Captivity Part 31

Suddenly Marcella gave a little giggle of sheer amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I don't see much to laugh at," he growled.

"I'm thinking of how worried you were about my dignity as your wife and afraid I'd disgrace you in hotels by being friendly with the servants,"

she said. "It doesn't look as if we're going to get a tent even."

He read unkindness into her chaffing words and flushed hotly.

Suddenly his silly pride that had lain asleep, for the most part, since Port Said, gave a little struggle and came to wakefulness again. He could not have her laugh at him however good-naturedly. Just as he had not realized he was lying to her when he told her highly coloured versions of his surgical exploits, so he scarcely realized he was lying, as he said, mysteriously:

"Don't be too sure, my child. You won't be laughing at me soon. I may be a bit of a waster, but I'm not the sort to marry a girl without knowing how I'm going to support her. How do you know you won't be the guest of the Governor-General as soon as he knows I'm in Sydney--"

"Whatever do you mean? Oh, Louis, don't tell me stories! And I don't want to go and see people like Governor-Generals. I want to be alone with you."

"You probably will, my dear girl. But you must remember that a secret service man has to cover up his traces in every way. He has to hide everything, even from his wife."

"Louis," she said in real distress, clutching his arm, "are you really in the secret service? I'll--I'll forget it all, if you're telling me lies. I'll never think of it again. But it so awful to think you are lying to me!"

"Why should I lie, my darling?" he said, looking hurt, but staring at her mouth instead of looking into her eyes.

"You--you told me--never--to believe you, Louis. Oh, you do make it hard for me. I don't know what to believe. If you're in the secret service don't they pay you any money?"

"Of course--they pay me enough to keep myself going. But it's a patriotic work, you know. And as for not believing me, I told you not to believe me about drinking. That was all."

"But Louis, if you have money, why are you so worried about it now?

And--didn't you tell me your father sent you out here?"

"Yes, he did, dearie," he said earnestly. "It's quite true. I was a rotter and he got fed up with me. But I've done a lot of secret service work and didn't dare even tell him. I'm under an oath of secrecy. The times I've had to let him think I was out all night, simply too squiffy to get home when in reality I was working--for England--"

"And you really, truly mean it, Louis? Louis, it would break my heart right in two if I thought you were lying now."

"I swear it, on my love for you. I can see, now, that I ought to have told the Pater all about it. But I thought when he was so unbelieving I'd take his bally pound a week. After all, it isn't much. It's what he spends on one dinner often, and it would keep me in cigarettes, at any rate. So I thought I'd stick to it, as well as my secret service screw.

Besides--supposing he wasn't my father at all? Supposing he'd been paid by someone--someone very much more exalted than he, to bring me up?"

"Whatever do you mean, Louis?" she cried.

"Oh, never mind, never mind, old girl. But some day, perhaps, you'll know all I've had to go through--"

There was a pause full of strained thinking. At last she burst out nervously, "But you've told your father not to send any more money, haven't you?"

"Yes, of course. I felt I couldn't be married to you on money I didn't earn. But this secret service--it is all so confidential--we have to guard our orders most carefully in case they get anything--"

"They? Who are they?" she asked quickly.

"The enemy--Germans and Chinese. There's quite a conspiracy on foot in Australia," he added, looking important. But he would tell her no more.

"Shall you be at work as soon as we get to Sydney?" she asked.

"It all depends on my orders. If we can stagger through the first few weeks, till I can get some cash--I say, Marcella, why shouldn't you ask your uncle for some money?"

"Because he'd make me go home with him if I did."

"But couldn't you tell him you'd changed your plans, and had a good job in Sydney? We can make up a tale for him. Just think how jolly it will be to be together, darling! I know it isn't nice to ask people for money, but--it's worth it, isn't it? You need never see him again.

Anyway, if you went to live with him you'd cost him a considerable amount, wouldn't you? Why shouldn't he give you some money now instead of that? After all, it's up to well-to-do relations to help a girl who's all alone in the world. Your father's dead--"

It took him all the morning to persuade her. It was only when he told her how he went all to pieces if he had to worry about money, and a moment later painted glowing pictures of the month they would have together if his orders permitted, before they attempted to do anything definite, that she consented. He very rapidly sketched a tale for her to tell her uncle; Marcella hated the lies, for they seemed unnecessary until Louis told her that no uncle in his senses would let her marry a man she had only known six weeks.

"But if you talked to him, Louis," she pleaded, "I'm sure he'd like you."

"I'm not. He'd ask what my job is, and if it was known that I'd given away the fact that a secret service agent was in Sydney I might even get shot as a spy," he said earnestly, and at last, in a maze of worry, she gave way.

The night before Melbourne she gave him her father's signet ring--a heavy gold thing that Andrew had given her just before he died, telling her it must never leave her possession. He seemed very pleased with it, and told her laughingly that if they could not afford to buy a ring she would be married with that as a temporary measure.

CHAPTER XII

It was a wet, miserable day when they drew alongside at Port Philip.

Louis took the communal eight s.h.i.+llings, Marcella kept sixpence for luck. He went ash.o.r.e before most of the pa.s.sengers; she waited on board for her uncle.

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

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

Marcella saw quite well that she was not wanted and felt immensely relieved that there was no necessity for her to go to Wooratonga.

Haltingly and stumblingly she asked him for the money, without telling him Louis's chain of lies at all. He took little notice of what she said. Money means very little in Australia where things are done on a large scale. Looking immensely relieved he said it would no doubt be much happier for her to go to stay with her friends--and how much money did she want?

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

He seemed frightened of the traffic, frightened of the people.

"I'll be very glad to get back," he said, as they stood outside the bank watching the street cars clang by. "I've lived in the back blocks so long that houses suffocate me and people all look like monstrosities.

I'm glad to have seen you, though. I was very fond of Rose, as a boy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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