Part 27 (1/2)

He had not shaved for a week and looked thoroughly disreputable. Holding out his hand he looked at it earnestly. It shook, as he had expected.

”Oh, I say, what a waster I look. I do hope to the Lord my hand's steady enough for a shave.”

”Let me do it,” she said. ”It would be fun.”

”I'm d.a.m.ned--Oh, I beg your pardon, old girl!--but I'm hanged if I'll not make my hand steady. I'll do it, I tell you! If I cut myself in bits, serve me right! I'll be half an hour and then--then--well, wait!”

She heard him in his cabin, whistling as he dragged out his trunk, pushed it back roughly, dropped and smashed a tumbler and then rushed along the alley-way. After awhile she heard him come back, heard the sound of violent brus.h.i.+ng, heard him kick things and swear, drop things, bundle things about. She sat down on her trunk suddenly weak as she realized what she had done. She had never thought of being married before; marriage seemed a thing for elderly people; there seemed something ungallant, something a little dragging about marriage that rather frightened her. Her mother's marriage, she was beginning to understand, had been a thing of horror. She thought of those stifled cries in the night at the old farm, cries that she had thought meant that ghosts were walking; she heard with terrible distinctness the voice of the Edinburgh specialist as he said, ”In my opinion the injury was caused by a blow--a blow, Mr. Lashcairn.” Then, quite suddenly she laughed. It was quite amusing to think of Louis's making anyone ill by a blow.

”He'd never have fought Ole Fred if they hadn't both been drunk,” she said slowly, staring at the boards of the floor, and her quick imagination showed her the two of them, fighting ign.o.bly, all dust and sweat and ill-aimed blows. They could only hurt each other because both were too unsteady to dodge futile lungings. There was nothing of the Berserk about Louis.

Panic came to her. The things she realized about marriage were that it was irrevocable, and that it meant a frighteningly close proximity; and in that swift vision of Louis's fight--even though it had been in defence of her--she had realized that it was utterly impossible for her to be with him for the rest of her life.

”Oh how could I? How can I? How can I be glittering and s.h.i.+ning with a man who is always crying? How can we be--be conquerors together when I never, never think of him except as 'poor boy' or 'silly idiot'? Oh no--no--I can't! I can't! Even if I do save him, what is there in that for me? I want to s.h.i.+ne--I daren't have hot, dirty, damp hands dragging at me. I can't. I must be free, uncaught--”

The cabin became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the part of fate, just as though, for her s.h.i.+ning lover, someone had subst.i.tuted a changeling stuffed with sawdust.

”I must tell him. But it's so cruel of me. I'm cruel--but I must tell him.”

In the next cabin he began to sing, rather jerkily, a song everyone on the s.h.i.+p was singing just then.

”Won't you come back to Bombombay?

Won't you come back to Bombombay?

I'm grieving, now you're leaving For a land so far away.

So sad and lonely shall I be, When you are far away from me.”

It was not the tipsy singing she had heard in the morning; it was jumpy, tuneless singing; she guessed that it was a.s.sisting in the process of shaving, for she heard a few ”d.a.m.ns” peppering the song, which suggested that his shaky hand was wielding the razor badly. And with the song came pity that swamped disgust and disillusion. It seemed so sad to her that, when hope dawned upon him, he should celebrate it by singing a piece of sentimental, however haunting, doggerel. To go there and tell him that she, too, was going to break promises, to change her mind--it was impossible. It was like breaking promises to a little child. Came a blinding flash of self-realization.

”Marcella Lashcairn,” she said, standing under the white flare of the electric light and facing herself squarely in the little mirror, which showed her two scornful grey eyes, ”You're a hypocrite! You think it's very splendid and grand to save a big, grown-up man from getting drunk.

That's only because you're a girl and are flattered at his dependence on you. If you saw any other girl acting as you do you'd say it was sheer impudence! And you think it's very wonderful that anyone so clever as Louis should notice you. You're flattered, you see--that's self-love, not Louis-love! Oh very beautiful! And you're such an illogical sort of idiot that you want to save him, and yet you want him so splendid and s.h.i.+ning that he doesn't need any saving. Oh go--get out--all of you!”

and she waved her hand to her dreams and sent the s.h.i.+ning Lover riding on on his quest without her. It was just as she used to talk to the gulls and the winds on Ben Grief--when she was having things out with herself before. ”I've taken the man I want--as all the Lashcairns do unless they are like Aunt Janet and--Oh, anyway, I'd rather be killed than be like her. It's rather illogical to growl at my choice the minute I've made it.”

Before she could stop herself she was out of the cabin; she did not stop to think that Louis might be embarra.s.sed: she dashed into his cabin. He was fastening his tie.

”Louis,” she cried, and stopped breathless. He seemed very different as she looked over his shoulder into the mirror. Cold water had removed the traces of a week's neglect; the razor had done a good deal, too, and a clean suit had transformed him. His eyes were different: there was a light of resolution in them and they met hers direct. She scarcely knew him.

”h.e.l.lo!” he said and let the tie hang as he stared at her.

”Where's the other man who used to sleep in here?” she asked. That was not what she had intended to say when she came in.

”He's gone. He was on the way to Cairo. I've got it to myself now.”

”Oh--”

”Marcella,” he said solemnly. ”You really mean it? You're not going to let me down? Violet let me down--and I'm always letting people down. I can't trust people now.”

”Supposing I'd wanted to marry Violet, I'd have married her,” she said, her brow puckered. ”And I wouldn't _be_ let down.”

”No, I suppose you wouldn't,” he said, slowly.