It was the doctor who saw Marcella on to the _Oriana_ at Tilbury. Aunt
Janet had not suggested coming with her: it had not occurred to her as
the sort of thing that was necessary, nor had Marcella given it a
thought. Left to herself, she would have taken train blithely from
Carlossie to Edinburgh and thence to London--imagining London not very
much more formidable than a larger Carlossie. But the doctor made them
see that it was quite necessary for someone to see her off safely, and
naturally the job fell to him.
The booking of the passage had caused considerable discussion. Aunt
Janet had written to the shipping company asking them to reserve a
saloon berth by the first mail-boat after a certain date. That it took
nearly all the money she had or was likely to have, as far as she could
see, for the rest of her days, did not trouble her in the least. She
could live on nothing, she told herself--and it was absolutely necessary
that Andrew's child should go away, even though she was going to seek
the once-refused charity of a relative, with the maximum of dignity and
with flags flying. But the doctor had a talk with her about it. He had
had three trips as ship's doctor to Australia on P. and O. steamers, and
his imagination reeled at the prospect of Marcella in the average saloon
on a long-distance liner.
"You see," he said, trying hard to be tactful, "if Marcella travels
first class she'll need many clothes. There are no laundries on most of
these ships, and it's a six weeks' trip. In the tropics you need to be
changing all day if you care a brass farthing for your appearance." He
did not tell her that Marcella's frankness and her lack of conventional
training would ostracize her among the first-class passengers, half of
whom were Government officials and the like going out to Australia or
India, while the rest were self-made Australians going back home after
expensive visits to the Old Country. They moved in airtight
compartments. The exclusive Government folks would not have accepted a
place on a raft that held the self-made colonials even at the risk of
losing their lives. The self-made folks, snubbed and a little hurt, were
rather inclined to be blatantly loud and assertive in self-defence.
Between the two Marcella would be a shuttlecock. But she clinched the
discussion herself by remarking airily that she was going in the
cheapest possible way.
"You shall go second class," said her aunt. "I quite see Dr. Angus's
point about the first-class passengers."
"I'm going third, Aunt. I won't spend money that needn't be spent, and
the third-class part of the ship gets there just as fast as the first!
I'd be uncomfortable among rich folks. I only know poor people, and Dr.
Angus--I'll get on better with third-class people."
The doctor laughed at the implication, and was forced to give in. He
told Aunt Janet that the third class was quite comfortable, though he
really knew nothing about it. He had never been on an emigrant ship in
his life. He arranged for a share in a two-berth cabin quite blithely.
Marcella felt solemn when she finally saw the doctor's machine at the
door waiting for her in the grey dawn light; Jean cried, and Tammas and
Andrew, who were coming in with the tide, seeing the trap crawling
along, ran up a little flag on the masthead to cheer her going. But Aunt
Janet did not cry. She kissed the girl unemotionally and went into the
house, shutting the heavy door with a hollow, echoing clang.
They had some hours to spend in Edinburgh, and got lunch in Princes
Street. It all seemed amazingly big and busy to Marcella, who could not
imagine the use of so many hundreds of people.
"I can't see what they're all here for, doctor," she said as they
sat at a very white and sparkling table in a deep window opposite
the Scott Monument, and the people went to and fro in the absorbed,
uncommunicative Edinburgh way. "They don't seem to be needed."
The doctor laughed.
"Wait till you see London," he said. "You'll wonder more then."
She got up from the table suddenly and stood in the window while the
doctor went on eating philosophically and smiling at her as he wished
he could go all the way to Australia with her and watch her growing
wonderment at the world.
"You know," she said doubtfully, "it seems so queer--all these people,
and then that monument. I don't see the connection, somehow."
"I see you standing there, and a lump of congealing mutton on your plate
here," said the doctor, and she sat down and ate a mouthful hurriedly.
"But what is the connection? What are they for?"
The doctor watched her in his precise way with his eyes twinkling at her
over his glasses, which he wore on the end of his nose.
"I thought you were such a learned biologist, Marcella. Kraill would
tell you they were the caskets of questing cells--seeking about for
complementary cells that some day will themselves become the caskets of
cells."
"Ugh! That reminds me of all the clouds of flies on the dead fish in
summer," she said, pushing her plate away. "Flies--then maggots."
"Exactly!" said the doctor, chuckling.
"But--" she began, and broke off, frowning.
"Don't you see any connection between all yon little people and the
monument, though? A crawling mass of folks--and one or two stand out.
The others show they realize how these big ones stand out by making
monuments for them. It infers, I think, that they'd all like to tower
if they could."
"Ah, that's better. But so few tower."
"And that, Marcella, is just what I told you yon day we drove to
Pitleathy. They're all patched--or I should say _we're_ all patched.
Either bodily, mentally or spiritually there are holes torn in us, and
we've to be so busy patching them up from collapsing that we've no time
to grow. As time goes on and we learn better there'll be less patching.
There'll be more growing up tall and straight--everyone--there'll be
giants in those days, Marcella."
"Yes," she said slowly, and saw herself as one of them some day as she
drew on her gloves rather awkwardly, for they were the first pair she
had ever possessed. "Oh, well--I'm not going to be patched at all,
doctor. I simply won't have things tearing holes in me."
London, of course, was even more amazing than Edinburgh. They had a day
to spend there, and the doctor took her to Regent Street and Bond Street
in the morning. He was enjoying himself in a melancholy sort of fashion.
Marcella was _tabula rasa_. It was interesting to watch the impressions
registered on her surface.
The shops gave her none of the acquisitive pleasure he had expected. To
her they were interesting as museums might have been. She could not, she
did not see the use of them. The women thronging the windows and
departments of a great store through which they walked roused her to
excited comment.
"What are they buying them all for?" she said, looking at the hats and
frocks and the purchasers. "They have such nice ones already."
The doctor asked her if she did not think they were very pretty when he
had got over his amusement at the idea of women only buying things
because they needed them.
"Oh beautiful!" she cried rapturously. "But you couldn't do very much in
frocks like that."
"That's the idea, of course," said the doctor, watching her quizzically.
"If you only knew it, Marcella, all these shops are built upon a
foundation of what your professor calls 'questing cells.' You see--but
let's get out into the air. You've started my bee buzzing now."
They faced about and elbowed their way through an eager-eyed,
aimless-footed throng by the doorway.
"Now go on," said Marcella when they were in the street, walking down
beside Liberty's. She had one eye on the windows and one ear for the
doctor.
"You see, all these women here--they're doing something quite
unconsciously when they buy pretty clothes and spend so much time and
money on making themselves look so bonny," said the doctor, striding
along in his Inverness cape, quite oblivious that he was a very unique
figure in Regent Street. "They'll worry tremendously about what colour
suits them, what style sets off their beauty best. I don't think that
it's really because they like to see something bonny every time they
look in their mirror. I don't think it's even that they want admiration,
or envy. It's simply that they're ruled by the law of reproduction, if
they only knew it. Inside them is new life--these same questing cells.
These cells can only find separate existence through complementary
cells. So they urge these women on to make themselves charming,
capturing--married or single, they are the same, deep down, for natural
laws take no count of marriage laws, you know. The men are the same,
too. They beg and placate--and all the time deep down, they think they
are the choosers, the overlords. And the women tempt them and then run
away. Last of all they yield. These cells have it ingrained in them that
the woman-thing is only ready to yield after a chase. Very few people do
this consciously. A few do--people who have been let into the secret of
studying natural laws. Then they either do it for the fun of the chase,
or else because they're too morally lazy to fight the urge of the cells.
That's when they get holes torn in them."
He walked on for a few steps, and then turned to laugh into Marcella's
puzzled face.
"All of which, I'd like to point out, I take no credit for, Marcella. I
got it out of Kraill's Edinburgh lectures that have just been published
in book form."
"I hate that way of talking," said Marcella abruptly. "I like Wullie's
way best. He says lives are the pathway of life, just as you do. But he
says it's not just life, it's either God or beasts that walk along it
and we've to help God kill the beasts so as to leave the pathway clear
for Him. It means the same, but your way of saying it is so--so
ungodly."
"I know. But there it is. The way I talk is the way Kraill and his
school talk. Of course, there's something in it. There would be a great
deal in it if we were only aiming at making bodies. All this tricking
out--refinement--it may produce the people who tower over others--like
the Greeks with their 'pure beauty' you know--"
He stopped speaking suddenly and they walked on in silence while
Marcella looked eagerly from shop window to passers-by and back again.
"It's all wrong, doctor," she said at last. "It's too one-sided."
"Yes. And look at the Greeks now--"
She turned to him with a quick, birdlike glance.
"Do you know what I think?" she said.
"Not quite all of it," said the doctor, watching her face, and thinking
how incongruous it looked in Regent Street.
"Well, I think biology's one of the beasts we've to kill before God
walks along us. So there! Tropical forests--maggots--women," she added,
and the doctor laughed outright.
The chief impression she got of London was its aimlessness. It reminded
her irresistibly of an ant-hill she had seen disturbed once. Myriads of
tiny creatures had scurried passionately, exhaustingly, after each other
to and fro, no whence and no whither; the people thronging out of shops
and offices at dusk frightened her: there seemed so many of them, and,
looking at their tired, strained faces and their unkingly way of
hurrying along, uninterested and uninteresting save in getting to their
destination, it seemed to her that they were not thinking of ever
"towering": when Dr. Angus reminded her that they were so busy keeping
alive that they had no time to think how and why they were alive at all,
she was plunged into black depression; at home she had only had less
than a hundred people and a few beasts about the farm to pity. Now it
came to her with sudden force that all these people, so driven by
different forces, were to be pitied. But as soon as she saw the crowd of
people at Fenchurch Street station and a chalked notice, "Boat train for
the R.M.S. _Oriana_," she forgot abstract worries.
There seemed to be a good many children, small groups of five or six
with father and mother, and piles of inexpensive-looking luggage; there
were several young men who looked very much like the lads who worked
about the farm at home; there were groups of girls and a more or less
heterogeneous collection of people who might be passengers, and might be
friends seeing passengers off. But what impressed her immensely was a
pile of brightly striped deck-chairs with sun-awnings. They looked
exotic, tropical on the grey, gloomy platform; they seemed so pleasantly
lazy and luxurious among the piles of utilitarian-looking luggage. The
doctor bought one for her and put it among her baggage.
The train was crowded; the doctor stood up to give his seat to a woman
and Marcella sprang to her feet, talking incessantly about her
impressions and her expectations. She thought London, seen from a
railway carriage window, which gave only a view of back gardens,
factories, little streets and greyish washing drying, was an appalling
place. Three times she said to the doctor, "But what's the use of living
at all in such miserable places?" and the second and third time he only
smiled at her. The first time he had said:
"Why, either because they don't know there's anything better, or else
because they're sure there's something better. Either is a good reason
for going on with awful things."
At last they were in the tender, in a drizzling, greyish rain, ploughing
through the coffee-coloured water of the Thames towards the _Oriana_,
which seemed surprisingly small. She had several surprises during the
journey from Fenchurch Street. To begin with, someone trod on her foot
and did not apologize; several people elbowed her out of their way in
their rush to get to their luggage; no one smiled at her or spoke to
her; no one seemed to realize that she was Marcella Lashcairn, or, if
they realized it, it made no impression on them.
"Don't people here seem bad tempered?" said she to the doctor. "They
don't seem to care about each other in the least."
"There are so many of them, Marcella--at home, you see, there are so few
that they are frightfully interesting and friendly and critical of each
other. Among all these people nobody matters very much--"
"They matter to me. I want to be friends with them, take them under my
wing," she said, looking round at them, most of them people who would
not be very likely to be put under anyone's wing at all. "Don't you feel
like that?"
"I don't. They come under my wing fast enough without being asked and
lots of them come in the night just when I've got in bed," he said. "I'm
a bit tired of people, Marcella. I've seen too much of them. I always
get two views of 'em, you know--inside and out. And the inside view is
very depressing."
He laughed at her grave face, but once again he had a sharp misgiving
about letting her go away alone. It seemed dangerous to turn her,
practically an anchorite, loose among so many people. He wished, now,
that he had let her brave the freezings of the saloon rather than the
thawings of the steerage. But she seemed so confident, so eager, that he
could say nothing to damp her spirits, only he was very glad, on going
with her to look at her cabin, to find that she was to have it to
herself. That, at any rate, prevented a too close intimacy that he
suddenly felt might be dangerous.
They found very little to say during the twenty minutes he had to spend
with her before the tender took him back to the shore. He was feeling
very saddened, and at the same time anxious to give her excellent,
fatherly advice, for he suddenly realized her abysmal ignorance when he
saw her standing smiling with an air of pleased expectancy among all
these strangers, waiting, as she had said, to love them all and take
them all under her wing. Twice he started nervously to warn her--and
each time she interrupted him joyously.
"Doctor, just come and peep into this door! Look, millions and millions
of shiny rods and wheels and things. Oh aren't engines the most
beautiful things on earth? Look at them--not an inch to waste in them!
I wish I could be an engineer."
The next minute the first bell rang to warn visitors to be getting their
farewells over, and he started again, shyly and hesitatingly:
"Marcella--I'd be careful."
He was frightened of women-folk unless they were ill. He could talk to
Marcella about impersonal things very interestedly, but suddenly to
become fatherly was difficult. His mouth went dry, his face flushed and
he wished he had asked Aunt Janet to come with them.
She seized his arm eagerly.
"Oh look at the nice, kind little lifeboats! They're not much bigger
than Tammas's boat. Doctor, if we're wrecked isn't it a good thing I can
row and swim? Do you think we might get wrecked? I'd have that nice
little neat boat the third along and rescue the women and children! If
the boat gets full I'll hop out and swim--and if sharks come along I'll
tell them what Aunt Janet said about Hoodie. I think I'd be tough, don't
you?"
Her face clouded at mention of her aunt and Hoodie and the second bell
rang out.
"Only three more minutes," called a steward close to Marcella's side.
"All for the shore ready, please!"
"You'll be looking after Aunt Janet, doctor?" she said gravely. "And
Wullie? He'll miss me--if you'd make it possible to call and have a few
words with him at the hut when you're passing."
"Yes, Marcella," said the doctor, and found his voice strangely husky.
"And look here, Marcella--you'll be careful?"
Her eyes were looking into his, very bright with tears as she took his
hand in hers and walked towards the gangway with him.
"I couldn't be careful if I tried," she said, laughing, though her eyes
got even more damp than ever. "Why should I be careful?"
"You--you might get sea-sick," stammered the doctor despairingly.
"Oh don't be silly! I'm as much at home on the sea as Tammas. Sea-sick
indeed! Whatever next?"
The third bell clanged deafeningly and the siren of the little tender
hooted at the doctor's efforts to be fatherly.
"Any more for the shore, please?" called one of the ship's officers who
stood ready to cast off, and Marcella thought he looked accusingly at
the doctor.
"They'll be taking you along, doctor," she said. "Oh I do wish you were
coming! Good-bye! Good-bye. Oh dear, I do believe I'm going to cry."
"Good-bye, lassie," said the doctor, taking off his glasses as he
stepped on to the gangway and blinked at her. Suddenly she thought he
looked so grey and so lonely that it seemed necessary to comfort him
and, before the man at the gangway could stop her, she had dashed after
him, flung her arms round his neck, kissed him loudly on his ruddy cheek
and ran back on deck again, all in a moment. She was looking at the
doctor as he stared at her blindly, but she was suddenly conscious of a
loud and passionate "Damn!" very close to her. She guessed, rather than
realized, that she was standing on someone's foot.
"Oh, I am so sorry," she said, flushing hotly; she gave the owner of the
foot, which was in a neat brown shoe, a swift upward glance that stopped
at rather bright, downcast brown eyes. The next minute she was waving
to the doctor, for the tender had already started and the gap of dirty
water was widening.
"You'll take care, Marcella," he called. "And, Marcella, if you're
getting unhappy, you'll be coming back home?"
"Of course I'll come back. This is only a crusade," she said, waving her
hand to him, feeling that she would begin to dance with excitement in
another moment, and at the same time wishing that he could come with
her, for, as she saw him through mists slowly getting further and
further away while the gap of water widened, she realized how absolutely
alone she was.
Next moment she became aware of a tall, grey-haired lady in black
clinging to the rail beside the doctor, and crying unrestrainedly as she
seemed to be gazing directly at Marcella.
"Louis, you'll remember, won't you?" she cried in a faint, choked
voice. "You'll try, won't you?" and Marcella, turning slightly,
realized that it was the young man with brown eyes at whom she was
looking.
"Yes, Mater, you know I will," said he hoarsely. A crowd of half a dozen
men standing on the other side of Dr. Angus began to yell greetings and
farewells to the man called Louis while the grey lady's eyes and his
held each other for a moment in a passionate glance of appeal and
ratification.
"Cheerio, Farne," called someone.
"Farne, don't get wet!" yelled someone else. There was a chorus of
cheers and catcalls.
"Buck up, Mater," he called with another long glance. Then, waving his
hat to the others he called cheerfully, "Give my respects to Leicester
Square, you chaps."
A group of stewards in white jackets began to whistle the song and
someone on the boat deck sang it in a high falsetto. Someone behind
Marcella was holding a piece of white ribbon that went right across the
water to the tender; as the boat's speed accelerated the frail thread
snapped and the girl in whose hand it was clasped, a very thin, anaemic
looking girl, gave a choking sob.
"My only sister," she said to no one in particular. "There she is, and
here am I. They wouldn't pass her for Australia, because they say she's
got consumption."
"What a shame!" murmured Marcella, waving frantically to the doctor
while from the tender came the deep, gay voices of the students who had
cheered Louis singing "We want more Beer" to the tune of "Lead Kindly
Light."
The wake of the tender widened out, lapped against the side of the
_Oriana_ and rippled away; it was no longer possible to distinguish
anything but a blurred mass of pinkish faces and dark clothes, splashed
by a crest of white handkerchiefs. Good-byes rang out to the undersong
of "We want more Beer." Marcella turned away and looked right into the
face of Louis Farne. It was a very red face, unnaturally red and
distorted; the brown eyes were bright with tears.
She stared at him in amazement; he really was a phenomenon to her--the
first young man she had ever seen, with the exception of the peasant
lads. She blinked her own dry eyes and frowned at him reflectively.
"Did it hurt you as much as that? Anyway, I'm very sorry," she said.
"D'you think I'm blubbing for that, idiot?" said the boy in a jerky
voice, and, bending almost double, darted down the companion-way.
She stared at him, and turned to the ship's rail again, drowning in
surprise. She was surprised at Tilbury now that she had time to look
about her. It was so utterly unromantic ashore--docks, wharves,
miserable buildings and brown fields, very distant. She remembered that
Queen Elizabeth had reviewed her troops at Tilbury when she was getting
ready for the Armada to land; she had expected that the glamour of that
ancient pageant would hang about Tilbury. And there was no glamour at
all--except, perhaps, in the ships that lay at anchor and the barges
that glided by; they were glamorous enough with their aura of far lands
and strange merchandise.
She became aware that the girl with the consumptive sister was looking
at her, and must have heard the boy's remark.
"People here seem very rude," she remarked.
"That they are! Saying she had consumption--I know it was consumption
though they wrote it down in funny words. Other folks said she had
consumption too--sauce! And now she's all alone there, and I'm here."
"What made you come," asked Marcella, "if you didn't want to leave her?"
"_I_ do' know. Fed up, that's about it," said the girl resignedly. "I
wisht I hadn't come an' left her now, though. Her not being strong--mind
you, it's all my eye to talk about consumption, but her best friend
couldn't say as she was strong. Oh, dear, I do wisht I hadn't left her."
For half an hour the thin girl argued with Marcella--a very one-sided
argument--explaining in detail that her sister could not possibly have
consumption, but that the doctor who had refused to pass her as an
emigrant must have had a spite against her--simply must have had.
Otherwise why didn't he pass her? What was it to him? Marcella was very
sympathetic but quite unhelpful, and after a while got away and went
below to arrange her things in her cabin.
It fascinated her; it was quite the smallest thing she had ever seen,
much smaller than Wullie's hut, and the shining whiteness of the new
enamel particularly appealed to her, though the smell of it was not very
pleasing. The clamps that held the water-bottle and glass gave an
exhilarating hint of rough weather; the top bunk, about on the level of
her eyes, promised thrilling acrobatic feats at bedtime, and she decided
to sleep in that one, leaving the other as a receptacle for her baggage.
In her preparations she lost sight of the lunch hour, and the bell and
the sound of feet scurrying down the companion way meant nothing to her.
But at three o'clock something extraordinarily exciting happened; she
heard the sharp "ting-ting" of a bell, and the ship began to palpitate
as if a great heart were beating within it. She hurried on deck as the
siren began to cry. As soon as her head appeared above the top of the
companion-way she saw the wharves and houses on shore running away in a
peculiarly stealthy fashion; a ship much bigger than the _Oriana_, whose
decks were thronged with stewards and deck-hands cheering and calling
out greetings, went by; she dipped her flag to the outgoing _Oriana_,
and Marcella thought how nice and chivalrous ships were to each other.
Then it dawned on her that they were under weigh--that the heart she
felt beating was the ship's engines, and that the extraordinary
behaviour of the shore was because the _Oriana_ was going out with the
tide.
She wondered then why she had come, and felt very frightened and lonely.
In all this big ship was no one who would care if she fell overboard
into the muddy water; in all the world except at Lashnagar, which was
sliding away from her with every beat of the ship's heart, there was no
one who knew her except an unknown, almost legendary, uncle. She sat
down on a covered hatchway, suddenly a little weak at the knees.
People passed and repassed, worrying the stewards with foolish and
unnecessary questions, which they answered vaguely as they hurried by.
The thin girl stood leaning over the rail watching the brown shores that
imprisoned her sister: four men who had apparently already made friends
came along and sat down by Marcella, exchanging plans. One of them was
horribly pock-marked; a younger man with red hair, queer shifty eyes and
a habit of gesticulating a great deal when he talked was apparently
going out with him. As the mudflats of the Thames glided by dreamily
Marcella found their conversation slipping into her consciousness. The
man with the red hair was talking: as he waved his right hand she saw
that it had the three middle fingers missing. Her eyes followed it as if
it hypnotized her.
"Going out to Sydney?" asked the pock-marked man of the two young farm
hands who were staring about them open-mouthed. They nodded stupidly.
"Got 'ny tin?" asked the red-haired man. The younger farm hand, a ruddy,
clean, foolish boy of twenty, jerked his thumb towards his friend.
"Dick's got it."
"Going to a job?"
"Maybe," said the elder of the two, a little on his guard.
"Well, what I was finkin' was vat vis is a six-weeks' trip, an' if we
was to pal in we could have a good time. I've done vis jaunt before, and
know ve ropes. I know how to square ve stewards to get drinks out of
hours, and little extrys."
The farm lads nodded comprehension, and the younger one began to talk
rather loudly of his prospects. The pock-marked man drew a little
closer.
"We're going out to start a little business," he began.
"Ole Fred," the red-haired man took up the tale, jerking his head
towards his friend, "he's bin runnin' a business down Poplar way--not a
business, in a manner o' speaking. It was a kip for sailors. On'y he got
acrorst the cops abaht a sailor as disappeared. So him an' me--we've
alwiz palled in wiv each ovver--fought we'd make a move over ve water.
If we was to pall in togevver vis trip maybe we might do somefing
togevver when we hit up in Sydney."
"Put it there, mate," said the pock-marked man, holding out his hand to
the farm lads, "and we'll wet it."
They all got up. Ole Fred, noticing Marcella looking at him with frank
curiosity as she tried to translate his queer, clipped English, gave her
what he imagined to be a friendly smile.
"Coming?" he asked, holding back, while the red-haired man gave a loud
guffaw and dug him in the ribs.
"Now, now, Freddy--vat's his great weakness--a little bit o' skirt," he
explained to the others, who laughed loudly.
"Coming where?" asked Marcella with pleased interest, though she wished
his face was not so appalling. "Is it tea-time?"
"No. Come an' 'ave a drink," he said.
"Oh, can we get one? I am glad. I missed lunch. You were luckier, I
suppose, as you have been here before and understand the rules. It's
very kind of you."
"I never mind being kind to young ladies," he said, leering at her.
"Look here, you sit down here an' I'll bring you a drink. Then we c'n
have a little talk and get to know each other better."
She sat down, feeling horrible at hating his face when he was so kind.
She heard laughter from the men who had gone a little way up the deck to
a doorway, and then Ole Fred came back with a small tumbler in one hand
and a large one in the other. The small one he put into Marcella's hand.
"Oh--" she began, looking at it doubtfully.
"What's up?" he asked, sitting down very close to her.
"I'm sorry. I wish I'd asked you to bring tea."
"Oh, you can't get tea. Anyway, ship's tea is rotten. Drink that up,
dear. It'll put a bit of go into you. I like young ladies with a bit of
go."
She frowned at him. Then the smell of the stuff in the tumbler was
wafted to her. The green baize door came before her, almost tangible,
and the book-room as it was the night her father died, when last she had
smelt whisky as she and Wullie knelt on the floor beside him.
"Here, take it," she cried, starting up wildly. "Take it away! I'd die
if I drank it."
"What in hell--" began the man, staring after her.
But she was already down the companion-way and rushing towards her
cabin. All the misery of her father's death and illness had swept back
upon her. It was quite true, as Aunt Janet had said, that nothing would
kill that pain until she had schooled herself not to feel. She felt the
literal, physical weight of all that misery as she ran along the
alley-way, her eyes swimming, her face flushed.
Her cabin--Number 9--being the one with the porthole, was at the end of
the alley-way. The door of Number 8 was open into the passage, but she
was too blinded by her emotion to notice it, and blundered into it. It
was badly swung, and slammed inwards. She heard a smash inside the
cabin, and someone said "Damn!" It was exactly the same "Damn" that had
resulted from her headlong flight after Dr. Angus.
She was standing a little breathless by her own door when Number 8
opened and Louis Farne looked out. His hair was rumpled, his expression
one of speechless annoyance.
"W--what the d--devil are you up to?" he said, stammering a little.
"Th-that's the s-second time."
"Oh, it's you!" she said, speaking breathlessly. "A horrible man gave me
whisky, and I was frightened."
"Good Lord!" He gazed at her, and she noticed that he gazed in a queer
way, afraid to meet her eyes: it was her chin he saw when he looked at
her; she rubbed it with her handkerchief, wondering if a smut had got on
it. And he transferred his gaze to her ear.
"And I made you spill your tea! I am sorry! I seem made to do violent
things to you. But can't I get you some more?"
"I s-suppose I c-can make some," he said, turning into the cabin.
"Don't they give us tea? Do we have to make our own?"
"Oh no--but I've done this trip before, and know how one w-wants a
d-drink in the tropics."
He took the door in his hand and fumbled with the faulty catch as though
he would shut it. Then he seemed to shake himself together inside his
coat, which was very crumpled, as though he had been lying down inside
it. "Look here," he said breathlessly and with an effort, "w-would you
like some tea? I can get another c-cup from the steward."
"I would," she said frankly. "Do make some more. I've a cake in my box
that's supposed to last me till I get to Australia. But I'll find it,
and we'll have it now. I'm horribly hungry."
She went inside her cabin and drew out her trunk, which she had not yet
unlocked. She heard him clearing up the broken cup, and then he tapped
on her door.
"I can't open it--mine opens inwards, you see," she called. "And my
trunk's in the way. What is it?"
"I--I--c-called you an idiot," came his voice, rather low and
hesitating.
"So I was," she said bluntly, and heard him laugh.
"St-still--I needn't have mentioned it."
Then his steps grew faint along the alley-way. She sat back on her
heels, frowning. She was wondering why he would not look at her, why he
flushed and stammered when he spoke to her.
He was back in a few minutes, explaining that he had been to the cook's
galley for boiling water to make tea. She had dragged her cabin trunk
into the doorway, and laid upon it the tin in which her cake was packed,
the two cups he brought with him and the teapot.
"A beneficent shipping company provides one camp stool to each cabin,
you'll find--if you're lucky," he said; but there was not one in
Marcella's cabin. He sat down on his own, and then, standing up
awkwardly as she sat quite casually and comfortably on the floor,
offered it to her.
"Oh no--keep it. I always sit on the floor," she explained, and this
time he stared at the end of her nose.
He explained the mystery of powdered milk to her; reaching over for the
tin to examine it more closely, she tipped it over.
"I keep doing this sort of thing," she explained, "ever since I left
Lashnagar. Most things I touch I knock over."
"Weak co-ordination," he said.
"Whatever's that?" She paused in cutting a slice of cake with an
enormous clasp-knife Wullie had given her years ago.
He immediately looked consciously learned.
"Like a baby, you know--it grabs for a thing and can't aim at it. It
reaches a few inches the other side of it. It means your brain and body
are not on speaking terms."
"Oh, my goodness! Am I like that? Does it matter? How do you know all
about it?"
"I learnt it at the hospital."
"Oh, are you a doctor then?"
"No. N-not n-now," he stammered, and began to untie and retie his shoe
lace very carefully. "I--I was going to be."
"You must be clever," she said admiringly. "What a lot of things we can
talk about!"
"Rather! I'm w-wondering what m-makes you like that!--you know what I
mean, without co-ordination. Babies and drunkards and that sort of thing
usually are."
"Well, I'm neither of those. But I'll tell you why I think it is. It's
because I've lived in the open air, where there was nothing to knock
over except trees and stones; or else I've lived in an enormous house
where everything was so big you couldn't knock it over if you tried. I'm
not used to being among things and people."
"Been in prison?" he said, smiling for the first time.
She entered on a vivid description of Lashnagar. He seemed to think it
was a fairy tale, though he listened eagerly enough, and once she saw
him actually look directly at her face for an instant.
"Are you going to Sydney?" he asked at length.
"I'm booked through to Sydney, but I'm going to live with an uncle right
in the backblocks somewhere, and he may meet me at Melbourne. I've never
seen him yet. Where are you going?"
"Sydney."
"To live there?"
"No, die probably," he said, and his face that had been animated
suddenly became morose and gloomy, and his hand shook as he lighted
a cigarette. Her eyes opened wider.
"Are you ill, then?" she asked gently. "You don't look ill."
"No, I'm not ill. By the way, do you smoke? It didn't occur to me to
offer you a cigarette."
She shook her head, watching him with a puzzled frown. She wondered why
his hands gave her such a vague sense of discomfort as she watched him
light another cigarette. It was not until she was in her bunk that night
that she remembered that his nails were bitten and ragged--one finger
was bleeding and inflamed.
"No, I'm not ill. I'm sick, though. The Pater says I want stiffening.
This is my third trip in the stiffening process. Like a bally collar in
a laundry! Oh, damn life! What's he know about it, anyway? Have you got
a deck-chair?"
"Yes, but--"
"I'm going to put mine on the fo'c'sle presently. If we don't peg out
claims they'll all go, and the fo'c'sle is the best place in the
steerage. Where's yours? I'll t-take it there, if you like."
He had begun to stammer in the last sentence, suddenly self-conscious
again. She told him where her chair was on deck, and next minute,
without another word, he was half-way along the alley-way, leaving the
tea-things where they were. Then he turned back and spoke from several
yards away.
"I suppose you're wondering what the devil I'm doing in the steerage,
aren't you? A chap like me--a medical student! And I'll t-tell you w-why
it is! The p-pater's too mean to pay for me to go decently."
He was looking down at his shoes as he spoke. She noticed that the nice
brown eyes were quite far apart; the forces that set them so had not
meant them to be shifty. His chin was strong, too, but his mouth was
loose and much too mobile. It quivered when he had finished speaking.
She reflected that if she had seen him in a train reading, and not
speaking to anyone, she would have thought him very nice to look at.
Only his nervousness and his mannerisms made him unpleasant.
"He'd go first class himself if he was going to Hades! Steerage is good
enough for Louis--as there's no way of letting him run behind like a
little dog!" He began to bite his lower lip, and his fingers twisted
aimlessly.
"I hadn't thought of the lack of dignity in it," said Marcella calmly.
"I said I'd come steerage, and here I am. I'm sure it's going to be
jolly."
"I don't suppose you'd notice, being a farmer's daughter," he said.
"I never notice anything, and I never worry about things. I knew
perfectly well aunt couldn't afford to pay more for me, and I'm not
such a fool as to pretend she could."
"And I'm to consider myself squashed--abso-bally-lutely pestle and
mortared?" he said, turning away flushing and biting his lip.
"Quite. I hate pretenders," she said. The next moment he heard her cabin
trunk being pushed noisily inside and the door was banged to.
At five o'clock a steward came along to explain that he had looked for
her at lunch-time, but could not find her.
"I've reserved you a place at my table, miss," he said. "You'd better
get in early and take it. These emigrants, they push and shove so--and
expect the best of everything. And mind you, not a penny to be had out
of them--not one penny! It's 'Knollys this' and 'Knollys that' all
day--my name being Knollys, miss--you'd think I was a dog."
She went along the alley-way with him. He went on, aggrievedly:
"Simply because they've never had anyone to order about before, and they
aren't used to it. But anything you want, let me know, miss, and I'll
see you all right."
When she got into the dining saloon she found small wars in progress.
About a hundred and fifty people were trying to sit down in a hundred
seats. The stewards looked harassed as they explained that there was
another meal-time half an hour after the first. Knollys was trying, with
impassive dignity, to prove mathematically to an old lady that by
waiting until six o'clock for her tea to-day and automatically shifting
all her meal-times on half an hour she was losing nothing; and, after
all, it would all be the same whether she had her tea at five or six or
seven a hundred years hence. But she thought there was some catch in it,
for she expressed an intention of seeing the captain, and then, thinking
better of it, stood behind an already occupied chair with the air of
Horatius holding the bridge.
When at last order was restored and Marcella sat down, she found that
she was at a long table, one of three that ran from end to end of the
saloon. Ole Fred and his three friends were at the same table, a little
higher up. He scowled at her, and the three others made some grinning
remarks to him which he seemed to resent. Next to her was a little boy
of six or seven, who looked at her gravely. Beside him was a man with
greying hair and a very red face, who was talking to a small lady of
deceptive age--a very pretty, dark, bright-eyed little lady, charmingly
dressed, with hair of shining blackness arranged about her head in
dozens of little tight curls. She and the elderly man were talking
animatedly. The little boy pulled the man's arm several times gently,
and said "Father," but he did not notice.
There were piles of sliced bread at intervals up the table, and saucers
containing butter and jam. The stewards came to each person with an
enormous pair of pots and, murmuring "tea or coffee?" poured something
by sleight-of-hand into the thick, unbreakable cups.
"Father!" murmured the little boy again, pulling his father's sleeve.
The father shook his arm impatiently, as one jerks away an annoying fly.
He went on talking absorbedly. A steward asked if Marcella would have
ham or fish.
"Father," said the little boy, with quivering lips.
"What's to do, laddie?" said Marcella.
He stared at her, summed her up and decided.
"I'm thinking, shall I have ham or fish?" he said seriously.
"Which do you like?"
"Fish--only the bones are so worrying."
"I'll see to the bones for you. Have fish because I'm having it, and we
can keep each other company," she said. Knollys darted away.
"I'd advise you to make a good tea, miss," said Knollys with a firmly
respectful air. "There's nothing until breakfast at eight to-morrow."
Marcella nodded at him. Next minute she heard Ole Fred swearing at him
for not being quicker, but Knollys took it all with an impersonally
sarcastic air. She cut up the little boy's bread and butter into strips,
arranged his fish, and watched, with amusement, his father turn to him
with a jerk of remembrance.
"It's good of you to look after young Jimmy," he said, smiling at
Marcella. "He misses his mother."
"Is she dead?"
"Yes. He's only me. There are a surprising lot of lonely people in the
world, aren't there? The little lady next to me--she's a widow, I find.
It's hard when a woman has had a man to depend on and suddenly finds
herself left to battle with the world, isn't it? Women are such fragile
little flowers to me--they want protecting from the winds."
Marcella looked at him; he was rather fat: the excitement of his talk
with the little lady had made his forehead shine; when he smiled his
drooping moustache could not hide a row of blackened, broken teeth. He
smelt of stale tobacco, as though he carried old pipes in every pocket.
He ate quickly and noisily, his eyes on his plate, his shoulders moving.
Jimmy asked timidly if he might have a piece of bread and jam. His
father said "Yes, of course," and went on eating. Marcella spread the
jam for him, and then turned to his father.
"I don't know many women," she said. "But I'd just like to see a man
treat me as a fragile flower."
"Ah, wasteful woman!" said Mr. Peters, smiling fatuously as he wrestled
with a hard piece of ham rather too big for his mouth. As soon as he had
swallowed it, he went on, "That's the thing a man loves in a woman--a
_real_ man, that is! 'Just like the ivy, I cling to thee' should be a
woman's motto, a true woman's motto. A woman's weakness, her trust in
man is her most womanly characteristic. It appeals to all that is best
and chivalrous in a man."
A fragile voice at his elbow said, "Mistah Petahs," and he turned
hurriedly towards it. Marcella said, "Pooh!" loudly and very rudely and
turned to Jimmy.
"Do you like cake?" she asked.
"Rather! Gran gives me cake."
"Well, you come with me into my little house after tea and we'll have
some. What number is your little house?"
"Fifteen."
"Mine is Number 9 so we are not very far away."
She looked round several times for Louis Farne, wondering if he would
consider it beneath his dignity to have his meals with the steerage
people, but could not see him. Even after she and Jimmy had explored her
cabin, eaten some cake and walked several times up and down the deck
talking, while the wind blew keenly in their faces, she saw nothing of
him and there was dead silence in his cabin. Her deck-chair, she
noticed, was where she had seen it put among a pile of others; later in
the day Knollys came along and stencilled her initials.
"If you don't have your name on, some of these blooming emigrants will
pinch it, or the deck-hands will hide it till we're a few days out and
sell it to someone else."
She began to think Knollys was a very useful person to know, for all his
superiority and pessimism.
As it grew dark, lights twinkled out ashore--lights rocked here and
there on passing ships and barges: tubes of light projected themselves
out from the portholes on to the blackening water, that swished and
washed past the sides with a sound of desolation; to the landward an
uncoiled serpent glittered out into the water and then seemed to cover
itself in a grey veil of darkness as the _Oriana_ passed the pier of
some little watering-place. Marcella went slowly along the deck, climbed
the fo'c'sle steps and sat down on the anchor. At Lashnagar she had
always seen ghosts walking on the sea at nightfall. Now they rose out of
the swirling water, passed in and out swaying among the lights of the
ship. From under her feet in the crew's quarters came the tinkle of a
mandoline playing "La Donna e Mobile."
She had seen ships pass in the darkness at home, out on the horizon, a
glimmering blur of light. She had pictured them by daylight, shining in
the sunlight with snowy decks and glittering engines; she had no idea
that this spirit of desolation would rise out of the waves and possess
her. For an hour she sat, dreaming of grey things, for her dreams could
admit of no colour. After a while, cold and cramped, she went to her
cabin for her coat. She noticed Mr. Peters and the little widow sitting
on two deck-chairs in a corner, their faces two blurs in the darkness,
the widow's tinkling laugh an oversong to his deep voice. Around the bar
some dozen men were laughing and talking loudly; in the dining saloon a
few people were playing cards, a few more writing letters, to post in
Plymouth next day. The thin girl sat with her elbows on the table, her
chin on her hands, crying. The tears were running down her cheeks, over
her fingers and dropping on to the table. It seemed less lonely on the
dark fo'c'sle, so Marcella went back.
It was quite dark now; the mandoline had stopped. From a ventilator
shaft close by came a deep murmur of conversation from the crew's
quarters that mingled with her dreams. Aunt Janet, her father, Wullie,
Dr. Angus, the restless London crowds came and went like pictures
crossing a screen. Jimmy, the thin girl, Ole Fred and Louis Farne
followed them, passing on. Suddenly out of the darkness at the other end
of the great anchor came a sound that was entangled with the wash of the
waves against the bows of the ship. It was a sob, choked back quickly
and bursting out again. She crept along the anchor softly. A huddled
figure was there, looking out to the black sea.
"What's the matter now? It's you, isn't it, Louis?" she said, for she
was quite sure it was he, even in the darkness. "I could sit and cry
too, it's so lonely, isn't it?"
"Oh, you're everywhere! And you only poke fun at me," he said in a
strangled voice.
"I didn't poke fun at you. I only laughed at your trying to pretend you
were such an exalted person you couldn't travel steerage."
"I d-didn't want y-y-you to think my p-people couldn't afford
to--to--" he stammered in a low voice.
"Oh, what an idiot you are! My father was always calling me an idiot,
but if he'd known you! My goodness--he said I was a double-distilled
one! Whatever are you?"
"There you are, you see," he grumbled.
"But, Louis, whatever does it matter? My people couldn't afford to pay
more for me, and I don't care who knows it. We'll get there as soon--"
"I--d-don't w-want to g-get there. What's at the end of it? I know very
well--I'll throw my damned self overboard, and then they'll see what
they've done."
"Who's they? And what is it they've done?" She had no idea that it was
an extraordinary thing to take so much interest in a perfect stranger.
All her world hitherto had had the claims of friendship upon her.
"They never understood me," he cried passionately. "They were always
trying to tie me down--they were always looking for faults. That's
enough to make a man go to the devil."
"Is it? Tell me all about it," she said, drawing a little closer.
"Do you know," he cried bitterly, so intent that he forgot his
nervousness and did not stammer, "I was the best man in my year. They
all told me so, the Dean and everyone--but I never had a chance. I never
got a free hand. And now do you know what I am? All because they never
understood me?"
She shook her head wonderingly.
"I'm a remittance man."
"What's that?"
"Don't you know? They're very picturesque in fiction! You'll find
h-h-heaps of them in Australia, spewed out as far as possible from the
Old Country! It's the dumping ground, Australia is!"
"I don't understand," she said.
"I went to church with the Mater last Sunday. I suppose she thought it
would induce the right atmosphere--something sacrificial, you know. We
yawped some psalms--the Mater and Pater are great at that. There was
one bit I noticed particularly--'Moab is my washpot, over Edom will I
cast my shoe.' That reminds me of Australia. They kick us out, pitch us
out over there like old boots."
"But don't you _want_ to go?" she protested, frowning. "I'm just dying
to go. It's such adventure."
"Adventure! Perhaps it is, for you. It depends on how much money you've
got."
"Ten pounds," she said guilelessly.
"Do you know what they're allowing me? A miserable pound a week! Doled
out once a week, mind you! Little Louis must toddle up to the General
Post Office in Sydney every English mail day, and if he says 'please'
very nicely they'll give him a letter from his mother. It's always from
his mother. His father 'cannot trust himself to write in a Christian
spirit,' he says. In the letter is a pound order. That's to keep body
and soul together."
In his passion of self-pity he forgot to stammer; his words tumbled out
wildly, between sobbing catches of his breath.
"But who gives you the pound?"
"The Pater, I tell you--so long as I stop there I'm assured of a pound a
week! If I come any nearer to England the money stops. They probably
hope I'll commit suicide and save them the expense of the pound a week.
It'll even save them the expense of a funeral and buying mourning, won't
it? I'll do it in Sydney, you see."
"But I never heard of such a funny thing in my life! Paid to keep away
from home! What's the matter with you? What have you done? It's like the
lepers in the Bible."
"T-that's what they say I am!" he burst out. "They c-call me a disgrace,
a drunkard! They sent me down from the hospital because they said I was
a drunkard. The girl I was in love with threw me over because of that.
She was married three months ago to someone else. That's why I'm here
now. My third remittance trip--"
He stopped, and she was horrified to hear him sobbing--gasping, choking
sobs that frightened her.
"I came home--tried my damnedest to get a grip on things, but when she
did that trick on me I saw red. They've kicked me out now."
"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "You must be so unhappy if
you're a drunkard--whisky--"
She broke off. The old farm came gliding over the waves and settled
round her with a sense of inevitability. She saw the green baize door;
she heard the crying of the wind, the scuttering of the rats: she saw
her father's blazing eyes, red-rimmed and mad. And then she heard him,
pleading, talking to God. Louis's voice broke in on her dream.
"A drunkard--that's what I am now."
"I didn't think boys were drunkards," she said casually.
"I'm twenty-seven."
"Are you really? All the boys at Lashnagar are grown up when they're
twenty-seven. You seem so young. You're so shy and queer. I'm nineteen,"
she added.
"And you know," he burst out in the midst of her words, "they can't
blame me! It isn't my own fault--they know it's in the family, only they
haven't the decency to admit it. But I know--different people in my
family who are cut by the respectable ones--I've raked them out, and
ever since I've felt hopeless."
"Oh no--no," she cried, suddenly throwing out her hands as if to ward
off something horrible. Leaning forwards she gripped his shoulder. "It's
so silly! Besides, think how cowardly it is to say you must do a thing
because someone else has done it."
"It's killed lots of my people, or landed them in asylums--they're not
talked about in the family, but I know it," he raved.
"Well, I think you're a perfect idiot," she cried impatiently. "Why, if
you saw about twenty people on this ship walk overboard in a procession,
that's no reason why you should do it too, is it?"
"That just shows you don't understand the power of suggestion," he said.
"At the hospital--I'll never forget it. There was a girl brought in
dying of burns. We got it from her that she was very unhappy and had set
herself on fire because the woman next door had been burnt to death. Old
Professor Hay, our lecturer in psychology, explained it to us. He said
the girl was in a weak state of nerves and health generally, owing to
family troubles she'd had to shoulder. She was receptive to suggestion,
you see. And she was too tired to think logically. Seeing the burnt
woman there very peaceful, and people sorry for her--don't you see?"
Marcella nodded.
"I'm pretty sure I'd never have got to this state of things if I'd never
known it was in the family. It seems inevitable, as if I'm working out a
laid-down law."
"Louis, I'm not very clever. As I told you, father used to call me a
double-distilled idiot when he got in a temper. But I do think you're
wrong. People are not a part of families nearly so much as they are
themselves. Besides--imagine letting anything get you down, and put
chains on you like that!" she added scornfully.
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said bitterly. "It
simply chews you up, gnaws holes in you."
She thought of what Dr. Angus had said.
"Well then, patch yourself up and go on again."
"But after all, why should you? There's nobody cares tuppence now what
happens to me. I'm an outcast."
"Louis, what was that you promised your mother--I heard you on the ship
just as the tender was going? Didn't you promise to make yourself
better?"
"Yes, but I've been thinking about it. Why should I? What does it really
matter to the Mater? She didn't care enough not to have me spewed out of
home. She's at home now; they'll be sitting round the dinner-table after
a tip-top meal. Presently they'll be playing whist and congratulating
themselves that I'm safely out of England. They'll breathe freely now."
"I don't believe it," she said quickly. "Mothers and fathers are not
like that."
"That's all you know. All day to-day, after she got back from Tilbury
and had powdered the traces of tears from her face she'd be at Harrods
or the Stores, buying things. And she'd take just as much interest in
matching some silks for embroidery, and getting the exact flavour of
cheese the Pater likes as she took in making me promise not to drink.
And to-morrow her friends will come, with an air of a funeral about
them, and be discreetly sympathetic about the terrible trouble she has
been having with Louis--such a pity--after he promised so well! Oh be
damned to them all! I'm not going to care any more."
Marcella sat in miserable silence. She did not know enough to say
anything helpful. She had no idea what had cured her father. She had
seen him a drunkard; she had seen him ill, no longer a drunkard; she had
seen him die and guessed dimly that the drinking had killed him. But she
suddenly grasped the fact that she had seen effects--whole years of
effects; of causes she knew nothing whatever.
The mandoline began to play again "La Donna e Mobile." Louis's voice
broke into the music and the lashing water.
"They're cowards, my people, mean little cowards. That's why I'm a
coward! I'm a beastly, bally sort of half-breed, don't you know! Do you
know why they give me a pound a week? Partly, of course, it's to bribe
me to keep away. They've no other weapon but that. But mostly it's
because they're so miserably sentimental they can't bear to think of me
starving or sleeping out all night! Ough! If they weren't such miserable
cowards they'd know I'd be better dead than chained to the end of a row
of pound-notes. They'd have kicked me out, and let me either buck up or
die."
"But--oh, I do wish Dr. Angus or Wullie were here! I know there's an
answer to all that, but I'm such an idiot I can't find it," she cried
despairingly.
"I'll do them! I'll get my own back on them! I'm damned if I'll do as
they expect me to. If they'd only seen me last time in Auckland," and he
gave an ugly laugh. "Do you think I lived on their bally pound a week?
Why, I spent that in half a day! Sometimes I wouldn't call for it for
five weeks. I'd go past the Post Office every day, knowing it was there,
and torturing myself with the thought of what I could buy with it, and
leaving it there till I'd got five pounds and could drink myself to
hell!"
She shivered. She could hear him grinding his teeth as he sat close to
her. She felt the same inarticulate helplessness that she had felt about
all the miseries of Lashnagar. She wanted, most passionately, to do
something for him. His telling her about it was, in itself, a challenge.
"But how did you live all the time, wasting your money like that?"
He laughed harshly.
"It's easy to live south the line--in Australasia, anyway, if you're a
drunkard. There's a lot of money about, you know. Men come from
up-country with a big cheque to knock out--shearers and men like that,
who live in the backblocks for months, hundreds of miles from hotels.
They come down from the backblocks with perhaps a hundred pounds to
spend on a week of blissful unconsciousness. Sailors come in and get
paid off too. There's a lot of freehandedness. They treat the whole bar.
If you won't drink with them, they knock you out of time before you
know where you are, sit on your chest and pour it down your neck. Once
you're in a pub in Australia you can stay in all day on nothing. And you
can get in for threepence--the price of a pint of beer. And you don't
get out till you're kicked out drunk."
"Oh--" she gasped.
"The devil of it is getting hold of the threepence. Sometimes you meet a
pal and borrow it. Sometimes you pawn something and get it. If the Home
boat's in, you go down to the quay, pick out a new chum--that's anyone
from the Old Country--offer to show him round a bit, and he naturally
treats you. Then you're in the haven."
He spoke cynically, bitterly. She grasped at his sleeve, as though she
would pull him back.
"Oh--," she gasped.
"D-don't keep s-saying 'Oh' like that!" he cried impatiently. "S-say
s-something s-sensible."
"Does your mother know all about the way you live?" she asked
desperately.
"I told her. I enjoyed letting her know what they drove me to. But she
doesn't understand. They don't ever understand, these easy, half-alive,
untempted folks! She's never been away from a world of afternoon calls,
broughams and shopping! I tell her I'm a beer-bum--yes, that's the word
for it in Australia! Not a pretty word--not a pretty thing either! I
gave the Mater and Pater a picture of myself once--broken shoes tied on
with string, trousers tied on with a bit of rope because I'd sold my
braces for threepence--slinking along in the gutter outside the Theatre
Royal picking up cigarette ends that had been thrown away! Counter
lunches! D'you know what counter lunches are?"
She shook her head. It seemed as though he were trying to shock her, as
he piled on his miseries to her.
"Three times a day the hotel keeper in Australia covers his counter in
all sorts of food--cold meat, bread, cheese, pickles, cakes--oh, just
everything there is going. He doesn't want you to go out to get food,
you see, and perhaps get caught by some other pub. You don't have to
pay. You just eat what you like, so long as you go on buying drinks or
having them bought for you. There's a lot more there to eat than you
want. You don't want much when you're boozing. I lived on counter
lunches once--crayfish and celery mostly, with vinegar and cayenne--for
four months. I spent not a single penny on food the whole time. Then I
nearly died in hospital. They had me in the padded cell for three days."
"Were you mad?" she whispered, wishing he would tell her no more, but
fascinated by the horror of it all, the pity of it. "I think you are
mad, really, even now--talking like this, almost as if you're proud of
it."
"No, I'm not mad--only the usual pink rat sort of madness. The thing's
obvious," he said, shrugging his shoulders. It was not obvious to her;
he had put her into a maelstrom of puzzles, but she did not tell him so.
She preferred to think it out for herself. But suddenly she coupled her
little broken arm and the barrel as effect and cause.
He went on muttering. She had great difficulty in hearing all he said.
"At night, at kicking out time, you can hang on, sometimes, to a man
with some cash and get asked to kip with him for the night. You can get
a bed for a shilling a night in many places. It isn't a feather-bed. If
there is no Good Samaritan about you go and lie down in the
Domain--that's the public park, you know--praying to whatever gods there
be that it won't rain. You never get a decent wash, and as soon as the
hotels are open at six o'clock you start again--if you can get the
entrance fee. If you haven't, you cadge round till you have."
He broke off, staring bitterly away from her, his knees drawn up, his
chin resting on them.
"And you told your mother about it--and your father?" she said.
"Yes, every word, and more. Things I wouldn't tell you, because you're
a girl, and I've still some respect for girls. Things that happened in
Rio and Rosario--some of the women there, the rich women--Lord, they're
the devil's own!" He reflected grimly. "I told the Pater a few
things--opened his eyes. He's a publisher--Sunday school prizes and that
sort of thing. Stacks of money! No imagination. Most people have no
imagination. They see things in a detached way. They see them, somehow,
as if they're in print or going on on a stage. But not really
happening. The Pater simply said I ought to be ashamed of myself--as
if I'm not!"
He broke off and tried to light a cigarette with fingers that trembled.
Three, four matches he struck before he got it lighted and puffing. She
sat silent, listening to the murmur of voices and the swishing water.
"Why the devil I'm telling you this I can't imagine," he said at last.
"Most girls would have yelled out for help before this."
"I think, you know," she said rather breathless, "I think you're a great
idiot! You _ask_ for things, don't you?"
"But what is there for a man to do out there? There's nothing I want to
do except medicine, and that's past for ever now. There's nothing to do
but get drunk. I've tried, often--got jobs, and all that. But there's no
inducement--and I've told you how easy it is not to starve."
"But it's so--so beastly! You might as well be dead--you're not happy."
"That's exactly what I think. That's what I'm going to do. I got ten
pounds out of the Mater. She's always ready to give me anything if it
happens to be the beginning of the month and she's well off. The Pater
solemnly presented me with three pounds--that's ten shillings a week for
smokes for the six weeks of the trip. I'll buy bull's-eyes with it, I
think. That'd please him. That makes thirteen pounds, and there's ten
pounds waiting for me in Sydney. I'll have a damned good bust-up then,
and then I'll finish the job for ever."
"Oh, I do think you're mad--raving mad!" she cried, and could say
nothing else.
"Of course it's by no means certain I'll have enough courage to kill
myself. I rather doubt it! You see, they didn't breed me with courage.
They've given me porridge in my veins instead of blood! They press
electric buttons for their emotions and keep them down as long as is
respectable! They didn't give me grit at all--they gave me convention
and respectability. Everything I wanted to do they restrained because
so many of the things I wanted to do seemed natural but were not
respectable. And in the end they made a first-class liar of me." There
was a long, terrible silence.
"To-night, for a bit, I'm stripped bare here," he said in a low voice,
"letting you see me. To-morrow I'll be a nervous, stammering fool,
hiding all I feel, swanking like hell about my people, myself and
everyone I've ever seen, like I was doing to-day when you told me off so
beautifully. To-morrow I'll be drunk, and I'll lie to you till all's
blue. To-night I'm just honest."
"Why is it that you're honest with me?" she asked him.
"Lord knows! I suppose it's because I'll disintegrate and go over the
side in shivers if I can't get something off my chest. You don't seem
disgusted with me--Lord, everyone else is! And I'm the loneliest devil
on earth."
"I'm glad you told me. Let's be friends, Louis--till we get to Sydney,
anyway."
"I never have friends. I lie to them, and they find me out. I borrow
money from them and don't pay it back, and then I'm afraid to face them.
I make fools of them in public; I'm irritable with them."
"I'm warned," she said with a laugh. "I'm not afraid of you."
Suddenly he turned round. All the time he had been talking his back
had been half turned to her. She saw the crimson end of the cigarette
glowing. It was flung overboard. He groped for and found both her hands.
"Look here, this is the maddest thing I've ever done yet--but will you
take it on, being friends with me?"
"I want to. I'm lonely, you know. I could have cried to-night, really."
"But--look here. I'm begging, yes begging, this of you. When I lie to
you, insult me, will you? You'll know. You've seen me honest to-night,
but sometimes a thing gets hold of me and I lie like hell! I'll tell you
the most amazing, most circumstantial tales--just as you told me this
afternoon--and you'll believe me. But I implore you, don't believe me!
Heaps of people have lent me money because they've believed what I've
told them about my wife or my mother or my child dying. Lord, I'm a
waster! But if I can find someone who'll be hard with me, I think I
might make a stand. Look here, I promised the Mater, as this was my last
week at home, and I haven't had a drink since Monday. That's four days
to the good. If I promise you there's a faint chance I won't do it. Do
you mind?"
"I'll watch you," she said calmly. "And I'll tell you if you tell me
lies. But I don't believe you'll do any such thing!"
"Don't you? Do you believe in me?" he cried.
"Why not? I think you're a fearful duffer, but naturally I believe in
you," she said calmly.
"I know why I came by this ship! It's a miracle. I believe I'm going to
make a stand now, I really do! It's fate, and nothing else. There's an
Anchor boat I was to have gone by--via the Cape, you know. She sailed
last week, and I couldn't get off in time. I wanted to wait for the next
as I've not been to the Cape. But the Pater couldn't put up with me for
another week, so out I came! I know why I came! I came to meet you!"
"Do you think so?" she said wonderingly.
"I do! I've never in all my life told the truth about myself before! If
you only knew what that means! I'm too nervous as a rule. But don't you
notice the difference? Of course you're not trained, so you wouldn't
notice as I should. But I'm not even stammering half so much. It's jolly
good of you to listen to me--and it's jolly good for me, because I've no
reason to try to get at you, or to get my own back on you, as I have
with my people all the time."
Marcella felt very small, very helpless. She had a sudden vision of a
man dying in an agony of poisoning while she stood frantic in a doctor's
laboratory, antidotes all round her, but no knowledge in her brain of
which drug to use. And all the time his agony went on, and death drew
nearer. She had not the least idea in the world what to do for Louis
Fame. He frightened her, he disgusted her, he made her feel hungrily
anxious to help, he made her feel responsible and yet helpless, but at
the same time it mattered and challenged her that he had appealed to her
at all. She thought of her father, and remembered with a pang that she
knew nothing about him except superficially. She thought of his books,
but nothing in them seemed helpful. She thought of the Bible, of her
poetry, her legends. They were a blur, a mist. Nothing in them held out
a hand to hail her. There seemed nothing that she could do.
"Oh," she cried passionately, "I'm such a fool. If only I was clever! If
only I knew what to do."
Before she had finished speaking came a flash of insight, and she went
on, in the same breath, "But there's one thing that occurs to me. You
think about yourself far too much. Old Wullie--I'll tell you about him
some day--used to say that if we were quiet and didn't fuss about
ourselves too much God would walk along our lives and help us to kill
beasts--like whisky--"
"God? Oh, I'm fed up with God! I've had too much of that all my life at
home," he said dully.
She had no answer for that, but as she bade him good night at the top of
the companion-way she saw herself in armour. Her vague dreams of John
the Baptist, of Siegfried and of Britomart suddenly crystallized, and
she saw herself, very self-consciously, the Deliverer who would save
Louis Fame. It did not occur to her to wonder if he were worth saving.
He was imprisoned in the first windmill she had encountered on her Don
Quixote quest--and so he was to be rescued.