Part 64 (2/2)

”Were you worried about me, old girl?” he asked.

”No, but dreadfully curious,” she began. He took a roll of dirty notes out of his pocket and threw it in her lap.

”Look! Alone I did it! Monish, old girl! Filthy lucre! Just enough to take us home. I meant to do it off my own bat, without asking your uncle!”

”But how on earth could you, in the time?” she asked.

”Navvying! That bally railway cutting at Cook's Wall! Lord, Marcella, if I don't get the Pater to pay for me to go to the hospital, I'll do a year first on the music-halls as the modern Hercules. I should make millions! My hands were blistered till they got like iron; my back felt broken; I used to lie awake at nights and weep till I got toughened. I had a few fights, too.”

”Why? Didn't they like you?”

”No, they're not so silly as you. They resented my English particularly, and they resented my funking whisky when they were all boozing. They thought I was being superior. Lord, if they'd known! One night, when they were calling me Jesus' Little Lamb and Wonky Willie, I saw red and tackled an Irishman. Of course, he knocked me out of time. I knew he would. And just to show them that I wasn't wonky, and wasn't a Cocoa Fiend--that was another name they had for me--I downed a tumbler full of whisky neat.”

She drew a deep breath.

”Oh, don't worry! It made me d.a.m.ned sick! Lord, wasn't I bad! There's something in my brain so fed up with the stuff that my body won't give it house-room.”

”Good thing too,” said Marcella.

”I'm not so sure,” he said reflectively. ”In a way, it's weak. Whisky still beats me, you see. There ought not to be anything on earth one's afraid of.”

”I think that's a bit morbid. I'm very much afraid of snails, and I certainly don't think I'm called upon to go and caress snails.”

”Ah, this is different. This isn't physical. It's psychological. Just as, once, I hungered for whisky, now I loathe and dread it. The ideal thing would be to be indifferent to it. That may come in time.”

Marcella asked him nothing about herself. What the doctors had told him she did not know: she was content to wait. All she wanted, now, was to get home.

They stayed a week in London with Louis's people. It was pathetic to see the mother's wistful anxiety and the father's open scepticism change to confidence as the week went by.

”He's a changeling, my dear,” said Mrs. Fame to Marcella when, in spite of the old lady's wish to keep them in London, they told her they must go North.

”Louis has always been a puzzle to me,” said his father. ”Even as a little chap he did things I couldn't understand--selfish things, crooked things--I don't understand what has happened to him.”

”If I told you you would think General Booth had been getting at me,”

said Marcella. ”But Louis will explain it all to you, some day.”

From the slowly dawning pride on the father's face and the pathetic hope of the mother Marcella guessed that Louis would not have to raise his fees on the music-halls.

The winds were black and wintry already round the station at Carlossie as the train drew in. Marcella had wired that she was coming, giving no explanations. Andrew had been very fidgety. He was wearing his first small suit and what he gained in dignity from knickers and three pockets he lost in comfort. At last he fell asleep. Marcella looked from him to Louis and felt that it was very childish of her, but she was really anxious to get them both home, put them on exhibition, as it were. She had never got over the feeling that Andrew had not merely happened, but was a voluntary achievement. Lately she had had the same idea about Louis. She wanted to see the effect of them both upon the people at home.

The station at Carlossie was just the same: it looked much smaller, and the people, too, seemed smaller. Dr. Angus was there in his Inverness cape, smiling with the same air of conscious achievement as Marcella felt.

”So ye're back again, Mrs. Marcella? I knew we'd be getting ye back soon. And bringing two men with ye!”

He shook hands gravely with Andrew and gave Louis a swift, appraising look that seemed to satisfy him.

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