"Louis," she said at last, "I am a wretchedly dissatisfied sort of person, dear."

He looked at her enquiringly and smiled.

"Louis, can you get up to-day and come out with me?"

He hesitated for a moment. Then he sighed.

"My dear—I don't think it's safe," he said in a low voice.

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"Well, then, it isn't. But I hate to see you lying here like this. I want us to go and explore. In that big garden by the waterside it's gorgeous. And—there's your work."

He flushed a little, struggling with himself. At last he said:

"After all, it's our honeymoon. We can afford to slack a little."

She laughed outright at that. He could not see anything to laugh at.

"It isn't enough for me—slacking. I hate it. I want to do things just all the time. I want to dig up fields and move hills about, and things like that. Louis, don't you think we might go up country and be squatters like uncle?"

"I wouldn't mind being a squatter like your uncle," he said, comfortably "with fifty quid notes to splash all over the shanty! But you're not getting tired of me, are you, darling—after last night?" he added gently. She flushed, and fidgeted perilously on the window-sill.

"No, Louis. But—after last night—I don't like to see you lying here like this," she began.

"I know it's boring for you, my pet. Marcella, come and sit on the edge of the bed. We can talk better if you're near me."

"No, I'll stay here," she said decidedly. "And it's not boring for me. It's—" She was going to say "degrading" but stopped in time.

"You know, I think I'd be all right," he went on, "if I got up and went out now. But I can't be sure. I don't want to hurt you again, darling."

"I know, my dear. But I can't help thinking this is a negative thing. If you had something to do—something that would interest you so much you couldn't even think about whisky."

"I've got that something in you, when you're as sweet as you were last night," he said softly. She felt sickened for a minute. The Spear in her hand wavered; it seemed to be turning to a chain again. A chain for her, a Spear for him—she said quietly:

"I like taking care of you, Louis. I'm not thinking of myself at all. Only I can't help wishing you'd got pneumonia, or a broken leg or something, so that you could stay in bed sort of—honourably."

"It's worth while, if I get better, isn't it, my pet?" he said, slowly.

"Anything's worth while—if you get better," she said.

And so the days wore on until they had been married six weeks. In all that time Louis never saw whisky. This, he confessed to her, was a miracle; except for when he was with the Maories in the Prohibition Country, and when he had been in hospital for various long stretches, he had never known three days to go by without his being drunk. So she felt that they had advanced steadily. Moods of depression came and went, charmed away by her. They spent a good deal of time on the roof. They had not many books to pass the slow hours, though Dr. Angus sent two every week. Louis began to lecture her on medicine; he really knew extraordinarily well what he had learnt: he was an excellent teacher of facts, but he had not one iota of deductive thought in his teaching and, like Andrew Lashcairn, was remarkably impatient if she did not understand or, understanding, ventured to express an opinion of her own about anything. They had many glamorous nights on the roof, nights that recalled the enchantment of those hours under the Aurora, nights of severe mental reservation on Marcella's part, all unsuspected by Louis. He confessed to her that his ideas were getting modified; a great confession for so crusted a conservative as he.

One night they were kept awake by a tropical downpour which lashed against the windows and poured through the ceiling. Three times they had to get up and move the bed round to escape the stream of water. Marcella seemed to be spending all the night mopping up water.

"If Mrs. King sees all this mess I expect she'll say we mustn't go up on the roof again," said Louis. "I suppose we cracked the rusty old iron by walking about on it."

"I love the roof," said Marcella, patiently mopping. It was three o'clock: the shrill hum of mosquitoes made them afraid to put out the light, since they had no mosquito nets. After a while they stood by the window watching the water running along the street as high as the kerb stones.

"I love the roof, too. A few months ago I'd have fainted at the thought of doing anything so unconventional as sleeping on a roof. You are changing me, Marcella. I'm getting your ideas of not caring what people think, of being my own censor. And—do you know something else, Marcella?" he added, looking at her with adoration. Her eyes asked questions.

"I believe I've got it beat at last."

"The whisky?"

"Yes. I don't want the bally stuff now. I want you instead. I hate you away from me for an instant. If you went away now, dearie, I'd be raving with d.t. next day!"

"Oh Louis!"

"I would! I worship you, Marcella. You're life itself to me. I can't get on two minutes without you."

"But just supposing I did die—seriously, Louis! People get knocked down in streets and all that. Why shouldn't it be me?"

"I shouldn't attempt to live. I know exactly what I'd do. I've got it all worked out! I shall just get blind, roaring drunk and then throw myself in the harbour. My life is useless without you."

To his amazement she wrung her hands hopelessly, and looked at him with tragic eyes.

"Can't you see, you utter idiot, that that's just all wrong? It's no use doing things for someone else! You've got to do them for yourself! What's the good of it? Do you think I want to make you a flabby thing hanging on to my apron strings all the time? You've got drunk on whisky in the past. Louis, I'm simply not going to have you getting drunk on me! What on earth's the use of conquering drink hunger and getting woman-hunger? It's only another—what you call neurosis, and what I call kink! If that's all the use my love and the whole wicked struggle is going to be, I might as well give up at once?"

He caught her wet face between his hands. In the light of the candle he looked at her earnestly.

"If, at the end of all this, I've to go on being a prop to you, we need not go on trying any more. Props are rotten and cowardly, whether they are props of love or not. I want to see you grow so that, if I go out of life, you'll stand up straight with your head in the sun and the wind. Not propped, my dear! Father was all wrong, I think now. When he'd killed the whisky he leaned on a great big man God outside him, a shield and defence. Can't you see that we've to stand up alone without God or anything except ourselves? Can't you see that unless our strength is in ourselves we'll never stand? That's what I'm trying to do—and I know how hard it is."

"You? You're not a drunkard, Marcella," he said.

She smiled a little as she looked at him.

"You know, Louis, you're an awful duffer!" she said, and turned away. But he lifted her over the wet floor into bed and, as he blew out the candle, told the mosquitoes to go to hell, and kissed her face and her hands, he thought he had effectually stilled her queer ethical doubtings. And she felt very much alone and unguided, and not at all able to stand up straight without a prop as she had preached to him.

For the next few days Louis was depressed and restless. She did not understand him. She was not yet aware that his hunger came on in periodic attacks and thought that she must have hurt him in some way to make him so wretched. She tried to be especially gentle to him, but he was rather difficult to please. He developed a habit of womanish, almost shrewish, nagging that astounded her; he grumbled at his food, he grumbled at the discomforts of living in one room; he made her feel cheap when she kissed him by turning away and saying, "There, that's enough, now!"; he found fault with her clothes and, one morning as she was dressing, said he was tired of seeing her cleaning the room; she seemed to think that that was all he needed—a nurse and a servant, since she never troubled to make herself attractive to him. Several times, coming from doing her cooking in the basement, she found Mr. King slinking along the top landing, but did not associate him with Louis. Several times she thought she smelt whisky, but told herself angrily that she was dreaming. Then, one day, coming in from the Post Office, she found Louis gone. One thing she noticed as she came along the landing was an empty bottle in the dark corner behind the door. As soon as she opened the door she saw three whisky bottles, empty, on the mantelpiece. On a piece of paper he had written:

"Get all the satisfaction you can out of these, old girl. I'm off."

She felt cold with horror, but there was nothing she could do. Mrs. King said that she had seen him go out at two o'clock. And that was all she could learn. For the rest of the afternoon and evening she was almost frantic with fear. But the money was not touched. She could not imagine what had happened until Mrs. King told her that Mr. King had confessed to getting letters containing money from the Post Office for Louis, and buying him whisky. Marcella ran out of the house, almost crazed with fright, to look for him. When she had only gone a few hundred yards she ran back, afraid he might come in and need her. It was not until after midnight that a violent knocking on the front door roused Mrs. King and sent Marcella down the stairs in a panic.

It was Louis. His eyes were wild, his clothes muddy. He lurched past Mrs. King and, making a great effort, managed to get upstairs.

In the room, instinct made Marcella shut and lock the door. He had thrown himself on the bed, his muddy boots on the coverlet. He lay there breathing heavily for awhile until he was violently sick.

"Oh, Louis—my poor little boy!" she cried, forgetting that he was drunk in her fear that he was ill.

"You think I'm drunk, ole girl—not drunk 'tall, ole girl."

"Well, get undressed and get into bed," she said, trying to help. He struck her hand away from his collar fiercely and, holding her arms twisted them until she had to beg him to let her go.

"Aft' my papers," he cried fiercely. Then he seemed to recognize her and began to rave about his duty to England, and how England's enemies had given him poison.

"I'm poisoned, ole girl. I knew what it would be. But when they sent for me I had to go."

"Who sent for you?"

"They sent a note by King. It came in by the English mail. Th-th-they have t-t-to b-be s-so c-c-careful," he said, and that was all he would tell her. Soon he was fast asleep, breathing heavily, and she was wrestling with a sick disgust at his presence, a fright that he really had been in danger from enemies and the conviction that he was drunk and not poisoned. She lay on the floor again this time because she could not bring herself to touch him or go near him. His hands and face were dirty and he had definitely refused to wash them or let her wash them. But in the middle of the night he woke up and began to shout for her.

"I wan' my wife. Where's my wife?" he raved and groping till he found the candlestick knocked on the floor with it. She sprung up hastily.

"Louis—hush, dear. You're waking up all the poor boys who have to go to work at six o'clock," she whispered.

"I wan' my wife," he cried, groping for her with his muddy hands. She stood trembling by the bed.

"Louis, I can't—it isn't a bit of use asking me. I can't be in bed beside you like this."

"Glad 'nough to las' night!" he said, laughing into her face. She felt the hot blood pumping to her skin until it seemed to her that even her hair must be blushing. Then she went very cold as she walked blindly towards the door, only conscious that she must get anywhere away from him.

"I wan' my wife. She is my wife, isn't she? Dammit! Wha's a man's wife for? Marsh—Marshlaise! Damn Germ's playing Marshlaise! They're aft' me—I knew they'd be aft' me! Marsh-shella? Where's my Marsh-ella?"

He pounded on the floor again, and she turned back, wrung by the terror in his voice. She lighted two candles and he saw that she was by his side.

"I thought you'd left me," he said, beginning to cry and streaking the tears about his face with his dirty hands. She was shivering as she bent over him, her tears mingling with his.

"I'm here with you, dear," she told him.

"Are you my wife? Wan' wom'n—beau-ful whi' shoulders! N'est ce pas? Parlez-vous Franshay, mam-selle? Ah oui, oui."

"Louis, you mustn't, mustn't talk that beastly French, please," she sobbed. He thumped on the floor, staring round wildly with glazed eyes. There was a tap at the door. Marcella, glad of any diversion, went and opened it.

"I say, kid, keep your boss quiet if you can," whispered Mrs. King. "My young chaps down below can't get their proper sleep for that row, and they've got a hard day's work before them if he hasn't."

"Mrs. King, whatever am I to do with him?" she cried frantically. "I don't believe he knows it's me. And he's so horribly dirty."

"Oh, go an' sit on his knee a bit, kid, and make up to him. That's the best way to make them go quiet. He's at the vulgar stage to-night, your boss is. But do keep him quiet. Not that I'm not sorry for you, kid," she added, as she turned away. "They're beasts, men are. Mine's asleep as it happens."

He was still raving, saying disgusting things that, unfortunately, were in English this time. Looking at him in the candlelight she felt terrified of him and utterly unable to treat him as a sick man and not a wicked one. As she stood there stiff, unable through sheer disgust to get any nearer to him, he clutched at her nightgown and drew her nearer. She felt frantic; her nails cut into her hands as she gripped them together as if for the comforting feel of a hand in hers.

"Why should I have this disgust happen to me? It's too dirty to ask women to get men to sleep like this."

Then, amidst all the searing things he was saying, came the memories of those cries in the night at the farm and she wondered breathlessly if this sort of thing could have happened to her mother. And, at that moment she knew that it had not. Her father might, quite possibly, have almost killed her mother by his violent rages. But he could never have been merely disgusting. She looked at him again and felt murderous; a passion to put him out of life, to stamp upon him and finish him flooded up and burst and died all in an instant. She realized in that quiet instant that this passionate disgust was utterly selfish; if he had been loathsome with any other disease than this she would have nursed and soothed him tenderly; if he had been clean and charming, as on the night of the aurora.

"Oh, what a hypocrite you are, Marcella Lashcairn!" she said. "With all your high-falutin' ideas of balance and coolness! You've been luxuriating in the thought of martyrdom all the time you've been fighting the enchantment of this wretched love-making! You've not been fighting it a bit, really! It's only now, when it's disgusting and beastly and—not a bit enchanting, that you're fighting it! What a liar you've been!"

"I wan' my wife," he muttered, quietened a little by Mrs. King's voice. "'Sall very well, ole girl."

"Be quiet, Louis, or I'll shake your head off!" she said, quietly. He stared at her, and cowered down in the bed. She watched him for a moment. Then she spoke softly.

"Now you're going to sleep—you're going to put your head down on Marcella's shoulder and go to sleep. You're quite safe with Marcella."

He shivered a little, and then lay still. She pinched out the candle with fingers that did not feel the flame.

For a whole fortnight he drank steadily, using remarkable cleverness in getting money. He joined forces with Mr. King: for the first week they obtained money from some unknown source and only came home at night when they were put out of the hotels at closing time, and even then they brought whisky or gin—which was much cheaper—home with them. Marcella had not known there were distinctions in alcohol; she found during that fortnight that whisky made him mad and then terrified, gin made him horribly disgusting and beer made him simply silly and very sick. The second week Louis tricked and lied to Marcella, using any excuse to get her out of the room. At the end of three days he had sold everything he possessed except his least reputable suit, which he had to keep to wear. The last day of the fortnight he came home without the waistcoat: whether he had sold that, or given it away in maudlin generosity, or lost it in some fantastic fashion she could never gather. He had not taken any of her money. On Mrs. King's advice she had gone up on the roof one day, crept along three other roofs and hidden it in a gully.

"You've got to be up to all the dodges," said Mrs. King.

"I loathe dodges," said Marcella.

She got down to the depths in this fortnight. Louis scarcely slept at all, nor did she. Soothing him at night sickened her beyond endurance; she read the New Testament much during the day while he was away, and the story of the Grail. One day St. Paul said something to her that brought her up sharp.

"Though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing; love suffereth long, and is kind: love—beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

"I don't believe I love him. I don't believe I ever loved him. That madness wasn't love, or it would have endured all things," she said. Then Parsifal told her that without love pity might still endure all things. By the time she had been married two months her pity for him was an overwhelming ache. He pretended penitence to win it: he had no need to pretend....

At last he had no money. Everything portable he had sold, including some of her clothes. His drink hunger was tearing him. She was going about the room with big, mournful eyes and white face, making a meal for him. He had scarcely eaten for the whole fortnight; she did not understand that he was too poisoned to eat; she tried to persuade him to take food until he was irritated beyond endurance and threw it on the floor. As she passed him, quiet footed, he noticed her purse in the pocket of the big cooking apron Mrs. King had lent her.

"Dearie," he said presently, "leave that silly mess and come here to me."

She came immediately, and sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders drooping.

"Your little Louis's so sorry," he whispered.

"Are you really sorry, Louis? Not like you were last time?" she asked, suddenly hoping all things again on the slightest provocation.

"My darling, I'm heartbroken to think of the way I've treated you," he said. "I think I'd better throw myself in the harbour."

He took her hand in his and held it shakily. Her loose sleeve slipped up; on the white arm he saw blue marks of fingers; this jerked him a little. He had not known he had got to that yet. Suddenly he kissed them and began to cry.

"When did I do that?"

"What?" she said guilelessly.

"Your arm—"

"Oh, that!" she said, flushing. "That's nothing. I don't know how I did it. Mrs. King's mangle, I think it was. It's ugly. I don't like you to see ugly things." She drew the sleeve down tight.

"My poor little brave darling," he whispered, drawing her closer, trying to make her hide her face on his shoulder as he measured the distance between his hand that was round her waist and the apron pocket. He saw that it was hopeless.

"Marcella—when your father was ill, did he pray?"

"Yes. All the time."

"I wish I could," he murmured.

"Why not, if you want to? Wanting to pray is a prayer, really."

"I don't feel fit to, Marcella. Do you think you could pray for me, girlie?" he said, looking past her at the wall.

"I—I don't think I could—out loud. I'd feel as if I were eavesdropping. But I can in my mind, if you like."

"Let's kneel down, then, like we did in the funny little tin tabernacle when we were married," he said, and with an unsteady spring he was out of bed and kneeling by her side. For five minutes they were very quiet, she with her face buried in the counterpane as she prayed vaguely to herself and God and her father to help him. So intent was she that she did not feel his hand in her pocket. She thought his look of relief when they stood up and he kissed her meant that once more he had beaten his enemy.

"Girlie—go down and fill the bath for me! Right full to the brim with cold water. Like ducking in Jordan! I feel good now. I'm going to be clothed and in my right mind, now," he said earnestly. When she came back, her shoulders squared again, he had vanished. She did not miss her purse until she went to the door to buy milk. Luckily there was not very much in it. Not till she heard the tale from Louis's lips did she believe he had stolen it, and when she missed a few not very valuable but very precious articles of jewellery that had belonged to her mother she thought that his tale of enemies—Germans and Chinese—who were dogging him, searching for valuable Government papers, must be true, and that they had taken her few trinkets.

That night brought the climax; he had reached the limit of endurance and was brought home by two sailors who had found him on the Man-of-War Steps. A wild southerly buster was blowing, bringing rain with it in floods. He was drenched and so were the sailors.

"He isn't half shikkered," said one of the boys admiringly. "Trying to jump in the harbour, saying the Germans was after him! If we'd not been going back to the Astarte just then he'd have been in, sure enough."

"I'll get him upstairs for you, miss," said one of the sailors. "He's going to have the rats. We'd really ought to have give him to the police."

"I'm glad you didn't. If you can help me get him to his room—"

"Right-o, miss. Is he married?"

"Yes. I'm his wife," she said quietly. The sailors seemed to discuss the matter together. Then one of them volunteered to stay the night, as he guessed Louis would be dangerous.

"I'll get pulled for it to-morrow," said the boy, "but it don't seem right to leave a girl with him."

"You are nice, both of you," she said gratefully, "but don't worry. I'm quite used to him. He'll go to sleep."

Her instinct was to get rid of spectators, to have him to herself locked away from unsympathetic eyes. So the sailors went at last. When she got back from seeing them out Louis was flattened against the wall, staring with horrified eyes at the door, shaking violently. He had lost control of all his muscles; his face was grinning dreadfully. She gave a little cry of fright at his dreadful face. He mistook the cause of it and it communicated itself to him adding to his already overwhelming horror.

"They're after me," he mumbled; she could scarcely tell what he said because his mouth could only form the words loosely. "On the roof! Germs—Chinks! Listen!" Suddenly he spoke with extraordinary clearness, telling her that he had had word that day that the Germans and Chinese had formed an alliance and were already over-running Europe.

"Big air fleet over Melb-Melba! Alb't Hall in ruins!" he chattered." Chinese torture. They know I'm biggest en'my in 'Stralia, ole girl. They got me—to-day they caught me. I always knew it—I knew they'd have me! But I beat them, just as I beat the Pater! They know I'm the man they're after! They know I'm the son of the Duke of ——" He mumbled a name Marcella could not catch. "Tha's why Pater—s'posed father—pers'cuted me all 'long! He was in their pay. Can't you see it? But I got away. Only they'll have me, they'll have me. They're on the roof now! Marsh-Marshe-lla, can you guard chimney if they come down? Ole girl, guard it with your body! Coming down chimney—Christmas Eve—"

He began to cry and laugh hysterically.

"When I was li'l kid'—Chris-mas stockings; I nev' thought Chinks'd come down chim' with hot irons—scalpels—" And then he described in abominable detail the tortures of the Inquisition all mixed up with Chinese tortures and atrocities: his reading seemed to have taken a morbid turn for years; the unspeakable horrors he described made Marcella the same quaking jelly of fear as he was, for the moment. The wild howling of the southerly buster in the chimney spoke to her Keltic imagination of enemy voices; the creakings of the rain-swollen roof, the pattering of the hail above on the iron was like quiet-footed torturers advancing to their work. Her reason had gone for a moment, overwhelmed by horrors. She did not stop to ask herself logical questions. Louis's voice went on, all on one note, piling horror on horror, disgust on disgust.

"They've killed poor ole King. Dutch Frank's in their pay—sleeping in the nex' room to us all these weeks. They hold your feet to the fire till they swell and burst. They'll do that to you, old thing, 'cause you're with me. Ole girl—I say, ole girl! You won't yell out, will you? Ole girl—show them how an Eng—Eng—can die!"

She watched him, fascinated, her back against the door. With a look of infinite cunning he began to search his pockets and produced a bundle of papers, ordinary note-paper, pale grey with an embossed address and telephone number at the top. He handed them to her solemnly.

"If they get me, ta' these! Lea' me! Le' me die f'r ole flag! Braved a thous' years batt' and the breeze! Ta' these to the Gov'-Genral! He mus' sen' these to King George! May save Buck'm Pal's! If all else falls, mus' save Buck'm Pal's, Marshella! King George unstans code—all in code—"

She took them dazedly in her hands. She saw that on the whitewashed wall against which he had almost stuck himself was a great patch of wet from his drowned clothes. He was standing with a pool of water dripping from him; his blazing eyes were darting this way and that in terror, his mouth was working loosely. Occasionally he lost power of speech entirely and regained it with didactic distinctness for a few moments. He made ineffectual grabs at Marcella, but his shaking hands failed to reach her. His inflamed brain searched back to every horrible physical thing he had read, or seen, every operation he had watched; his morbid condition made them things of obscenity, atrocity. He repeated them all to her with such circumstantial and guileless exactitude that her brain reeled, and still she stood by the door, keeping out she knew not what. Watching her face growing whiter, more pinched, he remembered things done to women by madmen—and said them aloud.

She glanced at the bundle of papers in her hand, wondering where she could hide them from his enemies. Opening them out so that she could fold them better she read the top page. It was written in thin, Italian handwriting, the typical caligraphy of the upper-class woman of middle age.

"My own Darling Boy," she read.

"I enclose the usual pound from the Pater. Also five shillings each from Mary and myself to get you some cigarettes and chocolates. I hope you can get that nice milk chocolate you like so much in Australia. My dear, I hope and pray every day that you will remember that promise you gave me at Tilbury. When I see other mothers with big sons I feel I can't bear your being right at the other side of the world. Mrs. Cornell came in with Rupert to-day, and for the first time in my life I felt I hated them both. The doctor and Mr. Blackie have been in playing billiards with the Pater. I strongly suspect the Pater let the old chap win. Anyway, he was very excited about it when he went home."

She turned over to the last page, and read, "given Toby his biscuit and told him Master will soon be home. He will, won't he, dear boy?

"Your loving old MUM."

She frowned. Louis had slid down to the floor and was curled up against the wall, making himself as small as possible, muttering, and occasionally grasping out at something that eluded him.

The next letter was very much the same as the first—little loving messages, circumstantial accounts of trivial family interests. Cook had been ill again and the soup was burnt one night because the temporary cook sent by Miss Watkin's Agency was certainly not up to her job. Mary had been to see "The Chocolate Soldier" again, and was very bored. One of the Wayre girls—the fair one—had dyed her hair for a church concert and couldn't wash it off again.

And he said these letters were a code!

Marcella had a quick struggle with two sides of her nature. The Kelt in her hugged the thought that these were secret service papers to be guarded with her life for his sake, his country's sake. There was nothing extraordinary to her in the thought that, in the reign of George V, torturing enemies were abroad with knife and bastinado and poison cup. She saw herself standing over his prostrate body, with countless slain enemies before her, and a dripping spear in her hand. She got a glimpse of King George, with ringlets, velvet suit and Vandyke lace collar gravely smiling as he received the papers from her hands. She was still in the romantic stage of kingship! And then the stolidly common-sense Puritan ancestress in her made her laugh. It was hard for her to disbelieve a romantic and perilous tale. But these letters! They were simply the pathetic love-letters of a mother to her boy, bringing an atmosphere of a commonplace, peaceful English home into all this madness. With that the truth dawned on her. There were eight of them, each mentioning money! Louis had admitted not writing to his father to put a stop to his remittance. She had forgotten to insist that it was done. Here was the explanation of his present orgy!

He was kneeling on the floor now, trying to grip his bitten, bleeding fingers into the wall and crawl upwards. He thought he was in a well, drowning. As she bent over him the well vanished, and she became his enemy. He made a desperate lunge at her and tried to grab his papers from her. But his body was unco-ordinated; murder was in his brain, but it could not be transferred to his shaking hands with which he menaced her.

She was very much stronger than he, and all the stronger now that her acquired fear of unknown enemies had been laughed away. The thing she realized most was that he must go to bed, that his wet clothes must come off for fear they gave him pneumonia; that, even if they were not wet, they must still come off and be locked up to keep him once again a prisoner. Only, it seemed, in imprisonment, lay peace. And peace was certainly not salvation!

As she realized that, all the strength was taken from her, but only for a moment. She felt that there was something in living from day to day and trusting that somehow good would come to him; she thought for a mad moment of being drastic, and breaking his leg to make him an honourable prisoner, but realized with self-contempt that she was too soft to do that to him. Instead, she fought him to get his clothes off, and by shaking him till all his breath went, perhaps saved his reason by crystallizing his intangible fears of enemies into physical fear of her, whom he could see and guard against. But he dared not sleep. As soon as he had ceased to be afraid of her rather hard, very strong hands he became afraid again of the Germans and Chinks; and, seeing him there, so weak now, so sick, so shaky she could not shake fear into him any more.

As the night wore on his delusions changed. He was still being persecuted, but now she was the persecutor. Once he cried out that he had been drinking sulphuric acid, and his throat and mouth were completely burnt away, leaving a gaping wound. She made tea for him, guessing that this was merely a picturesque way of telling her he was thirsty. But he thought she was poisoning him, and dared not drink the tea. She had only married him for his money and his position, for his enemies had told her he was a duke's son. She was a second Mrs. Maybrick—but this conveyed nothing to newspaperless Marcella. She had been unfaithful to him many times, he told her: Mr. King, Dutch Frank, Ole Fred and the Chinese greengrocer from whom she bought granadillas every day, were the objects of her transferred affections.

Unused to the ravings of delirium she was first wildly indignant and then coldly despairing; at first she thought he was cruel; then she realized, with a softening to pity, that he was only mad. He won back the pity by telling her that his mouth and throat were now in an advanced state of decomposition, having been dead many months; maggots were crawling over them, choking him. The overwhelming beastliness of this suggestion was almost more than she could bear until she realized that it must be even more overwhelming for him. By chance she hit upon the sort of treatment a doctor would most likely have given a man suffering from alcoholic poisoning. She spoke to him quietly, as if asking his advice, though she could scarcely control her voice.

"The best thing is to poison the maggots, don't you think, Louis?"

He looked at her craftily, his mind switching on to a less horrifying thought.

"Ha! I knew you had poison. Where is it?"

"I gave you all the poison in that tea, dear. What is there we can use to poison maggots? Surely they taught you that at the hospital?"

"Oh yes, yes—mix up salt and water and watch them wriggle! A quart of water and two tons of salt. Be quick! I'll poison the devils," he cried, and she watched in astonishment as he drank the salt water greedily. Of course he was sick, and very much better because much less poisoned.

His delusions became less terrifying; the maggots changed to a bee buzzing inside his ear, deafening him. She killed the bee by blowing cigarette smoke inside his ear and telling him it was dead. When he grew much quieter and more reasonable he asked her the time in so ordinary a voice that she thought he must be quite well. The next minute he begged her earnestly not to come near him again because her infidelities had made him loathe the sight of her.

Right back of her mind was the shaking conviction that she could not stand alone; she was longing, demanding almost, all that night, that God should come down from on high with chariots and thunderbolts to save her; she wanted Dr. Angus to tell her what to do, to persuade her that Louis was a sick man and not a bad man; next minute she wanted her father to come and thrash him to death for his wickedness. But all the time, illogically, she pitied him while she pitied herself. By accident he killed the self pity by transmuting it to a softer, more beautiful thing.

"Did I tell you the Chinks had got that little Jimmy who was on the Oriana?" he asked casually at tea-time next day.

"Who? What do you mean?" she said, starting.

"I saw him and Peters sleeping out in the Domain that wet night. I was going to sleep there too, because I was afraid to come home to you. They told me they were starving. The kiddie had got his pyjamas in a bundle. All their other baggage had gone somewhere—probably seized for rent somewhere. Serves the old fool right, spending all his tin on that little widow!"

"But where's Jimmy?" she cried, starting up to fetch him.

"I don't know. I gave him a shilling to get a feed, and the old chap came and had a few drinks with me. I forget what happened then. I expect the Salvation Army 'll get the kid—if they can get him from the Chinks."

That night she was tortured by Jimmy. Then she was tortured by all the children in all the worlds, especially those children who had no mother, and more especially those children whose fathers were chained as Mr. Peters was. She could not leave Louis while she went to search for Jimmy, whom she would have kidnapped without a second thought if she could. Next day Louis, though sane, was very ill with gastritis, and though several of Mrs. King's lodgers went from Domain to hotel, from hotel to the police, and from the police to the Salvation Army, they could not trace Jimmy. She never saw him again; he lived in her mind, a constant torment, the epitome of victimization, gallantly loyal and valiant even in homelessness and starvation.



CHAPTER XVIII

While Louis was so weak and ill Marcella came to several conclusions. The first was that they must leave Sydney at once; the second was that Louis must be made to work if he would not be persuaded to work willingly. In work, it seemed to her now, lay his salvation much more than in imprisonment, even though she should have him imprisoned in a nursing home, under treatment. And in getting away from Sydney lay her own salvation. It was high summer; the heat to her, after the cool exhilaration of the Highlands, was terrific; very often the thermometer she borrowed from Dutch Frank's bedroom registered a hundred and twenty degrees in their room, and the close intimacy of life in one room was becoming appalling to her. While he was in bed she was happy in a purely negative way; very soon happiness came to mean to her the state of quiescence when he was not drunk. They had cleared up many things, and though she was glad to have got to the bedrock of truth about him at last she was sick with disillusionment, and a self-disgust at having been so credulous, so easily deceived. In the state of chronic depression reactive to his orgy he let out all the truth about himself in a passion of self-indulgent penitence. His tales of secret service were, he told her, not technically lies. They were the delusions of his deranged mind. He had read a spy book in England just before meeting her, when he was recovering from a similar orgy; it had made a dint on his brain similar to the impression left by the French girl earlier. In the same way he explained his morbid tales of Chinese tortures—once, in a fit of melancholy, he had attempted suicide, and after his recovery had gone to the seaside with his mother to recuperate; in the boarding-house had been a collection of books on atrocities. It seemed that everything he read or saw when in a state of physical relaxation affected him psychologically. Marcella did not realize this, however, until long afterwards.

The tales he had told her about his parentage he was inclined to treat with amusement.

"Don't you know, darling, that that's the first thing a man says when he's crazed with any sort of delirium? Either his mother's honour or some other woman's goes by the board. I just had a variant on that theme—that's all."

She was silent for a while, crushed.

"And then the things you said to me, Louis. About me and—that awful Mr. King and old Hop Lee who brings the fruit. They are simply unforgivable. Louis, I'll do all I can to help you, my dear, but I'm finished with you. You sneered at me because you knew I liked to kiss you. Nothing on earth can ever make me do it again."

"Marcella," he said solemnly, "the other night I had d.t.—just a mild attack. Ask any doctor and he'll tell you about it. Those things I said to you I didn't say, really. They were just lunacy. There was an Indian student at the hospital who used to assure us solemnly that delirious or drugged or drunk people were possessed by the spirits of dead folks; drunkards by drunkards' spirits who wanted drink so badly they got into living bodies to satisfy their craving that even death couldn't kill. I used to laugh at him as a mad psychic. But I'm hanged if it doesn't look as if there's something in it. You know I couldn't talk to you like that, little girl, don't you? You forget that this is illness, dearie."

"I'm afraid I do, Louis. Anyway, whether it's you or—or—an obsessing spirit, or anything else, I can't help it. I can't have you talk like that any more."

"No—I quite see that," he said thoughtfully. "I can explain it, you know."

"I'm tired of explaining," she said wearily, sitting on the table with her legs swinging. Her hair was plaited back and tied with a big bow, as she usually wore it in the house; his heart contracted with pity as he saw what a girl she looked.

"I don't think people ever realize how deeply this question of physical fidelity has sunk into us—as a race, I mean. If you knew it, Marcella, it's absolutely the first thing of which people accuse those they love when they get deranged in any way. A dear old man I knew—he was quite eighty—a professor of psychology—when he was dying had the most terrible grief because he seriously thought he'd got unlimited numbers of girls into trouble. I suppose"—he went on slowly, wrestling with his thoughts as he put them into words—"I suppose it's because we resent infidelity so bitterly or else—why is it it touches us on the raw so much? Why is it you were so sick with me for saying that insane thing about King and Hop Lee?"

"I don't know, Louis," she said hopelessly. "It simply made me feel sick."

"But—it did touch you on the raw, you know, or you wouldn't have felt sick. It wouldn't make you feel sick if I accused you of murder or burglary—I believe it's simply because we might, all of us, very conceivably break the seventh commandment; in fact, I don't believe anybody goes through life, however sheltered and inhibited they may be, without wanting to break it at least once! And that's why we're so mad when anyone says we have."

She thought this out for a while.

"Well, I think that's perfectly disgusting, and that's all I can say about it," she said finally.

Later he explained in a very clear, concise way, the reason for his outburst. Partly it was periodic; partly it was the result of outside circumstances. He had lied to her to "keep his end up," he said; he had clung to his father's money because he could not bear that she should be penniless; then a letter from his mother, brought at his request by King, had upset him. It told how Violet had returned his engagement ring; she had forgotten to do it until her husband, noticing it in her jewel-case, had asked its history and insisted on its return. His mother had said she would keep it safe for him until he came back; his father had said it must be sold to pay some of the debts Louis had left. There had apparently been a family quarrel: the mother, wanting sympathy, had written to Louis about it. And he had felt angry with Violet, angry with Violet's husband, angry with his father. "That explains why, when I went off my head, I said I wasn't the Pater's son, and why I crystallized my annoyance with Violet into hatred of you."

There was a long silence. Marcella was learning things rapidly.

"Then, when everything outside goes well, we shall be happy, but if the tiniest thing upsets or annoys you I shall have to suffer?" she said calmly.

"Oh, my pet—" he began brokenly, and burst into tears.

She felt that his crying was pitiful, but very futile. Later, very shakily, he wrote a letter to his father at her dictation, and she posted it, thus cutting them off from England. He got better slowly, able, as his brain cleared, to treat himself as a doctor might have done. As soon as he seemed able to talk about the future she raised the subject.

"Louis," she said one evening, "I've learnt a lot of things lately. I've learnt that I must never believe a word you say, for one thing. And I'm going to act on that. But what's worrying me most is that we have practically no money left."

"Oh, my God!" he cried tragically.

"You see," she went on calmly, "I believed in your work, so I was not particularly careful with the money. That's one thing. Another is that we're both going to work or you'll be worse and I'll murder you soon. Number three is that we're going to get out of this city where you won't be in constant temptation. Perhaps when you've got some nerve back again we'll live among people again. You can't stay in bed for the rest of your life. You'd be bored to drink in no time—"

"I couldn't be bored where you are, girlie," he whispered tenderly. "How could I be?"

"I don't know, but you are. And so am I," she said grimly. He stared at her and was silent.

"What are we going to do till we get away, then?" he asked. "We've still got the Pater's money—"

"Yes, that will come for weeks yet. I've thought all about that. If I were heroic I suppose I'd not touch it. But I don't see how we can avoid it."

"But it isn't enough to get out of Sydney with," he said petulantly.

"Yes it is. I'm going to find work for us," she informed him.

"What sort of work?"

"Anything—farm work is all I know. But probably I could cook. Mrs. King has told me a good many things to make."

"But, Marcella—" began Louis, almost tearfully.

She turned to him quickly.

"Louis, you're to leave this to me. On the Oriana you said you would. I'm your doctor and I'm prescribing treatment. I may be wrong, but give me a trial, anyway. I don't want to boss you. I want you to be free. But you can't till you've learnt how to walk yourself."

And she would say no more, but going to several agencies in Pitt Street put down their names. She told them she came from a farm in Scotland, and they seemed very pleased to see her. But when she added that she was married to an Englishman who had a public-school education they became sceptical.

"What can he do?" they asked. She hesitated.

"Rouseabout?" asked the clerk. When they explained that this meant being Jack-of-all-trades on an up-country station, Marcella, in a spirit of sheer mischief, said that would suit Louis well. She liked the busy sound of the word, too. But though she called at the agencies day after day, no one seemed to want her. At last a clerk, an elderly, pleasant woman explained.

"They're afraid to engage newly married couples on up-country stations where there are not too many hands for fear they go having children—you see, that puts a woman out of action for a while and throws all the work out of gear. If you were forty-five or thereabouts, now."

This seemed an astonishing state of things to Marcella.

The days passed. Louis got up at Christmas time in the blazing heat of midsummer, looking a shadow of himself. He began to take a greedy interest in doing things; he made a cupboard for the crockery lent them by Mrs. King; he made it very well, very carefully, hampered by lack of tools. He read hungrily all the books Dr. Angus sent to Marcella, especially lectures and scientific books. He seemed to disagree on principle with whatever she said, and they had many pleasantly heated arguments. His mother sent him papers—the "Referee," "Punch," the "Mirror." He cut out many of the "Punch" pictures and tacked them up beside the Landseer print, side by side with Will Dyson's cartoons from the "Bulletin" that Marcella liked. When there was nothing to read or do he told Marcella yarns of his past, until she grew to know his people very well. Whenever he felt tempted to lie to her he pulled himself up pathetically, and she saw that he was really trying to keep his tongue under control. When everything else palled they played Noughts and Crosses, or Parson's Cat, or Consequences. Mrs. King had asked them repeatedly to play cards with her "young chaps" in the kitchen, but Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people, and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks." Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying he was abominably lazy.

Money became more and more scarce, but this worried her not at all. She was coming to associate the possession of money with Louis's restlessness, for always on English mail days he was restless and bad tempered until she had paid away practically all their money, when he became calm again. She began to think that if she could devise a way of living by barter, without money at all, they might conceivably eliminate these fits of restlessness and petulance. And all the time, as there seemed no chance of getting work, she was racking her brains for some way of getting out of the city before his next intermittent outburst came along.

English mail day usually happened on Monday; on the Saturday before the last remittance would arrive Marcella discovered that she had no money at all. She told Louis with a little, perplexed laugh.

"Lord, and I've no cigarettes," he cried in dismay.

"Well, it's only one day," she began. He got nearly frantic.

"You know perfectly well I can't do without cigarettes," he cried. "If I do I'll get all raked up. You know what it means if I get all raked up—"

"Oh, don't always be threatening me with that," she cried hotly. "You know I'm doing my best, Louis. But I tell you I wouldn't be a slave to anything like cigarettes. I do believe St. Paul when he says, 'If thy right hand offend thee cut it off.' I would—if my right hand dared to boss me."

"Probably you would," he sneered. "We all know how damned superior you always are, and as for an emasculated old ass like St. Paul—blasted, white-livered passive resister—"

She stared at him and laughed. Her laugh maddened him.

"I wonder why it is," she said quietly, "that if anyone conquers his particular vice, people sneer at him and call him names? You seem to think that curing a cancer in one's mind is rather an effeminate thing to do, Louis—rather a priggish thing. I suppose if you get cured of drinking you'll say you never did it for fear of being called a prig?"

"Oh, for God's sake stop theorizing and face facts!" he cried. "Just like a woman, to run away from things. Where am I to get cigarettes from for to-morrow? Marcella, I can't be without them! What on earth you do with the money I can't imagine! Girlie—do get them for me," and he burst into tears. She stared at him in astonishment. The next moment her arms were round his neck, his head on her shoulder.

"You poor little boy," she whispered. "Don't worry. I'll get them for you."

"I'm sorry I'm such a kid, dearie. But you know my nerves are in rags yet. And I can't be without cigarettes. I tell you I can't be without cigarettes! Borrow some money from Mrs. King—"

"Don't you worry. I'll manage it," she said soothingly. "We've got bread and jam and tea. We'll pretend it's a picnic and we've forgotten the rest of the things."

"Naturally, you'd take good care to get in a good stock of the things you like," he began. "Jam! Oh Lord, I do wish I hadn't a tongue. I say unkind things and wish I hadn't the next minute."

"It rather gives away what you think, though," she said quietly, as she went out of the room.

She passed three times through the kitchen before she could summon sufficient courage to borrow sixpence from Mrs. King to buy cigarettes. But after a while she came back with twenty cigarettes and gave them to Louis.

He stared at them.

"Only twenty!" he said gloomily. "These will never see me through all the week end."

"They're better than nothing, anyway," she said, not noticing that he had not thanked her.

"I've only ten more—that's thirty—till Monday at noon. I'll never see it through, girl—never in life. How much did you get from Mrs. King?" he asked wildly.

"I only wanted sixpence for those," she said.

"You've the brains of a gnat," he cried.

They spent a miserable evening. The cigarette question was preying on his mind, and she made it no better by talking about people on desert islands, and people at the South Pole who were forced to do without things. She was worried about him; she felt that if he had something big in his life these little, mean obsessions would be sublimated by it.

And the something big came, silently and unexpected.



CHAPTER XIX

She wanted to go and spend the day under the great trees on Lady Macquarie's Chair. The cool lapping of the blue water was inviting and the shade of the trees promised drowsy restfulness. It seemed to her that, if they were not near a table or chairs, he would not notice the lack of a meal—anyone can sit under trees by the sea wall and eat bread and jam sandwiches, and forget they are doing it because they have to. Louis objected. To him food eaten out of doors was reminiscent of people from the slums having tea on Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath or Greenwich Park. To Marcella it recalled days on Ben Grief with Wullie. But they stayed indoors with blinds drawn to keep out the stifling airs of the street, and sheets dipped in carbolic solution hung over doors and windows to keep away the half dozen unidentified insect pests that worried them.

She wrote long letters home during the morning. Louis smoked and fidgetted and read the Sunday papers. She found it hard to write letters when he was walking about, sometimes watching the point of her pen, lifting a cup and putting it down again, reading a few paragraphs of the paper and dropping it listlessly, opening the cupboard door motivelessly and closing it again, lifting down books, peering behind them and letting them slip from his hands to the floor with a bang.

She glanced up once or twice impatiently. Once, looking at her apologetically he said:

"I keep worrying about those bally cigarettes, old thing." She saw that his finger-nails, which three weeks' sanity had mended, were bitten and gnawed to bleeding again. "I c-can't h-help it, girlie."

She felt raked up and nervous, too. Since they had been married she had found such delight in preparing Louis's meals that she was miserable in not doing it to-day. She felt that she was to blame, that she had been remiss somewhere, though she could not see where. But she answered him crossly and impatiently, and he began to fidget about the room again.

"I've been reading 'Parsifal' again and again, doctor," she wrote. "Do read it, and tell me what you think of my theory. I see humanity as Amfortas, the wounded king, who, if he hadn't let himself so wantonly get wounded, would still have been the keeper of God's Presence on earth. I see the Spear as humanity's weakness, which, by being turned to strength, becomes a spear of Deliverance. Ingenious, isn't it? You'll say 'More dreams, Marcella?' But they're not dreams, doctor, any more. I'm a man of action now, and I like it."

"I say, old girl," broke in Louis's voice. "It's nearly one o'clock and I've only three left. I've smoked them faster than usual simply because I've been worrying so. What the devil am I to do when these are through?"

"Play ring o' roses on the roof and forget it," she said, with a laugh. "Ration those—one each hour when the church clock strikes. Then we'll go to bed and go to sleep and make to-morrow come quicker."

"You know I never sleep if I haven't a smoke," he said impatiently "I wish it wasn't Sunday. I'd go out and get drunk."

She made tea, which he swallowed in huge gulps. He refused food, but she ate large, thick slices of bread and jam with relish. The heat of the day came down like an impalpable curtain, making her tired and gasping. Twice she stood under the cold douche in the bathroom, but the exertion of dressing made her blaze again. In the afternoon they both tried to read, but he was too restless to be held by a book and she found "L'Assommoir" which Dr. Angus had sent out among a collection in answer to her request for "every book about drink," depressing. It told her nothing; all these books seemed to her to hold a policy of despair that indicated lunacy or suicide as Louis's only possible end. E.F. Benson's "House of Defence" was the most hopeful book she read. In the tormented morphia-maniac she saw Louis vividly. But she knew that he was too innately untrustful, unloving, to be saved by an act of faith. She had put that book down an hour ago, and turned again to the real pessimism of Zola, longing for the cool of the evening to come.

"Marcella," said Louis at last. "There's only one now."

She put the book down impatiently and, going across to him, sat on the cool, draughty floor, taking one of his limp, damp hands in hers.

"You know, little boy, if you really were a little boy, I could smack you and put you to bed for being such a worry. Didn't your mother ever stop you worrying for things when you were a kiddy? If I ever wanted things father made me go without them on principle."

"Yet he killed himself with drink."

"Yes. I guess he didn't mean me to kill myself with any desire at all! Fancy being tyrannized over by a bit of paper and tobacco! Can't you get a picture of it? A nice, big man like you and a cigarette standing there with a grin on its face, like a savage god, making you bow down and worship it! Horrible! Didn't the Lord know all about you when he made that commandment about graven images!"

"Oh, you're inhuman—and you're a prig! You're a block of marble. You think because you've never wanted anything in your life no one else has."

"I like marble," she said with a laugh. "Something solid and substantial about it. You can always be sure about it."

She went back to her book, but she was not reading. Presently she saw him raking about among a sheaf of waratahs with which she had hidden the ugly old grate. He looked up exultantly.

"Six cigarette ends! That's enough to make three if I roll them thin. Lord be thanked I've some cigarette papers."

There was something so pathetic about this that she forgot to feel contemptuous about it. Before another hour had gone he had smoked the three resurrected cigarettes as well as the last remaining new one. She made more tea. It was five o'clock, the hour when all the sun's heat in Australia seems to gather itself together and pour downwards, drawing up the earth heat to meet it. Louis looked fagged and worn. She re-dipped sheets in cold water and hung them up to cool the room a little; her hair was damp, the atmosphere of the room quite motionless.

"Do you think I could smoke tea?" said he, plaintively. "I believe people do sometimes."

He took the tea from the caddy, rubbed a little in his palm and made a cigarette with it. It drew with difficulty; after the first bitter whiff he threw it away impatiently and sat on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands.

She dashed out of the room and went down to the dining-room. Four of the "young chaps" were playing their interminable game of cards at the table. A three months' old niece of Mrs. King, whose mother was sitting with her sister in the bedroom talking, lay in a dressbasket on the table being guarded by the men.

She blinked knowingly at Marcella, who bent over her. Two men lay asleep on chairs, one on the couch. They were all in various stages of undress, and had towels round their necks with which they mopped their damp foreheads. They looked up and greeted her as she came in.

"Have a game, ma?" asked Dutch Frank.

"No, thank you. I've come to beg, borrow or steal. Can someone lend or give me a few cigarettes? My poor man has run short. It's too hot to go out. At least, I'm going to stay in."

They all had any amount of cigarettes; the piles of ends in the hearth made her think contemptuously of Louis scrabbling in the dust for them. Next minute she was sorry for her unkindness. The boys each pressed a packet of ten upon her; when she tried to choose between them they insisted that they would be jealous unless she took them all. Louis's face, when he saw forty cigarettes in her hand, disgusted her. It was like the pigs in the sty at feeding time—squealing—jostling.

In his relief, he became quite charming. He began to joke, and "be good" just like a child who had worried all day for a treat and been granted it by a weak mother who had reached the limit of endurance. He joked and told her stories and was more pleasant than she had ever seen him.

"You are a darling, you know, and you do spoil me, girlie," he said, kissing her hand. "You forgive me for being a baby, don't you?"

She could not say she didn't, as she smoothed the damp hair from his forehead.

In her mood caused by his brightening spirits she felt she could not go on reading "L'Assommoir." She glanced at the Sunday papers and put them down. Louis looked at her and laughed.

"Now you've got the fidgets," he said. "Let's do something."

"I've nothing to read but that Zola thing, and a book on Symbolism that Dr. Angus sent. And I don't want to read a bit. Louis, we'll have to do something, you and I. We're rusting. We'll have to get away."

"In this heat?"

"In anything. I'm like old Ulysses. I cannot rest from travel. What is it—'How dull it is to pause, to make an end, the rust unburnished—' I've forgotten most of it. But there's one bit that appeals to me a great deal—'Life piled on life were all too little—' I want to do millions of things in my life, don't you?"

He lifted his eyebrows at her, and smiled placidly over a cloud of smoke.

"Let's go along to those agencies to-morrow and say we'll be rouseabouts without any wages, just for food. I'd love to be a rouseabout. It sounds so beautifully active. 'Rouseabout'! I think John the Baptist was a rouseabout, don't you? The rouseabout of the Lord! Oh Louis, let's be that, shall we?"

"You'd never stand it."

"Well, anyway, after this week we've got to do something."

He immediately became petulant and worried again, so she told him blithely that she would arrange things. She grew to do this more and more as she knew him better. The cigarette famine that had made such a misery of the day was only typical of many things; anything that caused him the least anxiety lost him both nerve and temper, and he was only in the way. So in self-defence she began to protect him from everything, simply making plans and trying to get him to fall in with them with the least possible friction. And this was not very easy: he disagreed with her arrangements on principle, though he always fell in with them later. This, he considered, was his way of showing his man's authority.

As it grew cooler they went up on the roof. The iron was hot, the stone coping still warm, but there was a faint breeze blowing in from the sea, and the blue air was less heavy.

"What can we do?" he said, helplessly, looking down on the few weary people crawling through the streets.

"Nothing," she said, leaning back against the chimney-stack.

"I'll tell you what. Let's go on with those lectures I was giving you before—before I went rocky! Or rather, look here, I'll tell you what! The old Dean said I was one of the best men in England in midder."

"What's that?" she said, resignedly. She did not want to listen just then. She wanted to be quiet and think out the very obtrusive financial and moral problem of getting away. She felt like Lot when he knew of the destruction to come upon the cities of the Plain. But she felt one couldn't walk out of things as Lot had walked. Only—she had to do her worrying with placid face, giving lip-service to his entertainment; it would never do for him to know the convolutions that had led her to any conclusion; he was an innate pessimist, she an optimist. So she thought with half her mind and listened with the other half.

"Midwifery! We call it midder, you know," he said. "I was always awfully interested in women—as cases."

He took out an envelope to make notes, and a pencil. She felt a little compunction as she saw his look of keen interest and realized that the study of medicine was probably the only thing on earth that could take him out of himself.

"We've to begin at the beginning," he said intently. "It's amazing how few lay people know even the elements of embryology."

She heard his voice, and all the time she was wondering if she could write and tell her uncle the truth, asking him to let her and Louis come and work for him without any pay till they had paid back the fifty pounds she had borrowed. He had said it was far from civilization. That was what she needed!

"See?" came Louis's voice, keen and interested, and the words "cells" and "mulberry-form" floated into her consciousness.

"Yes, I think I will—it's the only way," she said, answering aloud the silent question.

"I don't believe you've heard a word, you young sinner! You confounded second-sighted Kelts—one never knows where you are! But next week I'll give you a written examination. It's not a bit of use swotting a thing half heartedly."

She dragged herself to attention, reproaching herself for damping his interest. Things he was saying dropped into her consciousness like heavy drops of rain falling from the eaves in a light summer shower. Suddenly she gripped his wrist tensely and he looked up in surprise. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining and sending out little flashes. He had never seen her like this before. His pencil and paper dropped. The paper fluttered over the wall, the pencil dropped after it.

"There, that's my only pencil," he said. "You have got the jerks, old lady. What's wrong?"

"Why, Louis, we must be going to have a baby! I've been wondering—" She broke off suddenly, flushing, and would say no more.

His mouth came open as he stared at her, and looked so funny that she laughed.

"Aren't you pleased? Oh Louis, isn't it splendid—isn't it a shining sort of thing to have happen to you!"

She felt it impossible to sit still; something bubbled up within her like fire; it was a touch of the old exhilaration she had felt on cold mornings in the sea at Lashnagar. She wanted to take his hands and go flying away with him, jumping from star to star in the thrilling blue sky. As it was she stood on one foot, as if poised for flight with a sort of spring in her movements that his softer muscles had never experienced. He caught at her hand, and felt it taut, and queerly, individually alive.

"Oh, do say something nice!" she cried. "Louis, I've a good mind to push you off the roof—like the queen bee."

They had been reading about the queen bee's amiable dealings with her lovers a few days ago.

"Well, I'm damned!" he cried. He got an impression of her as a captive balloon that had dragged loose its grapnel, and was being tugged at by currents far above the earth, where the air was heavy and motionless. He gripped her hand still tighter.

"Look here, young person, you sit down here and tell me all you mean," he said. She stared at him. He suddenly looked much more responsible. It was the doctor in him suddenly awakened to new life. He had not felt the birth struggles of the lover or the father yet.

"But you're not ill and tired like women are. I can't believe it," he objected, frowning with a sort of diagnostic eye upon her.

"Why should I be?" she said, laughing and rumpling his hair which was very straight and neat and made him look too elderly for her wakened mood of ecstasy. "It's too splendid! It's a funny thing, I've never thought of having babies before. I've always been a Knight, you know. And knights don't have babies. Oh Louis, wouldn't they look funny, riding out to battle with babies on a pillion behind them? Fancy Parsifal with a baby! Or St. George! Yet why shouldn't they have them? And why shouldn't they go to battle? It would be good training for them, wouldn't it? They're so soft."

It was impossible for him to stop her. For the first time in her life her tongue was loosened; she talked floods of nonsense, happy, enchanted nonsense. But Louis would not lose his diagnostic eye.

"But didn't you know before?" he persisted.

"No. Do you think I'd have been such a selfish hog as to keep it to myself?"

"But you've read biology—you ought to have known how things happen."

"Oh, bother biology! Who ever thought of biology meaning themselves? I didn't, anyway. I never think things in books refer to me. Fancy a skeleton meaning oneself! Mustn't a skeleton feel immodest? Louis, when I'm dead, do find some way of disintegrating me, will you? I couldn't bear to look as immodest as a skeleton does."

After awhile she became quiet, but still bubbling over with irrepressible happiness. Louis was unusually gentle as they sat talking in whispers as though afraid the stars would hear their secret as they came out one by one and looked at them.

"I can't believe it, yet," he said at last.

"Don't worry, then. You will soon enough. Louis—how long is it?" she said, puckering her forehead. He made calculations.

"More than six months," he said.

"Oh, what a long time! I don't believe I'll ever be able to wait so long as that. It's like being told the king is coming—and having to wait six months. It is a long time to wait till he's ready, isn't it?"

Suddenly he caught at her hand and kissed it. Presently he went downstairs, leaving her there. To her amazement he appeared later with the mattress and pillows. He had always left her to carry them before. She gathered that it was her role to be waited on, and resented it.

"We'll sleep up here to-night, girlie," he said. "I know you like it."

"It almost seems a waste of time to sleep, doesn't it?" she said, her eyes filled with dreams. "And yet all the while, whether we're awake or asleep, talking or working, he's getting nearer and nearer—without our doing anything towards it!" Her eyes, as she spoke, were out seeking the far invisible bar of the Pacific.

"It doesn't fit in with you, Marcella," he said, and her eyes focussed on the glowing end of his cigarette. "I can't imagine you ill and weak—or—or—motherly. Well, yes, perhaps motherly, because that's how you are to me sometimes. But you seem too young, somehow."

"Whom the gods love die young," she quoted softly. "Because they keep young. I'll be ever so young when I'm a nice old lady with white hair. I shall have it cut short then, like a choir boy's in saint pictures. And as for being ill and weak, I never shall. I simply won't have it."

"My dear, oh my dear, you'll have to. And I'll have to take care of you. All women need taking care of."

She gave a little short, quiet laugh.

"You'll not make me take off my armour, Louis," she said. He looked puzzled, but said nothing. She lay back on the pillow, looking up at the Southern Cross. The wind lifted her hair gently. Ghosts came over the sea, very kindly ghosts that smiled at her and passed on.

His hand reached out to hers in the darkness.

"I say," he whispered, into her hair, "I was an ass over those damn smokes. I'll—I'll buck up over that sort of thing in future, Marcella—can't have two babies in the family."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"My dear," she whispered, and held tight to his hand.



CHAPTER XX

He went to sleep that night with the muscles of his mind tightened. He was going to fight for his wife and child! She, judged by all he had known of women in his select suburb among his family's friends, and in his externing in the Borough was now a poor weak thing, to be cossetted and cared for, worked for and protected. He felt he could move mountains to-night—for the first time in his life he had someone weak to care for. No more charity from his father! No more slacking, no more giving way! He had an aim in life now. And, moreover, he had the thrilling excitement of a "case." That he could not forget, though it was certainly subsidiary to the feelings of pride in himself that her imaginary weakness had brought into being.

And the "poor weak woman" lay at his side, staring at the stars with eyes that held bigger worlds than they. After the heat of the day to lie here in the coolness, with the night breeze fanning her hair, tickling her bare feet and arms, was very delightful. Several times she pressed her hands tight down on the mattress and once she pinched herself. She seemed, in her exhilaration, to be losing weight; she would not have been surprised, if she had found herself floating away to have a real, close-hand look at the Southern Cross. She had no idea what was going on in Louis's mind. No kindly angel whispered to her that she should go in, now, for "swounds and vapours," and thus bolster up the protectiveness that had come to birth within him that night. She knew nothing of "swounds and vapours." The rather hard women on Lashnagar were never ill and weak until they were ready to drop into death. Aunt Janet had never been weak save in the matter of the acid drops. She certainly felt thrilled rather than weak. She had something of contempt for the weakness of women. She was very fond of Mrs. King, but her constant complaints about Mr. King's badness and her aching back did not seem to Marcella to be quite playing the game. Mrs. King had solemnly advised her, several times, to make Louis think she was not well. When she had seen her carrying pails of coal quite easily up the stairs she had said, with a shudder:

"Oh, kid—you make my back ache to see you! Why don't you let him do those jobs? You ought to lay down on the bed and tell him you feel queer. Then he'll be all over you, trying to do all he can for you."

"I don't want him to, thanks," said Marcella concisely. "Why should he do it any more than me?"

Mrs. King thought she was mad.

But now she felt that they must get away from Mrs. King, from everyone. She began to shape her letter to her uncle in her mind, and as she did so, realized that she and Louis would be alone together no longer. They would join the communal life at Wooratonga. If he failed again—and she felt that, perhaps, he might fail—there would be critics. It came to her that it was quite impossible to go and live with her uncle and the three daughters who were "rather hard." She was not ashamed of Louis now; for that she was thankful, but she dreaded that less kindly eyes than hers should see him when he was weak.

She touched him on the cheek with her lips. He wakened at once.

"What is it, my pet?" he asked anxiously, striking a match and holding it close to her face.

"Louis, I can't let our baby come to live in Sydney," she said.

"Well, he isn't coming to Sydney to-night," he laughed.

"No. But I want it settled. Louis, I was thinking it would be a good plan to ask uncle to let us go and work for him. But now I feel I can't go among his people—"

"You're afraid of what I'll get up to?"

"Not a bit, now. Only they'd never understand you as I do. And—we're fearfully happy when we don't have whisky worrying us. Don't you think we could go and live together in the Bush?"

He sat up, lit a cigarette and passed it to her. Then he lit one for himself.

"Can't you face the fact that you're going to be ill, Marcella?" he said, irritably. "You'll have to lie down for hours and all sorts of things. You're a lick to me—abso-bally-lutely! You ought not to be well like this! Lord, the things I've been told about women having babies! They simply get down to it—all except the unrefined working women."

"Then I'm an unrefined working woman, that's all," she said complacently. "Anyway, Louis, to please you or anyone else I can't pretend to be ill. Now just forget it till it gets obtrusive. I shall."

Over the roof-tops, through the moon haze streaming about the chimneys came a vision of the spaewife riding to Flodden after her man, riding from Flodden with the twin children wrapt in the Southrons' pennants. Marcella smiled a little. Louis frowned and fell in with her way of thinking. He suddenly felt flabby again. She felt taut as a steel spring.

The next day she wrote to her uncle for money, telling him the truth. It was not pleasant, but it had to be done. As soon as he saw that she was quite decided on going, and showed no signs whatever of falling in dead faints about the house, Louis entered into the spirit of the adventure. The lure of wild places got into his feet. As he wrote down a careful list of the things they were to take in their swags he looked up and actually suggested that she should wire to her uncle for the money so that they need not waste a day more. As for the prospect of work, that worried him not at all.

"You're always sure of a meal, anyway, if you're a sun-downer," he said. "And usually there's a job of sorts that'll keep you in grub. I say, old girl, we'll have to live on damper and billy-tea. It's the finest stuff going!"

He argued long with himself about how many blankets to take, how much tea and flour; he talked about the kind of boots best fitted for walking on unmade roads: one day when they went out together he discovered a patent "swaggie's friend"—a knife at one end of a composition handle and a fork at the other.

"It's a good thing to take a fork," he said reflectively, "you needn't eat with your fingers if you do. Fried sheep eaten with the fingers is rather messy at times."

They arranged for Mrs. King to collect and forward their letters from home as soon as they gave her an address; Marcella did not mention the chief reason for getting away from Sydney now. She had an instinctive feeling that Mrs. King would think she was raving mad to run away into the Bush with an unborn child.

"I hope you'll be happy, kid," she said, as they talked over plans. "But I doubt it, with him. You want more than I do—"

"I want everything," said Marcella, decidedly.

"I don't care so long's my back isn't too bad, and he scrubs down for me, and I can pay my way. I've got this house paying proper now, and the young chaps treat me as if I was their mother."

Marcella felt it was well that she was getting away from this atmosphere of dull acceptance of misery, of the worst in life. Anyway, she told herself, she would make a quick end to things with fire or knife before she got like that. Expediently keeping a drunken man quiet; expediently kissing him and fondling him for fear he would get drunk again to-morrow in spite or pique: content with a man who would scrub floors for a "livener"! It was better, far, to be homeless wanderers in the Bush where there was no need to be expedient for the sake of others, where they would have to stand up on their own intrinsic strength or fall; where they need not be respectable and where she could, if he were weak, alternately shake him up and soothe him without spectators. She would never, never, never allow herself to get into this cringing habit of being thankful for the small mercies of life when the big justices of life were there, so very big and shining.

"Of course," went on Mrs. King in a flat voice, "I've always one mercy I thank God for on my bended knees every night. That is, not having any drunkard's children to bring up and be a curse to me when their father's left off breaking my heart."

"Oh—no, no!" cried Marcella, staring at her with horror.

"Yes, kid, just you keep that in mind! You ta' care, my dear. It's on'y natural, if you have kids, they'll take after their father. And I'd sooner see them laying dead before me than bring up drunkards to be a curse to some other poor devil. They'll not escape it. It's in their blood."

Marcella burst in passionately:

"Why, Mrs. King, that's the rottenest, wickedest heresy that was ever invented to tell anyone! If you believe a cruel thing like that, it means that the whole scheme of things is wrong. Why should children take after a bad parent more than a good one? Why should they be weak rather than strong? If you're logical, what you say means that the world is getting worse and worse. And everyone knows it's getting better every minute—"

"I'd like to see it," said Mrs. King.

"Besides," went on Marcella, "besides, if I had a baby I'd build him so strong, I'd make him so good his father would simply get strong and good because he couldn't fight the strength and goodness all round him! I'd build a wall of strength round the child—I'd pull down the pillars of the heavens to make him strong—I'd clothe him in fires—There, I do talk rubbish, don't I?" she added, quietly as she turned away. But Mrs. King's words stuck: she pushed them forcibly away from her mind: they would not go, and sank deep down; they came back in dreams, tormenting. She dreamed often of a little child starving and cold out in the Domain, while the southerly winds lashed rain at him—dreams of a little boy with Louis's brown eyes—a little boy who gnawed his nails—and stammered—and grew old—and wavered—and shook in drink delirium.

She refused the dreams house-room in her conscious thoughts. She looked at the shining billy and big enamelled mugs they had bought that day, at the bright brown leather straps that smelt so pleasantly new, fastened round two grey and two brown blankets. Louis came in and made her strap the two blankets on her back to see if they tired her. In spite of the heat of the day she scarcely felt them.

"This is what they call Matilda," he told her, weighing the swag in his hand.

"I can carry you both if you get tired," said she, looking from Matilda to him.

She had asked her uncle for ten pounds. He characteristically made no comments about her omission to mention a husband when she saw him at Melbourne, and remarked that they would be very pleased to see her and her husband any time at Wooratonga. When he proved his unquestioning kindness she wished she had not had to ask him for money.

That night they packed. There was a new lodger downstairs who proved very helpful. He had come from the Never-Never Land to knock down a cheque in Sydney; in the ordinary course of things he would have been blind to the world till the cheques were all spent. The night of his arrival, when he was only softened by a few drinks after six months' abstinence, the Salvation Army had got him. He had saved his soul, his liver and his money at the same time. And he was bursting with information.

"You take the train to Cook's Wall, chum," he said, spitting on his hands and trying the strength of the good leather straps. He had tapped the billy and the mugs with a wise finger, giving them advice about soaking their boots in linseed oil for a few days.

"Yous ought to buy your tea and baccy and flour in Sydney. It's dear and poor the further yous get," he told them. And—

"Cook's Wall is the rail-head, chum," he said. "It's in the Lower Warrilow. There's a bit o' manganese down there, and they're clearing land. Plenty of work waiting. Lot of new squatters—small squatters without two fardens to rub together and make a chink. Them assisted lot. They're always glad of help, clearing scrub. They get a loand off of the Gov'ment for tools and seeds and stock, but they've got to clear the land—within three years, I think it is. Hard work, chum."

Marcella and Louis looked at each other with shining eyes.

"That's the place for us, old lady!" he said. "I've done clearing in New Zealand, and gorse grubbing. Makes you as black as your hat, and you sleep like a million tops and eat half a sheep at a sitting—"

"You'll get a job there, ma," he went on, turning the spigot of his information before her now. "They're always glad of cooks for the huts where the men live. And they don't pay so bad, either. You get your rations, of course. It's rotten hard for lads that have been working fourteen hours in the open air to come in and start cooking."

Marcella felt thrilled with the excitement of it all, but doubted her powers of cooking.

"You needn't worry, old lady," said Louis. "It's fried sheep for breakfast, dinner and tea unless a cow breaks its leg and has to be slaughtered. And then it's fried cow. And damper and flapjacks. I can do that much cooking in a southerly buster with three sticks for firing, standing on my head."

But she decided to be on the safe side and scoured Sydney for a cookery book. She found a very fat and flushed and comfortable Mrs. Beeton. It apparently weighed about two pounds. A week later Marcella decided that its weight was at least two stone, but the pretty picture of cooked foods, and the kindly advice it gave about answering doors, folding table napkins and serving truffles were all very reassuring.

They had a tremendous argument about books. Louis flatly refused to take any. Marcella refused to go without some. Finally she packed the New Testament, "Parsifal" and the cookery book inside her swag. Later, opening all her books to write her name in them before leaving them on the shelf downstairs for the use of Mrs. King's "boys," she noticed the gipsy woman's prophecy in the title page of "Questing Cells" and took that along too.

For the last time, they slept on the roof; as soon as Louis was asleep and Marcella lying quiet beside him, she had a visitation of her dreams about drunkards' children. Creeping from under the blankets silently, she walked right along the roof in the moonlight to have the matter out with herself once and for all. She did not want to take bad dreams away to a new life with her.

"I won't believe it. What's more, I don't believe it," she said decidedly. "Louis may be a drunkard. Father was. So were all the Lashcairns for ages. But I'm not. And my child is not going to be. After all—is he our child—? I mean—Jesus was not Joseph's child—only—"

She stopped, waiting. This was an immense, breathtaking thought.

"Just his body is made by Louis and me—and all the rest of him comes—new—quite new. The spirit—the quickening spirit—"

She felt, once more, as if her feet were taking wings with the hopefulness of this thought.

"Why that's what the Catholics mean by Immaculate Conception! Of course it is! Why—it's all Immaculate Conception! How on earth could it, logically, be anything else?"

She went back, then, and lay down very still. Louis lay white and quiet in the moonlight.

"You may hurt him, Louis, if I happen to die. Not that I intend to, for one small instant! You may let him be hungry and cold. But you won't hurt him inside. I'll see to it that there's strength in him—the quickening spirit."

Her last sleep in Sydney was dreamless.



CHAPTER XXI

Even the two days' journey in the most uncomfortable train on earth could not damp their ardour. Most of the time Louis was gay and unusually chivalrous; at night, tiredness and heat cracked his nerves a little, making him cross and cynical until, sitting bolt upright on the wooden seat, she drew his head on her knee and stroked his eyes with softened fingers till he fell asleep. At the stations where they alighted to stretch cramped limbs she stayed beside him all the time. Once, by a specious excuse, he tried to get rid of her, but she saw through it and stayed beside him. He resented it bitterly.

"Damned schoolmistress," he growled. "Always round me, like a limpet." In his eyes she read a flash of hate.

"My dear, do you think I want to be a limpet?" she said, "if I don't you know we'll never catch the train when it starts again."

"Never have a free hand," he muttered.

She was puzzled. It seemed impossible to keep a constant watch on a man of Louis's temperament. He resented her vigilance though he demanded it. If she seemed to be leading him, he bolted. If she let him have his head, he still bolted.

When they were in the train again, drawing away through miles of scrub further and further from the cities, she felt very glad that the strain was going to end soon: she would get a rest and so would he where probably he would have to go fifty miles to get a drink. But she tormented herself with the fear that inaccessibility was not going to strengthen him; rather it would weaken, she was afraid.

At five o'clock the second day the train, which had dwindled down to one coach and five trucks, rattled and groaned into Cook's Wall. The station consisted of a rough wooden platform raised on wooden supports with a weather-board hut which the stationmaster called porter's room, booking-office, luggage-office and station hotel. Someone had ambitiously painted the name on the station. "COOK'S WAL" and "STATION HOT" appeared in green letters on the face of the structure. "L" and "EL" appeared round the corner in red.

The surroundings of the station looked quite hopeless; a few sun-baked sheep-pens and races stretched behind the Station Hotel, shimmering and wavering in the heat haze; half a mile away was a collection of home-made huts consisting of boxes and kerosene tins piled on top of each other. A primitive winding-gear and a heap of slag marked the position of a small manganese mine which had been the cause for prolonging the single line railway so far into the Bush. To the west and south and north stretched scrub and bush, right away to forest and purple hills on the far horizon. Eastward the glittering rails shone back to the city, sending out blinding little flashes of light as the sun caught them.

The guard and driver got leisurely out of the train and stood on the platform; the stationmaster-cum-porter-cum-hotel-keeper, in a pair of dungaree trousers and a dusty vest of flesh-coloured cellular material which gave him the effect of nakedness, stared at them as though passengers were the last phenomenon he had expected to see.

"Cripes! What yous want?" he said.

"Are we far from anywhere?" asked Marcella, smiling at him. He spat assiduously through a knothole in the boarding and looked from her to Louis.

"Depends on what you call far," he said reflectively. "There's Gaynor's about fifteen miles along, an' Loose End nigh on thirty. Where yous makin' for, then?"

"I should say Loose End would suit us, by the sound of it," said Louis with a laugh. "But it isn't much use starting out to-night."

The stationmaster looked proprietorially towards the station and the hotel site. There seemed room for tickets, and for the man who sold them—if he were not a very large man. There was not much hope for visitors.