Captivity Part 47

"Oh, do say something nice!" she cried. "Louis, I've a good mind to push you off the roof--like the queen bee."

They had been reading about the queen bee's amiable dealings with her lovers a few days ago.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" he cried. He got an impression of her as a captive balloon that had dragged loose its grapnel, and was being tugged at by currents far above the earth, where the air was heavy and motionless. He gripped her hand still tighter.

"Look here, young person, you sit down here and tell me all you mean,"

he said. She stared at him. He suddenly looked much more responsible. It was the doctor in him suddenly awakened to new life. He had not felt the birth struggles of the lover or the father yet.

"But you're not ill and tired like women are. I can't believe it," he objected, frowning with a sort of diagnostic eye upon her.

"Why should I be?" she said, laughing and rumpling his hair which was very straight and neat and made him look too elderly for her wakened mood of ecstasy. "It's too splendid! It's a funny thing, I've never thought of having babies before. I've always been a Knight, you know.

And knights don't have babies. Oh Louis, wouldn't they look funny, riding out to battle with babies on a pillion behind them? Fancy Parsifal with a baby! Or St. George! Yet why shouldn't they have them?

And why shouldn't they go to battle? It would be good training for them, wouldn't it? They're so soft."

It was impossible for him to stop her. For the first time in her life her tongue was loosened; she talked floods of nonsense, happy, enchanted nonsense. But Louis would not lose his diagnostic eye.

"But didn't you know before?" he persisted.

"No. Do you think I'd have been such a selfish hog as to keep it to myself?"

"But you've read biology--you ought to have known how things happen."

"Oh, bother biology! Who ever thought of biology meaning themselves? I didn't, anyway. I never think things in books refer to me. Fancy a skeleton meaning oneself! Mustn't a skeleton feel immodest? Louis, when I'm dead, do find some way of disintegrating me, will you? I couldn't bear to look as immodest as a skeleton does."

After awhile she became quiet, but still bubbling over with irrepressible happiness. Louis was unusually gentle as they sat talking in whispers as though afraid the stars would hear their secret as they came out one by one and looked at them.

"I can't believe it, yet," he said at last.

"Don't worry, then. You will soon enough. Louis--how long is it?" she said, puckering her forehead. He made calculations.

"More than six months," he said.

"Oh, what a long time! I don't believe I'll ever be able to wait so long as that. It's like being told the king is coming--and having to wait six months. It _is_ a long time to wait till he's ready, isn't it?"

Suddenly he caught at her hand and kissed it. Presently he went downstairs, leaving her there. To her amazement he appeared later with the mattress and pillows. He had always left her to carry them before.

She gathered that it was her role to be waited on, and resented it.

"We'll sleep up here to-night, girlie," he said. "I know you like it."

"It almost seems a waste of time to sleep, doesn't it?" she said, her eyes filled with dreams. "And yet all the while, whether we're awake or asleep, talking or working, he's getting nearer and nearer--without our doing anything towards it!" Her eyes, as she spoke, were out seeking the far invisible bar of the Pacific.

"It doesn't fit in with you, Marcella," he said, and her eyes focussed on the glowing end of his cigarette. "I can't imagine you ill and weak--or--or--motherly. Well, yes, perhaps motherly, because that's how you are to me sometimes. But you seem too young, somehow."

"Whom the G.o.ds love die young," she quoted softly. "Because they keep young. I'll be ever so young when I'm a nice old lady with white hair. I shall have it cut short then, like a choir boy's in saint pictures. And as for being ill and weak, I never shall. I simply won't have it."

"My dear, oh my dear, you'll have to. And I'll have to take care of you.

All women need taking care of."

She gave a little short, quiet laugh.

"You'll not make me take off my armour, Louis," she said. He looked puzzled, but said nothing. She lay back on the pillow, looking up at the Southern Cross. The wind lifted her hair gently. Ghosts came over the sea, very kindly ghosts that smiled at her and pa.s.sed on.

His hand reached out to hers in the darkness.

"I say," he whispered, into her hair, "I was an a.s.s over those d.a.m.n smokes. I'll--I'll buck up over that sort of thing in future, Marcella--can't have two babies in the family."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"My _dear_," she whispered, and held tight to his hand.

CHAPTER XX

He went to sleep that night with the muscles of his mind tightened. He was going to fight for his wife and child! She, judged by all he had known of women in his select suburb among his family's friends, and in his externing in the Borough was now a poor weak thing, to be cossetted and cared for, worked for and protected. He felt he could move mountains to-night--for the first time in his life he had someone weak to care for. No more charity from his father! No more slacking, no more giving way! He had an aim in life now. And, moreover, he had the thrilling excitement of a "case." That he could not forget, though it was certainly subsidiary to the feelings of pride in himself that her imaginary weakness had brought into being.

And the "poor weak woman" lay at his side, staring at the stars with eyes that held bigger worlds than they. After the heat of the day to lie here in the coolness, with the night breeze fanning her hair, tickling her bare feet and arms, was very delightful. Several times she pressed her hands tight down on the mattress and once she pinched herself. She seemed, in her exhilaration, to be losing weight; she would not have been surprised, if she had found herself floating away to have a real, close-hand look at the Southern Cross. She had no idea what was going on in Louis's mind. No kindly angel whispered to her that she should go in, now, for "swounds and vapours," and thus bolster up the protectiveness that had come to birth within him that night. She knew nothing of "swounds and vapours." The rather hard women on Lashnagar were never ill and weak until they were ready to drop into death. Aunt Janet had never been weak save in the matter of the acid drops. She certainly felt thrilled rather than weak. She had something of contempt for the weakness of women. She was very fond of Mrs. King, but her constant complaints about Mr. King's badness and her aching back did not seem to Marcella to be quite playing the game. Mrs. King had solemnly advised her, several times, to make Louis think she was not well. When she had seen her carrying pails of coal quite easily up the stairs she had said, with a shudder:

"Oh, kid--you make my back ache to see you! Why don't you let him do those jobs? You ought to lay down on the bed and tell him you feel queer. Then he'll be all over you, trying to do all he can for you."

"I don't want him to, thanks," said Marcella concisely. "Why should he do it any more than me?"

Mrs. King thought she was mad.

But now she felt that they must get away from Mrs. King, from everyone.

She began to shape her letter to her uncle in her mind, and as she did so, realized that she and Louis would be alone together no longer. They would join the communal life at Wooratonga. If he failed again--and she felt that, perhaps, he might fail--there would be critics. It came to her that it was quite impossible to go and live with her uncle and the three daughters who were "rather hard." She was not ashamed of Louis now; for that she was thankful, but she dreaded that less kindly eyes than hers should see him when he was weak.

She touched him on the cheek with her lips. He wakened at once.

"What is it, my pet?" he asked anxiously, striking a match and holding it close to her face.

"Louis, I can't let our baby come to live in Sydney," she said.

"Well, he isn't coming to Sydney to-night," he laughed.

"No. But I want it settled. Louis, I was thinking it would be a good plan to ask uncle to let us go and work for him. But now I feel I can't go among his people--"

"You're afraid of what I'll get up to?"

"Not a bit, now. Only they'd never understand you as I do. And--we're fearfully happy when we don't have whisky worrying us. Don't you think we could go and live together in the Bush?"

He sat up, lit a cigarette and pa.s.sed it to her. Then he lit one for himself.

"Can't you face the fact that you're going to be ill, Marcella?" he said, irritably. "You'll have to lie down for hours and all sorts of things. You're a lick to me--abso-bally-lutely! You ought not to be well like this! Lord, the things I've been told about women having babies!

They simply get down to it--all except the unrefined working women."

"Then I'm an unrefined working woman, that's all," she said complacently. "Anyway, Louis, to please you or anyone else I can't pretend to be ill. Now just forget it till it gets obtrusive. I shall."