Part 63 (2/2)

”I'm a wretched coward to say these things to you. It makes it harder for you. But I can't help it. Kraill was right when he said I'd got to cracking-point. If I were heroic I'd lie down and be a beautiful invalid, waiting for a happy release. It would be easier for you if I could. Louis, I just can't. It wouldn't be honest. If I die, it won't be a beautiful spectacle, my dear. I'll fight every inch of the way!

There's such a lot of me to kill. I'm so alive, and I love to be alive.

It--it won't be dignified--”

”Oh G.o.d, I wish I were a Christian, or a theosophist, or something, and believed people went on!” he groaned.

”I don't want to go on anywhere else,” she said. ”I want to go on here with you and Andrew. And I want to see Dr. Angus and Aunt Janet and all the others at Lashnagar--and--No, I don't want to see him,” she added, and thought again for a while in silence. ”I don't need to--”

He looked at her quickly, and said nothing.

”Louis, do you think I've been wrong? I remember I said something to Kraill about not wanting to die, though it seemed worlds away then. And he said: 'It seems to me that you take too much on yourself. Are you the ultimate kindliness of the world?' Perhaps it will be better for Andrew if I'm not there--Oh, but that's morbid!”

”It is,” he said decidedly. ”And you're not going to die--”

She broke in quickly: ”Just think if this had happened last year! I'd have been frantic for fear of leaving you and Andrew. Why, I would never have dared to go to the hospital, for fear of what might happen to you while I was there. And now I'm not a bit afraid of that.”

”Then don't be afraid at all. Look here, let's talk as if you're not my Marcella at all, dear. Let's talk as if you were someone we're both keen about. Can't you see that you're in very little danger, really? You're so young, and so tremendously hard--”

She tried to make him think she was rea.s.sured, but a little later the fear cropped out again.

”If I die,” she said quietly, ”what are you going to do? No, don't look miserable about it. I'm miserable enough for two of us, goodness knows.

But people have been known not to wake up after an operation, haven't they?”

”Just as they've been known to be run over by a taxi,” he said.

”Yes. Well then, let's try to be quite unemotional about this stranger called Marcella that we're both keen about. If she did happen to finish up--out of sheer cussedness and desire to make a sensation, next week, you'd be the victim of a ghost, Louis! I'd simply have to be back to see what you're up to! You know what a managing sort of person Marcella is, don't you?”

He made a desperate effort to be unemotional, and presently he said, very decidedly:

”I know now what I'm going to do, old girl! I absolutely refuse to allow illness to go on! There! That's a challenge to the Almighty, if He likes to take it--”

She laughed gently, with tears in her eyes.

”I feel helpless. And I'm fed up with feeling helpless. That socialization of knowledge has got to begin, or I'll--Oh. I don't know!

Look at the idiocy of it! Here we are in the twentieth century, and people are dying like flies all over the show. Why, there's no room for houses because there's so much room needed for grave-yards! And--even if they don't die, they're ill, most of them. And I'm not going to have it!”

”Louis! What are you going to do?” she said, staring at him, taken out of her fear by his enthusiasm. ”I've never seen you like this before.”

”No. I never have been. But this business of illness has just come and touched me on the raw, you see! You ought not to be ill. It's waste and lunacy to think of it. And I--ten years of my life wasted by a neurosis!

And your father, and Lord knows how many millions more! I'll tell you this much, Marcella! Before five years have gone by I'll be in the battlefield against illness, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if illness won't have to look out! I loathe it, just as you do! I resent it! I'm going to stop it. Listen, old girl, as soon as you're out of that hospital, you're off to England, and I'm going to the Pater, and I'm going on my knees to beg him to give me another go at the hospital. I've got to get my tools ready, you know--”

”Do you think your father will?”

”He'll be sceptical. I should if I were he. I've been such a bounder to him in the past. But if he's too sceptical to help--well, I'll go to Buckingham Palace and ask King George to lend me the money! I should think he'd be jolly glad to think there was a chance of wiping out illness for ever.”

Tears brimmed over: it was when she saw the eternal child in Louis that she loved him most, and was most afraid for him; not afraid now that he would waste himself again, but afraid that he would never touch the mountain-tops at which he was aiming.

”Yes, we'll go home,” she said dreamily. ”And I'll take you on Lashnagar--and we'll see them all again. I'll ask Uncle to give us the money to take us home. This wretched illness will take all we have.”

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