"Don't you worry about your Uncle's money," he said grimly. "I'll see to that! Marcella, there's nothing I can't do now. If only I hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital, probably I'd have had the knowledge to save you all this now."

"Why, how silly!" she laughed. "If you hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital we should never have met!"

The next day she went into hospital: as the anesthetic broke over her in delicious warm waves she was frantically afraid that she was going to die; it seemed to her that these calm, business-like surgeons and nurses only treated her as one of millions, not realizing that she was Marcella Lashcairn, immensely important to Louis and Andrew. She began to feel that it would be much better if she did not have an anesthetic at all, and superintended the whole business herself intelligently. It seemed wrong that she should have no hand in a thing of such profound importance. Then her will relaxed a little and she was horribly afraid that she would feel sharp knives through the anesthetic. A blinding flash of realization abased her utterly. Just on the borders of unconsciousness she saw Kraill looking at her with his beautiful eyes clouded with disappointment.

"He knows I'm afraid of being cut up--and he knows I'm afraid of dying I--Naturally he knows--he lives in my imagination!--and he wanted my courage--But I'm not really frightened, you know. Can't you see I'm not?"

It became immediately necessary to explain this to Kraill. She tried to push the mask away. A very steady, pleasant voice was saying "breathe deeply," and she realized that she had once more been taken up by things much stronger and wiser than herself: quite conceivably they might make a mess of her, hurt her and even kill her. But they were doing wisely; and anyway, she herself could do nothing more--buoyant warm waves took her up and carried her right away from caring.

When she wakened again all fear had gone; she was conscious of a burning corkscrew boring into her body somewhere, but she was too lazy to localize it. A long, long time after that she saw sunshine and smelt something very beautiful.

She focussed her eyes on something that swayed drunkenly: after awhile it stood still, and she saw that it was a little blue vase filled with boronia. The breeze from the open window was tapping the blind softly to and fro, and wafting the scent of the boronia over her face. Then she saw Louis's face, very white, above her.

"All right, old girl?" he whispered.

She tried to find her hand to raise it to him, but it seemed so far from her that she would have to go to the end of the world to fetch it.

And that was too far. So she smiled at him.

"You're all right, you see," he said nervously. "Gloomy forebodings are so silly, aren't they?"

"I--thought I should feel it," she said.

"I told you you wouldn't, didn't I? The nurse said you took an awful time to go under--"

"Yes. I wanted to explain something. And I wanted to help the surgeons--I thought I'd--do it--much better than they could."

"Just like you, old lady," he said, with his eyes wet.

"Silly to fight, Louis--strong things--wise things--like those surgeons--even if they are making awful pains for you to bear--"

"I wouldn't talk, darling," he whispered anxiously, his face against hers.

"I'm not talking, Louis--I'm thinking," she said anxiously. "Something I was thinking--all mixed up with old Wullie, and a pathway. It seems to me G.o.d is like those surgeons--only--strong and wise, you know--only He never gives you chloroform, does He?"

She lost sight of Louis's face then for a very long time.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Three months later they were aboard a P. and O. steamer, calling their good-byes to Mrs. King and half a dozen of the boys, and Mr. and Mrs.

Twist who had come all the way from Loose End to see them off.

Marcella had stayed in hospital for two months; for another month she had been struggling with inability to begin life again in a nursing home overlooking the thunders of the Pacific. Louis had gone back to the Homestead. He would not explain what he was going to do. He merely fetched Andrew, and put him in charge of Mrs. King, who brought him every day to see her. And then he vanished. But she had no fears for him. They had vanished; her sudden yielding to the chloroform in the hospital had been symbolical of a deeper yielding; she felt that these strong, wise forces of her life, if pain became unendurable, would either cure it or find an anesthetic for it.

And one day, towards the end of the three months, Louis had come to the nursing home to see her. His hands, as he seized her pa.s.sionately, felt hard and stuck to her thin silk blouse.

"Louis!" she cried, taking one of the hands in hers, which had grown very soft and white, "I've seen them pretty bad before with the gorse.

But whatever have you been doing? Where have you been? They're like a navvy's hands!"

"Were you worried about me, old girl?" he asked.

"No, but dreadfully curious," she began. He took a roll of dirty notes out of his pocket and threw it in her lap.

"Look! Alone I did it! Monish, old girl! Filthy lucre! Just enough to take us home. I meant to do it off my own bat, without asking your uncle!"

"But how on earth could you, in the time?" she asked.

"Navvying! That bally railway cutting at Cook's Wall! Lord, Marcella, if I don't get the Pater to pay for me to go to the hospital, I'll do a year first on the music-halls as the modern Hercules. I should make millions! My hands were blistered till they got like iron; my back felt broken; I used to lie awake at nights and weep till I got toughened. I had a few fights, too."

"Why? Didn't they like you?"

"No, they're not so silly as you. They resented my English particularly, and they resented my funking whisky when they were all boozing. They thought I was being superior. Lord, if they'd known! One night, when they were calling me Jesus' Little Lamb and Wonky Willie, I saw red and tackled an Irishman. Of course, he knocked me out of time. I knew he would. And just to show them that I wasn't wonky, and wasn't a Cocoa Fiend--that was another name they had for me--I downed a tumbler full of whisky neat."

She drew a deep breath.

"Oh, don't worry! It made me d.a.m.ned sick! Lord, wasn't I bad! There's something in my brain so fed up with the stuff that my body won't give it house-room."

"Good thing too," said Marcella.

"I'm not so sure," he said reflectively. "In a way, it's weak. Whisky still beats me, you see. There ought not to be anything on earth one's afraid of."

"I think that's a bit morbid. I'm very much afraid of snails, and I certainly don't think I'm called upon to go and caress snails."

"Ah, this is different. This isn't physical. It's psychological. Just as, once, I hungered for whisky, now I loathe and dread it. The ideal thing would be to be indifferent to it. That may come in time."

Marcella asked him nothing about herself. What the doctors had told him she did not know: she was content to wait. All she wanted, now, was to get home.

They stayed a week in London with Louis's people. It was pathetic to see the mother's wistful anxiety and the father's open scepticism change to confidence as the week went by.

"He's a changeling, my dear," said Mrs. Fame to Marcella when, in spite of the old lady's wish to keep them in London, they told her they must go North.

"Louis has always been a puzzle to me," said his father. "Even as a little chap he did things I couldn't understand--selfish things, crooked things--I don't understand what has happened to him."

"If I told you you would think General Booth had been getting at me,"

said Marcella. "But Louis will explain it all to you, some day."

From the slowly dawning pride on the father's face and the pathetic hope of the mother Marcella guessed that Louis would not have to raise his fees on the music-halls.

The winds were black and wintry already round the station at Carlossie as the train drew in. Marcella had wired that she was coming, giving no explanations. Andrew had been very fidgety. He was wearing his first small suit and what he gained in dignity from knickers and three pockets he lost in comfort. At last he fell asleep. Marcella looked from him to Louis and felt that it was very childish of her, but she was really anxious to get them both home, put them on exhibition, as it were. She had never got over the feeling that Andrew had not merely happened, but was a voluntary achievement. Lately she had had the same idea about Louis. She wanted to see the effect of them both upon the people at home.

The station at Carlossie was just the same: it looked much smaller, and the people, too, seemed smaller. Dr. Angus was there in his Inverness cape, smiling with the same air of conscious achievement as Marcella felt.

"So ye're back again, Mrs. Marcella? I knew we'd be getting ye back soon. And bringing two men with ye!"

He shook hands gravely with Andrew and gave Louis a swift, appraising look that seemed to satisfy him.