CHAPTER X

It was not until the Oriana left Port Said that Louis spoke to Marcella again. Three times he wrote to her demanding his money. Three times something got beyond and above the pride that told her to send it to him and have nothing else to say to him, and she refused definitely to give him the money; she asked him to come and talk to her. But he entrenched himself behind the Ole Fred gang and speedily helped to make it the nuisance of the ship. The germ of self-confidence and courage that was entirely missing in his make-up was replaced by bombast under the combined influence of whisky and boredom. Some day, perhaps, the iniquity of fastening up a small world of people in a ship for six weeks with nothing compulsory to do will dawn upon shipping companies, and the passengers will be forced to work, for their own salvation. On board ship people drift; they drift into flirtation which rapidly becomes either love-making or a sex-problem; they drift into drinking or, if they have no such native weakness, they become back-biting and bad tempered.

Marcella found herself drifting like the rest. A letter to Dr. Angus she had begun to write the day after Naples asking him to explain the cause, treatment and cure of drunkenness, still awaited completion. She sat beside Louis's empty chair, physically too inert from want of strenuous exercise, and mentally too troubled to get a grip on anything. Naples had shown her that Louis had not come into her life merely as a shipboard acquaintance to be forgotten and dropped when they reached Sydney, as she would forget and drop Mrs. Hetherington, the schoolmaster and Biddy. His talk of the coincidence of his coming by the Oriana at all had made a deep dint on her Keltic imagination; his appeal to her for help had squared beautifully with her youthful dreams of Deliverance; the fact that he was the first young man who had ever talked to her probably had more than anything else to do with her preoccupation, though she did not realize it.

At Port Said she and Jimmy spent a stifling morning ashore amid the dust and smells of the native quarter. Turning a corner in the bazaar suddenly they heard Louis's voice joined with the red-haired man's in a futile song they sang night and day: it was a song about a man who went to mow a meadow; the second verse was about two men; the third about three and so on, as long as the singer's voice lasted out. It was the red-haired man's boast that he had once kept up to five hundred. As Marcella turned the corner she saw them sitting under some palm trees outside a little cafe, bottles and glasses before them. Louis, who looked dirty and unkempt, was facing her. He broke off and darted towards her.

"I wan' my money," he started.

"You're not going to have it—even if you try to get it with a sledge hammer, as you said you might," she said, white lipped.

"You—you—you're keeping it for yourself!"

"Don't be such a fool, Louis. You know why I'm keeping it. If only you'd stop drinking for a day or two your mind would come clear and you'd talk to me."

"Gi' m' my money, I tell you! Thas' why you hooked on to me, at first. You knew I was a gentleman! You guessed I'd plenty of money! Thas' what you want of me—you know the Pater's a well-known publisher, an' you think you'll do a good thing for yourself."

Marcella had a hard fight then; something told her that this was not Louis speaking. She remembered that he had told her that drinking was an illness. When Mrs. Mactavish had fever she remembered how the people in the village had talked of the cruel things she had said to Mr. Mactavish and her sister, and it came to Marcella that Louis was no more to be blamed than she. But her native temper made her quiver to take him and shake some sense in him, whether he were ill or not. It was in a strained, quiet voice that she said:

"I'm not going to talk any more about it. You'll get it when you say good-bye to me in Sydney," and so she turned away.

Just as the Oriana sailed, about six o'clock she saw him come aboard alone. His face was swollen, his eye blackened by a bruise; his collar was splashed with blood and his white drill suit very dirty and crumpled. She had seen Ole Fred carried on board some time ago by sympathetic, rather maudlin friends. She guessed that war had flamed up between the incongruous allies. Mrs. Hetherington, rather breathlessly, confirmed her suspicion.

"He fought about you—Ole Fred said you'd been in his cabin, and young Mr. Fame went for him," she said enviously.

"Of course I've been in his cabin. It's Jimmy's cabin—I had to get Jimmy's clean things," she said indignantly.

Mrs. Hetherington put on an air of helpfulness.

"You should always be so careful, dearie. I am. Oh most careful! I never let dear Mistah Petahs put more than the tip of his shoe over my doorway. And as for going into his cabin—My dear! There is no need to provoke scandal; you will learn as you grow older to do things more discreetly."

"Discreet! I hate the word! And Careful! I couldn't be careful!" she cried hotly, but Mrs. Hetherington tapped her playfully on the arm and turned away, murmuring, "Naughty, naughty!"

It was very quiet on deck that night, with Louis and Ole Fred both below in their bunks; a few Arabs had come aboard and sat in a corner of the deck eating their evening meal, which they could not take under the same roof as unbelievers; afterwards, as the sun sank into the purple distance of the desert leaving a sky like a palette splashed by a child's indiscriminating hand, they began an eerie, monotonous chant that went on for hours. Later the stewards rigged up a canvas screen behind which the women and children could sleep, for the heat of the desert was making the lower cabins unbearable; mattresses were dragged here and there, children put to sleep upon them; people walked about, stepping carefully over sleeping forms as the Oriana crept along at five miles an hour with a great searchlight forrard sending a huge fan of light on to the lapping waters of the Canal, and out into the brown sand of the desert. The schoolmaster became instructive about the rapid silting up of the Canal with erosion and sand storms: he discussed the genius and patience of de Lesseps, and argued lengthily on the respective merits of patience and genius. Finally, Marcella told him she had a headache. He suggested that he could cure it.

"I have some tabloids—very sedative, very. I make a point of never being without them. You, I take it, have the same type of brain and nerve force as I—always active, always alert. What we both need is a depressant—pot. brom. Or, as I prefer to call it, K.B.R."

"Oh no—it's very kind of you. But I'd like best to go to bed."

"May I carry your mattress up for you?"

"I'm not sleeping on deck. I couldn't sleep among so many people," she said, and, after a hurried good night went below.

As she paused at her cabin door she heard a little noise and guessed that Jimmy was within. Opening it quickly, without switching on the light, she cried, "Here comes a big bear to eat you all up," as Jimmy often did to her. She grasped someone, and cried out in fear. It was someone grown up, kneeling on the floor.

She switched on the light and saw Louis looking up at her, blinking in the sudden glare.

"Oh, it's you. What do you want?" she said, breathlessly, though she knew quite well. In his hand he held her little bank bag of orange canvas in which the doctor had put ten pounds for her to spend on the trip.

"I w-want m—my—my m—money," he began, trembling and afraid to meet her eyes.

"To buy more whisky and make yourself more horrible than ever?" she cried, standing with her back to the door. "Well, I'll not give it to you, and if you knock me down and fight me I'll not give it you even. I'm a better fighter than you."

"I w-want it—to—to—pay him back," he cried and began to sob, violently dropping the money on the floor. "He—he said—you'd been in his cabin and—and—and in m—mine! He s—said dev—devilish things. And I punched his ugly head for him! All for you! Be—be—because you're—you're—Oh God, give me the money and let me pay him and then cut him dead."

"Do you mean that you owe Ole Fred money?"

"Of c—course. How on earth have I managed since N-naples?"

"How much is it?"

"He's paid for a lot of drinks, but that doesn't count. I w-won a good bit at poker, too. I b-borrowed sixteen pounds from him."

"But, Louis, you hadn't sixteen pounds to pay him back with," she cried.

"Do you think I cared? Do you think I ever meant to pay him back? Anyway, he's helped spend it, and when we get to Sydney I shan't have to face him again, so I don't care a damn. I've g-given my credit note for ten pounds when I land to—to—the barman, too. I'm b-broke, ole girl."

He sobbed helplessly.

"He offered me the money. People always do. They all think I'm well off when I tell them who the pater is. And so I should be if he wasn't such a stingy old devil."

His sobbing ceased, his face looked hard and cynical again. Marcella watched him in amazement. She was not sure whether to be disgusted with him or sorry for him.

At last she spoke.

"Louis—I don't understand a bit. Why did you do it?"

"Because he said rude things about you! He hates you! I only made him my enemy for your sake—and now you won't let me cut adrift from him. That's just like all women! Once they get their claws on money there's no getting them off again."

"I'm not asking why you fought him, you idiot. I'm asking you why you made such an idiotic mess of things at Naples."

He sobbed for awhile, sitting on the floor, leaning his head on her trunk where the broken lock dangled. She laid her hand on his head with an incontrollable impulse of pity; his hair was matted and dull as though it, had not been brushed for years.

"I c-can't explain it, even to myself, Marcella. But I—I th-think it w-was because I g-got a bit huffy with the idea th-that I was depending on you for everything. I f-felt as if I was tied to your apron strings. I felt as if I was being a g-good little b-b-boy, you know. So I thought I'd kick a bit! But I w-was trying damned hard before. You know I was."

She knit her brows and said, very slowly, as though she had not known the end of the sentence when she began to speak.

"Louis—don't you—perhaps—think it's wrong—to try so hard? I mean, it's morbid to be always saying 'I'm a drunkard. If I don't keep myself keyed up every minute I'll fall—' Don't you think it would be better if you forgot all about it, and just said, 'I'm Louis Farne, the biggest thing that ever was in the annals of humanity.' I don't know, but that seems more sensible to me. You see, you're rather a self-willed sort of person, really. You like to have you own way. Then why on earth not have your own way with whisky."

He stared at her and started in surprise, his jaw dropping. She looked at the streaks of dust and blood on his face, through which his tears had made blurred runnels.

"I n-never thought of that before. Of course you're right—I ought to have thought of it—even from the point of view of a psychologist."

"I don't think it's anything to do with any 'ologists at all. It's just common sense. Louis, I've been thinking a lot this week. You know, when father used to get—ill—no, drunk (Why should I be afraid to tell the truth, in spite of your sneers about poor father?) I was too wee to know very much. But knowing him as I do, I'm certain he tried and tried again. After mother died he left whisky alone, though he still had it in the house. He took to reading philosophy instead. You see, he was not like you. There was a hardness, a bravery in him that you haven't got. You have cussedness instead and cussedness is a thing you can never be sure of. You see," she went on, flushing a little, and suddenly tossing her head proudly, "you don't understand this, and it may sound most appalling snobbishness to you. But my father's people have always been rulers—little kings—fighters, while yours have been just ordinary, protected folk. My people have had to fight for everything, even their food, their lands, their home. Yours have had shops and investments and policemen round every corner—there is a difference—Louis, am I offending you?" she asked anxiously.

"Go on!" he said hoarsely.

"Well, father tried. But trying wasn't any use. He read philosophy to get himself interested in something. But philosophy wasn't gripping enough. It seems we've all got to find something to anchor on, and it's different for almost everyone. That's where we can help each other by trying to understand each other's needs and offering suggestions. Like sailors do—with charts and things. All this philosophy of father's! It reminds me of a horse I saw once at Carlossie Fair. It had a most horrible ulcer on its shoulder and they'd tried to hide it up by plaiting its mane and tying it with a great heap of ribbons. That doesn't cure anything! You know there's a phrase we use often about people who are miserable—we say, 'Oh, he needs to be taken out of himself.' Isn't that a vivid way of putting it, if you stop to think?"

He nodded, and still stared fascinated at her, drinking in every slow, halting word.

"I suppose father brooded just like you do. He used to get very grumpy, and very, very unhappy. He begged and pleaded with me for understanding, and I couldn't give it to him. Then one day he got dreadfully drunk, after a whole year away from it. And mother's cousin came. He talked to father for five or six hours while Aunt and I kept shivering and thinking father would murder him. Our people usually do murder people who annoy them. But Cousin came out of the room and said, 'Andrew has cast his burden on the Lord.' He said it as if he was saying, 'Andrew has sneezed, or put some coal on the fire'—the most ordinary way you can imagine. And that was the end of whisky for father. After that he tried to make everyone he knew cast their burden on the Lord. I rather felt like laughing at the time. It seemed rather silly, and just a bit vulgar—most religion is, isn't it? But since I've been worrying myself to death about you I've understood all about poor father."

"I don't see it," he said hopelessly.

"Listen. Until father gave up trying himself and realized that he was weak, he was—was—sort of hiding the ulcer with a bunch of ribbons. But the minute he gave up, everything was different. He didn't say any more, 'I'm Andrew Lashcairn, the son of generations of drunkards and madmen.' He changed it and said, 'I'm God's man—I've given Him my homage and made Him the Captain of my life.' And then, don't you see, he stopped being shut in inside himself any longer. He began to love me and be gentle to me. Louis, do you know, I believe you're tackling this worry in the wrong way. It can't be right—being rude to me, growling all the time about your father and mother—thinking, thinking, thinking all the time about yourself and your weakness until the whole universe is yourself and your weakness. Can't you see how bad it is, you who are a doctor? You know the old saying about giving a dog a bad name and hanging him. Louis, you're giving yourself a bad name, and hanging yourself."

"Oh, I say, Marcella," he gasped. "Do you think—" he broke off, and groaned again.

"Louis, I know. I don't think anything about it! The other day I was reading a most extraordinary book the schoolmaster lent me. It was about St. Francis of Assisi. It said that, by contemplation of the wounds of Christ, in time he came to feeling pain in his hands and feet and side—"

"Balderdash!" muttered Louis impatiently. "Auto-suggestion!"

"Auto—what's that?" she asked. He explained and she cried out eagerly:

"Well, can't you see you're doing exactly the same thing? And you call it balderdash when other people do it! Those wounds of St. Francis were called the Stigmata—can't you see that you're giving yourself the stigmata of drunkenness?"

"I've got them," he cried hoarsely. "I'm done. I'm even a thief."

"Oh, you idiot! How sorry I am for my father! He used to call me an idiot, and have me to put up with. And now I've got you, and you're a thousand times denser than ever I was! You're neither a drunkard nor a thief, Louis. Look here, to begin with, how much do you owe Fred? You shall have all I've got. If I give it to you you can't be a thief any more."

Between them they had just enough money for Fred and a few shillings left. He wept as she fastened it in an envelope and asked him to take it along to Fred's cabin at once.

"I—I s-say, Marcella. I—I—d-daren't," he groaned. "He'll ask me to wet it. And I'll not be able to say no. And oh my God, I don't want to do it any more."

"Then I'll take it," she said promptly, and darted along with it to Number Fifteen, listened while Ole Fred said every insulting thing he could about Louis and all Louis's ancestors and then calmly asked him for a receipt for the money.

Louis was still sitting on the floor. He looked up, his bloodshot eyes appealing as he looked at her.

"I say, M-m-marcella. I'm sorry I said all those nasty things about your father."

"There you are again, Louis! Forget them all! Forget everything but the future now. I can't imagine where I've got this conviction from, but it's absolutely right, I know. If you'll wipe out all your memory and start clean, you'll be cured."

"I could never do as your father did—all that religion business."

"I don't think I could, Louis. Father saw God as a militant Captain, someone outside himself. I'd never get thinking that about God. But it seems to me, in your case, you want to find someone you could trust, someone who would take the responsibility from you. Just as God did for father. Even if we say there is no God at all, he thought there was and acted on his thought—I suppose it's when we feel weak as father did that we get the idea of God at all."

"It all seems rot to me," he told her. "I laugh at God—as a relic of fetishism."

There was a long, hopeless silence. At last he said dully:

"There are some doctors—our old Dean at St. Crispin's, that I could throw myself upon as your father threw himself upon God. But they're not here."

As she sat, frowning, trying most desperately to help him, finding her unready brain a blank thing like the desert, realizing that, in all her reading there was nothing that could help, since there was no strong helper in the world save that Strong Man God who had gripped her father's imagination and could never grip Louis's, a whole pageant of dreams passed before her; dreams, intangible ideas which she grasped eagerly—visions—she saw herself John the Baptist, "making straight the way of the Lord"—she saw Siegfried, King Arthur—and, with a heart-leaping gasp she asked herself, "Why should not I be Louis's Deliverer? Why should not I be God's pathway to him? Why should not I be Siegfried?" And all the time her brain, peopled with myths, saw only the shining armour, the glittering fight; she did not see the path of God deeply rutted by trampling feet, burnt by the blazing footsteps of God. She heard herself as John's great crying voice and heeded the prison and the martyrdom not at all: it was a moment's flash, a moment's revelation. Then she turned to him. Her eyes were very bright. She spoke rapidly, nervously.

"Louis—that doctor you know—the Dean. Do you think they are the only wise folks on earth? I mean, do you think wisdom begins and ends with wise people? I don't, you know." she paused, frowning, not quite sure where this thought was going to lead her.

"They're the best chaps on earth," he murmured. "I c-could have b-been like them."

"But what is it makes them wise and fine? It's—I think—because they get rid of themselves, and let God shine through them to other people."

He turned impatiently. She caught his hot, damp, dirty hand in hers.

"Louis, I don't know very much. I've proved I can't hold you very well already, but I care an awful lot. Louis—how would it be if you threw it all on to me for a while till either you believe in God or in yourself? And I've a sort of belief that, whichever you believe in first, you'll believe in the other automatically—I'm not a bit clever, Louis. I never was. Always I get puzzled, always I realize how utterly unlearned I am. Always father called me an idiot and threw things at me for it. But in spite of being a duffer I'm sure I can help you."

"You could if you were with me every minute. I'd rather be with you than most people. But the minute I'm away from you I get dragged."

"Well, why shouldn't I stop with you the whole time, never leave you a minute? Let's be married, and then I could."

She looked at him anxiously. There was not a glimmer of shyness or excitement about her. She was still in her dream world; she knew that marriage would keep them together always. So she suggested marriage. She was not, yet, consciously in love.

He stared at her, stammered a little as he tried to speak and then, suddenly sobered, snatched at her hand.

"Do you mean it, knowing what I am? I'm an awful waster, Marcella—there's nothing on earth I can do for a living."

She frowned a little.

"But that's nothing to do with it. We'll find some way of living. You know that. We'd have to if we were not married, wouldn't we? And stop all this about being a waster. You're not anything of the sort. You're not anything but what you're going to be."

"And you really, really, won't go back on it? I make so many promises and break them. I can't believe other people much."

"Of course I won't go back on it. I want to stay with you. I never want to be with anyone else at all on earth."

"But why?" he asked, humble for the first time in his life.

"I haven't the slightest idea. You seem very clever to me. That's one thing. And—and the way you depend. Oh dear, I feel I've got to kidnap both you and Jimmy and run away with you to some safe place."

"Good Lord!" he said, laughing harshly. "I'm just thinking of Violet."

"Why? She can't mind, now she's married."

"No. It was the idea of Violet's trying to kidnap me, and loving me because I depended on her. Lord, she did the depending."

"That was why she wasn't any use to you, I suppose. Besides, Louis, you know, I love you when you're not—not ill. And I love the way your eyes look."

"Good Lord," he cried again, and started up sharply. "I say, Marcella, I'm off to have a bath. Wait here for me—" He peeped into her mirror. He had not shaved for a week and looked thoroughly disreputable. Holding out his hand he looked at it earnestly. It shook, as he had expected.

"Oh, I say, what a waster I look. I do hope to the Lord my hand's steady enough for a shave."

"Let me do it," she said. "It would be fun."

"I'm damned—Oh, I beg your pardon, old girl!—but I'm hanged if I'll not make my hand steady. I'll do it, I tell you! If I cut myself in bits, serve me right! I'll be half an hour and then—then—well, wait!"

She heard him in his cabin, whistling as he dragged out his trunk, pushed it back roughly, dropped and smashed a tumbler and then rushed along the alley-way. After awhile she heard him come back, heard the sound of violent brushing, heard him kick things and swear, drop things, bundle things about. She sat down on her trunk suddenly weak as she realized what she had done. She had never thought of being married before; marriage seemed a thing for elderly people; there seemed something ungallant, something a little dragging about marriage that rather frightened her. Her mother's marriage, she was beginning to understand, had been a thing of horror. She thought of those stifled cries in the night at the old farm, cries that she had thought meant that ghosts were walking; she heard with terrible distinctness the voice of the Edinburgh specialist as he said, "In my opinion the injury was caused by a blow—a blow, Mr. Lashcairn." Then, quite suddenly she laughed. It was quite amusing to think of Louis's making anyone ill by a blow.

"He'd never have fought Ole Fred if they hadn't both been drunk," she said slowly, staring at the boards of the floor, and her quick imagination showed her the two of them, fighting ignobly, all dust and sweat and ill-aimed blows. They could only hurt each other because both were too unsteady to dodge futile lungings. There was nothing of the Berserk about Louis.

Panic came to her. The things she realized about marriage were that it was irrevocable, and that it meant a frighteningly close proximity; and in that swift vision of Louis's fight—even though it had been in defence of her—she had realized that it was utterly impossible for her to be with him for the rest of her life.

"Oh how could I? How can I? How can I be glittering and shining with a man who is always crying? How can we be—be conquerors together when I never, never think of him except as 'poor boy' or 'silly idiot'? Oh no—no—I can't! I can't! Even if I do save him, what is there in that for me? I want to shine—I daren't have hot, dirty, damp hands dragging at me. I can't. I must be free, uncaught—"

The cabin became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had substituted a changeling stuffed with sawdust.

"I must tell him. But it's so cruel of me. I'm cruel—but I must tell him."

In the next cabin he began to sing, rather jerkily, a song everyone on the ship was singing just then.

"Won't you come back to Bombombay? Won't you come back to Bombombay? I'm grieving, now you're leaving For a land so far away. So sad and lonely shall I be, When you are far away from me."

It was not the tipsy singing she had heard in the morning; it was jumpy, tuneless singing; she guessed that it was assisting in the process of shaving, for she heard a few "damns" peppering the song, which suggested that his shaky hand was wielding the razor badly. And with the song came pity that swamped disgust and disillusion. It seemed so sad to her that, when hope dawned upon him, he should celebrate it by singing a piece of sentimental, however haunting, doggerel. To go there and tell him that she, too, was going to break promises, to change her mind—it was impossible. It was like breaking promises to a little child. Came a blinding flash of self-realization.

"Marcella Lashcairn," she said, standing under the white flare of the electric light and facing herself squarely in the little mirror, which showed her two scornful grey eyes, "You're a hypocrite! You think it's very splendid and grand to save a big, grown-up man from getting drunk. That's only because you're a girl and are flattered at his dependence on you. If you saw any other girl acting as you do you'd say it was sheer impudence! And you think it's very wonderful that anyone so clever as Louis should notice you. You're flattered, you see—that's self-love, not Louis-love! Oh very beautiful! And you're such an illogical sort of idiot that you want to save him, and yet you want him so splendid and shining that he doesn't need any saving. Oh go—get out—all of you!" and she waved her hand to her dreams and sent the shining Lover riding on on his quest without her. It was just as she used to talk to the gulls and the winds on Ben Grief—when she was having things out with herself before. "I've taken the man I want—as all the Lashcairns do unless they are like Aunt Janet and—Oh, anyway, I'd rather be killed than be like her. It's rather illogical to growl at my choice the minute I've made it."

Before she could stop herself she was out of the cabin; she did not stop to think that Louis might be embarrassed: she dashed into his cabin. He was fastening his tie.

"Louis," she cried, and stopped breathless. He seemed very different as she looked over his shoulder into the mirror. Cold water had removed the traces of a week's neglect; the razor had done a good deal, too, and a clean suit had transformed him. His eyes were different: there was a light of resolution in them and they met hers direct. She scarcely knew him.

"Hello!" he said and let the tie hang as he stared at her.

"Where's the other man who used to sleep in here?" she asked. That was not what she had intended to say when she came in.

"He's gone. He was on the way to Cairo. I've got it to myself now."

"Oh—"

"Marcella," he said solemnly. "You really mean it? You're not going to let me down? Violet let me down—and I'm always letting people down. I can't trust people now."

"Supposing I'd wanted to marry Violet, I'd have married her," she said, her brow puckered. "And I wouldn't be let down."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," he said, slowly.

"Louis—" she began again, breathlessly, and then let the words out in a torrent. "Louis, I know I've got to marry you. Do you understand that? It's—it's inevitable. It was from the minute I met you. You'll never understand that, not being a Kelt, though. I know it quite well. And I'm afraid I'm going to shy at it. And, for my sake as well as yours, I've not to shy. Louis, will you grab me tight?"

He stared at her, utterly at a loss. He did not begin to grasp what she meant. To him she was just "fickle woman" always changing her mind. He had, all his life, generalized about woman; he had never known a woman who was not rather vapid, rather brainless; he had the same idea of women as Professor Kraill had ventilated in his lectures—that they were the vehicles of the race, living for the race but getting all the fun they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather strenuous, rather joyless thing for them. And it was in men they found the fun. Yet here was Marcella, who was quite different from anything feminine he had ever seen or imagined, suddenly appealing to him not to let her be fickle. Immediately he felt very manly, very responsible. Then he laughed.

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?" he said, looking into her eyes.

"Father often said that. What does it mean?"

"Who'll look after the looker-after?" he said, with a laugh. "Here's me begging you to look after me and save me from going to hell. And here's you asking me to grab you for fear you'll change your mind. I wonder which is going to have the hardest job?"

She looked at him and said hurriedly:

"Louis, couldn't we be married now—to-night? In Scotland we do, you know—just in any room without church or anything."

"But—I wish we could!" he said, his hands beginning to shake.

"I want to be sure—"

"I'm afraid we can't," he said, anxiously. "I'm afraid we'll have to wait till we get to Sydney."

Unexpectedly memory brought back the thought that when he became engaged to Violet he had kissed her and held her in his arms; he remembered it very well. To get to the necessary pitch of courage he had had to get very drunk on champagne, for champagne always made him in a generally kissing and love-making mood that involved him often with barmaids and street ladies. He knew very well that he would never have thought of making love to Marcella: if she had not taken things into her own hands, they would have parted in Sydney, necessary as he considered her to his well being, much as he liked to be near her. He had, even through his self-satisfied alcohol dream, seen her disgusted looks at Naples when he had spoken to her. He guessed that the sort of half-maudlin love-making that had won Violet would never suit Marcella. And he knew beyond the shadow of doubt that no power on earth save whisky could ever get him to make love to anything—even a young girl who seemed in love with him already.

He was extraordinarily shy with and cynical about women. He had always been detested by the servants at home—more or less unjustly. He spoke to them abominably because he was frightened of their sex. Had he not bullied them when he wanted small services performed, they never would have been performed at all, for he would have had no courage to ask civilly for anything. To his sister's friends when he was forced into their company he was boorish, simply because girls put him into such a panic of inferiority that, in self defence, he had to assert himself unnaturally. Years ago his sister had refused to make one of a theatre or concert party that included Louis; either he got drunk in the interval and rejoined them later, making them conspicuous by his behaviour, or else he sat at their side glowering and boorish, afraid even to look at the players on the stage, too shy even to negotiate the purchase of chocolates or programme. The last time he had been at the theatre with his sister and Violet had been after a whole fortnight without whisky. They were rather late; the play had begun. His sister had whispered to him to get a programme. Afraid of being conspicuous he had refused; she had ordered him to get it. People behind had hissed "Hush" indignantly and finally Violet, with a contemptuous smile, had bought programmes and chocolates for herself and the sister, cutting Louis dead.

But whisky transformed him from a twitching neurotic into a megalomaniac. He imagined that every woman he met was in love with him indecently and physically; without whisky he saw women in veils and shrouds; whisky made him see them with their clothes off, their eyes full of lewd suggestion. Even to the elderly suburban ladies who visited his mother he was tipsily improper. To find a girl like Marcella, who did not put him either in a fever or a panic of sexuality was supremely reassuring: she seemed to him like a nice man friend might be—though he never had been able to acquire a man friend. He was intensely grateful to her for marrying him: he was not her lover; he was her dependent: he was treating her as he might have treated the old Dean at the hospital, or as her father had treated God. But—his conventional sense told him to kiss her and make her "just a girl."

He took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. Her eyes, which began by being startled, grew suddenly soft, as his face came close to hers and his eyes looked into hers for a wavering second before they dropped awkwardly and looked at her cheek. And then he kissed her. It took a long time. It took just as long as it takes to transform a whole system of reasoned thinking into something chaotic, nebulous. The chances are that, had that kiss never happened to Marcella, she would have gone on with her dreams of deliverance, her ideals of a high road through life. Louis's lips opened a locked door in her personality. When he let her go again she looked at him, rather frightened and bewildered. She was trembling almost unbearably; her face, usually the fairest white, made gold by the sun and the wind, was flushed; her grey eyes were deep blue; her mind, for the while, was a blank.

"Oh Louis!" she gasped.

"Marcella—" he began but she seized his hands again.

"Oh Louis, please do it again." That time she closed her eyes and was only conscious of thinking that, if the ship went down, it would not matter just so long as nothing interrupted the kiss.

"Dear little girl," he whispered, and ceased to feel frightened of her. As he saw the tremendous effect his kisses had on her, masculine superiority put pokers into his backbone and made him feel a very fine fellow indeed. He had no time to think what his kisses had done to Marcella. All that he grasped was that she was not like Violet who had drawn away from him to lead him on further; who had flirted with him and teased him seductively, and made him pay dearly for kisses by pleadings and humiliations: who had never given anything, and had never come one inch of the way to meet him.

"I say, Marcella," he said, as he let her go. "Don't you know anything at all about the art of lying? Can't you lie?"

She frowned at him. He went on quickly.

"I've never met a girl yet who admitted that she liked a man to kiss her. They lie and lie—they put up barriers every minute."

"There can't be barriers between us, Louis. I'd rather die than have barriers," she said quietly, though she did not realize why, or what she implied.



CHAPTER XI

Looking back in after years on the six weeks of the voyage Marcella saw them as days and nights coloured by madness and storms through which Jimmy went like a little wistful ghost, hanging on to her hand, the only thing in grey tones amidst splashes of wild colour. Many a time in the sun-drowned days and windless nights Marcella was reminded of those old tales she had heard on Lashnagar from Wullie's lips, of the hot summer when the witch-woman came and men went mad just before the destruction came on the village. It was as though the Oriana went on ploughing through the waters, with the Dog-Star hitched to her masthead inflaming men's blood. Marcella was in a state of puzzlement. She was puzzled at herself, puzzled at Louis, puzzled at the people round her. Men went about barefoot in pyjamas, women in muslin nightdresses all day after Suez; in the Indian Ocean, one blazing day, they ran into the tail of a monsoon; the lower decks were swamped and the steerage passengers were sent on to the upper decks, where Marcella and Louis sat surrounded by half a dozen forlorn children whose parents had succumbed to the pitching of the ship and the heat. Great walls of green, unfoaming water rose sullenly and menacingly higher than the ship, which tossed like a weightless cork; seas came aboard with an effect of silence; down in the saloon glasses, crockery and cutlery crashed to the deck with a momentary fracture of the deadly quiet which seemed all the more silent afterwards: occasionally a child screamed in fright and was hushed by an almost voiceless mother, while stewards went about with trays of iced drinks, slipping to the deck in a dead faint now and again with a momentary smash that was swallowed to silence immediately. Underneath the sulky, heaving water lurked death, silent and sharp, from which the shoals of flying fishes escaped for the moment by soundless, silvery, aimless poising in the blue air, only to fall back exhausted again into the green water and the waiting white jaws. Some of the fishes flopped on board, and were put out of life by the blows of the sailors who dried and stuffed them and sold them afterwards to the passengers. To Marcella everything seemed cruel and mad and preying. The passengers were cruel—to each other and to the stewards; one day, going into the saloon by chance, she found Knollys leaning over a table looking white and sick, as he tried to polish spoons and forks.

"Are you ill?" she asked him.

"There's only two of us—including me—that haven't crocked up," he said; "people don't seem to think it's hot for us, or that we feel fed up at all. That Mrs. Hetherington seems to think I'm a private sort of lady's maid to her alone. All these women do—sitting about in deck chairs calling 'Steward' all day long! In the third class alone there's six stewards in hospital! And only yesterday I caught it from the Chief because the cutlery hadn't been polished—not that that's my job at all, really—"

The next moment Knollys fell over in a dead faint, and copying what she had seen him do when passengers fainted, Marcella fetched a pillow from her cabin, laid it under his back on the floor and left him while she polished the cutlery. Louis found her there and they came near to fighting about it.

"What on earth are you doing?" he asked in amazement.

"Poor Knollys has gone down," she said, thinking that adequate explanation.

Louis looked at him casually. Marcella was coming to understand that he looked upon illness with a certain hardness and lack of pity that surprised her; he was immensely interested in it, he liked to dabble in it, but not from a passion of healing nearly so much as from curiosity and technical interest. To him, in illness, curing the patient mattered infinitely less than beating the disease. He had a queer snobbishness about illness, too, that amazed her. To him Knollys, a steward, ill meant infinitely less than the illness of a member of his own class would have meant. This struck Marcella as illogical. To her it seemed that, in illness at least, all men were brothers.

"There's a stoker just died of heat apoplexy: there'll be a funeral presently," he said coolly. "What on earth are you doing?"

"People are so unkind. Knollys got into trouble yesterday because these silly things were not clean," she said, polishing away furiously.

"But you can't do the work of a servant," he said, aghast.

"I can. Of course I can. I often have. I've worked in the fields with the men, and I've milked the cows and made the butter. Oh, lots of things—"

"Oh well, I suppose a farmer's daughter can do those things, Marcella. But, look here, old girl, when we're married you'll have to be on your dignity a bit."

She flushed a little and the storm light came into her eyes. Louis did not see it. He sat on the edge of the table, and expostulated with her for a long time. But she went on until the last spoon was polished.

"Don't you think we'd better get something for Knollys? Sal volatile or iced water, or something?" she said at last, looking at her black hands.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, leave him alone. It's typical of the servant class to be bowled over on the slightest provocation. I expect, as a matter of fact, he can hear what we're saying now. He's got you taped pretty well and knew that if he worked on your sympathies you'd do his work while he miked about. The working class is always like that—no backbone."

She wondered if he were joking, but she saw from his solemn face that he meant it all, and she gathered that he considered himself very much better than Knollys. He did not see the contemptuous amusement in her face, and went on, stammering a little because he had at last brought himself to say something that had been on his mind for days.

He lit a cigarette nervously, fumbled with a bunch of keys in his trousers pocket and then, looking at her dirty hands, said:

"L-l-look here, old girl. I d-don't w-want to quarrel with you. But I w-want you to f-face things a bit. Y-you s-see—you've been used to a class of society quite different from mine. You know—look here, I say, I don't want you to go making faux pas."

"What do you mean?" she asked ominously.

"That's French for mistakes, don't you know—mistakes in—er—well, what one might call breeding, don't you know. Y-you know—associating with stewards and—and—common people like Jimmy, for instance. He's the very lowest bourgeois type."

"Much lower, I suppose, than Ole Fred, and those drinkers in New Zealand, isn't he?" she said calmly, her eyes glinting. He flushed hotly and looked hurt. Immediately she was sorry.

"There, I'm sorry, Louis. I ought not to have said a thing like that. It was unforgivable. But you do talk like an idiot. How on earth can one make mistakes in breeding? Oh, you and I talk different languages, that's all, and it's not any use at all trying to think and talk the same."

"Well, I know more of the world than you do, and you must let me teach you, Marcella. Oh, I know you're—you're braver and stronger morally than I. But, you know, when we get to Sydney and are married we'll have to stay in hotels and—and—I don't want my wife making faux pas. It'd be just like you—you're such a dear, really—to go doing things servants ought to do—in public, I mean, and make a fool of me."

She looked at him and smiled reminiscently and rather cruelly. But he looked so solemn, so serious that, in sheer mischief, she told him that she would be very careful not to make him conspicuous by her blunders. And then she asked him an unexpected question.

"Louis, did you write and tell your father you didn't want any more money?"

He took out his packet of cigarettes—he never possessed a cigarette case, such things were to be turned into money too easily. His hands were trembling as he struck a match.

"Yes—I—t-told him," he said jerkily.

"What did you say about me?" she asked curiously.

He pondered for a moment. At last he decided to be honest.

"I didn't tell him."

"Didn't you, Louis?" she said, looking hurt. "Why?"

"He'd only think you were a waster. He wouldn't think anyone but a waster would marry me. If I told him you were a Scotch farmer's daughter he'd picture something in short skirts, red cheeks and bare legs that talked like Harry Lauder. Or else he'd think I was lying, and had got off with a barmaid and wasn't married at all, and was living on some girl. They'd always think the worst of me, at home. I'm not even going to tell the Mater—"

She thought for some minutes.

"I don't much care," she said at last. "I think your father's rather a horrible man, but I may be wrong about him. My impressions of him are formed from yours, you see. It seems that no one but a most inhuman man could kick his son out. But then—well, I don't know just how much you worried him. But I'd have liked you to tell your mother. She looked so grieved that day on the tender, and she was crying so miserably. I'd have liked her to know you were taken care of."

"She wouldn't believe it, either, Marcella," he said gloomily. "And you don't know my Mater. The very fact that you were in the steerage would make her think you couldn't possibly be any good in the world. If I told her you cleaned spoons and forks for a steward she'd think you did it from habit because you'd been someone's servant. They've no imagination—"

"All mothers have, I'm sure," she told him. "I'd have liked your mother to be my friend. I'd have liked to write to her about you—"

"God forbid," he said fervently, and once more she gave way.

Later on that day they discussed ways and means. His definite picture of getting married and staying in hotels in Sydney had made the dream concrete. She had hitherto simply seen them both glittering along in an aura of Deliverance. Right at the back of her mind she still clung to pictures of knightly mail, obtained from she had not the slightest idea where. But that fitted badly with hotels in Sydney and conventions he was going to teach her. In the evening they went to their favourite seat on the anchor and watched the phosphorescence shimmering away in ghostly paths to the star-splashed sky.

"Louis," she said hurriedly, "how much does it cost you to get married in Australia?"

"Lord knows, I don't," he said, sitting up sharp. "There's a music-hall song about 'She cost me seven and sixpence; I wish I'd bought a dog.' But that's in England. I've a hazy notion that it's much more expensive in Australia than England. Why?"

"I'm wondering how we're going to do it. We've about eleven shillings in the world—you see, uncle is meeting me in Melbourne. I had a cable at Port Said to say so. And I'm afraid I'll have to do a little evasion. I don't know him at all, but he may think it his duty to see that I go with him to Wooratonga. Or he may enquire into your prospects like uncles do—"

"Good God!" he said, throwing his cigarette overboard and staring straight at her in horror. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Nor had I. It was all just romance till you mentioned it to-day, and then—probably because I was doing such a prosaic thing as cleaning spoons and forks, I saw all the details for the first time. Wedding rings are made of gold. They must cost a tremendous lot of money. And if being married is only seven and sixpence, I don't see how we are going to spare seven and sixpence out of eleven shillings—we've got to eat something, and live somewhere. You can't eat marriage licences, nor use them as shelter. I've seen one once, belonging to Mrs. Mactavish. She kept it sewed inside the lining of her bodice, all among the bits of whalebone that made her stand up straight. It's a crackly thing like a cheque—"

"Oh, do stop talking nonsense," cried Louis, suddenly desperate when faced with a problem. "Marcella, what are we going to do? Oh, why did I spend that money? Why were you such a fool as to pay it back to Fred? He's drunk it all by now. It did him no good, and think how useful it would have been to us!"

"Don't be so idiotic! As if I'd be married with money belonging to him! My goodness! The best thing is not to be married at all, until we've worked for some money."

"Oh yes," he cried bitterly. "Just like a woman, backing out now things are a bit difficult! I tell you, if we're parted when we get to Sydney I'll be in with the first waster that comes along and start the whole beastly pub-crawl again—"

"But—eleven shillings, Louis!" she said, laughing at the absurdity of it.

"We've got to get the money!" he cried wildly. "If I do a burglary! Look here, Marcella, the only thing is for me to get boozed and borrow it! If I had half a dozen whiskies I'd go to the Governor-General himself and get it out of him! But if I were not boozed I couldn't ask—ask even for the job of gorse-grubbing or road sweeping. I haven't even the courage to ask you for a kiss if I'm not boozed."

He looked at her. His eyes were infinitely pathetic.

"Is there anyone about?" she whispered.

"Only the man in the crow's-nest," he said, "why?"

"Never mind him—give me a kiss, Louis. I'm not frightened, if you are!" she whispered softly, and half awkward and shy he held her in his arms, gathering courage as he felt how she trembled, and guessed how his kisses made her soft and helpless in his arms. "Let's forget worries for a while—we'll never be sitting on an anchor in the Indian Ocean again, in a sea of ghost lights, shall we, Louis?"

"Say 'Louis dear,'" he ordered, gathering courage, kissing her hand. She said it, a little hesitatingly.

"We never say words like that at home," she whispered. "Only mother did, because she was English—"

"I'm English, too. I like words like that. Now say 'Louis darling.'"

"It sounds as if you're a baby."

"So I am—Marcella's baby," he whispered. "Say 'Louis darling.'"

"I can't, Louis," she said uneasily, "I can't say love things. I can only do them. I love you—oh, most dreadfully, but I can't talk about it."

She buried her face on his shoulder. Through his thin canvas coat she could feel his heart thumping as hers was.

"I'm going to kiss that funny little hollow place at the bottom of your neck," she whispered in a smothered voice. "What a good thing you don't wear collars in the Indian Ocean! Louis, tell me all the funny Latin names for the bones in your fingers, and I'll kiss them all—I can't say silly words to you like—like Violet could."

After a while he tried to carry his point.

"Now say 'Louis darling,'" he insisted.

She shook her head.

"Why can't you be like an ordinary girl?" he objected, holding her tight so that he could look into her face. "Ordinary girls don't mind calling a chap darling."

"I can't, anyway. I never can talk much, unless I'm simply taken out of myself and made to. I can't imagine what we'll find to talk about all the time when we're married. But—do you know, whenever we get up here in the dark like this, I always wish it was Sydney to-morrow, and we could be married. I hate to be away from you a minute; I wish we could be together all day and all night, without stopping for meal times—"

"You've got the tropics badly, my child," he said, laughing a little forcedly, as he tried to light a cigarette with trembling fingers and finally gave it up.

"Why? Do people love each other more in the tropics?" she asked. "You love me, don't you?"

"Of course I do. But girls are not supposed to talk about it like men do. Girls have to pretend they don't feel all wobbly and anyhow, because it's more fun for a man when a girl doesn't hurl herself at him."

"But why pretend? Why not be honest about it?" she said, her voice a little flat. "You want me to love you, don't you?"

"Course I do. But you're so queer. Most girls let a chap do the love-making. They dress themselves up—all laces and ribbons and things, and pretend they're frightened to make a chap all the keener."

She thought it out, sitting up as straight as possible.

"I couldn't, Louis," she said decidedly. "I've read that in books, years ago. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. And I think it's horrible. Father had a lot of books about those things and I read them to him when he was ill. I was looking one up again the other day—that day you threw the teapot in the sea." And she told him about the "preliminary canter."

"Well, that's absolutely right," he said coolly. "Women are like that. They're specialized for sex. Don't you admit that you've no brains? You've told me so many a time, and your father always said you were an idiot. And don't you admit that when I kiss you—especially here in the tropics where everything is a bit accelerated—you feel different—all wobbly—?"

She nodded, looking startled.

"Well, what does it mean? It simply means you're specialized. Yes you are, Marcella. Specialized as a woman. All this—this liking to be kissed, and feeling wobbly. They're Kraill's preliminary canter."

"Oh no—no!" she cried in horror.

"Oh, yes, yes!" he mocked, laughing at her gently.

"But Louis, how horrible!"

"Well, you're always preaching honesty and facing facts," he said bluntly.

"Yes—" she said thoughtfully. "But—I don't like it. I hate it. I don't believe Kraill thinks like that, really—I've read three of his courses of lectures and in all of them he doesn't seem to approve of women being like that. Just vehicles of existence or bundles of sensation. He seems, to me, to resent women."

"Yes—after many love adventures," he began.

"But—don't you think all the time he was just getting his education? Like I am? A month ago I'd have been horrified at the thought of kissing you. Now I like it. A few months ago I loathed the thought of having a body—and just everything connected with it. Now, ever since that day I was getting my nice frock ready to go with you to Pompeii I've not minded it a bit. All the time, now, I wish I was nicer."

"Because you've fallen in love, my child," he said, smiling in supreme superiority. "And falling in love instructs even fools."

"It's taught me some very lovely things the last few days, Louis," she said dreamily. "It's taught me that I've to be very shining, for you. And it's taught me that I'd die for you very happily. But what you've just said—about kissing—has suddenly taught me something very beastly. I wanted to love you with my soul and my mind. And now you say it's the hot weather!"

"Well, so it is, dearie. Love's not a spiritual nor a mental thing. It's purely physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. It's like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii—eating, drinking and physical love-making. One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can't work together, in offices or anything, or scientific laboratories because they—well—they'd get in each other's light and make each other jumpy."

"And do you believe it?"

"Course I do," he said. "Even if you had the brains or the knowledge for—say research work, I couldn't work with you. I'd be thinking of the way your lips look when they're getting ready to kiss me; and of your white shoulders that I can just catch a peep of when you sit a little way behind me, in that white blouse with little fleur-de-lys on the collar. Naturally if I tried to work then, the work would go to pot."

"But—" she tried to control her voice, which shook in spite of herself, "do you—think of those things—about me?"

"Of course. All men do about their women."

"It's horrible," she gasped, frowning at the Southern Cross. "And doesn't it mean that men are specialized, too?"

"Not a bit of it! Men have to do the work of the world. Women are just the softness of life."

"Cushions for men to fall on?" she said mischievously.

"No, half-holidays when he's fed up with work." He looked at her, laughing at her indignant face. "Why be superior, Marcella? You're just as bad as anyone else, only you're not used to it and haven't thought of it before. Who likes being kissed?"

"Oh, but it wouldn't get in the way of my work," she cried, flushing hotly.

"Wait till you try it, dear child. The first time I ever got the fever taught me a lot. It wasn't love, of course."

"When you loved Violet?" she asked in low tones.

"Oh Lord no! This was a little French girl who picked me up when I was squiffed after I'd passed the First. About twenty of us—all from St. Crispin's—had been up for the First. We all passed but two, and we all had to get drunk to buck those two up. We went to the Empire and kicked up such a gory din that we were helped out. A little mamzelle from the Promenade took charge of me. I—I hadn't thought about those things much before. At home they were taboo. I'd always been terrified of girls—If I hadn't been drunk then I'd never have done it. I thought it unutterably beastly. For months after that I was afraid to look the Mater in the face. I thought she was unutterably beastly, as well, just because she was a woman. It made a tremendous dint on me."

Marcella grasped about a tenth of what he meant. The rest sank into her mind to puzzle her later. But something sprang to the top of her consciousness and raised a question.

"Louis," she said quickly, "That night at Naples—when you were naughty. You talked French to me. I don't know what you said, but the schoolmaster looked shocked."

He flushed.

"Yes, I've been told that before. I always do talk French if I meet a girl when I'm boozy. I used to, to Violet, and she was—oh frightfully disgusted. And once I did to my sister! She, unfortunately, understands French. I suppose it's a good thing you don't."

"Louis, do you say—wrong things in French" she whispered. "Things—you know, beastly things?"

He hesitated a moment and an impulse of honesty made him tell her the truth.

"Yes, I believe I say perfectly appalling things. You see—it's like this. I'm a queer inhibited sort of thing, dear. I'm always—till you took me in hand—fighting drink. I'm in a state of fighting and inhibiting. I've always been like that. Even when I was a little kid I was afraid to be natural because I was taught that the natural impulse was the wrong one. I sometimes want to say something frightfully charming to you, and don't for fear it's silly. I'm always wondering what people will think of me—because I'm so often wrong, you know."

"I just don't care what anyone says or thinks," she broke in.

"There's the difference between us, then. Well, you see, being an ordinary, average sort of human being, I think a lot about girls and all that. Only deep down is the puritanical old idea that it's wicked to do so. Really, honestly, Marcella, I'm not pulling your leg—when I first started dissecting at the hospital, I felt horribly indecent. It was a female thigh! I felt as if it ought to be clothed, somehow—I sort of kept thinking the Pater or someone would come into the lab, and round on me for being immoral. If it had been a male thigh I wouldn't have cared a brass tanner!"

"It must be awful to have barriers in your mind," she pondered.

"It was just the same with booze. If I had a beer or a whisky in the club as all the others did, I saw the Pater disembodied before me, and had another to give me the courage necessary to face him. Everything, you see, everything—girls, drink, curiosities, courtesies, kindness—all got lumped together as things to keep in hand. I got in a fever of self-consciousness. I do now. I think everyone is watching and criticizing me. Then, you see, when I'm drunk, the watch I set on myself is turned out to grass and I get a damned good rest. I let myself rip! In my sober moments I daren't go and order tea for the Mater in a bunshop because I'm petrified with terror of the waitress. When I'm drunk I'd barge into a harem. That first affair—with the French girl—was a tremendous thing to me. Most boys have played about with that sort of thing before that age. They looked down on me because I hadn't. But it made such a deep dint on my brain that whisky and sex and French are all mixed up together and the one releases the other."

She sighed.

"I do wish Dr. Angus was here, Louis," she said. "I wish I understood better."

"You understand better than Violet did. She used to stay at our place a good deal, you know, and go with us to the seaside and to Scotland. Even when I was right off whisky she used to drive me to it. Evening dress, you know. Oh, frightfully evening! And—in a queer old place we stayed in in Scotland once there were heaps of mice. She used to run out of her room in the middle of the night saying she was frightened of them. And then I had to carry her back, and rub her feet because they'd got cold. She was rather a maddening sort of person, you know. She'd lead one on to biting one's nails and tearing one's hair and then she'd laugh and kiss her hand and run away with my sister into her bedroom. And they'd both laugh. She understood the value of being a woman, did Violet. And she didn't let herself go cheap—I used to get the key of the tantalus and cart a whole decanter of whisky to bed to get over it. If she'd just have let me kiss her—"

He paused, frowning reminiscently.

Marcella sighed, and laid a cool, firm hand on Louis's.

"Louis—I think I'm—cheap."

"So are air and water, dearie," he cried, with sudden passion that surprised her.

"I don't think I'll ever understand men, though. Wine, women and song they seem to lump together into a sort of tolerated degradation."

"I don't know much about song, but women and wine are certainly to be lumped together. They're both an uncontrollable hunger. And they give you a thick head afterwards! You say that Professor chap in his lectures resents women. Of course he does. Don't you think I resent whisky? Wouldn't any man resent the thing that makes dints in him, makes him undignified, body and soul, and gives him a thick head and a sense of repentance? I guess I look a pretty mucky spectacle when I'm drunk. I see myself afterwards, and can imagine the rest. Well, a man in the throes of a woman orgy is just as undignified—even if he doesn't lurch—oh and slobber! I've never heard that your Professor drinks. That doesn't happen to be his hunger, you see. But if he drank to the same extent as he has love-affairs he'd be in an asylum now; and if he were a woman he'd be on the streets! No woman—even if she were a Grand Duchess—would be tolerated with the same number of sex affairs as a man can have. She'd just have to be a prostitute out and out—without choice—or else keep herself in hand."

"Like Aunt Janet," murmured Marcella to herself, "and come to acid drops."

Aloud she said. "Louis—I wish you wouldn't tell me. I always think of clever men like Kraill as gods and heroes—I hate to think they have holes in them. They have such wonderful thoughts."

"That's the devil of it. I know they have. He has—Kraill. I've been to his lectures and felt inspired to do anything. They most of them think much better than they can do, that's about the size of it! I suppose we all do that more or less, but we don't put it on paper to be used in evidence against us. We think fine things and do smudged ones, and so the world goes on."

There was a long silence. She crept a little closer to him and put her hand into his. He held it tight. It was almost as if her world were shaking about her and even his unsteady hand seemed some support.

At last she said, as if talking to herself.

"Louis—can't something be done for us all? Can't we have these things cut out of us like cancers? Can't we get rid of these horrible desires as we've lost tails and hair and things we don't need? Then in time people would be born without them. Louis—you don't think—think of me like that, do you—as a—a hunger? As something you must have if you don't have whisky, or as something that will drive you to whisky if I go away as Violet did?"

"I'm—I'm afraid I do, old girl," he said. "It's natural—I say, Marcella—you're only a kid. I don't believe you quite realize what you've taken on—in that way."

She looked startled. Then she laughed gaily.

"I'm not afraid of my part of it, Louis," she said, "but I can't help thinking that if I'm to be—as you put it—a sort of hunger substituted for whisky, we're all wrong. Suppose I died, for instance?"

"Marcella, if you die I shall die too. Anything else is unthinkable. I can't face life without you, now. I can't be a pariah again. You're a hunger to me. I'll admit it. But you're more. You're a saviour. And—you don't know anything about it, dearie. But when we're married you will, and I suppose I'll be just the same sort of hunger to you, then. It's no use blinking your eyes to it. And—be damned glad I love you, and am not like some sort of men. Otherwise—well, Lord knows what would have happened to you. You're so honest that you think everyone else is. And yet, transparent little fool that you are, in common-sense things, I know that you're going to keep me straight."

Back came trooping all the visions of Deliverance, a rich pageantry shutting away the footmarks of the beast she had just glimpsed.

As every beat of the engines brought them nearer and nearer to Sydney consideration of ways and means became even more anxious. Louis spent glowering days. Marcella was quite certain that everything would turn out well.

It was in the dull run between Colombo and Fremantle that they decided upon a plan of action. The nights were getting colder now; they had to sit in thick coats in the evenings. This particular evening it was raining greyly, but they could not sit in the saloon because Ole Fred and his gang had started a smoking concert, and Marcella and Louis would have been ejected forcibly.

"You're such a fatuous optimist, Marcella," he said impatiently. "Lord, I wish I'd never started on this business! Everything's against us—I knew it would be! We'll give it up. You go off into the back blocks where you will at least be sure of food and a roof. And I'll go to the devil in the same old way as quickly as possible."

"Oh, I could shake you!" she cried. "You know quite well I'm not going to leave you, if we have to live on eleven shillings for the rest of our lives. It isn't eleven shillings now, either. I gave Jimmy half a crown to spend at Colombo."

"Fool," he muttered gloomily.

"Who spent fifteen pounds?" she retorted.

"I say, I'm sorry, old girl, but my nerves are a bundle of rags! I've never had a wife to worry about before—and I can't see how I'm going to make enough money to make her my wife yet—"

Marcella knew nothing whatever about money. She had a few jewels of her mother, but it did not occur to her that they were worth money. Louis had absolutely nothing of value. Guided by past experience his mother had given him the barest necessities for clothes; his watch and most of his clothes he had sold before he sailed. What made him so irritable with Marcella was the knowledge that he could easily get the money by being drunk. Publicans are proverbially open-handed; most publicans would have lent him ten pounds to spend in their establishment if he had thoroughly and courageously drunk and pitched some tale about expecting money by the English mail. He certainly looked worth ten pounds and his father's name as a publisher was fairly well known even in the Colonies. He had frequently "raised" twenty or thirty pounds in this way in New Zealand. Once or twice he had borrowed a few pounds from a doctor by telling him a pitiful tale, but most doctors recognized his symptoms and refused to help him to hurt himself.

Suddenly Marcella gave a little giggle of sheer amusement.

"I don't see much to laugh at," he growled.

"I'm thinking of how worried you were about my dignity as your wife and afraid I'd disgrace you in hotels by being friendly with the servants," she said. "It doesn't look as if we're going to get a tent even."

He read unkindness into her chaffing words and flushed hotly.

Suddenly his silly pride that had lain asleep, for the most part, since Port Said, gave a little struggle and came to wakefulness again. He could not have her laugh at him however good-naturedly. Just as he had not realized he was lying to her when he told her highly coloured versions of his surgical exploits, so he scarcely realized he was lying, as he said, mysteriously:

"Don't be too sure, my child. You won't be laughing at me soon. I may be a bit of a waster, but I'm not the sort to marry a girl without knowing how I'm going to support her. How do you know you won't be the guest of the Governor-General as soon as he knows I'm in Sydney—"

"Whatever do you mean? Oh, Louis, don't tell me stories! And I don't want to go and see people like Governor-Generals. I want to be alone with you."

"You probably will, my dear girl. But you must remember that a secret service man has to cover up his traces in every way. He has to hide everything, even from his wife."

"Louis," she said in real distress, clutching his arm, "are you really in the secret service? I'll—I'll forget it all, if you're telling me lies. I'll never think of it again. But it so awful to think you are lying to me!"

"Why should I lie, my darling?" he said, looking hurt, but staring at her mouth instead of looking into her eyes.

"You—you told me—never—to believe you, Louis. Oh, you do make it hard for me. I don't know what to believe. If you're in the secret service don't they pay you any money?"

"Of course—they pay me enough to keep myself going. But it's a patriotic work, you know. And as for not believing me, I told you not to believe me about drinking. That was all."

"But Louis, if you have money, why are you so worried about it now? And—didn't you tell me your father sent you out here?"

"Yes, he did, dearie," he said earnestly. "It's quite true. I was a rotter and he got fed up with me. But I've done a lot of secret service work and didn't dare even tell him. I'm under an oath of secrecy. The times I've had to let him think I was out all night, simply too squiffy to get home when in reality I was working—for England—"

"And you really, truly mean it, Louis? Louis, it would break my heart right in two if I thought you were lying now."

"I swear it, on my love for you. I can see, now, that I ought to have told the Pater all about it. But I thought when he was so unbelieving I'd take his bally pound a week. After all, it isn't much. It's what he spends on one dinner often, and it would keep me in cigarettes, at any rate. So I thought I'd stick to it, as well as my secret service screw. Besides—supposing he wasn't my father at all? Supposing he'd been paid by someone—someone very much more exalted than he, to bring me up?"

"Whatever do you mean, Louis?" she cried.

"Oh, never mind, never mind, old girl. But some day, perhaps, you'll know all I've had to go through—"

There was a pause full of strained thinking. At last she burst out nervously, "But you've told your father not to send any more money, haven't you?"

"Yes, of course. I felt I couldn't be married to you on money I didn't earn. But this secret service—it is all so confidential—we have to guard our orders most carefully in case they get anything—"

"They? Who are they?" she asked quickly.

"The enemy—Germans and Chinese. There's quite a conspiracy on foot in Australia," he added, looking important. But he would tell her no more.

"Shall you be at work as soon as we get to Sydney?" she asked.

"It all depends on my orders. If we can stagger through the first few weeks, till I can get some cash—I say, Marcella, why shouldn't you ask your uncle for some money?"

"Because he'd make me go home with him if I did."

"But couldn't you tell him you'd changed your plans, and had a good job in Sydney? We can make up a tale for him. Just think how jolly it will be to be together, darling! I know it isn't nice to ask people for money, but—it's worth it, isn't it? You need never see him again. Anyway, if you went to live with him you'd cost him a considerable amount, wouldn't you? Why shouldn't he give you some money now instead of that? After all, it's up to well-to-do relations to help a girl who's all alone in the world. Your father's dead—"

It took him all the morning to persuade her. It was only when he told her how he went all to pieces if he had to worry about money, and a moment later painted glowing pictures of the month they would have together if his orders permitted, before they attempted to do anything definite, that she consented. He very rapidly sketched a tale for her to tell her uncle; Marcella hated the lies, for they seemed unnecessary until Louis told her that no uncle in his senses would let her marry a man she had only known six weeks.

"But if you talked to him, Louis," she pleaded, "I'm sure he'd like you."

"I'm not. He'd ask what my job is, and if it was known that I'd given away the fact that a secret service agent was in Sydney I might even get shot as a spy," he said earnestly, and at last, in a maze of worry, she gave way.

The night before Melbourne she gave him her father's signet ring—a heavy gold thing that Andrew had given her just before he died, telling her it must never leave her possession. He seemed very pleased with it, and told her laughingly that if they could not afford to buy a ring she would be married with that as a temporary measure.



CHAPTER XII

It was a wet, miserable day when they drew alongside at Port Philip. Louis took the communal eight shillings, Marcella kept sixpence for luck. He went ashore before most of the passengers; she waited on board for her uncle.

When he came he was not at all what she had expected him to be. To begin with, he was very chilly—a queer, nervous man who told her he had not been in Melbourne for ten years and found great changes. He seemed to live so much alone that he was frightened to talk to anyone. His hands were hard with labour, but he told her casually that he had a sheep run bigger than Yorkshire and a hundred thousand sheep. His wife had been dead for five years: his house was run by his three daughters.

"We live seventy miles from a station, and fifty miles from the nearest neighbours," he said, looking at her doubtfully. "You don't think you'll be lonely? It's a hard life—I had no time to tell your aunt the many disadvantages, for she said you'd started when she cabled."

Marcella saw quite well that she was not wanted and felt immensely relieved that there was no necessity for her to go to Wooratonga. Haltingly and stumblingly she asked him for the money, without telling him Louis's chain of lies at all. He took little notice of what she said. Money means very little in Australia where things are done on a large scale. Looking immensely relieved he said it would no doubt be much happier for her to go to stay with her friends—and how much money did she want?

Marcella thought ten pounds—she really did not know. But he laughed at that and, taking her along to his bank, gave her fifty pounds. It seemed a lot of money to her, but he waved her thanks away, telling her a long tale about catching fresh-water oysters in the creek near his homestead. He seemed frightened of the traffic, frightened of the people.

"I'll be very glad to get back," he said, as they stood outside the bank watching the street cars clang by. "I've lived in the back blocks so long that houses suffocate me and people all look like monstrosities. I'm glad to have seen you, though. I was very fond of Rose, as a boy."

But he asked no questions about her or Andrew. He simply took for granted all that Marcella said, and was immensely interested in his sheep and his garden. He had recently imported a Chinese gardener who was going to do wonderful things.

"I ought to take you somewhere to get lunch," he said doubtfully, looking at the crowds of people and then at his watch. "There's a train in one hour that will let me catch a connection at midnight."

"Then I'll take you to the station," said Marcella promptly, and added on impulse, "I'm a bit sorry I'm not coming with you, though. I'd have liked to see my cousins—"

"I don't suppose you'd like them much. They are nothing like Rose. I married an Australian, you know, and the girls are like her. They have had very little schooling. They are good girls, very good girls, but just a little hard," he sighed a little, and Marcella felt a quick pang of regret for his loneliness. Obvious though it was that he did not want her, she wished, for a moment, she could have gone with him to cheer his solitude.

"But Ah Sing makes all the difference to me," he added hopefully. "He's growing strawberries, and next week, I hope, we shall see the asparagus peep through."

So she left him on the platform to dream of his sheep and Ah Sing his only friend, while she dreamed of what next week would bring.

She felt it was almost impossible to wait to tell Louis the good news; she wished she had arranged to meet him in the city; she wished all sorts of things as she wandered, solitary, round the streets, feeling very unsteady on her feet after so long on a buoyant floor, and expecting the pavement to rock and sway at every step. She went into the Post Office and despatched letters home. As she was going down the street again rather aimlessly she caught sight of Mrs. Hetherington and Mr. Peters coming out of a restaurant, and was reminded forcibly of Jimmy who would be alone in the drizzling rain on board.

Buying a great box of chocolates, a basket of peaches and a clockwork train she hurried back to the ship, feeling very wealthy.

It was a dreary day. Great Customs House buildings blotted out any possible view, reminding her very much of the ugliness of Tilbury. The rain drizzled down, warm rain that covered the walls of the cabins in streams of moisture; the sailors loading and unloading cargoes with loud creakings of donkey engines swore in sheer irritation; somewhere on the wharf sheep kept up an incessant and pitiful bleating all the day while sirens shrieked out in the stream. Jimmy was the only happy person on board, loading his train with chocolates and unloading them into his mouth after a tortuous trip along the dining table amongst glasses, knives and forks. It was the longest day Marcella had ever known; as the swift twilight passed, the passengers came aboard damp and damped; most of them were grumbling; all looked thoroughly pessimistic about Australia. The schoolmaster was one of the first to come solemnly along the deck under an umbrella. He had avoided Marcella rather pointedly lately, but he came and talked quite affably for a while, didactically contrasting Melbourne with Naples and Colombo.

The Oriana was to sail at eight o'clock; Marcella would not let herself be anxious; she had resolved that she must trust Louis now, and, knowing that he had scarcely any money and no friends, she could not imagine he would get into mischief. But as the last passengers came aboard and the first warning bell rang out, she began to grow cold with fear. The rain was pouring now in a sheet of water; she stood on deck in the green white glare of the arc lamps, which only lighted a circumscribed pool of radiance, and made the surrounding darkness blacker.

The second bell went; she heard the engine-room telegraph ring and the ship began to vibrate to the throb of the engines. She was feeling choked with fear: a thousand apprehensions went through her mind: he had been run over and was dead: he had lost his way: he was ill in hospital, crying out for her.

"Has your friend not come aboard?" asked the schoolmaster at her elbow.

She shook her head. It was impossible to speak.

"I suppose he has mistaken the time of sailing," said the schoolmaster soothingly.

"Do you think I ought to go ashore to look for him?" she cried, articulate at last in her misery, and ready to take advice.

"I think he should be able to take care of himself," he said carefully.

"Ah, but he isn't. I must go and find him," she cried wildly. "What sort of hands will he get into if he's left to himself?"

At that moment the last bell rang, and the boat began to move very slowly away from the wharf—perhaps a minute early. Knollys told Marcella afterwards that he guessed the captain had sailed early on purpose, for just at that moment he saw a group of four people dripping with rain rush on to the slippery boards of the jetty. They were four who had been pretty noticeable as law-breakers during the whole trip—at least, so the captain thought. Marcella gave a cry of hapless disappointment as she saw Louis with Ole Fred, the red-haired man and another. They were laughing wildly, and almost close enough to touch the rails of the ship.

"Jump, Louis," she cried wildly.

"Some flow's—for you, ole girl!" he cried, grinning loosely. "Mished bally boat! Catch, ole girl—flow's," and he threw a great bunch of bedraggled-looking flowers that had very obviously been dropped several times in the greasy mud. They fell helplessly into the water. Marcella could not stop to think of anything sensible. All she could see to do was to jump overboard to him and snatch him from the grinning men who were lurching at his side. But as she put her hand on the rail the schoolmaster drew her back.

"Thass ri! Come on, ole girl! Marsh—Marshella—come an' sleep in—sh-sh-shtreets! Got no money, ole girl. Marsh—Marshella! Parlez vous Franshay? Eh? Ah, oui, oui. Marsh-la! I wan' a woman! Beau-ful wi' shoulders—"

"Oh—oh," she cried, burying her face in her hands in horror.

"I should advise you to go below," said the schoolmaster's restrained voice.

But she was irresistibly drawn to look at Louis, to plead with him with her eyes, though her voice refused to work. And at that moment his unsteady foothold on the streaming planks gave way, and he sat down heavily. There were six or eight feet of black water now between the ship and the quay, but Marcella could hear plainly the foolish laughter of the other three as they tried to lift him to his feet. Ole Fred fell beside him, smashing a bottle as he did so, while several cans of tinned stuff went rolling out of his arms into the water. Louis sat, laughing helplessly until he realized that Marcella's white face was vanishing and he kissed his hand to her solemnly.

"Goo' ni' ole girl. Going fin' woman. Meet thee at Philippi! Ah, oui, oui! Marsh—ella! Look! Noblest Rom' of them all! Elements so mixshed—mixshed—can't stan' up, ole girl."

She heard no more for the laughter of the others who were all sitting heaped together on the slippery boards now. Sick and aching she stood there in the rain, scarcely realizing when the schoolmaster wrapped his raincoat round her; she was wondering whether she would have been happier if she had known he was lying dead in the mortuary, or ill in the hospital instead of sitting, too drunk to move out in the rain on the quay. And suddenly she knew quite well. He had said love was a hunger, and she would understand some day that it was as tigerish a hunger as drink hunger or any other. In that moment of utter disgust and pain and despair she understood that that hunger had come to her though she did not yet comprehend it. It had taken hold of her now—she writhed at the indignity of the thought, but she knew quite well that she actually wanted his presence with her whether he were rude and overbearing, weak and appealing, superior and instructive or drunk and filthy. She simply hungered to have him about her. Always ready to query, to examine motives, she asked herself whether this were not, after all, merely a species of vanity in her that wanted to hold and save this helpless man who, it seemed, could not live for a day without her. And she got no answer to the question—the black water rushed past, chill and pitiless: the rain-swept sky was starless, the streaming decks deserted.

At last she went below, and found it impossible to pass his cabin door. Everybody else was there, about the alleyways or in the saloon, safe and happy: only Louis had to bring himself to disaster every time. Opening his cabin door she went in. His things were all thrown about, his shaving tackle on the bunk, his pyjamas on the floor. Taking them up with hands that trembled she noticed that there were no buttons on them. The pathos of this was more than she could bear. On the floor were the two cups in which he had made tea before they reached port that morning. The teapot they had bought at Gibraltar lay overturned. Quite mechanically she cleaned up the tea-leaves and washed the cups. Then she could bear it no longer and, throwing herself on his bunk, she buried her face in his pillow and sobbed until she was exhausted.



CHAPTER XIII

There were things to be endured the next few days. The purser came along, got Knollys to pack Louis's things and then sealed them. This meant that Marcella was shut away from all association with him; it seemed an unwarrantable interference with what she considered her property. The schoolmaster was surprisingly comforting and kind; he went out of his way to entertain her: Knollys brought unexpected tea in the morning in an attempt to make up for the loss of Louis. A young Scotsman, a sugar planter going out to the Islands, to whom she had talked until the fact that she was "another man's girl" had put a taboo upon her, insisted that she should, in the cold evenings on deck, wear his fur coat which he had brought rather unnecessarily; Jimmy tried to comfort her with apples. Mrs. Hetherington, whom the end of the voyage had left nervy and cross, said cattish things. She thought Marcella had shown very little tact in throwing herself at Louis; she advised her, with the next man, not to tire him out.