Chapter 28

his words for her, even after more than three years of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Does this sort of thing happen very often?" he said with an air of intimate interest that reassured her.

"I'd forgotten about you," she said jerkily. "I'm so sorry--if I'd known you were coming I'd have arranged for you to stay at the Homestead to-night."

"But does it?"

"He can't help it."

"It can't go on, you know," said Kraill, lighting a cigarette and throwing it down impatiently.

"I know. That's why I wrote you that letter. He is so unhappy."

Kraill made an impatient gesture. Marcella stood up slowly.

"Are you tired? You must be," she said.

"No. I want to see this thing settled," he said. She felt very hopeful to hear him speak so determinedly.

"It's queer that you think as I do about that, Professor Kraill," she said with a faint smile. "People say other's troubles are not their business. But I think that's a most wicked heresy. I always interfere if I see people miserable. I can't bear to be blank and uninterested."

"Neither can I. I often get disliked for it, however," he said with a quick, impatient sigh. "And they don't often accept one's interference."

"I shall," she said gently. "I shall do whatever you tell me if it will make Louis well. I think that is really all I care about in the world. Sometimes, even, I think I care more about Louis than Andrew. I've a feeling that he's much more a little boy than Andrew is. You know, all my life, since I saw my father very unhappy and ill, I've wanted to save people--in great droves! And now I'm beginning to think I can't save one man."

"And you think I can?"

"I'm quite sure of it. People are not wise like you are just for fun. But will you come along the clearing with me a little way? I'm afraid our voices will waken Louis, and then he won't get any sleep. That is, if you're really not tired."

They went through the moon-silvered grass down to the lake. She sat under the big eucalyptus which clapped its leathery hands softly.

"I was sitting here when I read your lectures--the last ones--and decided to write to you. It is like--like Mount Sinai to me now. Will you talk to me out of the thunders, Professor Kraill?"

He looked at her for a moment, recalling the rather heart-breaking calmness and common-sense with which she had soothed Louis a while ago; he remembered her cool, patient logic in the midst of the drunken man's ravings--and he decided in a flash of insight that this rather rhetorical way of talking to him was very real to her. She saw him with the dream-endowed eyes of the Kelt and, embarrassing though it might be to him, and unreal though it made him feel, he had to accept the fact that, for her, he was clothed in a sort of shine. He saw, too, that she could not do without some sort of shine in her life.

"Tell me all about it," he said. "You don't mind talking to a stranger about these things?"

"You have never been a stranger to me, Professor Kraill. And I don't believe there is such a thing as a stranger, really. I like to think of the way the knights always went about ready to interfere with a good stout sword when they saw anyone in trouble."

And so she talked to him, and as she talked his quick mind gained an impression of her going about sordid ways and small woman tasks in knightly armour. After awhile he said something unexpected. It made her impatient for it showed that he was thinking of her. She was thinking only of Louis.

"You know, you make the years slip away," he said. "I have dreamed that women might go shoulder to shoulder with men, standing up straight and strong."

"Yes, I know," she said softly. "I think many a time I've very deliberately stood up straight when I wanted to lie down and cry my eyes out, just because I got the idea of a woman knight from those lectures of yours. And your talk about the softness of women rather goaded me. I _wouldn't_ be soft."

"Soft! You're not soft," he interrupted.

"But think how expensive it is!" she said with a voice that shook a little. "It took a lifetime of discipline and two weak men to make me hard. I know now, very well, that Louis has been softened, weakened by me. To save him I think I must crumple up."

She caught her breath sharply.

"And I don't see how I can," she added.

"One might pretend," he said slowly, looking reflectively at her face.

"I couldn't. I can't pretend anything. That's the worst of me. And it seems so wrong to me that, to make one human being strong, another must be weak. And it seems to me that the weak thing kills the strong in the end. Like ivy, you know, choking out the life of an oak."

"I don't think he is likely to kill you."

"I very much wish he would, except that I dare not leave him. I have weighed it all up very carefully, and I feel it would be better to die than live this way. Sometimes I feel I shall get unclean--right inside. I can't explain it. There are things in Louis I can't bear--little meannesses, and selfishnesses. He locks things up--even here, where no one ever comes. That's a horrible spirit of selfishness, isn't it?"

She told him calmly, uncomplainingly, impersonally as one talks to a doctor, of his locking up his cigarettes, his tobacco, his writing paper; of how he carried the only pencil about in his pocket and hid away the papers from his mother, the books from Dr. Angus until he had read them. One day last week they had been short of milk, and Marcella had been anxious about the boy's food. The breakfast was on the table; she had to run to her bedroom for a bib for Andrew. When she got back Louis had already poured all the milk into his tea, saying that he had done it by accident. Another time she had thrown away the boy's tablet of soap by accident, and could not find it anywhere. Louis had his own tablet, locked away; there was no other nearer than Klondyke except the home-made stuff composed of mutton fat and lye, very cruel to tender skin. And he had made a scene when she asked him for his soap for Andrew and, when she, too, made a scene threw it away into the scrub where she could not find it. Little things--little straws that showed the way of the hurricane.

"You see," she said calmly. "It wouldn't do for me to die, and leave Andrew to that sort of love, would it? I knew a little boy once who had to look after his father," and she told him of Jimmy Peters on the ship. "I think if it came to dying, the only thing would be to take Andrew along too."

"Don't you think you're being rather conceited?" he said suddenly. "Has it occurred to you that you're taking too much on yourself? You admit that you're keeping your husband a parasite. Are you going to do the same to your child? Are you the ultimate kindliness of the world? You tell me of your own stern childhood. Has it hurt you? You must be logical, you know!" he added, smiling at her.

"I think I want Andrew to be happy rather than heroic. Heroism is such a cold fierce thing. I'm only just realizing what a coward I've been, and how utterly unheroic my hope in Louis has been. But it's so natural, isn't it? I didn't dare face the rest of life without the belief that some day we should be happy. Every time he gets drunk I've told myself, very decidedly, that this was the last time. And I know I've been lying to myself because I daren't face the truth."

Kraill smoked thoughtfully for a few minutes.

"I suppose it never occurred to you that, without the drink to consider, you would not be happy with him?" he said at last.

"Oh yes. We are quite happy in between," she said with a sigh.

"On the edge of things? Always with reservations?" he said quickly.

"Only on the edge of things," she said slowly. "How well you know!"

"I know all about it. I have never been past the edge of things myself. But always I think I shall be some day. I suppose I am quite twice your age, and still I am romantic, still I think there's a miracle waiting for me round the corner of life."

"I used to think that until just a little while ago. I used to think there would be a day when I should shine. Now I daren't think of it because I know I never shall. After all, stars and suns and things must be lonely, don't you think?"

"I don't know."

The moon sank, the dawn wind ruffled the grass and whispered in the tops of the rustling trees, making soft, eerie sounds.

She stood up suddenly. Unconsciously she held out her hand to help him up. Then she laughed bitterly, and twisted her hands in each other behind her.

"I'm sorry. I forgot you didn't need helping up," she said. He looked at her curiously.

"This is an appalling way to treat a guest," she said as they walked slowly towards home. "To sit out with him in the middle of the night and keep him awake. You make me selfish. I've never talked about Louis to anyone before. You make me dependent, Professor Kraill."

"And that, you say, is what you need."

Louis was calling out thickly, wildly, as they came within distance. She started and began to hurry. "I wouldn't go in there!" said Kraill sharply.

"It doesn't worry me now. If I don't go in, he's too frightened to sleep, and then he'll wake Andrew. And if he doesn't sleep he's very ill next day. Sleep gets rid of the effects of whisky, you know. Oh just listen to him! Why can't I do something? You will help me--you must!" she cried, clutching at his hands for a minute. To his intense distress he saw her eyes full of tears, and saw her cover them with her hands as she ran into Louis's room. He stood on the verandah watching her shut the door. Through the trellis window came sounds of a soft voice and a wild one mingling.