Part 57 (1/2)

”Be careful when you cross the floor. It's worse than ice, to make it easy for those who can't dance. You just cling to someone and slip if you don't know any steps. Some of them say their slip is a waltz: others call it a gavotte, and some say it's the tango. Old Mike's very definite that it's a jig. The great thing is to make the slip coincide with a groan from the gramophone. Just watch a minute, and you'll see that there is quite a lot of method in it.”

She looked round for Louis, who was in a corner with some of the miners.

By his flushed face, his high voice and hysterical laugh she guessed that she must try to keep him from seeing Kraill that night. She never could be quite sure what he would do or say.

Mrs. Twist was pathetically honoured that the ”gentleman from England”

should have chosen her birthday for his visit, and Marcella left him with her.

”It's a pity to be Martha to-night, Professor Kraill,” she said in a low voice. ”I want to be Mary--”

She was gone before he could answer.

The noise had made Andrew cross and tired, and she put him to bed in the hammock under the gum trees, and hitched up her own hammock in the bedroom next to Louis's. She knew that he would be drunk to-night; experience had given her a plan of action. She had to pretend to go to bed with him and stay with him until he was asleep. Then she crept out into the open air beside the boy.

She tried to transform the storeroom into the semblance of a bedroom, but it did not occur to her to apologize for discrepancies; she would not have done so had the king come to visit her: indeed, she considered that he had, for Kraill had always taken his place in her imagination, as she had told him, with heroes of romance.

When she got back to the Homestead everyone was ready for supper. They had to get away early, for most of them had to walk the five miles to Klond.y.k.e. The Professor seemed to be at home with the miners. His air of intense interest that had so won Dr. Angus' heart had immediately flattered and enslaved them all. Before they said good night he had committed himself to visiting them all. Marcella won a good deal of reflected glory by possessing him as friend.

”Are you tired of us?” she asked him after a while.

”I am very glad I won that toss!” he said.

”Which?”

”I tossed up whether to stay in Sydney or come here”--he stopped sharp, for it seemed to him that she looked hurt. He decided that, with Marcella, it would be better to be honest than pleasant.

”As a matter of fact, your letter completely puzzled me. I'm a modest sort of person, you know. To be asked to help anyone seemed such a wonderful thing to me that I scarcely believed it. If a man had written the letter I should have believed it more. But as I told you, I can't take women seriously--”

”Before you've finished with me you will,” she said, and laughed.

She was just going to suggest to him that he was tired and should go to bed: she was so anxious to get him out of the way before Louis came out of his corner that she could scarcely talk coherently. But just at that moment Louis came up to her. He took no notice of Kraill or Mrs. Twist, who was quite used to him by this time. At the back of Louis's mind was the obsession that in two days he would draw his pay; half of him was a blazing hunger for whisky after three weeks' abstinence and hard work and peace; the other half of him was fighting the desire desperately; he wanted to win over one of these warring halves to the other; the fact that he had been drinking all the evening had weakened the finer half; his brain worked quickly. If he could find some grievance against Marcella he would be able to excuse himself to himself for getting drunk, for taking the money that he knew she needed. He wanted peace--unity within. So he raved at her because the tag had come off his shoelace, and it was her wifely duty to see that a new lace had been put into the shoe that morning. From that he went on to the usual gibberish of French, the usual accusation against men in the neighbourhood, the usual _melange_ of Chinese tortures and gruesome operations. From Kraill's horrified face Marcella saw that he understood more than she did. She had never been sufficiently morbid to ask anyone to translate his words for her, even after more than three years of them.

She wondered weakly what would happen. Judging Kraill by her father and Dr. Angus she knew that his ordinary code of convention could not let him disregard Louis as the others did, as being merely a rather weak, silly young man, who ”went on the s.h.i.+kker” every month and made many varieties of a fool of himself. Everyone gave him the mixture of disgusted toleration and amus.e.m.e.nt given to a spoilt child who kicks his nurse in the park, and pounds his toys to pieces. Marcella never talked about him to anyone; she cut off ungraciously the attempts at sympathetic pumping made by the women at Klond.y.k.e. They concluded that she did not feel anything since she never cried out. But, looking at Kraill's face for one fleeting instant Marcella knew that he understood how sore and shamed she was.

”He's very ill, really,” she said in a low voice. ”But no one believes it. They think he's just wicked. I'll tell you all about it to-morrow. I expect you know without my telling you. But I didn't want you to see him like this. I've fixed up a bed for you at home. Will you let Jerry show you the way?”

He decided instantly that she knew her own business better than he did, and that his desire, both natural and conventional, not to leave a woman to see a drunken man to bed, was not going to help her.

”Shut your door up tight, please,” she said. ”He may not go to sleep for a long time.”

He nodded, looked at her to show her that he had begun to take her seriously, and turned away with Jerry, rather astonished to find himself dismissed so coolly from the scene. She turned to Louis, forgetting Kraill. Jerry, who adored Marcella, became very voluble on the subject of Louis; Kraill listened mechanically to all he was saying as they crossed the paddock.

It was one of Louis's bad nights; he had been drinking both whisky and squareface. A letter from his mother, saying how she was longing to see her grandson, had roused him to great deeds. His fall after such resolutions was always the more bitter; always it needed more than usual justification; always Marcella was the scapegoat. She had forgotten Kraill in the intensity of her misery until, worn out by his ravings, Louis fell asleep. She knew, then, that he was safe for the rest of the night and she crept out silently into the cool cleanness of the garden, closing the door softly. Only his loud, stertorous breathing came to her with mutterings and groans. The moon had risen and little mist-wreaths walked in and out among the wonga-vines on the fence: Marcella's golden flowers with which she had planted the clearing all round the house--nasturtiums, sunflowers, marigolds and eczcoltzias--shone silvery and ethereal. The smoke from the dying fires rose in thin white needles, plumed at the top: out in the Bush a dingo barked shrilly and some small beast yelped in pain. Andrew stirred and she tucked the clothes round him, kissing his brown, round arm and fingers, wis.h.i.+ng he were awake so that he could be crushed in her arms and let her bury her aching head on his wriggling little body for an instant--he was never still for longer.

She sat down on the edge of the verandah, her arm round the post; her eyes were aching; she felt too tired and helpless to go on living and yet the relief of having got Louis to sleep was really very great. She was trying to decide to write to Dr. Angus, asking him to give her some sort of sleeping draught she could give Louis when he had one of his bad times; she had forgotten that, in a week's time, all the money would be spent again and they would be happy for another period: but to-night's misery, more and more each time, was beginning to shut out pictures of a peaceful to-morrow, a vindication of faith.

A faint sound behind her made her start in horror, afraid lest he had wakened. But it was Kraill who was standing quite still looking down at her.

”Does this sort of thing happen very often?” he said with an air of intimate interest that rea.s.sured her.