Captivity

It was a wet, miserable day when they drew alongside at Port Philip. Louis took the communal eight shillings, Marcella kept sixpence for luck. He went ashore before most of the passengers; she waited on board for her uncle.

When he came he was not at all what she had expected him to be. To begin with, he was very chilly—a queer, nervous man who told her he had not been in Melbourne for ten years and found great changes. He seemed to live so much alone that he was frightened to talk to anyone. His hands were hard with labour, but he told her casually that he had a sheep run bigger than Yorkshire and a hundred thousand sheep. His wife had been dead for five years: his house was run by his three daughters.

"We live seventy miles from a station, and fifty miles from the nearest neighbours," he said, looking at her doubtfully. "You don't think you'll be lonely? It's a hard life—I had no time to tell your aunt the many disadvantages, for she said you'd started when she cabled."

Marcella saw quite well that she was not wanted and felt immensely relieved that there was no necessity for her to go to Wooratonga. Haltingly and stumblingly she asked him for the money, without telling him Louis's chain of lies at all. He took little notice of what she said. Money means very little in Australia where things are done on a large scale. Looking immensely relieved he said it would no doubt be much happier for her to go to stay with her friends—and how much money did she want?

Marcella thought ten pounds—she really did not know. But he laughed at that and, taking her along to his bank, gave her fifty pounds. It seemed a lot of money to her, but he waved her thanks away, telling her a long tale about catching fresh-water oysters in the creek near his homestead. He seemed frightened of the traffic, frightened of the people.

"I'll be very glad to get back," he said, as they stood outside the bank watching the street cars clang by. "I've lived in the back blocks so long that houses suffocate me and people all look like monstrosities. I'm glad to have seen you, though. I was very fond of Rose, as a boy."

But he asked no questions about her or Andrew. He simply took for granted all that Marcella said, and was immensely interested in his sheep and his garden. He had recently imported a Chinese gardener who was going to do wonderful things.

"I ought to take you somewhere to get lunch," he said doubtfully, looking at the crowds of people and then at his watch. "There's a train in one hour that will let me catch a connection at midnight."

"Then I'll take you to the station," said Marcella promptly, and added on impulse, "I'm a bit sorry I'm not coming with you, though. I'd have liked to see my cousins—"

"I don't suppose you'd like them much. They are nothing like Rose. I married an Australian, you know, and the girls are like her. They have had very little schooling. They are good girls, very good girls, but just a little hard," he sighed a little, and Marcella felt a quick pang of regret for his loneliness. Obvious though it was that he did not want her, she wished, for a moment, she could have gone with him to cheer his solitude.

"But Ah Sing makes all the difference to me," he added hopefully. "He's growing strawberries, and next week, I hope, we shall see the asparagus peep through."

So she left him on the platform to dream of his sheep and Ah Sing his only friend, while she dreamed of what next week would bring.

She felt it was almost impossible to wait to tell Louis the good news; she wished she had arranged to meet him in the city; she wished all sorts of things as she wandered, solitary, round the streets, feeling very unsteady on her feet after so long on a buoyant floor, and expecting the pavement to rock and sway at every step. She went into the Post Office and despatched letters home. As she was going down the street again rather aimlessly she caught sight of Mrs. Hetherington and Mr. Peters coming out of a restaurant, and was reminded forcibly of Jimmy who would be alone in the drizzling rain on board.

Buying a great box of chocolates, a basket of peaches and a clockwork train she hurried back to the ship, feeling very wealthy.

It was a dreary day. Great Customs House buildings blotted out any possible view, reminding her very much of the ugliness of Tilbury. The rain drizzled down, warm rain that covered the walls of the cabins in streams of moisture; the sailors loading and unloading cargoes with loud creakings of donkey engines swore in sheer irritation; somewhere on the wharf sheep kept up an incessant and pitiful bleating all the day while sirens shrieked out in the stream. Jimmy was the only happy person on board, loading his train with chocolates and unloading them into his mouth after a tortuous trip along the dining table amongst glasses, knives and forks. It was the longest day Marcella had ever known; as the swift twilight passed, the passengers came aboard damp and damped; most of them were grumbling; all looked thoroughly pessimistic about Australia. The schoolmaster was one of the first to come solemnly along the deck under an umbrella. He had avoided Marcella rather pointedly lately, but he came and talked quite affably for a while, didactically contrasting Melbourne with Naples and Colombo.

The Oriana was to sail at eight o'clock; Marcella would not let herself be anxious; she had resolved that she must trust Louis now, and, knowing that he had scarcely any money and no friends, she could not imagine he would get into mischief. But as the last passengers came aboard and the first warning bell rang out, she began to grow cold with fear. The rain was pouring now in a sheet of water; she stood on deck in the green white glare of the arc lamps, which only lighted a circumscribed pool of radiance, and made the surrounding darkness blacker.

The second bell went; she heard the engine-room telegraph ring and the ship began to vibrate to the throb of the engines. She was feeling choked with fear: a thousand apprehensions went through her mind: he had been run over and was dead: he had lost his way: he was ill in hospital, crying out for her.

"Has your friend not come aboard?" asked the schoolmaster at her elbow.

She shook her head. It was impossible to speak.

"I suppose he has mistaken the time of sailing," said the schoolmaster soothingly.

"Do you think I ought to go ashore to look for him?" she cried, articulate at last in her misery, and ready to take advice.

"I think he should be able to take care of himself," he said carefully.

"Ah, but he isn't. I must go and find him," she cried wildly. "What sort of hands will he get into if he's left to himself?"

At that moment the last bell rang, and the boat began to move very slowly away from the wharf—perhaps a minute early. Knollys told Marcella afterwards that he guessed the captain had sailed early on purpose, for just at that moment he saw a group of four people dripping with rain rush on to the slippery boards of the jetty. They were four who had been pretty noticeable as law-breakers during the whole trip—at least, so the captain thought. Marcella gave a cry of hapless disappointment as she saw Louis with Ole Fred, the red-haired man and another. They were laughing wildly, and almost close enough to touch the rails of the ship.

"Jump, Louis," she cried wildly.

"Some flow's—for you, ole girl!" he cried, grinning loosely. "Mished bally boat! Catch, ole girl—flow's," and he threw a great bunch of bedraggled-looking flowers that had very obviously been dropped several times in the greasy mud. They fell helplessly into the water. Marcella could not stop to think of anything sensible. All she could see to do was to jump overboard to him and snatch him from the grinning men who were lurching at his side. But as she put her hand on the rail the schoolmaster drew her back.

"Thass ri! Come on, ole girl! Marsh—Marshella—come an' sleep in—sh-sh-shtreets! Got no money, ole girl. Marsh—Marshella! Parlez vous Franshay? Eh? Ah, oui, oui. Marsh-la! I wan' a woman! Beau-ful wi' shoulders—"

"Oh—oh," she cried, burying her face in her hands in horror.

"I should advise you to go below," said the schoolmaster's restrained voice.

But she was irresistibly drawn to look at Louis, to plead with him with her eyes, though her voice refused to work. And at that moment his unsteady foothold on the streaming planks gave way, and he sat down heavily. There were six or eight feet of black water now between the ship and the quay, but Marcella could hear plainly the foolish laughter of the other three as they tried to lift him to his feet. Ole Fred fell beside him, smashing a bottle as he did so, while several cans of tinned stuff went rolling out of his arms into the water. Louis sat, laughing helplessly until he realized that Marcella's white face was vanishing and he kissed his hand to her solemnly.

"Goo' ni' ole girl. Going fin' woman. Meet thee at Philippi! Ah, oui, oui! Marsh—ella! Look! Noblest Rom' of them all! Elements so mixshed—mixshed—can't stan' up, ole girl."

She heard no more for the laughter of the others who were all sitting heaped together on the slippery boards now. Sick and aching she stood there in the rain, scarcely realizing when the schoolmaster wrapped his raincoat round her; she was wondering whether she would have been happier if she had known he was lying dead in the mortuary, or ill in the hospital instead of sitting, too drunk to move out in the rain on the quay. And suddenly she knew quite well. He had said love was a hunger, and she would understand some day that it was as tigerish a hunger as drink hunger or any other. In that moment of utter disgust and pain and despair she understood that that hunger had come to her though she did not yet comprehend it. It had taken hold of her now—she writhed at the indignity of the thought, but she knew quite well that she actually wanted his presence with her whether he were rude and overbearing, weak and appealing, superior and instructive or drunk and filthy. She simply hungered to have him about her. Always ready to query, to examine motives, she asked herself whether this were not, after all, merely a species of vanity in her that wanted to hold and save this helpless man who, it seemed, could not live for a day without her. And she got no answer to the question—the black water rushed past, chill and pitiless: the rain-swept sky was starless, the streaming decks deserted.

At last she went below, and found it impossible to pass his cabin door. Everybody else was there, about the alleyways or in the saloon, safe and happy: only Louis had to bring himself to disaster every time. Opening his cabin door she went in. His things were all thrown about, his shaving tackle on the bunk, his pyjamas on the floor. Taking them up with hands that trembled she noticed that there were no buttons on them. The pathos of this was more than she could bear. On the floor were the two cups in which he had made tea before they reached port that morning. The teapot they had bought at Gibraltar lay overturned. Quite mechanically she cleaned up the tea-leaves and washed the cups. Then she could bear it no longer and, throwing herself on his bunk, she buried her face in his pillow and sobbed until she was exhausted.

There were things to be endured the next few days. The purser came along, got Knollys to pack Louis's things and then sealed them. This meant that Marcella was shut away from all association with him; it seemed an unwarrantable interference with what she considered her property. The schoolmaster was surprisingly comforting and kind; he went out of his way to entertain her: Knollys brought unexpected tea in the morning in an attempt to make up for the loss of Louis. A young Scotsman, a sugar planter going out to the Islands, to whom she had talked until the fact that she was "another man's girl" had put a taboo upon her, insisted that she should, in the cold evenings on deck, wear his fur coat which he had brought rather unnecessarily; Jimmy tried to comfort her with apples. Mrs. Hetherington, whom the end of the voyage had left nervy and cross, said cattish things. She thought Marcella had shown very little tact in throwing herself at Louis; she advised her, with the next man, not to tire him out.

"Oh, you're an idiot," cried Marcella, her eyes full of tears, and decided that this was an occasion for her father's favourite epithet. "A double-distilled idiot! How have you managed Mr. Peters except by never leaving him alone for a minute?"

"I am a woman of the world, and understand men," she said airily. "I wove a net about him—in ways you would not understand, my child."

"Don't want to," snapped Marcella. "I'm not a spider!"

They anchored out in the stream in Sydney Harbour, going ashore in tenders. Marcella scanned the quay anxiously to find Louis, though Knollys told her that he would, most probably, be in by train to-morrow at noon. But she had an idea that he might have got through earlier, and hurried up to the General Post Office, which he had told her was his only address in the Colonies, to which his letters were sent. But it was a fruitless errand. Enquiry at the station told her that, as Knollys had said, the next train possible for Louis would be in at noon to-morrow. She turned back through the streets that were so extraordinarily like London in spite of Chinese, German and Italian names. As she passed the Post Office for the second time it occurred to her that there might be letters for her there, and found quite a bundle of them in a little pigeonhole high up. There was also a cablegram that had been waiting two days. She opened that first. It was extravagantly long; the name "Carlossie" at the head of it gave her a sickening pang of homesickness for a moment. She read:

"Letter from Port Said arrived. Very anxious. Only way you treat drunkard is leave him alone. Impossible cure. Above all do not marry him or shall blame myself. Writing. Await letter I implore you.—Angus."

It was extraordinary extravagance for Dr. Angus. She felt guilty at having worried him.

"But I never mentioned marrying Louis! I simply said he was one of the passengers I was interested in."

There was a letter from Aunt Janet written after the Oriana had sailed and sent overland to Marseilles.

"I certainly miss you," she wrote, "but I shall get over it in time, I expect. One gets very used to everything in time. I wonder if you will ever come back? I expect so. Wullie the Hunchback came along with fish for me twice. He misses you badly. You were always a great deal with him."

Letters from Mrs. Mactavish and from Wullie, dictated to and written by Bessie, said that she would be back soon; standing under the portico of the Post Office, surrounded by the flower sellers with their bunches of exuberant waratah, feathery wattle and sweet, sober-looking boronia, she let her mind travel back to Lashnagar and the acrid smoke of the green-wood fires, the pungency of the fish, the sharp tang of the salt winds pushed the heavy perfume of flowers aside. In a moment the last six weeks of mad, unhappy dreaming and hoping vanished; she saw herself back again in her own sphere among her own people. She tried to picture Louis there, too, and realized horribly that he would never fit into the picture. Against Wullie and the doctor and her aunt he would look so vulgar, so pretentious, so tinsel-coloured. And how they would laugh at a man who could not master himself, a man who cried!

"Why, I'm a snob! I was hurt when he thought I'd disgrace him by my bad manners. And now I'm being just as cruel!"

Then she jerked herself away from Lashnagar and stood with the last letter in her hand, afraid to open it. It was postmarked Melbourne and had come in that morning. It was in Louis's writing, and gave her an acute sense of distress. She stood still by a shop window, looking into it blindly until she realized that she was looking at a crocodile and some snakes squirming about in tanks in a naturalist's window. The straggly writing reminded her of the ugly snakes: it told her that he was drunk more or less when the letter was written; she looked from the letter to the snakes. One of them crawled writhingly over the others, lifted its head and put out its tongue at her: shivering, she opened the letter.

"MY OWN DARLING,

"Wasn't it a sell? That damned captain's had a down on me all the trip. I reported him to the shipping company and I'm trying to get a free pass from them by rail. Otherwise I should come by the train that has brought this letter. By great luck I ran into an old girl I knew in New Zealand. She's a nurse who saved my life once when I was in hospital there. She's a dear—Oh quite old; don't get jealous, my pet! I'm staying the night at an hotel in Little Collins Street. The landlord has lent me a fiver, so don't worry about me. One thing I've to tell you—a terrible confession. I lost your father's ring in my haste the other night, but never mind. I'll buy you another. I hope your Uncle stumped up. Australia's a damnable place to be hard up in. Will you tip my stewards for me and see my things through the Customs? Give Knollys and the other chap ten shillings each. They haven't killed themselves on my behalf, or it would have been a quid. Tell them I sent it. I don't want them to know I'm hard up. If I hit up that railway pass I should be through before lunch on Saturday. And then, old girl, there'll be doings! I hear you can get hitched up in Sydney for about twenty-seven bob, without waiting for notices of any sort. Till then, all my love and all my thoughts are for you.

"Your own Louis.

"P.S. (Just like a woman) You'd better get something decent and not Scotch to wear if your uncle came down decently. And book us rooms at the Hotel Australia. They do you very well there."

It was her first love letter. She felt, vaguely, that it lacked something though she did not quite know what. She hated the talk about money and about her uncle. She hated that he could borrow money so casually from a nurse who had been good to him. She wished that terrible hunger he had predicted had not happened to her. She knew, with absolute certainty, that Dr. Angus had gauged her fatal habit of conceited anxiety to help other people when he cabled to her not to marry a drunkard whom she had merely put to him as a hypothetical case. And she knew the doctor was inevitably right about the folly of marrying a man like Louis.

"But he's wrong about there being no cure. When he is with me every minute and I can look after him as if he is my little baby, he won't be able to do it. I'll be a gaoler to him—I'll be his providence, his mother, his nurse, his doctor. Oh everything—I'll be what God was to father."

Down on Circular Quay she felt she could not go aboard the Oriana yet. In spite of the unsteadiness of her feet it was very pleasant to be walking about in a new land, so, taking out Louis's letter again she went on rather blindly through the wharves, reading it. A Japanese boat was loading; smells of garlic and of spice and sandalwood were wafted to her from the holds and weaved into her thoughts of Louis; a little further along there was a crowd of stevedores clustered in the roadway round a violent smell of whisky. She turned away, sickened by her memories of that smell, with her father's ghost and Louis's at her side, but uncontrollable curiosity made her press on again. A great barrel—like the barrel at Lashnagar—had been broken by falling from the top storey out of the clutch of a derrick; there was a pool of blood, dreadful and bright in the roadway and men were lifting the crushed body of a man into an ambulance; quite close to the pool of blood was one of whisky that was running into the gutter. Two big, bronzed, blue-shirted men were kneeling beside it, dipping their hands in it and licking them greedily; trembling at the same time and looking sick with the fright of sudden death. From a warehouse near by came a heavy smell of decay—sheep skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts and socks among the rigging, threw soapy water at each other and skated about the decks on lumps of soap.

A little further along by the wall was a great garden; she went in in a dream; unfamiliar flowers covered unfamiliar bushes with pink and scarlet snow; a bed of cactus looked like a nightmare of pincushions and tumours. She sat down beside them, under a low, gloomy leaved eucalyptus and dreamed. The champagne quality of the air, the sunlight dancing on the blue water, the great banks of dark green trees on the opposite shore, with prosperous, happy-looking little red houses nestling among them brought about an effect of well-being that soft weather and beautiful surroundings always gave her. She had, all her life, been able to escape from unhappiness by the mere physical effect of going into the sunshine and the wind—and then unhappiness and grief seemed impossible, incredible. Sitting there with half-closed eyes she dreamed of the future; the disgust of Melbourne had gone; the disillusionment of Louis's letter had gone, and yet she had very few delusions about what was going to happen to her.

She wished she had the courage to run away now, to her uncle, or anywhere away from Louis. And she knew quite well that nothing on earth would make her leave him. She was beginning to realize, vaguely, what marriage to him might mean; she had flashing visions of him, drunk, dirty, foolish and—beastly. She shrunk from him fastidiously; even thinking of him made her heart thump in sheer horror; she felt that, to be shut up in a room with him when he was drunk would be an indignity, a disgust too horrible to contemplate. And he had hinted things that frightened her, about her "having her work cut out" about her "not realizing what she had taken on." Next minute the soft sunlight and the fluttering leaves made her think of him when he was not drunk, and she frowned; she so hated his air of superiority, his calm pushing aside of her opinions as not worth notice, his cool insistence on her inferiority as a woman.

"Still, he's awfully clever," the dancing water told her. But she knew that he was not more clever than very many other people and that his cleverness had never been of any use except in getting money.

"He's grown up—a big, grown up man, and you're only a girl," said the soft, exhilarating breeze that sang in her hair. And that thought allowed no answer, it was so flattering, so satisfying.

"And—he needs me. He says he'll die without me," she told herself, and that was unanswerable.

Suddenly she stood up and looked over the sea wall. There seemed to be two Louis in her hands, being weighed and, all at once, she felt a little helpless and leaned rather heavily against the sea wall.

"It isn't a bit of use. I don't honestly believe any of these things are the real reason I'm going to marry him. I honestly believe I want to, so what's the good of lying to myself about it? But—oh what an idiot I am! It seems to me—there's something a bit degrading—in marrying a man like Louis—simply because—because—you want to."

She walked round and round the big eucalyptus as though she were in a cage. Then she came back and stood against the wall again, watching the sailors on the man-of-war with unseeing eyes. She felt hot and flushed and a little ashamed of herself. She felt that there was something rather disgraceful in wishing Louis were there to kiss her; something a little humiliating in longing so utterly that to-morrow might come when they could be together.

"I never, never, never thought I'd be such an idiot! I thought I'd fall in love with a king, or something—Oh my goodness, what a mess!" Her father came into her mind, striding giant-like over Ben Grief in his shabby old tweeds; she frowned and bit her lips and told herself, in bewilderment, that if only Louis had been like him she would have married him without any feeling of humiliation. And she had the uncomfortable feeling that, had her father been alive, she would never have dared to marry Louis. Andrew would have put him in the sea, or something equally final and ignominious.

She stared fixedly at the rippling water, with tight lips, and nodded her head at it.

"Yes, it's perfectly disgusting. It's degrading—it's—it's beastly to be shutting myself up like this with a drunken man. I believe I'd be better dead—from a selfish point of view—"

Next minute her eyes softened.

"But think how eager he is—what a boy he is—like Jimmy! And how he trusts me not to let those awful miseries happen to him any more."

She turned round, shook herself together and began to march back to the ship, her father's eyes shining through hers for a while.

"Marcella Lashcairn," she said solemnly, "you're going to stop asking yourself rude questions for ever and ever, Amen! You haven't time to waste on introspection. You love him. That's a good thing, anyway. Never mind how you love him, never mind if it's a John the Baptist love or a mother love or a fever produced by the tropics, as Wullie said, you've to do things as best you can and understand them afterwards, just trusting that God will burn out all the beastliness of them in the end. And—" she added, as an afterthought, "If he gets drunk I'll shake the life out of him."

If Louis had seen her just then he would probably have shied at marrying her.

She went on board to a deserted ship, hating to stay ashore without Louis. Even the passengers who were going on to Brisbane had gone to sleep ashore. Knollys told her that Jimmy had cried desperately because he was being taken away from her, and that Mr. Peters was drunk in his grief at ending his acquaintanceship with Mrs. Hetherington. Later, seeing her standing lonely on deck, watching the lighted ferries go by, Knollys came up to her.

"I beg your pardon, miss," he said, deferentially, "but it occurred to Jules and myself that you might possibly care to join us in a game of dominoes?" and, rather than appear unfriendly, she played with them for an hour. She was very glad when morning came.

Marcella hurried to her field of Philippi that day. She went up to the station to meet Louis at half-past eleven in alternating moods of trembling softness and militancy, softness to welcome him, belligerency for Ole Fred and the gang, and strange gusts of helpless, blazing, hungry joy at the thought of getting him away from them, all to herself. Almost she wished she could snatch him from life itself. As the train came in she caught sight of him, laughing foolishly, dirty and dishevelled from the long journey. She ran down the clanging platform on feet of wind to meet him. He tumbled out of the carriage with half a dozen draggled men after him.

"Oh—my dear," she cried, clinging to his hand, her face flushed, her eyes shining.

He stared, his eyes glassy and pale, almost startled.

"Hello, ole girl," he stammered. "G—g—good of you to mm—mm—meet me."

He stood awkwardly, undecided, the others edging round him.

"Louis, you'll never guess how awful it's been without you! I know what you meant, now, about not being able to do without each other—Uncle gave me the money—let's get away and talk—" The words all tumbled out breathlessly.

He gazed at her again, as though he scarcely knew her.

"These chaps have been awfully good to me," he said thickly. "We must—must—s-say good-bye. They s-sail for New Zealand this—safternoon."

"That's good. Then say good-bye now, and come away. We've a lot to do."

He stared moodily.

"Look here, where's my baggage? Did you g-get it th-through the Customs for me?"

She explained about it, and said that he must go aboard for it when the Oriana came alongside during the afternoon.

"Right-o, then. I'll say good-bye. Wait a minute."

He went down the platform and stood talking to the others for a few minutes. They looked towards her and laughed several times, and at last trooped off together.

"I think a wash is indicated, don't you?" he said, looking at himself. "Lord, don't I want a drink! And don't I just want to be alone with you a few minutes! What shall we do? Did you book rooms?"

"No. I was so busy thinking that I forgot. There's plenty of time. I'll tell you what. Let us go back to the boat and get your things, and then you can get cleaned up and—change—" she added hesitatingly, for he was still wearing the suit in which he had fallen on the jetty at Melbourne. It was splashed with mud and rain; it had been obviously slept in, and smelled of tobacco and spilled whisky.

"Right. We'll have a cab and then we can talk on the way," he said. "By the way, I haven't a penny in the world. Broke to the wide! What did your uncle give you?"

"Fifty pounds."

"Lord! What a decent sort of uncle to have about. I haven't a relative who'd let me raise a fiver. Well, you'd better lend me some, old girl, till I get mine through."

"You can have it all if you like," she said quickly. "I don't want it if I'm with you." She was thinking that he had told her not to let him have money; but if they were to be together all the time there could be no possible danger, and something told her that it would be good for him to be trusted with all her worldly goods.

In the cab, as soon as it started its two-mile crawl, she handed it to him solemnly. He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together as he put the money into his notecase.

"I say, Marcella," he jerked out, "you'll not let me out of your sight, will you, darling? It's no end risky, with all this money."

"Poor little boy," she whispered softly. "You couldn't be naughty to-day, could you? Besides, you've me to look after now, as well as yourself. You've been here before. I've never been away from home in my life."

He caught at her hand and held it tightly.

"I'm just dying to kiss you, darling," he whispered. "Oh, I wish we needn't waste time on that bally rotten ship. I want us to get away from everywhere."

On the ship they found that he could not get his things until the purser came aboard at seven o'clock in the evening, as he had them sealed up. But Knollys provided him with clothes brush and toilet apparatus while Marcella waited.

"I've found out all about getting married," he explained when they got outside on the quay again. "It's frightfully simple. Knollys has just told me where the Registrar's place is. Lord! Marcella, do you feel frightened?"

"No," she said, rather faintly.

"It's worse for me than for you, after all. It's fun for a girl to get married. But I've all the ordeals to go through, facing the Registrar, buying the ring—"

"Well, I'll do it," she said resignedly, "if you're frightened."

But as they passed the first jeweller's shop he dived in suddenly without speaking to her. After a few minutes he emerged, his face flushed and damp, his hand shaky.

"Look here, come up a side way somewhere, old thing! They've given me a chunk of cardboard with little holes in it. You've got to poke your finger in till you see which fits. Lord, I'm glad you don't get married more than once in a lifetime."

"Don't you like it, Louis?" she asked, as she fitted her finger into the little holes and found that she took the smallest size ring. "I do. I think it's frightfully exciting."

"I know you do. Women love getting married. They're cock of the walk on their wedding days, if they never are again. On her wedding day a woman is triumphant! She's making a public exhibition of the fact that she has achieved the aim of her life—she's landed a man!"

"Louis!" she cried indignantly, and next minute decided to think that he was joking as they reached the jeweller's shop again. She had been looking at the jewellery in the window: it was her first peep at a jeweller's shop, and she thought how expensive everything was. She noticed the price of wedding rings. When Louis came out with the ring in a little box which he put into his pocket, he told her casually that it cost something three times more than the prices in the window.

As they walked up the street he told her that he was tired to death, that he had not been to bed since the Oriana left Melbourne.

"I thought you stayed at an hotel that night," she said.

"No, as a matter of fact, my pet, we got run in, all of us. I don't know, now, what we did when we found the boat had gone without us, but we made up our minds to paint the town red. So we got landed in the police's hands for the night and locked up."

"Oh Louis!"

"It was a great game! The funny old magistrate next morning was as solemn as a judge. He read us a lecture about upholding the prestige of the Motherland in a new country. Then he made us promise him faithfully not to have another drink as long as we were in the state of Victoria. We promised right enough, and kept it—because we knew we were leaving Victoria in a few hours. Ole Fred was as solemn as the judge himself about it. But when we got to Albury—that's on the borders, you know—my hat, how we mopped it! I haven't got over it yet. But after to-day I'm on the water-wagon, Marcella. Lord, here's the marriage shop!"

It looked like a shop, with green wire shades over the glass windows, not at all a terrifying place. But Louis took off his hat, mopped his forehead and looked at her desperately.

"Look here, old girl, I shall never get through this without a whisky-and-soda. I'm a stammering bundle of nerves. I'll never get our names down right unless I have a drink to give me a bit of Dutch courage. If it hadn't been for that Melbourne madness I'd have been all right. But look at me"—and he held out a trembling hand. "Marcella, for God's sake say you'll let me—"

She felt she could not, to-day of all days, preach to him, but she could not trust herself to speak. She merely nodded her head, and without waiting another instant he darted into the nearest hotel, leaving her standing on the pavement. Her heart was aching, but every moment, every word he said made her all the more cussedly determined to see the thing through, and he certainly looked better when he came out ten minutes later.

"That saved my life, darling," he said feelingly. "Now for it."

He vanished behind the green windows and came back in a few minutes looking jubilant.

"Nice, fatherly old chap. Asked me if I realized the gravity of the step I was taking and if you were twenty-one, because if you weren't I'd have to get the consent of the State Guardian. And by the way, Marcella, that reminds me. You'll simply have to do something to your hair."

"Why?" she asked, flirting it over her shoulder to see what was wrong with it. It was tied very neatly with a big bow of tartan ribbon.

"You'll have to do it up, somehow—stow it under your hat, don't you know—hairpins, old girl, smokers' best friends. You can't be married with your hair down, or they'll think it isn't respectable."

"Oh," she said meekly.

"By the way, I got the religion wrong. I simply couldn't think what you were, so I said an atheist, and he said as the Congregational clergyman hadn't a full house to-night we'd better go to him. Lord, what would the Mater say? She wouldn't think it legal unless you were married in church with the 'Voice that breathed o'er Eden' and a veil."

"But—to-night?" she questioned.

"Yes, half-past six. And I got our father's professions wrong. I couldn't remember what the Pater was for anything, so I said they were both sailors! Lord, I was in a funk—and at half-past six to-night I'll be married and done for. It's the biggest scream that ever was!"

They went to a restaurant for lunch. She was very hungry; he could eat nothing. He ordered lemonade for her, adding something in a low tone to the waiter who went away smiling faintly. She thought he was drinking lemonade too, but he began to laugh a good deal, and his eyes glittered queerly all the time.

She was a little overawed by the magnificence of the Hotel Australia when they went to book rooms; she wished very much that they could be at the farm; there were so many people about, so many servants quite inhumanly uninterested in them. At home Jean would have been fussing about, making them welcome.

It was the queerest, most unromantic wedding. The streets were full of the Saturday night crowd of pleasure seekers. The chapel was next to a Chinese laundry; glancing in at the door through the steam she got a swift vision of two Chinamen ironing collars vigorously. Outside the chapel door stood a gawky-looking group—a young sailor, very fat and jolly-looking was being married to a rather elderly woman. Both had short white kid gloves that showed a little rim of red wrist; their friends were chaffing them unmercifully; the bride was giggling, the sailor looking imperturbable. Louis edged towards Marcella.

"I don't want those two Chinks to see me," he whispered nervously.

She stared at him.

"I wish they'd open the door," whispered Marcella.

"So do I. My hat, I wish Violet could come past. She'd kill herself with laughing. She was married at St. George's, Hanover Square."

That conveyed nothing to Marcella. She was watching a German band composed of very fat, pink Germans who, on their way to their nightly street playing outside various theatres and restaurants, had noticed the group and scented a wedding. They began by playing the "Marseillaise" and made her laugh by the extreme earnestness of their expression; then they played the Lohengrin "Bridal March" and had only just reached the tenth bar when the chapel door opened with a tremendous squeaking and creaking. The conductor paused with his baton in mid beat and his mouth wide open as he saw his audience melting away inside the door. Marcella, laughing almost hysterically, whispered to Louis:

"Give them a shilling or something. They look so unhappy!"

"They're spying on me," he whispered, tossing them a coin which fell among them and received the conductor's blessing.

Marcella and Louis sat on a bench in a Sunday-school classroom, looking at "Rebecca at the Well" and a zoological picture of the millennium while the sailor got married. Both were subdued suddenly. She found herself thinking that, if ever she had children, she would never let them go to such a dreary place as Sunday-school.

"Isn't this awful?" she whispered at last. "People ought to be married on the tops of hills, or under trees. But it makes you feel solemn, and sort of good, doesn't it—even such a fearful place?"

He nodded. They heard the sailor and the bride chattering suddenly and loudly in the next little room and guessed that they were married. A bent little woman—the chapel cleaner—came along and asked them where their witnesses were. Her dark eyes looked piercingly among grey, unbrushed hair; her hands were encrusted with much immersion in dirty water.

"Witnesses?" said Louis anxiously.

"Two witnesses," she said inexorably. "Haven't you got 'ny?"

"We didn't know—" began Marcella. The old woman looked pleased.

"Well, I was wondering if yous 'ud have me an' my boss. We often make a couple of bob like that."

Louis nodded, and she shuffled off, appearing a few moments later with an old man who had evidently been waiting about for the chance of earning a few shillings.

"It isn't a bit like Lochinvar," whispered Marcella, "or Jock of Hazeldean."

"Poor old lady," he whispered, suddenly gentle.

The two old people sat down on the form beside Louis, who edged a little closer to Marcella.

"It's forty years since we was married, my boss and me," began the old woman. "Forty years—and brought up twelve—"

"Buried six," mumbled the old man, shaking his head and wiping a watery eye on his coat sleeve.

"I say, I feel no end of an ass, don't you?" whispered Louis. "Tell the old idiots to shut up."

"Poor old things—forty years ago they thought it was all going to be so shining," she whispered.

"It isn't as if he's had very good work," went on the old woman, "but you must take the rough with the smooth."

A small old man with a black suit and a long white beard came to the door and beckoned them. They suddenly realized that he was the priest and followed him meekly.

"I've often been the officiating surgeon," whispered Louis, giggling nervously, "but I never understood the point of view of the man on the operating table before."

"Oh hush, Louis. I feel so solemn," whispered Marcella. She wished very much that Wullie was there. She felt that he would have understood how she felt as she repeated mechanically the words the old man told her; she did not hear them really. She was making an end of all her doubts of Louis; she knew, quite definitely, that whatever misery or degradation might come to her in the future, whatever wild or conceited or cussed or tropical thoughts had brought her to this dull little chapel to-night, God was quite surely making her His pathway, walking over her life with shining feet, burning out all the less fine things that did not belong to Him. She woke up to feel Louis fumbling with her hand to put the ring on; she had been miles and years away, through fires and waters of consecration.

The old clergyman looked at her; he looked at Louis. The actual service according to the book was over. He gave a little sigh, turned to lead them to the vestry to sign their names, and then quite suddenly came back and asked them to kneel down. He talked to God very intimately about them. Marcella got the queer idea that he was talking to her all the time.

"He must have thought a lot of you," whispered the old woman. "It isn't like him to make up a extry bit like that. Well, I'm sure I wish yous luck, both of you. Mind not let him have too much of his own way, my dear."

Smiling she led away her toothless old man. Marcella handed Louis the marriage certificate, which he put in his pocket. Out in the street it was quite dark.

"Phew, wasn't it an awful experience? Lord, we're married! Married! Do you really believe it, darling? And I haven't given you a kiss yet. I couldn't with those old dodderers about. Oh, Marcella, isn't it great? And isn't it a lark? But if anyone had told me I'd have got married in a tin tabernacle, slobbered over by a lot of Non-bally-conformists I'd have had hysterics. We'll simply have to tell the Mater and Violet! It'll be the joke of the century to them."

She drew a deep breath.

"Louis, can't we run right away into the Bush? I do wish we were at home on Ben Grief in the wind—the thought of that great, big hotel terrifies me. I feel sort of—like I used to feel when I went to church with mother on Easter Sundays, when everything was cool and white and smelt of lilies. Oh, Louis, I do so love you!"

Suddenly he stood still and looked at her.

"Let's find a cab and get down to that bally boat for the baggage. Oh, bother the baggage! My darling, I want you alone. You stood there so quiet and still, looking just like a little girl being very, very good. Oh, my dear, you're a damned sight too good for me. Lord, I'll feed myself to the sharks in the harbour if ever I hurt you! What luck to find you! What amazing, gorgeous luck! Me—the waster, the unwanted, the do-nothing. Marcella—Lord, what's the use of words? I'm getting your trick of not being able to find words for what I mean. But you wait. Just you wait. There's a new Louis born to-night, in a funny little Nonconformist chapel. Look at him, girlie—can't you see he's different?"

They found a cab and drove down to the quay again. Heedless of the people in the streets he kissed her again and again and did not stop talking for an instant.

"You know, the very fact of being married alone is going to do wonders for me. It's going to give me a grip on things. I've been an outcast, dear—I've never known, when I've been this side of the world, where my next bed or my next meal is coming from. But to have a wife—and we'll have a home and everything—why, you can't think what it means."

When they reached the quay he left Marcella in the cab, telling her he would only be two minutes. She watched him vanish in the shadow of the Customs shed. A moment later he was back.

"I hate to leave you, even for a minute. I must have one more kiss. Oh, my darling, if you could only guess what it means to me to know that you love me, that you are waiting here for me. You've never been a throwout, a waster, or you'd realize just what you mean to me."

Then he was gone, and she lay back, her eyes closed, dreaming. She felt very safe, very secure.

It seemed a long time that he was gone, but she was accustomed to going thousands of miles in her dreams, only to find, wakening suddenly, that the clock had only measured five minutes. But at last she realized that it really was a long time. The horse began to paw and fidget; the driver, smoking a very reeking pipe, looked in at the window.

"D'you think your boss'll be long?" he asked.

"How long has he been?" she asked.

"More'n half an hour. I've got some folks to take to the theatre, but I'm afraid I'll have to give them a miss if he don't hurry hisself."

"I wonder if you'd go and see, please?" she asked doubtfully. "You see, we've only just been married to-day and I feel so silly—the people on board are sure to start making a big fuss if I go—"

"Right-o, ma. I'll go," he said, and made off across the quay. He, too, was gone a long while; the horse got more fidgety, but at last he appeared, carrying two of Louis's bags.

He grinned as he came up to the cab.

"He's a lad!" he said genially. "Would make me stop an' wet the wedding. But it do seem hard to me for the bride to be out of all the fun. Why don't you go an' wet it, too, ma?"

"Where is—my husband?" she said, stumbling over the word and feeling sick with fright.

"Over there with his pals. They aren't half having a game. If I was you I'd go and rout him out! Not much use in a honeymoon when one's boozed and the other ain't. Now if you was to have a drop too—"

She did not hear what he said. She did not stop to think of dignity or anything else; the same panic that had almost made her jump overboard at Melbourne sent her running across the quay, over the gangway on to the ship. The voices of the men guided her towards them on the silent ship. Louis was sitting on the hatchway; two champagne bottles were overturned beside him; he was just pouring whisky from a bottle into a tumbler as he saw her.

His jaw dropped and he tried to stand up.

"Here's your missus," laughed Ole Fred, who was leaning against him.

Marcella looked from Louis to Fred.

"So you didn't go to New Zealand?" said Marcella quietly, looking at him with blazing eyes. He blinked at her and tried to smile affably.

"Of course I never thought you would, you horrible, wicked, idiotic old liar!" she said.

Ole Fred looked thoroughly startled. Louis gazed at Marcella and then at him.

"Now, ole man—I pu' it to you," said Ole Fred thickly. "Is tha' the sort of talk you le' your wife use to your bes' pals?"

Louis shook his head reprovingly at her.

"Marsh-shella! Naughty lil' girl! 'Pol'gize! Good Ole Fred! Bes' pal ev' man had, Mar-shella! Going t' Newze-eeelan'! All 'lone—way from 'smother—way from Ole Country! Give him kish, ole girl—no ill-feeling—"

Ole Fred got up unsteadily, grinning, and lurched towards her muttering, "No, no ill-feeling." She realized what he was going to do, and suddenly felt that she could not live any longer. But first—her father's temper came to her for a moment and she lost all responsibility. It was the first time the Lashcairn madness had seized her—and it was not the raging Berserk fury of her father. She stood quite still, very white. Ole Fred thought she was waiting passively for his kiss. But when he reached her on his unsteady feet she caught him by the shoulders, shook what little breath he had left out of him, and slid him deliberately along the deck. He was too surprised to resist effectively and the others had no idea what was in her mind. Reaching the rail of the ship, with the strength of madness she lifted him up—he was a thin little rat of a man—and dropped him calmly overboard. There was a heavy plonk and a rush of feet as Knollys, who had watched fascinated, ran down the companion-way with another man. She looked at her hands distastefully.

"You're very foolish if you rescue him, Knollys," she said, with an air of giving impartial advice. "He's not a bit of good. I knew quite well I'd put some of these idiotic men in the sea before I'd done with them."

She turned away towards Louis again. He cowered as she came near him. She smiled at him kindly and reassuringly.

"Poor little boy! You needn't be frightened of Marcella. She doesn't often put wicked ole men in the sea," she said gently, holding out her hand to help him to his feet. Before she had put Fred in the sea she had felt it would be much better to go herself than live with Louis any more. But the flood of madness ebbed; Louis's cowering as she came near him seemed to her so appalling, so appealing that she could not leave him, and her hatred of Fred made her set her teeth and determine not to let him have Louis.

No one spoke. The cab driver was looking at her with adoration in his eyes; looking round she guessed he was a friend.

"Have you all our luggage?" she asked him.

"Yes, ma—missus," he jerked, jumping and suddenly touching his hat—an epoch-making thing for an Australian to do.

"Will you help me get my husband to the cab then, please?"

"Aren't you going to wait and see if they fish him out, missus?" he asked hopefully, jerking his head over towards the companion-way, down which several sailors had vanished.

"It's no use," she said impatiently. "He isn't a bit of good. If he's dead all the better. He's a very, very wicked man, you know. He's not just weak and wobbly. He is so wicked and dreadful that he laughs at people when they try to be good, and fights the goodness. Naturally it's better to put him in the sea. If it was a few hundred years ago they'd burn him as a devil," she nodded reassuringly to the cabman.

"There are sharks in Sydney Harbour, too," she added reflectively.

"Oh cripes!" cried the cabman reverently. "Come on then, boss," he added, turning to Louis. "Heave hold of my shoulder. If old monkey face is drowned your missus'll hear sharp enough from the police."

Suddenly she ran back to the companion-way. She did not look to see where Ole Fred was. Keeping her eyes averted she called, "Good-bye, Knollys. Thank you for being so kind to me."

Then she took Louis's hand without a word. He stood immovable.

"Feel sh-shick, ole girl," he gasped.

She stood still, feeling sick, too.

"Go on, ma—I'll tend him," said the cabman. Marcella walked on with her head in the air, looking disgusted. After a few minutes she turned and saw the cabman struggling to drag him along. His legs lagged foolishly.

"Can't walk, ole girl. Legs all cross-nibbed, ole girl," he moaned.

"You're not to talk, Louis," she said calmly.

"Talk? Talk? Can't talk. Parlez-vous Franshay, Marsh-shella? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Baisez-moi, ma petite—!"

She faced him suddenly.

"Look here, Louis. If you talk French one of us goes in the harbour. I'd rather it was me. Either that or I'll take my hands and choke you. You know they're strong hands—made in Scotland, Louis—bony, not a bit wobbly. Now what do you think?"

He made a sudden effort, threw off the cabman's detaining hand, swayed a little and then steered a straight course for the cab, stumbling over the step and crawling in on his knees.

"Isn't he a lad!" said the cabman admiringly. "Pair of lads, that's what you are! By cripes, you are! Where are you making for, missus?" His eyes, full of curiosity, were on the ship as a babble of voices rose. "Listen, they've got ole monkey-face! That's him singing out now. We'd better put our best leg forward for fear he comes after you."

"If he does I shall put him back again," she said; "we were going to the Hotel Australia—but I don't think I'll take my husband there. I think they mightn't like him. Do you know anywhere else we could go—a house—where there are poor people who won't be rude to me about him?"

He thought for a moment. Then his face brightened.

"I know the very place, ma. It's quite near. The boss boozes, but Ma's a good sort. She'll have a room, sure. It's all among the Chows, if you don't mind that."

"Chows—what are Chows?"

"Chinese—Chinks—a good many white people won't live among them."

"If they don't object to us, I'm sure I shall not to them."

The next minute she was sitting beside Louis, but he was fast asleep.

"Louis," she whispered, shaking him gently. He stirred and muttered, but could not waken. She stared at him in the passing light of the street lamps. He looked so helpless, so much at her mercy. Quite unexpectedly she leaned over and kissed the tip of his ear. Next minute she was sobbing uncontrollably, leaning against his arm.

"Oh, why didn't I go in the water? I can't bear it—I can't! I'll never be able to go through with it! I'm making him no better—and no one can keep on being disappointed and disappointed and still keeping their faith. Even to-day, when I ought to have been so happy."

She sat up suddenly, and turned away from Louis, holding out longing arms for the softness of her mother, the autocratic strength of her father. But she had to dry her eyes quickly because the cabman had stopped and was speaking through the window.

"Here we are, ma," he said.

She wrestled with her voice.

"Do you mind—will you ask her, please? I've been crying, and I look such an idiot."

"Right-o, ma. But don't bother about that. Mrs. King has had her share o' crying in her time. She won't think nothing of that."

She realized that it was necessary to waken Louis as she heard the door open and a conversation between two people. A little figure of a woman came out to the cab and spoke to her.

"It's all right, my dear," she said quietly. "I've got a top room. I'll be glad to let you have it."

"It's very kind of you," said Marcella. "My husband is—rather—asleep. How on earth am I going to get him upstairs?"

"I'll get some of my young fellows to carry him up for you," said Mrs. King. "Don't you fret about it now, dear. Men often have a drop too much, and it's better to take no notice provided they don't get too noisy or too ready with their fists."

Marcella smiled faintly and stood stiff as a sentry while Mrs. King fetched out half a dozen of her lodgers who were playing cards in the kitchen. They carried Louis upstairs. He was so drugged that he did not waken.