Captivity Part 43

"What?" she said guilelessly.

"Your arm--"

"Oh, that!" she said, flus.h.i.+ng. "That's nothing. I don't know how I did it. Mrs. King's mangle, I think it was. It's ugly. I don't like you to see ugly things." She drew the sleeve down tight.

"My poor little brave darling," he whispered, drawing her closer, trying to make her hide her face on his shoulder as he measured the distance between his hand that was round her waist and the ap.r.o.n pocket. He saw that it was hopeless.

"Marcella--when your father was ill, did he pray?"

"Yes. All the time."

"I wish I could," he murmured.

"Why not, if you want to? Wanting to pray is a prayer, really."

"I don't feel fit to, Marcella. Do you think you could pray for me, girlie?" he said, looking past her at the wall.

"I--I don't think I could--out loud. I'd feel as if I were eavesdropping. But I can in my mind, if you like."

"Let's kneel down, then, like we did in the funny little tin tabernacle when we were married," he said, and with an unsteady spring he was out of bed and kneeling by her side. For five minutes they were very quiet, she with her face buried in the counterpane as she prayed vaguely to herself and G.o.d and her father to help him. So intent was she that she did not feel his hand in her pocket. She thought his look of relief when they stood up and he kissed her meant that once more he had beaten his enemy.

"Girlie--go down and fill the bath for me! Right full to the brim with cold water. Like ducking in Jordan! I feel good now. I'm going to be clothed and in my right mind, now," he said earnestly. When she came back, her shoulders squared again, he had vanished. She did not miss her purse until she went to the door to buy milk. Luckily there was not very much in it. Not till she heard the tale from Louis's lips did she believe he had stolen it, and when she missed a few not very valuable but very precious articles of jewellery that had belonged to her mother she thought that his tale of enemies--Germans and Chinese--who were d.o.g.g.i.ng him, searching for valuable Government papers, must be true, and that they had taken her few trinkets.

That night brought the climax; he had reached the limit of endurance and was brought home by two sailors who had found him on the Man-of-War Steps. A wild southerly buster was blowing, bringing rain with it in floods. He was drenched and so were the sailors.

"He isn't half s.h.i.+kkered," said one of the boys admiringly. "Trying to jump in the harbour, saying the Germans was after him! If we'd not been going back to the _Astarte_ just then he'd have been in, sure enough."

"I'll get him upstairs for you, miss," said one of the sailors. "He's going to have the rats. We'd really ought to have give him to the police."

"I'm glad you didn't. If you can help me get him to his room--"

"Right-o, miss. Is he married?"

"Yes. I'm his wife," she said quietly. The sailors seemed to discuss the matter together. Then one of them volunteered to stay the night, as he guessed Louis would be dangerous.

"I'll get pulled for it to-morrow," said the boy, "but it don't seem right to leave a girl with him."

"You _are_ nice, both of you," she said gratefully, "but don't worry.

I'm quite used to him. He'll go to sleep."

Her instinct was to get rid of spectators, to have him to herself locked away from unsympathetic eyes. So the sailors went at last. When she got back from seeing them out Louis was flattened against the wall, staring with horrified eyes at the door, shaking violently. He had lost control of all his muscles; his face was grinning dreadfully. She gave a little cry of fright at his dreadful face. He mistook the cause of it and it communicated itself to him adding to his already overwhelming horror.

"They're after me," he mumbled; she could scarcely tell what he said because his mouth could only form the words loosely. "On the roof!

Germs--c.h.i.n.ks! Listen!" Suddenly he spoke with extraordinary clearness, telling her that he had had word that day that the Germans and Chinese had formed an alliance and were already over-running Europe.

"Big air fleet over Melb-Melba! Alb't Hall in ruins!" he chattered."

Chinese torture. They know I'm biggest en'my in 'Stralia, ole girl. They got me--to-day they caught me. I always knew it--I knew they'd have me!

But I beat them, just as I beat the Pater! They know I'm the man they're after! They know I'm the son of the Duke of ----" He mumbled a name Marcella could not catch. "Tha's why Pater--s'posed father--pers'cuted me all 'long! He was in their pay. Can't you see it? But I got away.

Only they'll have me, they'll have me. They're on the roof now!

Marsh-Marshe-lla, can you guard chimney if they come down? Ole girl, guard it with your body! Coming down chimney--Christmas Eve--"

He began to cry and laugh hysterically.

"When I was li'l kid'--Chris-mas stockings; I nev' thought c.h.i.n.ks'd come down chim' with hot irons--scalpels--" And then he described in abominable detail the tortures of the Inquisition all mixed up with Chinese tortures and atrocities: his reading seemed to have taken a morbid turn for years; the unspeakable horrors he described made Marcella the same quaking jelly of fear as he was, for the moment. The wild howling of the southerly buster in the chimney spoke to her Keltic imagination of enemy voices; the creakings of the rain-swollen roof, the pattering of the hail above on the iron was like quiet-footed torturers advancing to their work. Her reason had gone for a moment, overwhelmed by horrors. She did not stop to ask herself logical questions. Louis's voice went on, all on one note, piling horror on horror, disgust on disgust.

"They've killed poor ole King. Dutch Frank's in their pay--sleeping in the nex' room to us all these weeks. They hold your feet to the fire till they swell and burst. They'll do that to you, old thing, 'cause you're with me. Ole girl--I say, ole girl! You won't yell out, will you?

Ole girl--show them how an Eng--Eng--can die!"

She watched him, fascinated, her back against the door. With a look of infinite cunning he began to search his pockets and produced a bundle of papers, ordinary note-paper, pale grey with an embossed address and telephone number at the top. He handed them to her solemnly.

"If they get me, ta' these! Lea' me! Le' me die f'r ole flag! Braved a thous' years batt' and the breeze! Ta' these to the Gov'-Genral! He mus'

sen' these to King George! May save Buck'm Pal's! If all else falls, mus' save Buck'm Pal's, Marsh.e.l.la! King George unstans code--all in code--"

She took them dazedly in her hands. She saw that on the whitewashed wall against which he had almost stuck himself was a great patch of wet from his drowned clothes. He was standing with a pool of water dripping from him; his blazing eyes were darting this way and that in terror, his mouth was working loosely. Occasionally he lost power of speech entirely and regained it with didactic distinctness for a few moments. He made ineffectual grabs at Marcella, but his shaking hands failed to reach her. His inflamed brain searched back to every horrible physical thing he had read, or seen, every operation he had watched; his morbid condition made them things of obscenity, atrocity. He repeated them all to her with such circ.u.mstantial and guileless exact.i.tude that her brain reeled, and still she stood by the door, keeping out she knew not what.

Watching her face growing whiter, more pinched, he remembered things done to women by madmen--and said them aloud.

She glanced at the bundle of papers in her hand, wondering where she could hide them from his enemies. Opening them out so that she could fold them better she read the top page. It was written in thin, Italian handwriting, the typical caligraphy of the upper-cla.s.s woman of middle age.

"My own Darling Boy," she read.

"I enclose the usual pound from the Pater. Also five s.h.i.+llings each from Mary and myself to get you some cigarettes and chocolates. I hope you can get that nice milk chocolate you like so much in Australia. My dear, I hope and pray every day that you will remember that promise you gave me at Tilbury. When I see other mothers with big sons I feel I can't bear your being right at the other side of the world. Mrs. Cornell came in with Rupert to-day, and for the first time in my life I felt I hated them both. The doctor and Mr. Blackie have been in playing billiards with the Pater. I strongly suspect the Pater let the old chap win.

Anyway, he was very excited about it when he went home."

She turned over to the last page, and read, "given Toby his biscuit and told him Master will soon be home. He will, won't he, dear boy?

"Your loving old MUM."

She frowned. Louis had slid down to the floor and was curled up against the wall, making himself as small as possible, muttering, and occasionally grasping out at something that eluded him.

The next letter was very much the same as the first--little loving messages, circ.u.mstantial accounts of trivial family interests. Cook had been ill again and the soup was burnt one night because the temporary cook sent by Miss Watkin's Agency was certainly not up to her job. Mary had been to see "The Chocolate Soldier" again, and was very bored. One of the Wayre girls--the fair one--had dyed her hair for a church concert and couldn't wash it off again.

And he said these letters were a code!

Marcella had a quick struggle with two sides of her nature. The Kelt in her hugged the thought that these were secret service papers to be guarded with her life for his sake, his country's sake. There was nothing extraordinary to her in the thought that, in the reign of George V, torturing enemies were abroad with knife and bastinado and poison cup. She saw herself standing over his prostrate body, with countless slain enemies before her, and a dripping spear in her hand. She got a glimpse of King George, with ringlets, velvet suit and Vand.y.k.e lace collar gravely smiling as he received the papers from her hands. She was still in the romantic stage of kings.h.i.+p! And then the stolidly common-sense Puritan ancestress in her made her laugh. It was hard for her to disbelieve a romantic and perilous tale. But these letters! They were simply the pathetic love-letters of a mother to her boy, bringing an atmosphere of a commonplace, peaceful English home into all this madness. With that the truth dawned on her. There were eight of them, each mentioning money! Louis had admitted not writing to his father to put a stop to his remittance. She had forgotten to insist that it was done. Here was the explanation of his present orgy!

He was kneeling on the floor now, trying to grip his bitten, bleeding fingers into the wall and crawl upwards. He thought he was in a well, drowning. As she bent over him the well vanished, and she became his enemy. He made a desperate lunge at her and tried to grab his papers from her. But his body was unco-ordinated; murder was in his brain, but it could not be transferred to his shaking hands with which he menaced her.

She was very much stronger than he, and all the stronger now that her acquired fear of unknown enemies had been laughed away. The thing she realized most was that he must go to bed, that his wet clothes must come off for fear they gave him pneumonia; that, even if they were not wet, they must still come off and be locked up to keep him once again a prisoner. Only, it seemed, in imprisonment, lay peace. And peace was certainly not salvation!

As she realized that, all the strength was taken from her, but only for a moment. She felt that there was something in living from day to day and trusting that somehow good would come to him; she thought for a mad moment of being drastic, and breaking his leg to make him an honourable prisoner, but realized with self-contempt that she was too soft to do that to him. Instead, she fought him to get his clothes off, and by shaking him till all his breath went, perhaps saved his reason by crystallizing his intangible fears of enemies into physical fear of her, whom he could see and guard against. But he dared not sleep. As soon as he had ceased to be afraid of her rather hard, very strong hands he became afraid again of the Germans and c.h.i.n.ks; and, seeing him there, so weak now, so sick, so shaky she could not shake fear into him any more.

As the night wore on his delusions changed. He was still being persecuted, but now she was the persecutor. Once he cried out that he had been drinking sulphuric acid, and his throat and mouth were completely burnt away, leaving a gaping wound. She made tea for him, guessing that this was merely a picturesque way of telling her he was thirsty. But he thought she was poisoning him, and dared not drink the tea. She had only married him for his money and his position, for his enemies had told her he was a duke's son. She was a second Mrs.

Maybrick--but this conveyed nothing to newspaperless Marcella. She had been unfaithful to him many times, he told her: Mr. King, Dutch Frank, Ole Fred and the Chinese greengrocer from whom she bought granadillas every day, were the objects of her transferred affections.

Unused to the ravings of delirium she was first wildly indignant and then coldly despairing; at first she thought he was cruel; then she realized, with a softening to pity, that he was only mad. He won back the pity by telling her that his mouth and throat were now in an advanced state of decomposition, having been dead many months; maggots were crawling over them, choking him. The overwhelming beastliness of this suggestion was almost more than she could bear until she realized that it must be even more overwhelming for him. By chance she hit upon the sort of treatment a doctor would most likely have given a man suffering from alcoholic poisoning. She spoke to him quietly, as if asking his advice, though she could scarcely control her voice.

"The best thing is to poison the maggots, don't you think, Louis?"