Marcella still divided
her time when she could between the book-room, Lashnagar and Wullie's
smoking-hut; but every morning Andrew Lashcairn tore her out of bed at
five o'clock and went with her through snows and frosts, and, later,
through the fresh spring mornings to teach her to swim in the wild
breakers of the North Sea. Many a girl would have died; Marcella proved
herself more a child of the Lashcairns than of her little English mother
by living and thriving on it. Her father sent her to work in the fields
with the men, but forbade her to speak to any of the village women who
worked there, telling her to remember that her folks were kings when
theirs were slaves. One night, when the snow drifted in from Lashnagar
on to her bed, she closed her window, and he, with a half return of the
old fury, pushed it out, window-frame and all. Ever after that Marcella
slept in a cave of winds. It never occurred to her to rebel against her
father. She accepted the things done to her body with complete docility.
Over the things that happened to her mind her father could have no
control.
But his Spartan training had a queer effect upon her. Always meagrely
fed, always knowing the very minimum of comfort, she became oblivious to
food or comfort for herself; she became unconscious, independent of her
body save as a means of locomotion, but she cared immensely for other
people's.
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