It was not until the _Oriana_ left Port Said that Louis spoke to
Marcella again. Three times he wrote to her demanding his money. Three
times something got beyond and above the pride that told her to send it
to him and have nothing else to say to him, and she refused definitely
to give him the money; she asked him to come and talk to her. But he
entrenched himself behind the Ole Fred gang and speedily helped to make
it the nuisance of the ship. The germ of self-confidence and courage
that was entirely missing in his make-up was replaced by bombast under
the combined influence of whisky and boredom. Some day, perhaps, the
iniquity of fastening up a small world of people in a ship for six weeks
with nothing compulsory to do will dawn upon shipping companies, and the
passengers will be forced to work, for their own salvation. On board
ship people drift; they drift into flirtation which rapidly becomes
either love-making or a sex-problem; they drift into drinking or, if
they have no such native weakness, they become back-biting and bad
tempered.
Marcella found herself drifting like the rest. A letter to Dr. Angus she
had begun to write the day after Naples asking him to explain the cause,
treatment and cure of drunkenness, still awaited completion. She sat
beside Louis's empty chair, physically too inert from want of strenuous
exercise, and mentally too troubled to get a grip on anything. Naples
had shown her that Louis had not come into her life merely as a
shipboard acquaintance to be forgotten and dropped when they reached
Sydney, as she would forget and drop Mrs. Hetherington, the schoolmaster
and Biddy. His talk of the coincidence of his coming by the _Oriana_ at
all had made a deep dint on her Keltic imagination; his appeal to her
for help had squared beautifully with her youthful dreams of
Deliverance; the fact that he was the first young man who had ever
talked to her probably had more than anything else to do with her
preoccupation, though she did not realize it.
At Port Said she and Jimmy spent a stifling morning ashore amid the dust
and smells of the native quarter. Turning a corner in the bazaar
suddenly they heard Louis's voice joined with the red-haired man's in a
futile song they sang night and day: it was a song about a man who went
to mow a meadow; the second verse was about two men; the third about
three and so on, as long as the singer's voice lasted out. It was the
red-haired man's boast that he had once kept up to five hundred. As
Marcella turned the corner she saw them sitting under some palm trees
outside a little cafe, bottles and glasses before them. Louis, who
looked dirty and unkempt, was facing her. He broke off and darted
towards her.
"I wan' my money," he started.
"You're not going to have it--even if you try to get it with a sledge
hammer, as you said you might," she said, white lipped.
"You--you--you're keeping it for yourself!"
"Don't be such a fool, Louis. You know why I'm keeping it. If only you'd
stop drinking for a day or two your mind would come clear and you'd talk
to me."
"Gi' m' my money, I tell you! Thas' why you hooked on to me, at first.
You knew I was a gentleman! You guessed I'd plenty of money! Thas' what
you want of me--you know the Pater's a well-known publisher, an' you
think you'll do a good thing for yourself."
Marcella had a hard fight then; something told her that this was not
Louis speaking. She remembered that he had told her that drinking was an
illness. When Mrs. Mactavish had fever she remembered how the people in
the village had talked of the cruel things she had said to Mr. Mactavish
and her sister, and it came to Marcella that Louis was no more to be
blamed than she. But her native temper made her quiver to take him and
shake some sense in him, whether he were ill or not. It was in a
strained, quiet voice that she said:
"I'm not going to talk any more about it. You'll get it when you say
good-bye to me in Sydney," and so she turned away.
Just as the _Oriana_ sailed, about six o'clock she saw him come aboard
alone. His face was swollen, his eye blackened by a bruise; his collar
was splashed with blood and his white drill suit very dirty and
crumpled. She had seen Ole Fred carried on board some time ago by
sympathetic, rather maudlin friends. She guessed that war had flamed up
between the incongruous allies. Mrs. Hetherington, rather breathlessly,
confirmed her suspicion.
"He fought about you--Ole Fred said you'd been in his cabin, and young
Mr. Fame went for him," she said enviously.
"Of course I've been in his cabin. It's Jimmy's cabin--I had to get
Jimmy's clean things," she said indignantly.
Mrs. Hetherington put on an air of helpfulness.
"You should always be so careful, dearie. I am. Oh _most_ careful! I
never let dear Mistah Petahs put more than the tip of his shoe over my
doorway. And as for going into his cabin--My _dear_! There is no need to
provoke scandal; you will learn as you grow older to do things more
discreetly."
"Discreet! I hate the word! And Careful! I couldn't be careful!" she
cried hotly, but Mrs. Hetherington tapped her playfully on the arm and
turned away, murmuring, "Naughty, naughty!"
It was very quiet on deck that night, with Louis and Ole Fred both below
in their bunks; a few Arabs had come aboard and sat in a corner of the
deck eating their evening meal, which they could not take under the same
roof as unbelievers; afterwards, as the sun sank into the purple
distance of the desert leaving a sky like a palette splashed by a
child's indiscriminating hand, they began an eerie, monotonous chant
that went on for hours. Later the stewards rigged up a canvas screen
behind which the women and children could sleep, for the heat of the
desert was making the lower cabins unbearable; mattresses were dragged
here and there, children put to sleep upon them; people walked about,
stepping carefully over sleeping forms as the _Oriana_ crept along at
five miles an hour with a great searchlight forrard sending a huge fan
of light on to the lapping waters of the Canal, and out into the brown
sand of the desert. The schoolmaster became instructive about the rapid
silting up of the Canal with erosion and sand storms: he discussed the
genius and patience of de Lesseps, and argued lengthily on the
respective merits of patience and genius. Finally, Marcella told him
she had a headache. He suggested that he could cure it.
"I have some tabloids--very sedative, very. I make a point of never
being without them. You, I take it, have the same type of brain and
nerve force as I--always active, always alert. What we both need is a
depressant--pot. brom. Or, as I prefer to call it, K.B.R."
"Oh no--it's very kind of you. But I'd like best to go to bed."
"May I carry your mattress up for you?"
"I'm not sleeping on deck. I couldn't sleep among so many people," she
said, and, after a hurried good night went below.
As she paused at her cabin door she heard a little noise and guessed
that Jimmy was within. Opening it quickly, without switching on the
light, she cried, "Here comes a big bear to eat you all up," as Jimmy
often did to her. She grasped someone, and cried out in fear. It was
someone grown up, kneeling on the floor.
She switched on the light and saw Louis looking up at her, blinking in
the sudden glare.
"Oh, it's you. What do you want?" she said, breathlessly, though she
knew quite well. In his hand he held her little bank bag of orange
canvas in which the doctor had put ten pounds for her to spend on the
trip.
"I w-want m--my--my m--money," he began, trembling and afraid to meet
her eyes.
"To buy more whisky and make yourself more horrible than ever?" she
cried, standing with her back to the door. "Well, I'll not give it to
you, and if you knock me down and fight me I'll not give it you even.
I'm a better fighter than you."
"I w-want it--to--to--pay him back," he cried and began to sob,
violently dropping the money on the floor. "He--he said--you'd been in
his cabin and--and--and in m--mine! He s--said dev--devilish things.
And I punched his ugly head for him! All for you! Be--be--because
you're--you're--Oh God, give me the money and let me pay him and then
cut him dead."
"Do you mean that you owe Ole Fred money?"
"Of c--course. How on earth have I managed since N-naples?"
"How much is it?"
"He's paid for a lot of drinks, but that doesn't count. I w-won a good
bit at poker, too. I b-borrowed sixteen pounds from him."
"But, Louis, you hadn't sixteen pounds to pay him back with," she
cried.
"Do you think I cared? Do you think I ever meant to pay him back?
Anyway, he's helped spend it, and when we get to Sydney I shan't have to
face him again, so I don't care a damn. I've g-given my credit note for
ten pounds when I land to--to--the barman, too. I'm b-broke, ole girl."
He sobbed helplessly.
"He offered me the money. People always do. They all think I'm well off
when I tell them who the pater is. And so I should be if he wasn't such
a stingy old devil."
His sobbing ceased, his face looked hard and cynical again. Marcella
watched him in amazement. She was not sure whether to be disgusted with
him or sorry for him.
At last she spoke.
"Louis--I don't understand a bit. Why did you do it?"
"Because he said rude things about you! He hates you! I only made him
my enemy for your sake--and now you won't let me cut adrift from him.
That's just like all women! Once they get their claws on money there's
no getting them off again."
"I'm not asking why you fought him, you idiot. I'm asking you why you
made such an idiotic mess of things at Naples."
He sobbed for awhile, sitting on the floor, leaning his head on her
trunk where the broken lock dangled. She laid her hand on his head with
an incontrollable impulse of pity; his hair was matted and dull as
though it, had not been brushed for years.
"I c-can't explain it, even to myself, Marcella. But I--I th-think it
w-was because I g-got a bit huffy with the idea th-that I was depending
on you for everything. I f-felt as if I was tied to your apron strings.
I felt as if I was being a g-good little b-b-boy, you know. So I thought
I'd kick a bit! But I w-was trying damned hard before. You know I was."
She knit her brows and said, very slowly, as though she had not known
the end of the sentence when she began to speak.
"Louis--don't you--perhaps--think it's wrong--to try so hard? I mean,
it's morbid to be always saying 'I'm a drunkard. If I don't keep myself
keyed up every minute I'll fall--' Don't you think it would be better if
you forgot all about it, and just said, 'I'm Louis Farne, the biggest
thing that ever was in the annals of humanity.' I don't know, but that
seems more sensible to me. You see, you're rather a self-willed sort of
person, really. You like to have you own way. Then why on earth not have
your own way with whisky."
He stared at her and started in surprise, his jaw dropping. She looked
at the streaks of dust and blood on his face, through which his tears
had made blurred runnels.
"I n-never thought of that before. Of course you're right--I ought to
have thought of it--even from the point of view of a psychologist."
"I don't think it's anything to do with any 'ologists at all. It's just
common sense. Louis, I've been thinking a lot this week. You know, when
father used to get--ill--no, drunk (Why should I be afraid to tell the
truth, in spite of your sneers about poor father?) I was too wee to know
very much. But knowing him as I do, I'm certain he tried and tried
again. After mother died he left whisky alone, though he still had it in
the house. He took to reading philosophy instead. You see, he was not
like you. There was a hardness, a bravery in him that you haven't got.
You have cussedness instead and cussedness is a thing you can never be
sure of. You see," she went on, flushing a little, and suddenly tossing
her head proudly, "you don't understand this, and it may sound most
appalling snobbishness to you. But my father's people have always been
rulers--little kings--fighters, while yours have been just ordinary,
protected folk. My people have had to fight for everything, even their
food, their lands, their home. Yours have had shops and investments and
policemen round every corner--there is a difference--Louis, am I
offending you?" she asked anxiously.
"Go on!" he said hoarsely.
"Well, father tried. But trying wasn't any use. He read philosophy to
get himself interested in something. But philosophy wasn't gripping
enough. It seems we've all got to find something to anchor on, and it's
different for almost everyone. That's where we can help each other by
trying to understand each other's needs and offering suggestions. Like
sailors do--with charts and things. All this philosophy of father's! It
reminds me of a horse I saw once at Carlossie Fair. It had a most
horrible ulcer on its shoulder and they'd tried to hide it up by
plaiting its mane and tying it with a great heap of ribbons. That
doesn't cure anything! You know there's a phrase we use often about
people who are miserable--we say, 'Oh, he needs to be taken out of
himself.' Isn't that a vivid way of putting it, if you stop to think?"
He nodded, and still stared fascinated at her, drinking in every slow,
halting word.
"I suppose father brooded just like you do. He used to get very grumpy,
and very, very unhappy. He begged and pleaded with me for understanding,
and I couldn't give it to him. Then one day he got dreadfully drunk,
after a whole year away from it. And mother's cousin came. He talked
to father for five or six hours while Aunt and I kept shivering and
thinking father would murder him. Our people usually do murder people
who annoy them. But Cousin came out of the room and said, 'Andrew has
cast his burden on the Lord.' He said it as if he was saying, 'Andrew
has sneezed, or put some coal on the fire'--the most ordinary way you
can imagine. And that was the end of whisky for father. After that he
tried to make everyone he knew cast their burden on the Lord. I rather
felt like laughing at the time. It seemed rather silly, and just a bit
vulgar--most religion is, isn't it? But since I've been worrying myself
to death about you I've understood all about poor father."
"I don't see it," he said hopelessly.
"Listen. Until father gave up trying himself and realized that he was
weak, he was--was--sort of hiding the ulcer with a bunch of ribbons. But
the minute he gave up, everything was different. He didn't say any more,
'I'm Andrew Lashcairn, the son of generations of drunkards and madmen.'
He changed it and said, 'I'm God's man--I've given Him my homage and
made Him the Captain of my life.' And then, don't you see, he stopped
being shut in inside himself any longer. He began to love me and be
gentle to me. Louis, do you know, I believe you're tackling this worry
in the wrong way. It can't be right--being rude to me, growling all the
time about your father and mother--thinking, thinking, thinking all the
time about yourself and your weakness until the whole universe is
yourself and your weakness. Can't you see how bad it is, you who are a
doctor? You know the old saying about giving a dog a bad name and
hanging him. Louis, you're giving yourself a bad name, and hanging
yourself."
"Oh, I say, Marcella," he gasped. "Do you think--" he broke off, and
groaned again.
"Louis, I _know_. I don't _think_ anything about it! The other day I was
reading a most extraordinary book the schoolmaster lent me. It was about
St. Francis of Assisi. It said that, by contemplation of the wounds of
Christ, in time he came to feeling pain in his hands and feet and
side--"
"Balderdash!" muttered Louis impatiently. "Auto-suggestion!"
"Auto--what's that?" she asked. He explained and she cried out eagerly:
"Well, can't you see you're doing exactly the same thing? And you call
it balderdash when other people do it! Those wounds of St. Francis were
called the Stigmata--can't you see that you're giving yourself the
stigmata of drunkenness?"
"I've got them," he cried hoarsely. "I'm done. I'm even a thief."
"Oh, you idiot! How sorry I am for my father! He used to call me an
idiot, and have me to put up with. And now I've got you, and you're a
thousand times denser than ever I was! You're neither a drunkard nor a
thief, Louis. Look here, to begin with, how much do you owe Fred? You
shall have all I've got. If I give it to you you can't be a thief any
more."
Between them they had just enough money for Fred and a few shillings
left. He wept as she fastened it in an envelope and asked him to take it
along to Fred's cabin at once.
"I--I s-say, Marcella. I--I--d-daren't," he groaned. "He'll ask me to
wet it. And I'll not be able to say no. And oh my God, I don't want to
do it any more."
"Then I'll take it," she said promptly, and darted along with it to
Number Fifteen, listened while Ole Fred said every insulting thing he
could about Louis and all Louis's ancestors and then calmly asked him
for a receipt for the money.
Louis was still sitting on the floor. He looked up, his bloodshot eyes
appealing as he looked at her.
"I say, M-m-marcella. I'm sorry I said all those nasty things about your
father."
"There you are again, Louis! Forget them all! Forget everything but the
future now. I can't imagine where I've got this conviction from, but
it's absolutely right, I know. If you'll wipe out all your memory and
start clean, you'll be cured."
"I could never do as your father did--all that religion business."
"I don't think I could, Louis. Father saw God as a militant Captain,
someone outside himself. I'd never get thinking that about God. But it
seems to me, in your case, you want to find someone you could trust,
someone who would take the responsibility from you. Just as God did for
father. Even if we say there is no God at all, he thought there was and
acted on his thought--I suppose it's when we feel weak as father did
that we get the idea of God at all."
"It all seems rot to me," he told her. "I laugh at God--as a relic of
fetishism."
There was a long, hopeless silence. At last he said dully:
"There are some doctors--our old Dean at St. Crispin's, that I could
throw myself upon as your father threw himself upon God. But they're not
here."
As she sat, frowning, trying most desperately to help him, finding her
unready brain a blank thing like the desert, realizing that, in all her
reading there was nothing that could help, since there was no strong
helper in the world save that Strong Man God who had gripped her
father's imagination and could never grip Louis's, a whole pageant of
dreams passed before her; dreams, intangible ideas which she grasped
eagerly--visions--she saw herself John the Baptist, "making straight the
way of the Lord"--she saw Siegfried, King Arthur--and, with a
heart-leaping gasp she asked herself, "Why should not I be Louis's
Deliverer? Why should not I be God's pathway to him? Why should not I be
Siegfried?" And all the time her brain, peopled with myths, saw only the
shining armour, the glittering fight; she did not see the path of God
deeply rutted by trampling feet, burnt by the blazing footsteps of God.
She heard herself as John's great crying voice and heeded the prison
and the martyrdom not at all: it was a moment's flash, a moment's
revelation. Then she turned to him. Her eyes were very bright. She spoke
rapidly, nervously.
"Louis--that doctor you know--the Dean. Do you think they are the only
wise folks on earth? I mean, do you think wisdom begins and ends with
wise people? I don't, you know." she paused, frowning, not quite sure
where this thought was going to lead her.
"They're the best chaps on earth," he murmured. "I c-could have b-been
like them."
"But what is it makes them wise and fine? It's--I think--because they
get rid of themselves, and let God shine through them to other people."
He turned impatiently. She caught his hot, damp, dirty hand in hers.
"Louis, I don't know very much. I've proved I can't hold you very well
already, but I care an awful lot. Louis--how would it be if you threw it
all on to me for a while till either you believe in God or in yourself?
And I've a sort of belief that, whichever you believe in first, you'll
believe in the other automatically--I'm not a bit clever, Louis. I never
was. Always I get puzzled, always I realize how utterly unlearned I am.
Always father called me an idiot and threw things at me for it. But in
spite of being a duffer I'm sure I can help you."
"You could if you were with me every minute. I'd rather be with you than
most people. But the minute I'm away from you I get dragged."
"Well, why shouldn't I stop with you the whole time, never leave you a
minute? Let's be married, and then I could."
She looked at him anxiously. There was not a glimmer of shyness or
excitement about her. She was still in her dream world; she knew that
marriage would keep them together always. So she suggested marriage. She
was not, yet, consciously in love.
He stared at her, stammered a little as he tried to speak and then,
suddenly sobered, snatched at her hand.
"Do you mean it, knowing what I am? I'm an awful waster,
Marcella--there's nothing on earth I can do for a living."
She frowned a little.
"But that's nothing to do with it. We'll find some way of living. You
know that. We'd have to if we were not married, wouldn't we? And stop
all this about being a waster. You're not anything of the sort. You're
not anything but what you're going to be."
"And you really, really, won't go back on it? I make so many promises
and break them. I can't believe other people much."
"Of course I won't go back on it. I want to stay with you. I never want
to be with anyone else at all on earth."
"But why?" he asked, humble for the first time in his life.
"I haven't the slightest idea. You seem very clever to me. That's one
thing. And--and the way you _depend_. Oh dear, I feel I've got to kidnap
both you and Jimmy and run away with you to some safe place."
"Good Lord!" he said, laughing harshly. "I'm just thinking of Violet."
"Why? She can't mind, now she's married."
"No. It was the idea of Violet's trying to kidnap me, and loving me
because I depended on her. Lord, she did the depending."
"That was why she wasn't any use to you, I suppose. Besides, Louis, you
know, I love you when you're not--not ill. And I love the way your eyes
look."
"Good Lord," he cried again, and started up sharply. "I say, Marcella,
I'm off to have a bath. Wait here for me--" He peeped into her mirror.
He had not shaved for a week and looked thoroughly disreputable. Holding
out his hand he looked at it earnestly. It shook, as he had expected.
"Oh, I say, what a waster I look. I do hope to the Lord my hand's steady
enough for a shave."
"Let me do it," she said. "It would be fun."
"I'm damned--Oh, I beg your pardon, old girl!--but I'm hanged if I'll
not make my hand steady. I'll do it, I tell you! If I cut myself in
bits, serve me right! I'll be half an hour and then--then--well, wait!"
She heard him in his cabin, whistling as he dragged out his trunk,
pushed it back roughly, dropped and smashed a tumbler and then rushed
along the alley-way. After awhile she heard him come back, heard the
sound of violent brushing, heard him kick things and swear, drop things,
bundle things about. She sat down on her trunk suddenly weak as she
realized what she had done. She had never thought of being married
before; marriage seemed a thing for elderly people; there seemed
something ungallant, something a little dragging about marriage that
rather frightened her. Her mother's marriage, she was beginning to
understand, had been a thing of horror. She thought of those stifled
cries in the night at the old farm, cries that she had thought meant
that ghosts were walking; she heard with terrible distinctness the voice
of the Edinburgh specialist as he said, "In my opinion the injury was
caused by a blow--a blow, Mr. Lashcairn." Then, quite suddenly she
laughed. It was quite amusing to think of Louis's making anyone ill by
a blow.
"He'd never have fought Ole Fred if they hadn't both been drunk," she
said slowly, staring at the boards of the floor, and her quick
imagination showed her the two of them, fighting ignobly, all dust and
sweat and ill-aimed blows. They could only hurt each other because both
were too unsteady to dodge futile lungings. There was nothing of the
Berserk about Louis.
Panic came to her. The things she realized about marriage were that it
was irrevocable, and that it meant a frighteningly close proximity; and
in that swift vision of Louis's fight--even though it had been in
defence of her--she had realized that it was utterly impossible for
her to be with him for the rest of her life.
"Oh how could I? How can I? How can I be glittering and shining with a
man who is always crying? How can we be--be conquerors together when I
never, never think of him except as 'poor boy' or 'silly idiot'? Oh
no--no--I can't! I can't! Even if I do save him, what is there in that
for me? I want to shine--I daren't have hot, dirty, damp hands dragging
at me. I can't. I must be free, uncaught--"
The cabin became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates
and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his
appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the
part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had
substituted a changeling stuffed with sawdust.
"I must tell him. But it's so cruel of me. I'm cruel--but I must tell
him."
In the next cabin he began to sing, rather jerkily, a song everyone on
the ship was singing just then.
"Won't you come back to Bombombay?
Won't you come back to Bombombay?
I'm grieving, now you're leaving
For a land so far away.
So sad and lonely shall I be,
When you are far away from me."
It was not the tipsy singing she had heard in the morning; it was jumpy,
tuneless singing; she guessed that it was assisting in the process of
shaving, for she heard a few "damns" peppering the song, which suggested
that his shaky hand was wielding the razor badly. And with the song came
pity that swamped disgust and disillusion. It seemed so sad to her that,
when hope dawned upon him, he should celebrate it by singing a piece of
sentimental, however haunting, doggerel. To go there and tell him that
she, too, was going to break promises, to change her mind--it was
impossible. It was like breaking promises to a little child. Came a
blinding flash of self-realization.
"Marcella Lashcairn," she said, standing under the white flare of the
electric light and facing herself squarely in the little mirror, which
showed her two scornful grey eyes, "You're a hypocrite! You think it's
very splendid and grand to save a big, grown-up man from getting drunk.
That's only because you're a girl and are flattered at his dependence on
you. If you saw any other girl acting as you do you'd say it was sheer
impudence! And you think it's very wonderful that anyone so clever as
Louis should notice you. You're flattered, you see--that's self-love,
not Louis-love! Oh very beautiful! And you're such an illogical sort of
idiot that you want to save him, and yet you want him so splendid and
shining that he doesn't need any saving. Oh go--get out--all of you!"
and she waved her hand to her dreams and sent the shining Lover riding
on on his quest without her. It was just as she used to talk to the
gulls and the winds on Ben Grief--when she was having things out with
herself before. "I've taken the man I want--as all the Lashcairns do
unless they are like Aunt Janet and--Oh, anyway, I'd rather be killed
than be like her. It's rather illogical to growl at my choice the minute
I've made it."
Before she could stop herself she was out of the cabin; she did not stop
to think that Louis might be embarrassed: she dashed into his cabin. He
was fastening his tie.
"Louis," she cried, and stopped breathless. He seemed very different as
she looked over his shoulder into the mirror. Cold water had removed the
traces of a week's neglect; the razor had done a good deal, too, and a
clean suit had transformed him. His eyes were different: there was a
light of resolution in them and they met hers direct. She scarcely knew
him.
"Hello!" he said and let the tie hang as he stared at her.
"Where's the other man who used to sleep in here?" she asked. That was
not what she had intended to say when she came in.
"He's gone. He was on the way to Cairo. I've got it to myself now."
"Oh--"
"Marcella," he said solemnly. "You really mean it? You're not going to
let me down? Violet let me down--and I'm always letting people down. I
can't trust people now."
"Supposing I'd wanted to marry Violet, I'd have married her," she said,
her brow puckered. "And I wouldn't _be_ let down."
"No, I suppose you wouldn't," he said, slowly.
"Louis--" she began again, breathlessly, and then let the words out in a
torrent. "Louis, I _know_ I've got to marry you. Do you understand that?
It's--it's inevitable. It was from the minute I met you. You'll never
understand that, not being a Kelt, though. I know it quite well. And I'm
afraid I'm going to shy at it. And, for my sake as well as yours, I've
not to shy. Louis, will you grab me tight?"
He stared at her, utterly at a loss. He did not begin to grasp what she
meant. To him she was just "fickle woman" always changing her mind. He
had, all his life, generalized about woman; he had never known a woman
who was not rather vapid, rather brainless; he had the same idea of
women as Professor Kraill had ventilated in his lectures--that they were
the vehicles of the race, living for the race but getting all the fun
they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather
strenuous, rather joyless thing for them. And it was in men they found
the fun. Yet here was Marcella, who was quite different from anything
feminine he had ever seen or imagined, suddenly appealing to him not to
let her be fickle. Immediately he felt very manly, very responsible.
Then he laughed.
"_Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?_" he said, looking into her eyes.
"Father often said that. What does it mean?"
"Who'll look after the looker-after?" he said, with a laugh. "Here's me
begging you to look after me and save me from going to hell. And here's
you asking me to grab you for fear you'll change your mind. I wonder
which is going to have the hardest job?"
She looked at him and said hurriedly:
"Louis, couldn't we be married now--to-night? In Scotland we do, you
know--just in any room without church or anything."
"But--I wish we could!" he said, his hands beginning to shake.
"I want to be sure--"
"I'm afraid we can't," he said, anxiously. "I'm afraid we'll have to
wait till we get to Sydney."
Unexpectedly memory brought back the thought that when he became engaged
to Violet he had kissed her and held her in his arms; he remembered it
very well. To get to the necessary pitch of courage he had had to get
very drunk on champagne, for champagne always made him in a generally
kissing and love-making mood that involved him often with barmaids and
street ladies. He knew very well that he would never have thought of
making love to Marcella: if she had not taken things into her own hands,
they would have parted in Sydney, necessary as he considered her to his
well being, much as he liked to be near her. He had, even through his
self-satisfied alcohol dream, seen her disgusted looks at Naples when he
had spoken to her. He guessed that the sort of half-maudlin love-making
that had won Violet would never suit Marcella. And he knew beyond the
shadow of doubt that no power on earth save whisky could ever get him to
make love to anything--even a young girl who seemed in love with him
already.
He was extraordinarily shy with and cynical about women. He had always
been detested by the servants at home--more or less unjustly. He spoke
to them abominably because he was frightened of their sex. Had he not
bullied them when he wanted small services performed, they never would
have been performed at all, for he would have had no courage to ask
civilly for anything. To his sister's friends when he was forced into
their company he was boorish, simply because girls put him into such a
panic of inferiority that, in self defence, he had to assert himself
unnaturally. Years ago his sister had refused to make one of a theatre
or concert party that included Louis; either he got drunk in the
interval and rejoined them later, making them conspicuous by his
behaviour, or else he sat at their side glowering and boorish, afraid
even to look at the players on the stage, too shy even to negotiate the
purchase of chocolates or programme. The last time he had been at the
theatre with his sister and Violet had been after a whole fortnight
without whisky. They were rather late; the play had begun. His sister
had whispered to him to get a programme. Afraid of being conspicuous he
had refused; she had ordered him to get it. People behind had hissed
"Hush" indignantly and finally Violet, with a contemptuous smile, had
bought programmes and chocolates for herself and the sister, cutting
Louis dead.
But whisky transformed him from a twitching neurotic into a
megalomaniac. He imagined that every woman he met was in love with him
indecently and physically; without whisky he saw women in veils and
shrouds; whisky made him see them with their clothes off, their eyes
full of lewd suggestion. Even to the elderly suburban ladies who visited
his mother he was tipsily improper. To find a girl like Marcella, who
did not put him either in a fever or a panic of sexuality was supremely
reassuring: she seemed to him like a nice man friend might be--though he
never had been able to acquire a man friend. He was intensely grateful
to her for marrying him: he was not her lover; he was her dependent: he
was treating her as he might have treated the old Dean at the hospital,
or as her father had treated God. But--his conventional sense told him
to kiss her and make her "just a girl."
He took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. Her eyes, which
began by being startled, grew suddenly soft, as his face came close to
hers and his eyes looked into hers for a wavering second before they
dropped awkwardly and looked at her cheek. And then he kissed her. It
took a long time. It took just as long as it takes to transform a whole
system of reasoned thinking into something chaotic, nebulous. The
chances are that, had that kiss never happened to Marcella, she would
have gone on with her dreams of deliverance, her ideals of a high road
through life. Louis's lips opened a locked door in her personality. When
he let her go again she looked at him, rather frightened and bewildered.
She was trembling almost unbearably; her face, usually the fairest
white, made gold by the sun and the wind, was flushed; her grey eyes
were deep blue; her mind, for the while, was a blank.
"Oh Louis!" she gasped.
"Marcella--" he began but she seized his hands again.
"Oh Louis, please do it again." That time she closed her eyes and was
only conscious of thinking that, if the ship went down, it would not
matter just so long as nothing interrupted the kiss.
"Dear little girl," he whispered, and ceased to feel frightened of her.
As he saw the tremendous effect his kisses had on her, masculine
superiority put pokers into his backbone and made him feel a very fine
fellow indeed. He had no time to think what his kisses had done to
Marcella. All that he grasped was that she was not like Violet who had
drawn away from him to lead him on further; who had flirted with him and
teased him seductively, and made him pay dearly for kisses by pleadings
and humiliations: who had never given anything, and had never come one
inch of the way to meet him.
"I say, Marcella," he said, as he let her go. "Don't you know anything
at all about the art of lying? Can't you lie?"
She frowned at him. He went on quickly.
"I've never met a girl yet who admitted that she liked a man to kiss
her. They lie and lie--they put up barriers every minute."
"There can't be barriers between us, Louis. I'd rather die than have
barriers," she said quietly, though she did not realize why, or what she
implied.