Part 11 (2/2)

”Buck up, Mater,” he called with another long glance. Then, waving his hat to the others he called cheerfully, ”Give my respects to Leicester Square, you chaps.”

A group of stewards in white jackets began to whistle the song and someone on the boat deck sang it in a high falsetto. Someone behind Marcella was holding a piece of white ribbon that went right across the water to the tender; as the boat's speed accelerated the frail thread snapped and the girl in whose hand it was clasped, a very thin, anaemic looking girl, gave a choking sob.

”My only sister,” she said to no one in particular. ”There she is, and here am I. They wouldn't pa.s.s her for Australia, because they say she's got consumption.”

”What a shame!” murmured Marcella, waving frantically to the doctor while from the tender came the deep, gay voices of the students who had cheered Louis singing ”We want more Beer” to the tune of ”Lead Kindly Light.”

The wake of the tender widened out, lapped against the side of the _Oriana_ and rippled away; it was no longer possible to distinguish anything but a blurred ma.s.s of pinkish faces and dark clothes, splashed by a crest of white handkerchiefs. Good-byes rang out to the undersong of ”We want more Beer.” Marcella turned away and looked right into the face of Louis Farne. It was a very red face, unnaturally red and distorted; the brown eyes were bright with tears.

She stared at him in amazement; he really was a phenomenon to her--the first young man she had ever seen, with the exception of the peasant lads. She blinked her own dry eyes and frowned at him reflectively.

”Did it hurt you as much as that? Anyway, I'm very sorry,” she said.

”D'you think I'm blubbing for that, idiot?” said the boy in a jerky voice, and, bending almost double, darted down the companion-way.

She stared at him, and turned to the s.h.i.+p's rail again, drowning in surprise. She was surprised at Tilbury now that she had time to look about her. It was so utterly unromantic ash.o.r.e--docks, wharves, miserable buildings and brown fields, very distant. She remembered that Queen Elizabeth had reviewed her troops at Tilbury when she was getting ready for the Armada to land; she had expected that the glamour of that ancient pageant would hang about Tilbury. And there was no glamour at all--except, perhaps, in the s.h.i.+ps that lay at anchor and the barges that glided by; they were glamorous enough with their aura of far lands and strange merchandise.

She became aware that the girl with the consumptive sister was looking at her, and must have heard the boy's remark.

”People here seem very rude,” she remarked.

”That they are! Saying she had consumption--I know it was consumption though they wrote it down in funny words. Other folks said she had consumption too--sauce! And now she's all alone there, and I'm here.”

”What made you come,” asked Marcella, ”if you didn't want to leave her?”

”_I_ do' know. Fed up, that's about it,” said the girl resignedly. ”I wisht I hadn't come an' left her now, though. Her not being strong--mind you, it's all my eye to talk about consumption, but her best friend couldn't say as she was strong. Oh, dear, I do wisht I hadn't left her.”

For half an hour the thin girl argued with Marcella--a very one-sided argument--explaining in detail that her sister could not possibly have consumption, but that the doctor who had refused to pa.s.s her as an emigrant must have had a spite against her--simply must have had.

Otherwise why didn't he pa.s.s her? What was it to him? Marcella was very sympathetic but quite unhelpful, and after a while got away and went below to arrange her things in her cabin.

It fascinated her; it was quite the smallest thing she had ever seen, much smaller than Wullie's hut, and the s.h.i.+ning whiteness of the new enamel particularly appealed to her, though the smell of it was not very pleasing. The clamps that held the water-bottle and gla.s.s gave an exhilarating hint of rough weather; the top bunk, about on the level of her eyes, promised thrilling acrobatic feats at bedtime, and she decided to sleep in that one, leaving the other as a receptacle for her baggage.

In her preparations she lost sight of the lunch hour, and the bell and the sound of feet scurrying down the companion way meant nothing to her.

But at three o'clock something extraordinarily exciting happened; she heard the sharp ”ting-ting” of a bell, and the s.h.i.+p began to palpitate as if a great heart were beating within it. She hurried on deck as the siren began to cry. As soon as her head appeared above the top of the companion-way she saw the wharves and houses on sh.o.r.e running away in a peculiarly stealthy fas.h.i.+on; a s.h.i.+p much bigger than the _Oriana_, whose decks were thronged with stewards and deck-hands cheering and calling out greetings, went by; she dipped her flag to the outgoing _Oriana_, and Marcella thought how nice and chivalrous s.h.i.+ps were to each other.

Then it dawned on her that they were under weigh--that the heart she felt beating was the s.h.i.+p's engines, and that the extraordinary behaviour of the sh.o.r.e was because the _Oriana_ was going out with the tide.

She wondered then why she had come, and felt very frightened and lonely.

In all this big s.h.i.+p was no one who would care if she fell overboard into the muddy water; in all the world except at Lashnagar, which was sliding away from her with every beat of the s.h.i.+p's heart, there was no one who knew her except an unknown, almost legendary, uncle. She sat down on a covered hatchway, suddenly a little weak at the knees.

People pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, worrying the stewards with foolish and unnecessary questions, which they answered vaguely as they hurried by.

The thin girl stood leaning over the rail watching the brown sh.o.r.es that imprisoned her sister: four men who had apparently already made friends came along and sat down by Marcella, exchanging plans. One of them was horribly pock-marked; a younger man with red hair, queer s.h.i.+fty eyes and a habit of gesticulating a great deal when he talked was apparently going out with him. As the mudflats of the Thames glided by dreamily Marcella found their conversation slipping into her consciousness. The man with the red hair was talking: as he waved his right hand she saw that it had the three middle fingers missing. Her eyes followed it as if it hypnotized her.

”Going out to Sydney?” asked the pock-marked man of the two young farm hands who were staring about them open-mouthed. They nodded stupidly.

”Got 'ny tin?” asked the red-haired man. The younger farm hand, a ruddy, clean, foolish boy of twenty, jerked his thumb towards his friend.

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