Part 27 (2/2)

”Louis--” she began again, breathlessly, and then let the words out in a torrent. ”Louis, I _know_ I've got to marry you. Do you understand that?

It's--it's inevitable. It was from the minute I met you. You'll never understand that, not being a Kelt, though. I know it quite well. And I'm afraid I'm going to shy at it. And, for my sake as well as yours, I've not to shy. Louis, will you grab me tight?”

He stared at her, utterly at a loss. He did not begin to grasp what she meant. To him she was just ”fickle woman” always changing her mind. He had, all his life, generalized about woman; he had never known a woman who was not rather vapid, rather brainless; he had the same idea of women as Professor Kraill had ventilated in his lectures--that they were the vehicles of the race, living for the race but getting all the fun they could out of the preliminary canter, since the race was a rather strenuous, rather joyless thing for them. And it was in men they found the fun. Yet here was Marcella, who was quite different from anything feminine he had ever seen or imagined, suddenly appealing to him not to let her be fickle. Immediately he felt very manly, very responsible.

Then he laughed.

”_Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?_” he said, looking into her eyes.

”Father often said that. What does it mean?”

”Who'll look after the looker-after?” he said, with a laugh. ”Here's me begging you to look after me and save me from going to h.e.l.l. And here's you asking me to grab you for fear you'll change your mind. I wonder which is going to have the hardest job?”

She looked at him and said hurriedly:

”Louis, couldn't we be married now--to-night? In Scotland we do, you know--just in any room without church or anything.”

”But--I wish we could!” he said, his hands beginning to shake.

”I want to be sure--”

”I'm afraid we can't,” he said, anxiously. ”I'm afraid we'll have to wait till we get to Sydney.”

Unexpectedly memory brought back the thought that when he became engaged to Violet he had kissed her and held her in his arms; he remembered it very well. To get to the necessary pitch of courage he had had to get very drunk on champagne, for champagne always made him in a generally kissing and love-making mood that involved him often with barmaids and street ladies. He knew very well that he would never have thought of making love to Marcella: if she had not taken things into her own hands, they would have parted in Sydney, necessary as he considered her to his well being, much as he liked to be near her. He had, even through his self-satisfied alcohol dream, seen her disgusted looks at Naples when he had spoken to her. He guessed that the sort of half-maudlin love-making that had won Violet would never suit Marcella. And he knew beyond the shadow of doubt that no power on earth save whisky could ever get him to make love to anything--even a young girl who seemed in love with him already.

He was extraordinarily shy with and cynical about women. He had always been detested by the servants at home--more or less unjustly. He spoke to them abominably because he was frightened of their s.e.x. Had he not bullied them when he wanted small services performed, they never would have been performed at all, for he would have had no courage to ask civilly for anything. To his sister's friends when he was forced into their company he was boorish, simply because girls put him into such a panic of inferiority that, in self defence, he had to a.s.sert himself unnaturally. Years ago his sister had refused to make one of a theatre or concert party that included Louis; either he got drunk in the interval and rejoined them later, making them conspicuous by his behaviour, or else he sat at their side glowering and boorish, afraid even to look at the players on the stage, too shy even to negotiate the purchase of chocolates or programme. The last time he had been at the theatre with his sister and Violet had been after a whole fortnight without whisky. They were rather late; the play had begun. His sister had whispered to him to get a programme. Afraid of being conspicuous he had refused; she had ordered him to get it. People behind had hissed ”Hush” indignantly and finally Violet, with a contemptuous smile, had bought programmes and chocolates for herself and the sister, cutting Louis dead.

But whisky transformed him from a twitching neurotic into a megalomaniac. He imagined that every woman he met was in love with him indecently and physically; without whisky he saw women in veils and shrouds; whisky made him see them with their clothes off, their eyes full of lewd suggestion. Even to the elderly suburban ladies who visited his mother he was tipsily improper. To find a girl like Marcella, who did not put him either in a fever or a panic of s.e.xuality was supremely rea.s.suring: she seemed to him like a nice man friend might be--though he never had been able to acquire a man friend. He was intensely grateful to her for marrying him: he was not her lover; he was her dependent: he was treating her as he might have treated the old Dean at the hospital, or as her father had treated G.o.d. But--his conventional sense told him to kiss her and make her ”just a girl.”

He took both her hands in his and drew her towards him. Her eyes, which began by being startled, grew suddenly soft, as his face came close to hers and his eyes looked into hers for a wavering second before they dropped awkwardly and looked at her cheek. And then he kissed her. It took a long time. It took just as long as it takes to transform a whole system of reasoned thinking into something chaotic, nebulous. The chances are that, had that kiss never happened to Marcella, she would have gone on with her dreams of deliverance, her ideals of a high road through life. Louis's lips opened a locked door in her personality. When he let her go again she looked at him, rather frightened and bewildered.

She was trembling almost unbearably; her face, usually the fairest white, made gold by the sun and the wind, was flushed; her grey eyes were deep blue; her mind, for the while, was a blank.

”Oh Louis!” she gasped.

”Marcella--” he began but she seized his hands again.

”Oh Louis, please do it again.” That time she closed her eyes and was only conscious of thinking that, if the s.h.i.+p went down, it would not matter just so long as nothing interrupted the kiss.

”Dear little girl,” he whispered, and ceased to feel frightened of her.

As he saw the tremendous effect his kisses had on her, masculine superiority put pokers into his backbone and made him feel a very fine fellow indeed. He had no time to think what his kisses had done to Marcella. All that he grasped was that she was not like Violet who had drawn away from him to lead him on further; who had flirted with him and teased him seductively, and made him pay dearly for kisses by pleadings and humiliations: who had never given anything, and had never come one inch of the way to meet him.

”I say, Marcella,” he said, as he let her go. ”Don't you know anything at all about the art of lying? Can't you lie?”

She frowned at him. He went on quickly.

”I've never met a girl yet who admitted that she liked a man to kiss her. They lie and lie--they put up barriers every minute.”

”There can't be barriers between us, Louis. I'd rather die than have barriers,” she said quietly, though she did not realize why, or what she implied.

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