Captivity Part 14

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 b.u.t.ter into strips, arranged his fish, and watched, with amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 ash.o.r.e--lights rocked here and there on pa.s.sing 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_ pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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, pa.s.sing 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sionately. "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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sured 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--"