped angrily, and his bare foot came down on a small but
singularly sharp pebble. With a brief exclamation he seized the foot
with one hand and hopped. While hopping, he delivered his ultimatum.
Probably this is the only instance on record of a father adopting this
attitude in dismissing a suitor.
"You may not," he said. "You may not consider any such thing. My
objections were never more--absolute. You detain me in the water till
I am blue, sir, blue with cold, in order to listen to the most
preposterous and impudent nonsense I ever heard."
This was unjust. If he had heard me attentively from the first and
avoided interruptions and not behaved like a submarine, we should
have got through our little business in half the time. We might both
have been dry and clothed by now.