Part 54 (1/2)

”Marcella,” he sobbed, kissing her hands, kneeling beside her desperate in his self-abas.e.m.e.nt. ”I thought I'd killed you.”

”You're not much of a doctor if you don't know I'd take much more killing than that,” she said. ”And I wanted to kill you for a minute, so we're equal.”

In a torrent all his explanations came pouring out. He had thought the whisky hunger was killed; he had tried to test his certainty and had failed.

”I got c.o.c.ky, old girl. I sw.a.n.ked to myself! I thought I'd got it beat and I'd just go and have one whisky at the Station Hotel to satisfy my own conviction. But when I'd had one I couldn't help it. I seemed to be outside myself, watching myself for the first two or three. I was interested. I kept thinking 'I'll tell Marcella she need not be frightened any more. I can drink two or three whiskies and not be a bally Blue Ribb.o.n.e.r any more. We need not be banished to the Bush for the rest of our lives to keep me out of danger.' Then I got muddled and quite lost grip. It had a sort of chemical effect, you know. I hated you for keeping me from whisky that was making me feel so fine and jolly again. I felt I'd been a bit of a prig lately. I loved the stationmaster and a few manganese miners who came in. In fact, I just wallowed again.

I came home hating you. I didn't come to see you. I came for money. And that's all. The whole thing's hopeless.”

”It was my fault this time, Louis. I went to bed and left you. If I'd not been so proud and so huffy I'd have kept you.”

”Yes, but only for a time, dear. I saw it all in a flash to-night when you lay there and I thought you were dead. Marcella, no savage would have done that--hurting you just now.”

”What rubbis.h.!.+ If you hadn't done it to me I would have done it to you,”

she said easily.

”Don't you see how hopeless it is? The very first time I go near whisky, I want it. And this happens. I was a madman to-night. It means that we've got to stick here for the rest of our lives. I daren't even go to the store to fetch things for you when you're ill. I have to hide in a hole like a fox when the dogs are after it.”

”After all, is it so very horrible here, Louis?” she whispered. ”I think it's been heaven. Our Castle, and the clearing--and next month my seeds that Dr. Angus sent will be coming up. And the baby, Louis! Just think of the millions of things we've got!”

But he knew better than she did the torment of his weakness and refused to be comforted. He was near suicide that night; he too had been happy, happier than ever in his tormented, unfriended life before. He had the terrible torture of knowing that it was he who had brought the cloud into their sky; he had the terror before him, with him, of knowing that he would keep on bringing clouds, all the more black because they both so loved the suns.h.i.+ne.

And she, when she undressed, sick and faint but comforted with the thought that once more a fight was over, blew the light out quickly so that he should not see the ugly purple mark of the pickaxe.

She usually slept with her nightgown unfastened so that the cool winds should blow over her through the trellis of the window. To-night she m.u.f.fled herself up tightly, and when he came in from a strenuous ten minutes in the lake, feeling once more as though she had sent him to dip in Jordan, she pretended to be asleep. Seeing her so unusually wrapped up, he thought she was cold, and fetched a blanket to cover her. She dared not yield to her impulse to hold out her arms to him and draw his aching head on to her breast for fear the bruise should grieve him.

CHAPTER XXV

Once more came peace, so sunlit and tender that it seemed as though they had wandered into a valley of Avilion where even the echoes of storms could not come, and doves brooded softly. They talked sometimes now of the coming of their son; Louis, once he had got over his conventional horror of such a proceeding, said that she would be as safe in Mrs.

Twist's care, with him hovering in the background, as though she had gone to the nursing home in Sydney, as he had suggested at first.

”I shall funk awfully to know you're going through it, old lady,” he told her. ”You know nothing about it yet. I've seen this thing happen dozens of times, and it's much worse than you imagine.”

She decided, privately, to spare him the misery of it all by sending him off into the Bush on an errand for Mr. Twist as soon as she was taken ill. But her scheme fell through. All one day of blue and silver in June, a winter's day with keen exhilaration in the air, she stayed with him in the clearing, burning the branches as he hewed them down. She felt scarcely alive. Her body was a queer, heavy, racked and apprehensive thing down on the ground. She watched it slowly walking about, dragging f.a.ggots of gorse fastened together by the swag-straps which she loosened as she cast the branches cracking and creaking into the flames. Her mind was restless, a little fey. Louis, seeing something of her uncertainty, stopped work early, and they walked home slowly over the cleared land that was now being ploughed.

”I feel proud of it, don't you?” she said, looking back. He nodded, watching her anxiously.

As she was making the tea pain, quite unbearable, seized her. She got out on the verandah so that he should not see her. After a while it pa.s.sed and, looking white, she came back into the room.

”I was going across to the Homestead to-night. Jerry's got a new record and wants to try it on us. But I feel tired. Will you ask Mrs. Twist to come and have a gossip?” she said casually.

The pain came back, quite astonis.h.i.+ng her. She had heard that it was horrible, but had not expected it to be quite so horrible as this. Her mind had only room for one thought--that Louis must not suspect--or, in his anxiety; he would lose grip on himself and make away for Cook's Wall and oblivion. Going into her bedroom she took pencil and paper and wrote a note to Mrs. Twist, who understood the plot and was ready to invent some lost sheep for Jerry and Louis to hunt up.

”Can you come up? I think it's happening to me. Please send Louis away,”

she wrote, and folded the note into an envelope which she fastened down.

That moment she found herself crying out without her own volition. She slammed the door and lay down on the floor inside it, to barricade it against Louis. She heard his steps coming along the verandah and clenched her hands fiercely over her mouth.