Captivity Part 27

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 d.a.m.ned--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 ign.o.bly, 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 subst.i.tuted 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 a.s.sisting in the process of shaving, for she heard a few "d.a.m.ns" 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 embarra.s.sed: 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.

"h.e.l.lo!" 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 h.e.l.l. 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 s.e.x. 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 a.s.sert 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 s.e.xuality was supremely rea.s.suring: 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 G.o.d. 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.