Part 53 (1/2)
”Yes, I know,” she said quietly. She was thinking of that stormy scene between her father and the two doctors when the faint smell of chloroform crept round her at the farm while she waited outside on the landing.
CHAPTER XXIV
For nearly five months peace stole round Castle Lashcairn. Marcella was almost incredibly happy and so was Louis. Mrs. Twist and Marcella held long consultations about the baby, but Marcella, afraid of worrying Louis, tried to make him forget all about it. Even when, as time went on, she really began to feel tired and unable to work with him, she fought her tiredness indignantly; she was terrified lest he should get ”raked up” and go along to the hotel for solace. So she hid everything from him, arranging all details with Mrs. Twist who promised to ”see her through it.” There was no nurse within a hundred miles; there was a dreadful old woman who had brought several bottles of squareface with her when she attended Mrs. Twist at Millie's birth. They decided to dispense with her services.
Marcella sent money to Mrs. King to buy things for her in Sydney. They spent a whole Sunday evening making out the list. Many of the things he had learnt, from textbooks, to a.s.sociate with babies, Mrs. Twist thought unnecessary, but Marcella, with no basic opinion of her own, let him have his way, and one day in May he took Gryphon, the Twist pony, to fetch the packages from the station.
He was to be away one night--starting at four in the morning he would rest at the hotel for the night and start back next morning. That night Marcella lay long awake, thinking about him. She was vaguely anxious; when she fell asleep she dreamed that he came home to Castle Lashcairn drunk. He was talking French--his eyes were wild, his mouth loose and s...o...b..ring, his tongue bitter.
She started up in fright and rolled out of the hammock.
”No--no. It couldn't happen again. It couldn't. We could never live now, if we were to get miserable like that after we've been so happy. He's so--so clean, now. He can't get dirty again.”
She could not sleep after that, and walked down to the lake in the moonlight. She was really feeling ill. Louis's lectures and diagrams and descriptions of ”midder” cases at the hospital sickened and frightened her. Mrs. Twist, with the average woman's unscientific and morbid interest in such illness, sickened her still more.
The moonlight was very bright; the weather was warm, for May. Louis had begged her not to swim now. She had given in to him rather than worry him, but a sudden impulse to do what she thought pleasant without troubling him came to her, and she slipped out of her nightgown quickly.
The lake lay at her feet, a s.h.i.+mmering pool of silver, almost without ripples. It lapped very gently against her feet, bringing back the softly lapping waters of Lashnagar on spring mornings. It was adorably, tinglingly cold; she forgot the dream in the exhilaration and gave a little cry of rapture as she waded further out. Then, without warning, a ghost was in the water beside her. She stared, and knew that it was her own reflection. With a little cry she hurried back to land, her heart thumping wildly as she pulled on her nightgown over her wet body with trembling hands.
”How horrible I look!” she whispered. ”He mustn't know I look as awful as that!”
The next day she waited for him, anxious to unpack the thrilling parcel from Sydney, but he did not come, and all the night she sat waiting, afraid that he had met with some accident. If someone had come, then, and told her he was drunk she would not have believed it. It seemed to her just as unreal a thing as last night's dream.
But at four o'clock in the morning as she sat on the verandah, half nodding with red-rimmed, heavy eyes, she saw him come stumbling along, holding on to the pony's neck.
She went out to meet him, knowing just exactly what she was going to meet. And she felt frozen with horror. The average man coming home drunk is not a tragedy. He is merely amiably ridiculous. To Louis, after all his fights and all his hopes, tragedy had certainly come, but he was too drunk to know it yet. He began to bluff and lie just as usual.
”Ought be 'shamed, sending a chap thirty--thirty--thirty miles f'r lot fem'--fem'--fripp--fripp--fripperies! Sick an' tired, stuck in with a wom' day an' night f'r months. 'Nough make any man k-k-kick.”
She did not speak, and he went on in the same old way, French words peppering the halting English; she could have shut her eyes and fancied she was back in the city again, or on the s.h.i.+p.
He muttered and shouted alternately all the way to the cottage; there was a meal waiting but he could not eat; sitting on the edge of the verandah, he ordered her to light him a cigarette. She knew there were none in the house and felt in his coat pocket, guessing he had bought some. She was not really unhappy. She was too sick, too frozen to feel yet at all.
”Come out my pock',” he growled, hitting her arm away fiercely, his teeth clenched. ”Aft' my money, eh? Think you're winning, don't you? In league with the Pater against me. Think you'll always have me under your thumb, nev' giv' free hand. There's not a man on G.o.d's earth would stand it, d.a.m.ned if there is--tied to wom' ap.r.o.n strings all the time!”
”Very well, get your own cigarette. I'm going to bed.”
”Y-you w-w-would,” he said, and laughed shrilly. ”Think you've got me in blasted bush, work like blast' galley slave while you skulk in bed.”
”Oh don't be such an idiot, Louis. You'd better go to bed. I'm tired of you,” she said, going past him into the bedroom.
”Ta' my boots off,” he grunted, trying to reach his feet and overbalancing. ”If you can't make yourself 'tractive to a man, you can be useful. Nice d.a.m.ned freak you are f'r any man t' come home to! Nev'
trouble to dress please me--like Vi'let.”
Marcella began to laugh hysterically. It was uncanny how his opinion of her appearance coincided with her own.
”Wom' your condish' no d.a.m.n goo' t' any man!” he mumbled. She went past him, into the room and left him. It was the first time she had made no attempt to soothe and sober him and bring him back. She felt impatient with him, and horribly lonely and frightened of being with him, horribly longing to run to someone and be comforted. But she was just as anxious to hide the trouble from the Twists and knew that she must bear it alone.
She cried for hours, completely disheartened, longing pa.s.sionately to go to him and ask him to a.s.sure her it was only a dream, and he really was cured as she had imagined. But at last she fell asleep, too proud to go and ask him to come to bed again, guessing that he would sleep in the living-room.
She wakened early and started up with full recollection of what had happened. In the light of morning, after a sleep, she was sick with herself for having forgotten her theory that he was an ill man; she had let personal annoyance stop her from trying to help him. Br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with love and pity and self-disgust she ran out to find him, for she guessed he would be penitent now, and in black despair.