Captivity

Louis, when he had got over his amazement at hearing that Kraill was his guest, tried frantically to pull himself together. He was indignant with Marcella for asking Kraill to stay in a hut, but he realized that it was only another evidence of what he called the "Lashcairn conceit" and that, if Marcella had thought it desirable to ask the Governor-General to tea, she would have done so unhesitatingly. When he met Kraill he was very nervous and shaky, unable to think coherently because of the fight that was going on within him. When she came back from her work at the Homestead, where the relics of the party had to be cleared away, the two men had vanished. They walked round the rabbit-proof fences and came back in time to welcome a "surprise party" from Klondyke drawn by the magnetism of the "gentleman from England" who had won them the night before. Marcella thought several times of Dr. Angus and wished that he could have been there to see Kraill "getting off the rostrum" as he had done in Edinburgh. But she got no chance to talk to him all that day; there was too much miscellaneous chatter.

"He's great, isn't he?" said Louis at bedtime. Marcella was startled. She had never heard him praise anyone but a few doctors at the hospital before.

"I wish I could be like that—not frightened of people," he said. "I've worn my nerves to shreds, now. You don't understand nerves. You don't possess any."

He turned over in his hammock ready to go to sleep. She came across to him and bent over him.

"Louis, what's going to happen to-morrow?" she asked presently.

"Gorse-grubbing. We've to get it all cleared now without delay."

"You know what I mean, dear. Can't you—won't you try not to go to Klondyke at all? Louis, it would be so splendid if we could save all the money for a few months and go home to England so that your mother can see Andrew. Wouldn't it?"

He sighed.

"Shall I ask Mr. Twist to keep the money, and not give us any for six months? That would be a good plan. We are always so happy except on pay days, and you are so wretched after you've been to Klondyke."

He agreed absolutely, with such alacrity that she was a little doubtful of him. Next morning when she went over to the Homestead at eight o'clock she learned that he had come to Mr. Twist with a tale about wanting the money for a visit to the store, and had gone off at six o'clock. It was three days before he came back, dirty and haggard and despairing almost to the verge of suicide.

During those three days Marcella deliberately left her work; she went to the Homestead in the mornings, and fired some gorse in the afternoons; dense clouds of smoke rose into the windless air. For the rest she made Kraill talk, listening to him with an air of sitting at his feet. She felt more despairing than ever. Kraill seemed to share her pity for Louis and she, feeling in a way that Jove had spoken from the thunders and the earth had not trembled, was dulled and dead. She knew that he would go back to Sydney soon; she wondered how she would bear her aching loneliness, her bankruptcy of spirit when he was gone.

The night Louis came back was even more dreadful than ever. His talk with Kraill had made him bitterly jealous. It hurt him like a wound to see an Englishman there, and an Englishman who could come and go about the world as he liked, unchained. Like Kraill he had tossed up for his chance that morning he went to Klondyke—whether to finish the whole miserable business in the lake and leave Marcella and the boy to go their way to England in peace, or whether to get drunk as usual. And tails had won. Cussedly he paid the cost.

And that night, sore and aching at heart, longing beneath the whisky madness to sob out all his penitence and misery into her ear, with her hair over his face, her arms around him, he raved at her all the foul things he could think, in sheer self-excuse. She had been to bed for hours. It was about two o'clock when he came home and, afraid that he should waken Kraill, she led him away from the house until he was quietened by her sudden turning on him and shaking him until he could not find his breath for awhile. That always sobered him; her kisses and caresses and forgiveness soothed him to sleep afterwards.

The next morning Kraill said that he must go to Sydney. He bade her good-bye and went without a word of kindliness, of hope. Louis took him to Cook's Wall. When he came back he said nothing in answer to all Marcella's enquiries about what they had said on the long drive. Louis went back to the gorse-grubbing and worked feverishly for almost a month, as he always did after being drunk. And it seemed as though Kraill had never been except that in all the little things that used to be a joy she now could find no joy at all. The shine had gone from her golden flowers, the softness from the wind rustling in the scrub, which now was an irritating crepitus; there was no music in Andrew's laugh, no ecstasy in the words he was learning every day, words that, at first, she had written proudly on a sheet of paper to send to his grandmother. The gentleness seemed to have gone even from Mrs. Twist's kindly face, and the negative peace of three moneyless weeks to come brought no healing. She felt that she would welcome strife.

One day she found it impossible to work; she felt fey, restless. She wrote a letter to Dr. Angus but tore it up, dissatisfied. Taking down the little grey book of the Edinburgh lectures, which she had not had the heart to touch, she read the last one again. Into it she read Kraill's voice, pictured his gesture, saw how his quick eyes would look friendly, interested, arresting as he talked. On the last page was a paragraph that someone had marked in pencil. In the margin was "J.R.K." written faintly. She read the paragraph hungrily. Evidently he had meant it as a message for her.

"One of the greatest of human triumphs is to read the need in another's eyes and be able to fulfil it. The difficulty lies in comprehending the need. Most of us have rich storehouses, but to the man who needs of us a crutch we give dancing shoes: to him who needs a spur we offer wrappings of cotton-wool. ... We ask tolerance and sympathy for our failings, patience for our inadequacies ... we give and get only disappointment.... Partly this is because our needs are the things we hide most jealously from each other, partly because we only see needs subjectively ... this is the explanation of most of the sex muddles that tangle life."

As she read Kraill's message she thought again of her prayer for weakness down by the lake. As she stood there, with all the lights of her life burning dim, all the virtue gone out of her, it was forced upon her that her prayer was being answered. She was getting weak! Never before had she felt despairing about Louis; never before had she felt so dull, so unable to help him, so unable to care that he should be helped.

As this thought came and held her, making her feel that something stronger than herself had taken possession of her and was merely using her as it would, she felt quietened. She had prayed for the blazing Feet of God to walk along her life to Louis. Perhaps this dulness, this weariness was their first pressure.

She turned to go out of the room and saw Kraill standing in the sunlight. He looked tired.

"You've come back, then?" she said, and laughed suddenly at the futility of her words. "It's a very long way for you to come."

"I went away for a whole month to think about it," he said in a low voice. "And all I can think is that I must take you away. You'll have to leave him."

She shook her head hopelessly.

"I've thought that too, very often, when I felt I couldn't bear it. But always I have borne it. And he would die without me."

"The best thing is for him to die," he cried harshly. "In a decent community he would be put in a lethal chamber. But I'm not thinking of him. I'm thinking of you. And I'm thinking of myself."

He threw his hat on the ground, and turned away from her.

"You've got into my imagination," he began almost indignantly.

"You've been in mine years and years," she said.

He came back then, and she was frightened of him.

"Let's get out of this," he said impatiently. "I can't talk to you here in his house. Let us get off into the Bush somewhere. Where's the boy?"

"He's playing with Betty."

"You'd better fetch him along," he said unevenly.

She shook her head.

"Louis would be worried if he came in and found me out at tea-time," she said. "It made him very unhappy to see you, you know. He can't bear to think that you are free while he is a slave."

She walked before him to look at the distant smoke of the fires. The clearing was almost finished.

"Damn Louis!" he cried. "He is a slave because he lets himself be! And you're a slave because he's one. I shall not let you stay here, chained. Armour suits you better."

"Whatever do you mean?" she gasped.

He strode along without her, knowing that she would follow; it was so good to follow instead of leading always.

"You know quite well what I mean," he said at last when they were out of sight of the house and only faint pungency of burning wood reached them, with the crackle of wind in the scrub. "I've made a woman like you, in my dreams. I never thought to see her in the flesh—yet—. One who could march along by me shining—not wanting to be carried over rough places—getting in a man's way, stooping his back—"

She tried to speak, but his eyes silenced her. She stared at him, fascinated.

"Oh I'm so sick of pretty, pathetic, seductive little women. Always I have to make love to them. It's the only meeting-ground between a man and most women. You—I couldn't make love to you! You're not seductive, in the least. You're hard and quick and taut. There's a courage about you—"

"Please, Professor Kraill," she began, but he silenced her by an impatient gesture.

"Listen to me, Marcella. You listened to me before, like a little meek girl on a school-bench. I'm sick, sick, sick of women! Soft corners and seduction!—Narcotics—when what a man needs is a tonic. Miserable, soft, uncourageous things. I want the courage of you."

"Can't you see that you're all wrong about me?" she said at last. "I'm not hard, really—only a bit crusted, I think. See what I've done to Louis!"

"Louis!" he cried contemptuously. "You're not going to be wasted on that half thing any longer. I'm not saying it isn't fine to save a man's life. It is. It's very fine and splendid. But you've to be honest with yourself, Marcella, and think if it's worth while. He's not worth it. If you save him from drinking there's very little to him, you know."

"Don't tell me that, because what you say I believe," she cried in a stricken voice. "It's all my life you're turning to ashes."

"I shall give you beauty for ashes, Marcella. You and I together, we can go marching on in seven-league boots! There's a kingliness about you. Listen to the things I say to you unconsciously! I can't say the pretty, graceful, soft things we say to women! There's a kingliness, Marcella—not only about you, but about me too. We're not the common ruck. You're not happy, are you?"

"Sometimes," she said softly.

"No, you're not—not honourably! Kings can't be happy with commoners! They don't speak the same language. If you're happy it's because you let yourself consciously come down. And—wallow. As I have—"

Her face flamed to think how he had seen through her. He saw it, and cried triumphantly:

"I knew it! In the higher parts of you you're always adventuring, always lonely, always hungry. As I am. You never find a harbour, a friend, a feast. Do you? No, I don't need you to tell me. I know all about it. I have known it for more years than you have lived yet."

"But really, I am happy sometimes," she protested. He caught her hands and held them so that she had to look at him.

"With Louis? Is your brain happy with Louis? Do you ever come within touching distance of each other? Is your spirit happy with Louis? Isn't it always hungry, holding out begging hands? Are your brain and your spirit not always calling you back and scorning you when you let your body wallow—slacken and take cheap thrills?"

"Oh, it's wicked that you should know these things about me," she cried.

"No. It isn't wicked at all. I know the same about myself. I've taken cheap things. Biology got me on the wrong tack at first; with a biological mind I saw everything via the body. Biology's a dragon one has to slay; that's why, in my work, I've taken to psychology instead. Love-making! I told you, right at the first, I always made love to women—. I always have done it, and always should have gone on doing it if I had never met you."

"But why—if you despise it?"

"I wasn't doing it as an end. It was a means. All the adorable, tender prettiness of love-making leads to physical love inevitably, and I always thought and hoped and believed that after it I'd arrive at some Ultima Thule of understanding, of comradeship, of equality. Never! Ugh, they were soft! Soft flesh, soft spirit, tricky brain! Sometimes I have a nightmare of trying to get to heaven up mountains of woman-flesh—soft, scented stuff, sucking one in like quicksands. You're the only woman I've ever thought much about and not made love to! To you I couldn't make love—"

"Whatever is this, then?" she asked faintly.

"This is one king coming to another, asking his alliance, his comradeship! You there, with that man—that jelly thing! You sicken, nauseate me. It's like seeing a queen go on the streets! Marcella, you can't do these things, you know. You're letting down your spiritual caste. You and I—we've been along lower paths. There wasn't really any disgust in it then, because we were adventuring, finding each other. But if we go on the lower paths now we're doing a thing that's damnable. All my life I've waited for the wonder that should come round the corner. So have you. And here it is, for both of us—"

"How many love affairs did you tell me you had had?" she broke in, in a queerly casual voice.

"You're not going to be conventionally horrified, are you?"

"No. But I think you're muddled. I think this is satiety, you know."

"It's you who are muddled, Marcella. This is satisfaction, not satiety. I know I've got all I need in you. Body, mind and spirit. Most of all, spirit—and courage."

She dropped on to the crackling ground. He looked down at her.

"I don't believe you know anything at all about control, Professor Kraill," she said very quietly, so quietly that he dropped down beside her to listen as she kept her face averted. "Do you remember, once, you said 'Women have no inhibitions'?"

"I was young. And even now, it's true—" he cried.

"I'm a woman. But I've never deliberately wallowed—as you seem to have done. Once or twice, perhaps—I was sort of weak, or perhaps hopeful. I thought it might be very beautiful—"

"You were seeking, as I was," he said, suddenly gentle.

"And—it meant softness, being bowled over, loss of control and finally cynicism," she said.

"No, no. Not finally cynicism, Marcella. Cynicism half-way along, if you like. But finally—anchoring."

She looked at him, very slowly, all over: her hands were quite still on her blue print frock that smelt of fire: many and many a night and day of hard schooling and cold patience had gone to make them lie there so untremulous now. She reflected on that for a moment; she reflected that, in years to come, by enduring hardness, people would be able to school their hearts from beating the swift blood to a whirlpool, their lips from hungering for a kiss. She thought next of Aunt Janet, desiccated, uncaring, and knew that Aunt Janet's way of life was wrong because it shirked rather than faced things. Her long gaze had reached his beautiful eyes and stayed there; she seemed to see down into a thousand years, a thousand lives. She knew quite well that here was the place of dreams come true; here was the deliverer with whom she had thought to ride to battle, and he too had dreamed. He saw her armour. He did not see the chinks in it. And he never should. And—he had said women had no inhibitions!

"It's hard," she said, her eyes still resting on his, "to keep your thoughts brave as well as your actions, isn't it?"

"What do you mean, Marcella?"

She was sitting motionless and white; he thought he had never seen a live thing so still, so impassive. As she watched his lips, and heard his voice speak her name, blazing floods of weakness were pouring over her.

"There are things one mustn't do," she said slowly. "But they would be most beautiful to think about, right deep down and quiet inside—like Mary had to hide and ponder in her heart the things the angel told her. One mustn't. I mustn't even think about you—that way—"

"What? What do you mean?"

"Thoughts drag people down, down, don't they? Except for a minute or two I've thought clean and selfless about Louis. Always about you I've thought very shiningly. If I let go a minute the shine of you will be out of my eyes. Do you see? Then I'll be like—like any of the other women! All soft corners and seduction. Just while you've been talking to me I've understood that I want to be like that; that's why I've been so dead this last month since you went away. It seems a pity, doesn't it?"

He found that it was his turn to sit speechless, watching her.

"There, now I've told you," she said, and lifted her hands and let them drop again hopelessly. "And now I'm going back to Louis. You want my courage.... Oh God, you've got it!"

He still stared at her. Quick, understanding as he was, he had not quite understood yet. He only saw that she was still whiter, that the still hands were clenched.

"If we get any closer you'll see the chinks in my armour. I suppose I'll see little dark patches in your shine.... If you didn't think so well of me, I suppose I should just let Louis drop out—if I didn't think so well of you I'd give you the kisses and narcotics and seduction you're tired of."

"Marcella, I don't care—if I thought—" he began, almost savagely.

"Oh, thoughts, thoughts! They're cruel! Here we both are, thinking so much better than we can do. No—no! We can do it! Only—we can't do it happily. Some day, I think, shining thinking and shining doing will be hand in hand—"

She stood up slowly then, and turned away. He saw her going right out of his life. And it seemed to him just as it had seemed to her, that all he had ever done or had done to him had led up to that moment.

"Marcella," he cried, and seized her hands again. "I can't let you go. Whatever you have, whatever you are, I want you."

"I!" she cried. "I! Always I! What do you and I and any of us matter, really? What does it matter if we do get smashed up like this if only we manage to keep our thoughts of each other clean and free from slinking things—fears, and greeds?"

"I can't help thinking about you!" he cried.

"I know. I can't, either. That's why we've to be so careful what we think. And it's going to be a hard, austere sort of thing for us both. Once I saw you a beautiful thing with swift wings all torn off in a sticky mess. Now I see you very shining—"

She looked at him with blinded eyes.

"Always I'm going to make myself see you like that now. Never, never will I let a greedy or unclean thought of mine dull you. And—please—you'll try to—to—do the same for me, won't you?"

He could not speak yet. He realized how terribly right she was.

"It's harder for us both, that you've been here and this has happened," she said. "Harder! But better! Neither of us, for each other's sake, can have any more cheap thrills, slothful moments, thoughts without courage. Oh good-bye."

She turned towards him and saw that he was lying on the grass. His shoulders were shaking. She knew that he was crying. That seemed terrible to her. She had to run, then, very quickly away from him or she would have stayed—and been soft. As she ran she, too, was crying.

Louis was on the verandah as she came round the fence. She saw his eyes blazing madly, his face distorted, his hands clenched. He came to meet her, raging.

"Where've you been?" he choked out.

She waved her hand over towards where Kraill was. She could not speak.

"Whose is this hat? It's that damned professor's!"

"Yes."

"Where is he? Why are you crying? He's come here after you!" he raved.

"He's gone," she said faintly. "Gone—for always. Except in my thoughts—inhibited thoughts—thoughts washed and boiled—thoughts—Oh—sterilized."

"What in hell are you talking about?" he cried, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her fiercely. "Why are you crying, I say?"

"Because he's gone," she said, and cried all the more.

"My God! The impudence of it—telling me," he shouted, and seemed to be strangling with rage.

"The—the—honesty of it, Louis. Oh and—the—the awfulness of it! I'm crying because I can't bear it!"

"You—you—" he gasped, and paused for a word.

"Louis," she said, raising wet, miserable eyes to his. "I've sent him away, but I daren't, daren't trust myself not to run after him. Oh and it would so spoil things for him and all of us if I did! Listen, Louis, can't you grab me and not let me go after him? I can't hold myself back, and I did promise him I wouldn't let my thoughts get greedy! He said I was in armour—Louis, my dear, I've tried to help you so often when you were being torn in two. Can't you—my dear—it's your turn now."

"You damned adulterer!" he gasped, finding the word at last.

She sobbed, and in her sobs he saw fear, guilt. He flung her to the ground, repeating the word.

"Oh you silly, silly fool," she cried. "He's better than that—if I'm not."

"Then what in hell are you crying about?"

"Because I'm not—not a damned adulterer!" the words were torn from her. "But I can't clean my thoughts of wanting to be. My dear—after so long—I've helped you and been patient. Can't you do something—now, to make me able to bear it?"

"Now you know what it is to—" he began with an ugly laugh. Then rage seized him. "I'll break his damned neck," he cried.

"That's no use! What will that do to me? You can't kill the love that's tearing me up, by smashing his body to bits! You see, Louis, I've got him, for ever and ever. The shining, knightly side of me has. But it's the greedy side of me—the side that makes you grab out for whisky—that's sticking teeth into me now. And you know how it hurts."

"God! I'll break his damned neck," he cried again, and raged off into the Bush.

She crept into the house. A wild thought came to her that, if there were any killing it would be Kraill who would do it. And he and she would run away for awhile, right into the Bush, before people came to hang them. She stopped breathing at the gloriousness, the primitive full-bloodedness of it, and then writhed in horror at the greed of such thoughts, and prayed passionately that a sentry might be put at the door of her mind.

And she knew, very well, that presently Louis would be back—that he would say once again all the foul things he had said before, now with some glimmering of truth in them: that he would get money from somewhere and be drunk to-night, for now, at least, he had excuse. Then he would grin foolishly, and cry weakly, and rage and be futilely violent, and she would have to take this quivering thing that housed her armoured soul and make it do his service; she would have to undress him and wash him so that Andrew, trotting in in the morning, should not see his father in bed dirty; she would have to kiss away his ravings, soothe his fears. Presently she shook her head many times. She knew that she could never do that any more.

An hour, two hours passed. She sat quite still. Then a shadow crossed the window and steps came on to the verandah. She did not move. Louis stood by the door. Kraill was beside him. Louis looked quite sane, and very unusually young and boyish. There was a queerly different look about him. She stared at him for a moment; almost it seemed as though she could see a shine about him for an instant. Then she looked at Kraill, and he at her. She did not move, but her soul was on its knees worshipping his beautiful, still eyes that were tragic no longer, but very wise and sad. He read all that she did not say.

Louis coughed.

"Marcella—I'm sorry, old girl. Kraill has talked to me about it. He's been—or rather—we've been bucking each other up."

He coughed awkwardly.

"Bucking each other up—no end, old lady," he added, and ran his hand through his hair, making it wild, and rough.

She smiled faintly with her lips. For another moment she could not snatch her eyes away from Kraill's.

Then she said faintly:

"It's all very well, Louis. You're always being sorry! Aren't you?"

"This is the last time, Marcella, that there'll be any need to be very sorry," he said solemnly. "I was going to clear out for good, but Kraill made me come back."

"That's all very well, too. Professor Kraill is going away. He doesn't have to put up with you. He doesn't have to sleep with you. You will be drunk to-night, and every night when there's any money. And next day you'll be whining about it. I've lost hope now. I'm tired, tired of to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow."

Kraill's eyes were on her. The echo of a cock that crowed outside a door in Jerusalem nineteen hundred years ago came to her and her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh I'm so sorry! You asked me for my courage," she said to Kraill.

"There's no need for it now—on Louis's account, Marcella. You believe what I say to you, don't you?"

He smiled at her; he looked very friendly, very kindly.

"You know I believe you!" she cried.

"Then I tell you that Louis is quite better now. He is going to take care of you and Andrew. I can't prove it to you, yet. But you will see it as time goes on."

"I don't want him any more," she cried, "I want you—Oh no—no—!"

His eyes held hers again, tragic and terrible. Then again he smiled, and she felt that she had failed him.

"No, of course not, Marcella," he said gently. "These slinking greeds of ours—"

He turned to Louis.

"We'd better be getting along to the station, don't you think?" He stood looking at Marcella, who seemed stunned.

"Don't you think you could make us some tea before we go?" he said casually. She stared at him dully.

"Tea?" she said dazedly, and began to laugh shrilly. "Tea? Oh, men are funny! You're both so funny! 'The greatest of human triumphs is to read the need in another's eyes and be able to fulfil it.' Tea! Oh Louis, isn't it funny—making tea—now."

She laughed and laughed, and then Kraill and Louis began to dance about before her eyes most erratically, until a black curtain all shot with fires came down and hid them, and waves of cold, green water went over her. She felt someone lift her out of the water and then she went to sleep.

In the months that followed Marcella often tried to find out what had caused the Miracle—for Miracle it seemed to her. The desire for whisky that had obsessed him for ten years seemed to have died: he frankly admitted that it gave him no trouble now at all. When she seemed inclined to praise him for his bravery he laughed at her; there was no bravery in doing a thing that was perfectly easy and natural to him. He looked different: he was just as different as Saul of Tarsus after he saw the blinding light on the Damascus road. His nerves never cracked now; the little meannesses of which both she and the boy had been victims had disappeared; he gave her a kind of wistful, protecting love that proved to her, more even than his frequent safe visits to the township, that something radical had happened that day in the Bush—something so radical that, if it were taken from him, he would not be there at all. She felt that he was safe now; she felt that the boy was safe; she felt that in everyone on earth who was sick and sad and unhappy was the capacity for safety. But she did not know how they might come by it.

But she knew, incontrovertibly, that she could never love Louis again with any degree of happiness or self-satisfaction. That much Kraill had shown her. She and Louis had no part in each other's spiritual nights and days; the typhoon of physical passion that had swept her up for a few minutes she saw now as a very cheap substitute for the apotheosis Kraill had indicated. It was Louis's weakness that had been their strongest bond in the past: now that that was gone there was little left in him for her. But peace after pain was very beautiful.

It was not until after six months of sanity that he told her all about the miracle. One evening, after the child had gone to bed, they were sitting on the verandah. Louis had been talking of going home to start afresh in England.

"The voyage would do you good, Marcella. My diagnostic eye has been on you lately," he said as he lighted a cigarette and passed it to her. "You're looking fagged, and it's unnatural to see you looking fagged. You're getting thin. I don't want to see you suddenly evaporate, old girl."

She shook her head and stared unseeingly over the soft green of springing life that, before they came, had been devastating gorse.

"Yes, clearly a trip to England is indicated," he said. "You're alone too much. Marcella, I believe you're thinking every minute about Kraill."

"I—can't help it," she said in a low voice. "They're—good thoughts, now."

He looked at her, and something about the droop of her shoulders contracted his throat, made a pain at his heart.

"It's hard—" he began.

"It's a hunger, Louis. You understand it, don't you? But I can't buy it in a bottle!"

"Marcella!" he cried passionately. "I'll—I'll come into your thoughts in time. Lord knows I'm trying hard enough."

"Oh my dear, don't I know?" she said gently. "And has it occurred to you what a mercy it is for me that you're like this now? If I had to hide everything up, like I used to, I couldn't bear it—never seeing him again—if you didn't help me to."

"It's queer," he said slowly. "Most people—husband and wife—would not be able to talk about this sort of thing to each other. They'd hide and lie to each other."

"We've both been weak—and we've both been helped. And these demands we make of each other teach us so much. If Kraill had not demanded courage of me I'd—he'd have had me. It's no use lying about it, is it? Why should you be so frank about your whisky, and give yourself away to me every time about it, and I hide up my weakness from you?"

"You're—weirdly honest, old girl," he said with a short laugh.

"Yes. Even now, if I had not promised him courage of thinking, I suppose—he'd have me—but I had to live up to what he saw in me."

"And that, of course, is what saved me," he said quietly.

"I've often wondered," she said. "Are you going to tell me now?"

There was a long silence. He smoked two cigarettes as his mind went back to that hot, strange day.

"I went out," he began at last, "to kill him. I'd always been a coward before. But then I didn't know what fear was. In a crisis like that—Marcella, listen to me getting back the psychology I learnt at the hospital!—the ruling emotion comes on top. And my ruling emotion, I think, is selfishness. Brutally frank, old lady! Learnt that from you. But do you remember that soap, when young Andrew got his face skinned because I wouldn't let him have mine? And—heaps of times—about grub, and things. Oh yes," he went on, as she looked startled, "I've quite realized how selfish I always was to you. Well, don't you see how it worked? I thought Kraill had got you. You were my property. I just couldn't bear that. The only thing seemed to be to kill him."

"I didn't think you loved me," she murmured.

"I don't believe I did—till Kraill gave me a few tips! You see, I went roaring off to him, and he was standing by a tree looking stunned. I was flaring, frantic. I called him a damned adulterer. He laughed at me, and said just what you said, 'If I'm not better than that, she is!' Then he told me that I'd deliberately thrown you away. Mad as I was with him, I saw that he was quite right."

He paused, and puffed at his cigarette.

"Lord, it was a set-out, Marcella! He said quite calmly, that he was going to take you. Then it was I saw what life without you would be. He gave me a thumb-nail sketch of myself—and of you and him. You both seemed rather fine. I seemed a stinking, grovelling, strawy sort of thing. To my amazement it seemed right that he should have you. Lord, it scorched! I stopped thinking about killing him, and wanted to kill myself."

She put out her hand to him silently and he took it in his.

"Then, quite unexpectedly, he asked me if I was happy. Happy! In that strife! I found myself telling him—and I'd just called him a damned adulterer, mind!—all about it, the awful fighting, the awful losing, and the hunger. And I knew he would understand all of it. He said he'd had just such hungers, and had got through with them. He said the getting through came to different people in different ways. He said something I want to have framed up in the sky for miserable neurotics to read, Marcella. He said, 'With you, Louis, it's got to be drastic. It's got to be an earthquake. There's more than the drink in you that's got to be rooted out. All the foundations of you, all the structure of you, have to crumble, to fall together in a heap. Your spiritual centre of gravity has got to shift. Do you see?' I didn't see. But that's the very most important thing, Marcella—about the centre of gravity."

She nodded. She thought she understood.

"Then he gave me another, gentler picture of myself—a fight here, a failure there, a hunger somewhere else, and Lord knows how many old shreds of cynicism and belief, of selfishness and ambition and wantonness and pride, and just a little bit of love and desire for beauty. I told him that madness of mine, about the Mater's letters that I told you to take to King George. He was interested in that—said it was symbolical of my love for the Mater. I think I told him every bally thing in my life. And I never lied once to him. He was quiet a bit, and then he said I'd to be shaken up, smashed and crumbled, so that these old things would all go from me, and new things come in by the crevices and let the axis of me get changed. That seemed reasonable. What was so queer was how he treated me like a kid. Rather an intelligent kid, you know. He said: 'Did you, at school, Louis, have the lamp and orange and hatpin trick to explain night and day to you?' I said yes, and it all came back to me, being a kid in school and under orders, you know. And he said: 'Suppose your master had jabbed the hatpin just anywhere, nowhere near the centre—how the orange would have wobbled, wouldn't it?' I said it would, and he went on to say the hatpin wasn't jabbed through my centre, and that's why I wobbled so much. That was very reasonable, too—but I told him I didn't see how the hatpin was going to be pulled out. Yet all the time I listened to him, sort of fascinated by a charm he has—seems a ridiculous thing to say about a man, doesn't it?"

"No—not a bit," she said faintly.

"He seemed to care a lot about me. No one but you ever had. And then he asked me if I realized what a thin time you had of it. 'Does it ever occur to you, Louis, that your wife has had a superhuman job? And she's only a girl after all. You know what women are,' he said. They pretend to us that they're so very strong and independent. Like a child trying to lift a great weight, and saying: 'No, no—you shan't help. I can do it,' and in the same minute dropping it on his toes with a smash and coming to be comforted! Marcella's like that. She's brave. But she's got to the cracking stage now. She's got to be taken care of. I didn't believe it. It seemed incongruous."

"After what I'd just told you?"

"Yes. I've always, even as a kid, been such a liar that when anyone was brutally honest I thought they were posing. Kraill said, 'You'll never be fit to take care of her. You're just a parasite. She's coming away with me now.' That squared with what I'd thought of your brutal honesty. I thought it was a blind, and that you were just coming back to fetch Andrew and then go. I wasn't cross with Kraill then. I simply crumpled up."

There was a long silence. When he spoke again he spoke as though sharing a secret with her.

"Do you know, I believe Kraill was playing with us both, Marcella? I believe he'd gauged you right, and me too. I believe he made love to you, knowing your cussed pride. He knew you'd turn to me, and that your turning to me would save me. I believe he was bluffing when he said he was going to take you. You never know, with men like that. Biology and psychology—! He's got people's bodies and brains and souls dissected, and nothing they can do is unaccountable to him! Men like that are beyond the ordinary human weaknesses, you know."

She did know, very much better than he, and hugged dear thoughts as she smiled faintly at him.

"Then he began to take whisky out and hold it up in front of me by its hind legs, kicking. And it looked pretty silly before he'd finished with it. I was sick of it, I tell you."

She started. She remembered how ashamed he had made her of those momentary cheap thrills of hers. What was it he had said—"Like a queen going on the streets?"

"He'd smashed me up, I tell you."

"And me," she said softly.

"Though I knew I'd lost you then, I knew I'd lost whisky too. All the striving things that had made me up, you see, were lying in ruins, and the whisky seemed such a disgusting, ridiculous thing it wouldn't fit in anywhere. Like one of those jigsaw puzzles—the whisky bit put all the rest out. I felt a most blissful peacefulness ... like, I suppose, when a cancer is taken away after months of hellish pain. You can't imagine it! It was just like those Salvation Army chaps you hear in the street sometimes talking about being at peace with God. You can see they are, they look so beaming! I felt like that. Only God didn't seem to come into it. I was just at peace with myself."

She nodded, and he went on slowly:

"I'm not clear about the rest. Having smashed me, you see, he began to put me together again. I felt I could worship him—that sounds rather like hot air, old girl, but it's quite true" he added, reddening a little. "He'd got rid of that bally cancer for me."

"But how did you know—?"

"How do you know the sun has risen, dear? How did that poor devil that was tearing himself in the tombs know that he need fear no more when Christ spoke to him? How did the blind man know he could see? I just don't know, but it happened. And Marcella, do you know what I did? Lord—it was awful. I cried like anything, and asked him to give you back to me. It came to me like a flash that I'd no right to you, that you and he were much righter for each other. But I just couldn't spare you. More selfishness! And it seemed I'd such a lot to make up to you. He said: 'Are you sure you can take care of her now, Louis?' I laughed. It seemed such cool, calm impudence the way our positions were reversed. He laughed too, and said: 'Queer how we still look upon women as goods and chattels, isn't it?'"

"You didn't seem to take me into account much," she said.

"Kraill answered for you in the surest possible way. And then we started to come back to you. He said an astonishing thing on the way back—asked me if I'd read a book on 'Dreams,' by a German chap named Freud. I said I left dreams and 'Old Moore's Almanac' to housemaids and old ladies. He laughed, and we talked about dreams. He told me some of his—rather racy ones. I told him lots of mine—those horrors I used to have, and all that. And he kept nodding his head, and saying: 'Yes, I thought so.' I've often wondered what he was getting at, or if he wasn't getting at anything at all, but just simply changing a difficult subject—like when he asked you to make that tea."

"So that's that," he said at last, and talked of England. Presently she surprised him by saying that she very much wanted to go to Sydney.

"Want to test me among pubs, old lady? Well—I am armed so strong in honesty that dangers are to me indifferent! I can't help swanking bits from 'Julius Caesar,' you know—my only Shakespeare play! But it'll be great to go to Sydney. Only—what are we going for? Shopping?"

She evaded his question, and in a flash he thought he saw the reason for the journey and became very tender and considerate of her. They made plans immediately; he was like a child being taken out for the day. He kept telling her how delightful it was not to be kept on a lead; and she could have told him how delightful it was not to be at the controlling end of a lead.

They left Andrew with Mrs. Twist; Marcella was very quiet during the drive in to Cook's Wall, though for some moments she was almost hysterically gay. Just beyond the station was a gang of navvies and a camp; the railway was pushing on to Klondyke; great Irishmen and navvies from all parts of Australia, drawn by the phenomenal pay, sweated and toiled under the blazing sun making the railway cutting. The sound of rumbling explosions came to them as the rocks were blasted: she watched the men running back with picks over their shoulders; she loved to see their enormous bull-like strength as they quarried the great boulders.

They stayed at Mrs. King's, and went to a theatre the first night. Louis grew more hungry for England every moment as he came into touch with civilization. Marcella sat in a dream; the music that would once have delighted her to ecstasy was muted; the people were things moving without life or meaning; she answered Louis every time he spoke to her, but her mind was drawn in upon itself by a gnawing anxiety.

The next day, leaving Louis to his own resources, she and Mrs. King went out.

He was a little inclined to chaff them about their air of mystery, but, taking Marcella's tiredness and whiteness into account, he was expecting them to say they had been buying baby clothes, though it was rather unlike Marcella to keep anything secret.

Her tragic face and Mrs. King's eyes, red with weeping, froze the gay words on his lips when they came in just before lunch, where he was playing a slow game of nap with some of the boys in the kitchen.

They went upstairs to their old room. When the door was closed she said to him: "Louis, I've been to a doctor. He says I'm not well."

"I knew it. I told you, didn't I? You want a change, my dear," he said anxiously.

"I'm afraid it's rather more serious than that, Louis," she said gravely. "He seems to think it—it may be—cancer. Oh, I wish they'd call it something else! I hate that word. It's such a hungry word."

She was feeling stunned, and very frightened.

"But Marcella, it's ridiculous! For one thing, you're too young—"

"That's what the doctor thought. But he says it's been known—in textbooks, you know. A girl of eighteen that he knew had it. I'm to see two other doctors to-morrow."

He began to pace about the room. Then he laughed a little shrilly.

"Oh, it's a silly mistake. Doctors are not infallible, you know! He's brutal to have suggested it even. Oh damn these colonials! No English doctor would have told you."

"I insisted," she said quietly, and he guessed that the doctor was not to be blamed.

"But," he went on, "it couldn't have happened except through an injury. You've had no injury that I can think of—"

"No, of course I haven't," she said rapidly. "But these things seem to happen without cause, don't they? Anyway, we won't believe it until we've got to. I've been ill for months, and noticed things. I've been an awful fool. But I didn't think it was dangerous, and—I don't think I'd have cared much if I had known."

The next day confirmed the first doctor's opinion. Marcella was a little incredulous. It did not seem to her that she was ill enough to be in danger. It was only when the doctors advised immediate operation that the horror and terror of it came flooding in upon her.

"Louis, we'll tell them what we think about it to-morrow, please," she said.

They went back to Mrs. King's almost in silence. Both of them seemed as creatures walking in a dream. With one accord they looked at each other when they got back in the room. Mrs. King, anxious-eyed, was talking to someone in the kitchen. To avoid having to talk to her they went up on the roof. The city rumbled beneath their feet, very, very much alive. Everything seemed to be blatantly alive, flaunting its bounding life at them. They sat down on the coping.

Without warning she clung to him and began to cry.

"Louis—please don't let me be chopped up," she sobbed. He held her as though he would snatch her out of life and pain and danger. But he did not know what to say.

"Louis, I hate my body to push itself into notice like this," she cried after awhile. "I always did—as a child, and when Andrew was coming, I hated you to see me—like that—Oh and Louis, I can't die—yet—"

"My darling, you're cracking me up!" he cried. "But don't think of dying. Surgeons don't let people die nowadays! You can't die. You're too much alive. You'd fight any illness—"

They sat trying to think some alleviation into their misery. Presently she snatched herself away from him.

"It's such a beastly, slinking sort of way to die! In a bed—sick and ill! Why can't they have wars—so that I could die quick on a battlefield? You wouldn't have time to be getting cold beforehand, then. Louis, it's like father, lying in bed till his poor heart was drowned. Louis—Oh—"

She stopped, breathless. Her eyes narrowed; she was thinking deep down.

"I wonder if it's—necessary?"

He shook himself impatiently.

"How can pain and illness ever be necessary?"

"They may be—perhaps not to the sufferer, you know," she said, and would not explain what she meant. She was seeing pictures of herself praying for weakness—and of burning Feet—

"I wish Andrew had come with us. Is there time to send for him?" she said presently.

"Every day is important now," he said, choked.

"Yes. I've not to be sentimental," she said, and tried not to grieve him as she remembered very vividly her own sick misery when her father and mother were ill and there was nothing she could do.

But even as she tried to be brave little fears would crop up, little jets of horror burst out and wring words from her lips.

"Louis, it's the beastliness of it, you know," she cried. "Imagine something taking possession of your body against your will. I hate that. Like a madman seizing hold of you—like that gorse being burnt out and growing up and breaking through other things that tried to grow—"

Louis was dumb. After awhile, when she had thought and thought again, she said:

"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 God, 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 reassured, 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 damned 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."

"Don't you worry about your Uncle's money," he said grimly. "I'll see to that! Marcella, there's nothing I can't do now. If only I hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital, probably I'd have had the knowledge to save you all this now."

"Why, how silly!" she laughed. "If you hadn't monkeyed about at the hospital we should never have met!"

The next day she went into hospital: as the anesthetic broke over her in delicious warm waves she was frantically afraid that she was going to die; it seemed to her that these calm, business-like surgeons and nurses only treated her as one of millions, not realizing that she was Marcella Lashcairn, immensely important to Louis and Andrew. She began to feel that it would be much better if she did not have an anesthetic at all, and superintended the whole business herself intelligently. It seemed wrong that she should have no hand in a thing of such profound importance. Then her will relaxed a little and she was horribly afraid that she would feel sharp knives through the anesthetic. A blinding flash of realization abased her utterly. Just on the borders of unconsciousness she saw Kraill looking at her with his beautiful eyes clouded with disappointment.

"He knows I'm afraid of being cut up—and he knows I'm afraid of dying I—Naturally he knows—he lives in my imagination!—and he wanted my courage—But I'm not really frightened, you know. Can't you see I'm not?"

It became immediately necessary to explain this to Kraill. She tried to push the mask away. A very steady, pleasant voice was saying "breathe deeply," and she realized that she had once more been taken up by things much stronger and wiser than herself: quite conceivably they might make a mess of her, hurt her and even kill her. But they were doing wisely; and anyway, she herself could do nothing more—buoyant warm waves took her up and carried her right away from caring.

When she wakened again all fear had gone; she was conscious of a burning corkscrew boring into her body somewhere, but she was too lazy to localize it. A long, long time after that she saw sunshine and smelt something very beautiful.

She focussed her eyes on something that swayed drunkenly: after awhile it stood still, and she saw that it was a little blue vase filled with boronia. The breeze from the open window was tapping the blind softly to and fro, and wafting the scent of the boronia over her face. Then she saw Louis's face, very white, above her.

"All right, old girl?" he whispered.

She tried to find her hand to raise it to him, but it seemed so far from her that she would have to go to the end of the world to fetch it. And that was too far. So she smiled at him.

"You're all right, you see," he said nervously. "Gloomy forebodings are so silly, aren't they?"

"I—thought I should feel it," she said.

"I told you you wouldn't, didn't I? The nurse said you took an awful time to go under—"

"Yes. I wanted to explain something. And I wanted to help the surgeons—I thought I'd—do it—much better than they could."

"Just like you, old lady," he said, with his eyes wet.

"Silly to fight, Louis—strong things—wise things—like those surgeons—even if they are making awful pains for you to bear—"

"I wouldn't talk, darling," he whispered anxiously, his face against hers.

"I'm not talking, Louis—I'm thinking," she said anxiously. "Something I was thinking—all mixed up with old Wullie, and a pathway. It seems to me God is like those surgeons—only—strong and wise, you know—only He never gives you chloroform, does He?"

She lost sight of Louis's face then for a very long time.

Three months later they were aboard a P. and O. steamer, calling their good-byes to Mrs. King and half a dozen of the boys, and Mr. and Mrs. Twist who had come all the way from Loose End to see them off.

Marcella had stayed in hospital for two months; for another month she had been struggling with inability to begin life again in a nursing home overlooking the thunders of the Pacific. Louis had gone back to the Homestead. He would not explain what he was going to do. He merely fetched Andrew, and put him in charge of Mrs. King, who brought him every day to see her. And then he vanished. But she had no fears for him. They had vanished; her sudden yielding to the chloroform in the hospital had been symbolical of a deeper yielding; she felt that these strong, wise forces of her life, if pain became unendurable, would either cure it or find an anesthetic for it.

And one day, towards the end of the three months, Louis had come to the nursing home to see her. His hands, as he seized her passionately, felt hard and stuck to her thin silk blouse.

"Louis!" she cried, taking one of the hands in hers, which had grown very soft and white, "I've seen them pretty bad before with the gorse. But whatever have you been doing? Where have you been? They're like a navvy's hands!"

"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 damned 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.

"Your aunt's getting a wee bit frail, Mrs. Marcella! So I brought the old machine along."

They climbed into the machine—his old, high dog-cart, and drove along through tearing winds which were like the greeting embraces of friends to Marcella. The doctor told her all the news; all about the new babies, and the few deaths and illnesses while she had been away. The dashing of the water on the beach came to them. He told her that Jock had been washed from his little boat one rough night, and his body had never been found. The reek of the green wood fires came to them on the salt breeze.

"What's that remind you of, Louis?" she asked him.

"Gorse!" he said with a grimace.

"I love it!" she said simply.

The door of Wullie's hut stood open. He was silhouetted dark against the light within. The doctor drew up.

"Must stop and speak to Wullie," he said rather apologetically, to Louis. The old man came out and stood looking at Marcella. He did not seem a day older.

"So ye're back again, Marcella?" he said. "I knew ye'd be back! I knew ye'd soon wear the wings off yer feet! But ye're not well?"

"How could I be, away from home?" she said gently. "I'll be well again here."

Tammas came up then, with his wife and the six big children Marcella knew, and two littler ones she had never seen. Jock's Bessie came out and put a small bundle on the floor of the machine.

"Juist a cookie for the bit laddie," she explained.

They all stared at Louis and then spoke to him: he got the idea that they were sizing him up, calling him to account for how he had dealt with Marcella, who belonged to them. They claimed young Andrew whom they coolly called "Andrew Lashcairn." As they drove on through the village they took on something of the nature of a triumphal progress, for everyone came out, and talked. And everyone seemed to be Marcella's owners.

Aunt Janet was on the step when they reached the farm: her eagle face was thinner, quite fleshless; in her black silk frock, shivered at the seams, and the great cairngorm brooch, she looked quite terrifying.

"So you're back, Marcella? I knew you would be coming back," she said.

Louis wondered if this were the stock greeting at Lashnagar.

"I wonder what you've got for going across the world?" she said. "You're not well."

"I've got my two men," laughed Marcella, as she kissed the old lady.

"Humphm!" said Aunt Janet. "He'd have found you out if you'd stayed here all the time."

"Do you know, Marcella," said Louis, as they went along the windy passages to her father's room in which Aunt Janet had elected to put them. "I've an extraordinary feeling that I've nothing to do with you any more. All these people—they seem to own you! You're an elusive young beggar, you know. First Kraill—I had to ask his permission to keep you. Now a whole village full!"

She shook her head and put her hand in his.

"Who's got me most, do you think?"

He answered as he thought.

There was a great spurting wood fire on the hearth in the book-room. As she looked round Marcella saw that most of the furniture left in the farm had been brought in. Jean came in, carrying a dish of scones. Andrew ran straight to her, just as Marcella used to. She explained that she had come back because the mistress was lonely without her, and she could not get used to any ways but those of the farm.

The doctor stayed to the meal. There was no bread on the table. Louis seemed surprised to see the oatcakes and the cheese and the herrings. To Marcella they were a feast of heaven. They put young Andrew in old Andrew's chair beneath the dusty pennant. He sat with his fat brown legs swinging, exceedingly conscious of their manly appearance which he compared with his father's and the doctor's, delighted to see that the doctor's old tweed knickerbockers were very much the same shape as his.

"There's bramble jelly for the boy," said Aunt Janet, who scarcely took her eyes from him for a moment. "Mrs. Mactavish sends me some every year—one pot. There's been four pots since you went away. And I've never been minded to open one. Maybe it's mouldered now."

They talked quietly; out on Lashnagar the winds began to howl; in the passages they shrieked and whined, and whistled and groaned in the chimney sending out little puffs of smoke. Up above their heads something scuttled swiftly. The little boy forgot his dignity and drew nearer to his mother.

"That's the rats, Andrew," said Aunt Janet, watching him. His mother explained that rats were a pest, to be hunted out like rabbits in Australia.

He drew away from her then and stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind.

"Andwew kill wats," he announced. "Wiv a big stick."

The doctor and Louis smoked and talked together of days forty years ago in Edinburgh, of days seven years ago at St. Crispin's. Marcella and Aunt Janet spoke softly, sitting by the fire.

"I wouldn't be sitting so near the fire, Marcella. You'll have all the colour taken out of your skirt. Not that it matters particularly," said Aunt Janet.

"It's lovely by the fire," murmured Marcella.

Aunt Janet reached over suddenly and spread an old plaid shawl over the girl's knees. She suddenly felt that Louis and Andrew and the last four years were unreal and dreamlike. They had happened to her, but now she was back home again, being told what to do.

Andrew began to rub his eyes.

"Yell be getting away to your bed now, Andrew," said Aunt Janet.

Jean stood up, waiting for him. He hugged his father and mother, shook hands with the doctor and looked searchingly at Aunt Janet before he kissed her. She put her hand behind the curtain, rustled a piece of paper and gave him an acid drop.

"I used tae pit Marcella, yer mither, tae her bed when she was a wee thing," said Jean, taking his small brown hand. He put the sweet into his mouth and trotted off beside her. At the door he stopped to kiss his hand to his mother. The rats scuttled across the floor above; one in the wainscoting scratched and gnawed. Andrew hesitated and came back a few steps. They were all watching him.