While Louis was so weak and ill Marcella came to several conclusions.
The first was that they must leave Sydney at once; the second was that
Louis must be made to work if he would not be persuaded to work
willingly. In work, it seemed to her now, lay his salvation much more
than in imprisonment, even though she should have him imprisoned in a
nursing home, under treatment. And in getting away from Sydney lay her
own salvation. It was high summer; the heat to her, after the cool
exhilaration of the Highlands, was terrific; very often the thermometer
she borrowed from Dutch Frank's bedroom registered a hundred and twenty
degrees in their room, and the close intimacy of life in one room was
becoming appalling to her. While he was in bed she was happy in a purely
negative way; very soon happiness came to mean to her the state of
quiescence when he was not drunk. They had cleared up many things, and
though she was glad to have got to the bedrock of truth about him at
last she was sick with disillusionment, and a self-disgust at having
been so credulous, so easily deceived. In the state of chronic
depression reactive to his orgy he let out all the truth about himself
in a passion of self-indulgent penitence. His tales of secret service
were, he told her, not technically lies. They were the delusions of his
deranged mind. He had read a spy book in England just before meeting
her, when he was recovering from a similar orgy; it had made a dint on
his brain similar to the impression left by the French girl earlier. In
the same way he explained his morbid tales of Chinese tortures--once, in
a fit of melancholy, he had attempted suicide, and after his recovery
had gone to the seaside with his mother to recuperate; in the
boarding-house had been a collection of books on atrocities. It seemed
that everything he read or saw when in a state of physical relaxation
affected him psychologically. Marcella did not realize this, however,
until long afterwards.
The tales he had told her about his parentage he was inclined to treat
with amusement.
"Don't you know, darling, that that's the first thing a man says when
he's crazed with any sort of delirium? Either his mother's honour or
some other woman's goes by the board. I just had a variant on that
theme--that's all."
She was silent for a while, crushed.
"And then the things you said to me, Louis. About me and--that awful Mr.
King and old Hop Lee who brings the fruit. They are simply unforgivable.
Louis, I'll do all I can to help you, my dear, but I'm finished with
you. You sneered at me because you knew I liked to kiss you. Nothing on
earth can ever make me do it again."
"Marcella," he said solemnly, "the other night I had d.t.--just a mild
attack. Ask any doctor and he'll tell you about it. Those things I said
to you _I_ didn't say, really. They were just lunacy. There was an
Indian student at the hospital who used to assure us solemnly that
delirious or drugged or drunk people were possessed by the spirits of
dead folks; drunkards by drunkards' spirits who wanted drink so badly
they got into living bodies to satisfy their craving that even death
couldn't kill. I used to laugh at him as a mad psychic. But I'm hanged
if it doesn't look as if there's something in it. You know _I_ couldn't
talk to you like that, little girl, don't you? You forget that this is
illness, dearie."
"I'm afraid I do, Louis. Anyway, whether it's you or--or--an obsessing
spirit, or anything else, I can't help it. I can't have you talk like
that any more."
"No--I quite see that," he said thoughtfully. "I can explain it, you
know."
"I'm tired of explaining," she said wearily, sitting on the table with
her legs swinging. Her hair was plaited back and tied with a big bow, as
she usually wore it in the house; his heart contracted with pity as he
saw what a girl she looked.
"I don't think people ever realize how deeply this question of physical
fidelity has sunk into us--as a race, I mean. If you knew it, Marcella,
it's absolutely the first thing of which people accuse those they love
when they get deranged in any way. A dear old man I knew--he was quite
eighty--a professor of psychology--when he was dying had the most
terrible grief because he seriously thought he'd got unlimited numbers
of girls into trouble. I suppose"--he went on slowly, wrestling with his
thoughts as he put them into words--"I suppose it's because we resent
infidelity so bitterly or else--why is it it touches us on the raw so
much? Why is it you were so sick with me for saying that insane thing
about King and Hop Lee?"
"I don't know, Louis," she said hopelessly. "It simply made me feel
sick."
"But--it _did_ touch you on the raw, you know, or you wouldn't have felt
sick. It wouldn't make you feel sick if I accused you of murder or
burglary--I believe it's simply because we might, all of us, very
conceivably break the seventh commandment; in fact, I don't believe
anybody goes through life, however sheltered and inhibited they may be,
without wanting to break it at least once! And that's why we're so mad
when anyone says we have."
She thought this out for a while.
"Well, I think that's perfectly disgusting, and that's all I can say
about it," she said finally.
Later he explained in a very clear, concise way, the reason for his
outburst. Partly it was periodic; partly it was the result of outside
circumstances. He had lied to her to "keep his end up," he said; he had
clung to his father's money because he could not bear that she should be
penniless; then a letter from his mother, brought at his request by
King, had upset him. It told how Violet had returned his engagement
ring; she had forgotten to do it until her husband, noticing it in her
jewel-case, had asked its history and insisted on its return. His mother
had said she would keep it safe for him until he came back; his father
had said it must be sold to pay some of the debts Louis had left. There
had apparently been a family quarrel: the mother, wanting sympathy, had
written to Louis about it. And he had felt angry with Violet, angry with
Violet's husband, angry with his father. "That explains why, when I went
off my head, I said I wasn't the Pater's son, and why I crystallized my
annoyance with Violet into hatred of you."
There was a long silence. Marcella was learning things rapidly.
"Then, when everything outside goes well, we shall be happy, but if the
tiniest thing upsets or annoys you I shall have to suffer?" she said
calmly.
"Oh, my pet--" he began brokenly, and burst into tears.
She felt that his crying was pitiful, but very futile. Later, very
shakily, he wrote a letter to his father at her dictation, and she
posted it, thus cutting them off from England. He got better slowly,
able, as his brain cleared, to treat himself as a doctor might have
done. As soon as he seemed able to talk about the future she raised the
subject.
"Louis," she said one evening, "I've learnt a lot of things lately. I've
learnt that I must never believe a word you say, for one thing. And I'm
going to act on that. But what's worrying me most is that we have
practically no money left."
"Oh, my God!" he cried tragically.
"You see," she went on calmly, "I believed in your work, so I was not
particularly careful with the money. That's one thing. Another is that
we're both going to work or you'll be worse and I'll murder you soon.
Number three is that we're going to get out of this city where you won't
be in constant temptation. Perhaps when you've got some nerve back again
we'll live among people again. You can't stay in bed for the rest of
your life. You'd be bored to drink in no time--"
"I couldn't be bored where you are, girlie," he whispered tenderly. "How
could I be?"
"I don't know, but you are. And so am I," she said grimly. He stared at
her and was silent.
"What are we going to do till we get away, then?" he asked. "We've still
got the Pater's money--"
"Yes, that will come for weeks yet. I've thought all about that. If I
were heroic I suppose I'd not touch it. But I don't see how we can avoid
it."
"But it isn't enough to get out of Sydney with," he said petulantly.
"Yes it is. I'm going to find work for us," she informed him.
"What sort of work?"
"Anything--farm work is all I know. But probably I could cook. Mrs. King
has told me a good many things to make."
"But, Marcella--" began Louis, almost tearfully.
She turned to him quickly.
"Louis, you're to leave this to me. On the _Oriana_ you said you would.
I'm your doctor and I'm prescribing treatment. I may be wrong, but give
me a trial, anyway. I don't want to boss you. I want you to be free. But
you can't till you've learnt how to walk yourself."
And she would say no more, but going to several agencies in Pitt Street
put down their names. She told them she came from a farm in Scotland,
and they seemed very pleased to see her. But when she added that she was
married to an Englishman who had a public-school education they became
sceptical.
"What can he do?" they asked. She hesitated.
"Rouseabout?" asked the clerk. When they explained that this meant being
Jack-of-all-trades on an up-country station, Marcella, in a spirit of
sheer mischief, said that would suit Louis well. She liked the busy
sound of the word, too. But though she called at the agencies day after
day, no one seemed to want her. At last a clerk, an elderly, pleasant
woman explained.
"They're afraid to engage newly married couples on up-country stations
where there are not too many hands for fear they go having children--you
see, that puts a woman out of action for a while and throws all the work
out of gear. If you were forty-five or thereabouts, now."
This seemed an astonishing state of things to Marcella.
The days passed. Louis got up at Christmas time in the blazing heat of
midsummer, looking a shadow of himself. He began to take a greedy
interest in doing things; he made a cupboard for the crockery lent them
by Mrs. King; he made it very well, very carefully, hampered by lack of
tools. He read hungrily all the books Dr. Angus sent to Marcella,
especially lectures and scientific books. He seemed to disagree on
principle with whatever she said, and they had many pleasantly heated
arguments. His mother sent him papers--the "Referee," "Punch," the
"Mirror." He cut out many of the "Punch" pictures and tacked them up
beside the Landseer print, side by side with Will Dyson's cartoons from
the "Bulletin" that Marcella liked. When there was nothing to read or do
he told Marcella yarns of his past, until she grew to know his people
very well. Whenever he felt tempted to lie to her he pulled himself up
pathetically, and she saw that he was really trying to keep his tongue
under control. When everything else palled they played Noughts and
Crosses, or Parson's Cat, or Consequences. Mrs. King had asked them
repeatedly to play cards with her "young chaps" in the kitchen, but
Louis was too frightened to face them. He was too shy to go downstairs
to carry up water or coal for Marcella, and she had to do it herself; in
the undermined state of his nerves it was torture to him to face people,
and he became petulant if asked to do what he called "menial tasks."
Marcella understood him: Mrs. King had no hesitation in saying he was
abominably lazy.
Money became more and more scarce, but this worried her not at all. She
was coming to associate the possession of money with Louis's
restlessness, for always on English mail days he was restless and bad
tempered until she had paid away practically all their money, when he
became calm again. She began to think that if she could devise a way of
living by barter, without money at all, they might conceivably eliminate
these fits of restlessness and petulance. And all the time, as there
seemed no chance of getting work, she was racking her brains for some
way of getting out of the city before his next intermittent outburst
came along.
English mail day usually happened on Monday; on the Saturday before the
last remittance would arrive Marcella discovered that she had no money
at all. She told Louis with a little, perplexed laugh.
"Lord, and I've no cigarettes," he cried in dismay.
"Well, it's only one day," she began. He got nearly frantic.
"You know perfectly well I can't do without cigarettes," he cried. "If I
do I'll get all raked up. You know what it means if I get all raked
up--"
"Oh, don't always be threatening me with that," she cried hotly. "You
know I'm doing my best, Louis. But I tell you I wouldn't be a slave to
anything like cigarettes. I do believe St. Paul when he says, 'If thy
right hand offend thee cut it off.' _I_ would--if my right hand dared to
boss me."
"Probably you would," he sneered. "We all know how damned superior you
always are, and as for an emasculated old ass like St. Paul--blasted,
white-livered passive resister--"
She stared at him and laughed. Her laugh maddened him.
"I wonder why it is," she said quietly, "that if anyone conquers his
particular vice, people sneer at him and call him names? You seem to
think that curing a cancer in one's mind is rather an effeminate thing
to do, Louis--rather a priggish thing. I suppose if you get cured of
drinking you'll say you never did it for fear of being called a prig?"
"Oh, for God's sake stop theorizing and face facts!" he cried. "Just
like a woman, to run away from things. Where am I to get cigarettes from
for to-morrow? Marcella, I can't be without them! What on earth you do
with the money I can't imagine! Girlie--do get them for me," and he
burst into tears. She stared at him in astonishment. The next moment her
arms were round his neck, his head on her shoulder.
"You poor little boy," she whispered. "Don't worry. I'll get them for
you."
"I'm sorry I'm such a kid, dearie. But you know my nerves are in rags
yet. And I can't be without cigarettes. I tell you I can't be without
cigarettes! Borrow some money from Mrs. King--"
"Don't you worry. I'll manage it," she said soothingly. "We've got bread
and jam and tea. We'll pretend it's a picnic and we've forgotten the
rest of the things."
"Naturally, you'd take good care to get in a good stock of the things
you like," he began. "Jam! Oh Lord, I do wish I hadn't a tongue. I say
unkind things and wish I hadn't the next minute."
"It rather gives away what you think, though," she said quietly, as she
went out of the room.
She passed three times through the kitchen before she could summon
sufficient courage to borrow sixpence from Mrs. King to buy cigarettes.
But after a while she came back with twenty cigarettes and gave them to
Louis.
He stared at them.
"Only twenty!" he said gloomily. "These will never see me through all
the week end."
"They're better than nothing, anyway," she said, not noticing that he
had not thanked her.
"I've only ten more--that's thirty--till Monday at noon. I'll never see
it through, girl--never in life. How much did you get from Mrs. King?"
he asked wildly.
"I only wanted sixpence for those," she said.
"You've the brains of a gnat," he cried.
They spent a miserable evening. The cigarette question was preying on
his mind, and she made it no better by talking about people on desert
islands, and people at the South Pole who were forced to do without
things. She was worried about him; she felt that if he had something big
in his life these little, mean obsessions would be sublimated by it.
And the something big came, silently and unexpected.