Part 30 (1/2)
”Not a bit of it! Men have to do the work of the world. Women are just the softness of life.”
”Cus.h.i.+ons for men to fall on?” she said mischievously.
”No, half-holidays when he's fed up with work.” He looked at her, laughing at her indignant face. ”Why be superior, Marcella? You're just as bad as anyone else, only you're not used to it and haven't thought of it before. Who likes being kissed?”
”Oh, but it wouldn't get in the way of my work,” she cried, flus.h.i.+ng hotly.
”Wait till you try it, dear child. The first time I ever got the fever taught me a lot. It wasn't love, of course.”
”When you loved Violet?” she asked in low tones.
”Oh Lord no! This was a little French girl who picked me up when I was squiffed after I'd pa.s.sed the First. About twenty of us--all from St.
Crispin's--had been up for the First. We all pa.s.sed but two, and we all had to get drunk to buck those two up. We went to the Empire and kicked up such a gory din that we were helped out. A little mamzelle from the Promenade took charge of me. I--I hadn't thought about those things much before. At home they were taboo. I'd always been terrified of girls--If I hadn't been drunk then I'd never have done it. I thought it unutterably beastly. For months after that I was afraid to look the Mater in the face. I thought she was unutterably beastly, as well, just because she was a woman. It made a tremendous dint on me.”
Marcella grasped about a tenth of what he meant. The rest sank into her mind to puzzle her later. But something sprang to the top of her consciousness and raised a question.
”Louis,” she said quickly, ”That night at Naples--when you were naughty.
You talked French to me. I don't know what you said, but the schoolmaster looked shocked.”
He flushed.
”Yes, I've been told that before. I always do talk French if I meet a girl when I'm boozy. I used to, to Violet, and she was--oh frightfully disgusted. And once I did to my sister! She, unfortunately, understands French. I suppose it's a good thing you don't.”
”Louis, do you say--_wrong_ things in French” she whispered.
”Things--you know, beastly things?”
He hesitated a moment and an impulse of honesty made him tell her the truth.
”Yes, I believe I say perfectly appalling things. You see--it's like this. I'm a queer inhibited sort of thing, dear. I'm always--till you took me in hand--fighting drink. I'm in a state of fighting and inhibiting. I've always been like that. Even when I was a little kid I was afraid to be natural because I was taught that the natural impulse was the wrong one. I sometimes want to say something frightfully charming to you, and don't for fear it's silly. I'm always wondering what people will think of me--because I'm so often wrong, you know.”
”I just don't care what anyone says or thinks,” she broke in.
”There's the difference between us, then. Well, you see, being an ordinary, average sort of human being, I think a lot about girls and all that. Only deep down is the puritanical old idea that it's wicked to do so. Really, honestly, Marcella, I'm not pulling your leg--when I first started dissecting at the hospital, I felt horribly indecent. It was a female thigh! I felt as if it ought to be clothed, somehow--I sort of kept thinking the Pater or someone would come into the lab, and round on me for being immoral. If it had been a male thigh I wouldn't have cared a bra.s.s tanner!”
”It must be awful to have barriers in your mind,” she pondered.
”It was just the same with booze. If I had a beer or a whisky in the club as all the others did, I saw the Pater disembodied before me, and had another to give me the courage necessary to face him. Everything, you see, everything--girls, drink, curiosities, courtesies, kindness--all got lumped together as things to keep in hand. I got in a fever of self-consciousness. I do now. I think everyone is watching and criticizing me. Then, you see, when I'm drunk, the watch I set on myself is turned out to gra.s.s and I get a d.a.m.ned good rest. I let myself rip!
In my sober moments I daren't go and order tea for the Mater in a bunshop because I'm petrified with terror of the waitress. When I'm drunk I'd barge into a harem. That first affair--with the French girl--was a tremendous thing to me. Most boys have played about with that sort of thing before that age. They looked down on me because I hadn't. But it made such a deep dint on my brain that whisky and s.e.x and French are all mixed up together and the one releases the other.”
She sighed.
”I do wish Dr. Angus was here, Louis,” she said. ”I wish I understood better.”
”You understand better than Violet did. She used to stay at our place a good deal, you know, and go with us to the seaside and to Scotland. Even when I was right off whisky she used to drive me to it. Evening dress, you know. Oh, frightfully _evening_! And--in a queer old place we stayed in in Scotland once there were heaps of mice. She used to run out of her room in the middle of the night saying she was frightened of them. And then I had to carry her back, and rub her feet because they'd got cold.
She was rather a maddening sort of person, you know. She'd lead one on to biting one's nails and tearing one's hair and then she'd laugh and kiss her hand and run away with my sister into her bedroom. And they'd both laugh. She understood the value of being a woman, did Violet. And she didn't let herself go cheap--I used to get the key of the tantalus and cart a whole decanter of whisky to bed to get over it. If she'd just have let me kiss her--”
He paused, frowning reminiscently.