Captivity Part 22

"Would you brush my silly mop of hair and then pa.s.s me my cap, dear? Oh this hair is a bother! I've often thought I'd have it cut off like a convict."

"I think it is wonderful hair," Marcella told her, brus.h.i.+ng it tenderly, and plaiting it back before she arranged it under a ridiculous boudoir cap of ribbon and lace.

"I can't tell you how I suffered during the night, dear," said Mrs.

Hetherington plaintively. "(Just pa.s.s me the hand mirror, will you?) I can't think why I was so foolish as to travel steerage. Those three emigrant girls in this cabin--my dear, they are absolutely _coa.r.s.e_! You should see their underclothes! Look, Marcella--I'm going to call you Marcella, you are so sweet. Look at that nightgown on the top bunk.

_Pink flannelette_! And I hate to share my cabin with them! They've gone on deck now for the day. I told them I simply must be alone."

"Aren't you going to have any breakfast?" asked Marcella. "I'll make you some tea if you like." She and Louis had bought a teapot at Gibraltar, solemnly paying half each and sharing the responsibility for the sacrifice of the other one.

"No, I don't think I could drink tea. What do you think I could have?

You know, my dear, it was champagne that upset me like this! Mistah Petahs and I had a small bottle last night and it brought everything back."

She began to wipe a plaintive eye on her small handkerchief.

"The day I married my dear George--the father of my darlings--we had champagne. It always brings it all back to me."

"But--tea makes headaches better."

"Not mine." Mrs. Hetherington knitted her white brows and looked immensely interested.

"I think if you were to see dear Mistah Petahs and ask him to come along the alley-way and speak to me. He is so gentle, so sympathetic, he might suggest something, dear."

"Um," said Marcella, thinking of Jimmy. But she fetched Mistah Petahs who came with voluble and pleased sympathy.

He stood at the door of the cabin smiling fatuously. Mrs. Hetherington gave a little horrified shriek as she saw the tip of his toe over the threshold.

"No, no, naughty boy! You mustn't come in here! I'm shocked."

"Are you ill?" he asked in a deeply pained voice.

"My poor, poor head, Mistah Petahs! That champagne last night brought everything back--dear George and all our happiness."

"Oh, I say," murmured Mr. Peters.

"I feel so ill, so terribly ill. What could I have? If this head doesn't get better I shall jump overboard, really I shall. And then the fishes will eat me!"

Mr. Peters contemplated the prospect hopefully.

"And--I keep thinking of my darlings," she whispered, reduced to tears.

"What you want, little lady, is a hair of the dog that bit you," said Mr. Peters judicially. She gave a gentle little scream.

"Oh you sound so fierce, Mistah Petahs! Which dog? When?" she asked guilelessly.

"I'll get it--you lie back, little lady, and rest your pretty head."

She lay back, with swimming eyes.

He went half a step along the alley-way.

"Mistah Petahs," she called faintly.

He came back, a.s.siduous.

"On ice," she murmured. He nodded and went.

"So kind--so sympathetic," murmured Mrs. Hetherington with closed eyes.

Marcella, who had stood frowning and puzzled, was now pressed into the service.

"I think, dear, when Mistah Petahs comes back I could manage a little bread and b.u.t.ter--only the b.u.t.ter is so nasty."

"Would you like jam?" said Marcella helpfully, liking jam herself.

The thought of jam made Mrs. Hetherington feel faint.

"No, I'll have bread and b.u.t.ter. Get me two slices, dear--thin. And--ask Knollys if he could let you have some cayenne pepper. Bread and b.u.t.ter sprinkled with cayenne always does me good when my head has one of its naughty fits."

Twenty minutes later she was sitting up with sparkling eyes eating devilled bread and b.u.t.ter and drinking champagne daintily while Mr.

Peters sat beaming and bashful and inexpressibly silly on a camp-stool in the alley-way, and the bedroom steward wondered what on earth he would do when the officers came along for cabin inspection.

The night before they touched at Naples Marcella and Louis arranged what she called a "ploy." They would go ash.o.r.e together and spend the day at Pompeii. He had been there before, but he remembered little of it because he had been with a party who had hired a car, taken a luncheon basket and several bottles of whisky and left him asleep in the car while they explored the dead towns.

"It seems an insult to the past--going there and getting drunk on their tombs," he said musingly. "But you and I will have a great day. In a Roman town, Marcella--there's something very Roman about you--you're like the mother of the Gracchi. I happen to know all about the mother of the Gracchi because it came in my Latin translation at Matric, and I had such a devil of a job with it that I never forgot it. That's the only bit of Roman history that's stuck to me, just as 'Julius Caesar' is the only bit of Shakespeare I know because we did scenes from it for a school concert once."

During the afternoon the young schoolmaster came along with "The Last Days of Pompeii" in his hands.

"He's going to suggest coming with us to-morrow," said Louis, who laughed at him every time he saw him. "And he's going to read us bits of local colour. I can see it glinting in his eye. Let's look very busy."

"What can we do?" asked Marcella with a giggle. He initiated her into the mysteries of "Noughts and Crosses" and they sat with heads bent low over the paper as the schoolmaster came along.

"I have been tracing the course of the fugitives in Lytton's immortal work," he began with a cough. "It would greatly add to the interest of visitors to Pompeii if they could follow it to-morrow, so I am giving a little lecture on it in the saloon to anyone who cares--"

"Thanks," said Louis shortly. With a sigh the schoolmaster pa.s.sed on, and, sitting down with his back against the capstan, read studiously.

"Don't let's go with him if he asks us," whispered Marcella. "Let's be alone."

"Of course--he's a bore," whispered Louis. "I wouldn't lose this day at Pompeii for a s.h.i.+pload of footling schoolmasters."

Very early next morning he wakened her by tapping on her cabin door. She had heard him tossing about in the night and was not surprised that he looked tired and rather haggard. But she forgot to ask him what was the matter as Naples burst upon her the moment she put her head above the companion-way where he was waiting for her.

"Oh--look at it," she gasped.

"Yes, isn't it?" he said, waving his arm as if he were responsible for Naples. "Look at the jolly old bonfire."

All round, in the brilliant blue waters of the Bay, s.h.i.+ps lay as if asleep; a few little tugs fussed nervously, a few little boats laden brilliantly with fruit and vegetables glided along as though they were content to reach somewhere quite near by to-morrow or the day after.

There was a cloud over the grey town at the foot of Vesuvius; it looked like winding sheets about the dead; it reminded Marcella insensibly of Lashnagar as she saw the mist and smoke wraiths mingle grey and white, rising from fissures, creeping along gullies until they formed a wreath at the crest of the volcano through which a thin needle of yellower smoke was rising straight as a pinnacle through the windless air.