Chapter VI (2)

"Adventure! Perhaps it is, for you. It depends on how much money you've got."

"Ten pounds," she said guilelessly.

"Do you know what they're allowing me? A miserable pound a week! Doled out once a week, mind you! Little Louis must toddle up to the General Post Office in Sydney every English mail day, and if he says 'please' very nicely they'll give him a letter from his mother. It's always from his mother. His father 'cannot trust himself to write in a Christian spirit,' he says. In the letter is a pound order. That's to keep body and soul together."

In his passion of self-pity he forgot to stammer; his words tumbled out wildly, between sobbing catches of his breath.

"But who gives you the pound?"

"The Pater, I tell you--so long as I stop there I'm assured of a pound a week! If I come any nearer to England the money stops. They probably hope I'll commit suicide and save them the expense of the pound a week. It'll even save them the expense of a funeral and buying mourning, won't it? I'll do it in Sydney, you see."

"But I never heard of such a funny thing in my life! Paid to keep away from home! What's the matter with you? What have you done? It's like the lepers in the Bible."

"T-that's what they say I am!" he burst out. "They c-call me a disgrace, a drunkard! They sent me down from the hospital because they said I was a drunkard. The girl I was in love with threw me over because of that. She was married three months ago to someone else. That's why I'm here now. My third remittance trip--"

He stopped, and she was horrified to hear him sobbing--gasping, choking sobs that frightened her.

"I came home--tried my damnedest to get a grip on things, but when she did that trick on me I saw red. They've kicked me out now."

"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "You must be so unhappy if you're a drunkard--whisky--"

She broke off. The old farm came gliding over the waves and settled round her with a sense of inevitability. She saw the green baize door; she heard the crying of the wind, the scuttering of the rats: she saw her father's blazing eyes, red-rimmed and mad. And then she heard him, pleading, talking to God. Louis's voice broke in on her dream.

"A drunkard--that's what I am now."

"I didn't think boys were drunkards," she said casually.

"I'm twenty-seven."

"Are you really? All the boys at Lashnagar are grown up when they're twenty-seven. You seem so young. You're so shy and queer. I'm nineteen," she added.

"And you know," he burst out in the midst of her words, "they can't blame me! It isn't my own fault--they know it's in the family, only they haven't the decency to admit it. But I know--different people in my family who are cut by the respectable ones--I've raked them out, and ever since I've felt hopeless."

"Oh no--no," she cried, suddenly throwing out her hands as if to ward off something horrible. Leaning forwards she gripped his shoulder. "It's so silly! Besides, think how cowardly it is to say you must do a thing because someone else has done it."

"It's killed lots of my people, or landed them in asylums--they're not talked about in the family, but I know it," he raved.

"Well, I think you're a perfect idiot," she cried impatiently. "Why, if you saw about twenty people on this ship walk overboard in a procession, that's no reason why you should do it too, is it?"

"That just shows you don't understand the power of suggestion," he said. "At the hospital--I'll never forget it. There was a girl brought in dying of burns. We got it from her that she was very unhappy and had set herself on fire because the woman next door had been burnt to death. Old Professor Hay, our lecturer in psychology, explained it to us. He said the girl was in a weak state of nerves and health generally, owing to family troubles she'd had to shoulder. She was receptive to suggestion, you see. And she was too tired to think logically. Seeing the burnt woman there very peaceful, and people sorry for her--don't you see?"

Marcella nodded.

"I'm pretty sure I'd never have got to this state of things if I'd never known it was in the family. It seems inevitable, as if I'm working out a laid-down law."

"Louis, I'm not very clever. As I told you, father used to call me a double-distilled idiot when he got in a temper. But I do think you're wrong. People are not a part of families nearly so much as they are themselves. Besides--imagine letting anything get you down, and put chains on you like that!" she added scornfully.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he said bitterly. "It simply chews you up, gnaws holes in you."

She thought of what Dr. Angus had said.

"Well then, patch yourself up and go on again."

"But after all, why should you? There's nobody cares tuppence now what happens to me. I'm an outcast."

"Louis, what was that you promised your mother--I heard you on the ship just as the tender was going? Didn't you promise to make yourself better?"

"Yes, but I've been thinking about it. Why should I? What does it really matter to the Mater? She didn't care enough not to have me spewed out of home. She's at home now; they'll be sitting round the dinner-table after a tip-top meal. Presently they'll be playing whist and congratulating themselves that I'm safely out of England. They'll breathe freely now."

"I don't believe it," she said quickly. "Mothers and fathers are not like that."

"That's all you know. All day to-day, after she got back from Tilbury and had powdered the traces of tears from her face she'd be at Harrods or the Stores, buying things. And she'd take just as much interest in matching some silks for embroidery, and getting the exact flavour of cheese the Pater likes as she took in making me promise not to drink. And to-morrow her friends will come, with an air of a funeral about them, and be discreetly sympathetic about the terrible trouble she has been having with Louis--such a pity--after he promised so well! Oh be damned to them all! I'm not going to care any more."

Marcella sat in miserable silence. She did not know enough to say anything helpful. She had no idea what had cured her father. She had seen him a drunkard; she had seen him ill, no longer a drunkard; she had seen him die and guessed dimly that the drinking had killed him. But she suddenly grasped the fact that she had seen effects--whole years of effects; of causes she knew nothing whatever.

The mandoline began to play again "La Donna e Mobile." Louis's voice broke into the music and the lashing water.

"They're cowards, my people, mean little cowards. That's why I'm a coward! I'm a beastly, bally sort of half-breed, don't you know! Do you know why they give me a pound a week? Partly, of course, it's to bribe me to keep away. They've no other weapon but that. But mostly it's because they're so miserably sentimental they can't bear to think of me starving or sleeping out all night! Ough! If they weren't such miserable cowards they'd know I'd be better dead than chained to the end of a row of pound-notes. They'd have kicked me out, and let me either buck up or die."

"But--oh, I do wish Dr. Angus or Wullie were here! I know there's an answer to all that, but I'm such an idiot I can't find it," she cried despairingly.

"I'll do them! I'll get my own back on them! I'm damned if I'll do as they expect me to. If they'd only seen me last time in Auckland," and he gave an ugly laugh. "Do you think I lived on their bally pound a week? Why, I spent that in half a day! Sometimes I wouldn't call for it for five weeks. I'd go past the Post Office every day, knowing it was there, and torturing myself with the thought of what I could buy with it, and leaving it there till I'd got five pounds and could drink myself to hell!"

She shivered. She could hear him grinding his teeth as he sat close to her. She felt the same inarticulate helplessness that she had felt about all the miseries of Lashnagar. She wanted, most passionately, to do something for him. His telling her about it was, in itself, a challenge.

"But how did you live all the time, wasting your money like that?"

He laughed harshly.

"It's easy to live south the line--in Australasia, anyway, if you're a drunkard. There's a lot of money about, you know. Men come from up-country with a big cheque to knock out--shearers and men like that, who live in the backblocks for months, hundreds of miles from hotels. They come down from the backblocks with perhaps a hundred pounds to spend on a week of blissful unconsciousness. Sailors come in and get paid off too. There's a lot of freehandedness. They treat the whole bar. If you won't drink with them, they knock you out of time before you know where you are, sit on your chest and pour it down your neck. Once you're in a pub in Australia you can stay in all day on nothing. And you can get in for threepence--the price of a pint of beer. And you don't get out till you're kicked out drunk."

"Oh--" she gasped.

"The devil of it is getting hold of the threepence. Sometimes you meet a pal and borrow it. Sometimes you pawn something and get it. If the Home boat's in, you go down to the quay, pick out a new chum--that's anyone from the Old Country--offer to show him round a bit, and he naturally treats you. Then you're in the haven."

He spoke cynically, bitterly. She grasped at his sleeve, as though she would pull him back.

"Oh--," she gasped.

"D-don't keep s-saying 'Oh' like that!" he cried impatiently. "S-say s-something s-sensible."

"Does your mother know all about the way you live?" she asked desperately.

"I told her. I enjoyed letting her know what they drove me to. But she doesn't understand. They don't ever understand, these easy, half-alive, untempted folks! She's never been away from a world of afternoon calls, broughams and shopping! I tell her I'm a beer-bum--yes, that's the word for it in Australia! Not a pretty word--not a pretty thing either! I gave the Mater and Pater a picture of myself once--broken shoes tied on with string, trousers tied on with a bit of rope because I'd sold my braces for threepence--slinking along in the gutter outside the Theatre Royal picking up cigarette ends that had been thrown away! Counter lunches! D'you know what counter lunches are?"

She shook her head. It seemed as though he were trying to shock her, as he piled on his miseries to her.

"Three times a day the hotel keeper in Australia covers his counter in all sorts of food--cold meat, bread, cheese, pickles, cakes--oh, just everything there is going. He doesn't want you to go out to get food, you see, and perhaps get caught by some other pub. You don't have to pay. You just eat what you like, so long as you go on buying drinks or having them bought for you. There's a lot more there to eat than you want. You don't want much when you're boozing. I lived on counter lunches once--crayfish and celery mostly, with vinegar and cayenne--for four months. I spent not a single penny on food the whole time. Then I nearly died in hospital. They had me in the padded cell for three days."

"Were you mad?" she whispered, wishing he would tell her no more, but fascinated by the horror of it all, the pity of it. "I think you are mad, really, even now--talking like this, almost as if you're proud of it."

"No, I'm not mad--only the usual pink rat sort of madness. The thing's obvious," he said, shrugging his shoulders. It was not obvious to her; he had put her into a maelstrom of puzzles, but she did not tell him so. She preferred to think it out for herself. But suddenly she coupled her little broken arm and the barrel as effect and cause.

He went on muttering. She had great difficulty in hearing all he said.

"At night, at kicking out time, you can hang on, sometimes, to a man with some cash and get asked to kip with him for the night. You can get a bed for a shilling a night in many places. It isn't a feather-bed. If there is no Good Samaritan about you go and lie down in the Domain--that's the public park, you know--praying to whatever gods there be that it won't rain. You never get a decent wash, and as soon as the hotels are open at six o'clock you start again--if you can get the entrance fee. If you haven't, you cadge round till you have."

He broke off, staring bitterly away from her, his knees drawn up, his chin resting on them.

"And you told your mother about it--and your father?" she said.

"Yes, every word, and more. Things I wouldn't tell you, because you're a girl, and I've still some respect for girls. Things that happened in Rio and Rosario--some of the women there, the rich women--Lord, they're the devil's own!" He reflected grimly. "I told the Pater a few things--opened his eyes. He's a publisher--Sunday school prizes and that sort of thing. Stacks of money! No imagination. Most people have no imagination. They see things in a detached way. They see them, somehow, as if they're in print or going on on a stage. But not really happening. The Pater simply said I ought to be ashamed of myself--as if I'm not!"

He broke off and tried to light a cigarette with fingers that trembled. Three, four matches he struck before he got it lighted and puffing. She sat silent, listening to the murmur of voices and the swishing water.

"Why the devil I'm telling you this I can't imagine," he said at last. "Most girls would have yelled out for help before this."

"I think, you know," she said rather breathless, "I think you're a great idiot! You _ask_ for things, don't you?"

"But what is there for a man to do out there? There's nothing I want to do except medicine, and that's past for ever now. There's nothing to do but get drunk. I've tried, often--got jobs, and all that. But there's no inducement--and I've told you how easy it is not to starve."

"But it's so--so beastly! You might as well be dead--you're not happy."

"That's exactly what I think. That's what I'm going to do. I got ten pounds out of the Mater. She's always ready to give me anything if it happens to be the beginning of the month and she's well off. The Pater solemnly presented me with three pounds--that's ten shillings a week for smokes for the six weeks of the trip. I'll buy bull's-eyes with it, I think. That'd please him. That makes thirteen pounds, and there's ten pounds waiting for me in Sydney. I'll have a damned good bust-up then, and then I'll finish the job for ever."

"Oh, I do think you're mad--raving mad!" she cried, and could say nothing else.

"Of course it's by no means certain I'll have enough courage to kill myself. I rather doubt it! You see, they didn't breed me with courage. They've given me porridge in my veins instead of blood! They press electric buttons for their emotions and keep them down as long as is respectable! They didn't give me grit at all--they gave me convention and respectability. Everything I wanted to do they restrained because so many of the things I wanted to do seemed natural but were not respectable. And in the end they made a first-class liar of me." There was a long, terrible silence.

"To-night, for a bit, I'm stripped bare here," he said in a low voice, "letting you see me. To-morrow I'll be a nervous, stammering fool, hiding all I feel, swanking like hell about my people, myself and everyone I've ever seen, like I was doing to-day when you told me off so beautifully. To-morrow I'll be drunk, and I'll lie to you till all's blue. To-night I'm just honest."

"Why is it that you're honest with me?" she asked him.

"Lord knows! I suppose it's because I'll disintegrate and go over the side in shivers if I can't get something off my chest. You don't seem disgusted with me--Lord, everyone else is! And I'm the loneliest devil on earth."

"I'm glad you told me. Let's be friends, Louis--till we get to Sydney, anyway."

"I never have friends. I lie to them, and they find me out. I borrow money from them and don't pay it back, and then I'm afraid to face them. I make fools of them in public; I'm irritable with them."

"I'm warned," she said with a laugh. "I'm not afraid of you."

Suddenly he turned round. All the time he had been talking his back had been half turned to her. She saw the crimson end of the cigarette glowing. It was flung overboard. He groped for and found both her hands.

"Look here, this is the maddest thing I've ever done yet--but will you take it on, being friends with me?"

"I want to. I'm lonely, you know. I could have cried to-night, really."

"But--look here. I'm begging, yes begging, this of you. When I lie to you, insult me, will you? You'll know. You've seen me honest to-night, but sometimes a thing gets hold of me and I lie like hell! I'll tell you the most amazing, most circumstantial tales--just as you told me this afternoon--and you'll believe me. But I implore you, don't believe me! Heaps of people have lent me money because they've believed what I've told them about my wife or my mother or my child dying. Lord, I'm a waster! But if I can find someone who'll be hard with me, I think I might make a stand. Look here, I promised the Mater, as this was my last week at home, and I haven't had a drink since Monday. That's four days to the good. If I promise you there's a faint chance I won't do it. Do you mind?"

"I'll watch you," she said calmly. "And I'll tell you if you tell me lies. But I don't believe you'll do any such thing!"

"Don't you? Do you believe in me?" he cried.

"Why not? I think you're a fearful duffer, but naturally I believe in you," she said calmly.

"I know why I came by this ship! It's a miracle. I believe I'm going to make a stand now, I really do! It's fate, and nothing else. There's an Anchor boat I was to have gone by--via the Cape, you know. She sailed last week, and I couldn't get off in time. I wanted to wait for the next as I've not been to the Cape. But the Pater couldn't put up with me for another week, so out I came! I know why I came! I came to meet you!"

"Do you think so?" she said wonderingly.

"I do! I've never in all my life told the truth about myself before! If you only knew what that means! I'm too nervous as a rule. But don't you notice the difference? Of course you're not trained, so you wouldn't notice as I should. But I'm not even stammering half so much. It's jolly good of you to listen to me--and it's jolly good for me, because I've no reason to try to get at you, or to get my own back on you, as I have with my people all the time."

Marcella felt very small, very helpless. She had a sudden vision of a man dying in an agony of poisoning while she stood frantic in a doctor's laboratory, antidotes all round her, but no knowledge in her brain of which drug to use. And all the time his agony went on, and death drew nearer. She had not the least idea in the world what to do for Louis Fame. He frightened her, he disgusted her, he made her feel hungrily anxious to help, he made her feel responsible and yet helpless, but at the same time it mattered and challenged her that he had appealed to her at all. She thought of her father, and remembered with a pang that she knew nothing about him except superficially. She thought of his books, but nothing in them seemed helpful. She thought of the Bible, of her poetry, her legends. They were a blur, a mist. Nothing in them held out a hand to hail her. There seemed nothing that she could do.

"Oh," she cried passionately, "I'm such a fool. If only I was clever! If only I knew what to do."

Before she had finished speaking came a flash of insight, and she went on, in the same breath, "But there's one thing that occurs to me. You think about yourself far too much. Old Wullie--I'll tell you about him some day--used to say that if we were quiet and didn't fuss about ourselves too much God would walk along our lives and help us to kill beasts--like whisky--"

"God? Oh, I'm fed up with God! I've had too much of that all my life at home," he said dully.

She had no answer for that, but as she bade him good night at the top of the companion-way she saw herself in armour. Her vague dreams of John the Baptist, of Siegfried and of Britomart suddenly crystallized, and she saw herself, very self-consciously, the Deliverer who would save Louis Fame. It did not occur to her to wonder if he were worth saving. He was imprisoned in the first windmill she had encountered on her Don Quixote quest--and so he was to be rescued.