Part 14 (1/2)

Marcella nodded at him. Next minute she heard Ole Fred swearing at him for not being quicker, but Knollys took it all with an impersonally sarcastic air. She cut up the little boy's bread and b.u.t.ter into strips, arranged his fish, and watched, with amus.e.m.e.nt, his father turn to him with a jerk of remembrance.

”It's good of you to look after young Jimmy,” he said, smiling at Marcella. ”He misses his mother.”

”Is she dead?”

”Yes. He's only me. There are a surprising lot of lonely people in the world, aren't there? The little lady next to me--she's a widow, I find.

It's hard when a woman has had a man to depend on and suddenly finds herself left to battle with the world, isn't it? Women are such fragile little flowers to me--they want protecting from the winds.”

Marcella looked at him; he was rather fat: the excitement of his talk with the little lady had made his forehead s.h.i.+ne; when he smiled his drooping moustache could not hide a row of blackened, broken teeth. He smelt of stale tobacco, as though he carried old pipes in every pocket.

He ate quickly and noisily, his eyes on his plate, his shoulders moving.

Jimmy asked timidly if he might have a piece of bread and jam. His father said ”Yes, of course,” and went on eating. Marcella spread the jam for him, and then turned to his father.

”I don't know many women,” she said. ”But I'd just like to see a man treat me as a fragile flower.”

”Ah, wasteful woman!” said Mr. Peters, smiling fatuously as he wrestled with a hard piece of ham rather too big for his mouth. As soon as he had swallowed it, he went on, ”That's the thing a man loves in a woman--a _real_ man, that is! 'Just like the ivy, I cling to thee' should be a woman's motto, a true woman's motto. A woman's weakness, her trust in man is her most womanly characteristic. It appeals to all that is best and chivalrous in a man.”

A fragile voice at his elbow said, ”Mistah Petahs,” and he turned hurriedly towards it. Marcella said, ”Pooh!” loudly and very rudely and turned to Jimmy.

”Do you like cake?” she asked.

”Rather! Gran gives me cake.”

”Well, you come with me into my little house after tea and we'll have some. What number is your little house?”

”Fifteen.”

”Mine is Number 9 so we are not very far away.”

She looked round several times for Louis Farne, wondering if he would consider it beneath his dignity to have his meals with the steerage people, but could not see him. Even after she and Jimmy had explored her cabin, eaten some cake and walked several times up and down the deck talking, while the wind blew keenly in their faces, she saw nothing of him and there was dead silence in his cabin. Her deck-chair, she noticed, was where she had seen it put among a pile of others; later in the day Knollys came along and stencilled her initials.

”If you don't have your name on, some of these blooming emigrants will pinch it, or the deck-hands will hide it till we're a few days out and sell it to someone else.”

She began to think Knollys was a very useful person to know, for all his superiority and pessimism.

As it grew dark, lights twinkled out ash.o.r.e--lights rocked here and there on pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps and barges: tubes of light projected themselves out from the portholes on to the blackening water, that swished and washed past the sides with a sound of desolation; to the landward an uncoiled serpent glittered out into the water and then seemed to cover itself in a grey veil of darkness as the _Oriana_ pa.s.sed the pier of some little watering-place. Marcella went slowly along the deck, climbed the fo'c'sle steps and sat down on the anchor. At Lashnagar she had always seen ghosts walking on the sea at nightfall. Now they rose out of the swirling water, pa.s.sed in and out swaying among the lights of the s.h.i.+p. From under her feet in the crew's quarters came the tinkle of a mandoline playing ”La Donna e Mobile.”

She had seen s.h.i.+ps pa.s.s in the darkness at home, out on the horizon, a glimmering blur of light. She had pictured them by daylight, s.h.i.+ning in the sunlight with snowy decks and glittering engines; she had no idea that this spirit of desolation would rise out of the waves and possess her. For an hour she sat, dreaming of grey things, for her dreams could admit of no colour. After a while, cold and cramped, she went to her cabin for her coat. She noticed Mr. Peters and the little widow sitting on two deck-chairs in a corner, their faces two blurs in the darkness, the widow's tinkling laugh an oversong to his deep voice. Around the bar some dozen men were laughing and talking loudly; in the dining saloon a few people were playing cards, a few more writing letters, to post in Plymouth next day. The thin girl sat with her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands, crying. The tears were running down her cheeks, over her fingers and dropping on to the table. It seemed less lonely on the dark fo'c'sle, so Marcella went back.

It was quite dark now; the mandoline had stopped. From a ventilator shaft close by came a deep murmur of conversation from the crew's quarters that mingled with her dreams. Aunt Janet, her father, Wullie, Dr. Angus, the restless London crowds came and went like pictures crossing a screen. Jimmy, the thin girl, Ole Fred and Louis Farne followed them, pa.s.sing on. Suddenly out of the darkness at the other end of the great anchor came a sound that was entangled with the wash of the waves against the bows of the s.h.i.+p. It was a sob, choked back quickly and bursting out again. She crept along the anchor softly. A huddled figure was there, looking out to the black sea.

”What's the matter now? It's you, isn't it, Louis?” she said, for she was quite sure it was he, even in the darkness. ”I could sit and cry too, it's so lonely, isn't it?”

”Oh, you're everywhere! And you only poke fun at me,” he said in a strangled voice.

”I didn't poke fun at you. I only laughed at your trying to pretend you were such an exalted person you couldn't travel steerage.”

”I d-didn't want y-y-you to think my p-people couldn't afford to--to--” he stammered in a low voice.

”Oh, what an idiot you are! My father was always calling me an idiot, but if he'd known you! My goodness--he said I was a double-distilled one! Whatever are you?”