Captivity Part 29

"Don't be so idiotic! As if I'd be married with money belonging to him!

My goodness! The best thing is not to be married at all, until we've worked for some money."

"Oh yes," he cried bitterly. "Just like a woman, backing out now things are a bit difficult! I tell you, if we're parted when we get to Sydney I'll be in with the first waster that comes along and start the whole beastly pub-crawl again--"

"But--eleven shillings, Louis!" she said, laughing at the absurdity of it.

"We've _got_ to get the money!" he cried wildly. "If I do a burglary!

Look here, Marcella, the only thing is for me to get boozed and borrow it! If I had half a dozen whiskies I'd go to the Governor-General himself and get it out of him! But if I were not boozed I couldn't ask--ask even for the job of gorse-grubbing or road sweeping. I haven't even the courage to ask you for a kiss if I'm not boozed."

He looked at her. His eyes were infinitely pathetic.

"Is there anyone about?" she whispered.

"Only the man in the crow's-nest," he said, "why?"

"Never mind him--give me a kiss, Louis. I'm not frightened, if you are!"

she whispered softly, and half awkward and shy he held her in his arms, gathering courage as he felt how she trembled, and guessed how his kisses made her soft and helpless in his arms. "Let's forget worries for a while--we'll never be sitting on an anchor in the Indian Ocean again, in a sea of ghost lights, shall we, Louis?"

"Say 'Louis dear,'" he ordered, gathering courage, kissing her hand. She said it, a little hesitatingly.

"We never say words like that at home," she whispered. "Only mother did, because she was English--"

"I'm English, too. I like words like that. Now say 'Louis darling.'"

"It sounds as if you're a baby."

"So I am--Marcella's baby," he whispered. "Say 'Louis darling.'"

"I can't, Louis," she said uneasily, "I can't _say_ love things. I can only do them. I love you--oh, most dreadfully, but I can't talk about it."

She buried her face on his shoulder. Through his thin canvas coat she could feel his heart thumping as hers was.

"I'm going to kiss that funny little hollow place at the bottom of your neck," she whispered in a smothered voice. "What a good thing you don't wear collars in the Indian Ocean! Louis, tell me all the funny Latin names for the bones in your fingers, and I'll kiss them all--I can't say silly words to you like--like Violet could."

After a while he tried to carry his point.

"Now say 'Louis darling,'" he insisted.

She shook her head.

"Why can't you be like an ordinary girl?" he objected, holding her tight so that he could look into her face. "Ordinary girls don't mind calling a chap darling."

"I can't, anyway. I _never_ can talk much, unless I'm simply taken out of myself and made to. I can't imagine what we'll find to talk about all the time when we're married. But--do you know, whenever we get up here in the dark like this, I always wish it was Sydney to-morrow, and we could be married. I hate to be away from you a minute; I wish we could be together all day and all night, without stopping for meal times--"

"You've got the tropics badly, my child," he said, laughing a little forcedly, as he tried to light a cigarette with trembling fingers and finally gave it up.

"Why? Do people love each other more in the tropics?" she asked. "You love me, don't you?"

"Of course I do. But girls are not supposed to talk about it like men do. Girls have to pretend they don't feel all wobbly and anyhow, because it's more fun for a man when a girl doesn't hurl herself at him."

"But why pretend? Why not be honest about it?" she said, her voice a little flat. "You want me to love you, don't you?"

"Course I do. But you're so queer. Most girls let a chap do the love-making. They dress themselves up--all laces and ribbons and things, and pretend they're frightened to make a chap all the keener."

She thought it out, sitting up as straight as possible.

"I couldn't, Louis," she said decidedly. "I've read that in books, years ago. I didn't understand it then, but I do now. And I think it's horrible. Father had a lot of books about those things and I read them to him when he was ill. I was looking one up again the other day--that day you threw the teapot in the sea." And she told him about the "preliminary canter."

"Well, that's absolutely right," he said coolly. "Women are like that.

They're specialized for s.e.x. Don't you admit that you've no brains?

You've told me so many a time, and your father always said you were an idiot. And don't you admit that when I kiss you--especially here in the tropics where everything is a bit accelerated--you feel different--all wobbly--?"

She nodded, looking startled.

"Well, what does it mean? It simply means you're specialized. Yes you are, Marcella. Specialized as a woman. All this--this liking to be kissed, and feeling wobbly. They're Kraill's preliminary canter."

"Oh no--no!" she cried in horror.

"Oh, yes, yes!" he mocked, laughing at her gently.

"But Louis, how horrible!"

"Well, you're always preaching honesty and facing facts," he said bluntly.

"Yes--" she said thoughtfully. "But--I don't like it. I hate it. I don't believe Kraill thinks like that, really--I've read three of his courses of lectures and in all of them he doesn't seem to approve of women being like that. Just vehicles of existence or bundles of sensation. He seems, to me, to resent women."

"Yes--after many love adventures," he began.

"But--don't you think all the time he was just getting his education?

Like I am? A month ago I'd have been horrified at the thought of kissing you. Now I like it. A few months ago I loathed the thought of having a body--and just everything connected with it. Now, ever since that day I was getting my nice frock ready to go with you to Pompeii I've not minded it a bit. All the time, now, I wish I was nicer."

"Because you've fallen in love, my child," he said, smiling in supreme superiority. "And falling in love instructs even fools."

"It's taught me some very lovely things the last few days, Louis," she said dreamily. "It's taught me that I've to be very shining, for you.

And it's taught me that I'd die for you very happily. But what you've just said--about kissing--has suddenly taught me something very beastly.

I wanted to love you with my soul and my mind. And now you say it's the hot weather!"

"Well, so it is, dearie. Love's not a spiritual nor a mental thing. It's purely physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. It's like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii--eating, drinking and physical love-making. One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can't work together, in offices or anything, or scientific laboratories because they--well--they'd get in each other's light and make each other jumpy."

"And do you believe it?"

"Course I do," he said. "Even if you had the brains or the knowledge for--say research work, I couldn't work with you. I'd be thinking of the way your lips look when they're getting ready to kiss me; and of your white shoulders that I can just catch a peep of when you sit a little way behind me, in that white blouse with little fleur-de-lys on the collar. Naturally if I tried to work then, the work would go to pot."

"But--" she tried to control her voice, which shook in spite of herself, "do you--think of those things--about me?"

"Of course. All men do about their women."

"It's horrible," she gasped, frowning at the Southern Cross. "And doesn't it mean that men are specialized, too?"