Captivity Part 59

"You've come back, then?" she said, and laughed suddenly at the futility of her words. "It's a very long way for you to come."

"I went away for a whole month to think about it," he said in a low voice. "And all I can think is that I must take you away. You'll have to leave him."

She shook her head hopelessly.

"I've thought that too, very often, when I felt I couldn't bear it. But always I _have_ borne it. And he would die without me."

"The best thing is for him to die," he cried harshly. "In a decent community he would be put in a lethal chamber. But I'm not thinking of him. I'm thinking of you. And I'm thinking of myself."

He threw his hat on the ground, and turned away from her.

"You've got into my imagination," he began almost indignantly.

"You've been in mine years and years," she said.

He came back then, and she was frightened of him.

"Let's get out of this," he said impatiently. "I can't talk to you here in his house. Let us get off into the Bush somewhere. Where's the boy?"

"He's playing with Betty."

"You'd better fetch him along," he said unevenly.

She shook her head.

"Louis would be worried if he came in and found me out at tea-time," she said. "It made him very unhappy to see you, you know. He can't bear to think that you are free while he is a slave."

She walked before him to look at the distant smoke of the fires. The clearing was almost finished.

"d.a.m.n Louis!" he cried. "He is a slave because he lets himself be! And you're a slave because he's one. I shall not let you stay here, chained.

Armour suits you better."

"Whatever do you mean?" she gasped.

He strode along without her, knowing that she would follow; it was so good to follow instead of leading always.

"You know quite well what I mean," he said at last when they were out of sight of the house and only faint pungency of burning wood reached them, with the crackle of wind in the scrub. "I've made a woman like you, in my dreams. I never thought to see her in the flesh--yet--. One who could march along by me shining--not wanting to be carried over rough places--getting in a man's way, stooping his back--"

She tried to speak, but his eyes silenced her. She stared at him, fascinated.

"Oh I'm so sick of pretty, pathetic, seductive little women. Always I have to make love to them. It's the only meeting-ground between a man and most women. You--I couldn't make love to you! You're not seductive, in the least. You're hard and quick and taut. There's a courage about you--"

"Please, Professor Kraill," she began, but he silenced her by an impatient gesture.

"Listen to me, Marcella. You listened to me before, like a little meek girl on a school-bench. I'm sick, sick, sick of women! Soft corners and seduction!--Narcotics--when what a man needs is a tonic. Miserable, soft, uncourageous things. I want the courage of you."

"Can't you see that you're all wrong about me?" she said at last. "I'm not hard, really--only a bit crusted, I think. See what I've done to Louis!"

"Louis!" he cried contemptuously. "You're not going to be wasted on that half thing any longer. I'm not saying it isn't fine to save a man's life. It is. It's very fine and splendid. But you've to be honest with yourself, Marcella, and think if it's worth while. He's not worth it. If you save him from drinking there's very little to him, you know."

"Don't tell me that, because what you say I believe," she cried in a stricken voice. "It's all my life you're turning to ashes."

"I shall give you beauty for ashes, Marcella. You and I together, we can go marching on in seven-league boots! There's a kingliness about you.

Listen to the things I say to you unconsciously! I can't say the pretty, graceful, soft things we say to women! There's a kingliness, Marcella--not only about you, but about me too. We're not the common ruck. You're not happy, are you?"

"Sometimes," she said softly.

"No, you're not--not honourably! Kings can't be happy with commoners!

They don't speak the same language. If you're happy it's because you let yourself consciously come down. And--wallow. As I have--"

Her face flamed to think how he had seen through her. He saw it, and cried triumphantly:

"I knew it! In the higher parts of you you're always adventuring, always lonely, always hungry. As I am. You never find a harbour, a friend, a feast. Do you? No, I don't need you to tell me. I know all about it. I have known it for more years than you have lived yet."

"But really, I am happy sometimes," she protested. He caught her hands and held them so that she had to look at him.

"With Louis? Is your brain happy with Louis? Do you ever come within touching distance of each other? Is your spirit happy with Louis? Isn't it always hungry, holding out begging hands? Are your brain and your spirit not always calling you back and scorning you when you let your body wallow--slacken and take cheap thrills?"

"Oh, it's wicked that you should know these things about me," she cried.

"No. It isn't wicked at all. I know the same about myself. I've taken cheap things. Biology got me on the wrong tack at first; with a biological mind I saw everything _via_ the body. Biology's a dragon one has to slay; that's why, in my work, I've taken to psychology instead.

Love-making! I told you, right at the first, I always made love to women--. I always have done it, and always should have gone on doing it if I had never met you."

"But why--if you despise it?"

"I wasn't doing it as an end. It was a means. All the adorable, tender prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I'd arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality.

Never! Ugh, they were soft! Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain!

Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh--soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands. You're the only woman I've ever thought much about and not made love to! To you I couldn't make love--"

"Whatever is this, then?" she asked faintly.

"This is one king coming to another, asking his alliance, his comradeship! You there, with that man--that jelly thing! You sicken, nauseate me. It's like seeing a queen go on the streets! Marcella, you can't do these things, you know. You're letting down your spiritual caste. You and I--we've been along lower paths. There wasn't really any disgust in it then, because we were adventuring, finding each other. But if we go on the lower paths now we're doing a thing that's d.a.m.nable. All my life I've waited for the wonder that should come round the corner. So have you. And here it is, for both of us--"

"How many love affairs did you tell me you had had?" she broke in, in a queerly casual voice.

"You're not going to be conventionally horrified, are you?"

"No. But I think you're muddled. I think this is satiety, you know."

"It's you who are muddled, Marcella. This is satisfaction, not satiety.

I know I've got all I need in you. Body, mind and spirit. Most of all, spirit--and courage."

She dropped on to the crackling ground. He looked down at her.

"I don't believe you know anything at all about control, Professor Kraill," she said very quietly, so quietly that he dropped down beside her to listen as she kept her face averted. "Do you remember, once, you said 'Women have no inhibitions'?"

"I was young. And even now, it's true--" he cried.