Captivity Part 15

He stopped, and she was horrified to hear him sobbing--gasping, choking sobs that frightened her.

"I came home--tried my d.a.m.nedest 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 G.o.d. 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 n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l!"

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 pa.s.sionately, 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 p.a.w.n 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-b.u.m--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 G.o.ds 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."