"But it's so—so beastly! You might as well be dead—you're not happy."

"That's exactly what I think. That's what I'm going to do. I got ten pounds out of the Mater. She's always ready to give me anything if it happens to be the beginning of the month and she's well off. The Pater solemnly presented me with three pounds—that's ten shillings a week for smokes for the six weeks of the trip. I'll buy bull's-eyes with it, I think. That'd please him. That makes thirteen pounds, and there's ten pounds waiting for me in Sydney. I'll have a damned good bust-up then, and then I'll finish the job for ever."

"Oh, I do think you're mad—raving mad!" she cried, and could say nothing else.

"Of course it's by no means certain I'll have enough courage to kill myself. I rather doubt it! You see, they didn't breed me with courage. They've given me porridge in my veins instead of blood! They press electric buttons for their emotions and keep them down as long as is respectable! They didn't give me grit at all—they gave me convention and respectability. Everything I wanted to do they restrained because so many of the things I wanted to do seemed natural but were not respectable. And in the end they made a first-class liar of me." There was a long, terrible silence.

"To-night, for a bit, I'm stripped bare here," he said in a low voice, "letting you see me. To-morrow I'll be a nervous, stammering fool, hiding all I feel, swanking like hell about my people, myself and everyone I've ever seen, like I was doing to-day when you told me off so beautifully. To-morrow I'll be drunk, and I'll lie to you till all's blue. To-night I'm just honest."

"Why is it that you're honest with me?" she asked him.

"Lord knows! I suppose it's because I'll disintegrate and go over the side in shivers if I can't get something off my chest. You don't seem disgusted with me—Lord, everyone else is! And I'm the loneliest devil on earth."

"I'm glad you told me. Let's be friends, Louis—till we get to Sydney, anyway."

"I never have friends. I lie to them, and they find me out. I borrow money from them and don't pay it back, and then I'm afraid to face them. I make fools of them in public; I'm irritable with them."

"I'm warned," she said with a laugh. "I'm not afraid of you."

Suddenly he turned round. All the time he had been talking his back had been half turned to her. She saw the crimson end of the cigarette glowing. It was flung overboard. He groped for and found both her hands.

"Look here, this is the maddest thing I've ever done yet—but will you take it on, being friends with me?"

"I want to. I'm lonely, you know. I could have cried to-night, really."

"But—look here. I'm begging, yes begging, this of you. When I lie to you, insult me, will you? You'll know. You've seen me honest to-night, but sometimes a thing gets hold of me and I lie like hell! I'll tell you the most amazing, most circumstantial tales—just as you told me this afternoon—and you'll believe me. But I implore you, don't believe me! Heaps of people have lent me money because they've believed what I've told them about my wife or my mother or my child dying. Lord, I'm a waster! But if I can find someone who'll be hard with me, I think I might make a stand. Look here, I promised the Mater, as this was my last week at home, and I haven't had a drink since Monday. That's four days to the good. If I promise you there's a faint chance I won't do it. Do you mind?"

"I'll watch you," she said calmly. "And I'll tell you if you tell me lies. But I don't believe you'll do any such thing!"

"Don't you? Do you believe in me?" he cried.

"Why not? I think you're a fearful duffer, but naturally I believe in you," she said calmly.

"I know why I came by this ship! It's a miracle. I believe I'm going to make a stand now, I really do! It's fate, and nothing else. There's an Anchor boat I was to have gone by—via the Cape, you know. She sailed last week, and I couldn't get off in time. I wanted to wait for the next as I've not been to the Cape. But the Pater couldn't put up with me for another week, so out I came! I know why I came! I came to meet you!"

"Do you think so?" she said wonderingly.

"I do! I've never in all my life told the truth about myself before! If you only knew what that means! I'm too nervous as a rule. But don't you notice the difference? Of course you're not trained, so you wouldn't notice as I should. But I'm not even stammering half so much. It's jolly good of you to listen to me—and it's jolly good for me, because I've no reason to try to get at you, or to get my own back on you, as I have with my people all the time."

Marcella felt very small, very helpless. She had a sudden vision of a man dying in an agony of poisoning while she stood frantic in a doctor's laboratory, antidotes all round her, but no knowledge in her brain of which drug to use. And all the time his agony went on, and death drew nearer. She had not the least idea in the world what to do for Louis Fame. He frightened her, he disgusted her, he made her feel hungrily anxious to help, he made her feel responsible and yet helpless, but at the same time it mattered and challenged her that he had appealed to her at all. She thought of her father, and remembered with a pang that she knew nothing about him except superficially. She thought of his books, but nothing in them seemed helpful. She thought of the Bible, of her poetry, her legends. They were a blur, a mist. Nothing in them held out a hand to hail her. There seemed nothing that she could do.

"Oh," she cried passionately, "I'm such a fool. If only I was clever! If only I knew what to do."

Before she had finished speaking came a flash of insight, and she went on, in the same breath, "But there's one thing that occurs to me. You think about yourself far too much. Old Wullie—I'll tell you about him some day—used to say that if we were quiet and didn't fuss about ourselves too much God would walk along our lives and help us to kill beasts—like whisky—"

"God? Oh, I'm fed up with God! I've had too much of that all my life at home," he said dully.

She had no answer for that, but as she bade him good night at the top of the companion-way she saw herself in armour. Her vague dreams of John the Baptist, of Siegfried and of Britomart suddenly crystallized, and she saw herself, very self-consciously, the Deliverer who would save Louis Fame. It did not occur to her to wonder if he were worth saving. He was imprisoned in the first windmill she had encountered on her Don Quixote quest—and so he was to be rescued.



CHAPTER VII

She wakened to a world of blue and silver next morning; the sunlight seemed to come from the sea with a cold, hard glitter; there was a keenness in the air, a sharp tang of sea-salt with an underlying suggestion of something that was pleasantly reminiscent of Dr. Angus's surgery. The sailors were sluicing the deck with great hoses, and sprinkling it with little watering-cans of disinfectant. Up on the fo'c'sle her deck-chair was side by side with another on which "L. F." was stencilled; after breakfast she went there with a book, expecting Louis to follow her. Presently Jimmy discovered her, bringing three other children with him, and they sat with shining eyes while she told them fairy-tales.

When they drew into Plymouth Harbour the fo'c'sle was cleared, and Marcella watched a few people going ashore. Not very many went: they had not been at sea long enough to welcome a change on land, and the Oriana only stayed two hours to take on mails and passengers.

All that day she did not see Louis. Once or twice she heard him in his cabin, speaking to the man who shared it with him; not once did he put in an appearance at meals, and even at the melancholy hour of twilight he hid himself somewhere. She began to feel a little neglected.

It was easy to make friends: there were so many children to act as introducers. It was interesting to watch people forming little cliques; the pock-marked man had now a collection of eight; they went ashore at Plymouth and came back again talking excitedly, with little snatches of song. Mr. Peters and Mrs. Hetherington, the bright-haired little widow, were inseparable; one of the farm lads had forsaken Ole Fred already for a shy, red-cheeked emigrant girl, who giggled a good deal in corners with him; they sat for long hours, as the trip went on, saying nothing, staring out vacantly to sea, and occasionally holding each other's hands. At tea-time Marcella saw Louis come to the door of the saloon, look round with a frown, become very red in the face as he saw several people look at him casually, and beat a hasty retreat. She had a long talk with the thin girl during the evening, learning that she had been under-housemaid in a girls' school; she asked Marcella her name, volunteering the information that she was Phyllis Mayes, only her friends called her Diddy; she seemed to have got over much of her grief at parting with her sister. After a while she explained, blushing and giggling, that one of the cook's assistants had made friends with her the previous night and given her two meringues.

"A friend of mine who came out as a stewardess told me the best thing you could do was to make friends with the cooks or the butchers—because there's all sorts of little tit-bits they can get for you. Young Bill—him that gave me the meringues—has got a mate called Winkle. I'll give you an intro., if you like. He's quite a toff. He's been a waiter."

Marcella made some excuse, but when Phyllis—or Diddy—went away to her appointment with Bill she sat for a long time thinking. She was already feeling disillusioned.

At nine o'clock she decided to go below. In the shadow of the steps leading to the upper deck Mr. Peters and Mrs. Hetherington were sitting very close together. A little bright tray was at their feet, and a big bottle with a cap and scarf of gold foil stood sentinel over two glasses of such an exquisite shape that Marcella stared hard at them as she passed, saying "Good night." Mr. Peters was smiling with filmy, vacuous eyes. The little lady was flushed and vivid-looking. They both nodded beamingly at her. At the other side of the steps, in the bright light of the electric lamp was a small bundle, between two scarlet fire buckets. It was Jimmy.

His hands were very dirty, his neck and back looked uncomfortably twisted. She touched him gently and he wakened with a start.

"Jimmy, what's to do? You ought to be in bed," she said.

"I'm waiting for dad," he explained, blinking and stretching. "My, it does make your neck stiff."

"Come with me, and I'll put you in bed."

"Must wait for dad," he protested.

"You'll be too tired to play to-morrow. You'll be dropping asleep all day."

"Then he'll go to sleep on the floor, and have a bad back," he said.

"Whyever does he go to sleep on the floor?"

"Because he's too tired, like I was. Only if I take my boots off and kick him—very kindly, I have to kick—he wakes up and he's cross and then he gets into bed."

He stared at her, frowning, as though trying to understand or else to explain this queerness of his father's. Next minute he found himself clasped firmly in her arms. He was very thin and light—much thinner than the Mactavish babies and Jock's children.

She marched up to Mr. Peters.

"I'm putting Jimmy to bed, Mr. Peters. It's late and cold." Then she added, "May I?"

"Plezh—plezh—my dear," he said, smiling foolishly.

"Sweet of you—dear little chap," twittered the little lady.

They passed a group of some dozen men sitting round a brown blanket hedged with a fence of tumblers. They were watching a game of cards. The pock-marked man looked up from the pile of cards in front of him and grinned at Jimmy.

"You find it easier to get off than I do, son," he shouted. Jimmy kicked out at him as they passed, and there was a roar of laughter.

"I hate him—he's like the Beast," said the child as they went down the companion-way.

"Poor man—he can't help that. The Beast turned into a prince, didn't he?"

"He's a nasty man. He sleeps in with us. And the man with no fingers. Ugh, they're dreadful. They stayed awake all night and so did daddy. And they wouldn't let me put the bottles through the porthole this morning. They put them themselves, and I did so want to see them go smash."

Marcella stopped dead. Things were trickling into her mind. She saw her father and her little thin arm dangling sickeningly when he broke it years ago; all her childish terrors of him came back, associated with the whisky, changed into a general terror of anything that was a father. She saw Jimmy's little arm broken—and there were three of them in that tiny cabin to break his little arm!

"Oh, poor wee mannie! Jimmy, ye're just going to sleep in my little house."

He started to dance with joy, holding on to her hand and hopping on one foot in the alley-way. Then his face clouded over.

"There'll be nobody to make daddy get in bed, then," he said.

"Well—"

"His back'll be bad to-morrow if he lies on the floor."

"The ugly man will make him go to bed, because if he doesn't they won't have anywhere to walk," she said, determined to save his arm at any cost.

"D'you think so?" he asked eagerly.

"Yes, quite sure. He'll be quite safe. Where's your nighty?"

He darted into Number 15 and came back with a minute bundle.

"I don't have to have nighties now. Gran said I was grown up now I was coming to Australia. So I wear pyjamas, made out of the same stuff as Dad's," he explained, undressing hurriedly and putting them on with considerable pride. "Last night was the first time I wore them. Only Daddy never looked, with those other men there."

A lump came into Marcella's throat as he neatly folded his clothes and laid them in a heap on the floor.

"There's a pocket, look!" he said, afraid that she would miss any of the proud points of his pyjamas. "Gran put a silver sixpence in it, for luck, and a little letter. But I can't read yet."

He fumbled in the pocket which was just big enough for his hand. There was the sixpence and a little handkerchief with rabbits sitting perkily at each corner. The letter was a small text-card with a bright rosebud painted on it.

"Read it," he said, watching her anxiously. "Granny read it to me when she put it there."

"Call upon me in the time of trouble," she read. He nodded.

"That's right. Now put it back. Gran said I must never lose it, and some day if I remembered it, it might come in handy."

She tucked it safely away and he started to climb into bed.

"Jimmy, I always get washed before bed, don't you?" she suggested.

"Oh yes. I promised Gran. But it's hard to remember everything," he said resignedly. But his washing was not very comprehensive; Marcella promised herself a busy half-hour with him in the bathroom next morning.

He was asleep in two minutes, but Marcella did not attempt to undress for a long time. She dragged the cabin trunk out from under the bunk very quietly, and, sitting down on it, frowned. A queer thing had happened to her. Over all her early life her father had towered like a Colossus. The rest of the world had been filled with friends—friendly visions, friendly people, friendly ghosts. She had not met anyone unkind before. Conditions had never been anything but unkind; she expected cold and hunger, hardness and discomfort. But that people could be unkind to each other she had never realized. Then had come Louis's tale, which had horrified her, Diddy's tale which had grieved her at first and then puzzled her as she saw how easily the image of the sick girl was replaced by that of a man who gave her meringues. Ole Fred had frightened her: Mr. Peters had at first seemed ridiculous and then cruel. Most of the people on the ship seemed cruel, when she came to reflect about it. Something cruel had happened that very morning. She had noticed, when they came aboard at Tilbury, a very romantic figure standing on deck; he fitted in much better with her conceptions of travel in far lands than did the very respectable, commonplace fathers of families she saw scattered about the deck. He was a man in knee breeches, leather leggings, a bright blue shirt and a claret and buff blazer. He wore a wide-brimmed brown hat and a fierce expression. From his leather belt hung a huge clasp knife and two small pistols. She thought him very funny, but very much like herself when she had dressed up as King Arthur. She sympathized entirely with his dressing a part. Later she heard shouts of cruel laughter as he explained valiantly that he had never in his life been from his native village in the Welsh hills—that Australia was a new country that needed to be "opened up." He quoted Manville Fenn and other writers of boys' adventure stories thirty or forty years old to show the dangers of Australia and his own indomitable courage in tackling them: he told of Captain Cook's heart and many other blood-curdling tales, and was greeted with ironical cheers and laughter. They explained to him at great length all about the civilization of Australia, and when, an hour after the Devon coast had dropped below the horizon he became miserably sea-sick, they formed a procession before him, carrying fire buckets, brandy and beer to his assistance.

Marcella was muddled. She frowned and got no nearer a solution to her puzzles, until she remembered that, right at the top of her trunk, put in at the last moment, was a Golden Treasury her mother gave her years ago.

She turned the pages to the end, looking for something she remembered that seemed to fit in with her mood. In the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality she read it—

"Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized,"

she murmured. "Well, that means that I'm not the only one. Wordsworth evidently got worried about things like I do. But it's the cruelty—that's what I can't understand."

There was a little comfort in that thought as she fell asleep: it gave her a sense of comradeliness that anyone so eminently sane as Wordsworth should have had "blank misgivings."



CHAPTER VIII

Blue and silver had turned to blue and gold next morning; the light no longer seemed to come from the sea in bright glitters; it was transfused through the air as liquid gold, very mellow and soothing and softened. It was five o'clock when she wakened. Through the open port she could see the sea swelling gently, breaking into a little hesitating ripple of foam here and there. She climbed very carefully down from her bunk; Jimmy was still sleeping soundly. There was no one about save a few deck hands scrubbing up above; they were out of sight of land now, and she gave a deep sigh of exhilaration as she turned on the sea-water spigot of the bath and, opening the port wide, felt the keen morning breezes blowing in upon her. Coming out ten minutes later, pink-cheeked and damp-haired, she met Louis in pyjamas, hurrying along with a towel over his arm.

"Were you ill yesterday?" she said, standing in front of him. "I could hear your bunk creaking lots of times in the night, and once or twice you gave the partition an almighty crack."

"Oh, I'm all right," he said, dashing past without looking at her.

"I suppose," she called softly, with mischief in her eyes, "that you are intentionally making for the women's bathroom? Someone might want to use it and be horrified to see you emerging—"

"Laughing at me again, aren't you?" he cried savagely, turning with a scowl and standing undecided.

She hurried below to give him a chance to retire gracefully.

When she was in a white frock and Jimmy shining with soap and water, they took their places at the breakfast-table. Mr. Peters looked at Jimmy in surprise.

"Hello! I never noticed you get up," he said.

"He slept in my cabin," she explained. "He was frightened."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure, young lady," he said and turned to Mrs. Hetherington, who looked at Marcella calculatingly between narrow lids. As soon as breakfast was over she put her arm confidingly through Marcella's and drew her aside.

"Come for a little stroll, dear, won't you? I can see that you're different from most of the passengers—they're so common so terribly common. I've regretted very much that I came third class. It wasn't that I wanted to save money, you know," her voice twittered to little inarticulacies.

"Most of the people are very interesting," said Marcella.

"I find poor Mistah Petahs interesting, very," said Mrs. Hetherington, pressing Marcella's arm. "Losing my dear husband, and he losing his wife—it's a bond, isn't it? And I feel so sorry for a poor man with a child to bring up."

"Um—" said Marcella doubtfully.

"It's sweet of you to mother the little fellow, dear. He must be a great trouble to poor Mistah Petahs! I have two little darlings, but I find that boarding school suits them much better than being with me. I think that children need both father and mother, don't you?"

"Yes," said Marcella dazedly, unable to follow Mrs. Hetherington's reasoning.

"And you know," she went on, "I've a terrible feeling that poor Mistah Petah's loneliness might lead him to—er—Oh dreadful things." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "My dear—I believe he drinks," she said, underlining the words. "I tried my best to look after him last night," she added plaintively.

"Oh, did you?" said Marcella and suddenly stopped dead. "All this looking after! What are we all up to? Is it impudence or vanity, or what is it? I don't know! Anyway, I'm going below," and she turned abruptly away.

As it was Sunday Marcella lost her crowd of children, who were claimed for a church service by an enthusiastic missionary in the first class. She spent the morning writing letters and reading. When she went to her cabin to get ready for lunch there was a note pinned on to the mirror. She took it down in surprise.

"I don't know your name," she read; "but I must see you. I've been going through hell and I can't hold out. I understand myself very well; I know what I need, but I can't do it. I've got to have someone to make me do things. And if you make me do things I'll get huffy with you and try to deceive you. It's pretty hopeless, isn't it? That pock-marked devil has been trying to get me. That's why I've been taking to cover all this time, partly. Come up on the fo'c'sle to-night at seven. I'll be sitting on the anchor. For God's sake come. And don't laugh at me, will you? I can't stand it. L. F."

Without pausing she took paper and pencil and wrote.

"I shall be there. Of course I shall not laugh at you. I cannot understand anything. I am sorry to admit this, because you will say I am like your parents. I am in muddles myself, but I am most sorry for you. And my name is Marcella Lashcairn of Lashnagar."

She put it in an envelope, addressed it to him, tapped on his door and pushed it under.

She went on deck that afternoon in a state of bubbling excitement. There were not many people about. They were just getting into the Bay of Biscay and the Oriana was rolling a little; many had succumbed to sea-sickness; many more were afraid of it and had gone to lie down in their bunks. She took some books to read but did not open them for a long time until the sea-glare had made her eyes ache.

Then she opened "Questing Cells," which she had decided to try to master during the voyage. She read a page, understanding much better than when she had read it to her father. But she was pulled up over the word "inhibition."

It was a chapter of generalization at the end of the book that she was trying to fathom.

"Women have no inhibitions: their pretended inhibitions serve exactly the same purpose as the civet-cat's scent of musk, the peacock's gorgeous tail, the glow-worm's lamp. A woman's inhibitions are invitations. Women do not exist—per se. They are merely the vehicles of existence. If they fail to reproduce their kind, they have failed in their purpose; they are unconsciously ruled by the philoprogenitive passion; it is their raison d'etre, for it they are fed, clothed, trained, bred. Existing for the race, they enjoy existence merely in the preliminary canter. Small brained, short-visioned, they lose sight of the race and desire the preliminary canter, with its excitements and promises, to continue indefinitely."

The word "philoprogenitive" and the French phrase stopped her.

"Why on earth I didn't bring a dictionary," she said, "passes my comprehension! I'll write the words down and ask someone."

A young man was sitting on the deck a few yards away, his back against a capstan. He looked supremely uncomfortable trying to read a little blue-backed book.

Marcella looked at Louis's chair empty beside her.

"Wouldn't you like to sit on this chair?" she said, and the young man looked up startled.

"You look so uncomfortable there. This chair isn't being used. Won't you sit down?"

"That's very good of you. I was getting a decided crick in my back," he said, sitting down and wondering whether to go on reading or to entertain her. Marcella looked at him; he was the epitome of propriety, the spirit of the Sabbath incarnate in his neat black suit, gold watch-chain and very high collar.

"I really asked you to sit here for quite a selfish reason," she said. "I want to know the meanings of some words that have just cropped up. You look as if you know."

The young man coughed and looked pleased.

"I am a schoolmaster," he remarked. "Probably I can—"

"Inhibition?" she interrupted.

"Inhibition?" he said. "That means 'holding back.' Latin 'habeo, I have' or 'I hold' and 'in—"

"Women have no inhibitions," she repeated; "no power of holding back."

She frowned, and decided to return to that later. "Now philoprogenitive," she said turning to him. He stared at her, coughed again and held out his hand for the book.

"That's rather a difficult book for a girl to be reading, isn't it?" he said, glancing at the title page. "Oh, Kraill the biologist? Whatever makes you read that? I thought girls read Mrs. Barclay and Charles Garvice."

"I have not read any of their books yet," she said. "I read this book some time ago, and it seemed to me to hold the whole illumination of life. But since I've been on this ship I've been in a muddle about things. People are not a bit like I thought they would be. I was awake hours last night trying to get right about it."

"They're not a very nice collection here—in the steerage. But the difference in fare between steerage and second is very considerable—very considerable," he sighed. "My profession must take care of the financial aspect of life."

Marcella felt that he was honest. He was the first passenger who had admitted that he had not unlimited wealth.

"That's refreshing. Most of the people here want one to think they are disguised millionaires only travelling steerage to enquire into the ways of poorer folks. And that's part of my puzzle. I want to know why these people are not a very nice collection. Is my taste at fault? Last night I raked out my 'Golden Treasury' and read about 'Blind misgivings of a creature roaming about in worlds not realized.'"

"You misquote," he murmured. "'Blank' not 'blind' and 'moving' not 'roaming.'"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Of course," he said with an air of depth and of conscious helpfulness, "the most difficult thing on earth—and, I may remark, the most important—is realization of one's sphere, and one's place in that sphere. And our way of instructing the young in such realization is defective, defective to a degree at present. Queerly enough I am just reading Tagore on 'Realization.' You know Tagore, of course?"

She shook her head.

"He is the Bengali poet who was recently honoured by His Majesty with a knighthood. Perhaps you would like to change books and see what he says? I have marked something on page sixteen that is helpful, particularly helpful."

"Thank you. But take care of my book, won't you? It is very precious, because it belonged to my father."

She looked into "Realization," but its cool calmness failed to grip her at first, and she lay back in her chair, the breeze fanning her hair, the deep blue of the sky flecked with little cirrus clouds above her as she dreamed. Presently the schoolmaster went below for tea, and she was left alone. She had decided that she did not want tea; after this quiet place the saloon seemed too noisy, and now that seven o'clock was drawing nearer she was feeling rather frightened.

The gold in the air was collected into a great ball that turned crimson in the west, touching the crests of the waves with red as though blood had been splashed upon them, setting Marcella's hair afire, turning her white frock rosy-pink. Two bells sounded, and the sea and the sky grew deep blue, while shadows began to slink about the decks and stalk over the water; grey veils fell over the western sky, and she sat up straight, wondering where Louis was.

Quarter-past seven—twenty-past—and the quick twilight with its message of melancholy was almost past. Three bells sounded, and on the upper deck she saw the saloon passengers going in to dinner. Then she started up.

"He said he was horribly shy and nervous—anyone can see he is, too. I suppose he's frightened, now."

For a moment she stood leaning over the rail, her face turned towards the stairway, waiting. Then her feet took her down the steps, along the deck, past the engine-room towards the companion-way. Diddy and a young man in white sat on the step of the cook's galley in a hot atmosphere redolent of food; she was eating an orange. Under the steps Mr. Peters and Mrs. Hetherington sat in shadow; further away, up the deck, the young missionary had collected a group of children and women who were singing "There's a Friend for Little Children" all out of tune. She looked round almost motivelessly before she went below. A splash of light and a volley of laughter from the bar broke through the hymn singing. She turned quickly. Inside the bar, which was arranged like a great window with sliding panels, stood a little man with bright black eyes, wearing a white coat. Behind him were rows upon rows of bottles and bright shining glasses; a cash register was on the counter. Leaning against it, his face amazingly merry, his eyes shining, was Louis, talking volubly without the suspicion of a stammer. In his hand was a tumbler.

Marcella felt her knees getting weak, though she scarcely realized that she was frightened; she felt that there was going to be a fight of some sort, though she did not rightly realize her enemy. Then, justly or unjustly, her fears crystallized and she had something tangible to fight, for the pock-marked man was standing beside Louis, patting him on the back and smiling at him.

The words of Louis' letter flashed into the depths of her mind: "That pock-marked man's a devil—he's trying to get me."

She made her frightened feet go nearer. Ole Fred saw her and grinned.

"Come for that drink, miss?" he asked. She scowled at him; if she had been nine instead of nineteen it would have been called deliberately "making a face." Then she looked past him to Louis.

"I've been waiting for you half an hour, Louis."

"I'm not coming," he said, looking away from her awkwardly. "Y-you've b-better c-company than m-mine."

She flushed and felt herself trembling with temper. A flash from her father's eyes lit up her face as she said quickly:

"No, I haven't. I want to talk to you."

"I c-can't l-leave these chaps now. I'll s-see you to-morrow," he said sullenly.

"Oh no, you'll not. What's to do, Louis? You said you wanted to see me, and there I was waiting for you, and feeling so lonely."

"Go on, ole man. Take her in a dark corner somewhere. Wants a spoon pretty bad," said the red-haired man. "The bar don't close till eleven, an' we'll have some in Number 15 if you're too late."

Marcella treated him to one of her scowls that astonished him, and suddenly, setting his teeth, Louis put down his glass, took her arm roughly and, striding along blindly, made forrard.

Until they got into the privacy of the fo'c'sle neither spoke. She was breathless, partly with indignation, partly with indefinable fear and partly with the breakneck speed at which he had rushed her along the deck. He sat down on the anchor; she stood before him, her back to the rail, which she gripped with her hands. Her first impulse was to shake him thoroughly. But she resisted it as she heard him groan.

"Never—never in all my life have I imagined there could be anyone so utterly rude as you, and so utterly mad. What on earth do you think you're doing?" she said breathlessly.

To her surprise he spoke quite quietly.

"I got mad with you. I can see now I was a fool."

"But why should you get mad with me? And even if you did, is that any reason why you should go and—and—what was that beastly word?—beer-bum with those awful men?"

"I—I—s-saw you—s-sitting here th-this afternoon—t-talking t-to a man," he stammered, covering his face with his hand.

"Yes, I was. Why not?"

"In—in m-my chair!"

"Oh, my goodness! You great baby!" she cried.

"I w-was c-coming up with s-some t-tea for you and—and th-there I s-saw another man," he jerked out, overcome by the pathos of it. "I th-threw it overboard."

"But supposing there had been sixteen men, why shouldn't I talk to them?"

"I d-don't w-want you to. I w-wanted to talk to you."

"Well!" She could find nothing else to say in her astonishment.

"Don't you see that's enough to start me drinking?" he burst out passionately. "Whenever I get hipped about anything—I—t-told you I know myself very well. I'd only h-had one drink when you came along. Did you notice me?"

"Notice you! Oh no!" she cried scornfully.

"Y-you know w-what a nervous f-fool I am; how I'm afraid of my own shadow. But when I've had only one whisky I'd tackle Satan himself! You must have noticed that I was jolly enough then! I used to be the ringleader in all the stunts at the hospital. But when I don't drink I'm afraid to face people. Do you know I haven't had a meal since I came aboard, except your piece of cake and the tea I've made? And now I've thrown my teapot overboard."

"But whyever haven't you had a meal?"

"All those damn fools in the saloon are looking at me!"

"Oh, you idiot!" she cried, and suddenly sat down on the anchor beside him, all her indignation at the personal slight and the personal annoyance gone.

"You see how it is, Marcella," he groaned. "I can call you Marcella, can't I? Just till we get to Sydney. It sounds a Roman, fighting sort of name. You see how wobbly I am! I've had the devil's own time since we left Tilbury, lying there in my bunk, thinking, thinking—and the more I think the more sorry I get for myself, and the more I hate other people, and the more nervous I get. I knew I was in for a bad attack. I always do when I get away from home. Reaction I suppose. I put up the devil of a fight, and then when I felt it was whacking me I wrote to you."

"Well, I said I'd come, didn't I? And I waited," she reminded him.

"Yes, and then I saw you talking to that idiotic fellow in a high collar, and I thought, 'Oh, everything be damned!' So I chummed up to the pock-marked chap. He was glad enough to have me! Wants me to play poker."

He buried his face, and she could scarcely hear his words.

"Oh, God," he muttered, "you can see how it is! All the time I'm not drunk I'm worrying and thinking what a hell of a mess I've made of things. Th-the minute I'm even sniffing whisky I see everything in a warm, rosy glow. When I'm not drunk everyone's an enemy; when I'm drunk they're all jolly good fellows. Marcella, I'm alone on earth, and I don't want to be."

She sat there, impatient with herself for her ignorance, her hands clasping and unclasping each other nervously.

"Louis—" she began. She could get no further. "Louis—what's one to do? You say you're a doctor and understand yourself. It seems to me you've really a disease, haven't you? Just as much as—as measles?"

"Of course it's a disease! But don't you see how hopeless it is? It's a disease in which the nurse and the doctor both get the huff with the patient because he's such a damned nuisance to them! And he, poor devil, by the very nature of the disease, fights every step of the treatment."

There was a long silence. At last she put her hand on his arm.

"You know you want to be happy, don't you? You say you don't want to be lonely. That's why you drink the miserable stuff, to make you forget that you're unhappy and friendless."

"Yes—you do understand, you see," he cried eagerly.

"Well, this is where I'm so puzzled. I'm quite happy, and I always think people are my friends. What I want to know is what is there inside us two that's different?"

He shook his head impatiently.

"It's in my family," he began, and she felt it on the tip of her tongue to tell him it was in hers too, but something stopped her. "And it's a hunger—absolutely an unendurable hunger."

"Were you always frightened of things?" she said, a little wonderingly.

"No—I was always nervy and shy and repressed. But this is a vicious circle, don't you see? A thing is called a vicious circle in medicine when cause and effect are so closely linked that you can't tell which is which. At home I was repressed; that was the fashion in my young days. The motto was, 'Children are to be seen and not heard.' I dodged visitors always; when I met them by any chance I was always a fool with them, blinking and stammering like anything. When I was first at the hospital among men I was gawky until quite by chance I discovered that whisky made me graceful, stopped the stammering, gave me a surprising flow of eloquence and made me feel a damned fine chap. Naturally I went at it like anything, and of course after each burst was more nervous than ever. It plays havoc with your nerves, you know. And in addition I had a sense of guilt.—Oh, damn life!"

"Yes," she said slowly. She understood what a vicious circle was now. "You drank to stop yourself being nervous. The stuff makes you temporarily happy, and then even more nervous afterwards. So you drink more. Oh, my goodness, how silly!"

"But you don't take into account what a hunger it is, you know," he said in a low voice. "You don't understand that. I don't think there can be such another hunger on earth, even love."

"Oh—" she started to speak, and stopped. She had never thought of love like that, and wanted to tell him so, but that seemed to be side-tracking. So she went on, "Has it occurred to you that it will make you ill, kill you in time?"

"Do you think I've had five years at a hospital without seeing alcoholism?" he said bitterly. "Oh, I know all the diseases—I shall go mad, I expect. My brain's much weaker than my body."

"I suppose you think it's very nice to go mad?" she said, hating herself for the futility of her words, wishing she had books or preachments to hurl at him and convince him.

"Oh, what's it matter?" he said wearily. "Who cares?"

"Have you any idea how horrible it is, Louis?" she asked solemnly, with all the tragedy of the farm behind her words, compelling him to look at her.

"Most diseases are horrible—what about cancer?" he said coolly.

"But people can't help cancer, and they can—at least I think so—help your sort of illness. Louis, I saw the two people I love best on earth dying. One of them died of cancer, the other of drink. I wasn't going to tell you that. But when you said it was in your family I was going to tell you that was no argument. It's been in my family for generations and generations. I suppose it's in everyone's to some extent. It has wiped out all my family. But it certainly is not going to wipe out me. I perhaps should not talk about my family to you, a stranger. Yet somehow I feel that father would not mind my telling you about him, if it can help you from suffering as he did. He cured himself."

"How?" he cried with sudden, breathless hopefulness.

"There, that's the awfulness of it. I don't know. I only know that one day he was drunk, and the next day he was not, and never was again. He said he gave all his burden to God."

He shook himself impatiently.

"Oh, I can't believe in all that rot!" he said harshly. "I neither trust God nor myself."

Below deck the mandoline began to twang again, and the soft Italian voice went on with "La Donna E Mobile" interminably.

"Louis, listen to me," she said quietly. "I'm not going to let you die like father died. I'm not going to let your heart get all horrible and thumping so that you can't lie down, and your feet and hands swollen and white and horrible. And I'm not going to have you shut up in an asylum."

"It's good of you to bother," he said humbly, "but I can see it's no good. You can't stop it. I can't myself. You'd get fed up. You'll get fed up with me as it is before we get to Sydney. You'll be jolly glad to get rid of me and be off with the uncle into the backblocks. I insulted and sickened and shamed Violet till she threw me over. And she loved me. I know very well she did."

"I won't let you be rude to me, Louis. I'm not quite like Violet, perhaps. If people are rude to me I don't get hurt. I just give them a good shaking and forget it. Besides, I couldn't get cross with anyone for being ill, could I? And I'm going to make you get better before we get to Sydney."

He shook his head hopelessly.

"I mean it. I am going to keep worrying you about it till you stop it dead. I'll make it seem a dreadful nuisance to you."

"It may work," he said slowly, impressed by her certainty. "So long as we're on the ship. If you can keep me from the Ole Fred gang. But it'll be all up when we get to Sydney and you leave me."

"Well then, I'll stay in Sydney," she said, making up her mind casually. "I'll tell uncle I don't want to go and live with him. I'll find some way of staying with you."

"I say, do you mean it?" he cried. "After my rudeness?"

"Of course I mean it. It will be fun! I love a fight!"

"And you mean that you really care about me?"

"Of course I care! I believe I'll die if you don't get better," she said eagerly.

He fumbled in his pockets, lit several matches and put something in her hand.

"Here it is, look. Thirteen pounds, eight and fivepence."

"What's that for?"

"It's all my money. If I have any I'll be magnetized towards the bar. If I haven't, it's much safer. And look here, Marcella, if I come and knock you down with a sledgehammer, don't let me have that money, will you?"

"I won't," she said promptly.

She was thrilled, exhilarated, as they went below after shaking hands solemnly. She was Siegfried, and the dragon had a pock-marked face, and each foot had three claws missing. She thought, as she looked through dream-misted eyes, that the dragon was a very long one, with many legs and many heads. But she had not the faintest doubt that, in the end, he would fall to her trusty sword. And she told Louis so at the door of his cabin as she said good night to him.

Then she turned back to Number 15. She had looked about the deck for Jimmy, but guessing that he had fallen asleep in his own bunk, pushed open the door softly. She was determined that he should not sleep in there with Ole Fred, who was celebrating a great win at poker.

Louis stood at his own door.

"What are you going in there for?" he asked.

"I'm fetching poor little Jimmy. He's terrified of Ole Fred. He calls him the Beast. I think it's disgusting that he and the red-haired man sleep in here with a little boy."

He nodded and smiled at her, but Jimmy was not in the cabin at all. As she came out Ole Fred came along the alley-way. He leered at her but did not speak. She hurried into her own cabin, shut the door and pushed the bolt along instinctively. As she switched on the light she saw a very small amount of exceedingly dirty water in her basin, and Jimmy's neat pile of tiny clothes folded on the floor. He was fast asleep in the lower bunk.

She started to undress in a golden glow of romance, and realized that, as her clothes came off, her armour was going to stay on, waking and sleeping, visible only to herself. Then she thought of a small, trivial thing. She tapped on the partition.

"Are you hungry?" she called quietly.

"Frightfully."

"Go and talk to Knollys. He's very nice. He'll find something for you."

"N-no. I c-can't," he stammered, frightened immediately.

"Then I shall," she said, and, slipping on her dressing-gown, went along to the saloon. By luck she found Knollys there and he produced bread and cheese and ship's biscuit from the steward's pantry.

"I imagine you are hungry, miss," he said respectfully when she asked him to be sure to give her a lot.

"No, I'm not. It's Mr. Farne in Number 8. He hasn't had a meal since he came aboard."

"Sea-sick?" he said sympathetically.

"Well—" she began, and realizing that she could not explain, nodded.

"He's better now, anyhow."

"I'll make him some tea if you like, miss," went on Knollys. She waited until he had made it, and ten minutes later she tapped on Louis's door, took the tray in, laid it on his bunk and came out.

"I won't stay to keep you company. When I'm very hungry I like to gobble, but I don't like anyone to watch me," she said.

As she came out Ole Fred opened the door of Number 15 and stood watching her until her door closed. Then he hurried on deck.



CHAPTER IX

For the next few days Marcella and Louis were inseparable. They were up very early each morning and did the usual march—seven times round the deck before breakfast. Afterwards she went up on the fo'c'sle and waited for him; for the rest of the day there was nothing to do but talk and read, and there was only a very limited library. Sometimes Louis talked of medicine; he told her things that had happened, that he had seen at the hospital; he explained cases to her, quoted lectures, and she, with all a layman's rather morbid interest, was fascinated. He, with the aura of travel, of learning, of experience in the ways of men, began to play Othello to her Desdemona. Feeling at his ease with her, and getting strength every day from the fact that yet another day had gone by without a victory to his enemy, he lost his shyness; she began to feel very humble as he talked largely, and her passion for understanding, enlightenment, that had led her to read books she could not understand, to talk to everyone and even to talk to herself, now enveloped him. She opened her mouth to be fed from his stores. Sometimes he would talk of London, a marvellous fairyland to her; tell her of "rags" in which he had played the leading part; of things he had done when he was in Rio for three months—Rio! the very name enthralled her! It smacked of buccaneers and Francis Drake—of his life in New Zealand two years ago, when, snatching himself from the outcasts of Christchurch and Auckland he had flung himself valiantly into the prohibition district of the King Country and lived with the Maoris for six months in the hope of finding the tribal cure for cancer; of the time when, on a girl-chase, he had toured with a theatrical company for a few months while his father thought he was at the hospital working. Her sponge-like eagerness for all the Romance, the Adventure he could give her was insidious in its effect on him; she was flattered that he, with all his cleverness, his "grown-up-ness" that went so queerly with his babyishness, should have so thrown himself on her mercy; to her nineteen years it seemed a wonderful and beautiful thing that a man of twenty-seven should find in her an anchor. Of the three men she had known before, her father had been, even in his weakness, her tyrant; Wullie had been her playmate all her life; the doctor, all alone and friendless in a small, remote village, had found in her an intelligent listener, and had talked quite impersonally to her, as a safety-valve for his own loneliness. To them all she had been just a girl in certain circumstances; her circumstances and not herself had really been the thing that impressed them; she was just someone who happened to be there. But to Louis she was obviously a very tangible, defined person. She could not forget the wonder of that.

And Louis, flattered by her admiration, her wonderment, fell into a very human sort of weakness; he tried to make himself even more interesting; with the same quite amiable weakness that makes the witness of a street accident spill more blood, bear more pain in the telling than the victim could possibly have done, he began to lie to her. She was so easy to lie to. He scarcely realized, at first, that he was lying; a description of an operation he had witnessed, as a student, with Sir Horsley Winans playing the chief part, had won her horrified, shivering admiration; ten minutes later he was describing how he himself had done trephining (which he was careful to assure her was the most difficult operation possible) on an injured dock labourer; how the patient had wakened from the anesthetic in the middle of it; how Louis had immediately dropped his instruments and gone on administering the anesthetic because the anesthetist was actually flirting with a nurse who was Louis's pet annoyance in the wards; how the electric light had failed at the crucial moment; how only Louis's iron nerve had prevented tragedy and horror.

"You may think, seeing me such a bundle of nerves as I am now, that I couldn't have done it," he said. "But when I'm doing the doctor job I'm a different being; I lose myself. I just gave him another whiff of A.C.E., called to the nurses to fetch candles and got on with it. He's walking about London to-day—as right as nine-pence."

She knew nothing about hospitals, had never seen one in her life; he called most things by their bewildering technical names and she listened respectfully as a layman will always listen to technicalities. She did not know that the whole thing was a fabrication; in spite of his warning about his lying she had naturally thought that, if he should lie to her at all it would be about drinking and not about everyday affairs. And he, carried away by his imagination and his desire to impress her, scarcely realized what he was doing.

Marcella was very bad for him; her courteous belief in him encouraged him to deceive her; he thought she was rather silly; any other girl would have chaffed him, have capped his tales by others, obviously "tall" as Violet had done until he had sickened her entirely; but to Marcella's Keltic imagination there was nothing incredible in his gory, gorgeous exploits; was not she, herself, the daughter of a faraway spaewife who could slide down moonbeams and ride on the breasts of snowflakes? And was not she herself a fighter of windmills? To her Romance could not come in too brightly-coloured garb, and so her Romance wove a net about him. Sometimes it flattered: sometimes it amused: sometimes it gave a sense of kinship that made him think that, unless she were a liar she would never have so sympathized with him. He was unable to trace the fine distinction in veracity between describing a perfectly fictitious operation performed by oneself, and in recounting the messages given by the screaming gulls, the whining winds on Lashnagar.

On one or two things she was certainly caught up sharp. His taste in books showed a width of divergence between them that nothing could ever bridge; seeing her with "Fruit Gathering" which the schoolmaster had lent to her, he asked what it was.

"It's by Tagore," she ventured.

"Tagore? Never heard of him," he said dismissively.

In the fly-leaf of the book was a beautiful portrait of Tagore. She showed it to him, remarking that he was the Bengali poet.

"Oh, a nigger!" he cried contemptuously, pushing the book on one side. She frowned at him and shyly suggested that Christ, in that case, shared Tagore's disadvantage. He laughed loudly. Then she opened the book at random. She had been impressed with something before going to bed the night before.

"Listen to this, Louis. I thought I'd like to read it to you," she said, and read, "'Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. And this—listen, 'Let me not look for allies in life's fight, but to my own strength'; and here's the best bit of all, 'Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.' I wish so much I could have found that before father died and read it to him."

"Oh—poetry," he said contemptuously; "a lot of high falutin' nonsense—and by a nigger too! What's that someone said? 'Intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.' That's a good description of a poet."

Another time she spoke of St. Brigid, the Bride of Christ.

"Who's she?" he asked contemptuously.

"The Irish saint." He interrupted with a long tirade against Home Rule which proved, to his satisfaction, that St. Brigid was also "high-falutin' nonsense." A pamphlet of Shaw's she found in the saloon he told her not, on any account, to read.

"A damned Socialist—a vegetarian—a faddist," he said excitedly, and she led the conversation away from books, though he brought it back several times to explain to her the jokes in "Punch" which he said would have to be put into her head with a hammer and chisel, since she was a Scot.

But in spite of puzzlement and divergences she was intensely happy. After the solitude of Lashnagar every day was full of thrilled interest to her. The many people, the changes of temperature as the boat went south, the shoals of porpoises tumbling in the blue water; the strange foods, the passing ships were all amazements to her and the fact that her thoughts had, for the first time, found a tangible resting-place like homing pigeons alighting at their cot, together with her absorption in Louis, all gave her a sense of security.

Louis, on the other hand, though he was trying hard to keep content, realized that the very fact he had to try meant a fight was coming. And his inflated sense of being a very fine fellow indeed in her eyes made it impossible for him to be honest as he had been at first, and tell her that he had caught sight of his enemy seeing to the edge of his sword, the priming of his pistols. He could not ask her for help now—he could not be less than a hero now! He would fight it out alone. Both of them had yet to realize that life is not a static condition: both of them had to realize that lives are interdependent.

At Gibraltar happened something that was to have far-reaching effects. She was watching the frowning Rock; Louis was pointing out the little threatening barbettes as they drew inshore slowly. Out in the stream—very much out—lay a Norddeutscher Lloyd ship at anchor.

"Every inch of this water is mined," he told her. "A touch from switches up on the Rock would blow the whole lot of us to Kingdom Come. The bally old German out there knows that."

Marcella knew nothing of world politics. He explained.

"England is mistress of the seas," he orated proudly. "The empire on which the sun never sets! In a few years' time every foreign ship—especially Germans—will be swept off the seas and Britannia will literally rule the waves."

"She looks such a nice, comfortable, clean old ship," began Marcella, feeling very sorry for her.

"Clean?" he cried. "A German clean? Filthy cockroachy holes, their ships are! Why, there's only one race on earth dirtier than the Germans and that's the Scots."

Then he stopped dead and giggled nervously as he realized what he had said. Her eyes were blazing, her lips quivering; it was impossible for her to speak for a moment, her breath was coming in such sharp pants. For a moment she looked just like Andrew Lashcairn, but before she had time to launch her indignation he was stammering and apologizing and looking so sorry that she decided to bury the hatchet. And he went on breathlessly, trying to reinstate himself.

"You know, I hate the Germans. I happen to know a lot about them and the menace they are to Eng—Britain," he said in a low, confidential voice. He had, as a matter of fact, recently read in proof some spy-revelations his father's firm was publishing. He was well primed. He went on talking rapidly, showing her Germany as an ogre. She listened amazed; she thought all that sort of thing had died out years ago, but, thinking of her own indignant championing of Scotland, decided that she was just as illogical as Louis.

"However do you know all this?" she asked at last.

"Well—as a matter of fact—I did a bit of secret service work once. It was one time when the Pater spewed me out of home."

That day he was secretive and bewildering: once he took a little bundle of crackling papers from his pocket and put them away again furtively, watching her as he did so. She was impressed, but puzzled.

But all the time, in spite of chaffing insults and even friendly overtures he kept away from Ole Fred's gang and stayed almost desperately at Marcella's side. They became the subject of gossip; spiteful gossip on the part of the girls, shocked gossip on the side of the married women, who, with the exception of Mrs. Hetherington, left her severely alone.

Between Marcella and Mrs. Hetherington a queer friendship had sprung up; her quickness, her absolute lack of continuity, her littleness and her transparently minx-like qualities seemed so pathetic that Marcella took her under her wing. She never came out of her cabin for breakfast; the stewardess, with her nose very high in the air and a non-committal voice, had asked Marcella to go to Mrs. Hetherington's cabin the morning after Gibraltar. She found the little lady propped up in her bunk, her black hair all over the pillow, her small face rising from a foam of pink ribbons and laces that seemed unreal to the girl.

"Oh, my dear, how sweet of you to come to me! I am terribly ill—terribly ill," she said faintly.

"I am so sorry. Will I get the doctor?"

"Oh dear no. I am often like this! I suffer terribly, my dear, terribly. My poor, poor head."

Marcella had bought a bottle of eau-de-Cologne at Gibraltar when the Spanish merchants came aboard; she fetched it and bathed Mrs. Hetherington's aching head. All the time she was staring at her fascinating nightgown. It was the first dainty garment she had seen close to since her mother's death.

"That is so nice, dear," she murmured. Marcella blushed. She was not used to being called "dear" and liked it immensely.

"Would you brush my silly mop of hair and then pass me my cap, dear? Oh this hair is a bother! I've often thought I'd have it cut off like a convict."

"I think it is wonderful hair," Marcella told her, brushing it tenderly, and plaiting it back before she arranged it under a ridiculous boudoir cap of ribbon and lace.

"I can't tell you how I suffered during the night, dear," said Mrs. Hetherington plaintively. "(Just pass me the hand mirror, will you?) I can't think why I was so foolish as to travel steerage. Those three emigrant girls in this cabin—my dear, they are absolutely coarse! You should see their underclothes! Look, Marcella—I'm going to call you Marcella, you are so sweet. Look at that nightgown on the top bunk. Pink flannelette! And I hate to share my cabin with them! They've gone on deck now for the day. I told them I simply must be alone."

"Aren't you going to have any breakfast?" asked Marcella. "I'll make you some tea if you like." She and Louis had bought a teapot at Gibraltar, solemnly paying half each and sharing the responsibility for the sacrifice of the other one.

"No, I don't think I could drink tea. What do you think I could have? You know, my dear, it was champagne that upset me like this! Mistah Petahs and I had a small bottle last night and it brought everything back."

She began to wipe a plaintive eye on her small handkerchief.

"The day I married my dear George—the father of my darlings—we had champagne. It always brings it all back to me."

"But—tea makes headaches better."

"Not mine." Mrs. Hetherington knitted her white brows and looked immensely interested.

"I think if you were to see dear Mistah Petahs and ask him to come along the alley-way and speak to me. He is so gentle, so sympathetic, he might suggest something, dear."

"Um," said Marcella, thinking of Jimmy. But she fetched Mistah Petahs who came with voluble and pleased sympathy.

He stood at the door of the cabin smiling fatuously. Mrs. Hetherington gave a little horrified shriek as she saw the tip of his toe over the threshold.

"No, no, naughty boy! You mustn't come in here! I'm shocked."

"Are you ill?" he asked in a deeply pained voice.

"My poor, poor head, Mistah Petahs! That champagne last night brought everything back—dear George and all our happiness."

"Oh, I say," murmured Mr. Peters.

"I feel so ill, so terribly ill. What could I have? If this head doesn't get better I shall jump overboard, really I shall. And then the fishes will eat me!"

Mr. Peters contemplated the prospect hopefully.

"And—I keep thinking of my darlings," she whispered, reduced to tears.

"What you want, little lady, is a hair of the dog that bit you," said Mr. Peters judicially. She gave a gentle little scream.

"Oh you sound so fierce, Mistah Petahs! Which dog? When?" she asked guilelessly.

"I'll get it—you lie back, little lady, and rest your pretty head."

She lay back, with swimming eyes.

He went half a step along the alley-way.

"Mistah Petahs," she called faintly.

He came back, assiduous.

"On ice," she murmured. He nodded and went.

"So kind—so sympathetic," murmured Mrs. Hetherington with closed eyes.

Marcella, who had stood frowning and puzzled, was now pressed into the service.

"I think, dear, when Mistah Petahs comes back I could manage a little bread and butter—only the butter is so nasty."

"Would you like jam?" said Marcella helpfully, liking jam herself.

The thought of jam made Mrs. Hetherington feel faint.

"No, I'll have bread and butter. Get me two slices, dear—thin. And—ask Knollys if he could let you have some cayenne pepper. Bread and butter sprinkled with cayenne always does me good when my head has one of its naughty fits."

Twenty minutes later she was sitting up with sparkling eyes eating devilled bread and butter and drinking champagne daintily while Mr. Peters sat beaming and bashful and inexpressibly silly on a camp-stool in the alley-way, and the bedroom steward wondered what on earth he would do when the officers came along for cabin inspection.

The night before they touched at Naples Marcella and Louis arranged what she called a "ploy." They would go ashore together and spend the day at Pompeii. He had been there before, but he remembered little of it because he had been with a party who had hired a car, taken a luncheon basket and several bottles of whisky and left him asleep in the car while they explored the dead towns.

"It seems an insult to the past—going there and getting drunk on their tombs," he said musingly. "But you and I will have a great day. In a Roman town, Marcella—there's something very Roman about you—you're like the mother of the Gracchi. I happen to know all about the mother of the Gracchi because it came in my Latin translation at Matric, and I had such a devil of a job with it that I never forgot it. That's the only bit of Roman history that's stuck to me, just as 'Julius Caesar' is the only bit of Shakespeare I know because we did scenes from it for a school concert once."

During the afternoon the young schoolmaster came along with "The Last Days of Pompeii" in his hands.

"He's going to suggest coming with us to-morrow," said Louis, who laughed at him every time he saw him. "And he's going to read us bits of local colour. I can see it glinting in his eye. Let's look very busy."

"What can we do?" asked Marcella with a giggle. He initiated her into the mysteries of "Noughts and Crosses" and they sat with heads bent low over the paper as the schoolmaster came along.

"I have been tracing the course of the fugitives in Lytton's immortal work," he began with a cough. "It would greatly add to the interest of visitors to Pompeii if they could follow it to-morrow, so I am giving a little lecture on it in the saloon to anyone who cares—"

"Thanks," said Louis shortly. With a sigh the schoolmaster passed on, and, sitting down with his back against the capstan, read studiously.

"Don't let's go with him if he asks us," whispered Marcella. "Let's be alone."

"Of course—he's a bore," whispered Louis. "I wouldn't lose this day at Pompeii for a shipload of footling schoolmasters."

Very early next morning he wakened her by tapping on her cabin door. She had heard him tossing about in the night and was not surprised that he looked tired and rather haggard. But she forgot to ask him what was the matter as Naples burst upon her the moment she put her head above the companion-way where he was waiting for her.

"Oh—look at it," she gasped.

"Yes, isn't it?" he said, waving his arm as if he were responsible for Naples. "Look at the jolly old bonfire."

All round, in the brilliant blue waters of the Bay, ships lay as if asleep; a few little tugs fussed nervously, a few little boats laden brilliantly with fruit and vegetables glided along as though they were content to reach somewhere quite near by to-morrow or the day after. There was a cloud over the grey town at the foot of Vesuvius; it looked like winding sheets about the dead; it reminded Marcella insensibly of Lashnagar as she saw the mist and smoke wraiths mingle grey and white, rising from fissures, creeping along gullies until they formed a wreath at the crest of the volcano through which a thin needle of yellower smoke was rising straight as a pinnacle through the windless air.

"Does it ever do things now?" she asked rather breathlessly.

"Oh yes. Listen!" She heard faint reports like distant small guns being fired. "With any luck it'll give us a bit of a Crystal Palace Bank Holiday exploit to-night—we sail at midnight, you know. It will be rather gorgeous if the old bonfire will oblige. Red fires, white and silver moonlight—why Naples is making me get poetical," he added, stopping short.

People began to come on deck: the schoolmaster walked along, his finger in between two pages of a Baedeker in which he was going to count off the items of interest he encountered.

"Good morning, Miss Lashcairn!" he said with a smile. "See Naples and die!"

"Oh no—it's too beautiful!" she said quickly. Louis edged her along the deck as a little clatter of church bells pealed from the many spires rising above the tall brown houses of the town. A motor-launch chuff-chuffed out from the quay, flying the yellow flag.

"Port doctor," he informed her. "If he gives us a clean bill we'll be ashore the minute breakfast's over. And I say, Marcella, let me implore you not to have Jimmy or schoolmasters in attendance. This is my show."

She smiled at him and turned to watch three boys scrambling up the ladder after the port doctor, carrying great baskets of grapes and flowers and oranges.

"I'm going to buy you some grapes—those whopping big black ones. It seems the obvious thing to do in Naples, doesn't it? Oh, by the way, I must pay a visit to the Bank of Scotland. You'd better give me five pounds."

"You're very extravagant," she laughed.

"Never mind. Any other trip I've been broke by this time, and in a devil of a mess as well. Lord knows what these bally dagoes will charge us for a car out to Pompeii. They're all on the make. But I don't care if they charge thirteen pounds—"

"Eight and fivepence," she added, laughing at him and running below to unlock her trunk and bring him the money without a glimmer of apprehension.

She put the five pounds into his hand in the alley-way. A minute later he was back with an enormous bunch of grapes lying amongst their green leaves.

"Lock your door when you come on deck, and shut your porthole," he told her. "We're coaling, and coal dust gets everywhere—in your eyes, your finger-nails, your food and your bed if you don't hermetically seal them all. It's a good place to be away from, a coaling ship."

He darted away before she could mention the grapes. She helped Jimmy dress, and then, turning him out, examined her three white frocks with minute care to see in which she should do honour to Pompeii. Often, in the past, she had dressed a part, but always her personality had been lost in the part she was playing. Now she consciously dressed as Marcella; it was probably the first time in her life she had looked interestedly in a mirror; comparing herself with Mrs. Hetherington, she felt vaguely dissatisfied: she wished she were much nicer. Noticing the vine leaves where she had twined them round the rail of her bunk, she broke off two or three and tucked them in her dress at the waist. Stepping back, she surveyed the effect, decided that it was as good as could be managed, and tapped at the partition. She had heard Louis moving about some time before.

There was no answer, and she decided that he must have gone on deck.

It was crowded with passengers waiting for the little boats to take them ashore; Italians went here and there selling fruit, postcards and jewellery straight from Birmingham; two flat coal lighters were drawing ponderously alongside. She could not see Louis.

From end to end she searched the ship, even going on to the upper deck, which to-day was not sacred to the upper-class passengers. But he was nowhere to be seen. A lump came into her throat, her knees felt a little shaky.

Going below again she saw Knollys looking about eagerly.

"Oh, there you are, miss. Mr. Fame desired me to give you this. He was considerably hurried."

She took it with a word of thanks—a little note, folded three cornerwise.

"I'm more sorry than I can say," she read. "The port doctor was an old St. Crispin's man. He noticed me on deck and spoke. He and I were great pals at the hospital, and he asked me to go ashore with him. He remembered how keen I was on gynecology, and has a queer case he'd like me to look at. It's his wife as a matter of fact. I made all sorts of excuses, but he seemed so hurt I had to give way. I know this will disappoint you horribly, but it seems unavoidable. I'll cut away as soon as I can, and we'll still go to Pompeii. After all, I hear we don't sail till one o'clock, so there'll be time—we'll come back in the moonlight. Give my love to Jimmy and the schoolmaster.—L.F."

To her amazement she felt tears begin to prick her eyelids. She blinked fiercely.

"Well, of all the babies! Did it cry because it was wanting to go out, then?" she cried indignantly, and stood watching the coal bunkers being opened. But she could not see much; she was thinking of Louis.

"You'll get filthy here!" said the third officer behind her, "and most uncomfortable. I should advise you to go ashore."

"I can't. I'm waiting for someone," she explained.

"Then I'd go up on the boat deck. You've no idea how abominable it gets down here. Coaling should be prohibited by Act of Parliament."

"Which is the boat-deck?" she asked, glad that her voice was sensible again. He pointed, and she turned away.

The ship was deserted, practically; everyone had gone ashore. She went disconsolately towards the stairway. On the bottom step sat Jimmy sobbing dismally.

"There they are!" he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand and pointing to a little boat out on the blue water. "I did so want to go with them."

Mrs. Hetherington in a white frock and blue sash was waving her hand gaily from the little boat. Marcella suddenly felt indignant with her, and took Jimmy's tear-stained hand.

"There they are!" she said, smiling. "And here are we! We're both in the same boat, old man. Come down to my little house. I've something nice there."

She broke off a big bunch of grapes for him and, taking pencils, books and writing-paper, went back on deck. Two Italians were just going off with a stock of postcards. She bought a dozen for Jimmy, and a little basket of strawberries.

"Now you're going to be a big man, Jimmy. We're going right up on the roof of the ship, and you're having a chair all to yourself so that you can write postcards to Gran."

His face cleared immediately, though as they got settled in the shadow of one of the lifeboats and he saw Mrs. Hetherington's white figure walking along the quay he gave a little sigh. She addressed his postcards as far as his remembered stock of addresses would go. Several Aunties who lived "along Gran's street and along the next and over the field" had to be left out. As soon as postcard writing palled a sailor came along providentially, took him to see the hen coops, and let him find two eggs that had been laid.

Marcella wrote long letters home; only to Wullie did she mention Louis, and even to him she said very little.

Noon came, and the boat deck was very hot. The chiming of bells in the churches told when the moment of the Elevation came and passed; the little reports sounded from the old mountain: she thought they sounded like guns that had been fired a thousand years ago. Jimmy said he didn't feel well, and went to sleep after a while; an Italian boy with black, hyacinthine curls and swimming black eyes spied her white frock from his little boat out in the bay: tying up to the accommodation ladder, he stood singing a passionate song to the twanging of a guitar. She wondered whether this were a personal tribute or a way of earning money. The cap he held out for a coin showed it was the one; his eloquent eyes and picturesque gestures as he begged her little withering bunch of vine leaves showed it was the other. She tossed them to him carelessly, and he bowed and kissed them gracefully.

At last the family parties began to come on board, with hot, tired mothers, cross children and disillusioned fathers; then came the emigrant girls, their hats covered in bright flowers. They were hustled below by the third officer, who was superintending the sluicing of the dusty, black decks. As Marcella went slowly below with Jimmy she heard him declaring that coaling was the bane of his existence, as he pointed out to the ship's doctor marks of black hands deliberately printed high up on the shining white paint.

When she had finished her letters Marcella sat for a while perfectly still while Jimmy slept and the fowls in the coops crooned. Down below in the bunkers the coal went thudding faintly, heard up on the boat deck more as vibrations than sounds, mingling with the tinkling of guitars, the lazy splash of oars; somewhere a man with a voice like a rook was cawing:

"A mother was chay-sing her boy round the room, She was chay-sing her boy round the room"

over and over again. Somewhere at the end of a ventilator shaft a man was polishing boots; he was swearing monotonously, between each rub of his brush, using a list of twelve words beginning with "blast" uttered very softly and increasing in volume of sound and violence of meaning at the twelfth word, when he would start pianissimo again. Marcella's eyes closed; she was not asleep, she was thinking very vividly of Louis, but all the murmur of sounds about her intruded on her consciousness, making clear thought impossible. The peculiar languor of shipboard life seized upon her mind and her body: when she went below both were partly anaesthetized; her feet scarcely felt the boards of the deck; her fingers were scarcely conscious of the letters and books she held. Her eyes and her mind took in the returning passengers dully.

"You look half asleep, kid," said Diddy with sparkling eyes. "We didn't half have a day of it! Young Bill and Mr. Winkle both got shore leaf, and Mr. Winkle knew a man who keeps a little cafe. He was once chef where Mr. Winkle was assistant chef in an hotel. My, we didn't half have a tuck in! Oysters and funny things in French, and chicken done up with jam, and ices. We went to Pompey in the afternoon, but I couldn't move, I was that stuffed up! My, it was a day and a half! Where did you get to?"

"Oh, just about with Jimmy."

"Where's your young chap?" asked Diddy in surprise.

Marcella stared at her and flushed. The schoolmaster came up to her and stood silent beside her. He was very full of Naples. His shoes were dustless, though everyone else was covered in the fine, impalpable powdery dust of Naples. His high collar was spotless, his coat incredibly black. He looked irresistibly as if he had been lay-reading.

"I was hoping that I might have had the pleasure of your company during my journeyings to-day, Miss Lashcairn," he began after a little cough. "But I was—er—afraid to intrude."

"I stayed on board with Jimmy," she explained. "Did you have a good time?"

"One cannot have a good time in the tomb of past splendours," he said slowly. "Imperial Cesar dead and turned to clay stopping a hole to keep the wind away is indeed a tragedy to a sensitive mind. But to see Imperial Pompeii desecrated by ginger-beer bottles, cigarette packets and spent matches—it was more than tragic. It was—it was—but I pause for a word! All the time I was murmuring sadly to myself 'Sic transit gloria mundi.'"

"I'm quite glad I didn't go if it was so bad as that," she said.

"I had been at great, very great, trouble to trace the path of the fugitives in Lytton's immortal work. But I have an idea that at certain points Lytton was rather nebulous. I met your young friend and asked him what he thought. He only laughed, however. He is fond of laughing."

Marcella's dullness disappeared; the clouds from her mind packed like wolves and vanished. Her heart suddenly stood still.

"He was at Pompeii?" she whispered.

"Only for a little time this morning. Then he and his party went away again in their car."

"He was with the doctor," said Marcella, hating to talk about him, but unable not to.

"Not when I saw him. He was with those exceedingly noisy fellows—the man who is severely pitted with small-pox and the man with the missing fingers."

"Oh—"

She turned away and answered him at random after that. Even then she did not see that Louis had deliberately lied to her. She was hurt that he could have gone to Pompeii without her: she was indignant that he had gone with her abomination, the pock-marked man. But perhaps it was only an accident! She wondered, with sudden misgiving, if he could have been back on the boat for her and missed her. But that his desertion was intentional she could not imagine.

Lights began to twinkle from the houses, to flare from the streets, to dance from the boats. The sky of ultramarine became indigo with a green and mauve lightening to the west. Over Vesuvius was a column of white smoke that now turned rosy, now coppery from the fires beneath. Little boat loads of chattering people who seemed ghosts kept tumbling up the accommodation ladder out of the grey water; they seemed to come soundlessly as though they were produced by a conjuror's hand, for no one could hear what they said: only their gestures, their laughing, excited faces were visible. A little cold hand squeezed Marcella's, and she answered Jimmy's eager questions about his father thoughtlessly, while a steamer coming into port hooted shrilly and desolately beyond the bar. The little boats glided up and down, in and out of the shadows of big ships with double lights—lights on board that were determinate and steady, reflections of lights that cracked and shivered and went in long, shimmering ribbons through the water.

"Most of the passengers are aboard now," volunteered the schoolmaster.

"Are they?" she said, her heart sinking. It came to her that he had gone, that she would never see him again. And in that moment she knew just how much she wanted to see him: and in that moment she saw him.

A boatload of men was zigzagging towards the Oriana with snatches of loud song, laughter and occasional shouts. It was impossible to distinguish faces until the boat came within range of the vessel's arc lamps. And their dead white glare shone on Louis's face—and on his face alone, as far as Marcella was concerned. He was grinning vacantly: he looked very white. As he swayed up the ladder she saw that his clothes were covered in dust. Catching sight of her the minute he reached the deck, he lurched towards her. She shrank away a little, frightened of the glazed stare of his eyes, his loose, slobbering mouth. She knew that he was drunk, but he was not drunk as her father had been. Wild thoughts flickered on the curtain of her mind: "drunk as a lord" was one of them. "That's how father used to be," and a queer sort of pride in him followed. After all, there was something in being a lord, even in drunkenness! But this foolish, grinning, damp-mouthed thing before her, who kept making ineffectual attempts to lift his hand to his head and take off his hat, who was coming closer towards her with the inadequate movements she had once seen made by a duck when its leg had been broken!—

"H'lo, ole girl!" he said, standing before her at last. "Parlez-vous Franshay? Ah, oui, oui! Give—kith, ole girl!"

"You'd better go below, Miss Lashcairn," said the schoolmaster in a low voice. "It's no use talking to an intoxicated man."

She knew he was speaking, but she felt mesmerized by Louis, and shook her head impatiently, never taking her eyes for an instant from the boy's dribbling mouth.

"Give's—kith—kith—kisssh," he said solemnly after a great effort, managing to close his mouth. "Baisez-moi—ole girl! Ah, oui, oui! Ole girl—I shay, ole girl—voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"

He caught her arm and held it tight, grinning into her face. She stood with set face, trembling.

"What does he mean?" she asked the schoolmaster, who was looking distressed.

"He is speaking French—I—don't quite"—he coughed nervously—"I don't quite understand him—it isn't classical French. But I should go below. He will be better to-morrow."

Louis turned to him solemnly, his jaws working.

"G-g-go to—school!" he cried, and giggled helplessly. "You w-w-white-livered k-k-kidpuncher! Are you after her yourself? G-god damn you, you're always sniffing about after her."

"I wish you would go below," said the schoolmaster. "Men when intoxicated say things unfit for the ears of young ladies. You go away and leave him to me, Miss Lashcairn."

"Louis, you trusted me to take care of you," she said in a low voice.

He laughed hysterically until tears ran down his cheeks.

"Thass ri', ole girl! Trus' take care of me! Nashly! Father drunkard—father dead drunkard! Nash'ly ta' care poor little Louis."

Ole Fred and the red-haired man had made immediately for the bar, but finding it closed had come back to claim Louis. They saw the schoolmaster's white face and Louis's passionate gestures; they scented a fight, and hoped for it.

"Wan' 'ny 'elp, mate?" cried Ole Fred, putting up his fists.

Marcella did not see them. She saw her father standing by his bed, holding on to the post, praying for courage. Something in her brain gave a little snap like a fiddle string breaking, and, taking Louis by both shoulders, she shook him violently. His head wobbled about loosely. He was terrified, and so were the others. Ole Fred had seen girls and women resort to physical argument: in his world of the East End it was quite common, but he was rather surprised to see a "young lady" do it. Nor had they ever imagined it possible for such a blaze of anger to scorch anyone as shone in her eyes, vibrated in her voice as she loosed him, quite breathless, propped him against the rail and said, very quietly:

"The very next time you mention my father I'll put you in the sea."

Louis was trembling and staring at her, his mouth open. The schoolmaster was the first to speak.

"I regret this," he began, and stopped, coughing.

"Just you shut the 'ole in yer fice," growled Ole Fred. Then, turning to Louis, he became maudlinly soothing. "Look 'ere, mate, no young lady likes to hear her father spoke of rough—even if he ain't her father, as the saying goes. I do' know what the rah's abaht, but y' know, ole chap, no man should make sin—sin—sinuation he can't prove—in black an' white." He looked from one to the other with engaging earnestness. "Life's—life's—slife's too short to quarrel, hearts are too precious to break, so shake hands and kissh and kiss and be frien's, for ole time's sake."

He was so overcome by the pathos of his own eloquence that he began to sob brokenly, clinging to the red-haired man. "We alwiz bin mates, ain't we?" he added, trying to shake hands with him. Fired by his example, Louis made a grab at Marcella. He had entirely forgotten his fright, his shame of a moment ago.

"Thass ri', Marsh—Marcella. Kith—kith—kisssh an' be fren's! Ah, oui, oui, n'est ce pas? Ole Fred—no, no, Ole girl—voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"

She looked at him, frowning. The unusual words—she had never heard French words before—worried her: she never afterwards was able to hear French without an acute sense of discomfort. He was smiling at her with open mouth and wet eyes. She came quite close to him: he cringed unconsciously, and then lifted his face, expecting her to kiss him. Instead, she said in a low voice, close to his ear:

"You asked me to help you, Louis. Do you know the best way to help you?"

"Kith—baisez-moi—ah, oui, oui."

"The best way to help you is to drown you. You're—you're not fit to live! Oh, you're a perfect idiot!"

She turned and ran down below. Dimly she heard the schoolmaster say, "Very foolish to talk to an intoxicated man"; she heard the same boy who had begged her vine leaves singing his passionate love song to the tinkling music of his guitar and the lapping water. Then she was below deck, making blindly for her cabin.

At the door of Number 15 she was arrested by Jimmy. He was standing in the doorway, his head well back, his hands in his trouser pockets.

"Marcella!" he whispered proudly. "Look!"

She made herself conscious of him and looked. On the outer bunk was a crumpled mass of clothing that was heaving up and down and snoring loudly.

"He's there all right. I got him up when he wanted to be on the floor. He pinched my arm fearful. He's very strong, my Daddy is! He didn't pinch it on purpose, he couldn't help it."

Pushing back the sleeve of his jersey, he showed her a red mark as a soldier might show his scars.

"Now he's fast asleep. Marcella, isn't he making a funny noise?" he added with the queerest cross between amusement and puzzlement on his small face. She suddenly realized what he was saying.

"Oh, you little brave man," she cried, taking him up in her arms and kissing him. He wriggled down quickly, and stood in the doorway again, on sentry duty. She forgot to take him with her. She had forgotten everything save her instinct to be alone with her misery.