"
Marcella sat in miserable silence. She did not know enough to say
anything helpful. She had no idea what had cured her father. She had
seen him a drunkard; she had seen him ill, no longer a drunkard; she had
seen him die and guessed dimly that the drinking had killed him. But she
suddenly grasped the fact that she had seen effects--whole years of
effects; of causes she knew nothing whatever.
The mandoline began to play again "La Donna e Mobile." Louis's voice
broke into the music and the lashing water.
"They're cowards, my people, mean little cowards. That's why I'm a
coward! I'm a beastly, bally sort of half-breed, don't you know! Do you
know why they give me a pound a week? Partly, of course, it's to bribe
me to keep away. They've no other weapon but that. But mostly it's
because they're so miserably sentimental they can't bear to think of me
starving or sleeping out all night! Ough! If they weren't such miserable
cowards they'd know I'd be better dead than chained to the end of a row
of pound-notes. They'd have kicked me out, and let me either buck up or
die."
"But--oh, I do wish Dr. Angus or Wullie were here! I know there's an
answer to all that, but I'm such an idiot I can't find it," she cried
despairingly.
"I'll do them! I'll get my own back on them! I'm damned if I'll do as
they expect me to.
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