Captivity Part 46

"You know, little boy, if you really were a little boy, I could smack you and put you to bed for being such a worry. Didn't your mother ever stop you worrying for things when you were a kiddy? If I ever wanted things father made me go without them on principle."

"Yet he killed himself with drink."

"Yes. I guess he didn't mean me to kill myself with any desire at all!

Fancy being tyrannized over by a bit of paper and tobacco! Can't you get a picture of it? A nice, big man like you and a cigarette standing there with a grin on its face, like a savage G.o.d, making you bow down and worship it! Horrible! Didn't the Lord know all about you when he made that commandment about graven images!"

"Oh, you're inhuman--and you're a prig! You're a block of marble. You think because you've never wanted anything in your life no one else has."

"I like marble," she said with a laugh. "Something solid and substantial about it. You can always be sure about it."

She went back to her book, but she was not reading. Presently she saw him raking about among a sheaf of waratahs with which she had hidden the ugly old grate. He looked up exultantly.

"Six cigarette ends! That's enough to make three if I roll them thin.

Lord be thanked I've some cigarette papers."

There was something so pathetic about this that she forgot to feel contemptuous about it. Before another hour had gone he had smoked the three resurrected cigarettes as well as the last remaining new one. She made more tea. It was five o'clock, the hour when all the sun's heat in Australia seems to gather itself together and pour downwards, drawing up the earth heat to meet it. Louis looked f.a.gged and worn. She re-dipped sheets in cold water and hung them up to cool the room a little; her hair was damp, the atmosphere of the room quite motionless.

"Do you think I could smoke tea?" said he, plaintively. "I believe people do sometimes."

He took the tea from the caddy, rubbed a little in his palm and made a cigarette with it. It drew with difficulty; after the first bitter whiff he threw it away impatiently and sat on the edge of the bed, his face buried in his hands.

She dashed out of the room and went down to the dining-room. Four of the "young chaps" were playing their interminable game of cards at the table. A three months' old niece of Mrs. King, whose mother was sitting with her sister in the bedroom talking, lay in a dressbasket on the table being guarded by the men.

She blinked knowingly at Marcella, who bent over her. Two men lay asleep on chairs, one on the couch. They were all in various stages of undress, and had towels round their necks with which they mopped their damp foreheads. They looked up and greeted her as she came in.

"Have a game, ma?" asked Dutch Frank.

"No, thank you. I've come to beg, borrow or steal. Can someone lend or give me a few cigarettes? My poor man has run short. It's too hot to go out. At least, I'm going to stay in."

They all had any amount of cigarettes; the piles of ends in the hearth made her think contemptuously of Louis scrabbling in the dust for them.

Next minute she was sorry for her unkindness. The boys each pressed a packet of ten upon her; when she tried to choose between them they insisted that they would be jealous unless she took them all. Louis's face, when he saw forty cigarettes in her hand, disgusted her. It was like the pigs in the sty at feeding time--squealing--jostling.

In his relief, he became quite charming. He began to joke, and "be good"

just like a child who had worried all day for a treat and been granted it by a weak mother who had reached the limit of endurance. He joked and told her stories and was more pleasant than she had ever seen him.

"You are a darling, you know, and you do spoil me, girlie," he said, kissing her hand. "You forgive me for being a baby, don't you?"

She could not say she didn't, as she smoothed the damp hair from his forehead.

In her mood caused by his brightening spirits she felt she could not go on reading "L'a.s.sommoir." She glanced at the Sunday papers and put them down. Louis looked at her and laughed.

"Now you've got the fidgets," he said. "Let's do something."

"I've nothing to read but that Zola thing, and a book on Symbolism that Dr. Angus sent. And I don't want to read a bit. Louis, we'll have to do something, you and I. We're rusting. We'll have to get away."

"In this heat?"

"In anything. I'm like old Ulysses. I cannot rest from travel. What is it--'How dull it is to pause, to make an end, the rust unburnished--'

I've forgotten most of it. But there's one bit that appeals to me a great deal--'Life piled on life were all too little--' I want to do millions of things in my life, don't you?"

He lifted his eyebrows at her, and smiled placidly over a cloud of smoke.

"Let's go along to those agencies to-morrow and say we'll be rouseabouts without any wages, just for food. I'd love to be a rouseabout. It sounds so beautifully active. 'Rouseabout'! I think John the Baptist was a rouseabout, don't you? The rouseabout of the Lord! Oh Louis, let's be that, shall we?"

"You'd never stand it."

"Well, anyway, after this week we've got to do something."

He immediately became petulant and worried again, so she told him blithely that she would arrange things. She grew to do this more and more as she knew him better. The cigarette famine that had made such a misery of the day was only typical of many things; anything that caused him the least anxiety lost him both nerve and temper, and he was only in the way. So in self-defence she began to protect him from everything, simply making plans and trying to get him to fall in with them with the least possible friction. And this was not very easy: he disagreed with her arrangements on principle, though he always fell in with them later.

This, he considered, was his way of showing his man's authority.

As it grew cooler they went up on the roof. The iron was hot, the stone coping still warm, but there was a faint breeze blowing in from the sea, and the blue air was less heavy.

"What can we do?" he said, helplessly, looking down on the few weary people crawling through the streets.

"Nothing," she said, leaning back against the chimney-stack.

"I'll tell you what. Let's go on with those lectures I was giving you before--before I went rocky! Or rather, look here, I'll tell you what!

The old Dean said I was one of the best men in England in midder."

"What's that?" she said, resignedly. She did not want to listen just then. She wanted to be quiet and think out the very obtrusive financial and moral problem of getting away. She felt like Lot when he knew of the destruction to come upon the cities of the Plain. But she felt one couldn't walk out of things as Lot had walked. Only--she had to do her worrying with placid face, giving lip-service to his entertainment; it would never do for him to know the convolutions that had led her to any conclusion; he was an innate pessimist, she an optimist. So she thought with half her mind and listened with the other half.

"Midwifery! We call it midder, you know," he said. "I was always awfully interested in women--as cases."

He took out an envelope to make notes, and a pencil. She felt a little compunction as she saw his look of keen interest and realized that the study of medicine was probably the only thing on earth that could take him out of himself.

"We've to begin at the beginning," he said intently. "It's amazing how few lay people know even the elements of embryology."

She heard his voice, and all the time she was wondering if she could write and tell her uncle the truth, asking him to let her and Louis come and work for him without any pay till they had paid back the fifty pounds she had borrowed. He had said it was far from civilization. That was what she needed!

"See?" came Louis's voice, keen and interested, and the words "cells"

and "mulberry-form" floated into her consciousness.

"Yes, I think I will--it's the only way," she said, answering aloud the silent question.

"I don't believe you've heard a word, you young sinner! You confounded second-sighted Kelts--one never knows where you are! But next week I'll give you a written examination. It's not a bit of use swotting a thing half heartedly."

She dragged herself to attention, reproaching herself for damping his interest. Things he was saying dropped into her consciousness like heavy drops of rain falling from the eaves in a light summer shower. Suddenly she gripped his wrist tensely and he looked up in surprise. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining and sending out little flashes. He had never seen her like this before. His pencil and paper dropped. The paper fluttered over the wall, the pencil dropped after it.

"There, that's my only pencil," he said. "You have got the jerks, old lady. What's wrong?"

"Why, Louis, we must be going to have a baby! I've been wondering--" She broke off suddenly, flushing, and would say no more.

His mouth came open as he stared at her, and looked so funny that she laughed.

"Aren't you pleased? Oh Louis, isn't it splendid--isn't it a _shining_ sort of thing to have happen to you!"

She felt it impossible to sit still; something bubbled up within her like fire; it was a touch of the old exhilaration she had felt on cold mornings in the sea at Lashnagar. She wanted to take his hands and go flying away with him, jumping from star to star in the thrilling blue sky. As it was she stood on one foot, as if poised for flight with a sort of spring in her movements that his softer muscles had never experienced. He caught at her hand, and felt it taut, and queerly, individually alive.