Captivity Part 18

"Laughing at me again, aren't you?" he cried savagely, turning with a scowl and standing undecided.

She hurried below to give him a chance to retire gracefully.

When she was in a white frock and Jimmy shining with soap and water, they took their places at the breakfast-table. Mr. Peters looked at Jimmy in surprise.

"h.e.l.lo! I never noticed you get up," he said.

"He slept in my cabin," she explained. "He was frightened."

"Very kind of you, I'm sure, young lady," he said and turned to Mrs.

Hetherington, who looked at Marcella calculatingly between narrow lids.

As soon as breakfast was over she put her arm confidingly through Marcella's and drew her aside.

"Come for a little stroll, dear, won't you? I can see that you're different from most of the pa.s.sengers--they're so common so terribly common. I've regretted very much that I came third cla.s.s. It wasn't that I wanted to save money, you know," her voice twittered to little inarticulacies.

"Most of the people are very interesting," said Marcella.

"I find poor Mistah Petahs interesting, very," said Mrs. Hetherington, pressing Marcella's arm. "Losing my dear husband, and he losing his wife--it's a bond, isn't it? And I feel so sorry for a poor man with a child to bring up."

"Um--" said Marcella doubtfully.

"It's sweet of you to mother the little fellow, dear. He must be a great trouble to poor Mistah Petahs! I have two little darlings, but I find that boarding school suits them much better than being with me. I think that children need both father and mother, don't you?"

"Yes," said Marcella dazedly, unable to follow Mrs. Hetherington's reasoning.

"And you know," she went on, "I've a terrible feeling that poor Mistah Petah's loneliness might lead him to--er--Oh dreadful things." She dropped her voice to a whisper. "My dear--I believe he drinks," she said, underlining the words. "I tried my best to look after him last night," she added plaintively.

"Oh, did you?" said Marcella and suddenly stopped dead. "All this looking after! What are we all up to? Is it impudence or vanity, or what is it? I don't know! Anyway, I'm going below," and she turned abruptly away.

As it was Sunday Marcella lost her crowd of children, who were claimed for a church service by an enthusiastic missionary in the first cla.s.s.

She spent the morning writing letters and reading. When she went to her cabin to get ready for lunch there was a note pinned on to the mirror.

She took it down in surprise.

"I don't know your name," she read; "but I must see you. I've been going through h.e.l.l and I can't hold out. I understand myself very well; I know what I need, but I can't do it. I've got to have someone to make me do things. And if you make me do things I'll get huffy with you and try to deceive you. It's pretty hopeless, isn't it? That pock-marked devil has been trying to get me. That's why I've been taking to cover all this time, partly. Come up on the fo'c'sle to-night at seven. I'll be sitting on the anchor. For G.o.d's sake come. And don't laugh at me, will you? I can't stand it. L. F."

Without pausing she took paper and pencil and wrote.

"I shall be there. Of course I shall not laugh at you. I cannot understand anything. I am sorry to admit this, because you will say I am like your parents. I am in muddles myself, but I am most sorry for you.

And my name is Marcella Lashcairn of Lashnagar."

She put it in an envelope, addressed it to him, tapped on his door and pushed it under.

She went on deck that afternoon in a state of bubbling excitement. There were not many people about. They were just getting into the Bay of Biscay and the _Oriana_ was rolling a little; many had succ.u.mbed to sea-sickness; many more were afraid of it and had gone to lie down in their bunks. She took some books to read but did not open them for a long time until the sea-glare had made her eyes ache.

Then she opened "Questing Cells," which she had decided to try to master during the voyage. She read a page, understanding much better than when she had read it to her father. But she was pulled up over the word "inhibition."

It was a chapter of generalization at the end of the book that she was trying to fathom.

_"Women have no inhibitions: their pretended inhibitions serve exactly the same purpose as the civet-cat's scent of musk, the peac.o.c.k's gorgeous tail, the glow-worm's lamp. A woman's inhibitions are invitations. Women do not exist--per se. They are merely the vehicles of existence. If they fail to reproduce their kind, they have failed in their purpose; they are unconsciously ruled by the philoprogenitive pa.s.sion; it is their raison d'etre, for it they are fed, clothed, trained, bred. Existing for the race, they enjoy existence merely in the preliminary canter. Small brained, short-visioned, they lose sight of the race and desire the preliminary canter, with its excitements and promises, to continue indefinitely."_

The word "philoprogenitive" and the French phrase stopped her.

"Why on earth I didn't bring a dictionary," she said, "pa.s.ses my comprehension! I'll write the words down and ask someone."

A young man was sitting on the deck a few yards away, his back against a capstan. He looked supremely uncomfortable trying to read a little blue-backed book.

Marcella looked at Louis's chair empty beside her.

"Wouldn't you like to sit on this chair?" she said, and the young man looked up startled.

"You look so uncomfortable there. This chair isn't being used. Won't you sit down?"

"That's very good of you. I was getting a decided crick in my back," he said, sitting down and wondering whether to go on reading or to entertain her. Marcella looked at him; he was the epitome of propriety, the spirit of the Sabbath incarnate in his neat black suit, gold watch-chain and very high collar.

"I really asked you to sit here for quite a selfish reason," she said.

"I want to know the meanings of some words that have just cropped up.

You look as if you know."

The young man coughed and looked pleased.

"I am a schoolmaster," he remarked. "Probably I can--"

"Inhibition?" she interrupted.

"Inhibition?" he said. "That means 'holding back.' Latin '_habeo_, I have' or 'I hold' and 'in--"

"Women have no inhibitions," she repeated; "no power of holding back."

She frowned, and decided to return to that later. "Now philoprogenitive," she said turning to him. He stared at her, coughed again and held out his hand for the book.

"That's rather a difficult book for a girl to be reading, isn't it?" he said, glancing at the t.i.tle page. "Oh, Kraill the biologist? Whatever makes you read that? I thought girls read Mrs. Barclay and Charles Garvice."

"I have not read any of their books yet," she said. "I read this book some time ago, and it seemed to me to hold the whole illumination of life. But since I've been on this ship I've been in a muddle about things. People are not a bit like I thought they would be. I was awake hours last night trying to get right about it."

"They're not a very nice collection here--in the steerage. But the difference in fare between steerage and second is very considerable--very considerable," he sighed. "My profession must take care of the financial aspect of life."

Marcella felt that he was honest. He was the first pa.s.senger who had admitted that he had not unlimited wealth.

"That's refreshing. Most of the people here want one to think they are disguised millionaires only travelling steerage to enquire into the ways of poorer folks. And that's part of my puzzle. I want to know _why_ these people are not a very nice collection. Is my taste at fault? Last night I raked out my 'Golden Treasury' and read about 'Blind misgivings of a creature roaming about in worlds not realized.'"

"You misquote," he murmured. "'Blank' not 'blind' and 'moving' not 'roaming.'"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Of course," he said with an air of depth and of conscious helpfulness, "the most difficult thing on earth--and, I may remark, the most important--is realization of one's sphere, and one's place in that sphere. And our way of instructing the young in such realization is defective, defective to a degree at present. Queerly enough I am just reading Tagore on 'Realization.' You know Tagore, of course?"

She shook her head.