Part 52 (2/2)

”Louis! A savage?”

”They aren't savages. But after all, savage doesn't mean anything but wild, untamed. You're that, you know, old lady. Untamed even by motherhood. And I'd have thought that would have tamed even Petruchio's handful. But this Maori woman I was thinking about was in the King Country in New Zealand--You know, I'd read 'The Blue Lagoon' and thought it a bit overdrawn.”

”What is it?” she interrupted, pointing to the food imperiously.

”It's about a girl and a boy living on a desert island, and she has a baby without turning a hair. Remembering my nerve-racking experience of maternity in the Borough I thought Stacpoole was rather talking without his book. But when I saw this Maori I felt like sending him my humble apologies by wireless. The tribe was trekking. I was with them for months, you know, in the Prohibition Country. My diagnostic eye had foreseen a birthday and, as a matter of fact, I was getting rather funky and wis.h.i.+ng I had Hermann's 'Midwifery' to swot up. I saw myself the hero of the occasion, don't you know, das.h.i.+ng in to save her life, miles from civilization. One morning we were camping by a hot spring for the women to do some cooking and was.h.i.+ng. My patient disappeared with an old thing we called Aunt Maggie. Presently we trekked again, and I was feeling horribly uneasy about her, when I nearly dropped. There she was, sailing along in the midst of the other women, with the kid in her arms, looking as cool as a cuc.u.mber! Lord, I did feel small!”

He laughed reminiscently, and lighted his pipe.

”It seems right to me,” she said, looking away through the drifting smoke. ”Why should the coming of life mean pain for someone?”

”Don't know, old lady. But it does. I say, how do you think I'm getting on?”

They looked across the clearing and felt rather proud.

”I love it,” he said simply, ”taking nature in hand a bit--she's a wicked old harridan, isn't she? A naughty old lady gone wrong! Look at that gorse! We'll have spuds here in no time, and then, in a few years, wheat. I feel I'm making a dint on the face of the earth at last. In a hundred year's time, when I'm forgotten, the effect of these few months'

work will be felt. I say, am I talking hot air?”

”Not a bit. But let's do a bit more--Jerry calls it scene-s.h.i.+fting.”

She tossed the last piece of cake to an inquisitive kookaburra who had been watching the meal optimistically, with bright eyes and nodding head. It was a triumph, this cake--in several ways. The stationmaster at Cook's Wall had built his ”bosker hotel” at last, and had made it a store at which one could buy fruit, jam, sugar and various luxuries.

Louis had been in twice to the store lately, and had actually remembered the seed-cake on the _Oriana_ when he saw caraway seeds in the store. He volunteered the information that there was whisky for sale at the store, but did not mention whether he had wanted to buy it or not.

He got up, taking the mattock. Marcella began to fight a great stem running along the ground.

”Devilish stuff,” he said, turning back to look at her. ”See that little patch over there?”

She nodded, following his eyes. A brisk little gorse bush was bursting from the ground. A few feet away another was keeping it company.

”Devilish stuff!” he repeated. ”Just like a cancer--in pathology. You chop the d.a.m.ned thing out, root and branch, and there it pops out again, miles away from where it started. Look at that piece there.”

He attacked the little plant with rather unnecessary severity and dug up a thin, tough, cord-like root which he threw on the fire savagely.

”Louis, do you remember that schoolmaster on the _Oriana_?” she asked suddenly, staring thoughtfully at the long, thin leaders.

”Oh, that a.s.s who sat in my chair? Yes. Why?”

”He told me a fearful thing about cancer.”

”He would--blighted idiot. What was it?”

She hesitated a minute.

”He said he'd read in some book--he was always reading queer books--that cancer was an elemental that had taken possession of one's body. A horribly preying, parasitic life--feeding on one's body--Ugh, it made me feel sick! And it's so cruel, really, to say things like that. He seemed to suggest that elementals were something unclean that could not come except to unclean people. And--mother died of cancer. And mother was very beautiful.”

”Well, you can tell the footling a.s.s from me that he's a thumping liar.

Elemental grandmother! Let me tell you this much--cancers come from one thing only, and that's irritation--injury, often. Corsets, sometimes--or a blow--If I were to thump you--”

He laughed, and turned away.

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