CHAPTER X

It was not until the _Oriana_ left Port Said that Louis spoke to Marcella again. Three times he wrote to her demanding his money. Three times something got beyond and above the pride that told her to send it to him and have nothing else to say to him, and she refused definitely to give him the money; she asked him to come and talk to her. But he entrenched himself behind the Ole Fred gang and speedily helped to make it the nuisance of the ship. The germ of self-confidence and courage that was entirely missing in his make-up was replaced by bombast under the combined influence of whisky and boredom. Some day, perhaps, the iniquity of fastening up a small world of people in a ship for six weeks with nothing compulsory to do will dawn upon shipping companies, and the pa.s.sengers will be forced to work, for their own salvation. On board ship people drift; they drift into flirtation which rapidly becomes either love-making or a s.e.x-problem; they drift into drinking or, if they have no such native weakness, they become back-biting and bad tempered.

Marcella found herself drifting like the rest. A letter to Dr. Angus she had begun to write the day after Naples asking him to explain the cause, treatment and cure of drunkenness, still awaited completion. She sat beside Louis's empty chair, physically too inert from want of strenuous exercise, and mentally too troubled to get a grip on anything. Naples had shown her that Louis had not come into her life merely as a shipboard acquaintance to be forgotten and dropped when they reached Sydney, as she would forget and drop Mrs. Hetherington, the schoolmaster and Biddy. His talk of the coincidence of his coming by the _Oriana_ at all had made a deep dint on her Keltic imagination; his appeal to her for help had squared beautifully with her youthful dreams of Deliverance; the fact that he was the first young man who had ever talked to her probably had more than anything else to do with her preoccupation, though she did not realize it.

At Port Said she and Jimmy spent a stifling morning ash.o.r.e amid the dust and smells of the native quarter. Turning a corner in the bazaar suddenly they heard Louis's voice joined with the red-haired man's in a futile song they sang night and day: it was a song about a man who went to mow a meadow; the second verse was about two men; the third about three and so on, as long as the singer's voice lasted out. It was the red-haired man's boast that he had once kept up to five hundred. As Marcella turned the corner she saw them sitting under some palm trees outside a little cafe, bottles and gla.s.ses before them. Louis, who looked dirty and unkempt, was facing her. He broke off and darted towards her.

"I wan' my money," he started.

"You're not going to have it--even if you try to get it with a sledge hammer, as you said you might," she said, white lipped.

"You--you--you're keeping it for yourself!"

"Don't be such a fool, Louis. You know why I'm keeping it. If only you'd stop drinking for a day or two your mind would come clear and you'd talk to me."

"Gi' m' my money, I tell you! Thas' why you hooked on to me, at first.

You knew I was a gentleman! You guessed I'd plenty of money! Thas' what you want of me--you know the Pater's a well-known publisher, an' you think you'll do a good thing for yourself."

Marcella had a hard fight then; something told her that this was not Louis speaking. She remembered that he had told her that drinking was an illness. When Mrs. Mactavish had fever she remembered how the people in the village had talked of the cruel things she had said to Mr. Mactavish and her sister, and it came to Marcella that Louis was no more to be blamed than she. But her native temper made her quiver to take him and shake some sense in him, whether he were ill or not. It was in a strained, quiet voice that she said:

"I'm not going to talk any more about it. You'll get it when you say good-bye to me in Sydney," and so she turned away.

Just as the _Oriana_ sailed, about six o'clock she saw him come aboard alone. His face was swollen, his eye blackened by a bruise; his collar was splashed with blood and his white drill suit very dirty and crumpled. She had seen Ole Fred carried on board some time ago by sympathetic, rather maudlin friends. She guessed that war had flamed up between the incongruous allies. Mrs. Hetherington, rather breathlessly, confirmed her suspicion.

"He fought about you--Ole Fred said you'd been in his cabin, and young Mr. Fame went for him," she said enviously.

"Of course I've been in his cabin. It's Jimmy's cabin--I had to get Jimmy's clean things," she said indignantly.

Mrs. Hetherington put on an air of helpfulness.

"You should always be so careful, dearie. I am. Oh _most_ careful! I never let dear Mistah Petahs put more than the tip of his shoe over my doorway. And as for going into his cabin--My _dear_! There is no need to provoke scandal; you will learn as you grow older to do things more discreetly."

"Discreet! I hate the word! And Careful! I couldn't be careful!" she cried hotly, but Mrs. Hetherington tapped her playfully on the arm and turned away, murmuring, "Naughty, naughty!"

It was very quiet on deck that night, with Louis and Ole Fred both below in their bunks; a few Arabs had come aboard and sat in a corner of the deck eating their evening meal, which they could not take under the same roof as unbelievers; afterwards, as the sun sank into the purple distance of the desert leaving a sky like a palette splashed by a child's indiscriminating hand, they began an eerie, monotonous chant that went on for hours. Later the stewards rigged up a canvas screen behind which the women and children could sleep, for the heat of the desert was making the lower cabins unbearable; mattresses were dragged here and there, children put to sleep upon them; people walked about, stepping carefully over sleeping forms as the _Oriana_ crept along at five miles an hour with a great searchlight forrard sending a huge fan of light on to the lapping waters of the Ca.n.a.l, and out into the brown sand of the desert. The schoolmaster became instructive about the rapid silting up of the Ca.n.a.l with erosion and sand storms: he discussed the genius and patience of de Lesseps, and argued lengthily on the respective merits of patience and genius. Finally, Marcella told him she had a headache. He suggested that he could cure it.

"I have some tabloids--very sedative, very. I make a point of never being without them. You, I take it, have the same type of brain and nerve force as I--always active, always alert. What we both need is a depressant--pot. brom. Or, as I prefer to call it, K.B.R."

"Oh no--it's very kind of you. But I'd like best to go to bed."

"May I carry your mattress up for you?"

"I'm not sleeping on deck. I couldn't sleep among so many people," she said, and, after a hurried good night went below.

As she paused at her cabin door she heard a little noise and guessed that Jimmy was within. Opening it quickly, without switching on the light, she cried, "Here comes a big bear to eat you all up," as Jimmy often did to her. She grasped someone, and cried out in fear. It was someone grown up, kneeling on the floor.

She switched on the light and saw Louis looking up at her, blinking in the sudden glare.

"Oh, it's you. What do you want?" she said, breathlessly, though she knew quite well. In his hand he held her little bank bag of orange canvas in which the doctor had put ten pounds for her to spend on the trip.

"I w-want m--my--my m--money," he began, trembling and afraid to meet her eyes.

"To buy more whisky and make yourself more horrible than ever?" she cried, standing with her back to the door. "Well, I'll not give it to you, and if you knock me down and fight me I'll not give it you even.

I'm a better fighter than you."

"I w-want it--to--to--pay him back," he cried and began to sob, violently dropping the money on the floor. "He--he said--you'd been in his cabin and--and--and in m--mine! He s--said dev--devilish things.

And I punched his ugly head for him! All for you! Be--be--because you're--you're--Oh G.o.d, give me the money and let me pay him and then cut him dead."

"Do you mean that you owe Ole Fred money?"

"Of c--course. How on earth have I managed since N-naples?"

"How much is it?"

"He's paid for a lot of drinks, but that doesn't count. I w-won a good bit at poker, too. I b-borrowed sixteen pounds from him."

"But, Louis, you hadn't sixteen pounds to pay him back with," she cried.

"Do you think I cared? Do you think I ever meant to pay him back?

Anyway, he's helped spend it, and when we get to Sydney I shan't have to face him again, so I don't care a d.a.m.n. I've g-given my credit note for ten pounds when I land to--to--the barman, too. I'm b-broke, ole girl."

He sobbed helplessly.

"He offered me the money. People always do. They all think I'm well off when I tell them who the pater is. And so I should be if he wasn't such a stingy old devil."

His sobbing ceased, his face looked hard and cynical again. Marcella watched him in amazement. She was not sure whether to be disgusted with him or sorry for him.

At last she spoke.

"Louis--I don't understand a bit. Why did you do it?"

"Because he said rude things about you! He hates you! I only made him my enemy for your sake--and now you won't let me cut adrift from him.

That's just like all women! Once they get their claws on money there's no getting them off again."

"I'm not asking why you fought him, you idiot. I'm asking you why you made such an idiotic mess of things at Naples."

He sobbed for awhile, sitting on the floor, leaning his head on her trunk where the broken lock dangled. She laid her hand on his head with an incontrollable impulse of pity; his hair was matted and dull as though it, had not been brushed for years.

"I c-can't explain it, even to myself, Marcella. But I--I th-think it w-was because I g-got a bit huffy with the idea th-that I was depending on you for everything. I f-felt as if I was tied to your ap.r.o.n strings.

I felt as if I was being a g-good little b-b-boy, you know. So I thought I'd kick a bit! But I w-was trying d.a.m.ned hard before. You know I was."

She knit her brows and said, very slowly, as though she had not known the end of the sentence when she began to speak.

"Louis--don't you--perhaps--think it's wrong--to try so hard? I mean, it's morbid to be always saying 'I'm a drunkard. If I don't keep myself keyed up every minute I'll fall--' Don't you think it would be better if you forgot all about it, and just said, 'I'm Louis Farne, the biggest thing that ever was in the annals of humanity.' I don't know, but that seems more sensible to me. You see, you're rather a self-willed sort of person, really. You like to have you own way. Then why on earth not have your own way with whisky."

He stared at her and started in surprise, his jaw dropping. She looked at the streaks of dust and blood on his face, through which his tears had made blurred runnels.