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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Thou Gavest Me
+       Being the Story of Mary O'Neill
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: January 4, 2005 [EBook #14597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Woman
+Thou Gavest Me
+
+Being the Story of Mary O'Neill
+
+By HALL CAINE
+
+Author of "The Prodigal Son," Etc.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Published August, 1913
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
+
+_How much of the story of Mary O'Neill is a work of my own imagination,
+and how much comes from an authentic source I do not consider it
+necessary to say. But as I have in this instance drawn more largely and
+directly from fact than is usually the practice of the novelist, I have
+thought it my duty to defeat all possible attempts at personal
+identification by altering and disguising the more important scenes and
+characters. Therefore this novel is not to be understood as referring to
+any living person or persons, and the convent school described in it is
+not to be identified with any similar educational institution in Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR
+
+_Here are the Memoranda we have talked about. Do as you like with them.
+Alter, amend, add to or take away from them, exactly as you think best.
+They were written in the first instance for my own eye alone, and hence
+they take much for granted which may need explanation before they can be
+put to the more general uses you have designed for them. Make such
+explanation in any way you consider suitable. It is my wish that in this
+matter your judgment should be accepted as mine. The deep feeling you
+could not conceal when I told you the story of my dear one's life gives
+me confidence in your discretion.
+
+Whatever the immediate effect may be, I feel that in the end I shall be
+justified--fully justified--in allowing the public to look for a little
+while into the sacred confessional of my darling's stainless heart.
+
+I heard her voice again to-day. She was right--love is immortal. God
+bless her! My ever lovely and beloved one!_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL
+
+                                   PAGE
+     FIRST PART: MY GIRLHOOD          1
+     SECOND PART: MY MARRIAGE        97
+     THIRD PART: MY HONEYMOON       135
+     FOURTH PART: I FALL IN LOVE    210
+     FIFTH PART: I BECOME A MOTHER  308
+     SIXTH PART: I AM LOST          401
+     SEVENTH PART: I AM FOUND       505
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE: _The name Raa (of Celtic origin with many variations
+among Celtic races) is pronounced Rah in Ellan._
+
+
+
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL
+
+
+FIRST PART
+
+MY GIRLHOOD
+
+FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+"Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths," begins the most
+beautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the depths of
+my life that I must bring the incidents of this story.
+
+I was an unwanted child--unwanted as a girl at all events. Father Dan
+Donovan, our parish priest, told me all about it. I was born in October.
+It had been raining heavily all day long. The rain was beating hard
+against the front of our house and running in rivers down the
+window-panes. Towards four in the afternoon the wind rose and then the
+yellow leaves of the chestnuts in the long drive rustled noisily, and
+the sea, which is a mile away, moaned like a dog in pain.
+
+In my father's room, on the ground floor, Father Dan sat by the fire,
+fingering his beads and listening to every sound that came from my
+mother's room, which was immediately overhead. My father himself, with
+his heavy step that made the house tremble, was tramping to and fro,
+from the window to the ingle, from the ingle to the opposite wall.
+Sometimes Aunt Bridget came down to say that everything was going on
+well, and at intervals of half an hour Doctor Conrad entered in his
+noiseless way and sat in silence by the fire, took a few puffs from a
+long clay pipe and then returned to his charge upstairs.
+
+My father's impatience was consuming him.
+
+"It's long," he said, searching the doctor's face.
+
+"Don't worry--above all don't worry," said Father Dan.
+
+"There's no need," said Doctor Conrad.
+
+"Then hustle back and get it over," said my father. "It will be five
+hundred dollars to you if this comes off all right."
+
+I think my father was a great man at that time. I think he is still a
+great man. Hard and cruel as he may have been to me, I feel bound to
+say that for him. If he had been born a king, he would have made his
+nation feared and perhaps respected throughout the world. He was born a
+peasant, the poorest of peasants, a crofter. The little homestead of his
+family, with its whitewashed walls and straw-thatched roof, still stands
+on the bleak ayre-lands of Ellan, like a herd of mottled cattle
+crouching together in a storm.
+
+His own father had been a wild creature, full of daring dreams, and the
+chief of them had centred in himself. Although brought up in a mud
+cabin, and known as Daniel Neale, he believed that he belonged by lineal
+descent to the highest aristocracy of his island, the O'Neills of the
+Mansion House (commonly called the Big House) and the Barons of Castle
+Raa. To prove his claim he spent his days in searching the registers of
+the parish churches, and his nights in talking loudly in the village
+inn. Half in jest and half in earnest, people called him "Neale the
+Lord." One day he was brought home dead, killed in a drunken quarrel
+with Captain O'Neill, a dissolute braggart, who had struck him over the
+temple with a stick. His wife, my grandmother, hung a herring net across
+the only room of her house to hide his body from the children who slept
+in the other bed.
+
+There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she had to
+fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficient
+living she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours. It was
+ill-paid labour--ninepence a day fine days and sixpence all weathers,
+with a can of milk twice a week and a lump of butter thrown in now and
+then. The ways were hard and the children were the first to feel them.
+Five of them died. "They weren't willing to stay with me," she used to
+say. My father alone was left to her, and he was another Daniel. As he
+grew up he was a great help to his mother. I feel sure he loved her.
+Difficult as it may be to believe it now, I really and truly think that
+his natural disposition was lovable and generous to begin with.
+
+There is a story of his boyhood which it would be wrong of me not to
+tell. His mother and he had been up in the mountains cutting gorse and
+ling, which with turf from the Curragh used to be the crofter's only
+fuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it by a straw rope when,
+dipping into the high road by a bridge, they crossed the path of a
+splendid carriage which swirled suddenly out of the drive of the Big
+House behind two high-spirited bays driven by an English coachman in
+gorgeous livery. The horses reared and shied at the bundle of kindling,
+whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and then
+the brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip,
+struck the boy on his naked legs.
+
+At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the head of
+the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain
+O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing.
+But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his
+eyes with his ragged sleeve and said:
+
+"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a
+man, and then nobody shall never lash you."
+
+His mother died. He was twenty years of age at that time, a
+large-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education but
+with a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his chest and
+emigrated to America. What work he found at first I never rightly knew.
+I can only remember to have heard that it was something dangerous to
+human life and that the hands above him dropped off rapidly. Within two
+years he was a foreman. Within five years he was a partner. In ten years
+he was a rich man. At the end of five-and-twenty years he was a
+millionaire, controlling trusts and corporations and carrying out great
+combines.
+
+I once heard him say that the money tumbled into his chest like crushed
+oats out of a crown shaft, but what happened at last was never fully
+explained to me. Something I heard of a collision with the law and of a
+forced assignment of his interests. All that is material to my story is
+that at forty-five years of age he returned to Ellan. He was then a
+changed man, with a hard tongue, a stern mouth, and a masterful lift of
+the eyebrows. His passion for wealth had left its mark upon him, but the
+whole island went down before his face like a flood, and the people who
+had made game of his father came crawling to his feet like cockroaches.
+
+The first thing he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft,
+re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take care of it.
+
+"Guess it may come handy some day," he said.
+
+His next act was worthy of the son of "Neale the Lord." Finding that
+Captain O'Neill had fallen deeply into debt, he bought up the braggart's
+mortgages, turned him out of the Big House, and took up his own abode in
+it.
+
+Twelve months later he made amends, after his own manner, by marrying
+one of the Captain's daughters. There were two of them. Isabel, the
+elder, was a gentle and beautiful girl, very delicate, very timid, and
+most sweet when most submissive, like the woodland herbs which give out
+their sweetest fragrance when they are trodden on and crushed. Bridget,
+the younger, was rather homely, rather common, proud of her strength of
+mind and will.
+
+To the deep chagrin of the younger sister, my father selected the elder
+one. I have never heard that my mother's wishes were consulted. Her
+father and my father dealt with the marriage as a question of business,
+and that was an end of the matter. On the wedding day my father did two
+things that were highly significant. He signed the parish register in
+the name of Daniel O'Neill by right of Letters Patent; and on taking his
+bride back to her early home, he hoisted over the tower of his chill
+grey house the stars and stripes of his once adopted country stitched to
+the flag of his native island. He had talked less than "Neale the Lord,"
+but he had thought and acted more.
+
+Two years passed without offspring, and my father made no disguise of
+his disappointment, which almost amounted to disgust. Hitherto he had
+occupied himself with improvements in his house and estate, but now his
+restless energies required a wider field, and he began to look about
+him. Ellan was then a primitive place, and its inhabitants, half
+landsmen, half seamen, were a simple pious race living in a sweet
+poverty which rarely descended into want. But my father had magnificent
+schemes for it. By push, energy and enterprise he would galvanise the
+island into new life, build hotels, theatres, casinos, drinking halls
+and dancing palaces, lay out race-courses, construct electric railways
+to the tops of the mountains, and otherwise transform the place into a
+holiday resort for the people of the United Kingdom.
+
+"We'll just sail in and make this old island hum," he said, and a number
+of his neighbours, nothing loth to be made rich by magic--advocates,
+bankers and insular councillors--joined hands with him in his
+adventurous schemes.
+
+But hardly had he begun when a startling incident happened. The old Lord
+Raa of Castle Raa, head of the O'Neills, the same that had sworn at my
+grandmother, after many years in which he had lived a bad life abroad
+where he had contracted fatal maladies, returned to Ellan to die. Being
+a bachelor, his heir would have been Captain O'Neill, but my mother's
+father had died during the previous winter, and in the absence of direct
+male issue it seemed likely that both title and inheritance (which, by
+the conditions of an old Patent, might have descended to the nearest
+living male through the female line) would go to a distant relative, a
+boy, fourteen years of age, a Protestant, who was then at school at
+Eton.
+
+More than ever now my father chewed the cud of his great disappointment.
+But it is the unexpected that oftenest happens, and one day in the
+spring, Doctor Conrad, being called to see my mother, who was
+indisposed, announced that she was about to bear a child.
+
+My father's delight was almost delirious, though at first his happiness
+was tempered by the fear that the child that was to be born to him might
+not prove a boy. Even this danger disappeared from his mind after a
+time, and before long his vanity and his unconquerable will had so
+triumphed over his common sense that he began to speak of his unborn
+child as a son, just as if the birth of a male child had been
+prearranged. With my mother, with Doctor Conrad, and above all with
+Father Dan, he sometimes went the length of discussing his son's name.
+It was to be Hugh, because that had been the name of the heads of the
+O'Neills through all the ages, as far back as the legendary days in
+which, as it was believed, they had been the Kings of Ellan.
+
+My mother was no less overjoyed. She had justified herself at last, and
+if she was happy enough at the beginning in the tingling delight of the
+woman who is about to know the sweetest of human joys, the joy of
+bearing a child, she acquiesced at length in the accepted idea that her
+child would be a boy. Perhaps she was moved to this merely by a desire
+to submit to her husband's will, and to realise his hopes and
+expectations. Or perhaps she had another reason, a secret reason, a
+reason that came of her own weakness and timidity as a woman, namely,
+that the man child to be born of her would be strong and brave and free.
+
+All went well down to the end of autumn, and then alarming news came
+from Castle Raa. The old lord had developed some further malady and was
+believed to be sinking rapidly. Doctor Conrad was consulted and he gave
+it as his opinion that the patient could not live beyond the year. This
+threw my father into a fever of anxiety. Sending for his advocate, he
+took counsel both with him and with Father Dan.
+
+"Come now, let us get the hang of this business," he said; and when he
+realised that (according to the terms of the ancient Patent) if the old
+lord died before his child was born, his high-built hopes would be in
+the dust, his eagerness became a consuming fire.
+
+For the first time in his life his excitement took forms of religion and
+benevolence. He promised that if everything went well he would give a
+new altar to Our Lady's Chapel in the parish church of St. Mary, a ton
+of coals to every poor person within a radius of five miles, and a
+supper to every inhabitant of the neighbouring village who was more than
+sixty years of age. It was even rumoured that he went so far in secret
+as to provide funds for the fireworks with which some of his flatterers
+were to celebrate the forthcoming event, and that one form of
+illumination was a gigantic frame which, set upon the Sky Hill,
+immediately in front of our house, was intended to display in brilliant
+lights the glowing words "God Bless the Happy Heir." Certainly the birth
+was to be announced by the ringing of the big bell of the tower as
+signal to the country round about that the appointed festivities might
+begin.
+
+Day by day through September into October, news came from Castle Raa by
+secret channels. Morning by morning, Doctor Conrad was sent for to see
+my mother. Never had the sun looked down on a more gruesome spectacle.
+It was a race between the angel of death and the angel of life, with my
+father's masterful soul between, struggling to keep back the one and to
+hasten on the other.
+
+My father's impatience affected everybody about him. Especially it
+communicated itself to the person chiefly concerned. The result was just
+what might have been expected. My mother was brought to bed prematurely,
+a full month before her time.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+By six o'clock the wind had risen to the force of a hurricane. The last
+of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare
+branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder
+than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore,
+was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the
+clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of
+billows over the port-holes of a ship at sea.
+
+"Pity for the poor folk with their fireworks," said Father Dan.
+
+"They'll eat their suppers for all that," said my father.
+
+It was now dark, but my father would not allow the lamps to be lighted.
+There was therefore no light in his gaunt room except a sullen glow from
+the fire of peat and logs. Sometimes, in a momentary lull of the storm,
+an intermittent moan would come from the room above, followed by a dull
+hum of voices.
+
+"Guess it can't be long now," my father would say.
+
+"Praise the Lord," Father Dan would answer.
+
+By seven the storm was at its height. The roaring of the wind in the
+wide chimney was as loud as thunder. Save for this the thunderous noise
+of the sea served to drown all sounds on the land. Nevertheless, in the
+midst of the clamour a loud rapping was heard at the front door. One of
+the maid-servants would have answered it, but my father called her back
+and, taking up a lantern, went to the door himself. As quietly as he
+could for the rush of wind without, he opened it, and pulling it after
+him, he stepped into the porch.
+
+A man in livery was there on horseback, with another saddled horse
+beside him. He was drenched through, but steaming with sweat as if he
+had ridden long and hard. Shouting above the roar of the storm, he said:
+
+"Doctor Conrad is here, is he?"
+
+"He is--what of it?" said my father.
+
+"Tell him he's wanted and must come away with me at once."
+
+"Who says he must?"
+
+"Lord Raa. His lordship is dangerously ill. He wishes to see the doctor
+immediately."
+
+I think my father must then have gone through a moment of fierce
+conflict between his desire to keep the old lord alive and his hope of
+the immediate birth of his offspring. But his choice was quickly made.
+
+"Tell the lord," he cried, "that a woman is here in child-birth, and
+until she's delivered the doctor cannot come to him."
+
+"But I've brought a horse, and the doctor is to go back with me."
+
+"Give the lord my message and say it is Daniel O'Neill who sends it."
+
+"But his lordship is dying and unless the doctor is there to tap him, he
+may not live till morning."
+
+"Unless the doctor is here to deliver my wife, my child may be dead
+before midnight."
+
+"What is the birth of your child to the death of his lordship?" cried
+the man; but, before the words were well out of his mouth, my father, in
+his great strength, had laid hold of the reins and swung both horse and
+rider round about.
+
+"Get yourself to the other side of my gate, or I'll fling you into the
+road," he cried; and then, returning to the porch, he re-entered the
+house and clashed the door behind him.
+
+Father Dan used to say that for some moments more the groom from Castle
+Raa could be heard shouting the name of the doctor to the lighted
+windows of my mother's room. But his voice was swirled away in the
+whistling of the wind, and after a while the hoofs of his horses went
+champing over the gravel in the direction of the gate.
+
+When my father returned to his room, shaking the rain from his hair and
+beard, he was fuming with indignation. Perhaps a memory of forty years
+ago was seething in his excited brain.
+
+"The old scoundrel," he said. "He'd like it, wouldn't he? They'd all
+like it! Which of them wants a son of mine amongst them?"
+
+The roaring night outside became yet more terrible. So loud was the
+noise from the shore that it was almost as if a wild beast were trying
+to liberate itself from the womb of the sea. At one moment Aunt Bridget
+came downstairs to say that the storm was frightening my mother. All the
+servants of the house were gathered in the hall, full of fear, and
+telling each other superstitious stories.
+
+Suddenly there came a lull. Rain and wind seemed to cease in an instant.
+The clamour of the sea became less and the tolling of the bell on St.
+Mary's Rock died away in the distance. It was almost as if the world,
+which had been whirling through space, suddenly stood still.
+
+In that moment of silence a deeper moan than usual came from the room
+overhead. My father dropped into a chair, clasped his hands and closed
+his eyes. Father Dan rattled his pearl beads and moved his lips, but
+uttered no sound.
+
+Then a faint sound came from the room overhead. My father opened his
+eyes and listened. Father Dan held his breath. The sound was repeated,
+but louder, clearer, shriller than before. There could be no mistaking
+it now. It was Nature's eternal signal that out of the womb of silence a
+living soul had been born into the world.
+
+"It's over," said my father.
+
+"Glory be to God and all the Saints!" said Father Dan.
+
+"That'll beat 'em," cried my father, and he leapt to his feet and
+laughed.
+
+Going to the door of the room, he flung it open. The servants in the
+hall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the gardener, Tom
+Dug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and asked if he ought
+to ring the big bell.
+
+"Certainly," said my father. "Isn't that what you've been standing by
+for?"
+
+A few minutes later the bell of the tower began to ring, and it was
+followed almost immediately by the bell of our parish church, which rang
+out a merry peal.
+
+"That'll beat 'em, I say," cried my father, and laughing in his triumph
+he tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than ever.
+
+All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a confused
+rumble of voices overhead. My father stopped, his face straightened, and
+his voice, which had rung out like a horn, wheezed back like a whistle.
+
+"What's going doing? Where's Conrad? Why doesn't Conrad come to me?"
+
+"Don't worry. He'll be down presently," said Father Dan.
+
+A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing heard, and
+then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the foot
+of the staircase and shouted the doctor's name.
+
+A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone stairs.
+They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the doctor
+entered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the peat fire his
+face was white, ashen white. He did not speak at first, and there was an
+instant of silence, dead silence. Then my father said:
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"It is . . ."
+
+"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . _dead?_"
+
+"No! Oh no! Not that."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"It is a girl."
+
+"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair. His lips
+were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became fixed
+on the dying fire in a stupid stare.
+
+Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody's
+crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girls
+were the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly
+pilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had
+been born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.
+
+All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to
+be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the
+firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for
+the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "God
+Bless the Happy Heir."
+
+In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth
+stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.
+
+"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think
+of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may
+not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet
+of the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be without
+women? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Think
+of the Holy Virgin herself. . . ."
+
+"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet, he
+began to curse and swear.
+
+"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put out
+those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell trying
+to laugh at me?"
+
+With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out of
+the room.
+
+My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floor
+between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed. She
+felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain she
+turned to the wall and fainted.
+
+The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches of
+the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwards
+the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possession
+of his inheritance.
+
+But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like an
+account that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers and
+insular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old island
+into new life.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from Father
+Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing a big
+bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an
+image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a
+sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp.
+
+When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this was my
+mother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch me up in
+her arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery round the vast
+place was my mother herself, and that she would comfort me when I fell,
+and stroke my head with her thin white hand, while she sang softly and
+rocked me to and fro.
+
+As I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother in any other
+part of our house, or indeed in any other place except our carriage when
+we drove out in the sunshine, I conclude that from the time of my birth
+she had been an invalid.
+
+Certainly the faces which first emerge from the islands of my memory are
+the cheerful and sunny ones of Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. I recall
+the soft voice of the one as he used to enter our room after breakfast
+saying, "How are we this morning ma'am?" And I remember the still softer
+voice of the other as he said "And how is my daughter to-day?"
+
+I loved both of them, but especially Father Dan, who used to call me his
+Nanny and say I was the plague and pet of his life, being as full of
+mischief as a goat. He must have been an old child himself, for I have
+clear recollection of how, immediately after confessing my mother, he
+would go down on all fours with me on the floor and play at
+hide-and-seek around the legs of the big bed, amid squeals and squeaks
+of laughter. I remember, too, that he wore a long sack coat which
+buttoned close at the neck and hung loose at the skirts, where there
+were two large vertical pockets, and that these pockets were my
+cupboards and drawers, for I put my toys and my doll and even the
+remnants of my cakes into them to be kept in safe custody until wanted
+again.
+
+My mother called me Mally veen (Mary dear) and out of love of her only
+child she must have weaned me late, for I have vague memories of her
+soft white breasts filled with milk. I slept in a little wickerwork cot
+placed near her bed, so that she could reach me if I uncovered myself in
+the night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlike
+in my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remember
+myself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and
+chirping about our chill and rather cheerless house.
+
+If I was like a bird my mother was like a flower. Her head, which was
+small and fair, and her face, which was nearly always tinged with
+colour, drooped forward from her delicate body like a rose from its
+stalk. She was generally dressed in black, I remember, but she wore a
+white lace collar as well as a coif such as we see in old pictures, and
+when I call her back to my mind, with her large liquid eyes and her
+sweet soft mouth, I think it cannot be my affection alone, or the magic
+of my childish memory, which makes me think, after all these years and
+all the countries I have travelled in, and all the women I have seen,
+that my darling mother, though so little known and so little loved, was
+the most beautiful woman in the world.
+
+Even yet I cannot but wonder that other people, my father especially,
+did not see her with my eyes. I think he was fond of her after his own
+fashion, but there was a kind of involuntary contempt in his affection,
+which could not conceal itself from my quick little eyes. She was
+visibly afraid of him, and was always nervous and timid when he came
+into our room with his customary salutation,
+
+"How now, Isabel? And how's this child of yours?"
+
+From my earliest childhood I noticed that he always spoke of me as if I
+had been my mother's child, not his, and perhaps this affected my
+feeling for him from the first.
+
+I was in terror of his loud voice and rough manner, the big bearded man
+with the iron grey head and the smell of the fresh air about his thick
+serge clothes. It was almost as if I had conceived this fear before my
+birth, and had brought it out of the tremulous silence of my mother's
+womb.
+
+My earliest recollections are of his muffled shout from the room below,
+"Keep your child quiet, will you?" when I was disturbing him over his
+papers by leaping and skipping about the floor. If he came upstairs when
+I was in bed I would dive under the bedclothes, as a duck dives under
+water, and only come to the surface when he was gone. I am sure I never
+kissed my father or climbed on to his knee, and that during his short
+visits to our room I used to hold my breath and hide my head behind my
+mother's gown.
+
+I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my father and
+from my father's indifference to me, for she made many efforts to
+reconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent schemes, as I recall
+them now, seem very sweet but very pitiful. She took pride, for
+instance, in my hair, which was jet black even when I was a child, and
+she used to part it in the middle and brush it smooth over my forehead
+in the manner of the Madonna, and one day, when my father was with us,
+she drew me forward and said:
+
+"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little like the
+pictures of Our Lady, perhaps--don't you think so, Daniel?"
+
+Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:
+
+"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"
+
+I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to sing to a
+little upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her room, and on
+another day she said:
+
+"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet and
+pure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an angel
+singing."
+
+Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:
+
+"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I wonder?"
+
+My mother made most of my clothes. There was no need for her to do so,
+but in the absence of household duties I suppose it stimulated the
+tenderness which all mothers feel in covering the little limbs they
+love; and one day, having made a velvet frock for me, from a design in
+an old pattern book of coloured prints, which left the legs and neck and
+arms very bare, she said:
+
+"Isn't our Mary a little lady? But she will always look like a lady,
+whatever she is dressed in."
+
+And then my father laughed still more contemptuously and replied,
+
+"Her grandmother weeded turnips in the fields though--ninepence a day
+dry days, and sixpence all weathers."
+
+My mother was deeply religious, never allowing a day to pass without
+kneeling on her prayer-stool before the image of the Virgin, and one day
+I heard her tell my father that when I was a little mite, scarcely able
+to speak, she found me kneeling in my cot with my doll perched up before
+me, moving my lips as if saying my prayers and looking up at the ceiling
+with a rapt expression.
+
+"But she has always had such big, beautiful, religious eyes, and I
+shouldn't wonder if she becomes a Nun some day!"
+
+"A nun, eh? Maybe so. But I take no stock in the nun business anyway,"
+said my father.
+
+Whereupon my mother's lips moved as if she were saying "No, dearest,"
+but her dear, sweet pride was crushed and she could go no farther.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who, like my
+father, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and the head of
+them was Aunt Bridget.
+
+She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to one
+Colonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower, a Belfast
+Irishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal grandfather. But the
+Colonel had died within a year, leaving Aunt Bridget with one child of
+her own, a girl, as well as a daughter of his wife by the former
+marriage. As this happened about the time of my birth, when it became
+obvious that my mother was to be an invalid, my father invited Aunt
+Bridget to come to his house as housekeeper, and she came, and brought
+her children with her.
+
+Her rule from the outset had been as hard as might have been expected
+from one who prided herself on her self-command--a quality that covered
+everybody, including my mother and me, and was only subject to softening
+in favour of her own offspring.
+
+Aunt Bridget's own daughter, a year older than myself, was a fair child
+with light grey eyes, round cheeks of the colour of ripe apples, and
+long yellow hair that was carefully combed and curled. Her name was
+Betsy, which was extended by her mother to Betsy Beauty. She was usually
+dressed in a muslin frock with a sash of light blue ribbon, and being
+understood to be delicate was constantly indulged and nearly always
+eating, and giving herself generally the airs of the daughter of the
+house.
+
+Aunt Bridget's step-daughter, ten years older, was a gaunt, ungainly
+girl with red hair and irregular features. Her name was Nessy, and,
+having an instinctive sense of her dependent position, she was very
+humble and subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to say, "as smooth as
+an old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers, which always meant my Aunt,
+but spiteful, insolent, and acrid to anybody who was outside my Aunt's
+favour, which usually meant me.
+
+Between my cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which Nessy
+MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my poor
+mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I was a
+wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing how
+disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was being brought up.
+
+These skirmishes went on for a considerable time without consequences,
+but they came at last to a foolish climax which led to serious results.
+
+Even my mother's life had its gleams of sunshine, and flowers were a
+constant joy to her. Old Tommy, the gardener, was aware of this, and
+every morning sent up a bunch of them, freshly cut and wet with the dew.
+But one day in the spring he could not do so, being out in the dubs of
+the Curragh, cutting peat for the fires. Therefore I undertook to supply
+the deficiency, having already, with the large solemnity of six, begun
+to consider it my duty to take charge of my mother.
+
+"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you," I said (every _f_
+being an _s_ in those days), and armed with a pair of scissors I skipped
+down to the garden.
+
+I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant, and
+was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who had been
+watching from a window, came bouncing down me.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked,
+underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you know
+this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"
+
+I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the Mate,
+but Nessy would hear no such explanation.
+
+"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that your
+Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be done
+without her."
+
+Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little heart
+there had long been a secret pang of mortified pride--how born I do not
+know--at seeing Aunt Bridget take the place of my mother, and now,
+choking with vexation but without saying a word, I swept off the heads
+of all the flowers in the bed, and with my arms full of them--ten times
+more than I wanted--I sailed back to my mother's room.
+
+Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was doomed to
+punishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt Bridget kept
+suspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs, but it was my
+poor mother who paid the penalty.
+
+"Isabel," cried Aunt Bridget, "I hope you are satisfied with your child
+at last."
+
+"What has Mary been doing now, dear?" said my mother.
+
+"Don't ask me what she has been doing. You know quite well, or if you
+don't you ought to."
+
+My mother glanced at the flowers and she seemed to understand what had
+happened, for her face fell and she said submissively,
+
+"Mary has done wrong, but I am sure she is sorry and will never do it
+again."
+
+"Sorry, indeed!" cried my Aunt. "Not she sorry. And she'll do it again
+at the very next opportunity. The vixen! The little wilful, underhand
+vixen! But what wonder if children go wrong when their own mothers
+neglect to correct them."
+
+"I daresay you are quite right, dear Bridget--you are always right,"
+said my mother in a low, grave voice. "But then I'm not very well, and
+Mary is all I have, you know."
+
+My mother was in tears by this time, but Aunt Bridget was not content
+with her triumph. Sweeping downstairs she carried her complaint to my
+father, who ordered that I was to be taken out of my mother's charge on
+the ground that she was incapable of attending to my upbringing--a task
+which, being assigned to my Aunt Bridget, provided that I should
+henceforward live on the ground floor and eat oaten cake and barley
+bonnag and sleep alone in the cold room over the hall while Betsy Beauty
+ate wheaten bread and apple tart and slept with her mother in the room
+over the kitchen in which they always kept a fire.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The altered arrangements were a cause of grief to my mother, but I am
+bound to confess that for me they had certain compensations. One of them
+was the greater ease with which I could slip out to Tommy the Mate, who
+had been a sailor before he was a gardener, and was still a fine old
+salt, with grizzled beard and shaggy eyebrows, and a merry twinkle in
+what he called his "starboard" eye.
+
+I think Tommy was one of the few about my father's house who were really
+fond of me, but perhaps that was mainly because he loathed aunt Bridget.
+He used to call her the Big Woman, meaning that she was the master and
+mistress of everything and everybody about the place. When he was told
+of any special piece of her tyranny to servant or farmhand he used to
+say: "Aw, well, she'll die for all"; and when he heard how she had
+separated me from my mother, who had nothing else to love or live for,
+he spat sideways out of his mouth and said:
+
+"Our Big Woman is a wicked devil, I'm thinking, and I wouldn't trust
+[shouldn't wonder] but she'll burn in hell."
+
+What definite idea I attached to this denunciation I do not now recall,
+but I remember that it impressed me deeply, and that many a night
+afterwards, during the miserable half-hours before I fell asleep with my
+head under the clothes in the cold bedroom over the hall to which (as
+Nessy MacLeod had told me) the bad fairies came for bad children, I
+repeated the strange words again and again.
+
+Another compensation was the greater opportunity I had for cultivating
+an acquaintance which I had recently made with the doctor's son, when he
+came with his father on visits to my mother. As soon as the hoofs of the
+horse were heard on the gravel, and before the bell could be rung, I
+used to dart away on tiptoe, fly through the porch, climb into the gig
+and help the boy to hold the reins while his father was upstairs.
+
+This led to what I thought a great discovery. It was about my mother. I
+had always known my mother was sick, but now I got a "skute" (as old
+Tommy used to say) into the cause of her illness. It was a matter of
+milk. The doctor's boy had heard his father saying so. If my mother
+could only have milk morning, noon and night, every day and all day,
+"there wouldn't be nothing the matter with her."
+
+This, too, impressed me deeply, and the form it took in my mind was that
+"mammy wasn't sed enough," a conclusion that gained colour from the fact
+that I saw Betsy Beauty perched up in a high chair in the dining-room
+twice or thrice a day, drinking nice warm milk fresh from the cow. We
+had three cows, I remember, and to correct the mischief of my mother's
+illness, I determined that henceforth she should not have merely more of
+our milk--she should have all of it.
+
+Losing no time in carrying my intentions into effect, I crept into the
+dairy as soon as the dairymaid had brought in the afternoon's milking.
+There it was, still frothing and bubbling in three great bowls, and
+taking up the first of them in my little thin arms--goodness knows
+how--I made straight for my mother's room.
+
+But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and panting
+under my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and she fell on
+me with her usual reproaches.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, you wilful, underhand little vixen, whatever are you
+doing with the milk?"
+
+Being in no mood for explanations I tried to push past, but Nessy
+prevented me.
+
+"No, indeed, you shan't go a step further. What will your Aunt Bridget
+say? Take the milk back, miss, this very minute."
+
+Nessy's loud protest brought Betsy Beauty out of the dining-room, and in
+a moment my cousin, looking more than ever like a painted doll in her
+white muslin dress with a large blue bow in her yellow hair, had run
+upstairs to assist her step-sister.
+
+I was now between the two, the one above and the other below, and they
+laid hold of my bowl to take it from me. They tugged and I resisted and
+there was a struggle in which the milk was in danger of being spilled.
+
+"She's a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped," cried
+Nessy.
+
+"She's stealing my milk, and I'll tell mamma," said Betsy.
+
+"Tell her then," I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding myself
+unable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and flung its
+contents over my cousin's head, thereby drenching her with the frothing
+milk and making the staircase to run like a river of whitewash.
+
+Of course there was a fearful clamour. Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessy
+bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while my
+mother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room.
+
+"Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt Bridget
+found no need of questions. After running upstairs to her dripping
+daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her "my poor
+darling," and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing more to do with
+that little vixen?" she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings.
+
+"Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child is--the little
+spiteful fury!"
+
+By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken refuge
+behind my mother's gown, but I heard her timid voice trying to excuse
+me, and saying something about my cousin and a childish quarrel.
+
+"Childish quarrel, indeed!" cried my Aunt; "there's nothing childish
+about that little imp, nothing. And what's more, I shall be obliged to
+you, Isabel, if you will never again have the assurance to speak of my
+Betsy Beauty in the same breath with a child of yours."
+
+That was more than I could hear. My little heart was afire at the
+humiliation put upon my mother. So stepping out to the head of the
+stairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble:
+
+"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but she'll
+burn in hell!"
+
+Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of that
+pronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle of
+the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her. Then, ghastly
+white and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I could
+recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek and
+boxed both my ears.
+
+I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in the
+midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demanded
+in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told what
+was going on.
+
+Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother did
+not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, she
+began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she could
+not live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her.
+
+"I have to leave this house--I have to leave it to-morrow," she said.
+
+"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm just
+crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These children
+must go to school. They must all go--the darned lot of 'em."
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I
+first became known to the doctor's boy.
+
+It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in
+the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The
+church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house,
+under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while
+I made my voice as soft as I could and said:
+
+"Mamma, what is it'?"
+
+"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.
+
+I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the
+window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty
+air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing,
+and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father's
+loud voice asking the singers into the house.
+
+They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking and then
+laughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than all the rest,
+and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me she was serving
+out bunloaf and sherry-wine.
+
+I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I awoke in
+the morning I conceived the idea of singing the Waits myself. Being an
+artful little thing I knew that my plan would be opposed, so I said
+nothing about it, but I got my mother to play and sing the carol I had
+heard overnight, until my quick ear had mastered both tune and words,
+and when darkness fell on Christmas night I proceeded to carry out my
+intention.
+
+In the heat of my impatience I forgot to put on cloak or hat, and
+stealing out of the house I found myself in the carriage drive with
+nothing on but a pair of thin slippers and the velvet frock that left my
+neck and arms so bare. It was snowing, and the snow-flakes were whirling
+round me and making me dizzy, for in the light from my mother's window
+they seemed to come up from the ground as well as down from the sky.
+
+When I got out of the light of the window, it was very dark, and I could
+only see that the chestnuts in the drive seemed to have white blankets
+on them which looked as if they had been hung out to dry. It was a long
+time before I got to the gate, and then I had begun to be nervous and to
+have half a mind to turn back. But the thought of the bunloaf and the
+sherry-wine buoyed me up, and presently I found myself on the high road,
+crossing a bridge and turning down a lane that led to the sea, whose
+moaning a mile away was the only sound I could hear.
+
+I knew quite well where I was going to. I was going to the doctor's
+house. It was called Sunny Lodge, and it was on the edge of Yellow Gorse
+Farm. I had seen it more than once when I had driven out in the carriage
+with my mother, and had thought how sweet it looked with its whitewashed
+walls and brown thatched roof and the red and white roses which grew
+over the porch.
+
+I was fearfully cold before I got there. The snow was in my slippers and
+down my neck and among the thickening masses of my hair. At one moment I
+came upon some sheep and lambs that were sheltering under a hedge, and
+they bleated in the silence of the night.
+
+But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor's cottage, and
+coming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was clogged with
+snow, and stepped up to the porch. My teeth were now chattering with
+cold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and in my thin and creachy
+voice I had got as far as--
+
+     "_Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+         Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+         Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+           An' in a manger laid_. . . ."
+
+when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house.
+
+Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman whom I
+knew to be the doctor's wife looked down into my face with an expression
+of bewilderment, and then cried:
+
+"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God
+bless her!"
+
+"Bring her in at once, then," said the voice of Doctor Conrad from
+within, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort of
+kitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had a
+kettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork hearth-rug, a
+dresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle covered with red cloth.
+
+I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me to faint,
+for I have no recollection of what happened next, except that I was
+sitting on somebody's lap and that she was calling me _boght millish_
+(little sweet) and _veg-veen_ (little dear) while she rubbed my
+half-frozen limbs and did other things that were, I am sure, all womanly
+and good.
+
+When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to sleep
+there that night, and he must go over to the Big House and tell my
+mother what had happened. He went, and by the time he came back, I had
+been bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire, and was being
+carried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too large for me) to a
+little dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet smelling "scraas" under the
+sloping thatch of the roof came down almost to my face.
+
+I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I was
+feeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the doctor's
+wife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that seemed far
+away. But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget came in her satin
+mantle and big black hat, and said something, while standing at the end
+of my bed, about people paying the penalty when they did things that
+were sly and underhand.
+
+Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in to see me
+at night he said:
+
+"How are we this evening? Ah, better, I see. Distinctly better!"
+
+And then turning to his wife he said:
+
+"No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann."
+
+"But won't the _boght millish_ be afraid to be left alone?" she asked.
+
+I said I shouldn't, and she kissed me and told me to knock at the wall
+if I wanted anything. And then, with her husband's arm about her waist,
+the good soul left me to myself.
+
+I don't know how I knew, but I did know that that house was a home of
+love. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that that sweet woman,
+who had been the daughter of a well-to-do man, had chosen the doctor out
+of all the men in the world when he was only a medical student fresh
+from Germany or Switzerland. I don't know how I knew, but I did know,
+that leaving father and mother and a sheltered home she had followed her
+young husband when he first came to Ellan without friends or
+connections, and though poor then and poor still, she had never
+regretted it. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that all this was
+the opposite of what had happened to my own dear mother, who having
+everything yet had nothing, while this good creature having nothing yet
+had all.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning the sun was shining, and, after my hair had
+been brushed smooth over my forehead, I was sitting up in bed, eating
+for breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the smallest of silver
+spoons, when the door opened with a bang and a small figure tumbled into
+my room.
+
+It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket
+and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felt
+hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim,
+and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair sticking
+through it, gave him the appearance of a damaged mushroom.
+
+Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his face,
+which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue eyes--as blue as
+the bluest sea--he took no notice of my presence, but tossed a
+somersault in the middle of the floor, screwed his legs over the back of
+a chair, vaulted over a table and finally stood on his hands with his
+legs against the wall opposite to my bed, and his inverted countenance
+close to the carpet.
+
+In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of remaining as
+long as possible, while his face grew very red, we held our first
+conversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet as a mouse, but now
+I said:
+
+"Little boy, what's your name?"
+
+"Mart," was the answer.
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+"Spitzbergen."
+
+I cannot remember that this intelligence astonished me, for when the
+inverted face had become scarlet, and the legs went down and the head
+came up, and my visitor tossed several somersaults over the end of my
+bed, to the danger of my breakfast tray, and then, without a word more,
+tumbled out of the room, I was still watching in astonishment.
+
+I did not know at that time that these were the ways which since the
+beginning of the world have always been employed by savages and boys
+when they desire to commend themselves to the female of their kind, so
+that when the doctor's wife came smiling upstairs I asked her if the
+little boy who had been to see me was not quite well.
+
+"Bless you, yes, dear, but that's his way," she said, and then she told
+me all about him.
+
+His name was Martin Conrad and he was her only child. His hat, which had
+awakened my interest, was an old one of his father's, and it was the
+last thing he took off when he undressed for bed at night and the first
+thing he put on in the morning. When the hole came into its crown his
+mother had tried to hide it away but he had always found it, and when
+she threw it into the river he had fished it out again.
+
+He was the strangest boy, full of the funniest fancies. He used to say
+that before he was born he lived in a tree and was the fellow who turned
+on the rain. It was with difficulty that he could be educated, and every
+morning on being awakened, he said he was "sorry he ever started this
+going to school." As a consequence he could not read or write as well as
+other boys of his age, and his grammar was still that of the peasant
+people with whom he loved to associate.
+
+Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who lived in a
+mud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on his way to work.
+Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous story. It was about Arctic
+exploration and an expedition he had joined in search of Franklin. This
+had made an overpowering impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwards
+would stand waiting at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:
+
+"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"
+
+Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would answer:
+
+"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a day now."
+
+"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen every
+morning.
+
+But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was the
+locality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every day he
+would set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the road and
+the shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of mysterious
+things and undiscovered places. By some means--nobody knew how--the boy
+who could not learn his lessons studied his father's German atlas, and
+there was not a name in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got by
+heart. He transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill became
+Greenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the Nun's
+Well became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New Siberia, and
+St. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became the pivot of the
+earth itself.
+
+He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he kept a
+log-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits, which he
+called his "diarrhea." And now if you lost him you had only to look up
+to the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the chimney stack, which he
+called his crow's nest, and there you found him, spying through his
+father's telescope and crying out:
+
+"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen point
+north, five knots to the starboard bow."
+
+His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but there
+is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellous
+story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and saw
+myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose my
+poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a
+sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's boy
+as his sister.
+
+The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come until the
+next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang
+than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be
+a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been
+called William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from
+his mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knitted
+stockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs.
+
+He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day,
+but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that the
+chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug was
+floating ice.
+
+After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, I
+tried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little woman I went
+artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin,
+Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing how
+rich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself.
+
+I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's boy did
+not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review he
+only said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"
+
+At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it.
+
+"Haven't you got a sister?" I said.
+
+"Not _me_!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis on the last
+word which cut me to the quick.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to have one?"
+
+"Sisters isn't no good," said the doctor's boy, and he instanced "chaps"
+at school--Jimmy Christopher and others--whose sisters were afraid of
+everything--lobsters and crabs and even the sea.
+
+I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart was
+beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which was
+choking me, I said:
+
+"I'm not afraid of the sea--not crabs neither."
+
+In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyes
+looked aslant at me.
+
+"Isn't you, though?"
+
+"No."
+
+That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I invited
+the doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by my
+right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachment
+for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap.
+
+Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might call
+downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling his mother
+what I was. I was a "stunner."
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged to
+him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and her
+stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property.
+
+It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by a
+Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher
+was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the
+colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head.
+But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when
+she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great
+rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped in
+a charity school.
+
+Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who had
+exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his account
+with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display her
+gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my character
+had gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directly
+under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class,
+although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher.
+
+I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as a
+goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved the
+fate that followed.
+
+One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held
+my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl
+beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter.
+
+"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but I
+went on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter.
+
+I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying something
+about herself--making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance--for
+after a moment she said, in her rapid accents:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying."
+
+I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer.
+
+"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven't
+you?"
+
+But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, come forward."
+
+She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey when
+I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction,
+seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see."
+
+I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk,
+came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:
+
+"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out,
+miss, this very moment."
+
+I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.
+
+"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and
+spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy _me_?"
+
+That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a
+rock.
+
+Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly
+compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my
+seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of
+me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself
+afresh.
+
+"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big
+girls come and help me?"
+
+With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to
+the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together,
+after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch
+from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes.
+By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were
+scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.
+
+"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril."
+
+My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on
+the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious
+position.
+
+"Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the
+scholars, "put down your slates and listen."
+
+Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my
+side and pointing down to me:
+
+"This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little
+vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience she
+has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil the
+child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their
+children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there is
+no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is
+she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her
+unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was
+sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop
+your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ."
+
+With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped
+back and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane out
+of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an
+impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if
+I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was
+holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and
+limber.
+
+I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was
+conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--the
+pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I
+thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I
+thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered
+what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady,
+and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before
+all the village children.
+
+At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I
+was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my
+lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer
+if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to
+the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange
+thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.
+
+Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming
+out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin
+Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the
+gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp
+voice:
+
+"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without
+permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."
+
+Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his
+big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands
+pulled it down hard on his head.
+
+"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him
+with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike.
+
+The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped
+his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck
+her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against
+the wall.
+
+Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to
+him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the
+scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little
+stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the
+school.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order of
+the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to our
+mothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanently
+darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and our
+sunshine. On the contrary it occurred that--Aunt Bridget having washed
+her hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mind
+what to do with him--we found ourselves for some time at large and were
+nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came which
+brought a great disaster.
+
+One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potting-shed,
+deep in the discussion of their usual subject--the perils and pains of
+Arctic exploration, when you have little food in your wallet and not too
+much in your stomach.
+
+"But you has lots of things when you gets there--hams and flitches and
+oranges and things--hasn't you?" said Martin.
+
+"Never a ha'p'orth," said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just takes your
+Alping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o' biscuit and away you
+go over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet and mountains higher nor
+Mount Blank and never think o' nothing but doing something that nobody's
+never done before. My goodness, yes, boy, that's the way of it when
+you're out asploring. 'Glory's waiting for me' says you, and on you go."
+
+At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea when
+the sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first time, he
+turned back to old Tommy and said:
+
+"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out asploring--women
+and girls?"
+
+"Never a woman," said Tommy.
+
+"Not never--not if they're stunners?" said Martin.
+
+"Well," says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eye
+twinkled, "I won't say never--not if they're stunners."
+
+Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house with a
+big corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his hand, a
+lemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit and a small
+Union Jack which came from the confectioner's on the occasion of his
+last birthday.
+
+"Glory's waiting for me--come along, shipmate," he said in a mysterious
+whisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed.
+
+He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock, and the
+bottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we went, with the
+dog bounding before us.
+
+I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth, for of all
+the things I was afraid of I feared the sea most--a terror born with me,
+perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But I had to live up to the
+character I had given myself when Martin became my brother, and the one
+dread of my life was that, finding me as timid as other girls, he might
+want me no more.
+
+We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which had a
+mud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that was moored
+to a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate, who was a
+"widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none to see us when
+we launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It was then two o'clock
+in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the tide, which was at the
+turn, was beginning to flow.
+
+I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything about
+that, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken the stroke
+himself, I spluttered and plunged and made many blunders. I had never
+been on the sea either, and almost as soon as we shot clear of the shore
+and were lifted on to the big waves, I began to feel dizzy, and dropped
+my oar, with the result that it slipped through the rollocks and was
+washed away. Martin saw what had happened as we swung round to his
+rowing, but when I expected him to scold me, he only said:
+
+"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better with one,"
+and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he began to scull.
+
+My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from fear, I
+now sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as little as
+possible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his stout little
+body rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and sang and shouted
+messages to me over his shoulder.
+
+"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and though my
+teeth were chattering, I answered that it was.
+
+"Some girls--Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy
+Beauty--would be frightened to come asploring, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling down to
+the soles of my shoes.
+
+We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far away
+that Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of the Big
+House looked like something I had seen through the wrong end of a
+telescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in his eyes, and
+said:
+
+"See the North Pole out yonder?"
+
+"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little person, and
+had not an ounce of "dream" in me.
+
+I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's
+Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most
+afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing
+twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall,
+with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a
+multitude of hungry sea-fowl.
+
+A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we approached, and
+wheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their wings over our heads. I
+wanted to scream too, but Martin said:
+
+"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"
+
+"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I began to
+sing.
+
+I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally," because its
+jolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune--
+
+     "_Oh Sally's the gel for me,
+         Our Sally's the gel for me,
+         I'll marry the gel that I love best
+         When I come back from sea_."
+
+My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment I made
+another mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock, and laying
+hold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held out his hand to
+me to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held back when I ought to
+have jumped, and he was drenched from head to foot. I was ashamed, and
+thought he would have scolded me, but he only shook himself and said:
+
+"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out asploring."
+
+My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but without
+waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told
+me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the
+rock and took possession of it in the name of the king.
+
+"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring," he said, and
+with his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his hand and his
+little Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the crown of his hat, he
+clambered up the crag and disappeared over the top of it.
+
+Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness increased
+tenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was about to submerge
+the ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright to climb the cliff. But
+hardly had I taken three steps when my foot slipped and I clutched the
+seaweed to save myself from falling, with the result that the boat's
+rope slid from my arm, and went rip-rip-ripping down the rock until it
+fell with a splash into the sea.
+
+I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head appeared
+after a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late for him to do
+anything, for the boat had already drifted six yards away, and just when
+I thought he would have shrieked at me for cutting off our only
+connection with the shore, he said:
+
+"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two when we're
+out asploring."
+
+I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the rock by
+help of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing had
+happened--pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a bell
+suspended inside of it and his little flag floating on top.
+
+"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered.
+
+"Don't you worrit about that," he said. "We'll just signal back to the
+next base--we call them bases when we're out asploring."
+
+I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which, being
+heard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But the bell was
+big, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights by the shock and
+surging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied a string to its tongue
+it was a feeble sound he struck from it.
+
+Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing on the
+water but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the shore.
+
+"Will they ever come?" I faltered.
+
+"Ra--ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And when they take
+us ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles and bands and things
+to take us home. My goodness, yes," he said, with the same wild look,
+"hundreds and tons of them!"
+
+But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, the
+moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screaming
+sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heart
+was quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who had
+whistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry.
+
+"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat a
+dog--we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring."
+
+This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the pocket of my
+frock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having fallen out, perhaps,
+when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and I looked up at him with
+eyes of fear, but he only said:
+
+"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out asploring."
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who could not
+learn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a born gentleman,
+but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming and to hide my emotion
+I pretended to be ill.
+
+"I know," said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus has
+dizzingtory when we're out asploring."
+
+There was one infallible cure for that, though--milk!
+
+"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory in a
+jiffy."
+
+This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hoping
+to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it had
+suffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, and
+every drop of the contents gone.
+
+That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin went
+on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing had
+happened.
+
+The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea,
+the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and I
+began to shiver.
+
+"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're out
+asploring."
+
+I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up in
+the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me I
+was as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in a
+storybook, and half choking with sobs I said:
+
+"Martin!"
+
+"What now, shipmate?"
+
+"It's all my fault . . . and I'm just as frightened as Jimmy
+Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and I'm
+not a stunner . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me
+here and save yourself and . . ."
+
+But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.
+
+"Not _me_! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out asploring.
+Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"
+
+That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who was
+sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling.
+
+What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware, though my
+back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up to
+the bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make a
+louder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and a
+crack, and then silence.
+
+"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer.
+
+"Have you hurt yourself?"
+
+And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock,
+came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingled
+with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul was
+struggling to suppress--
+
+"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds _nothing_ when we're
+out asploring!"
+
+Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was railing at
+Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for Father
+Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horse
+into his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children.
+
+But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shed
+and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to the
+shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came to
+his own conclusions.
+
+By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and there,
+guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great little
+explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying together
+in the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and fast asleep.
+
+There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when Tommy
+brought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken limb in his
+mother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me over to the
+Presbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home and so stand
+between me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's birch.
+
+Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House, when we
+reached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a blood vessel.
+
+
+
+
+TENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+During the fortnight in which my mother was confined to bed I was her
+constant companion and attendant. With the mighty eagerness of a child
+who knew nothing of what the solemn time foreboded I flew about the
+house on tiptoe, fetching my mother's medicine and her milk and the ice
+to cool it, and always praising myself for my industry and thinking I
+was quite indispensable.
+
+"You couldn't do without your little Mally, could you, mammy?" I would
+say, and my mother would smooth my hair lovingly with her thin white
+hand and answer:
+
+"No, indeed, I couldn't do without my little Mally." And then my little
+bird-like beak would rise proudly in the air.
+
+All this time I saw nothing of Martin, and only heard through Doctor
+Conrad in his conversations with my mother, that the boy's broken arm
+had been set, and that as soon as it was better, he was to be sent to
+King George's College, which was at the other end of Ellan. What was to
+be done with myself I never inquired, being so satisfied that my mother
+could not get on without me.
+
+I was partly aware that big letters, bearing foreign postage-stamps and
+seals and coats of arms, with pictures of crosses and hearts, were
+coming to our house. I was also aware that at intervals, while my mother
+was in bed, there was the sound of voices, as if in eager and sometimes
+heated conference, in the room below, and that my mother would raise her
+pale face from her pillow and stop my chattering with "Hush!" when my
+father's voice was louder and sterner than usual. But it never occurred
+to me to connect these incidents with myself, until the afternoon of the
+day on which my mother got up for the first time.
+
+She was sitting before the fire, for autumn was stealing on, and I was
+bustling about her, fixing the rug about her knees and telling her if
+she wanted anything she was to be sure and call her little Mally, when a
+timid knock came to the door and Father Dan entered the room. I can see
+his fair head and short figure still, and hear his soft Irish voice, as
+he stepped forward and said:
+
+"Now don't worry, my daughter. Above all, don't worry."
+
+By long experience my mother knew this for a sign of the dear Father's
+own perturbation, and I saw her lower lip tremble as she asked:
+
+"Hadn't Mary better run down to the garden?"
+
+"No! Oh no!" said Father Dan. "It is about Mary I come to speak, so our
+little pet may as well remain."
+
+Then at a signal from my mother I went over to her and stood by her
+side, and she embraced my waist with a trembling arm, while the Father
+took a seat by her side, and, fumbling the little silver cross on his
+chain, delivered his message.
+
+After long and anxious thought--and he might say prayer--it had been
+decided that I should be sent away to a Convent. It was to be a Convent
+of the Sacred Heart in Rome. He was to take me to Rome himself and see
+me safely settled there. And they (meaning my father and Aunt Bridget)
+had promised him--faithfully promised him--that when the holidays came
+round he should be sent to bring me home again. So there was nothing to
+fear, nothing to worry about, nothing to . . . to . . .
+
+My mother listened as long as she could, and then--her beautiful white
+face distorted by pain--she broke in on the Father's message with a cry
+of protest.
+
+"But she is so young! Such a child! Only seven years old! How can any
+one think of sending such a little one away from home?"
+
+Father Dan tried to pacify her. It was true I was very young, but then
+the Reverend Mother was such a good woman. She would love me and care
+for me as if I were her own child. And then the good nuns, God bless
+their holy souls. . . .
+
+"But Mary is all I have," cried my mother, "and if they take her away
+from me I shall be broken-hearted. At such a time too! How cruel they
+are! They know quite well what the doctor says. Can't they wait a little
+longer?"
+
+I could see that Father Dan was arguing against himself, for his eyes
+filled as he said:
+
+"It's hard, I know it's hard for you, my daughter. But perhaps it's best
+for the child that she should go away from home--perhaps it's all God's
+blessed and holy will. Remember there's a certain person here who isn't
+kind to our little innocent, and is making her a cause of trouble. Not
+that I think she is actuated by evil intentions. . . ."
+
+"But she is, she is," cried my mother, who was growing more and more
+excited.
+
+"Then all the more reason why Mary should go to the convent--for a time
+at all events."
+
+My mother began to waver, and she said:
+
+"Let her be sent to a Convent in the island then."
+
+"I thought of that, but there isn't one," said Father Dan.
+
+"Then . . . then . . . then take her to the Presbytery," said my mother.
+"Dear, dear Father," she pleaded, "let her live with you, and have
+somebody to teach her, and then she can come to see me every day, or
+twice a week, or even once a week--I am not unreasonable."
+
+"It would be beautiful," said Father Dan, reaching over to touch my arm.
+"To have our little Mary in my dull old house would be like having the
+sun there always. But there are reasons why a young girl should not be
+brought up in the home of a priest, so it is better that our little
+precious should go to Rome."
+
+My mother was breaking down and Father Dan followed up his advantage.
+
+"Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for the
+child. She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus first, then a
+child of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself. And then remember,
+Rome! The holy city! The city of the Holy Father! Why, who knows, she
+may even see himself some day!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said my mother, and then turning with her melting
+eyes to me she said:
+
+"Would my Mary like to go--leaving her mamma but coming home in the
+holidays--would she?"
+
+I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly get on
+without me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her bunch of
+keys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and catching my mother's
+last words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched voice.
+
+"Isabel! You astonish me! To defer to the will of a child! Such a child
+too! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If _we_ say it is good for
+her to go she _must_ go!"
+
+I could feel through my mother's arm, which was still about my waist,
+that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she did not speak
+and Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on:
+
+"We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten your
+death by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more blood
+vessels. So we are consulting your welfare as well as the girl's in
+sending her away."
+
+My mother's timid soul could bear no more. I think it must have been the
+only moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but, gathering all her
+strength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in ungovernable excitement.
+
+"Bridget," she said, "you are doing nothing of the kind. You know you
+are not. You are only trying to separate me from my child and my child
+from me. When you came to my house I thought you would be kinder to my
+child than a anybody else, but you have not been, you have been cruel to
+her, and shut your heart against her, and while I have been helpless
+here, and in bed, you have never shown her one moment of love and
+kindness. No, you have no feeling except for your own, and it never
+occurs to you that having brought your own child into my house you are
+trying to turn my child out of it."
+
+"So that's how you look at it, is it?" said Aunt Bridget, with a flash
+of her cold grey eyes. "I thought I came to this house--your house as
+you call it--only out of the best intentions, just to spare you trouble
+when you were ill and unable, to attend to your duties as a wife. But
+because I correct your child when she is wilful and sly and
+wicked. . . ."
+
+"Correct your own child, Bridget O'Neill!" cried my mother, "and leave
+mine to me. She's all I have and it isn't long I shall have her. You
+know quite well how much she has cost me, and that I haven't had a very
+happy married life, but instead of helping me with her father. . . ."
+
+"Say no more," said Aunt Bridget, "we don't want you to hurt yourself
+again, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the cause of
+another hemorrhage."
+
+"Bridget O'Neill," cried my mother, rising up from her chair, "you are a
+hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition. You know as well as I do that
+it wasn't Mary who made me ill, but you--you, who reproached me and
+taunted me about my child until my heart itself had to bleed. For seven
+years you have been doing that, and now you are disposing of my darling
+over my head without consulting me. Has a mother no rights in her own
+child--the child she has suffered for, and loved and lived for--that
+other people who care nothing for it should take it away from her and
+send it into a foreign country where she may never see it again? But you
+shall not do that! No, you shall not'! As long as there's breath in my
+body you shall not do it, and if you attempt. . . ."
+
+In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling hands
+into Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped about me,
+when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she stopped speaking.
+She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was my father. He entered
+the room with his knotty forehead more compressed than usual and said:
+
+"What's this she shall not do?"
+
+My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt Bridget,
+wiping' her eyes on her black apron--she only wept when my father was
+present--proceeded to explain.
+
+It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and though,
+I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for seven years
+I'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of it. It seems
+too, that we have no business--none of us have--to say what ought to be
+done for this girl--her mother being the only person who has any rights
+in the child, and if we attempt . . ."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and in his
+loud voice he said:
+
+"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He has to
+provide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to him she has to
+look for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh? Always has been, all
+the world over. Then what's all this hustling about?"
+
+My mother made a feeble effort to answer him.
+
+"I was only saying, Daniel . . ."
+
+"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man can do
+what he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my child and I say
+she is to go somewhere, she is to go." And saying this my father brought
+down his thick hand with a thump on to a table.
+
+It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that acted on
+my mother, as she said, submissively:
+
+"Very well, dear. _You_ know best what is best for Mary, and if you
+say--you and Bridget and . . . and Father Dan. . . ."
+
+"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this Convent
+scheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for the future
+if a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles for his important
+business."
+
+My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said nothing aloud,
+and my father turned on his heel, and left the room, shaking the floor
+at every step under the weight of his sixteen stone. At the next moment,
+Aunt Bridget, jingling her keys, went tripping after him.
+
+Hardly had they gone when my mother broke into a long fit of coughing,
+and when it was over she lay back exhausted, with her white face and her
+tired eyes turned upwards. Then I clasped her about the neck, and Father
+Dan, whose cheeks were wet with tears patted her drooping hand.
+
+My darling mother! Never once have I thought of her without the greatest
+affection, but now that I know for myself what she must have suffered I
+love best to think of her as she was that day--my sweet, beautiful,
+timid angel--standing up for one brief moment, not only against Aunt
+Bridget, but against the cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right of
+her outraged motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+ELEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My mother's submission was complete. Within twenty-four hours she was
+busy preparing clothes for my journey to Rome. The old coloured pattern
+book was brought out again, material was sent for, a sewing-maid was
+engaged from the village, and above all, in my view, an order was
+dispatched to Blackwater for a small squirrel-skin scarf, a large
+squirrel-skin muff, and a close-fitting squirrel-skin hat with a feather
+on the side of it.
+
+A child's heart is a running brook, and it would wrong the truth to say
+that I grieved much in the midst of these busy preparations. On the
+contrary I felt a sort of pride in them, poor innocent that I was, as in
+something that gave me a certain high superiority over Betsy Beauty and
+Nessy MacLeod, and entitled me to treat them with condescension.
+
+Father Dan, who came more frequently than ever, fostered this feeling
+without intending to do so, by telling me, whenever we were alone, that
+I must be a good girl to everybody now, and especially to my mother.
+
+"My little woman would be sorry to worry mamma, wouldn't she?" he would
+whisper, and when I answered that I would be sorrier than sorry, he
+would say:
+
+"Wisha then, she must be brave. She must keep up. She must not grieve
+about going away or cry when the time comes for parting."
+
+I said "yes" and "yes" to all this, feeling very confidential and
+courageous, but I dare say the good Father gave the same counsel to my
+mother also, for she and I had many games of make-believe, I remember,
+in which we laughed and chattered and sang, though I do not think I ever
+suspected that the part we played was easier to me than to her.
+
+It dawned on me at last, though, when in the middle of the night, near
+to the time of my going away, I was awakened by a bad fit of my mother's
+coughing, and heard her say to herself in the deep breathing that
+followed:
+
+"My poor child! What is to become of her?"
+
+Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure. It had been
+arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two daily
+steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the first
+sign of daylight. So great was my delight that I began to dance in my
+nightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, who
+always rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the room below.
+
+My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion.
+It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including my
+furs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myself
+in a mirror. I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write to
+her as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool,
+which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters.
+
+Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs. Daniel
+O'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, and
+my throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I remembered what Father Dan
+had told me to do, so I said:
+
+"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry--I'll be home for the holidays."
+
+Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window,
+and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funny
+bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through a
+little cloud of white breath, that everything was ready.
+
+I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her
+pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a sign
+from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed back the
+water in my eyes and cried:
+
+"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas," and then darted across to
+the door.
+
+I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary" in a
+strange low voice, and I turned and saw her--I can see her still--with
+her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me.
+
+Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying,
+"Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart beating through
+her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poor
+little game of make-believe broke down utterly.
+
+At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late
+for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let
+me go.
+
+Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing
+Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my
+composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately
+silence with my little bird-like head in the air.
+
+I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a
+shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"
+
+"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because you
+think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Convent
+that you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . as bad as the
+bad women in the Bible!"
+
+"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I could
+see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did not
+trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan,
+who was sitting inside, said:
+
+"My little Mary won't leave home like that--without kissing her aunt and
+saying good-bye to her cousins."
+
+So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, and
+lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.
+
+"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I had
+passed her my quick little ear caught the words:
+
+"Good thing she's going, though."
+
+During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like
+hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel and
+saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled me
+into the carriage and banged the door on me.
+
+But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his little
+eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief,
+said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.
+
+There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her open
+window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees and
+I lost the sight of her.
+
+What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do not
+know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage.
+I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that it
+did not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with a
+dog darted from under the chestnuts and raced alongside of us.
+
+It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt up to
+the step and held on to the open window by his left hand while he pushed
+his head into the carriage and made signs to me to take out of his mouth
+a big red apple which he held in his teeth by the stalk. I took it, and
+then he dropped to the ground, without uttering a word, and I could
+laugh now to think of the gruesome expression of his face with its
+lagging lower lip and bloodshot eyes. I had no temptation to do so then,
+however, and least of all when I looked back and saw his little
+one-armed figure in the big mushroom hat, standing on the top of the
+high wall of the bridge, with William Rufus beside him.
+
+We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the funnels
+had ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we were sitting
+in one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and then Father Dan told
+me that the other was occupied by the young Lord Raa, and his guardian,
+and that they were going up together for the first time to Oxford.
+
+I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so false
+is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur.
+And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawn
+on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to pay
+his respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of the
+cabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I had
+been turned out of my father's house, and would never see my mother and
+Martin any more.
+
+I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern,
+making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded
+away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery
+crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway.
+
+It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. He
+was the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome and well
+dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a moment he
+stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said:
+
+"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"
+
+I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all,
+having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.
+
+"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?"
+
+Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy
+MacLeod's--shrill and harsh and grating.
+
+"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?"
+
+Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt
+Bridget's--cold and grey and piercing.
+
+"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deuced
+pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."
+
+I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.
+
+"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from some
+picture of the Madonna, I'll swear."
+
+By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so I
+turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say:
+
+"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman,
+aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, but you must--we are relations, you know."
+
+"I won't."
+
+He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kiss
+me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling my
+little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.
+
+Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by
+servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised and
+angry.
+
+"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face of a nun
+and the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends for this, my
+lady."
+
+With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer was
+drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while the
+passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with Father
+Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said:
+
+"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me a
+grudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"
+
+"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody," said Father Dan.
+"She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain."
+
+And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt Bridget--I
+held up my face and he kissed me.
+
+It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other things
+to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it I
+sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers of
+the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting with
+which to warn His children that their footsteps may not fail.
+
+
+
+
+TWELFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Of our journey to Rome nothing remains to me but the memory of sleeping
+in different beds in different towns, of trains screaming through
+tunnels and slowing down in glass-roofed railway stations, of endless
+crowds of people moving here and there in a sort of maze, nothing but
+this, and the sense of being very little and very helpless and of having
+to be careful not to lose sight of Father Dan, for fear of being
+lost--until the afternoon of the fourth day after we left home.
+
+We were then crossing a wide rolling plain that was almost destitute of
+trees, and looked, from the moving train, like green billows of the sea
+with grass growing over them. Father Dan was reading his breviary for
+the following day, not knowing what he would have to do in it, when the
+sun set in a great blaze of red beyond the horizon, and then suddenly a
+big round black ball, like a captive balloon, seemed to rise in the
+midst of the glory.
+
+I called Father Dan's attention to this, and in a moment he was
+fearfully excited.
+
+"Don't worry, my child," he cried, while tears of joy sprang to his
+eyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St. Peter's! Rome,
+my child, Rome!"
+
+It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in the midst
+of a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and held on to his
+vertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a basket of mine,
+down the crowded platform to an open cab outside the station.
+
+Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief and I sat
+close up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and shouted at the
+pedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony streets, which seemed
+to be full of statues and fountains that were lit up by a great white
+light that was not moonlight and yet looked like it.
+
+But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which seemed to
+stand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf overlooking the city,
+for I could see many domes like that of St. Peter lying below us.
+
+A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a black
+habit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands down each
+side of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to step in, and
+when we had done so, she took us down a long passage into a warm room,
+where another lady, dressed in the same way, only a little grander, sat
+in a big red arm-chair.
+
+Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed very low to
+this lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene, and she answered
+him in English but with a funny sound which I afterwards knew to be a
+foreign accent.
+
+I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as beautiful as
+my mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her hand I did so, and
+then she put me to sit in a chair and looked at me.
+
+"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he thought I
+would be eight that month, which was right, being October.
+
+"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said something
+about poor mamma which I cannot remember.
+
+After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the pictures
+on the walls--pictures of Saints and Popes and, above all, a picture of
+Jesus with His heart open in His bosom.
+
+"The child will be hungry," said the lady. "She must have something to
+eat before she goes to bed--the other children have gone already."
+
+Then she rang a hand-bell, and when the first lady came back she said:
+
+"Ask Sister Angela to come to me immediately."
+
+A few minutes later Sister Angela came into the room, and she was quite
+young, almost a girl, with such a sweet sad face that I loved her
+instantly.
+
+"This is little Mary O'Neill. Take her to the Refectory and give her
+whatever she wants, and don't leave her until she is quiet and
+comfortable."
+
+"Very well, Mother," said Sister Angela, and taking my hand she
+whispered: "Come, Mary, you look tired."
+
+I rose to go with her, but at the same moment Father Dan rose too, and I
+heard him say he must lose no time in finding an hotel, for his Bishop
+had given him only one day to remain in Rome, and he had to catch an
+early train home the following morning.
+
+This fell on me like a thunderbolt. I hardly know what I had led myself
+to expect, but certainly the idea of being left alone in Rome had never
+once occurred to me.
+
+My little heart was fluttering, and dropping the Sister's hand I stepped
+back and took Father Dan's and said:
+
+"You are not going to leave your little Mary are you, Father?"
+
+It was harder for the dear Father than for me, for I remember that,
+fearfully flurried, he stammered in a thick voice something about the
+Reverend Mother taking good care of me, and how he was sure to come back
+at Christmas, according to my father's faithful promise, to take me home
+for the holidays.
+
+After that Sister Angela led me, sniffing a little still, to the
+Refectory, which was a large, echoing room, with rows of plain deal
+tables and forms, ranged in front of a reading desk that had another and
+much larger picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall above it. Only one
+gasjet was burning, and I sat under it to eat my supper, and after I had
+taken a basin of soup I felt more comforted.
+
+Then Sister Angela lit a lamp and taking my hand she led me up a stone
+staircase to the Dormitory, which was a similar room, but not so silent,
+because it was full of beds, and the breathing of the girls, who were
+all asleep, made it sound like the watchmaker's shop in our village,
+only more church-like and solemn.
+
+My bed was near to the door, and after Sister Angela had helped me to
+undress, and tucked me in, she made her voice very low, and said I would
+be quite comfortable now, and she was sure I was going to be a good
+little girl and a dear child of the Infant Jesus; and then I could not
+help taking my arms out again and clasping her round the neck and
+drawing her head down and kissing her.
+
+After that she took the lamp and went away to a cubicle which was
+partitioned off the end of the Dormitory and there I could see her
+prepare to go to bed herself--taking the white bands off her cheeks and
+the black band off her forehead, and letting her long light hair fall
+in beautiful wavy masses about her face, which made her look so sweet
+and home like.
+
+But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since--no, not even when I was
+in my lowest depths--have I felt so little and helpless and alone. After
+the Sister had gone to bed and everything was quiet in the Dormitory
+save for the breathing of the girls--all strangers to me and I to
+them--from mere loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as I
+used to do when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother's
+room.
+
+I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a loss to
+know how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it merely that he
+wanted peace for his business and saw no chance of securing it in his
+own home except by removing the chief cause of Aunt Bridget's jealousy?
+Or was it that his old grudge against Fate for making me a girl made him
+wish to rid himself of the sight of me?
+
+I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to see how
+he could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for me, to tear me
+from the mother who loved me and had paid for me so dear; or how he
+could have believed that because he was my father, charged with the care
+of my poor little body, he had control over the little bleeding heart
+which was not his to make to suffer.
+
+He is my father--God help me to think the best of him.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At half past six in the morning I was awakened by the loud ringing of
+the getting-up bell, and as soon as I could rouse myself from the deep
+sleep of childhood I saw that a middle-aged nun with a severe face was
+saying a prayer, and that all the girls in the dormitory were kneeling
+in their beds while they made the responses.
+
+A few minutes later, when the girls were chattering and laughing as they
+dressed, making the room tingle with twittering sounds like a tree full
+of linnets in the spring, a big girl came up to me and said:
+
+"I am Mildred Bankes and Sister Angela says I am to look after you
+to-day."
+
+She was about fifteen years of age, and had a long plain-featured face
+which reminded me of one of my father's horses that was badly used by
+the farm boys; but there was something sweet in her smile that made me
+like her instantly.
+
+She helped me to dress in my brown velvet frock, but said that one of
+her first duties would be to take me to the lay sisters who made the
+black habits which all the girls in the convent wore.
+
+It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just broken by
+pale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see that the children
+of my own age were only seven or eight altogether, while the majority of
+the girls were several years older, and Mildred explained this by
+telling me that the children of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were so
+few that they had been put into the dormitory of the children of the
+Sacred Heart.
+
+In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and then, at a
+word from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and laughing downstairs
+to the Meeting Room, which was a large hail, with a platform at the
+farther end of it and another picture of the Sacred Heart, pierced with
+sharp thorns, on the wall.
+
+The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the Convent, all
+pale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and she said a long
+prayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy or eighty altogether)
+made responses, and then there was silence for five minutes, which were
+supposed to be devoted to meditation, although I could not help seeing
+that some of the big girls were whispering to each other while their
+heads were down.
+
+After that, and Mass in the Church, we went scurrying away to the
+Refectory, which was now warm with the steam from our breakfast and
+bubbling with cheerful voices, making a noise that was like water
+boiling in a saucepan.
+
+I was so absorbed by all I saw that I forgot to eat until Mildred nudged
+me to do so, and even when my spoon was half way to my mouth something
+happened which brought it down again.
+
+At the tinkle of a hand-bell one of the big girls had stepped up to the
+reading-desk and begun to read from a book which I afterwards knew to be
+"The Imitation of Christ." She was about sixteen years of age, and her
+face was so vivid that I could not take my eyes off it.
+
+Her complexion was fair and her hair was auburn, but her eyes were so
+dark and searching that when she raised her head, as she often did, they
+seemed to look through and through you.
+
+"Who is she?" I whispered.
+
+"Alma Lier," Mildred whispered back, and when breakfast was over, and we
+were trooping off to lessons, she told me something about her.
+
+Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was in New
+York. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying at an hotel
+in Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a carriage to take her
+daughter for a drive.
+
+Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at the end
+of terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and one of the
+Cardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books to take away
+that she could hardly carry them down from the platform.
+
+I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most wonderful
+and worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it now, after all
+these years, and the bitter experiences which have come with them, I
+hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that such was the
+impression she first made on me.
+
+My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister Angela was my
+teacher. She was so sweet to me that her encouragement was like a kiss
+and her reproof like a caress; but I could think of nothing but Alma,
+and at noon, when the bell rang for lunch and Mildred took me back to
+the Refectory, I wondered if the same girl would read again.
+
+She did, but this time in a foreign language, French as Mildred
+whispered--from the letters of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque--and
+my admiration for Alma went up tenfold. I wondered if it could possibly
+occur that I should ever come to know her.
+
+There is no worship like that of a child, and life for me, which had
+seemed so cold and dark the day before, became warm and bright with a
+new splendour.
+
+I was impatient of everything that took me away from the opportunity of
+meeting with Alma--the visit to the lay-sisters to be measured for my
+new black clothes, the three o'clock "rosary," when the nuns walked with
+their classes in the sunshine and, above all, the voluntary visit to the
+Blessed Sacrament in the Church of the Convent, which seemed to me
+large and gorgeous, though divided across the middle by an open bronze
+screen, called a Cancello--the inner half, as Mildred whispered, being
+for the inmates of the school, while the outer half was for the
+congregation which came on Sunday to Benediction.
+
+But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read again--this time in
+Italian--from the writings of Saint Francis of Sales--and then, to my
+infinite delight, came a long recreation, when all the girls scampered
+out into the Convent garden, which was still bright with afternoon
+sunshine and as merry with laughter and shouts as the seashore on a
+windy summer morning.
+
+The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by the
+convent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an avenue
+made by a line of stone pines with heads like open umbrellas, but it had
+no other foliage except an old tree which reminded me of Tommy the Mate,
+having gnarled and sprawling limbs, and standing like a weather-beaten
+old sailor, four-square in the middle.
+
+A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree, and I
+felt so happy just then that I should have loved to join them, but I was
+consumed by a desire to come to close quarters with the object of my
+devotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked Mildred if Alma was
+likely to be there.
+
+"Sure to be," said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouth
+when Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by a
+group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing at
+everything she said.
+
+My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stopped
+dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me.
+
+Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching
+eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but
+Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had
+accidentally turned up something with her toe that was little and
+ridiculous, she said:
+
+"Goodness, girls, what's this?"
+
+Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined,
+and looking me up and down they all laughed together.
+
+I knew what they were laughing at--the clothes my mother had made for me
+and I had felt so proud of. That burnt me like iron, and I think my lip
+must have dropped, but Alma showed no mercy.
+
+"Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though," she said. And
+then she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they went off they
+looked back over their shoulders and laughed again.
+
+Never since has any human creature--not even Alma herself--made me
+suffer more than I suffered at that moment. My throat felt tight, tears
+leapt to my eyes, disappointment, humiliation, and shame swept over me
+like a flood, and I stood squeezing my little handkerchief in my hand
+and feeling as if I could have died.
+
+At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her arm about
+my waist she said:
+
+"Never mind, Mary. She's a heartless thing. Don't have anything to do
+with her."
+
+But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I cried for
+hours. I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when, at eight
+o'clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma, who was in
+the opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who sat next to her
+and then looking straight across at me.
+
+And at nine o'clock when we went to bed I was crying more than ever, so
+that after the good-night-bell had been rung and the lights had been put
+down, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of my sorrow, stepped up to
+my bed before going down stairs for her own studies, and whispered:
+
+"You mustn't fret for home, Mary. You will soon get used to it."
+
+But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could find no
+ease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and, looking up, I
+saw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me. It was Alma and she
+said:
+
+"Say, little girl, is your name O'Neill?"
+
+Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was.
+
+"Do you belong to the O'Neills of Ellan?"
+
+Still trembling I told her that I did.
+
+"My!" she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by some means
+I had begun to look different in her eyes.
+
+After a moment she sat on the side of my bed and asked questions about
+my home--if it was not large and very old, with big stone staircases,
+and great open fireplaces, and broad terraces, and beautiful walks going
+down to the sea.
+
+I was so filled with the joy of finding myself looking grand in Alma's
+eyes that I answered "yes" and "yes" without thinking too closely about
+her questions, and my tears were all brushed away when she said:
+
+"I knew somebody who lived in your house once, and I'll tell her all
+about you."
+
+She stayed a few moments longer, and when going off she whispered:
+
+"Hope you don't feel badly about my laughing in the garden to-day. I
+didn't mean a thing. But if any of the girls laugh again just say you're
+Alma Lier's friend and she's going to take care of you."
+
+I could hardly believe my ears. Some great new splendour had suddenly
+dawned upon me and I was very happy.
+
+I did not know then that the house which Alma had been talking of was
+not my father's house, but Castle Raa. I did not know then that the
+person who had lived there was her mother, and that in her comely and
+reckless youth she had been something to the bad Lord Raa who had lashed
+my father and sworn at my grandmother.
+
+I did not know anything that was dead and buried in the past, or
+shrouded and veiled in the future. I only knew that Alma had called
+herself my friend and promised to take care of me. So with a glad heart
+I went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Alma kept her word, though perhaps her method of protection was such as
+would have commended itself only to the heart of a child.
+
+It consisted in calling me Margaret Mary after our patron saint of the
+Sacred Heart, in taking me round the garden during recreation as if I
+had been a pet poodle, and, above all, in making my bed the scene of the
+conversaziones which some of the girls held at night when they were
+supposed to be asleep.
+
+The secrecy of these gatherings flattered me, and when the unclouded
+moon, in the depths of the deep blue Italian sky, looked in on my group
+of girls in their nightdresses, bunched together on my bed, with my own
+little body between, I had a feeling of dignity as well as solemnity and
+awe.
+
+Of course Alma was the chief spokeswoman at these whispered
+conferences. Sometimes she told us of her drives into the Borghese
+Gardens, where she saw the King and Queen, or to the Hunt on the
+Campagna, where she met the flower of the aristocracy, or to the Pincio,
+where the Municipal band played in the pavilion, while ladies sat in
+their carriages in the sunshine, and officers in blue cloaks saluted
+them and smiled.
+
+Sometimes she indicated her intentions for the future, which was
+certainly not to be devoted to retreats and novenas, or to witness
+another black dress as long as she lived, and if she married (which was
+uncertain) it was not to be to an American, but to a Frenchman, because
+Frenchmen had "family" and "blood," or perhaps to an Englishman, if he
+was a member of the House of Lords, in which case she would attend all
+the race-meetings and Coronations, and take tea at the Carlton, where
+she would eat _méringues glacés_ every day and have as many _éclairs_ as
+she liked.
+
+And sometimes she would tell us the stories of the novels which she
+bribed one of the washing-women to smuggle into the convent--stories of
+ladies and their lovers, and of intoxicating dreams of kissing and
+fondling, at which the bigger girls, with far-off suggestions of sexual
+mysteries still unexplored, would laugh and shudder, and then Alma would
+say:
+
+"But hush, girls! Margaret Mary will be shocked."
+
+Occasionally these conferences would be interrupted by Mildred's voice
+from the other end of the dormitory, where she would raise her head from
+her pillow and say:
+
+"Alma Lier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--keeping that child up
+when she ought to be asleep, instead of listening to your wicked
+stories."
+
+"Helloa, Mother Mildred, is that you?" Alma would answer, and then the
+girls would laugh, and Mildred was supposed to be covered with
+confusion.
+
+One night Sister Angela's footsteps were heard on the stairs, and then
+the girls flew back to their beds, where, with the furtive instinct of
+their age and sex, they pretended to be sleeping soundly when the Sister
+entered the room. But the Sister was not deceived, and walking up the
+aisle between the beds she said in an angry tone:
+
+"Alma Lier, if this ever occurs again I'll step down to the Reverend
+Mother and tell her all about you."
+
+Little as I was, I saw that between Alma and Sister Angela there was a
+secret feud, which must soon break into open rupture, but for my own
+part I was entirely happy, being still proud of Alma's protection and
+only feeling any misgivings when Mildred's melancholy eyes were looking
+at me.
+
+Thus week followed week until we were close upon Christmas, and the
+girls, who were to be permitted to go home before the Feast, began to
+count the days to the holidays. I counted them too, and when anybody
+talked of her brother I thought of Martin Conrad, though his faithful
+little figure was fading away from me, and when anybody spoke of her
+parents I remembered my mother, for whom my affection never failed.
+
+But, within a week from the time for breaking up, the Reverend Mother
+sent for me, and with a sinking heart I went to her room, knowing well
+what she was going to say.
+
+"You are not to go home for the holidays this time, my child. You are to
+remain here, and Sister Angela is to stay to take care of you."
+
+She had a letter from Father Dan, telling her that my mother was still
+unwell, and for this and other reasons it was considered best that I
+should not return at Christmas.
+
+Father Dan had written a letter to me also, beginning, "My dear daughter
+in Jesus" and ending "Yours in Xt," saying it was not his fault that he
+could not fulfil his promise, but my father was much from home
+now-a-days and Aunt Bridget was more difficult than ever, so perhaps I
+should be happier at the Convent.
+
+It was a bitter blow, though the bitterest part of it lay in the fear
+that the girls would think I was of so little importance to my people
+that they did not care to see me.
+
+But the girls were too eager about their own concerns to care much about
+me, and even on the very last day and at the very last moment, when
+everything was bustle and joy, and boxes were being carried downstairs,
+and everybody was kissing everybody else and wishing each other a Happy
+Christmas, and then flying away like mad things, and I alone was being
+left, Alma herself, before she stepped into a carriage in which a stout
+lady wearing furs was waiting to receive her, only said:
+
+"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela."
+
+Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi, and the
+other nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and then Sister
+Angela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing convent--save for two
+elderly lay Sisters, who cooked and cleaned for us, and the Chaplain,
+who lived by himself in a little white hut like a cell which stood at
+the farthest corner of the garden.
+
+We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to look
+out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic,
+and after a while we had many cheerful hours together.
+
+During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting the
+churches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of the
+Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among the
+straw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where the
+Chaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under the
+old tree, reading his breviary.
+
+His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long,
+thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him she
+said:
+
+"This is our Margaret Mary."
+
+Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, and
+sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angela
+sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in the
+avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cell
+in the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if she
+would have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable.
+
+On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast, and Sister
+Angela asked Father Giovanni to come to tea, and he came, and was quite
+cheerful, so that when the Sister, who was also very happy, signalled to
+me to take some mistletoe from the bottom of a picture I held it over
+his head and kissed him from behind. Then he snatched me up in his arms
+and kissed me back, and we had a great romp round the chairs and tables.
+
+But the Ave Maria began to ring from the churches, and Father Giovanni
+(according to the rule of our Convent) having to go, he kissed me again,
+and then I said:
+
+"Why don't you kiss Sister Angela too?"
+
+At that they only looked at each other and laughed, but after a moment
+he kissed her hand, and then she went downstairs to see him out into the
+garden.
+
+When she came back her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed,
+and, that night, when she took away her black and white whimple and
+gorget on going to bed, she stood before a looking-glass and wound her
+beautiful light hair round her finger and curled it over her forehead
+in the way it was worn by the ladies we saw in the streets.
+
+I think it was two nights later that she told me I was to go to bed
+early because Father Giovanni was not well and she would have to go over
+to see him.
+
+She went, and I got into bed, but I could not sleep, and while I lay
+waiting for Sister Angela I listened to some men who as they crossed the
+piazza were singing, in tremulous voices, to their mandolines and
+guitars, what I believed to be love songs, for I had begun to learn
+Italian.
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli. Oh suol beato
+         Onde soiridere volta il creato_."
+
+It was late when Sister Angela came back and then she was breathing hard
+as if she had been running. I asked if Father Giovanni's sickness was
+worse, and she said no, it was better, and I was to say nothing about
+it. But she could not rest and at last she said:
+
+"Didn't we forget to say our prayers, Mary?"
+
+So I got up again and Sister Angela said one of the beautiful prayers
+out of our prayer-book. But her voice was very low and when she came to
+the words:
+
+"O Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners who repent of their sins,"
+she broke down altogether.
+
+I thought she was ill, but she said it was only a cold she had caught in
+crossing the garden and I was to go to sleep like a good girl and think
+no more about her.
+
+But in the middle of the night I awoke, and Sister Angela was crying.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Most of the girls were depressed when they returned to school, but Alma
+was in high spirits, and on the first night of the term she crept over
+to my bed and asked what we had been doing during the holidays.
+
+"Not a thing, eh?"
+
+I answered that we had done lots of things and been very happy.
+
+"Happy? In this gloomy old convent? You and Sister Angela alone?"
+
+I told her we had two lay sisters-and then there was Father Giovanni.
+
+"Father Giovanni? That serious old cross-bones?"
+
+I said he was not always serious, and that on Christmas Day he had come
+to tea and kissed me under the mistletoe.
+
+"Kissed you under the mistletoe!" said Alma, and then she whispered
+eagerly,
+
+"He didn't kiss Sister Angela, did he?"
+
+I suppose I was flattered by her interest, and this loosened my tongue,
+for I answered:
+
+"He kissed her hand, though."
+
+"Kissed her hand? My! . . . Of course she was very angry . . . wasn't
+she angry?"
+
+I answered no, and in my simplicity I proceeded to prove this by
+explaining that Sister Angela had taken Father Giovanni down to the
+door, and when he was ill she had nursed him.
+
+"Nursed him? In his own house, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, at night, too, and she stayed until he was better, and caught a
+cold coming back."
+
+"Well, I never!" said Alma, and I remember that I was very pleased with
+myself during this interview, for by the moonlight which was then
+shining into the room, I could see that Alma's eyes were sparkling.
+
+The next night we recommenced our conferences in bed, when Alma told us
+all about her holiday, which she had spent "way up in St. Moritz," among
+deep snow and thick ice, skating, bobbing, lugging, and above all riding
+astride, and dragging a man on skis behind her.
+
+"Such lots of fun," she said. And the best of it was at night when there
+were dances and fancy-dress balls with company which included all the
+smart people in Europe, and men who gave a girl such a good time if she
+happened to be pretty and was likely to have a dot.
+
+Alma had talked so eagerly and the girls had listened so intently, that
+nobody was aware that Sister Angela had returned to the room until she
+stepped forward and said:
+
+"Alma Lier, I'm ashamed of you. Go back to your bed, miss, this very
+minute."
+
+The other girls crept away and I half covered my face with my
+bed-clothes, but Alma stood up to Sister Angela and answered her back.
+
+"Go to bed yourself, and don't speak to me like that, or you'll pay for
+your presumption."
+
+"Pay? Presumption? You insolent thing, you are corrupting the whole
+school and are an utter disgrace to it. I warned you that I would tell
+the Reverend Mother what you are and now I've a great mind to do it."
+
+"Do it. I dare you to do it. Do it to-night, and to-morrow morning _I_
+will do something."
+
+"What will you do, you brazen hussy?" said Sister Angela, but I could
+see that her lip was trembling.
+
+"Never mind what. If I'm a hussy I'm not a hypocrite, and as for
+corrupting the school, and being a disgrace to it, I'll leave the
+Reverend Mother to say who is doing that."
+
+Low as the light was I could see that Sister Angela was deadly pale.
+There was a moment of silence in which I thought she glanced in my
+direction, and then stammering something which I did not hear, she left
+the dormitory.
+
+It was long before she returned and when she did so I saw her creep into
+her cubicle and sit there for quite a great time before going to bed. My
+heart was thumping hard, for I had a vague feeling that I had been
+partly to blame for what had occurred, but after a while I fell asleep
+and remembered no more until I was awakened in the middle of the night
+by somebody kissing me in my sleep.
+
+It was Sister Angela, and she was turning away, but I called her back,
+and she knelt by my bed and whispered:
+
+"Hush! I know what has happened, but I don't blame you for it."
+
+I noticed that she was wearing her out-door cloak, and that she was
+breathing rapidly, just as she did on the night she came from the
+chaplain's quarters, and when I asked if she was going anywhere she said
+yes, and if I ever heard anything against Sister Angela I was to think
+the best of her.
+
+"But you are so good. . . ."
+
+"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have thought of
+being a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and have never
+taken the vows."
+
+After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, and
+I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left the
+room.
+
+Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had roused
+myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns were
+standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about something
+that had happened during the night--Sister Angela had gone!
+
+Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls went
+bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great
+agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity--Father Giovanni also
+had disappeared!
+
+A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always
+rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon
+the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew
+everything that had happened--how at four in the morning Father Giovanni
+and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which
+connected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered a
+clothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest and
+nun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eight
+they had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to
+catch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way to
+England.
+
+By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered with
+glistening eyes in front of the chaplain's deserted quarters, where Alma
+leaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and while the others
+talked she smiled, as much as to say, "I told you so."
+
+As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain that I was
+the sole cause of Sister Angela's misfortune, I was sitting under the
+tree in the middle of the garden, when Alma, surrounded by her usual
+group of girls, came down on me.
+
+"What's this?" she said. "Margaret Mary crying? Feeling badly for Sister
+Angela, is she? Why, you little silly, you needn't cry for her. She's
+having the time of her life, she is!"
+
+At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when Alma
+told them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the stern face
+(she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said, solemnly:
+
+"Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you."
+
+"To me?" said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next moment she
+went off jauntily.
+
+Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred until
+afternoon "rosary," when the Mother of the Novices came again and taking
+me by the hand said:
+
+"Come with me, my child."
+
+I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was trembling when
+we entered the Reverend Mother's room, for Alma was there, sitting by
+the stove, and close beside her, with an angry look, was the stout lady
+in furs whom I had seen in the carriage at the beginning of the
+holidays.
+
+"Don't be afraid," said the Reverend Mother, and drawing me to her side
+she asked me to tell her what I had told Alma about Sister Angela.
+
+I repeated our conversation as nearly as I could remember it, and more
+than once Alma nodded her head as if in assent, but the Reverend
+Mother's face grew darker at every word and, seeing this, I said:
+
+"But if Sister Angela did anything wrong I'm sure she was very sorry,
+for when she came back she said her prayers, and when she got to 'Father
+of all mankind, forgive all sinners . . .'"
+
+"Yes, yes, that will do," said the Reverend Mother, and then she handed
+me back to the Mother of the Novices, telling her to warn me to say
+nothing to the other children.
+
+Alma did not return to us at dinner, or at recreation, or at chapel
+(when another chaplain said vespers), or even at nine o'clock, when we
+went to bed. But next morning, almost as soon as the Mother of the
+Novices had left the dormitory, she burst into the room saying:
+
+"I'm leaving this silly old convent, girls. Mother has brought the
+carriage, and I've only come to gather up my belongings."
+
+Nobody spoke, and while she wrapped up her brushes and combs in her
+nightdress, she joked about Sister Angela and Father Giovanni and then
+about Mildred Bankes, whom she called "Reverend Mother Mildred," saying
+it would be her turn next.
+
+Then she tipped up her mattress, and taking a novel from under it she
+threw the book on to my bed, saying:
+
+"Margaret Mary will have to be your story-teller now. By-by, girls!"
+
+Nobody laughed. For the first time Alma's humour had failed her, and
+when we went downstairs to the Meeting Room it was with sedate and quiet
+steps.
+
+The nuns were all there, with their rosaries and crosses, looking as
+calm as if nothing had occurred, but the girls were thinking of Alma,
+and when, after prayers, during the five minutes of silence for
+meditation, we heard the wheels of a carriage going off outside, we knew
+what had happened--Alma had gone.
+
+We were rising to go to Mass when the Reverend Mother said,
+
+"Children, I have a word to say to you. You all know that one of our
+novices has left us. You also know that one of our scholars has just
+gone. It is my wish that you should forget both of them, and I shall
+look upon it as an act of disobedience if any girl in the Convent ever
+mentions their names again."
+
+All that day I was in deep distress, and when, night coming, I took my
+troubles to bed, telling myself I had now lost Alma also, and it was all
+my fault, somebody put her arms about me in the darkness and whispered:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, are you awake?"
+
+It was Mildred, and I suppose my snuffling answered her, for she said:
+
+"You mustn't cry for Alma Lier. She was no friend of yours, and it was
+the best thing that ever happened to you when she was turned out of the
+convent."
+
+
+
+
+SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+A child lives from hour to hour, and almost at the same moment that my
+heart was made desolate by the loss of my two friends it was quickened
+to a new interest.
+
+Immediately after the departure of Sister Angela and Alma we were all
+gathered in the Meeting Room for our weekly rehearsal of the music of
+the Benediction--the girls, the novices, the nuns, the Reverend Mother,
+and a Maestro from the Pope's choir, a short fat man, who wore a black
+soutane and a short lace tippet.
+
+Benediction was the only service of our church which I knew, being the
+one my mother loved best and could do most of for herself in the
+solitude of her invalid room, but the form used in the Convent differed
+from that to which I had been accustomed, and even the _Tantum ergo_ and
+the _O Salutaris Hostia_ I could not sing.
+
+On this occasion a litany was added which I had heard before, and then
+came a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well. My mother
+sang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when the Maestro,
+swinging his little ivory baton, began in his alto voice--
+
+     "_Ave maris stella,
+         Dei Mater alma--_"
+
+I joined in with the rest, but sang in English instead of Latin Of all
+appeals to the memory that of music is the strongest, and after a moment
+I forgot that I was at school in Rome, being back in my mother's room in
+Ellan, standing by her piano and singing while she played. I think I
+must have let my little voice go, just as I used to do at home, when it
+rang up to the wooden rafters, for utterly lost to my surroundings I had
+got as far as--
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+         To thy shelter take us--_"
+
+when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the children
+about me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton slowing down. Then I
+saw that all eyes were turned in my direction, and overwhelmed with
+confusion I stopped, for my voice broke and slittered into silence.
+
+"Go on, little angel," said the Maestro, but I was trembling all over by
+this time and could not utter a sound.
+
+Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing the hymn
+in church in future."
+
+As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the presence of
+the girls, I did so, singing the first line of each verse alone, and I
+remember to have heard that the congregations on Sunday afternoons grew
+larger and larger, until, within a few weeks, the church was densely
+crowded.
+
+Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for I
+remember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the bronze
+screen that separated us from the public and whisper among themselves,
+"Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with the big eyes!"
+"God bless her!"
+
+But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to have a
+certain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in the life of
+the Convent, and particularly in the services of the church, so that
+home itself began to fade away, and when the holidays came round and
+excuses were received for not sending for me, the pain of my
+disappointment became less and less until at last it disappeared
+altogether.
+
+If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments when I
+reproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day. These were
+the moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling me she was less
+well than before and her spark of life had to be coaxed and trimmed or
+it would splutter out altogether.
+
+But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother wrote
+herself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because she knew
+that though so long separated we should soon be together, and the time
+would not seem long.
+
+Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like these, I
+was nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until little by
+little it faded away from me in the distance, just as the island itself
+had done on the day when I sailed out with Martin Conrad on our great
+voyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock.
+
+Thus two years and a half passed since I arrived in Rome before the
+great fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of my
+remembrance.
+
+It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the Sacred
+Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritual
+duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls in
+Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of the
+Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of the
+Gloria and the return of the Alleluia.
+
+But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my first
+confession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve other
+girls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn and knelt by
+the grating, and heard the whispering voice within, like something from
+the unseen, something supernatural, something divine, that I forgot all
+I had come to say and the priest had to prompt me.
+
+And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first communion,
+which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to walk in
+procession with the other girls, dressed all in white, behind a gilded
+figure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella," through the piazza
+into the church, where one of the Cardinals, in the presence of the
+fathers and mothers of the other children, was to put the Holy Wafer on
+our tongues and we were to know for the first time the joy of communion
+with our Lord.
+
+But that was not to be for me.
+
+On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous grey of the
+Italian dawn was filtering through the windows of the dormitory, like
+the light in a tomb, and a multitude of little birds on the old tree in
+the garden were making a noise like water falling on small stones in a
+fountain, when the Mother of the Novices came to my bedside and said:
+
+"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my child."
+
+Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something had
+happened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the Reverend
+Mother had spoken, what she was going to say.
+
+"Mary," she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is ill."
+
+I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow.
+
+"She is very ill--very seriously ill, and she wishes to see you.
+Therefore you are to go home immediately."
+
+The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to her side
+and laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my dear mother
+had lived the life of a good Christian and could safely trust in the
+redeeming blood of our Blessed Saviour. But I thought she must have some
+knowledge of the conditions of my life at home, for she told me that
+whatever happened I was to come back to her.
+
+"Tell your father you _wish_ to come back to me," she said, and then she
+explained the arrangements that were being made for my journey.
+
+I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at six
+o'clock that evening. The Mother of the Novices was to put me in a
+sleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of me until I
+arrived at Calais, where Father Donovan was to meet the train and take
+me home.
+
+I cried a great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind,
+and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, the
+sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to
+all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to me
+also--poor, helpless innocent--and I felt a certain distinction in my
+sorrow.
+
+At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought round to the
+door, and I was seated in one corner of it, with the Mother of the
+Novices in front of me, when Mildred Bankes came running breathlessly
+downstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had given her permission to
+see me off.
+
+Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment of the
+Wagon-Lit, while the Mother was talking to the conductor on the
+platform.
+
+Mildred, whose eyes were wet, was saying something about herself which
+seems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened since.
+
+She was to leave the Convent soon, and before I returned to it she would
+be gone. She was poor and an orphan, both her parents being dead, and if
+she had her own way she would become a nun. In any case our
+circumstances would be so different, our ways of life so far apart, that
+we might never meet again; but if . . .
+
+Before she had finished a bell rang on the platform, and a moment or two
+afterwards the train slid out of the station.
+
+Then for the first time I began to realise the weight of the blow that
+had fallen on me. I was sitting alone in my big compartment, we were
+running into the Campagna, the heavens were ablaze with the glory of the
+sunset, which was like fields of glistening fire, but darkness seemed to
+have fallen on all the world.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Early on Good Friday I arrived at Calais. It was a misty, rimy, clammy
+morning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel.
+
+Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar
+turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he was
+greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his
+composure.
+
+"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be all
+ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! And
+how glad your poor mother will be to see you!"
+
+I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ."
+
+"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope."
+
+We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater
+at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were
+running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green
+with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with
+fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.
+
+At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us
+and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered
+question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's
+condition was unchanged.
+
+We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new
+electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the
+carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.
+
+I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen,
+and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at
+her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if
+the blinds were down.
+
+Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more
+and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my
+mother was now, poor thing, she answered:
+
+"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble
+and expense has been wasted."
+
+As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet
+step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my
+mother's bedroom.
+
+I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I
+remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought.
+I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a
+brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood
+in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a
+child, and even some of the toys I had played with.
+
+A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I
+entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did
+see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be
+almost hidden in the big white bed.
+
+Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt
+Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a
+pen in his ear, I remember.
+
+Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and
+led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making his
+voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel,
+he said:
+
+"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home to
+see you."
+
+Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashes
+parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in a
+sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in dark
+hollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and her
+voice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed,
+stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones:
+
+"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"
+
+How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms about
+me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dan
+saying, as if speaking to a child:
+
+"You are happy now, are you not?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered.
+
+"You have everything you want?"
+
+"Everything--everything!"
+
+Then came my father's voice, saying:
+
+"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her,
+and here she is."
+
+"You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was kissing
+my forehead and crying in her joy.
+
+When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement.
+
+"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad.
+
+"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it."
+
+"I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied.
+
+"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. We
+can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is a
+mother's love for her child."
+
+"Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like herself
+again, but still . . ."
+
+"Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and having
+swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went away
+ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holy
+ground.
+
+Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to her
+lips, said:
+
+"Tell me everything that has happened."
+
+As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life at
+the Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices and
+the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of the
+hymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that,
+after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand had
+become cold and moist.
+
+At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?"
+
+I told her it was night and the lamp was burning.
+
+"Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it was not
+she did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for some time there
+was silence in which I heard nothing but the ticking of the clock on the
+mantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog a long way off, and the husky
+breathing in my mother's throat.
+
+I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was going to
+speak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother she went out
+quickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad and Father Dan.
+
+I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon Father Dan
+hurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion. The nurse spoke
+of taking me to another room but the doctor said:
+
+"No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside he
+whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and not
+cry.
+
+Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next half
+hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nurse
+spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candles
+on it.
+
+I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meant
+that she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it was
+terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would not
+find it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning under
+my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious . . ."
+when the nurse said:
+
+"Here they are back again."
+
+Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sight
+not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits.
+
+A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in the
+middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like a
+cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men were
+carrying torches to light him on his way.
+
+I knew what it was--it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they were
+bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room,
+saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white box on the
+table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestments
+underneath.
+
+Then the whole of my father's household--all except my father
+himself--came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat
+with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who
+knelt in a group by the door.
+
+Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had
+opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be
+choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and
+sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were
+inspiring him.
+
+After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction--anointing the sweet
+eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong,
+and the feet which had walked in the ways of God.
+
+All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a
+church--no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room
+below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes
+when it is far away and going out.
+
+When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me
+and being told I was in the cot, she said:
+
+"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now."
+
+A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then
+she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with
+my face hidden in her neck.
+
+What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too
+sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while
+other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that
+are forgotten and lost.
+
+"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me
+she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would
+not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns.
+
+I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard
+the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it.
+
+"Not that your father has been to blame--you must never think that,
+Mary, yet still . . ."
+
+But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she had
+to stop.
+
+Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for I
+said something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweet
+voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that she
+was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she would
+think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watch
+over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so.
+
+"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always be
+together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you are
+doing, I shall know all about it."
+
+This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though God
+knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could have
+seen what was waiting for her child.
+
+It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next.
+
+She told me to say a _De Profundis_ for her sometimes, and to think of
+her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told me
+to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it should
+prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep at
+night and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again,
+and "the time between would not seem long."
+
+"So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said.
+
+And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of the
+next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out of
+bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying in
+a tremulous voice:
+
+"Your dear mother has gone to God."
+
+I began to cry, but he checked me and said:
+
+"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise after
+all her suffering. Let her go!"
+
+So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel.
+
+It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my father's
+house.
+
+Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself more than
+ever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied half her days with
+the governess who had been engaged to teach her, and the other half in
+driving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the houses of the gentry round
+about.
+
+Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father's
+secretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a privilege
+which enlarged her pride without improving her manners.
+
+Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at school
+the doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in London in
+order to look at Nansen's ship, the _Fram_, which had just then arrived
+in the Thames.
+
+Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me, with its
+familiar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned with timid steps
+towards my father's busy room, intending to say, "Please, father, don't
+send me back to school," I made no demur when, six or seven days after
+the funeral, Aunt Bridget began to prepare for my departure.
+
+"There's odds of women," said Tommy the Mate, when I went into the
+garden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is women. If
+there's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if there isn't you
+might as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman is hot water--but
+she'll die for all."
+
+Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the Reverend
+Mother atoned to me for every neglect.
+
+"I knew you would come back to me," she said, and from that hour onward
+she seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I had lost.
+
+I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit became my
+spirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the life of the
+Convent took complete possession of me.
+
+At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Mother
+loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, the
+flowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion,
+the mysteries of our religion took hold of me--the Confessional with its
+sense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.
+
+For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side of my
+mind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the holidays came
+round the Reverend Mother took me with her to her country home at Nemi.
+
+That was a beautiful place--a sweet white cottage, some twenty
+kilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the middle of the
+remains of a mediæval village which contained a castle and a monastery,
+and had a little blue lake lying like an emerald among the green and red
+of the grass and poppies in the valley below.
+
+In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with
+its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the
+rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in
+velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous
+outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to
+girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.
+
+Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while I
+became entirely happy.
+
+I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, who
+had not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, where
+she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she had
+ridden with him. More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually began
+by complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and
+ended with accounts of her daughter's last new costume and how well she
+looked in it.
+
+From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Dan
+was my constant correspondent and he told me everything.
+
+First of my father himself--that he had carried out many of his great
+enterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancing
+palaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of
+thousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted the
+advantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety which
+had followed on the lust for wealth.
+
+Next of Aunt Bridget--that she was bringing up her daughter in the ways
+of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning Nessy
+MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.
+
+Next, of Tommy the Mate--that he sent his "best respec's" to the
+"lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who
+"was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't say Tom to a cat
+before her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas."
+
+Then of Martin Conrad--that he was at college "studying for a doctor,"
+but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull in
+the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to be out on the wild waves.
+
+Finally of the young Lord Raa--that the devil's dues must be in the man,
+for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance in
+riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must
+marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer.
+
+Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six
+years. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life they described
+seemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outer
+world was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more and
+more immersed in my spiritual exercises.
+
+I spent much of my time reading religious books--the life of Saint
+Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, the
+letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love of
+the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit.
+
+The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul--not the new Rome,
+for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the holy city, that could
+speak to me in the silence of the night within the walls of my
+convent-school, with its bells of the Dominican and Franciscan
+monasteries on either side, its stories of miracles performed on the
+sick and dying by the various shrines of the Madonna, its accounts of
+the vast multitudes of the faithful who came from all ends of the earth
+to the ceremonials at St. Peter's, and, above all, its sense of the
+immediate presence of the Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar and
+mouthpiece of God Himself.
+
+The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said nothing of
+my desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother, but day by day my
+resolution grew.
+
+Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl should plunge
+with all this passion into the aurora of a new spiritual life; but when
+I think how my nature was made for love, human love, the love of husband
+and children, I cannot but wonder with a thrill of the heart whether my
+mother in heaven, who, while she was on earth, had fought so hard with
+my father for the body of her child, was now fighting with him for her
+soul.
+
+I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reached
+its highest point, and then received its final overthrow.
+
+Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novice
+with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and the
+Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.
+
+Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning,
+tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the
+garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lighted
+tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival,
+the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressed
+as a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attended
+by other novices as bridesmaids.
+
+It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of a
+visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the taking of
+the vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacred
+and touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promising
+to serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, for
+better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as
+long as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it.
+
+I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and
+when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she
+was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I
+vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do,
+that I would follow her example.
+
+It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise
+and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming
+the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun,
+for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering
+what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life
+would I live under any circumstances.
+
+Then came the shock.
+
+As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them
+was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my
+father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed
+it to me. It ran:
+
+"_Madam,
+
+"I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her education
+will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare her
+for the change in life that is before her.
+
+"The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay our
+respects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow morning.
+
+"Yours, Madam_,
+
+"DANIEL O'NEILL."
+
+
+
+
+NINETEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soul
+rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years during
+which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans were
+formed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage--an
+iniquity. It might be his right--his natural right--but if so his
+natural right was a spiritual wrong--and I would resist it--to my last
+breath and my last hour I would resist it.
+
+Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten
+o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it
+was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to
+the Reverend Mother's room.
+
+Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not much
+changed. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself," and when I
+went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.
+
+"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though," he said,
+and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other side
+of the room, he added:
+
+"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"
+
+"Perfectly," said the Bishop.
+
+I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feeling
+of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the Reverend
+Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain on
+her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.
+
+She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking my
+right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole of
+the interview.
+
+The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He was
+a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly
+dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy
+gold chain with a jewelled cross.
+
+"Reverend Mother," he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's letter
+that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately--I presume there will
+be no difficulty in his doing so?"
+
+The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent her
+head.
+
+"Naturally," said the Bishop, "there will be a certain delay while
+suitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt you will
+give Mr. O'Neill your help in these preparations."
+
+My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed again.
+But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her silence, began to
+talk of the best date for my removal, and just when I was quivering with
+fear that without a word of protest I was to be taken away, the Reverend
+Mother said:
+
+"Monsignor!"
+
+"Reverend Mother!"
+
+"You are aware that this child"--here she patted my trembling hand--"has
+been with me for ten years?"
+
+"I am given to understand so."
+
+"And that during that time she has only once been home?"
+
+"I was not aware--but no doubt it is as you say."
+
+"In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been left to
+my undivided care?"
+
+"You have been very good to her, very, and I'm sure her family are
+extremely grateful."
+
+"In that case, Monsignor, doesn't it seem to you that I am entitled to
+know why she is being so suddenly taken away from me, and what is the
+change in life which Mr. O'Neill referred to in his letter?"
+
+The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop's face was smitten away
+from it by that question, and he looked anxiously across at my father.
+
+"Tell her," said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in my bosom
+and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the Bishop gave a
+brief explanation.
+
+The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more definite, but
+he might say that Mr. O'Neill was trying to arrange a happy and enviable
+future for his daughter, and therefore he wished her to return home to
+prepare for it.
+
+"Does that mean marriage?" said the Reverend Mother.
+
+"It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . ."
+
+"And that a husband has already been found for her?"
+
+"That too perhaps. I will not say . . ."
+
+"Monsignor," said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity "is that
+fair?"
+
+"Fair?"
+
+"Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done nothing
+for her, he should determine what her life is to be, without regard to
+her wish and will?"
+
+I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast.
+
+"Reverend Mother, you surprise me," he said. "Since when has a father
+ceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not been so since
+the beginning of the world? Doesn't the Church itself build its laws on
+that foundation?"
+
+"Does it?" said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could feel her
+hand trembling as she spoke): "Some of its servants do, I know. But when
+did the Church say that anybody--no matter who--a father or anybody
+else--should take the soul of another, and control it and govern it, and
+put it in prison? . . ."
+
+"My good lady," said the Bishop, "would you call it putting the girl in
+prison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her an historic
+name, to surround her with the dignity and distinction . . ."
+
+"Bishop," said my father, raising his hand, "I guess it's my right to
+butt in here, isn't it?"
+
+I saw that my father's face had been darkening while the Reverend Mother
+spoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair so as to face her,
+he said:
+
+"Excuse me, ma'am, but when you say I've done nothing for my gel here I
+suppose you'll allow I've kept her and educated her?"
+
+"You've kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare say, but do
+you claim the same rights over a human being?"
+
+"I do, ma'am--I think I do. And when the human being happens to be my
+own daughter I don't allow that anybody else has anything to say."
+
+"If her mother were alive would _she_ have nothing to say?"
+
+I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:
+
+"Her mother would agree to anything I thought best."
+
+"Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most submissive,
+most unhappy woman," said the Reverend Mother.
+
+My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he said:
+
+"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, much obliged. But as I'm not a man to throw
+words away I'll ask you to tell me what all this means. Does it mean
+that you've made plans of your own for my daughter without consulting
+me?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . ."
+
+"That may be so or not--I cannot say. But when you sent your daughter to
+a convent-school . . ."
+
+"Wrong, ma'am, wrong for once. It was my wife's sister--who thinks the
+gel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . ."
+
+"Then your wife's sister is either a very stupid or a very bad-hearted
+woman."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn't a word
+of truth in what she says."
+
+It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend Mother's neck,
+but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp.
+
+"May be so, ma'am, may be no," said my father. "But when you talk about
+my sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have you know that
+I've been so busy with my business . . ."
+
+"That you haven't had time to take care of the most precious thing God
+gave you."
+
+"Ma'am," said my father, rising to his feet, "may I ask what right you
+have to speak to me as if . . ."
+
+"The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherless
+child, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten her."
+
+At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted, turned
+to the Bishop.
+
+"Bishop," he said, "is this what I've been paying my money for? Ten
+years' fees, and middling high ones too, I'm thinking?"
+
+And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said suavely:
+
+"But aren't we crossing the river before we reach the bridge? The girl
+herself may have no such objections. Have you?" he asked, turning to me.
+
+I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not reply.
+
+"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"
+
+"No, sir," I answered.
+
+"And why not, please?"
+
+"Because my father's home is no home to me--because my aunt has always
+been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me or
+protected me, and because . . ."
+
+"Well, what else?"
+
+"Because . . . because I wish to become a nun."
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitter
+laughter.
+
+"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnership
+with the Mother in the nun business, eh?"
+
+"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir."
+
+"Your mother was a baby--that's what she was."
+
+"My mother was an angel, sir," I said, bridling up, "and when she was
+dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anything
+else under any circumstance."
+
+"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and then
+turning to the Reverend Mother he said:
+
+"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in most
+everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take the
+hard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who pull
+against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't feel called
+upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I'm going to do
+with her when I get her there. I believe I've got the rights of a father
+to do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business for
+anybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father's will.
+So I'll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I'll expect
+her to be ready and waiting and willing--ready and waiting and willing,
+mind you--to go along with me."
+
+After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat step
+went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Mother
+and followed him.
+
+My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion--all that the pacifying
+life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenly
+swept away--and I cried:
+
+"I won't do it! I won't do it!"
+
+But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly become very
+white while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in a
+timid, almost frightened tone:
+
+"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you."
+
+
+
+
+TWENTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for the
+last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa.
+
+It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was
+stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a young
+boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledges
+of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behind
+us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church at
+Gonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angels
+calling to each other from long distances in the sky.
+
+"Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is the
+story of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's."
+
+I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, and
+patting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning.
+
+"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is too
+attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has suffered
+shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not so
+with me.
+
+"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did not
+content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this might
+have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that of
+marrying one of us into the Italian nobility.
+
+"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with a
+young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sister
+he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; the
+third time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong and
+passionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different the
+result might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?"
+
+The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyard
+was going on.
+
+"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took her
+from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musician
+followed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he was
+determined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do so
+he threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on a
+certain night my father would be dead in the morning."
+
+The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; the
+daylight was dying out.
+
+"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father or
+her lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself."
+
+"Herself?"
+
+The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragic
+circumstances are always doing?" she said.
+
+"By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to change
+rooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in the
+tower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to the
+garden and the pine forest that goes up the hill.
+
+"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of the
+night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sister
+was found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay in
+my father's bed.
+
+"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one person
+had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierce
+anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the man
+who had killed his daughter.
+
+"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the young
+musician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted,
+and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might be
+allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented.
+'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is punished enough.'
+
+"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry
+eye as the cortège passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knew
+the story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knew
+the secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloud
+as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father,
+who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him."
+
+My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to
+compose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, the
+stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite
+sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night.
+
+"That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after a
+while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are
+different.
+
+"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred in
+me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when
+I should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on a
+middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family.
+
+"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do you
+want?' said my father.
+
+"We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--I
+had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she
+marries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led to
+believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who
+marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had
+had other domestic relations.
+
+"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and
+then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I was
+formally engaged.
+
+"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by
+which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, and
+cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made
+preparations for carrying out my purpose.
+
+"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was
+given by my fiancé's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can see
+it still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful
+Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and
+velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and
+beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats.
+
+"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in
+gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my
+forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.
+
+"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged
+lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. At
+three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. At
+six I had entered a convent.
+
+"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither
+did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of the
+convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior
+would say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul,' and
+that was all we ever heard of the world outside.
+
+"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I became
+restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, but
+the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart.
+'You are thinking about your father,' she said, 'that he is growing old,
+and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, and
+then come back to your cell and pray.'
+
+"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me.
+A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace was
+let out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried.
+After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief,
+for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought
+him, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had
+failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one
+knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone
+and broken-hearted."
+
+That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to
+explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither
+did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances.
+She left me to do that for myself.
+
+I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to
+her until my head was on her breast.
+
+For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, while
+the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the garden
+and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light.
+
+When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room,
+and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down,
+shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself that
+the obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand of
+her, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no human
+law-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon most
+women by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door opened
+and the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again.
+
+"Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the Sacred
+Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back as
+Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, so
+that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Convent
+of. . . ."
+
+Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in the
+heart of Rome.
+
+"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see me
+whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . but no, I
+will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under proper
+conditions God blesses and hallows it."
+
+With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, the
+monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnight
+offices.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edge
+of the Piazza di Spagna.
+
+He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell me
+what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left to
+discover them for myself.
+
+Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics--Monsignori,
+Archbishops, even one of the Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought there
+by Bishop Walsh (the Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not help
+but hear portions of their conversation.
+
+"It will be difficult, extremely difficult," the Cardinal would say.
+"Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds that they
+are usually attended by the worst consequences to both wife and husband.
+Still--under the exceptional circumstances--that the bridegroom's family
+was Catholic before it was Protestant--it is possible, just
+possible. . . ."
+
+"Cardinal," my father would answer, while his strong face was darkening,
+"excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang of this
+business. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can, we'll just sail
+in and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go home quick and spend my
+money another way."
+
+Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would be
+right, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to have
+patience and wait.
+
+My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself in seeing
+the sights of the old city.
+
+But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of the
+past--the Forum with the broken columns of its dead centuries; the
+Coliseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate crater of a moon;
+the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and shattered
+aqueducts,--only vexed and irritated him.
+
+"Guess if I had my way," he said, "I would just clean out this old
+stone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for living
+ones."
+
+At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had been
+completed, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the Pope had
+signified his willingness to receive in private audience both my father
+and myself.
+
+This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I had begun
+to realise that my father's business concerned myself, so that when,
+early the following morning (clad according to instructions, my father
+in evening dress and I in a long black mantilla), we set out for the
+Vatican, I was in a condition of intense excitement.
+
+What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate near
+St. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory. I
+remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-coloured
+coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in other
+costumes. I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, each
+larger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards still
+more gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind. I remember
+coming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword,
+knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names.
+And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediæval court
+I found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure
+before me, and . . . I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself.
+
+Can I ever forget that moment?
+
+I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with a
+reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first I
+thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father's feet I do
+not know. I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding out
+the delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman's emerald ring,
+and smoothing my head after I had kissed it.
+
+When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an old
+man, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he spoke it was in such
+a soft and fatherly voice that I loved and worshipped him.
+
+"So this is the little lady," he said, "who is to be the instrument in
+the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the folds
+of Mother Church."
+
+Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying it
+was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law and
+sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, so
+that those who entered it might live together in peace and love.
+
+"It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type of the
+holy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church."
+
+Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriage
+in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altar
+only after penance and communion.
+
+"And when you leave the church, my daughter," he said, "do not profane
+the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember to
+bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at the
+marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee."
+
+Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy
+matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not be
+broken but by death.
+
+"Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder--remember that,
+too, my daughter."
+
+Finally he said something about children--that a Catholic marrying a
+person of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby any
+of her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholic
+faith.
+
+After that, and something said to my father which I cannot recall, he
+gave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice so sweet that it
+fell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of the rising sun on a
+summer morning.
+
+"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with
+you, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and peace, and may
+you see your children's children to the third and fourth generation."
+
+Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the Chamberlain, I
+backed out of the room.
+
+When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as if I had
+come out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the Piazza of St.
+Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of common things--the
+cabs and electric cars--it was the same as if I had suddenly descended
+from heaven to earth.
+
+After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend Mother's
+story, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I wished to tell my
+father so, but an opportunity did not arise until late the same night
+and then it was he who was the first to speak.
+
+Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he said, as
+soon as his guests had gone--speaking in the tone of one who believed he
+was doing a great thing for me--
+
+"Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well know
+right here what we're trying to fix up for you."
+
+Then he told me.
+
+I was to marry the young Lord Raa!
+
+I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been smitten
+out of me.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+That night, and during the greater part of the following day, I felt,
+without quite knowing why, as if I were living under the dark cloud of a
+gathering thunderstorm. All my fear of the world, and my desire to
+escape from it, had fallen upon me afresh. Hence it was not altogether
+by the blind leading of fate that half an hour before Ave Maria I
+entered the church of the Convent which the Reverend Mother had given me
+the name of.
+
+The church was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that covered
+the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so
+I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public
+part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and knelt on the nearest
+step.
+
+After a while the church-bell rang overhead, and then (the congregation
+having gathered in the meantime) the nuns came in by way of a corridor
+which seemed to issue out of the darkness from under a figure of the
+Virgin and Child.
+
+They were all in white, snow-white from head to foot, with a glimmer of
+blue scapular beneath their outer garment, and they wore long thick
+veils which entirely concealed their features when they entered but were
+raised when they reached their seats and faced the altar.
+
+Familiar as I was with similar scenes this one moved me as I had never
+before been moved--the silent white figures, with hands clasped on their
+breasts, coming in one by one with noiseless and unhurried footsteps,
+like a line of wraiths from another world.
+
+But a still deeper emotion was to come to me.
+
+As the last of the nuns entered, the Superior as I knew she would be, I
+recognised her instantly. It was my own Reverend Mother herself; and
+when, after kneeling to the altar, she came down to her seat nearest to
+the screen, immediately in front of the place where I knelt, I knew by
+the tremor of the clasped hands which held the rosary, that she had seen
+and recognised me.
+
+I trembled and my heart thumped against my breast.
+
+Then the priest entered and the Litany began. It was sung throughout.
+Almost the whole of the service was sung. Never had Benediction seemed
+so beautiful, so pathetic, so appealing, so irresistible.
+
+By the time the _Tantum ergo_ had been reached and the sweet female
+voices, over the soft swell of the organ, were rising to the vaulted
+roof in sorrowful reparation for the sins of all sinners in the world
+who did not pray for themselves, the religious life was calling to me as
+it had never called before.
+
+"Come away from the world," it seemed to say. "Obedience to your
+heavenly Father cancels all duty to your earthly one. Leave everything
+you fear behind you, and find peace and light and love."
+
+The service was over, the nuns had dropped their veils and gone out as
+slowly and noiselessly as they had come in (the last of them with her
+head down): the sacristan with his long rod was extinguishing the
+candles on the altar; the church was growing dark and a lay-sister in
+black was rattling a bunch of keys at the door behind me before I moved
+from my place beside the rails.
+
+Then I awoke as from a dream, and looking longingly back at the dark
+corridor down which the nuns had disappeared, I was turning to go when I
+became aware that a young man was standing beside me and smiling into my
+face.
+
+"Mally," he said very softly, and he held out his hand.
+
+Something in the voice made me giddy, something in the blue eyes made me
+tremble. I looked at him but did not speak.
+
+"Don't you know me, Mally?" he said.
+
+I felt as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck. A flood of
+joy was sweeping through me. At last I knew who it was.
+
+It was Martin Conrad, grown to be a man, a tall, powerful, manly man,
+but with the same face still--an elusive ghost of the boy's face I used
+to look up to and love.
+
+A few minutes later we were out on the piazza in front of the church,
+and with a nervous rush of joyous words he was telling me what had
+brought him to Rome.
+
+Having just "scraped through" his examinations, and taken his
+degree--couldn't have done so if the examiners had not been "jolly good"
+to him--he had heard that Lieut. . . .--was going down to the great ice
+barrier that bounds the South Pole, to investigate the sources of winds
+and tides, so he had offered himself as doctor to the expedition and
+been accepted.
+
+Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples that
+morning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had run up
+to Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but never expecting to
+see me, and coming upon me by the merest accident in the
+world--something having said to him, "Let's go in here and look at this
+queer old church."
+
+He had to leave to-morrow at two, though, having to sail the same night,
+but of course it would be luck to go farther south than Charcot and make
+another attack on the Antarctic night.
+
+I could see that life was full of faith and hope and all good things for
+him, and remembering some episodes of the past I said:
+
+"So you are going 'asploring' in earnest at last?"
+
+"At last," he answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and laughed
+as we stood together on the church steps, with little tender waves of
+feeling from our childhood sweeping to our feet.
+
+"And you?" he said. "You look just the same. I knew you instantly. Yet
+you are changed too. So grown and so . . . so wonderfully. . . ."
+
+I knew what he meant to say, and being too much of a child to pretend
+not to know, and too much of a woman (notwithstanding my nun-like
+impulses) not to find joy in it, I said I was glad.
+
+"You've left the Convent, I see. When did that happen?"
+
+I told him three weeks ago--that my father had come for me and we were
+going back to Ellan.
+
+"And then? What are you going to do then?" he asked.
+
+For a moment I felt ashamed to answer, but at last I told him that I was
+going home to be married.
+
+"Married? When? To whom?"
+
+I said I did not know when, but it was to be to the young Lord Raa.
+
+"Raa? Did you say Raa? That . . . Good G----But surely you know. . . ."
+
+He did not finish what he was going to say, so I told him I did not know
+anything, not having seen Lord Raa since I came to school, and
+everything having been arranged for me by my father.
+
+"Not seen him since . . . everything arranged by your father?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then he asked me abruptly where I was staying, and when I told him he
+said he would walk back with me to the hotel.
+
+His manner had suddenly changed, and several times as we walked together
+up the Tritoni and along the Du Marcelli he began to say something and
+then stopped.
+
+"Surely your father knows. . . ."
+
+"If he does, I cannot possibly understand. . . ."
+
+I did not pay as much attention to his broken exclamations as I should
+have done but for the surprise and confusion of coming so suddenly upon
+him again; and when, as we reached the hotel, he said:
+
+"I wonder if your father will allow me to speak. . . ."
+
+"I'm sure he'll be delighted," I said, and then, in my great impatience,
+I ran upstairs ahead of him and burst into my father's room, crying:
+
+"Father, whom do you think I have brought to see you--look!"
+
+To my concern and discomfiture my father's reception of Martin was very
+cool, and at first he did not even seem to know him.
+
+"You don't remember me, sir?" said Martin.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't just place you," said my father.
+
+After I had made them known to each other they sat talking about the
+South Pole expedition, but it was a chill and cheerless interview, and
+after a few minutes Martin rose to go.
+
+"I find it kind of hard to figure you fellows out," said my father. "No
+money that I know of has ever been made in the Unknown, as you call it,
+and if you discover both Poles I don't just see how they're to be worth
+a two-cent stamp to you. But you know best, so good-bye and good luck to
+you!"
+
+I went out to the lift with Martin, who asked if he could take me for a
+walk in the morning. I answered yes, and inquired what hour he would
+call for me.
+
+"Twelve o'clock," he replied, and I said that would suit me exactly.
+
+The Bishop came to dine with us that night, and after dinner, when I had
+gone to the window to look out over the city for the three lights on the
+Loggia of the Vatican, he and my father talked together for a long time
+in a low tone. They were still talking when I left them to go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+At breakfast next morning my father told me that something unexpected
+had occurred to require that we should return home immediately, and
+therefore he had sent over to Cook's for seats by the noon express.
+
+I was deeply disappointed, but I knew my father too well to demur, so I
+slipped away to my room and sent a letter to Martin, explaining the
+change in our plans and saying good-bye to him.
+
+When we reached the station, however, I found Martin waiting on the
+platform in front of the compartment that was labelled with our name.
+
+I thought my father was even more brusque with him than before, and the
+Bishop, who was to travel with us, was curt almost to rudeness. But
+Martin did not seem to mind that this morning, for his lower lip had the
+stiff setting which I had seen in it when he was a boy, and after I
+stepped into the carriage he stepped in after me, leaving the two men on
+the platform.
+
+"Shall you be long away?" I asked.
+
+"Too long unfortunately. Six months, nine--perhaps twelve, worse luck!
+Wish I hadn't to go at all," he answered.
+
+I was surprised and asked why, whereupon he stammered some excuse, and
+then said abruptly:
+
+"I suppose you'll not be married for some time at all events?"
+
+I told him I did not know, everything depending on my father.
+
+"Anyhow, you'll see and hear for yourself when you reach home, and then
+perhaps you'll. . . ."
+
+I answered that I should have to do what my father desired, being a
+girl, and therefore. . . .
+
+"But surely a girl has some rights of her own," he said, and then I was
+silent and a little ashamed, having a sense of female helplessness
+which I had never felt before and could find no words for.
+
+"I'll write to your father," he said, and just at that moment the bell
+rang, and my father came into the compartment, saying:
+
+"Now then, young man, if you don't want to be taken up to the North Pole
+instead of going down to the South one. . . ."
+
+"That's all right, sir. Don't you trouble about _me_. I can take care of
+myself," said Martin.
+
+Something in his tone must have said more than his words to my father
+and the Bishop, for I saw that they looked at each other with surprise.
+
+Then the bell rang again, the engine throbbed, and Martin said,
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+While the train moved out of the station he stood bareheaded on the
+platform with such a woebegone face that looking back at him my throat
+began to hurt me as it used to do when I was a child.
+
+I was very sad that day as we travelled north. My adopted country had
+become dear to me during my ten years' exile from home, and I thought I
+was seeing the last of my beautiful Italy, crowned with sunshine and
+decked with flowers.
+
+But there was another cause of my sadness, and that was the thought of
+Martin's uneasiness about my marriage the feeling that if he had
+anything to say to my father he ought to have said it then.
+
+And there was yet another cause of which I was quite unconscious--that
+like every other girl before love dawns on her, half of my nature was
+still asleep, the half that makes life lovely and the world dear.
+
+To think that Martin Conrad was the one person who could have wakened my
+sleeping heart! That a word, a look, a smile from him that day could
+have changed the whole current of my life, and that. . . .
+
+But no, I will not reproach him. Have I not known since the day on St.
+Mary's Rock that above all else he is a born gentleman?
+
+And yet. . . . And yet. . . .
+
+
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+
+And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken to
+Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:
+
+"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughter
+is a profligate and a reprobate? If you _do_ know this, are you
+deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rank
+and power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"
+
+That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of being
+thought to have personal motives--of interfering where I wasn't wanted,
+of butting in when I had no right.
+
+Yet I felt I _had_ a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everything
+and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had been
+looking forward to and I could not give it up.
+
+So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took me
+a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By that time we
+were at Port Said, and from there I posted three letters,--the first to
+Daniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop Walsh, the third to Father Dan.
+
+Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and considered or
+resented and destroyed?
+
+I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into the
+deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reach
+me.
+
+What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say.
+
+     M.C.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND PART
+
+MY MARRIAGE
+
+TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowly
+and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depression
+had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear at
+the thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband.
+
+My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailed
+into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which had
+been made under his direction--the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and
+boarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways that
+ran up to the tops of the mountains.
+
+"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum."
+
+On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of people
+were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.
+
+"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the height
+of the season."
+
+As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengers
+had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with the
+thought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not,
+and the first words spoken to my father were--
+
+"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopes
+to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."
+
+I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even less
+prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was going
+up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searching
+eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr.
+Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old Father
+Dan.
+
+I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him,
+very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he had
+the tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of the
+vowels that I could never forget.
+
+"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like your
+mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care of
+you, and she has, she has."
+
+Three conveyances were waiting for us--a grand brougham for the Bishop,
+a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer, and a still
+bigger one for ourselves.
+
+"Well, s'long until to-morrow then," cried my father, getting up into
+the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and Father
+Dan and myself behind.
+
+On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought me
+back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have said
+of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, and
+the world was so censorious--and then there was no measuring the
+miraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman.
+
+He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when he
+spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at her
+marriage--her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and her
+first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence which
+a man could never know.
+
+"Even an old priest may see that," he said, with a laugh and a pat of my
+hand.
+
+We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father sat
+with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he had
+done, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that were
+before me.
+
+"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be a
+mother's son that dare say boo to you."
+
+I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestion
+of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil;
+and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returned
+home from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the people
+who had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood.
+
+Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy" of the
+island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now,
+for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter's marriage,
+he was going to triumph over them all.
+
+"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried, with a
+flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows.
+
+As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed them
+out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone of
+contempt.
+
+"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed me six
+months ago. He'll know better six months to come. . . . That's Eyreton.
+His missus was too big to call on your mother--she'll call on you,
+though, you go bail. See yonder big tower in the trees? That's
+Folksdale, where the Farragans live. The daughters have been walking
+over the world like peacocks, but they'll crawl on it like cockroaches
+. . . Hulloh, here's ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage
+with his English coachman. . . . See that, though? See him doff his hat
+to you, the ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling.
+Things travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round us
+like bees about a honeypot."
+
+It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's triumphant
+spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight as
+I recognised the scenes associated with my childhood--the village, the
+bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees that
+bordered our drive.
+
+Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I had
+thought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so snugly
+under the hill and with the sea in front of them.
+
+Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I had
+expected, but my father explained this by saying:
+
+"Improvements, gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow morning."
+
+Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap),
+Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness)
+and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her
+best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up,
+and they received me with surprising cordiality.
+
+"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget.
+
+"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty.
+
+There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt Bridget
+declaring she could not have believed it, she really could not), and
+then Nessy undertook to take me to my room.
+
+"It's the same room still, Mary," said my Aunt, calling to me as I went
+upstairs. "When they were changing everything else I remembered your
+poor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their changing that. It isn't a
+bit altered."
+
+It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just as I was
+beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to Aunt
+Bridget, Nessy said:
+
+"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wiped
+out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her own
+daughter instead."
+
+More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression that my
+father was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return was not too
+welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I was
+left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers.
+
+How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!
+
+From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything had
+something to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!
+
+Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at its
+head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on the
+wall above it.
+
+I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in the
+crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoon
+sunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed,
+and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it.
+
+Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the
+house--going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts were
+still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, where
+the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads against
+the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in their
+noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of the
+odour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on a
+griddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy
+the Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was still
+working as before.
+
+The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and recognised me
+instantly.
+
+"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well!
+Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes,"
+he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been the
+match of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"
+
+I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had been
+watching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" a
+cup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my father
+being busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for half
+an hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners and
+general accomplishments.
+
+"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.
+
+I saw him the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to tell
+her of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and raising my
+eyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained three gentlemen,
+one of them wore goggles and carried a silver-haired terrier on his
+knees.
+
+A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and his party
+had arrived and I was wanted immediately.
+
+I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming trouble.
+Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended husband for the
+first time--there being nothing in his appearance to awaken in me the
+memory of ever having seen him before.
+
+He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy Beauty,
+who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him, and at the
+same time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to speak to the
+three gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's trustee or guardian) who
+were standing with my father in the middle of the floor.
+
+He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of breeding, but
+even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character of
+a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a dissipated life.
+
+His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and heavy, his
+moustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his forehead, and
+he had a general appearance of being much older than his years, which I
+knew to be thirty-three.
+
+His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle, almost
+playful and indulgent, but through all their softness there pierced a
+certain hardness, not to say brutality, which I afterwards learned (when
+life had had its tug at me) to associate with a man who has spent much
+of his time among women of loose character.
+
+Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a drawling
+voice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it was quite
+unnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made each other's
+acquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was the prettiest
+little woman in the world, he remembered, though perhaps my manners were
+not quite cordial.
+
+"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you remember
+it?"
+
+Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to say that
+he wished to show his lordship the improvements he had been making, and
+the rest of us were at liberty to follow them.
+
+The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old house,
+containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been modelled, as
+I found later, on the corresponding room in Castle Raa.
+
+With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the beauties
+of his new possession, while my intended husband, with his monocle to
+his eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and answered with a
+languid humour that narrowly bordered on contempt.
+
+"Oak, sir, solid oak," said my father, rapping with his knuckles on the
+tall, dark, heavy wainscoting.
+
+"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose," said Lord
+Raa.
+
+"Harder than some, sir," said my father.
+
+"Exactly," said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was general
+laughter.
+
+The bell rang for luncheon, and we went into the plain old dining room,
+where Aunt Bridget placed her principal guest on her right and told him
+all about her late husband, the Colonel, his honours and military
+achievements.
+
+I could see that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more than
+once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather supercilious
+responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, Aunt
+Bridget seemed quite oblivious.
+
+I was so nervous and embarrassed that I spoke very little during
+luncheon, and even Aunt Bridget observed this at last.
+
+"Mary, dear, why don't you speak?" she said.
+
+But without waiting for my reply she proceeded to explain to his
+lordship that the strangest change had come over me since I was a child,
+when I had been the sauciest little chatterbox in the world, whereas now
+I was so shy that it was nearly impossible to get a word out of me.
+
+"Hope I shall be able to get one word out of her, at least," said his
+lordship, whereupon Aunt Bridget smiled significantly and Betsy Beauty
+burst into fits of laughter.
+
+Almost before the meal was over, my father rose from his seat at the
+head of the table, and indicating the lawyers who sat near to him, he
+said:
+
+"These gentlemen and I have business to fix up--money matters and all
+that--so I guess we'll step into the library and leave you young people
+to look after yourselves."
+
+Everybody rose to leave the room.
+
+"All back for tea-time," said Aunt Bridget.
+
+"Of course you don't want _me_," said Betsy Beauty with a giggle, and at
+the next moment I was alone with his lordship, who drew a long breath
+that was almost like a yawn, and said:
+
+"Is there no quiet place we can slip away to?"
+
+There was the glen at the back of the house (the Cape Flora of Martin
+Conrad), so I took him into that, not without an increasing sense of
+embarrassment. It was a clear October day, the glen was dry, and the air
+under the shadow of the thinning trees was full of the soft light of the
+late autumn.
+
+"Ah, this is better," said his lordship.
+
+He lit a cigar and walked for some time by my side without speaking,
+merely flicking the seeding heads off the dying thistles with his
+walking stick, and then ruckling it through the withered leaves with
+which the path was strewn.
+
+But half way up the glen he began to look aslant at me through his
+monocle, and then to talk about my life in Rome, wondering how I could
+have been content to stay so long at the Convent, and hinting at a
+rumour which had reached him that I had actually wished to stay there
+altogether.
+
+"Extraordinary! 'Pon my word, extraordinary! It's well enough for women
+who have suffered shipwreck in their lives to live in such places, but
+for a young gal with any fortune, any looks . . . why I wonder she
+doesn't die of _ennui_."
+
+I was still too nervous and embarrassed to make much protest, so he went
+on to tell me with what difficulty he supported the boredom of his own
+life even in London, with its clubs, its race-meetings, its dances, its
+theatres and music halls, and the amusement to be got out of some of the
+ladies of society, not to speak of certain well-known professional
+beauties.
+
+One of his great friends--his name was Eastcliff--was going to marry the
+most famous of the latter class (a foreign dancer at the "Empire"), and
+since he was rich and could afford to please himself, why shouldn't he?
+
+When we reached the waterfall at the top of the glen (it had been the
+North Cape of Martin Conrad), we sat on a rustic seat which stands
+there, and then, to my still deeper embarrassment, his lordship's
+conversation came to close quarters.
+
+Throwing away his cigar and taking his silver-haired terrier on his lap
+he said:
+
+"Of course you know what the business is which the gentlemen are
+discussing in the library?"
+
+As well as I could for the nervousness that was stifling me, I answered
+that I knew.
+
+He stroked the dog with one hand, prodded his stick into the gravel with
+the other, and said:
+
+"Well, I don't know what your views about marriage are. Mine, I may say,
+are liberal."
+
+I listened without attempting to reply.
+
+"I think nine-tenths of the trouble that attends married life--the
+breakdowns and what not--come of an irrational effort to tighten the
+marriage knot."
+
+Still I said nothing.
+
+"To imagine that two independent human beings can be tied together like
+a couple of Siamese twins, neither to move without the other, living
+precisely the same life, year in, year out . . . why, it's silly,
+positively silly."
+
+In my ignorance I could find nothing to say, and after another moment my
+intended husband swished the loosened gravel with his stick and said:
+
+"I believe in married people leaving each other free--each going his and
+her own way--what do you think?"
+
+I must have stammered some kind of answer--I don't know what--for I
+remember that he said next:
+
+"Quite so, that's my view of matrimony, and I'm glad to see you appear
+to share it. . . . Tell the truth, I was afraid you wouldn't," he added,
+with something more about the nuns and the convent.
+
+I wanted to say that I didn't, but my nervousness was increasing every
+moment, and before I could find words in which to protest he was
+speaking to me again.
+
+"Our friends in the library seem to think that you and I could get along
+together, and I'm disposed to think they're right--aren't you?"
+
+In my ignorance and helplessness, and with the consciousness of what I
+was expected to do, I merely looked at him without speaking.
+
+Then he fixed his monocle afresh, and, looking back at me in a curious
+way, he said:
+
+"I don't think I should bore you, my dear. In fact, I should be rather
+proud of having a good-looking woman for my wife, and I fancy I could
+give you a good time. In any case"--this with a certain
+condescension--"my _name_ might be of some use to you."
+
+A sort of shame was creeping over me. The dog was yawning in my face. My
+intended husband threw it off his knee.
+
+"Shall we consider it a settled thing, then?" he asked, and when in my
+confusion I still made no reply (having nothing which I felt myself
+entitled to say), he said something about Aunt Bridget and what she had
+told him at luncheon about my silence and shyness, and then rising to
+his feet he put my arm through his own, and turned our faces towards
+home.
+
+That was all. As I am a truthful woman, that was everything. Not a word
+from me, nay, not half a word, merely a passive act of silent
+acquiescence, and in my youthful and almost criminal innocence I was
+committed to the most momentous incident of my life.
+
+But if there was no love-making, no fondling, no kissing, no courtship
+of any kind, and none of the delirious rapture which used to be
+described in Alma's novels, I was really grateful for that, and
+immensely relieved to find that matters could he completed without them.
+
+When we reached the house, the bell was ringing for tea and my father
+was coming out of the library, followed by the lawyers.
+
+"So that's all right, gentlemen?" he was saying.
+
+"Yes, that's all right, sir," they were answering; and then, seeing us
+as we entered, my father said to Lord Raa:
+
+"And what about you two?"
+
+"We're all right also," said his lordship in his drawling voice.
+
+"Good!" said my father, and he slapped his lordship sharply on the back,
+to his surprise, and I think, discomfiture.
+
+Then with a cackle of light laughter among the men, we all trooped into
+the drawing room.
+
+Aunt Bridget in her gold-rimmed spectacles and new white cap, poured out
+the tea from our best silver tea-pot, while Nessy MacLeod with a
+geranium in her red hair, and Betsy Beauty, with large red roses in her
+bosom, handed round the cups. After a moment, my father, with a radiant
+face, standing back to the fire, said in a loud voice:
+
+"Friends all, I have something to tell you."
+
+Everybody except myself looked up and listened, though everybody knew
+what was coming.
+
+"We've had a stiff tussle in the library this afternoon, but everything
+is settled satisfactory--and the marriage is as good as made."
+
+There was a chorus of congratulations for me, and a few for his
+lordship, and then my father said again:
+
+"Of course there'll be deeds to draw up, and I want things done correct,
+even if it costs me a bit of money. But we've only one thing more to fix
+up to-day, and then we're through--the wedding. When is it to come off?"
+
+An appeal was made to me, but I felt it was only formal, so I glanced
+across to Lord Raa without speaking.
+
+"Come now," said my father, looking from one to the other. "The clean
+cut is the short cut, you know, and when I'm sot on doing a thing, I
+can't take rest till it's done. What do you say to this day next month?"
+
+I bowed and my intended husband, in his languid way, said:
+
+"Agreed!"
+
+A few minutes afterwards the motor was ordered round, and the gentlemen
+prepared to go. Then the silver-haired terrier was missed, and for the
+first time that day his lordship betrayed a vivid interest, telling us
+its price and pedigree and how much he would give rather than lose it.
+But at the last moment Tommy appeared with the dog in his arms and
+dropped it into the car, whereupon my intended husband thanked him
+effusively.
+
+"Yes," said Tommy, "I thought you set store by _that_, sir."
+
+At the next moment the car was gone.
+
+"Well, you _are_ a lucky girl," said Betsy Beauty; and Aunt Bridget
+began to take credit to herself for all that had come to pass, and to
+indicate the methods by which she meant to manage Castle Raa as soon as
+ever I became mistress of it.
+
+Thus in my youth, my helplessness, my ignorance, and my inexperience I
+became engaged to the man who had been found and courted for me. If I
+acquiesced, I had certainly not been consulted. My father had not
+consulted me. My intended husband had not consulted me. Nobody consulted
+me. I am not even sure that I thought anybody was under any obligation
+to consult me. Love had not spoken to me, sex was still asleep in me,
+and my marriage was arranged before my deeper nature knew what was being
+done.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The next weeks were full of hurry, hubbub and perturbation. Our house
+was turned upside down. Milliners, sewing-maids and dressmakers were
+working day and night. Flowers, feathers and silk remnants were flowing
+like sea-wrack into every room. Orders were given, orders were retracted
+and given again, and then again retracted.
+
+Such flying up and down stairs! Everybody so breathless! Everybody so
+happy! Every face wearing a smile! Every tongue rippling with laughter!
+The big grey mansion which used to seem so chill and cold felt for the
+first time like a house of joy.
+
+In the midst of these busy preparations I had no time to think. My
+senses were excited. I was dazed, stunned, wrapped round by a kind of
+warm air of hot-house happiness, and this condition of moral
+intoxication increased as the passing of the days brought fresh
+developments.
+
+Our neighbours began to visit us. My father had been right about the
+great people of the island. Though they had stood off so long, they
+found their account in my good fortune, and as soon as my marriage was
+announced they came in troops to offer their congratulations.
+
+Never, according to Tommy the Mate, had the gravel of our carriage drive
+been so rucked up by the pawing feet of high-bred horses. But their
+owners were no less restless. It was almost pitiful to see their
+shamefacedness as they entered our house for the first time, and to
+watch the shifts they were put to in order to account for the fact that
+they had never been there before.
+
+Aunt Bridget's vanity was too much uplifted by their presence to be
+particular about their excuses, but my father's contempt of their
+subterfuges was naked and undisguised, and I hardly know whether to feel
+amused or ashamed when I think of how he scored off them, how he lashed
+them to the bone, with what irony and sarcasm he scorched their
+time-serving little souls.
+
+When they were very great folks, the "aristocracy" of Ellan, he
+pretended not to know who they were, and asked their names, their
+father's names, and what parishes they came from.
+
+"Some of the Christians of Balla-Christian, are you? Think of that now.
+And me a born Ellanman, and not knowing you from Adam!"
+
+When they were very near neighbours, with lands that made boundary with
+our own, he pretended to think they had been twenty years abroad, or
+perhaps sick, or even dead and buried.
+
+"Too bad, ma'am, too bad," he would say. "And me thinking you were under
+the sod through all the lonely years my poor wife was ill and dying."
+
+But when they were insular officials, who "walked on the stars," and
+sometimes snubbed him in public, the rapier of ridicule was too light
+for his heavy hand, and he took up the sledge-hammer, telling them he
+was the same man to-day as yesterday, and only his circumstances were
+different--his daughter being about to become the lady of the first
+house in the island, and none of them being big enough to be left out of
+it.
+
+After such scenes Aunt Bridget, for all her despotism within her own
+doors, used to tremble with dread of our neighbours taking lasting
+offence, but my father would say:
+
+"Chut, woman, they'll come again, and make no more faces about it."
+
+They did, and if they were shy of my father they were gracious enough
+to me, saying it was such a good thing for society in the island that
+Castle Raa was to have a lady, a real lady, at the head of it at last.
+
+Then came their wedding presents--pictures, books, silver ornaments,
+gold ornaments, clocks, watches, chains, jewellery, until my bedroom was
+blocked up with them. As each fresh parcel arrived there would be a rush
+of all the female members of our household to open it, after which Betsy
+Beauty would say:
+
+"What a lucky girl you are!"
+
+I began to think I was. I found it impossible to remain unaffected by
+the whirlwind of joyous turmoil in which I lived. The refulgence of the
+present hour wiped out the past, which seemed to fade away altogether.
+After the first few days I was flying about from place to place, and
+wherever I went I was a subject for congratulation and envy.
+
+If there were moments of misgiving, when, like the cold wind out of a
+tunnel, there came the memory of the Reverend Mother and the story she
+had told me at Nemi, there were other moments when I felt quite sure
+that, in marrying Lord Raa, I should be doing a self-sacrificing thing
+and a kind of solemn duty.
+
+One such moment was when Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, who with his
+clammy hands always made me think of an over-fatted fish, came to tell
+him that, after serious legal difficulties, the civil documents had been
+agreed to, for, after he had finished with my father, he drew me aside
+and said, as he smoothed his long brown beard:
+
+"You ought to be a happy girl, Mary. I suppose you know what you are
+doing for your father? You are wiping out the greatest disappointment of
+his life, and rectifying the cruelty--the inevitable cruelty--of the
+law, when you were born a daughter after he had expected a son."
+
+Another such moment was when the Bishop came, in his grand carriage, to
+say that after much discussion he had persuaded his lordship to sign the
+necessary declaration that all the children of our union, irrespective
+of sex, should be brought up as Catholics, for taking me aside, as the
+advocate had done the day before, he said, in his suave voice, fingering
+his jewelled cross:
+
+"I congratulate you, my child. Yours is a great and precious
+privilege--the privilege of bringing back to the Church a family which
+has been estranged from it for nineteen years."
+
+At the end of a fortnight we signed the marriage settlement. The little
+ceremony took place in the drawing-room of my father's house. My
+intended husband, who had not been to see me in the meantime, brought
+with him (as well as his trustee and lawyer) a lady and a gentleman.
+
+The lady was his maiden aunt, Lady Margaret Anslem, a fair woman of
+about forty, fashionably dressed, redolent of perfume, and (except to
+me, to whom she talked quite amicably) rather reserved and haughty, as
+if the marriage of her nephew into our family were a bitter pill which
+she had compelled herself to swallow.
+
+The gentleman was a tall young man wearing a very high collar and
+cravat, and using a handkerchief with embroidered initials in the corner
+of it. He turned out to be the Hon. Edward Eastcliff--the great friend
+who, being rich enough to please himself, was about to marry the
+professional beauty.
+
+I noticed that Aunt Bridget, with something of the instinct of the fly
+about the flame, immediately fixed herself upon the one, and that Betsy
+Beauty attached herself to the other.
+
+Lord Raa himself looked as tired as before, and for the first half-hour
+he behaved as if he did not quite know what to do with himself for
+wretchedness and _ennui_.
+
+Then the deeds were opened and spread out on a table, and though the
+gentlemen seemed to be trying not to discuss the contents aloud I could
+not help hearing some of the arrangements that had been made for the
+payment of my intended husband's debts, and certain details of his
+annual allowance.
+
+Looking back upon that ugly hour, I wonder why, under the circumstances,
+I should have been so wounded, but I remember that a sense of discomfort
+amounting to shame came upon me at sight of the sorry bargaining. It
+seemed to have so little to do with the spiritual union of souls, which
+I had been taught to think marriage should be. But I had no time to
+think more about that before my father, who had signed the documents
+himself in his large, heavy hand, was saying.
+
+"Now, gel, come along, we're waiting for your signature."
+
+I cannot remember that I read anything. I cannot remember that anything
+was read to me. I was told where to sign, and I signed, thinking what
+must be must be, and that was all I had to do with the matter.
+
+I was feeling a little sick, nevertheless, and standing by the tire
+with one foot on the fender, when Lord Raa came up to me at the end, and
+said in his drawling voice:
+
+"So it's done."
+
+"Yes, it's done," I answered.
+
+After a moment he talked of where we were to live, saying we must of
+course pass most of our time in London.
+
+"But have you any choice about the honeymoon," he said, "where we should
+spend it, I mean?"
+
+I answered that he would know best, but when he insisted on my choosing,
+saying it was my right to do so, I remembered that during my time in the
+Convent the one country in the world I had most desired to see was the
+Holy Land.
+
+Never as long as I live shall I forget the look in his lordship's grey
+eyes when I gave this as my selection.
+
+"You mean Jerusalem--Nazareth--the Dead Sea and all that?" he asked.
+
+I felt my face growing red as at a frightful _faux pas_, but his
+lordship only laughed, called me his "little nun," and said that since I
+had been willing to leave the choice to him he would suggest Egypt and
+Italy, and Berlin and Paris on the way back, with the condition that we
+left Ellan for London on the day of our marriage.
+
+After the party from Castle Raa had gone, leaving some of their family
+lace and pearls behind for the bride to wear at her wedding, and after
+Aunt Bridget had hoped that "that woman" (meaning Lady Margaret) didn't
+intend to live at the Castle after my marriage, because such a thing
+would not fit in with her plans "at all, at all," I mentioned the
+arrangements for the honeymoon, whereupon Betsy Beauty, to whom Italy
+was paradise, and London glimmered in an atmosphere of vermillion and
+gold, cried out as usual:
+
+"What a lucky, lucky girl you are!"
+
+But the excitement which had hitherto buoyed me up was partly dispelled
+by this time, and I was beginning to feel some doubt of it.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+As my wedding-day approached and time ran short, the air of joy which
+had pervaded our house was driven out by an atmosphere of irritation. We
+were all living on our nerves. The smiles that used to be at everybody's
+service gave place to frowns, and, in Aunt Bridget's case, to angry
+words which were distributed on all sides and on all occasions.
+
+As a consequence I took refuge in my room, and sat long hours there in
+my dressing-gown and slippers, hearing the hubbub that was going on in
+the rest of the house, but taking as little part in it as possible. In
+this semi-conventual silence and solitude, the excitement which had
+swept me along for three weeks subsided rapidly.
+
+I began to think, and above all to feel, and the one thing I felt beyond
+everything else was a sense of something wanting.
+
+I remembered the beautiful words of the Pope about marriage as a mystic
+relation, a sacred union of souls, a bond of love such as Christ's love
+for His Church, and I asked myself if I felt any such love for the man
+who was to become my husband.
+
+I knew I did not. I reminded myself that I had had nearly no
+conversation with him, that our intercourse had been of the briefest,
+that I had seen him only three times altogether, and that I scarcely
+knew him at all.
+
+And yet I was going to marry him! In a few days more I should be his
+wife, and we should be bound together as long as life should last!
+
+Then I remembered what Father Dan had said about a girl's first love,
+her first love-letter, and all the sweet, good things that should come
+to her at the time of her marriage.
+
+None of them had come to me. I do not think my thoughts of love were
+ever disturbed by any expectation of the delights of the heart--languors
+of tenderness, long embraces, sighs and kisses, and the joys and fevers
+of the flesh--for I knew nothing about them. But, nevertheless, I asked
+myself if I had mistaken the matter altogether. Was love really
+necessary? In all their busy preparations neither my father, nor my
+husband, nor the lawyers, nor the Bishop himself, had said anything
+about that.
+
+I began to sleep badly and to dream. It was always the same dream. I was
+in a frozen region of the far north or south, living in a ship which was
+stuck fast in the ice, and had a great frowning barrier before it that
+was full of dangerous crevasses. Then for some reason I wanted to write
+a letter, but was unable to do so, because somebody had trodden on my
+pen and broken it.
+
+It seems strange to me now as I look back upon that time, that I did not
+know what angel was troubling the waters of my soul--that Nature was
+whispering to me, as it whispers to every girl at the first great crisis
+of her life. But neither did I know what angel was leading my footsteps
+when, three mornings before my wedding-day, I got up early and went out
+to walk in the crisp salt air.
+
+Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the shore,
+and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found myself near
+Sunny Lodge. The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and there was a
+smell of burning turf coming from the house, which was so pretty and
+unchanged, with the last of the year's roses creeping over the porch and
+round the windows of the room in which I had slept when a child.
+
+Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his shirt
+sleeves.
+
+"Good morning, doctor," I called, speaking over the fence.
+
+He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment.
+
+"Don't you know who I am?" I asked.
+
+"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . ."
+
+Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried:
+
+"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"
+
+Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but
+with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as
+sweet as may-blossom.
+
+She held up both hands at sight of me and cried:
+
+"There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they might marry
+her to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old friends!"
+
+I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the sweetest
+part of it was that she did not know what we were laughing at.
+
+Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, and
+involuntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal from
+the porridge she was making) before taking mine.
+
+"Goodness me, it's Mary O'Neill."
+
+"Yes, it's I."
+
+"But let me have a right look at you," she said, taking me now by both
+hands. "They were saying such wonderful things about the young misthress
+that I wasn't willing to believe them. But, no, no," she said, after a
+moment, "they didn't tell me the half."
+
+I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to cry, so I
+said:
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"My goodness yes, and welcome," she said, and calling to the doctor to
+wash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the kitchen-parlour,
+where the kettle was singing from the "slowery" and a porridge-pot was
+bubbling over the fire.
+
+"Sit down. Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth place].
+There! That's nice. Aw, yes, you know the house."
+
+Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that was
+hurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so closely
+linked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin's mother
+(herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in her face) went
+on talking while she stirred the porridge with a porridge-stick.
+
+"Well, well! To think of all the years since you came singing carols to
+my door! You remember it, don't you? . . . Of course you do. 'Doctor,' I
+said, 'don't talk foolish. _She'll_ not forget. _I_ know Mary O'Neill.
+She may be going to be a great lady, but haven't I nursed her on my
+knee?'"
+
+"Then you've heard what's to happen?" I asked.
+
+"Aw yes, woman, yes," she answered in a sadder tone, I thought.
+"Everybody's bound to hear it--what with the bands practising for the
+procession, and the bullocks roasting for the poor, and the fireworks
+and the illuminations, and I don't know what."
+
+She was silent for a moment after that, and then in her simple way she
+said:
+
+"But it's all as one if you love the man, even if he _is_ a lord."
+
+"You think that's necessary, don't you?"
+
+"What, _millish?_"
+
+"Love. You think it's necessary to love one's husband?"
+
+"Goodness sakes, girl, yes. If you don't have love, what have you?
+What's to keep the pot boiling when the fire's getting low and the
+winter's coming on, maybe? The doctor's telling me some of the fine
+ladies in London are marrying without it--just for money and titles and
+all to that. But I can't believe it, I really can't! They've got their
+troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and what's the use of their
+fine clothes and grand carriages when the dark days come and the night's
+falling on them?"
+
+It was harder than ever to speak now, so I got up to look at some silver
+cups that stood on the mantelpiece.
+
+"Martin's," said his mother, to whom they were precious as rubies. "He
+won them at swimming and running and leaping and climbing and all to
+that. Aw, yes, yes! He was always grand at games, if he couldn't learn
+his lessons, poor boy. And now he's gone away from us--looking for South
+Poles somewheres."
+
+"I know--I saw him in Rome," said I.
+
+She dropped her porridge-stick and looked at me with big eyes.
+
+"Saw him? In Rome, you say? After he sailed, you mean?"
+
+I nodded, and then she cried excitedly to the doctor who was just then
+coming into the house, after washing his hands under the pump.
+
+"Father, she saw himself in Rome after he sailed."
+
+There was only one _himself_ in that house, therefore it was not
+difficult for the doctor to know who was meant. And so great was the
+eagerness of the old people to hear the last news of the son who was the
+apple of their eye that I had to stay to breakfast and tell them all
+about our meeting.
+
+While Martin's mother laid the tables with oat-cake and honey and bowls
+of milk and deep plates for the porridge, I told the little there was to
+tell, and then listened to their simple comments.
+
+"There now, doctor! Think of that! Those two meeting in foreign parts
+that used to be such friends when they were children! Like brother and
+sister, you might say. And whiles and whiles we were thinking that some
+day . . . but we'll say no more about that now, doctor."
+
+"No, we'll say no more about that now, Christian Ann," said the doctor.
+
+Then there was a moment of silence, and it was just as if they had been
+rummaging among half-forgotten things in a dark corner of their house,
+and had come upon a cradle, and the child that had lived in it was dead.
+
+It was sweet, but it was also painful to stay long in that house of
+love, and as soon as I had eaten my oat-cake and honey I got up to go.
+The two good souls saw me to the door saying I was not to expect either
+of them at the Big House on my wedding-day, because she was no woman for
+smart clothes, and the doctor, who was growing rheumatic, had given up
+his night-calls, and therefore his gig, so as to keep down expenses.
+
+"We'll be at the church, though," said Martin's mother. "And if we
+don't see you to speak to, you'll know we're there and wishing you
+happiness in our hearts."
+
+I could not utter a word when I left them; but after I had walked a
+little way I looked back, intending to wave my farewell, and there they
+were together at the gate still, and one of her hands was on the
+doctor's shoulder--the sweet woman who had chosen love against the
+world, and did not regret it, even now when the night was falling on
+her.
+
+I had to pass the Presbytery on my way home, and as I did so, I saw
+Father Dan in his study. He threw up the window sash and called in a
+soft voice, asking me to wait until he came down to me.
+
+He came down hurriedly, just as he was, in his worn and discoloured
+cassock and biretta, and walked up the road by my side, breathing
+rapidly and obviously much agitated.
+
+"The Bishop is staying with me over the wedding, and he is in such a
+fury that . . . Don't worry. It will be all right. But . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did you see young Martin Conrad while you were in Rome?"
+
+I answered that I did.
+
+"And did anything pass between you . . . about your marriage, I mean?"
+
+I told him all that I had said to Martin, and all that Martin had said
+to me.
+
+"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing it, and
+calling on him to stop it."
+
+"To stop it?"
+
+"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if the
+Church is willing to give its blessing to such rank commercialism, let
+it bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the slave market."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young man,' he
+says, 'who dares to . . .' But if I thought there was nothing more to
+your marriage than . . . If I imagined that what occurred in the case of
+your dear mother . . . But that's not all."
+
+"Not all?"
+
+"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse--far worse."
+
+"What does he say, Father Dan?"
+
+"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet if it's
+true . . . if there's anything in it . . ."
+
+I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had said. He
+told me. It was about my intended husband--that he was a man of
+irregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a connection with
+somebody in London, a kind of actress who was practically his wife
+already, and therefore his marriage with me would be--so Martin had
+said--nothing but "legalised and sanctified concubinage."
+
+With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this story, as if
+it were something so infamous that his simple and innocent heart could
+scarcely credit it.
+
+"If I really thought it was true," he said, "that a man living such a
+life could come here to marry my little . . . But no, God could not
+suffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make sure. We live
+so far away in this little island that . . . But I must go back now. The
+Bishop will be calling for me."
+
+Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at the gate
+of our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering, with flowers
+from the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the joiner had hammered up
+the day before.
+
+The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this prompted me
+to look up and speak to him.
+
+"Tommy," I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't said a
+good word to me about my marriage?"
+
+"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe that's
+because I've had so many bad ones to say to other people."
+
+I asked which other people.
+
+"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the 'Horse and
+Saddle.' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling me,' says
+Johnny. 'I won't say no,' I says. 'It'll be a proud day for the
+grand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of Castle Raa,'
+says Johnny. 'Maybe so,' I says, 'but it'll be a prouder day for Castle
+Raa when she sets her clane little foot in it.'"
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened since, to
+convey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and personal dishonour
+which was produced in me by Father Dan's account of the contents of
+Martin's letter. It was like opening a door out of a beautiful garden
+into a stagnant ditch.
+
+That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt, first
+because Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all points
+with the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real conversation
+I had yet had with him.
+
+Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friend
+Eastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would have
+married her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an allowance,
+he was marrying me in return for my father's money.
+
+It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my father, the
+lawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it.
+
+I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a young
+girl out of a convent, I did not know.
+
+Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she had been
+alive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about her neck and my
+face in her breast, I should have told her all my trouble.
+
+There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever expected to
+go to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings and after much
+hesitation I went.
+
+It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my aunt as
+she passed through the house like a biting March wind, scolding
+everybody, until I found her in her own room.
+
+She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking pale, I
+suppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and cried:
+
+"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your morning walks,
+eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We must send for the
+doctor straight. We can't have _you_ laid up now, after all this trouble
+and expense."
+
+"It isn't that, Auntie."
+
+"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"
+
+I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept looking
+at me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my aunt listened
+with amazement, and then she laughed outright.
+
+"So _you've_ heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill," she said, with a
+thump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you."
+
+I asked if she thought it wasn't true.
+
+"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or isn't?
+Young men will be young men, I suppose."
+
+She went on with her ironing as she added:
+
+"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked for
+that there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world, wouldn't
+there?"
+
+I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to say:
+
+"But if he is practically married to the other woman. . . ."
+
+"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like that? You
+might as well talk about marriage in the hen coop."
+
+"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie. . . ."
+
+"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off and get
+rid of her before he marries you."
+
+"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her iron and
+looked at me as if I had said something shameful.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. He
+shouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a barn-door
+rooster?"
+
+My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my intended
+husband could not care for _me_, or he would have seen more of me.
+
+"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about that."
+
+I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him.
+
+"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work miracles."
+
+Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had been
+taught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the Almighty
+so that those who entered it might live together in union, peace and
+love, whereas . . .
+
+But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me with her
+hard lip curled, said:
+
+"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays
+marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just
+an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up
+children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me."
+
+"But don't you think love is necessary?"
+
+"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in
+poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that
+nonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing.
+
+"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it
+generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to
+do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron,
+"do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed!
+'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income,' I said, 'and if I
+put my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he
+_is_ a taste in years,' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was one
+of the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where
+would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? And
+where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt Bridget, bringing
+down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage,
+founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is the
+only proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, so
+for goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting every
+busybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your
+chance--I can tell you that much, my lady."
+
+I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, and
+then,
+
+"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If
+you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him
+later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I
+had to, and if. . . ."
+
+"But if she can't, Auntie?"
+
+"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it."
+
+It was useless to say more, so I rose to go.
+
+"Yes, go," said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other people's
+business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill," she
+said, looking after me as I passed through the door, "for mercy's sake
+do brighten up a hit, and don't look as if marrying a husband was like
+taking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad as that, anyway."
+
+It served me right. I should have known better. My aunt and I spoke
+different languages; we stood on different ground.
+
+Returning to my room I found a letter from Father Dan. It ran--
+
+_"Dear Daughter in Jesus,
+
+"I have been afraid to go far into the story we spoke about from fear of
+offending my Bishop, but I have inquired of your father and he assures
+me that there is not a word of truth in it.
+
+"So I am compelled to believe that our good Martin must have been
+misinformed, and am dismissing the matter from my mind. Trusting you
+will dismiss it from your mind also,
+
+"Yours in Xt.,
+
+"D.D."_
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I could not do as Father Dan advised, being now enmeshed in the threads
+of innumerable impulses unknown to myself, and therefore firmly
+convinced that Martin's story was not only true, but a part of the whole
+sordid business whereby a husband was being bought for me.
+
+With this thought I went about all day, asking myself what I could do
+even yet, but finding no answer until nine o'clock at night, when,
+immediately after supper (we lived country fashion), Aunt Bridget said:
+
+"Now then, off to bed, girls. Everybody must be stirring early in the
+morning."
+
+And then I slipped upstairs to my room, and replied to Father Dan.
+
+Never had I written such a letter before. I poured my whole heart on to
+the paper, saying what marriage meant to me, as the Pope himself had
+explained it, a sacrament implying and requiring love as the very soul
+of it, and since I did not feel this love for the man I was about to
+marry, and had no grounds for thinking he felt it for me, and being sure
+that other reasons had operated to bring us together, I begged Father
+Dan, by his memory of my mother, and his affection for me, and his
+desire to see me good and happy, to intervene with my father and the
+Bishop, even at this late hour, and at the church door itself to stop
+the ceremony.
+
+It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was asleep,
+but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving in the room
+below, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a new thought I
+went downstairs and knocked at his door.
+
+"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in."
+
+He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a looking-glass
+which was propped up against two ledgers. The lather on his upper lip
+gave his face a fierce if rather grotesque expression.
+
+"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sit down. Got to do this to-night--goodness
+knows if I'll have time for it in the morning."
+
+I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the night of
+my birth. The fire had nearly burnt out.
+
+"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been in bed
+myself but for this business. Look there"--he pointed with the handle of
+his razor to the table littered with papers--"that's a bit of what I've
+had to do for you. I kind o' think you ought to be grateful to your
+father, my gel."
+
+I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:
+
+"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"
+
+Not catching my meaning he laughed.
+
+"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between the tips
+of his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as right as law
+and wax can make it."
+
+"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . ."
+
+"What?" he said, facing round.
+
+Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord Raa. Lord
+Raa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake, for his sake,
+for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's sake also) to
+postpone our marriage.
+
+At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears.
+
+"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything signed and
+sealed and witnessed!"
+
+"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . ."
+
+I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in a
+towering rage.
+
+"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? The
+greatest match this island has ever seen, and you say postpone--put it
+off, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you want to make a fool of a man?
+At the last moment, too. Just when there's nothing left but to go to the
+High Bailiff and the Church! . . . But I see--I see what it is. It's
+that young Conrad--he's been writing to you."
+
+I tried to say no, but my father bore me down.
+
+"Don't go to deny it, ma'am. He has been writing to every one--the
+Bishop, Father Dan, myself even. Denouncing the marriage if you plaze."
+
+My father, in his great excitement, was breaking with withering scorn
+into his native speech.
+
+"Aw yes, though, denouncing and damning it, they're telling me! Mighty
+neighbourly of him, I'm sure! Just a neighbour lad without a penny at
+his back to take all that throuble! If I had known he felt like that
+about it I might have axed his consent! The imperence, though! The
+imperence of sin! A father has no rights, it seems! A daughter is a
+separate being, and all to that! Well, well! Amazing thick, isn't it?"
+
+He was walking up and down the room with his heavy tread, making the
+floor shake.
+
+"Then that woman in Rome--I wouldn't trust but she has been putting
+notions into your head, too. All the new-fangled fooleries, I'll go
+bail. Women and men equal, not a ha'p'orth of difference between them!
+The blatherskites!"
+
+I was silenced, and I must have covered my face and cried, for after a
+while my father softened, and touching my shoulder he asked me if a man
+of sixty-five was not likely to know better than a girl of nineteen what
+was good for her, and whether I supposed he had not satisfied himself
+that this marriage was a good thing for me and for him and for
+everybody.
+
+"Do you think I'm not doing my best for you, gel--my very best?"
+
+I must have made some kind of assent, for he said:
+
+"Then don't moither me any more, and don't let your Aunt Bridget moither
+me--telling me and telling me what I might have done for her own
+daughter instead."
+
+At last, with a kind of rough tenderness, he took me by the arm and
+raised me to my feet.
+
+"There, there, go to bed and get some sleep. We'll have to start off for
+the high Bailiff's early in the morning."
+
+My will was broken down. I could resist no longer. Without a word more I
+left him.
+
+Returning to my room I took the letter I had been writing to Father Dan
+and tore it up piece by piece. As I did so I felt as if I were tearing
+up a living thing--something of myself, my heart and all that was
+contained in it.
+
+Then I threw open the window and leant out. I could hear the murmur of
+the sea. I felt as if it were calling to me, though I could not
+interpret its voice. The salt air was damp and it refreshed my eyelids.
+
+At length I got into bed, shivering with cold. When I had put out the
+light I noticed that the moon, which was near the full, had a big yellow
+ring of luminous vapour around it.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+My sleep that night was much troubled by dreams. It was the same dream
+as before, again and again repeated--the dream of frozen regions and of
+the great ice barrier, and then of the broken pen.
+
+When I awoke in the hazy light of the dawn I thought of what the Pope
+had said about beginning my wedding-day with penance and communion, so I
+rose at once to go to church.
+
+The dawn was broadening, but the household was still asleep, only the
+servants in the kitchen stirring when I stepped through a side door, and
+set out across the fields.
+
+The dew was thick on the grass, and under the gloom of a heavy sky the
+day looked cold and cheerless. A wind from the south-east had risen
+during the night, the sea was white with breakers, and from St. Mary's
+Rock there came the far-off moaning of surging waves.
+
+The church, too, when I reached it, looked empty and chill. The
+sacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites about
+the high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red and black
+shawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the side chapel where
+Father Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little boy in clogs to serve
+him.
+
+The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she was
+already a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the herrings"
+somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a gale, leaving her
+with one child, a year old, and another soon to come.
+
+All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing seemed
+to think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at school with
+me in the village.
+
+"I'm Bella Quark that was," she whispered. "I married Willie Shimmin of
+the Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning since he was
+lost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't nothing in the
+world like it."
+
+She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though the world
+was "so dark and lonely for some." Then she said something about her
+"lil Willie." She had left him asleep in her cottage on the Curragh, and
+he might awake and cry before she got back, so she hoped Father Dan
+wouldn't keep her long.
+
+I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost forgot my
+own, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through hers as we knelt
+together, and that was how the Father found us when he turned to put the
+holy wafer on our tongues.
+
+The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when I
+was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs so
+that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort of
+monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague line
+of the heavy sky.
+
+I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in
+her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of
+yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleating
+to the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock
+was the last sound I heard as I re-entered the house.
+
+Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The servants
+were flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs in accents of
+alarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of vexation, and my
+father was opening doors with a heavy push and closing them with a
+clash.
+
+They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it flashed upon
+me at the moment that they must have thought I had run away.
+
+"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt Bridget.
+
+I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not ordering round
+the carriage, instead of making my boots and stockings damp by traipsing
+across the grass, when my father said:
+
+"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of something. I
+guess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour."
+
+I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by eight
+o'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High Bailiff, who
+had to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage according to the
+conditions required by law.
+
+The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office, holding
+a newspaper in front of it to make it burn.
+
+"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father.
+
+"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered.
+
+He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights at the
+"Crown and Mitre," and was apparently out of humour at having been
+brought out of bed so early.
+
+His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk, a stool
+and a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls, one over
+another, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay on a table.
+The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room, and half like a
+small police court.
+
+Presently Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, came in, rather irritatingly
+cheerful in that chill atmosphere, and, half an hour late, my intended
+husband arrived, with his London lawyer and his friend Eastcliff.
+
+My mind was far from clear and I had a sense of seeing things by flashes
+only, but I remember that I thought Lord Raa was very nervous, and it
+even occurred to me that early as it was he had been drinking.
+
+"Beastly nuisance, isn't it?" he said to me aside, and then there was
+something about "this legal fuss and fuddlement."
+
+With the air of a man with a grievance the High Bailiff took a big book
+out of the desk, and a smaller one off a shelf, and then we sat in a
+half circle, and the ceremony began.
+
+It was very brief and cold like a matter of business. As far as I can
+remember it consisted of two declarations which Lord Raa and I made
+first to the witnesses present and afterwards to each other. One of them
+stated that we knew of no lawful impediment why we should not be joined
+together in matrimony, and the other declared that we were there and
+then so joined.
+
+I remember that I repeated the words automatically, as the High Bailiff
+in his thick alcoholic voice read them out of the smaller of his books,
+and that Lord Raa, in tones of obvious impatience, did the same.
+
+Then the High Bailiff opened the bigger of his books, and after writing
+something in it himself he asked Lord Raa to sign his name, and this
+being done he asked me also.
+
+"Am I to sign, too?" I asked, vacantly.
+
+"Well, who else do you think?" said Mr. Curphy with a laugh. "Betsy
+Beauty perhaps, eh?"
+
+"Come, gel, come," said my father, sharply, and then I signed.
+
+I had no longer any will of my own. In this as in everything I did
+whatever was asked of me.
+
+It was all as dreary and lifeless as an empty house. I can remember that
+it made no sensible impression upon my heart. My father gave some money
+(a few shillings I think) to the High Bailiff, who then tore a piece of
+perforated blue paper out of the bigger of his books and offered it to
+me, saying:
+
+"This belongs to you."
+
+"To me?" I said.
+
+"Who else?" said Mr. Curphy, who was laughing again, and then something
+was said by somebody about marriage lines and no one knowing when a wise
+woman might not want to use them.
+
+The civil ceremony of my marriage was now over, and Lord Raa, who had
+been very restless, rose to his feet, saying:
+
+"Beastly early drive. Anything in the house to steady one's nerves, High
+Bailiff?"
+
+The High Bailiff made some reply, at which the men laughed, all except
+my father. Then they left me and went into another room, the
+dining-room, and I heard the jingling of glasses and the drinking of
+healths while I sat before the fire with my foot on the fender and my
+marriage lines in my hand.
+
+My brain was still numbed. I felt as one might feel if drowned in the
+sea and descending, without quite losing consciousness, to the depths of
+its abyss.
+
+I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed in no
+respect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except that in the
+one case I had given my husband rights over my money, my father's money,
+whereas in this case I seemed to have given him rights over myself.
+
+Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so unaffecting.
+
+The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn hearthrug when
+my helpless meditations were interrupted by the thrumming and throbbing
+of the motor-car outside, and by my father, who was at the office door,
+saying in his loud, commanding voice:
+
+"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back."
+
+Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given over to
+the dressmakers. I was still being moved automatically--a creature
+without strength or will.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the sights
+and sounds of the next two hours--of everybody except myself being
+wildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from unseen regions of
+the house: of Aunt Bridget scolding indiscriminately; of the dressmakers
+chattering without ceasing as they fitted on my wedding dress; of their
+standing off from me at intervals with cries of delight at the success
+of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the
+church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of
+the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber
+wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel
+of the drive.
+
+When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory satin
+dress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and orange
+blossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as well as a
+string of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I was marrying
+into. I remember they said my black hair shone with a blue lustre
+against the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay on the outside
+anyway.
+
+At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a running
+stream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the banging of
+carriage doors, and then my father's deep voice, saying:
+
+"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess."
+
+He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was still
+wearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There was not
+even a flower in his button-hole.
+
+We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a certain
+comfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the carriage with
+the windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning to frighten me.
+
+"It will be nothing," said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a slant
+of rain maybe."
+
+The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries were full
+of the children from the village school. There was a twittering overhead
+like that of young birds in a tree, and as I walked up the nave on my
+father's arm I could not help but hear over the sound of the organ the
+whispered words of the people in the pews on either side of us.
+
+"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless her!"
+
+"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life again."
+
+"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though."
+
+Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet more
+nervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear himself
+with his usual composure, there was (or I thought there was) a certain
+expression of fear in his face which I had never seen before.
+
+His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole,
+was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf of
+beautiful white flowers, was standing near.
+
+My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in
+large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear
+the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of
+their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of
+Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half
+moon, was telling them to be silent and to look placid.
+
+At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in the
+chancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and hemming in
+the church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand here, my lord";
+that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking "Here?" and taking a
+place by my side; that the lighted altar, laden with flowers, was in
+front of me; and that the Bishop in his vestments, Father Dan in his
+surplice and white stole, and a clerk carrying a book and a vessel of
+holy water were beginning the service.
+
+Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl under
+similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains and
+penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yet
+there came to me in the course of the service such a startling change of
+thought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget the
+compulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm of
+spiritual ecstasy.
+
+The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing on the
+ceremony which was to join together two of His children in the bonds of
+holy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious of nothing except
+the howling of the wind about the church windows and the far-off tolling
+of the bell on St. Mary's Rock--nothing but this and a voice within me
+which seemed to say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't love
+him!"
+
+But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be overawed
+by the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by the sense of
+God leaning over my littleness and guiding me according to His will.
+
+What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had led up
+to this marriage if God was making it? God makes all marriages that are
+blessed by His Church, and therefore He overrules to His own good ends
+all human impulses, however sordid or selfish they may be.
+
+After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, and
+nothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower the
+exaltation of my spirit.
+
+But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have an
+exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly,
+though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner that
+sometimes looked like derision.
+
+Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:
+
+"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawful
+wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church," my husband
+halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "I
+thought I was a heretic."
+
+But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Dan
+thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry,
+child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:
+
+"I will."
+
+And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silver
+on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled and
+dropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they had
+been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and then
+repeat after the Bishop:
+
+"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with my
+body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," he
+tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.
+
+But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spite
+of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacrament
+made him mine and no one else's.
+
+It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it was
+so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest fact
+of all my life.
+
+I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke to
+me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of his
+comforting, for my strength was from a higher source.
+
+I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through the
+ceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to shun
+each other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because my
+marriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its sense of
+purity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome where Mildred
+Bankes had taken her vows.
+
+After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and Benediction
+(special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a still higher
+pitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me.
+
+Father Dan read the Epistle beginning "Let wives be subject to their
+husbands," and then the Bishop read the Gospel, concluding, "Therefore
+now they are not two, but one flesh: what therefore God hath joined
+together, let not man put asunder."
+
+I had trembled when I thought of these solemn and sonorous words in the
+solitude of my own room, but now that they were spoken before the
+congregation I had no fear, no misgiving, nothing but a sense of rapture
+and consecration.
+
+The last words being spoken and Lord Raa and I being man and wife, we
+stepped into the sacristy to sign the register, and not even there did
+my spirit fail me. I took up the pen and signed my name without a
+tremor. But hardly had I done so when I heard a rumbling murmur of
+voices about me--first the Bishop's voice (in such a worldly tone) and
+then my father's and then my husband's, and then the voices of many
+others, in light conversation mingled with trills of laughter. And then,
+in a moment, in a twinkling, as fast as a snowflake melts upon a stream,
+the spell of the marriage service seemed to break.
+
+I have heard since that my eyes were wet at that moment and I seemed to
+have been crying all through the ceremony. I know nothing about that,
+but I do know that I felt a kind of internal shudder and that it was
+just as if my soul had suddenly awakened from an intoxicating drug.
+
+The organ began to play the Wedding March, and my husband, putting my
+arm through his, said, "Come."
+
+There was much audible whispering among the people waiting for us in the
+church, and as we walked towards the door I saw ghostly faces smiling at
+me on every side, and heard ghostly voices speaking in whispers that
+were like the backward plash of wavelets on the shore.
+
+"Sakes alive, how white's she's looking, though," said somebody, and
+then somebody else said--I could not help but hear it--
+
+"Dear heart knows if her father has done right for all that."
+
+I did not look at anybody, but I saw Martin's mother at the back, and
+she was wiping her eyes and saying to some one by her side--it must have
+been the doctor--
+
+"God bless her for the sweet child veen she always was, anyway."
+
+The storm had increased during the service; and the sacristan, who was
+opening the door for us, had as much as he could do to hold it against
+the wind, which came with such a rush upon us when we stepped into the
+porch that my veil and the coronal of myrtle and orange blossoms were
+torn off my head and blown back into the church.
+
+"God bless my sowl," said somebody--it was Tommy's friend, Johnny
+Christopher--"there's some ones would he calling that bad luck, though."
+
+A band of village musicians, who were ranged up in the road, struck up
+"The Black and Grey" as we stepped out of the churchyard, and the next
+thing I knew was that my husband and I were in the carriage going home.
+
+He had so far recovered from the frightening effects of the marriage
+service that he was making light of it, and saying:
+
+"When will this mummery come to an end, I wonder?"
+
+The windows of the carriage were rattling with the wind, and my husband
+had begun to talk of the storm when we came upon the trunk of a young
+tree which had been torn up by the roots and was lying across the road,
+so that our coachman had to get down and remove it.
+
+"Beastly bad crossing, I'm afraid. Hope you're a good sailor. Must be in
+London to-morrow morning, you know."
+
+The band was playing behind us. The leafless trees were beating their
+bare boughs in front. The wedding bells were pealing. The storm was
+thundering through the running sky. The sea was very loud.
+
+At my father's gate Tommy the Mate, with a serious face, was standing,
+cap in hand, under his triumphal arch, which (as well as it could for
+the wind that was tearing its flowers and scattering them on the ground)
+spelled out the words "God bless the Happy Bride."
+
+When we reached the open door of the house a group of maids were
+waiting for us. They were holding on to their white caps and trying to
+control their aprons, which were swirling about their black frocks. As I
+stepped out of the carriage they addressed me as "My lady" and "Your
+ladyship." The seagulls, driven up from the sea, were screaming about
+the house.
+
+My husband and I went into the drawing-room, and as we stood together on
+the hearthrug I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass over the
+mantelpiece. It was deadly white, and had big staring eyes and a look of
+faded sunshine. I fixed afresh the pearls about my neck and the diamond
+in my hair, which was much disordered.
+
+Almost immediately the other carriages returned, and relatives and
+guests began to pour into the room and offer us their congratulations.
+First came my cousins, who were too much troubled about their own
+bedraggled appearance to pay much attention to mine. Then Aunt Bridget,
+holding on to her half-moon bonnet and crying:
+
+"You happy, happy child! But what a wind! There's been nothing like it
+since the day you were born."
+
+My father came next, like a gale of wind himself, saying:
+
+"I'm proud of you, gel. Right proud I am. You done well."
+
+Then came Lady Margaret, who kissed me without saying many words, and
+finally a large and varied company of gaily-dressed friends and
+neighbours, chiefly the "aristocracy" of our island, who lavished many
+unnecessary "ladyships" upon me, as if the great name reflected a
+certain glory upon themselves.
+
+I remember that as I stood on the hearthrug with my husband, receiving
+their rather crude compliments, a vague gaiety came over me, and I
+smiled and laughed, although my heart was growing sick, for the effect
+of the wedding-service was ebbing away into a cold darkness like that of
+a night tide when the moonlight has left it.
+
+It did not comfort me that my husband, without failing in good manners,
+was taking the whole scene and company with a certain scarcely-veiled
+contempt which I could not help but see.
+
+And neither did it allay my uneasiness to glance at my father, where he
+stood at the end of the room, watching, with a look of triumph in his
+glistening black eyes, his proud guests coming up to me one by one, and
+seeming to say to himself, "They're here at last! I've bet them! Yes,
+by gough, I've bet them!"
+
+Many a time since I have wondered if his conscience did not stir within
+him as he looked across at his daughter in the jewels of the noble house
+he had married her into--the pale bride with the bridegroom he had
+bought for her--and thought of the mockery of a sacred union which he
+had brought about to gratify his pride, his vanity, perhaps his revenge.
+
+But it was all over now. I was married to Lord Raa. In the eyes equally
+of the law, the world and the Church, the knot between us was
+irrevocably tied.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I am no mystic and no spiritualist, and I only mention it as one of the
+mysteries of human sympathy between far-distant friends, that during a
+part of the time when my dear one was going through the fierce struggle
+she describes, and was dreaming of frozen regions and a broken pen, the
+ship I sailed on had got itself stuck fast in a field of pack ice in
+latitude 76, under the ice barrier by Charcot Bay, and that while we
+were lying like helpless logs, cut off from communication with the
+world, unable to do anything but groan and swear and kick our heels in
+our bunks at every fresh grinding of our crunching sides, my own mind,
+sleeping and waking, was for ever swinging back, with a sort of yearning
+prayer to my darling not to yield to the pressure which I felt so
+damnably sure was being brought to bear on her.
+
+     M.C.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD PART
+
+MY HONEYMOON
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+When the Bishop and Father Dan arrived, the bell was rung and we went in
+to breakfast.
+
+We breakfasted in the new dining-room, which was now finished and being
+used for the first time.
+
+It was a gorgeous chamber beblazoned with large candelabra, huge
+mirrors, and pictures in gold frames--resembling the room it was
+intended to imitate, yet not resembling it, as a woman over-dressed
+resembles a well-dressed woman.
+
+My father sat at the head of his table with the Bishop, Lady Margaret
+and Aunt Bridget on his right, and myself, my husband, Betsy Beauty and
+Mr. Eastcliff on his left. The lawyers and the trustee were midway down,
+Father Dan with Nessy MacLeod was at the end, and a large company of our
+friends and neighbours, wearing highly-coloured flowers on their breasts
+and in their buttonholes, sat between.
+
+The meal was very long, and much of the food was very large--large fish,
+large roasts of venison, veal, beef and mutton, large puddings and large
+cheeses, all cut on the table and served by waiters from Blackwater.
+There were two long black lines of them--a waiter behind the chair of
+nearly every other guest.
+
+All through the breakfast the storm raged outside. More than once it
+drowned the voices of the people at the table, roaring like a wild beast
+in the great throat of the wide chimney, swirling about the lantern
+light, licking and lashing and leaping at the outsides of the walls like
+lofty waves breaking against a breakwater, and sending up a thunderous
+noise from the sea itself, where the big bell of St. Mary's Rock was
+still tolling like a knell.
+
+Somebody--it must have been Aunt Bridget again--said there had been
+nothing like it since the day of my birth, and it must be "fate."
+
+"Chut, woman!" said my father. "We're living in the twentieth century.
+Who's houlding with such ould wife's wonders now?"
+
+He was intensely excited, and, his excitement betrayed itself, as usual,
+in reversion to his native speech. Sometimes he surveyed in silence,
+with the old masterful lift of his eyebrows, his magnificent room and
+the great guests who were gathered within it; sometimes he whispered to
+the waiters to be smarter with the serving of the dishes; and sometimes
+he pitched his voice above the noises within and without and shouted, in
+country-fashion, to his friends at various points of the table to know
+how they were faring.
+
+"How are you doing, Mr. Curphy, sir?"
+
+"Doing well, sir. Are you doing well yourself, Mr. O'Neill, sir?"
+
+"Lord-a-massy yes, sir. I'm always doing well, sir."
+
+Never had anybody in Ellan seen so strange a mixture of grandeur and
+country style. My husband seemed to be divided between amused contempt
+for it, and a sense of being compromised by its pretence. More than once
+I saw him, with his monocle in his eye, look round at his friend
+Eastcliff, but he helped himself frequently from a large decanter of
+brandy and drank healths with everybody.
+
+There were the usual marriage pleasantries, facetious compliments and
+chaff, in which to my surprise (the solemnity of the service being still
+upon me) the Bishop permitted himself to join.
+
+I was now very nervous, and yet I kept up a forced gaiety, though my
+heart was cold and sick. I remember that I had a preternatural power of
+hearing at the same time nearly every conversation that was going on at
+the table, and that I joined in nearly all the laughter.
+
+At a more than usually loud burst of wind somebody said it would be a
+mercy if the storm did not lift the roof off.
+
+"Chut, man!" cried my father. "Solid oak and wrought iron here. None of
+your mouldy old monuments that have enough to do to keep their tiles
+on."
+
+"Then nobody," said my husband with a glance at his friend, "need be
+afraid of losing his head in your house, sir?"
+
+"Not if he's got one to come in with, sir."
+
+Betsy Beauty, sitting next to Mr. Eastcliff, was wondering if he would
+do us the honour to visit the island oftener now that his friend had
+married into it.
+
+"But, my dear Betsy," said my husband, "who would live in this
+God-forsaken place if he could help it?"
+
+"God-forsaken, is it?" said my father. "Maybe so, sir--but that's what
+the cuckoo said after he had eaten the eggs out of the thrush's nest and
+left a mess in it."
+
+Aunt Bridget was talking in doleful tones to Lady Margaret about my
+mother, saying she had promised her on her death-bed to take care of her
+child and had been as good as her word, always putting me before her own
+daughter, although her ladyship would admit that Betsy was a handsome
+girl, and, now that his lordship was married, there were few in the
+island that were fit for her.
+
+"Why no, Mrs. MacLeod," said my husband, after another significant
+glance at his friend, "I dare say you've not got many who can make
+enough to keep a carriage?"
+
+"Truth enough, sir," said my father. "We've got hundreds and tons that
+can make debts though."
+
+The breakfast came to an end at length, and almost before the last of
+the waiters had left the room my father rose to speak.
+
+"Friends all," he said, "the young married couple have to leave us for
+the afternoon steamer."
+
+"In this weather?" said somebody, pointing up to the lantern light
+through which the sky was now darkening.
+
+"Chut! A puff of wind and a slant of rain, as I've been saying to my gel
+here. But my son-in-law, Lord Raa," (loud cheers followed this
+description, with some laughter and much hammering on the table), "my
+son-in-law says he has to be in London to-morrow, and this morning my
+daughter has sworn obedience. . . . What's that, Monsignor? Not
+obedience exactly? Something like it then, so she's bound to go along
+with him. So fill up your glasses to the brim and drink to the bride and
+bridegroom."
+
+As soon as the noise made by the passing of decanters had died down my
+father spoke again.
+
+"This is the proudest day of my life. It's the day I've worked for and
+slaved for and saved for, and it's come to pass at last."
+
+There was another chorus of applause.
+
+"What's that you were saying in church, Mr. Curphy, sir? Time brings in
+its revenges? It does too. Look at me."
+
+My father put his thumbs in the arm-pits of his waistcoat.
+
+"You all know what I am, and where I come from."
+
+My husband put his monocle to his eye and looked up.
+
+"I come from a mud cabin on the Curragh, not a hundred miles from here.
+My father was kill . . . but never mind about that now. When he left us
+it was middling hard collar work, I can tell you--what with me working
+the bit of a croft and the mother weeding for some of you--some of your
+fathers I mane--ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all weathers.
+When I was a lump of a lad I was sworn at in the high road by a
+gentleman driving in his grand carriage, and the mother was lashed by
+his . . . but never mind about that neither. I guess I've hustled round
+considerable since then, and this morning I've married my daughter into
+the first family in the island."
+
+There was another burst of cheering at this, but it was almost drowned
+by the loud rattling of the rain which was now falling on the lantern
+light.
+
+"Monsignor," cried my father, pitching his voice still higher, "what's
+that you were saying in Rome about the mills of God?"
+
+Fumbling his jewelled cross and smiling blandly the Bishop gave my
+father the familiar quotation.
+
+"Truth enough, too. The mills of God grind slowly but they're grinding
+exceeding small. Nineteen years ago I thought I was as sure of what I
+wanted as when I got out of bed this morning. If my gel here had been
+born a boy, my son would have sat where his lordship is now sitting. But
+all's well that ends well! If I haven't got a son I've got a son-in-law,
+and when I get a grandson he'll be the richest man that ever stepped
+into Castle Raa, and the uncrowned king of Ellan."
+
+At that there was a tempest of cheers, which, mingling with the clamour
+of the storm, made a deafening tumult.
+
+"They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and children--daughters
+being separate beings, and all to that. But show me the daughter that
+could do better for herself than my gel's father has done for her. She
+has a big fortune, and her husband has a big name, and what more do they
+want in this world anyway?"
+
+"Nothing at all," came from various parts of the room.
+
+"Neighbours," said my father, looking round him with a satisfied smile,
+"I'm laying you dry as herrings in a hould, but before I call on you to
+drink this toast I'll ask the Bishop to spake to you. He's a grand man
+is the Bishop, and in fixing up this marriage I don't in the world know
+what I could have done without him."
+
+The Bishop, still fingering his jewelled cross and smiling, spoke in his
+usual suave voice. He firmly believed that the Church had that morning
+blessed a most propitious and happy union. Something might be said
+against mixed marriages, but under proper circumstances the Church had
+never forbidden them and his lordship (this with a deep bow to my
+husband) had behaved with great liberality of mind.
+
+As for what their genial and rugged host had said of certain foolish and
+dangerous notions about the relations of father and child, he was
+reminded that there were still more foolish and dangerous ones about the
+relations of husband and wife.
+
+From the earliest ages of the Church, however, those relations had been
+exactly defined. "Let wives be subject to their husbands," said the
+Epistle we had read this morning, and no less conclusive had been our
+closing prayer, asking that the wife keep true faith with her husband,
+being lovely in his eyes even as was Rachel, wise as was Rebecca, and
+dutiful as was Sara.
+
+"Beautiful!" whispered Aunt Bridget to Lady Margaret. "It's what I
+always was myself in the days of the dear Colonel."
+
+"And now," said the Bishop, "before you drink this toast and call upon
+the noble bridegroom to respond to it," (another deep bow to my
+husband), "I will ask for a few words from the two legal gentlemen who
+have carried out the admirably judicious financial arrangements without
+which this happy marriage would have been difficult if not impossible."
+
+Then my husband's lawyer, with a supercilious smile on his clean-shaven
+face, said it had been an honour to him to assist in preparing the way
+for the "uncrowned king of Ellan." ("It _has_, sir," cried my father in
+a loud voice which straightened the gentleman's face instantly); and
+finally Mr. Curphy, speaking through his long beard, congratulated my
+father and my husband equally on the marriage, and gave it as his
+opinion that there could be no better use for wealth than to come to the
+rescue of an historic family which had fallen on evil times and only
+required a little money to set it on its feet again.
+
+"The bride and bridegroom!" cried my father; and then everybody rose and
+there was much cheering, with cries of "His lordship," "His lordship."
+
+All through the speech-making my husband had rolled uneasily in his
+chair. He had also helped himself frequently from the decanter, so that
+when he got up to reply he was scarcely sober.
+
+In his drawling voice he thanked the Bishop, and said that having made
+up his mind to the marriage he had never dreamt of raising difficulties
+about religion. As to the modern notions about the relations of husband
+and wife, he did not think a girl brought up in a convent would give him
+much trouble on that subject.
+
+"Not likely," cried my father. "I'll clear her of that anyway."
+
+"So I thank you for myself and for my family," continued my husband,
+"and . . . Oh, yes, of course," (this to Lady Margaret). "I thank you
+for my wife also, and . . . and that's all."
+
+I felt sick and cold and ashamed. A rush of blood came under the skin of
+my face that must have made me red to the roots of my hair.
+
+In all this speaking about my marriage there had not been one word about
+myself--myself really, a living soul with all her future happiness at
+stake. I cannot say what vague impulse took possession of me, but I
+remember that when my husband sat down I made a forced laugh, though I
+knew well that I wanted to cry.
+
+In an agony of shame I was beginning to feel a wild desire to escape
+from the room and even from the house, that I might breathe in some of
+the free wind outside, when all at once I became aware that somebody
+else was speaking.
+
+It was Father Dan. He had risen unannounced from his seat at the end of
+the table. I saw his sack coat which was much worn at the seams; I saw
+his round face which was flushed; I heard the vibrating note in his soft
+Irish voice which told me he was deeply moved; and then I dropped my
+head, for I knew what was coming.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+"Mr. O'Neill," said Father Dan, "may your parish priest take the liberty
+of speaking without being spoken to?"
+
+My father made some response, and then a hush fell over the dining-room.
+Either the storm ceased for a time, or in my great agitation it seemed
+to do so, for I did not hear it.
+
+"We have heard a great deal about the marriage we have celebrated
+to-day, but have we not forgotten something? What _is_ marriage? Is it
+the execution of a contract? Is it the signing of a register? Is it even
+the taking of an oath before an altar? No. Marriage is the sacred
+covenant which two souls make with each other, the woman with the man,
+the man with the woman, when she chooses him from all other men, when he
+chooses her from all other women, to belong to each other for ever, so
+that no misfortune, no storm of life, no sin on either side shall ever
+put them apart. That's what marriage is, and all we have been doing
+to-day is to call on God and man to bear witness to that holy bond."
+
+My heart was beating high. I raised my head, and I think my eyes must
+have been shining. I looked across at the Bishop. His face was showing
+signs of vexation.
+
+"Mr. O'Neill, sir," cried Father Dan, raising his trembling voice, "you
+say your daughter has a big fortune and her husband has a big name, and
+what more do they want in this world? I'll tell you what they want, sir.
+They want love, love on both sides, if they are to be good and happy,
+and if they've got that they've got something which neither wealth nor
+rank can buy."
+
+I had dropped my head again, but under my eyelashes I could see that the
+company were sitting spell-bound. Only my husband was shuffling in his
+seat, and the Bishop was plucking at his gold chain.
+
+"My Bishop," said Father Dan, "has told us of the submission a wife owes
+to her husband, and of her duty to be lovely and wise and faithful in
+his eyes. But isn't it the answering thought that the husband on his
+part owes something to the wife? Aren't we told that he shall put away
+everything and everybody for her sake, and cleave to her and cling to
+her and they shall be one flesh? Isn't that, too, a divine commandment?"
+
+My heart was throbbing so loud by this time that the next words were
+lost to me. When I came to myself again Father Dan was saying:
+
+"Think what marriage means to a woman--a young girl especially. It means
+the breaking of old ties, the beginning of a new life, the setting out
+into an unknown world on a voyage from which there can be no return. In
+her weakness and her helplessness she leaves one dependency for another,
+the shelter of a father for the shelter of a husband. What does she
+bring to the man she marries? Herself, everything she is, everything
+she can be, to be made or marred by him, and never, never, never to be
+the same to any other man whatsoever as long as life shall last."
+
+More than ever now, but for other reasons, I wanted to fly from the
+room.
+
+"Friends," cried Father Dan, "we don't know much of the bridegroom in
+this parish, but we know the bride. We've known her all her life. We
+know what she is. I do, anyway. If you are her father, Mr. O'Neill, sir,
+I am her father also. I was in this house when she was born. I baptized
+her. I took her out of the arms of the angel who bore her. So she's my
+child too, God bless her. . . ."
+
+His voice was breaking--I was sobbing--though he was speaking so loudly
+I could scarcely hear him--I could scarcely see him--I only knew that he
+was facing about in our direction and raising his trembling hand to my
+husband.
+
+"She is my child, too, I say, and now that she is leaving us, now that
+you are taking her away from us, I charge you, my lord, to be good and
+faithful to her, as you will have to answer for her soul some day."
+
+What else he said I do not know. From that moment I was blind and deaf
+to everything. Nevertheless I was conscious that after Father Dan had
+ceased to speak there was a painful silence. I thought the company
+seemed to be startled and even a little annoyed by the emotion so
+suddenly shot into their midst. The Bishop looked vexed, my father
+looked uncomfortable, and my husband, who had been drinking glass after
+glass of brandy, was muttering something about "a sermon."
+
+It had been intended that Mr. Eastcliff should speak for the
+bridesmaids, and I was afterwards told by Betsy Beauty that he had
+prepared himself with many clever epigrams, but everybody felt there
+could be no more speaking of any kind now. After a few awkward moments
+my father looked at his watch and said it was about time for us to start
+if we were to catch the steamer, so I was hurried upstairs to change for
+our journey.
+
+When I came down again, in my tailor-made travelling dress with sables,
+the whole company was in the hall and everybody seemed to be talking at
+the same time, making a noise like water in a weir.
+
+I was taken possession of by each in turn. Nessy MacLeod told me in an
+aside what an excellent father I had. Betsy Beauty whispered that Mr.
+Eastcliff was so handsome and their tastes were so similar that she
+hoped I would invite him to Castle Raa as soon as I came back. Aunt
+Bridget, surrounded by a group of sympathising ladies (including Lady
+Margaret, who was making an obvious effort to be gracious) was wiping
+her eyes and saying I had always been her favourite and she had
+faithfully done her duty by me.
+
+"Mary, my love," she said, catching my eye, "I'm just telling her
+ladyship I don't know in the world what I'll do when you are gone."
+
+My husband was there too, wearing a heavy overcoat with the collar up,
+and receiving from a group of insular gentlemen their cheerful
+prognostics of a bad passage.
+
+"'Deed, but I'm fearing it will be a dirty passage, my lord."
+
+"Chut!" said my father. "The wind's from the south-west. They'll soon
+get shelter."
+
+The first of our two cars came round and my husband's valet went off in
+advance with our luggage. Then the second car arrived, and the time came
+for our departure. I think I kissed everybody. Everybody seemed to be
+crying--everybody except myself, for my tears were all gone by this
+time.
+
+Just as we were about to start, the storm, which must certainly have
+fallen for a while, sprang up suddenly, and when Tommy the Mate (barely
+recognisable in borrowed black garments) opened the door the wind came
+rushing into the house with a long-drawn whirr.
+
+I had said good-bye to the old man, and was stepping into the porch when
+I remembered Father Dan. He was standing in his shabby sack coat with a
+sorrowful face in a dark corner by the door, as if he had placed himself
+there to see the last of me. I wanted to put my arms around his neck,
+but I knew that would be wrong, so I dropped to my knees and kissed his
+hand and he gave me his blessing.
+
+My husband, who was waiting by the side of the throbbing automobile,
+said impatiently:
+
+"Come, come, dear, don't keep me in the rain."
+
+I got into the landaulette, my husband got in after me, the car began to
+move, there were cries from within the house ("Good-bye!" "Good luck")
+which sounded like stifled shrieks as they were carried off by the wind
+without, and then we were under weigh.
+
+As we turned the corner of the drive something prompted me to look back
+at my mother's window--with its memories of my first going to school.
+
+At the next moment we were crossing the bridge--with its memories of
+Martin Conrad and William Rufus.
+
+At the next we were on the road.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+"Thank God, that's over," said my husband. Then, half apologetically, he
+added: "You didn't seem to enjoy it any more than myself, my dear."
+
+At the entrance to our village a number of men stood firing guns; in the
+middle a group of girls were stretching a rope across the road; a number
+of small flags, torn by the wind and wet with the rain, were rattling on
+flagstaffs hung out from some of the window sills; a few women, with
+shawls over their heads, were sheltering on the weather side of their
+porches to see us pass.
+
+My husband was impatient of our simple island customs. Once or twice he
+lowered the window of the car, threw out a handful of silver and at the
+same time urged the chauffeur to drive quicker. As soon as we were clear
+of the village he fell back in his seat, saying:
+
+"Heavens, how sleepy I am! No wonder either! Late going to bed last
+night and up so early this morning."
+
+After a moment he began to yawn, and almost before he could have been
+aware of it he had closed his eyes. At the next moment he was asleep.
+
+It was a painful, almost a hideous sleep. His cheeks swelled and sank;
+his lips parted, he was breathing heavily, and sometimes gaping like a
+carp out of water.
+
+I could not detach my eyes from his face, which, without eyes to relieve
+it, seemed to be almost repulsive now. It would be difficult to describe
+my sensations. I felt dreadfully humiliated. Even my personal pride was
+wounded. I remembered what Father Dan had said about husband and wife
+being one flesh, and told myself that _this_ was what I belonged to,
+what belonged to me--_this!_ Then I tried to reproach and reprove
+myself, but in order to do so I had to turn my eyes away.
+
+Our road to Blackwater lay over the ridge of a hill much exposed to the
+wind from the south-west. When we reached this point the clouds seemed
+to roll up from the sea like tempestuous battalions. Torrential rain
+fell on the car and came dripping in from the juncture of the
+landaulette roof. Some of it fell on the sleeper and he awoke with a
+start.
+
+"Damn--"
+
+He stopped, as if, caught in guilt, and began to apologise again.
+
+"Was I asleep? I really think I must have been. Stupid, isn't it? Excuse
+me."
+
+He blinked his eyes as if to empty them of sleep, looked me over for a
+moment or two in silence, and then said with a smile which made me
+shudder:
+
+"So you and I are man and wife, my dear!"
+
+I made no answer, and, still looking fixedly at me, he said:
+
+"Well, worse things might have happened after all--what do _you_ think?"
+
+Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust.
+Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance.
+
+"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"
+
+That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it was
+because the words gave me the sense of having been used before to other
+women. I turned my eyes away again.
+
+"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of yours. I
+adore black eyes. They always pierce me like a gimlet."
+
+He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt frightened and
+pushed him off.
+
+"What's this?" he said, as if surprised.
+
+But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who had
+had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, he
+said:
+
+"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"
+
+Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist,
+but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.
+
+His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for having paid
+so little court to her? Well, she's right there too, bless her! But
+never mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little woman, my dear, and
+if I have neglected you thus far, I intend to make up for it during the
+honeymoon. So come, little gal, let's be friends."
+
+Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the same time
+his hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face aside and
+prevented him.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man who was
+quite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun will get over
+that by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"
+
+By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that was
+entirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it, but
+it was there, and I could not escape from it.
+
+Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had been
+troubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant to myself
+by love--the love of husband and wife--was the kind of feeling I had for
+the Reverend Mother, heightened and deepened and spiritualised, as I
+believed, by the fact (with all its mysterious significance) that the
+one was a man and the other a woman.
+
+But this was something quite different. Not having found in marriage
+what I had expected, I was finding something else, for there could be no
+mistaking my husband's meaning when he looked at me with his passionate
+eyes and said, "Wait awhile!"
+
+I saw what was before me, and in fear of it I found myself wishing that
+something might happen to save me. I was so frightened that if I could
+have escaped from the car I should have done so. The only thing I could
+hope for was that we should arrive at Blackwater too late for the
+steamer, or that the storm would prevent it from sailing. What relief
+from my situation I should find in that, beyond the delay of one day,
+one night (in which I imagined I might be allowed to return home), I did
+not know. But none the less on that account I began to watch the clouds
+with a feverish interest.
+
+They were wilder than ever now--rolling up from the south-west in huge
+black whorls which enveloped the mountains and engulfed the valleys. The
+wind, too, was howling at intervals like a beast being slaughtered. It
+was terrible, but not so terrible as the thing I was thinking of. I was
+afraid of the storm, and yet I was fearfully, frightfully glad of it.
+
+My husband, who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own corner
+of the car, was very angry. He talked again of our "God-forsaken
+island," and the folly of living in it, said our passage would be a long
+one in any case, and we might lose our connection to London.
+
+"Damnably inconvenient if we do. I've special reasons for being there in
+the morning," he said.
+
+At a sharp turn of the road the wind smote the car as with an invisible
+wing. One of the windows was blown in, and to prevent the rain from
+driving on to us my husband had to hold up a cushion in the gap.
+
+This occupied him until we ran into Blackwater, and then he dropped the
+cushion and put his head out, although the rain was falling heavily, to
+catch the first glimpse of the water in the bay.
+
+It was in terrific turmoil. My heart leapt up at the sight of it. My
+husband swore.
+
+We drew up on the drenched and naked pier. My husband's valet, in
+waterproofs, came to the sheltered side of the car, and, shouting above
+the noises of the wind in the rigging of the steamer, he said:
+
+"Captain will not sail to-day, my lord. Inshore wind. Says he couldn't
+get safely out of the harbour."
+
+My husband swore violently. I was unused to oaths at that time and they
+cut me like whipcord, but all the same my pulse was bounding joyfully.
+
+"Bad luck, my lord, but only one thing to do now," shouted the valet.
+
+"What's that?" said my husband, growling.
+
+"Sleep in Blackwater to-night, in hopes of weather mending in the
+morning."
+
+Anticipating this course, he had already engaged rooms for us at the
+"Fort George."
+
+My heart fell, and I waited for my husband's answer. I was stifling.
+
+"All right, Hobson. If it must be, it must," he answered.
+
+I wanted to speak, but I did not know what to say. There seemed to be
+nothing that I could say.
+
+A quarter of an hour afterwards we arrived at the hotel, where the
+proprietor, attended by the manageress and the waiters, received us with
+rather familiar smiles.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I began to write I determined to tell the truth and the whole
+truth. But now I find that the whole truth will require that I should
+invade some of the most sacred intimacies of human experience. At this
+moment I feel as if I were on the threshold of one of the sanctuaries
+of a woman's life, and I ask myself if it is necessary and inevitable
+that I should enter it.
+
+I have concluded that it _is_ necessary and inevitable--necessary to the
+sequence of my narrative, inevitable for the motive with which I am
+writing it.
+
+Four times already I have written what is to follow. In the first case I
+found that I had said too much. In the second I had said too little. In
+the third I was startled and shocked by the portrait I had presented of
+myself and could not believe it to be true. In the fourth I saw with a
+thrill of the heart that the portrait was not only true, but too true.
+Let me try again.
+
+I entered our rooms at the hotel, my husband's room and mine, with a
+sense of fear, almost of shame. My sensations at that moment had nothing
+in common with the warm flood of feeling which comes to a woman when she
+finds herself alone for the first time with the man she loves, in a
+little room which holds everything that is of any account to her in the
+world. They were rather those of a young girl who, walking with a candle
+through the dark corridors of an empty house at night, is suddenly
+confronted by a strange face. I was the young girl with the candle; the
+strange face was my husband's.
+
+We had three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the middle with
+bedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was large and it
+contained a huge bed with a covered top and tail-boards. That on the
+left was small, and it had a plain brass and iron bedstead, which had
+evidently been meant for a lady's maid. I had no maid yet. It was
+intended that I should engage a French one in London.
+
+Almost immediately on entering the sitting-room my husband, who had not
+yet recovered from his disappointment, left me to go downstairs, saying
+with something like a growl that he had telegrams to send to London and
+instructions to give to his man Hobson.
+
+Without taking off my outer things I stepped up to the windows, which
+were encrusted with salt from the flying spray. The hotel stood on a
+rocky ledge above the harbour, and the sound of the sea, beating on the
+outer side of the pier, came up with a deafening roar. The red-funnelled
+steamer we should have sailed by lay on the pier's sheltered side,
+letting down steam, swaying to her creaking hawsers, and heaving to the
+foam that was surging against her bow.
+
+I was so nervous, so flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears that I
+hardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our trunks and asked
+me where they were to place them, but I scarcely know how I answered
+them, although I was aware that everything--both my husband's luggage
+and mine--was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she
+ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes,"
+and presently I heard the fire crackling.
+
+After awhile my husband came back in a better temper and said:
+
+"Confounded nuisance, but I suppose we must make the best of it."
+
+He laughed as he said this, and coming closer and looking me over with a
+smile which was at the same time passionate and proud, he whispered:
+
+"Dare say we'll not find the time long until to-morrow morning. What do
+_you_ think, my little beauty?"
+
+Something in his voice rather than in his question made my heart beat,
+and I could feel my face growing hot.
+
+"Not taken off your things yet?" he said. "Come, let me help you."
+
+I drew out my hat-pins and removed my hat. At the same moment my husband
+removed my sables and cloak, and as he did so he put his arms about me,
+and held me close to him.
+
+I shuddered. I tried not to, but I could not help it. My husband laughed
+again, and said:
+
+"Not got over it yet, little woman? Perhaps that's only because you are
+not quite used to me."
+
+Still laughing he pulled me still closer to him, and putting one of his
+hands under my chin he kissed me on the mouth.
+
+It will be difficult and perhaps it will be ridiculous to say how my
+husband's first kiss shocked me. My mouth felt parched, I had a sense of
+intense disgust, and before I was quite aware of what I was doing I had
+put up both hands to push him off.
+
+"Come, come, this is going too far," he said, in a tone that was half
+playful, half serious. "It was all very well in the automobile; but
+here, in your own rooms, you know. . . ."
+
+He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meant
+that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charming
+for him.
+
+I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, and
+crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before the
+fire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, and
+then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders and
+kissed my neck.
+
+A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of
+indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with the
+look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud and
+insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much as
+contemplated resistance.
+
+"Well, this is funny," he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll see!"
+
+A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked for
+dinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering excitedly by
+this time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of other
+people gave me.
+
+While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of the
+day. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given us "the
+sermon" at the wedding breakfast--he had evidently forgotten that he had
+seen the Father before.
+
+I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a saint if
+ever there was one.
+
+"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not synonymous with
+simpleton, though."
+
+Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony." By
+holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused more
+misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural
+adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair by
+marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and a
+scoundrel.
+
+I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of all
+this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife. I am
+sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every word
+he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepen
+into horror.
+
+My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with my
+handkerchief. I was feeling more frightened and more ashamed than I had
+ever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat down to dinner I tried to
+compose myself. Partly for the sake of appearance before the servants,
+and partly because I was taking myself to task for the repugnance I
+felt towards my husband, I found something to say, though my voice
+shook.
+
+My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal. Once or twice, when he
+insisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses with him.
+Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and disgust, I
+sometimes allowed myself to laugh.
+
+Encouraged by this he renewed his endearments even before the waiters
+had left the room, and when they had gone, with orders not to return
+until he rang, and the door was closed behind them, he switched off the
+lights, pushed a sofa in front of the fire, put me to sit on it, sat
+down beside me and redoubled his tenderness.
+
+"How's my demure little nun now?" he said. "Frightened, wasn't she?
+They're all frightened at first, bless them!"
+
+I could smell the liquor he had been drinking. I could see by the
+firelight the prominent front tooth (partly hidden by his moustache)
+which I had noticed when I saw him first, and the down of soft hair
+which grew as low on his hands as his knuckles. Above all I thought I
+could feel the atmosphere of other women about him--loose women, bad
+women as it seemed to me--and my fear and disgust began to be mixed with
+a kind of physical horror.
+
+For a little while I tried to fight against this feeling, but when he
+began to put his arms about me, calling me by endearing names,
+complaining of my coldness, telling me not to be afraid of him,
+reminding me that I belonged to him now, and must do as he wished, a
+faintness came over me, I trembled from head to foot and made some
+effort to rise.
+
+"Let me go," I said.
+
+"Nonsense," he said, laughing and holding me to my seat. "You bewitching
+little woman! You're only teasing me. How they love to tease, these
+charming little women!"
+
+The pupils of his eyes were glistening. I closed my own eyes in order to
+avoid his look. At the next moment I felt his hand stray down my body
+and in a fury of indignation I broke out of his arms and leapt to my
+feet.
+
+When I recovered my self-possession I was again looking out of the
+window, and my husband, who was behind me, was saying in a tone of anger
+and annoyance:
+
+"What's the matter with you? I can't understand. What have I done? Good
+heavens, we are man and wife, aren't we?"
+
+I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was becoming
+cold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an outrage on my
+natural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence against my dignity
+as a woman.
+
+It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing. The
+rain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the rocks. I
+wanted to fly, but I felt caged--morally and physically caged.
+
+My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down the
+sitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile he
+approached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:
+
+"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long and
+exhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up early."
+
+Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the large
+bedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to undress and get
+into bed, and after that he said something about waiting. Then he closed
+the door softly and I was alone.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There was a fire in the bedroom and I sat down in front of it. Many
+forces were warring within me. I was trying to fix my thoughts and found
+it difficult to do so.
+
+Some time passed. My husband's man came in with the noiseless step of
+all such persons, opened one of the portmanteaux and laid out his
+master's combs and brushes on the dressing table and his sleeping suit
+on the bed. A maid of the hotel followed him, and taking my own sleeping
+things out of the top tray of my trunk she laid them out beside my
+husband's.
+
+"Good-night, my lady," they said in their low voices as they went out on
+tiptoe.
+
+I hardly heard them. My mind, at first numb, was now going at lightning
+speed. Brought face to face for the first time with one of the greatest
+facts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I had not reckoned with
+it before.
+
+I had not even thought of it. My whole soul had been so much occupied
+with one great spiritual issue--that I did not love my husband (as I
+understood love), that my husband did not love me--that I had never once
+plainly confronted, even in my own mind, the physical fact that is the
+first condition of matrimony, and nobody had mentioned it to me or even
+hinted at it.
+
+I could not plead that I did not know of this condition. I was young but
+I was not a child. I had been brought up in a convent, but a convent is
+not a nursery. Then why had I not thought of it?
+
+While sitting before the fire, gathering together these dark thoughts, I
+was in such fear that I was always conscious of my husband's movements
+in the adjoining room. At one moment there was the jingling of his glass
+against the decanter, at another moment the smell of his cigarette
+smoke. From time to time he came to the door and called to me in a sort
+of husky whisper, asking if I was in bed.
+
+"Don't keep me long, little girl."
+
+I shuddered but made no reply.
+
+At last he knocked softly and said he was coming in. I was still
+crouching over the fire as he came up behind me.
+
+"Not in bed yet?" he said. "Then I must put you to bed."
+
+Before I could prevent him he had lifted me in his arms, dragged me on
+to his knee and was pulling down my hair, laughing as he did so, calling
+me by coarse endearing names and telling me not to fight and struggle.
+
+But the next thing I knew I was back in the sitting-room, where I had
+switched up the lights, and my husband, whose face was distorted by
+passion, was blazing out at me.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband, am I not? You are my
+wife, aren't you? What did you marry for? Good heavens, can it be
+possible that you don't know what the conditions of matrimony are? Is
+that what comes of being brought up in a convent? But has your father
+allowed you to marry without. . . . And your Aunt--what in God's name
+has the woman been doing?"
+
+I crossed towards the smaller bedroom intending to enter it, but my
+husband intercepted me.
+
+"Don't be a fool," he said, catching at my wrist. "Think of the
+servants. Think what they'd say. Think what the whole island would say.
+Do you want to make a laughing stock of both of us?"
+
+I returned and sat by the table. My husband lit another cigarette.
+Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of his left hand,
+and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his lips, he told me I
+was mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a scene like this. He thought
+he could spend his time better. I was equally mistaken if I imagined
+that he had desired our marriage at all. Something quite different might
+have happened if he could have afforded to please himself.
+
+He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not thought of
+that, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a person like my
+father for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and my cousins--ugh!
+
+The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to make
+all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics!
+Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the
+muss and mummery of the Church!
+
+It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my confessor.
+Did any rational man want another man to come between him and his
+wife--knowing all he did and said, and everything about him?
+
+I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral of it
+was that if I had been allowed to marry without being instructed in the
+first conditions of married life my husband had suffered a gross and
+shocking injustice.
+
+The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating and
+degrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view, and when I
+remembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked to me like this,
+and that he could claim rights in me, to-night, to-morrow, as long as I
+lived, until death parted us, a wild impulse of impotent anger at
+everybody and everything made me drop my head on to the table and burst
+into tears.
+
+My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything. Taking my
+crying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his arms round my
+shoulders again and renewed his fondling.
+
+"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes," he said. "The people
+of the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be all sorts of
+ridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common people you are a
+different pair of shoes altogether."
+
+He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my shuddering) and
+saying:
+
+"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've kept you
+in ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little woman, we'll soon
+repair that."
+
+I could bear no more. I _must_ speak and I did. Leaping up and facing
+round on him I told him my side of the story--how I had been married
+against my will, and had not wanted him any more than he had wanted me;
+how all my objections had been overruled, all my compunctions borne
+down; how everybody had been in a conspiracy to compel me, and I had
+been bought and sold like a slave.
+
+"But you can't go any farther than that," I said. "Between you, you have
+forced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey you, because I
+won't."
+
+I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had finished
+it was ashen-white.
+
+"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more he
+tramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying to
+account to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me again and
+said, in the tone of one who thought he was making peace:
+
+"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have some other
+attachment--that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think I'm blaming you. I may
+be in the same case myself for all you know to the contrary. But
+circumstances have been too strong for us and here we are. Well, we're
+in it, and we've got to make the best of it and why shouldn't we? Lots
+of people in my class are in the same position, and yet they get along
+all right. Why can't we do the same? I'll not be too particular. Neither
+will you. For the rest of our lives let each of us go his and her own
+way. But that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our
+wedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . .
+Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look
+here, we won't expect too much affection from each other--but let's stop
+this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. Come, now."
+
+Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as
+he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the
+immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and I cried:
+
+"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"
+
+There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen on my
+husband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride had
+expected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a moment,
+recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot blood run cold,
+he said:
+
+"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as such you
+belong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I will."
+
+The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming towards
+me with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils fixed. In the
+drunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally.
+
+But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse. I
+wanted to strike him on the face.
+
+"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the window," I
+said.
+
+"No fear of that," he said, catching me quickly in his arms.
+
+"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house down," I
+cried.
+
+That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the next
+moment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without resistance on my
+husband's part I entered the little bedroom to the left and locked the
+door behind me.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Some further time passed. I sat by the fireless grate with my chin in my
+hand. If the storm outside was still raging I did not hear it. I was
+listening to the confused sounds that came from the sitting-room.
+
+My husband was pacing to and fro, muttering oaths, knocking against the
+furniture, breaking things. At one moment there was a crash of glass, as
+if he had helped himself to brandy and then in his ungovernable passion
+flung the decanter into the fire grate.
+
+Somebody knocked at the sitting-room. It must have been a waiter, for
+through the wall I heard the muffled sound of a voice asking if there
+had been an accident. My husband swore at the man and sent him off.
+Hadn't he told him not to come until he was rung for?
+
+At length, after half an hour perhaps, my husband knocked at the door of
+my little room.
+
+"Are you there?" he asked.
+
+I made no answer.
+
+"Open the door."
+
+I sat motionless.
+
+"You needn't be afraid. I'm not going to do anything. I've something to
+say."
+
+Still I made no reply. My husband went away for a moment and then came
+back.
+
+"If you are determined not to open the door I must say what I've got to
+say from here. Are you listening?"
+
+Sitting painfully rigid I answered that I was.
+
+Then he told me that what I was doing would entitle him to annul our
+marriage--in the eyes of the Church at all events.
+
+If he thought that threat would intimidate me he was mistaken--a wave of
+secret joy coursed through me.
+
+"It won't matter much to me--I'll take care it won't--but it will be a
+degrading business for you--invalidity and all that. Are you prepared
+for it?"
+
+I continued to sit silent and motionless.
+
+"I daresay we shall both be laughed at, but I cannot help that. We can't
+possibly live together on terms like these."
+
+Another wave of joy coursed through me.
+
+"Anyhow I intend to know before I leave the island how things are to be.
+I'm not going to take you away until I get some satisfaction. You
+understand?"
+
+I listened, almost without breathing, but I did not reply.
+
+"I'm think of writing a letter to your father, and sending Hobson with
+it in the car immediately. Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you know what your father is. Unless I'm much mistaken he's not a
+man to have much patience with your semi-romantic, semi-religious
+sentiments. Are you quite satisfied?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Very well! That's what I'll do, then."
+
+After this there was a period of quiet in which I assumed that my
+husband was writing his letter. Then I heard a bell ring somewhere in
+the corridor, and shortly afterwards there was a second voice in the
+sitting-room, but I could not hear the words that were spoken. I suppose
+it was Hobson's low voice, for after another short interval of silence
+there came the thrum and throb of a motor-car and the rumble of
+india-rubber wheels on the wet gravel of the courtyard in front of the
+hotel.
+
+Then my husband knocked at my door again.
+
+"I've written that letter and Hobson is waiting to take it. Your father
+will probably get it before he goes to bed. It will be a bad break on
+the festivities he was preparing for the village people. But you are
+still of the same mind, I suppose?"
+
+I did not speak, but I rose and went over to the window. For some reason
+difficult to explain, that reference to the festivities had cut me to
+the quick.
+
+My husband must have been fuming at my apparent indifference, and I felt
+as if I could see him looking at me, passionate and proud.
+
+"Between the lot of you I think you've done me a great injustice. Have
+you nothing to say?"
+
+Even then I did not answer.
+
+"All right! As you please."
+
+A few minutes afterwards I heard the motor-car turning and driving away.
+
+The wind had fallen, the waves were rolling into the harbour with that
+monotonous moan which is the sea's memory of a storm, and a full moon,
+like a white-robed queen, was riding through a troubled sky.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet
+as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning
+before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and
+jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay
+down to sleep.
+
+I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an impatient
+voice crying:
+
+"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"
+
+It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile. When I
+opened the door to her she came sailing into the room with her new
+half-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on hurriedly in the
+dim light of early morning, and, looking at me with her cold grey eyes
+behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she began to bombard me with
+mingled ridicule and indignant protest.
+
+"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little simpleton,
+tell me what has happened!"
+
+She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh before. But
+her vexation soon got the better of her merriment.
+
+"His lordship's letter arrived in the middle of the night and nearly
+frightened us out of our senses. Your father was for coming away
+straight, and it would have been worse for you if he had. But I said:
+'No, this is work for a woman, I'll go,' and here I am. And now tell me,
+what in the name of goodness does this ridiculous trouble mean?"
+
+It was hard to say anything on such a subject under such circumstances,
+especially when so challenged, but Aunt Bridget, without waiting for my
+reply, proceeded to indicate the substance of my husband's letter.
+
+From this I gathered that he had chosen (probably to save his pride) to
+set down my resistance to ignorance of the first conditions of
+matrimony, and had charged my father first and Aunt Bridget afterwards
+with doing him a shocking injustice in permitting me to be married to
+him without telling me what every girl who becomes a wife ought to know.
+
+"But, good gracious," said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you
+_didn't_ know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put up
+her hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that.
+And to think that you--you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . .
+Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose"
+(Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the world
+went on?"
+
+The coarse ridicule of what was supposed to be my maidenly modesty cut
+me like a knife, but I could not permit myself to explain, so my Aunt
+Bridget ran on talking.
+
+"I see how it has been. It's the fault of that Reverend Mother at the
+convent. What sort of a woman is she? Is she a woman at all, I wonder,
+or only a piece of stucco that ought to be put up in a church corner! To
+think she could have you nine years and never say one word about. . . .
+Well, well! What has she been doing with you? Talking about the
+mysteries, I suppose--prayers and retreats and novenas, and the
+spiritual bridegroom and the rest of it, while all the while. . . . But
+you must put the convent out of your head, my girl. You are a married
+woman now. You've got to think of your husband, and a husband isn't a
+spiritual bridegroom I can tell you. He's flesh and blood, that's what a
+husband is, and you can't expect _him_ to spend his time talking about
+eternity and the rosary. Not on his wedding-day, anyway."
+
+I was hot in my absurd embarrassment, and I dare say my face was
+scarlet, but Aunt Bridget showed me no mercy.
+
+"The way you have behaved is too silly for anything. . . . It really is.
+A husband's a husband, and a wife's a wife. The wife has to obey her
+husband. Of course she has. Every wife has to. Some don't like it. I
+can't say that I liked it very much myself. But to think of anybody
+objecting. Why, it's shocking! Nobody ever heard of such a thing."
+
+I must have flushed up to my forehead, for I became conscious that in my
+Aunt Bridget's eyes there had been a kind of indecency in my conduct.
+
+"But, come," she said, "we must be sensible. It's timidity, that's what
+it is. I was a little timid myself when I was first married, but I soon
+got over it. Once get over your timidity and you will be all right.
+Sakes alive, yes, you'll be as happy as the day is long, and before this
+time to-morrow you'll wonder what on earth you made all this fuss
+about."
+
+I tried to say that what she predicted could never be, because I did not
+love my husband, and therefore . . . but my Aunt Bridget broke in on me,
+saying:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, don't be a fool. Your maiden days are over now, and you
+ought to know what your husband will do if you persist."
+
+I jumped at the thought that she meant he would annul our marriage, but
+that was not what she was thinking of.
+
+"He'll find somebody else--that's what he'll do. Serve you right, too.
+You'll only have yourself to blame for it. Perhaps you think you'll be
+able to do the same, but you won't. Women can't. He'll be happy enough,
+and you'll be the only one to suffer, so don't make a fool of yourself.
+Accept the situation. You may not like your husband too much. I can't
+say I liked the Colonel particularly. He took snuff, and no woman in the
+world could keep him in clean pocket handkerchiefs. But when a sensible
+person has got something at stake, she puts up with things. And that's
+what you must do. He who wants fresh eggs must raise his own chickens,
+you know."
+
+Aunt Bridget ran on for some time longer, telling me of my father's
+anger, which was not a matter for much surprise, seeing how he had built
+himself upon my marriage, and how he had expected that I should have a
+child, a son, to carry on the family.
+
+"Do you mean to disappoint him after all he has done for you? It would
+be too silly, too stupid. You'd be the laughing-stock of the whole
+island. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to go with
+his lordship when he sails by this afternoon's steamer."
+
+"I can't," I said.
+
+"You can't? You mean you won't?"
+
+"Very well, Auntie, I won't."
+
+At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling me that
+if my stubborn determination not to leave the island with my husband
+meant that I intended to return home she might inform me at once that I
+was not wanted there and I need not come.
+
+"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsy
+unmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty Nessy
+MacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are ruining
+everything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter! If you
+_will_ make your bed I shall take care that you lie on it."
+
+With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing over her
+angry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room.
+
+Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I found my
+father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked down at me with
+an indulgent and significant smile, which brought the colour rushing
+back to my face, put me to sit by his side, touched my arm with one of
+his large white clammy hands, stroked his long brown beard with the
+other, and then in the half-reproving tone which a Sunday-school teacher
+might have used to a wayward child, he began to tell me what the
+consequences would be if I persisted in my present conduct.
+
+They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights. If a
+wife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of cruelty or
+something equally plausible, he could apply to the court and compel her
+to do so; and if she declined, if she removed herself from his abode, or
+having removed, refused to return, the Court might punish her--it might
+even imprison her.
+
+"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my dear, and he
+can compel the woman to obey him."
+
+"Do you mean," I said, "that he can use force to compel her?"
+
+"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too, when
+you come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious contract,
+and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills the conditions of
+it."
+
+I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the contract I
+had entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed to say anything
+about that.
+
+"Aw yes, that's so," said the advocate, "force, reasonable force! You
+may say it puts a woman in a worse position as a wife than she would be
+if she were a mistress. That's true, but it's the law, and once a woman
+has married a man, the only escape from this condition of submission is
+imprisonment."
+
+"Then I would rather that--a thousand times rather," I said, for I was
+hot with anger and indignation.
+
+Again the advocate smiled indulgently, patted my arm, and answered me as
+if I were a child.
+
+"Tut, tut, my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded on
+suitability of position, property and education, and everything will
+come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and so
+destroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of your
+father. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell you
+that he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge your husband's debts
+and undertaken responsibility for an allowance of six thousand a year
+beside. Do you want him to lose all that money?"
+
+I was so sick with disgust at hearing this that I could not speak, and
+the advocate, who, in his different way, was as dead to my real feelings
+as my husband had been, went on to say:
+
+"Come, be reasonable. You may have suffered some slight, some indignity.
+No doubt you have. Your husband is proud and he has peculiarities of
+temper which we have all to make allowances for. But even if you could
+establish a charge of cruelty against him and so secure a
+separation--which you can't--what good would that do you? None at
+all--worse than none! The financial arrangements would remain the same.
+Your father would be a frightful loser. And what would you be? A married
+widow! The worst condition in the world for a woman--especially if she
+is young and attractive, and subject to temptations. Ask anybody who
+knows--anybody."
+
+I felt as if I would suffocate with shame.
+
+"Come now," said the advocate in his superior way, taking my hand as if
+he were going to lead me like a child to my husband, "let us put an end
+to this little trouble. His lordship is downstairs and he has
+consented--kindly and generously consented--to wait an hour for your
+answer. But he must leave the island by the afternoon steamer, and
+if. . . ."
+
+"Then tell him he must leave it without me," I said, as well as I could
+for the anger that was choking me.
+
+The advocate looked steadily into my face. I think he understood the
+situation at last.
+
+"You mean that--really and truly mean it?" he asked.
+
+"I do," I answered, and unable to say or hear any more without breaking
+out on him altogether I left the room.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Down to this moment I had put on a brave front though my very heart had
+been trembling; but now I felt that all the weight of law, custom,
+parental authority and even religion was bearing me down, down, down,
+and unless help came I must submit in the long run.
+
+I was back in the small bedroom, with my hot forehead against the cold
+glass of the window, looking out yet seeing nothing, when somebody
+knocked at the door, softly almost timidly. It was Father Dan, and the
+sight of his dear face, broken up with emotion, was the same to me as
+the last plank of a foundering ship to a sailor drowning at sea.
+
+My heart was so full that, though I knew I ought not, I threw my arms
+about his neck and burst into a flood of tears. The good old priest did
+not put me away. He smoothed my drooping head and patted my shoulders
+and in his sweet and simple way he tried to comfort me.
+
+"Don't cry! Don't worry! It will be all right in the end, my child."
+
+There was something almost grotesque in his appearance. Under his soft
+clerical outdoor hat he was wearing his faded old cassock, as if he had
+come away hurriedly at a sudden call. I could see what had happened--my
+family had sent him to reprove me and remonstrate with me.
+
+He sat on a chair by my bed and I knelt on the floor at his feet, just
+as my mother used to do when I was a child and she was making her
+confession. Perhaps he thought of that at the same moment as myself, for
+the golden light of my mother's memory lay always about him. For some
+moments we did not speak. I think we were both weeping.
+
+At length I tried to tell him what had happened--hiding nothing,
+softening nothing, speaking the simple and naked truth. I found it
+impossible to do so. My odd-sounding voice was not like my own, and even
+my words seemed to be somebody else's. But Father Dan understood
+everything.
+
+"I know! I know!" he said, and then, to my great relief, interrupting my
+halting explanations, he gave his own interpretation of my husband's
+letter.
+
+There was a higher love and there was a lower love and both were
+necessary to God's plans and purposes. But the higher love must come
+first, or else the lower one would seem to be cruel and gross and
+against nature.
+
+Nature was kind to a young girl. Left to itself it awakened her sex very
+gently. First with love, which came to her like a whisper in a dream,
+like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so that when she
+awoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did not startle or appal
+her.
+
+But sex in me had been awakened rudely and ruthlessly. Married without
+love I had been suddenly confronted by the lower passion. What wonder
+that I had found it brutal and barbarous?
+
+"That's it, my child! That's it! I know! I know!"
+
+Then he began to blame himself for everything, saying it was all his
+fault and that he should have held out longer. When he saw how things
+stood between me and my husband he should have said to my father, to the
+Bishop, and to the lawyers, notwithstanding all their bargainings: "This
+marriage must not go on. It will lead to disaster. It begins to end
+badly."
+
+"But now it is all over, my child, and there's no help for it."
+
+I think the real strength of my resistance to Aunt Bridget's coarse
+ridicule and the advocate's callous remonstrance must have been the
+memory of my husband's threat when he talked about the possible
+annulment of our marriage. The thought of that came back to me now, and
+half afraid, half ashamed, with a fluttering of the heart, I tried to
+mention it.
+
+"Is there no way out?" I asked.
+
+"What way can there be?" said Father Dan. "God knows I know what
+pressure was put upon you; but you are married, you have made your vows,
+you have given your promises. That's all the world sees or cares about,
+and in the eyes of the law and the Church you are responsible for all
+that has happened."
+
+With my head still buried in Father Dan's cassock I got it out at last.
+
+"But annulment! Isn't that possible--under the circumstances?" I asked.
+
+The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a moment.
+Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of the question.
+
+"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have not been
+annulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case the civil law
+would require proof--something to justify nullity. Failing that there
+would have to be collusion either on one side or both, and that is not
+possible--not to you, my child, not to the daughter of your mother, that
+dear saint who suffered so long and was silent."
+
+More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last plank
+sinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband was creeping
+back, and the future of my life with him stood before me with startling
+vividness. In spite of all my struggling and fighting of the night
+before I saw myself that very night, the next night, and the next, and
+every night and day of my life thereafter, a victim of the same
+sickening terror.
+
+"Must I submit, then?" I said.
+
+Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice that
+submission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in the
+history of the world, and perhaps it always would be.
+
+"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning: 'Wives submit
+yourselves to your husbands.'"
+
+With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I ought to
+go away with my husband when he left the island by the afternoon
+steamer.
+
+"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove you. I
+can't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It would be
+wrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into further trouble."
+
+My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say:
+
+"Then you can hold out no hope for me?"
+
+"God knows I can't."
+
+"Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his wife?"
+
+"It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for it."
+
+I rose to my feet, and went back to the window. A wild impulse of
+rebellion was coming over me.
+
+"I shall feel like a bad woman," I said.
+
+"Don't say that," said Father Dan. "You are married to the man anyway."
+
+"All the same I shall feel like my husband's mistress--his married
+mistress, his harlot."
+
+Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my mouth I
+was more frightened than I had ever been before, for something within
+seemed to have forced them out of me.
+
+When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously fumbling
+with the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was talking of the
+supernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage. It was God Who joined
+people together, and whom God joined together no man might put asunder.
+No circumstances either, no trial or tribulation. Could it be thought
+that a bond so sacred, so indissoluble, was ever made without good
+effect? No, the Almighty had His own ways with His children, and this
+great mystery of holy wedlock was one of them.
+
+"So don't lose heart, my child. Who knows what may happen yet? God works
+miracles now just as He did in the old days. You may come . . . yes, you
+may come to love your husband, and then--then all will be well."
+
+Suddenly out of my despair and my defiance a new thought came to me. It
+came with the memory of the emotion I had experienced during the
+marriage service, and it thrilled me through and through.
+
+"Father Dan?" I said, with a nervous cry, for my heart was fluttering
+again.
+
+"What is it, my child?"
+
+It was hard to say what I was thinking about, but with a great effort I
+stammered it out at last. I should be willing to leave the island with
+my husband, and live under the same roof with him, and bear his name, so
+that there might be no trouble, or scandal, and nobody except ourselves
+might ever know that there was anything dividing us, any difference of
+any kind between us, if he, on his part, would promise--firmly and
+faithfully promise--that unless and until I came to love him he would
+never claim my submission as a wife.
+
+While I spoke I hardly dared to look at Father Dan, fearing he would
+shake his head again, perhaps reprove me, perhaps laugh at me. But his
+eyes which had been moist began to sparkle and smile.
+
+"You mean that?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will go away with him on that condition?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Then he must agree to it."
+
+The pure-minded old priest saw no difficulties, no dangers, no risks of
+breakdown in my girlish scheme. Already my husband had got all he had
+bargained for. He had got my father's money in exchange for his noble
+name, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of his wife, let him
+earn it, let him win it.
+
+"That's only right, only fair. It will be worth winning, too--better
+worth winning than all your father's gold and silver ten times over. I
+can tell him that much anyway."
+
+He had risen to his feet in his excitement, the simple old priest with
+his pure heart and his beautiful faith in me.
+
+"And you, my child, you'll try to love him in return--promise you will."
+
+A shiver ran through me when Father Dan said that--a sense of the
+repugnance I felt for my husband almost stifled me.
+
+"Promise me," said Father Dan, and though my face must have been
+scarlet, I promised him.
+
+"That's right. That alone will make him a better man. He may be all that
+people say, but who can measure the miraculous influence of a good
+woman?"
+
+He was making for the door.
+
+"I must go downstairs now and speak to your husband. But he'll agree.
+Why shouldn't he? I know he's afraid of a public scandal, and if he
+attempts to refuse I'll tell him that. . . . But no, that will be quite
+unnecessary. Good-bye, my child! If I don't come back you'll know that
+everything has been settled satisfactorily. You'll be happy yet. I'm
+sure you will. Ah, what did I say about the mysterious power of that
+solemn and sacred sacrament? Good-bye!"
+
+I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God knows I
+did. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven alone the
+judge of it?
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for England. I went
+with him.
+
+
+
+
+FORTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of it. I
+had faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I prepared to do
+so.
+
+Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect and even
+reverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do that by
+shutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing only his
+better qualities.
+
+What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and humiliating
+disillusionments!
+
+On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable hotel
+in a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is inhabited
+chiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons. Here, to my
+surprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of visitors waited
+upon my husband the following morning.
+
+I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt of pride
+came to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my husband must be
+a man of some importance in the metropolis.
+
+But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and bookmakers,
+to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been unable or unwilling
+to disclose to my father and his advocate.
+
+One of my husband's visitors was a pertinacious little man who came
+early and stayed late. He was a solicitor, and my husband was obviously
+in some fear of him. The interviews between them, while they were
+closeted together morning after morning in one of our two sitting-rooms,
+were long and apparently unpleasant, for more than once I caught the
+sound of angry words on both sides, with oaths and heavy blows upon the
+table.
+
+But towards the end of the week, my husband's lawyer arrived in London,
+and after that the conversations became more pacific.
+
+One morning, as I sat writing a letter in the adjoining room, I heard
+laughter, the popping of corks, the jingling of glasses, and the
+drinking of healths, and I judged that the, difficult and disagreeable
+business had been concluded.
+
+At the close of the interview I heard the door opened and my husband
+going into the outer corridor to see his visitors to the lift, and then
+something prompted me--God alone knows what--to step into the room they
+had just vacated.
+
+It was thick with tobacco smoke. An empty bottle of champagne (with
+three empty wine glasses) was on the table, and on a desk by the window
+were various papers, including a sheet of foolscap which bore a seal and
+several signatures, and a thick packet of old letters bound together
+with a piece of purple ribbon.
+
+Hardly had I had time to recognise these documents when my husband
+returned to the room, and by the dark expression of his face I saw
+instantly that he thought I had looked at them.
+
+"No matter!" he said, without any preamble. "I might as well tell you at
+once and have done with it."
+
+He told me. The letters were his. They had been written to a woman whom
+he had promised to marry, and he had had to buy them back from her.
+Although for three years he had spent a fortune on the creature she had
+shown him no mercy. Through her solicitor, who was a scoundrel, she had
+threatened him, saying in plain words that if he married anybody else
+she would take proceedings against him immediately. That was why, in
+spite of the storm, we had to come up to London on the day after our
+wedding.
+
+"Now you know," said my husband. "Look here" (holding out the sheet of
+foolscap), "five thousand pounds--that's the price I've had to pay for
+marrying."
+
+I can give no idea of the proud imperiousness and the impression of
+injury with which my husband told his brutal story. But neither can I
+convey a sense of the crushing shame with which I listened to it. There
+was not a hint of any consciousness on his part of my side of the case.
+Not a suggestion of the clear fact that the woman he had promised to
+marry had been paid off by money which had come through me. Not a
+thought of the humiliation he had imposed upon his wife in dragging her
+up to London at the demand of his cast-off mistress.
+
+When my husband had finished speaking I could not utter a word. I was
+afraid that my voice would betray the anger that was boiling in me. But
+I was also degraded to the very dust in my own eyes, and to prevent an
+outburst of hysterical tears I ran back to my room and hid my face in my
+pillow.
+
+What was the good of trying to make myself in love with a man who was
+separated from me by a moral chasm that could never be passed? What was
+the good? What was the good?
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+But next morning, having had time to think things out in my simple and
+ignorant way, I tried to reconcile myself to my position. Remembering
+what Aunt Bridget had said, both before my marriage and after it, about
+the different moralities of men and women, I told myself I had placed my
+standard too high.
+
+Perhaps a husband was not a superior being, to be regarded with respect
+and reverence, but a sort of grown-up child whom it was the duty of a
+wife to comfort, coax, submit to and serve.
+
+I determined to do this. Still clinging to the hope of falling in love
+with my husband, I set myself to please him by every means within my
+power, even to the length of simulating sentiments which I did not feel.
+
+But what a task I was setting myself! What a steep and stony Calvary I
+was attempting to climb!
+
+After the degrading business with the other woman had been concluded I
+thought we should have left England immediately on the honeymoon tour
+which my husband had mapped out for us, but he told me that would not be
+convenient and we must remain in London a little longer. We stayed six
+weeks altogether, and never did a young wife pass a more cheerless and
+weary time.
+
+I had no friends of my own within reach, and to my deep if secret
+mortification no woman of my husband's circle called upon me. But a few
+of his male friends were constantly with us, including Mr. Eastcliff,
+who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, though
+the brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapid
+person, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an
+abrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave
+the impression of screeching against the wind.
+
+With these two men, and others of a similar kind, we passed many hours
+of nearly every day, lunching with them, dining with them, walking with
+them, driving with them, and above all playing bridge with them in one
+of our sitting rooms in the hotel.
+
+I knew nothing of the game to begin with, never having touched a card in
+my life, but in accordance with the theories which I believed to be
+right and the duties I had imposed upon myself, I took a hand with my
+husband when he could find nobody better to be his partner.
+
+The results were very disheartening. In spite of my desire to please I
+was slow to learn, and my husband's impatience with my mistakes, which
+confused and intimidated me, led to some painful humiliations. First he
+laughed, next he sneered, then he snapped me up in the midst of my
+explanations and apologies, and finally, at a moment of loss, he broke
+out on me with brutal derision, saying he had never had much opinion of
+my intellect, but was now quite sure that I had no more brains than a
+rabbit and could not say Boo to a goose.
+
+One day when we were alone, and he was lying on the couch with his
+vicious little terrier by his side, I offered to sing to him.
+Remembering how my voice had been praised, I thought it would be
+pleasant to my husband to see that there was something I really could
+do. But nine years in a convent had left me with next to no music but
+memories of the long-breathed harmonies of some of the beautiful masses
+of our Church, and hardly had I begun on these when my husband cried:
+
+"Oh, stop, stop, for heaven's sake stop, or I shall think we're
+attending a funeral."
+
+Another day I offered to read to him. The Reverend Mother used to say I
+was the best reader she had ever heard, but perhaps it was not
+altogether my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion. And
+indeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would have
+laughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and intonation
+which I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis of Assisi, the
+mystic allusions to "certs," and "bookies," and "punters," and "evens,"
+and "scratchings," which formed the substance of the sporting journals
+that were my husband's only literature.
+
+"Oh, stop it, stop it," he cried again. "You read the 'Winning Post' as
+if it were the Book of Revelation."
+
+As time passed the gulf that separated me from my husband became still
+greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip we
+might have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him,
+and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He loved
+the town; I loved the country; he loved the night and the blaze of
+electric lights; I loved the morning and the sweetness of the sun.
+
+At the bottom of my heart I knew that his mind was common, low and
+narrow, and that his tastes were gross and vulgar, but I was determined
+to conquer the repulsion I felt for him.
+
+It was impossible. If I could have struck one spark from the flint of
+his heart the relations between us might have been different. If his
+look could have met my look in a single glance of understanding I could
+have borne with his impatience and struggled on.
+
+But nothing of this kind ever happened, and when one dreary night after
+grumbling at the servants, cursing his fate and abusing everybody and
+everything, he put on his hat and went out saying he had "better have
+married Lena [the other woman] after all," for in that case he would
+have had "some sort of society anyway," the revulsion I had felt on the
+night of my marriage came sweeping over me like a wave of the sea, and I
+asked myself again, "What's the good? What's the good?"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+Nevertheless next day I found myself taking my husband's side against
+myself.
+
+If he had sacrificed anything in order to marry me it was my duty to
+make it up to him.
+
+I resolved that I _should_ make it up to him. I would study my husband's
+likes and dislikes in every little thing. I would share in his pleasures
+and enter into his life. I would show him that a wife was something
+other and better than any hired woman in the world, and that when she
+cast in her lot with her husband it was for his own sake only and not
+for any fortune he could spend on her.
+
+"Yes, yes, that's what I'll do," I thought, and I became more solicitous
+of my husband's happiness than if I had really and truly loved him.
+
+A woman would smile at the efforts which I made in my inexperience to
+make my husband forget his cast-off mistress, and indeed some of them
+were very childish.
+
+The first was a ridiculous failure.
+
+My husband's birthday was approaching and I wished to make him a
+present. It was difficult to know what to select, for I knew little or
+nothing of his tastes or wants; but walking one day in a street off
+Oxford Street I saw, in the window of a shop for the sale of objects of
+ecclesiastical _vertu_, among crosses and crucifixes and rosaries, a
+little ivory ink-stand and paper-holder, which was surmounted by a
+figure of the Virgin.
+
+I cannot for the life of me conceive why I thought this would be a
+suitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady was so
+young, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine that it
+seemed impossible that any man in the world should not love her. But
+however that might be I bought her, and carrying her home in a cab, I
+set her on my husband's desk without a word, and then stood by, like the
+mother of Moses, to watch the result.
+
+There was no result--at first at all events. My husband was several
+hours in the room with my treasure without appearing to be aware of its
+presence. But towards evening his two principal friends came to play
+bridge with him, and then, from the ambush of my own apartments, I heard
+the screechy voice of Mr. Vivian saying:
+
+"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a Pape?"
+
+"Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's my wife's
+little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest to
+make me a 'vert.'"
+
+My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly more
+successful.
+
+Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely without a
+rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room with
+them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early,
+before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to Covent
+Garden, through the empty and echoing streets, while the air of London
+was fresh with the breath of morning and the big city within its
+high-built walls seemed to dream of the green fields beyond.
+
+I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were rolling
+in from the country with huge crates of red and white roses, bright with
+the sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then buying the largest and
+loveliest and costliest bunch of them (a great armful, as much as I
+could hold), I hurried back to the hotel and set them in vases and
+glasses in every part of my husband's room--his desk, his sideboard, his
+mantelpiece, and above all his table, which a waiter was laying for
+breakfast--until the whole place was like a bridal bower.
+
+"Ah, this is something like," I heard my husband say as he came out of
+his bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious terrier at his
+heels.
+
+I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while drawing
+on his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter, who was
+clearing the table,
+
+"Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming flowers
+with which she has decorated my room this morning."
+
+"But it wasn't the manageress, my lord," said the waiter.
+
+"Then who was it?"
+
+"It was her . . . her ladyship," said the waiter.
+
+"O-oh!" said my husband in a softer, if more insinuating tone, and a few
+minutes afterwards he went out whistling.
+
+God knows that was small reward for the trouble I had taken, but I was
+so uplifted by the success of my experiment that I determined to go
+farther, and when towards evening of the same day a group of my
+husband's friends came to tell him that they had booked a box at a
+well-known musical comedy theatre, I begged to be permitted to join
+them.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear! Brompton Oratory would suit you better," said my
+husband, chucking me under the chin.
+
+But I persisted in my importunities, and at length Mr. Eastcliff said:
+
+"Let her come. Why shouldn't she?"
+
+"Very well," said my husband, pinching my cheek. "As you please. But if
+you don't like it don't blame _me_."
+
+It did not escape me that as a result of my change of front my husband
+had risen in his own esteem, and that he was behaving towards me as one
+who thought he had conquered my first repugnance, or perhaps
+triumphantly ridden over it. But in my simplicity I was so fixed in my
+determination to make my husband forget the loss of his mistress that I
+had no fear of his familiarities and no misgivings about his mistakes.
+
+All that was to come later, with a fresh access of revulsion and
+disgust.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I had seen enough of London by this time to know that the dresses which
+had been made for me at home were by no means the _mode_; but after I
+had put on the best-fitting of my simple quaker-like costumes with a
+string of the family pearls about my neck and another about my head, not
+all the teaching of the good women of the convent could prevent me from
+thinking that my husband and his friends would have no reason to be
+ashamed of me.
+
+We were a party of six in all, whereof I was the only woman, and we
+occupied a large box on the first tier near the stage, a position of
+prominence which caused me a certain embarrassment, when, as happened
+at one moment of indefinable misery, the opera glasses of the people in
+the dress-circle and stalls were turned in our direction.
+
+I cannot say that the theatre impressed me. Certainly the building
+itself did not do so, although it was beautifully decorated in white and
+gold, for I had seen the churches of Rome, and in my eyes they were much
+more gorgeous.
+
+Neither did the audience impress me, for though I had never before seen
+so many well-dressed people in one place, I thought too many of the men,
+when past middle life, seemed fat and overfed, and too many of the
+women, with their plump arms and bare shoulders, looked as if they
+thought of nothing but what to eat and what to put on.
+
+Nor did the performers impress me, for though when the curtain rose,
+disclosing the stage full of people, chiefly girls, in delicate and
+beautiful toilettes, I thought I had never before seen so many lovely
+and happy faces, after a while, when the faces fell into repose, I
+thought they were not really lovely and not really happy, but hard and
+strained and painful, as if life had been very cruel.
+
+And, above all, I was not impressed by the play, for I thought, in my
+ignorance of such productions, that I had never heard anything so
+frivolous and foolish, and more than once I found myself wondering
+whether my good nuns, if they could have been present, would not have
+concluded that the whole company had taken leave of their senses.
+
+There was, however, one thing which did impress me, and that was the
+leading actor. It was a woman, and when she first came on to the stage I
+thought I had never in my life seen anybody so beautiful, with her
+lovely soft round figure, her black eyes, her red lips, her pearly white
+teeth, and a smile so sunny that it had the effect of making everybody
+in the audience smile with her.
+
+But the strange thing was--I could not account for it--that after a few
+minutes I thought her extremely ugly and repellent, for her face seemed
+to be distorted by malice and envy and hatred and nearly every other bad
+passion.
+
+Nevertheless she was a general favourite, for not only was she applauded
+before she did anything, but everything she said, though it was
+sometimes very silly, was accompanied by a great deal of laughter, and
+everything she sang, though her voice was no great matter, was followed
+by a chorus of applause.
+
+Seeing this, and feeling that her appearance had caused a flutter of
+interest in the box behind me, I laughed and applauded also, in
+accordance with the plan I had prepared for myself, of sharing my
+husband's pleasures and entering into his life, although at the bottom
+of my heart I really thought the joy was not very joyful or the mirth
+very merry.
+
+This went on for nearly an hour, and then a strange thing happened. I
+was leaning forward on the velvet barrier of the box in front of me,
+laughing and clapping my hands with the rest, when all at once I became
+aware that the lady had wheeled about, and, walking down the stage in
+the direction of our box, was looking boldly back at me.
+
+I could not at first believe it to be so, and even now I cannot say
+whether it was something in her face, or something whispered at my back
+which flashed it upon my mind that this was the woman my husband ought
+to have married, the woman whose place I had taken, the woman of the
+foolscap document and the letters in the purple ribbon.
+
+After that I could play my poor little part no longer, and though I
+continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me I
+dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped and
+prayed for the end of the performance.
+
+It came at length with a crash of instruments and voices, and a few
+minutes afterwards my husband and I were in the cab on our way back to
+the hotel.
+
+I was choking with mingled anger and shame--anger at my husband for
+permitting me to come to a place in which I could be exposed to a public
+affront from his cast-off mistress, shame at the memory of the pitiful
+scheme for entering into his life which had fallen to such a welter of
+wreck and ruin.
+
+But my husband himself was only choking with laughter.
+
+"It was as good as a play," he said. "Upon my soul it was! I never saw
+anything funnier in the whole course of my life."
+
+That served him, repeated again and again, until we reached the hotel,
+when he ordered a bottle of wine to be sent upstairs, and then shook
+with suppressed laughter as we went up in the lift.
+
+Coming to our floor I turned towards my bedroom, wishing to be alone
+with my outraged feelings, but my husband drew me into one of our
+sitting-rooms, telling me he had something to say.
+
+He put me to sit in an arm-chair, threw off his overcoat, lit a
+cigarette, as well as he could for the spurts and gusts of his laughter,
+and then, standing back to the fire-place, with one hand in his pocket
+and his coat-tail over his arm, he told me the cause of his merriment.
+
+"I don't mind telling you that was Lena," he said. "The good-looking
+girl in the scarlet dress and the big diamonds. She spotted me the
+moment she stepped on to the stage. Must have guessed who you were, too.
+Did you see how she looked at you? Thought I had brought you there to
+walk over her. I'm sure she did!"
+
+There was another gust of laughter and then--
+
+"She'd been going about saying I had married an old frump for the sake
+of her fortune, and when she saw that you could wipe her off the face of
+the earth without a gown that was worth wearing, she was ready to die
+with fury."
+
+There was another gust of laughter through the smoke that was spurting
+from his mouth and then--
+
+"And you, too, my dear! Laughing and applauding! She thought you were
+trying to crow over her! On her own particular barn-door, too! Upon my
+soul, it was too amusing. I wonder she didn't throw something at you.
+She's like that when she's in her tantrums."
+
+The waiter came in with the wine and my husband poured out a glass for
+me.
+
+"Have a drink. No? Well, here's to your health, my dear. I can't get
+over it. I really can't. Lena's too funny for anything. Why, what else
+do you think she's been saying? She's been saying I'll come back to her
+yet. Yes, 'I'll give him six months to come crawling back to me,' she
+said to Eastcliff and Vivian and some of the other fellows at the Club.
+Wonder if she thinks so now? . . . I wonder?"
+
+He threw away his cigarette, drank another glass of the wine, came close
+up to me and said in a lower tone, which made my skin creep as with
+cold.
+
+"Whether she's right or wrong depends on you, though."
+
+"On me?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course. That's only natural. One may have all the goodwill
+in the world, but a man's a man, you know."
+
+I felt my lips quivering with anger, and in an effort to control myself
+I rose to go, but my husband drew me back into my chair and sat on the
+arm of it.
+
+"Don't go yet. By the way, dear, I've never thanked you for the
+beautiful flowers with which you decorated my room this morning.
+Charming! But I always knew you would soon come round to it."
+
+"Come round to what?" I said, but it was just as if somebody else were
+speaking.
+
+"_You_ know. Of course you know. When that simple old priest proposed
+that ridiculous compact I agreed, but I knew quite well that it would
+soon break down. Not on my side, though. Why should it? A man can afford
+to wait. But I felt sure you would soon tire of your resistance. And you
+have, haven't you? Oh, I'm not blind. I've seen what's been going on,
+though I've said nothing about it."
+
+Again I tried to rise, and again my husband held me to my seat, saying:
+
+"Don't be ashamed. There's no reason for that. You were rather hard on
+me, you know, but I'm going to forget all about it. Why shouldn't I?
+I've got the loveliest little woman in the world, so I mean to meet her
+half way, and she's going to get over her convent-bred ideas and be my
+dear little darling wife. Now isn't she?"
+
+I could have died of confusion and the utter degradation of shame. To
+think that my poor efforts to please him, my vain attempts to look up to
+him and reverence him, my bankrupt appeals to the spiritual woman in me
+that I might bring myself to love him, as I thought it was my duty to
+do, should have been perverted by his gross and vulgar mind into
+overtures to the animal man in him--this was more than I could bear. I
+felt the tears gushing to my eyes, but I kept them back, for my
+self-pity was not so strong as my wrath.
+
+I rose this time without being aware of his resistance.
+
+"Let me go to bed," I said.
+
+"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . ."
+
+"Let me go to bed," I said again, and at the next moment I stepped into
+my room.
+
+He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what was
+taking place behind me.
+
+My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first of
+amazement and then of rage.
+
+"I can't understand you," he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There isn't a
+man in the world who could." After that he strode into his own bedroom
+and clashed the door after him.
+
+"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again.
+
+It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was no use
+trying.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to read the
+deep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came to pass that
+the only result of this incident was to make me sure that if we remained
+in London much longer my husband would go back to the other woman, and
+to say why (seeing that I did not love him) I should have become
+feverishly anxious to remove him from the range of this temptation.
+
+Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father saying I
+had been unwell and begging him to use his influence with my husband to
+set out on the Egyptian trip without further delay.
+
+My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the lines of my
+letter I do not know; what he said was this--
+
+     "Daughter--Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling him to
+     quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there already. And
+     while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as much as you
+     please, for where it is a matter of money you must never let nobody
+     walk over you.
+
+     Yours--&c."
+
+The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Within
+twenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about trains
+and berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way to
+Marseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port Said.
+
+Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with a
+passage-way between them. This admitted of entirely separate existences,
+which was well, for knowing or guessing my share in our altered
+arrangements, my husband had become even more morose than before, and no
+conversation could be sustained between us.
+
+He spent the greater part of his time in his state-room, grumbling at
+the steward, abusing his valet, beating his bad-tempered terrier and
+cursing the luck that had brought him on this senseless voyage.
+
+More than ever now I felt the gulf that divided us. I could not pass one
+single hour with him in comfort. My life was becoming as cold as an
+empty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness with which I
+had removed my husband from a scene in which he had at least lived the
+life of a rational creature, when an unexpected event brought me a
+thrill of passing pleasure.
+
+Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table, and the
+doctor himself was a young Irishman of three or four-and-twenty, as
+bright and breezy as a March morning and as racy of the soil as new-cut
+peat.
+
+Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by chance I
+knew Martin Conrad.
+
+"Martin Conrad?" I repeated, feeling (I hardly knew why) as if a rosy
+veil were falling over my face and neck.
+
+"Yes, Mart Conrad, as we call him. The young man who has gone out as
+doctor with Lieutenant ----'s expedition to the South Pole?"
+
+A wave of tender feeling from my childhood came surging up to my throat
+and I said:
+
+"He was the first of my boy friends--in fact the only one."
+
+The young doctor's eyes sparkled and he looked as if he wanted to throw
+down his soup-spoon, jump up, and grasp me by both hands.
+
+"God bless me, is that so?" he said.
+
+It turned out that Martin and he had been friends at Dublin University.
+They had worked together, "roomed" together, and taken their degrees at
+the same time.
+
+"So you know Mart? Lord alive, the way things come out!"
+
+It was easy to see that Martin was not only his friend but his hero. He
+talked of him with a passionate love and admiration with which men,
+whatever they feel, rarely speak of each other.
+
+Martin was the salt of the earth. He was the finest fellow and the
+staunchest friend and the bravest-hearted chap that walked under the
+stars of God.
+
+"The greatest chum I have in the world, too, and by the holy Immaculate
+Mother I'm destroyed at being away from him."
+
+It was like music to hear him speak. A flood of joy went sweeping
+through me at every word of praise he gave to Martin. And yet--I cannot
+explain why, unless it was the woman in me, the Irish-woman, or
+something like it--but I began to depreciate Martin, in order to "hoosh"
+him on, so that he might say more on the same subject.
+
+"Then he _did_ take his degree," I said. "He was never very clever at
+his lessons, I remember, and I heard that he was only just able to
+scrape through his examinations."
+
+The young doctor fell to my bait like a darling. With a flaming face and
+a nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I closed my
+eyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome talking to
+Martin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought his friend was a
+numskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in College Green," and
+the way he could learn things when he wanted to was wonderful.
+
+He might be a bit shaky in his spelling, and perhaps he couldn't lick
+the world in Latin, but his heart was always in exploring, and the way
+he knew geography, especially the part of it they call the "Unknown,"
+the Arctic, and the Antarctic, and what Charcot had done there, and
+Biscoe and Bellamy and D'Urville and Greely and Nansen and Shackleton
+and Peary, was enough to make the provost and professors look like fools
+of the earth by the side of him.
+
+"Why, what do you think?" said the doctor. "When he went to London to
+apply for his billet, the Lieutenant said to him: 'You must have been
+down there before, young man.' 'No such luck,' said Martin. 'But you
+know as much about the Antarctic already as the whole boiling of us put
+together,' said the Lieutenant. Yes, by St. Patrick and St. Thomas, he's
+a geographer any way."
+
+I admitted that much, and to encourage the doctor to go on I told him
+where I had seen Martin last, and what he had said of his expedition.
+
+"In Rome you say?" said the doctor, with a note of jealousy. "You beat
+me there then. I saw him off from London, though. A few of us Dublin
+boys, being in town at the time, went down to Tilbury to see him sail,
+and when they were lifting anchor and the tug was hitching on, we stood
+on the pier--sixteen strong--and set up some of our college songs. 'Stop
+your noising, boys,' said he, 'the Lieutenant will be hearing you.' But
+not a bit of it. We sang away as long as we could see him going out with
+the tide, and then we went back in the train, smoking our pipes like so
+many Vauxhall chimneys, and narra a word out of the one of us. . . .
+Yes, yes, there are some men like that. They come like the stars of
+night and go like the light of heaven. Same as there are some women who
+walk the world like the sun, and leave the grass growing green wherever
+their feet have trod."
+
+It was very ridiculous, I did not then understand why it should be so,
+but the tears came gushing into my eyes while the doctor spoke, and it
+was as much as I could do to preserve my composure.
+
+What interpretation my husband put upon my emotion I do not know, but I
+saw that his face darkened, and when the doctor turned to him to ask if
+he also knew Martin he answered curtly and brusquely,
+
+"Not I. No loss either, I should say."
+
+"No loss?" said the doctor. "Show me the man under the stars of God
+that's fit to hold a candle to Martin Conrad, and by the angel Gabriel
+I'll go fifty miles out of my way to put a sight on him."
+
+More than ever after this talk about Martin Conrad I was feeling
+defenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims, when
+something happened which seemed to change his character altogether.
+
+The third day out, on a bright and quiet morning, we called at Malta,
+and while my husband went ashore to visit some friends in the garrison,
+I sat on deck watching the life of the little port and looking at the
+big warships anchored in the bay.
+
+A Maltese woman came on board to sell souvenirs of the island, and
+picking out of her tray a tiny twisted thing in coral, I asked what it
+was.
+
+"That's a charm, my lady," said the woman.
+
+"A charm for what?"
+
+"To make my lady's husband love her."
+
+I felt my face becoming crimson, but my heart was sore, so in my
+simplicity I bought the charm and was smuggling it into my bag when I
+became aware that one of my fellow-passengers, a lady, was looking down
+at me.
+
+She was a tall, singularly handsome woman, fashionably and (although on
+shipboard) almost sumptuously dressed. A look in her face was haunting
+me with a memory I could not fix when she stooped and said:
+
+"Aren't you Mary O'Neill?"
+
+The voice completed the identification, and I knew who it was. It was
+Alma Lier.
+
+She was now about seven-and-twenty and in the prime of her young
+womanhood. Her beautiful auburn hair lay low over her broad forehead,
+almost descending to her long sable-coloured eyebrows. Her cheeks were
+very white, (rather beyond the whiteness of nature, I thought), and her
+lips were more than commonly red, with the upper one a little thin and
+the lower slightly set forward. But her eyes were still her
+distinguishing feature, being larger and blacker than before and having
+that vivid gaze that looked through and through you and made you feel
+that few women and no man in the world would have the power to resist
+her.
+
+Her movements were almost noiseless, and as she sank into the chair by
+my side there was a certain over-sweetness in the soft succulent tones
+of the voice with which she began to tell me what had happened to her
+since I had seen her last.
+
+It was a rather painful story. After two or three years in a girls'
+college in her own country she had set out with her mother for a long
+tour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was falsely called a
+Charity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count who was understood to be
+rich and related to one of the Grand Ducal families. Against the
+protests of her father (a shrewd American banker), she had married the
+Count, and they had returned to New York, where her mother had social
+ambitions.
+
+There they had suffered a serious shock. It turned out that her husband
+had deceived them, and that he was really a poor and quite nameless
+person, only remotely related to the family he claimed to belong to.
+
+Nevertheless Alma had "won out" at last. By digging deep into her
+father's treasury she got rid of her treacherous husband, and going "way
+out west," she had been able, in due time, to divorce him.
+
+Since then she had resumed her family name, being known as Madame Lier,
+and now she was on her way to Egypt to spend the season at Cairo.
+
+"And you?" she said. "You stayed long at the convent--yes?"
+
+I answered that I had, and then in my fluttering voice (for some of the
+old spell of her presence had come sweeping back upon me) I replied one
+by one to the questions she asked about the Reverend Mother, the
+"Reverend Mother Mildred," Sister Angela and Father Giovanni, not to
+speak of myself, whom she had always thought of as "Margaret Mary"
+because I had looked so innocent and nun-like.
+
+"And now you are married!" she said. "Married so splendidly, too! We
+heard all about it. Mother was so interested. What a lucky girl you are!
+Everybody says your husband is so handsome and charming. He is, isn't
+he?"
+
+I was doing my utmost to put the best face upon my condition without
+betraying the facts or simulating sentiments which I could not feel,
+when a boat from the shore pulled up at the ship's side, and my husband
+stepped on to the deck.
+
+In his usual morose manner he was about to pass without speaking on his
+way to his state-room, when his eyes fell on Alma sitting beside me.
+Then he stopped and looked at us, and, stepping up, he said, in a tone I
+had never heard from him before:
+
+"Mary, my dear, will you not present me to your friend?"
+
+I hesitated, and then with a quivering of the lips I did so. But
+something told me as I introduced my husband to Alma, and Alma to my
+husband, and they stood looking into each other's eyes and holding each
+other's hands (for Alma had risen and I was sitting between them), that
+this was the most momentous incident of my life thus far--that for good
+or ill my hour had struck and I could almost hear the bell.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+From that hour forward my husband was a changed man. His manner to me,
+so brusque before, became courteous, kind, almost affectionate. Every
+morning he would knock at the door of my state-room to ask if I had
+slept well, or if the movement of the steamer had disturbed me.
+
+His manner to Alma was charming. He was up before breakfast every day,
+promenading the deck with her in the fresh salt air. I would slide back
+my window and hear their laughter as they passed, above the throb of the
+engines and the wash of the sea. Sometimes they would look in upon me
+and joke, and Alma would say:
+
+"And how's Margaret Mary this morning?"
+
+Our seats in the saloon had been changed. Now we sat with Alma at the
+Captain's table, and though I sorely missed the doctor's racy talk about
+Martin Conrad I was charmed by Alma's bright wit and the fund of her
+personal anecdotes. She seemed to know nearly everybody. My husband knew
+everybody also, and their conversation never flagged.
+
+Something of the wonderful and worshipful feeling I had had for Alma at
+the Sacred Heart came back to me, and as for my husband it seemed to me
+that I was seeing him for the first time.
+
+He persuaded the Captain to give a dance on our last night at sea, so
+the awnings were spread, the electric lights were turned on, and the
+deck of the ship became a scene of enchantment.
+
+My husband and Alma led off. He danced beautifully and she was dressed
+to perfection. Not being a dancer myself I stood with the Captain in the
+darkness outside, looking in on them in the bright and dazzling circle,
+while the moon-rays were sweeping the waters like a silver fan and the
+little waves were beating the ship's side with friendly pats.
+
+I was almost happy. In my simplicity I was feeling grateful to Alma for
+having wrought this extraordinary change, so that when, on our arrival
+at Port Said, my husband said,
+
+"Your friend Madame Lier has made no arrangements for her rooms at
+Cairo--hadn't I better telegraph to our hotel, dear?" I answered, "Yes,"
+and wondered why he had asked me.
+
+Our hotel was an oriental building, situated on an island at the further
+side of the Nile. Formerly the palace of a dead Khedive, who had built
+it in honour of the visit of an Empress, it had a vast reception hall
+with a great staircase.
+
+There, with separated rooms, as in London, we remained for three months.
+I was enthralled. Too young and inexperienced to be conscious of the
+darker side of the picture before me, I found everything beautiful. I
+was seeing fashionable life for the first time, and it was entrancing.
+
+Lovely and richly-dressed ladies in silk, velvet, lace, and no limit of
+jewellery--the dark French women, the blonde German women, the stately
+English women, and the American women with their flexuous grace. And
+then the British soldiers in their various uniforms, the semi-Turks in
+their red tarbooshes, and the diplomats of all nationalities, Italian,
+Austrian, French, German--what a cosmopolitan world it was, what a
+meeting-place of all nations!
+
+Every hour had its interest, but I liked best the hour of tea on the
+terrace, for that was the glorious hour of woman, when every condition
+invested her dress with added beauty and her smile with greater charm.
+
+Such a blaze of colour in the sunshine! Such a sea of muslin, flowers,
+and feathers! Such lovely female figures in diaphanous clouds of
+toilettes, delicate as gossamer and varied as the colours in the
+rainbow! They were like a living bouquet, as they sat under the shade of
+the verandah, with the green lawns and the palm trees in front, the
+red-coated orchestra behind, and the noiseless forms of swarthy
+Bednouins and Nubians moving to and fro.
+
+Although I had been brought up in such a different world altogether I
+could not help being carried away by all this beauty. My senses
+burgeoned out and my heart seemed to expand.
+
+As for Alma and my husband, they seemed to belong to the scene of
+themselves. She would sit at one of the tea-tables, swishing away the
+buzzing flies with a little whip of cord and cowries, and making
+comments on the crowd in soft undertones which he alone seemed to catch.
+Her vivid and searching eyes, with their constant suggestion of
+laughter, seemed to be picking out absurdities on every side and finding
+nearly everybody funny.
+
+She found me funny also. My innocence and my convent-bred ideas were a
+constant subject of jest with her.
+
+"What does our dear little Margaret Mary think of that?" she would say
+with a significant smile, at sights that seemed to me quite harmless.
+
+After a while I began to have a feeling of indefinable uneasiness about
+Alma. She was daily redoubling her cordiality, always calling me her
+"dearest sweetest girl," and "the oldest friend she had in the world."
+But little by little I became conscious of a certain commerce between
+her and my husband in which I had no part. Sometimes I saw her eyes
+seeking his, and occasionally I heard them exchange a few words about me
+in French, which (because I did not speak it, being uncertain of my
+accent) they thought I did not understand.
+
+Perhaps this helped to sharpen my wits, for I began to see that I had
+gone the wrong way to work with my husband. Instead of trying to make
+myself fall in love with my husband, I should have tried to make my
+husband fall in love with me.
+
+When I asked myself how this was to be done I found one obvious
+answer--I must become the sort of woman my husband admired and liked; in
+short I must imitate Alma.
+
+I resolved to do this, and after all that has happened since I feel a
+little ashamed to tell of the efforts I made to play a part for which I
+was so ill-fitted by nature and education.
+
+Some of them were silly enough perhaps, but some were almost pathetic,
+and I am not afraid that any good woman will laugh at the futile shifts
+I was put to, in my girlish ignorance, to make my husband love me.
+
+"I must do it," I thought. "I must, I must!"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Hitherto I had attended to myself, but now I determined to have a maid.
+I found one without much difficulty. Her name was Price. She was a very
+plain woman of thirty, with piercing black eyes; and when I engaged her
+she seemed anxious above all else to make me understand that she "never
+saw anything."
+
+I soon discovered that she saw everything, especially the relations
+between myself and my husband, and that she put her own interpretation
+(not a very flattering one) on our separated apartments. She also saw
+the position of Alma, and putting her own interpretation upon that also,
+she tortured me with many pin-pricks.
+
+Under the guidance of my maid I began to haunt the shops of the
+dressmakers, the milliners and the jewellers. It did not require the
+memory of my father's letter to make me spend his money--I spent it like
+water. Feeling ashamed of my quaker-cut costumes (Alma had a costume for
+every day of the week, and wore a large gold snake on her arm), I bought
+the most costly toilettes, and loaded myself with bracelets, rings and
+necklaces.
+
+I was dressing for my husband, and for him I did many things I had never
+dreamt of doing before. For him I filed my nails, put cream on my skin,
+perfume on my handkerchief, and even rouge on my lips. Although I did
+not allow myself to think of it so, I was running a race with Alma.
+
+My maid knew that before I did, and the first night she put me into one
+of my uncomfortable new gowns she stood off from me and said:
+
+"His lordship must be a strange gentleman if he can resist you _now_."
+
+I felt ashamed, yet pleased too, and went downstairs with a certain
+confidence.
+
+The result was disappointing. My husband smiled rather condescendingly,
+and though Alma praised me beyond measure I saw that she was secretly
+laughing as she said:
+
+"Our Margaret Mary is coming out, isn't she?"
+
+Nevertheless I persevered. Without too much preparation for so perilous
+an enterprise, I threw myself into the gaieties of Cairo, attending polo
+matches, race-meetings, picnics at the Pyramids, dances at the different
+hotels, and on the island of Roda, where according to tradition,
+Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes.
+
+I think I may say that I drew the eyes of other men upon me,
+particularly those of the colonel commanding on the Citadel, a fine type
+of Scotsman, who paid me the most worshipful attention. But I thought of
+nobody but my husband, being determined to make him forget Alma and fall
+in love with me.
+
+It was a hopeless task, and I had some heart-breaking hours. One day,
+calling at a jeweller's to see a diamond necklace which I greatly
+coveted, I was told in confidence that my husband had been pricing it,
+but had had to give it up because it was a thousand francs too dear for
+him. I was foolish enough to pay the thousand francs myself, under a
+pledge of secrecy, and to tell the jeweller to send the necklace to my
+husband, feeling sure in my simplicity that it had been meant for me.
+
+Next night I saw it on Alma's neck, and could have died of mortification
+and shame.
+
+I daresay it was all very weak and very childish, but I really think my
+last attempt, if rather ridiculous, was also very pitiful.
+
+Towards the end of our stay the proprietors of the hotel gave a
+Cotillon. As this was the event of the season, and nearly every woman
+was giving a dinner in honour of it, I resolved that I too would give
+one, inviting the gayest of the gay acquaintances I had made in Cairo.
+
+Feeling that it would be my last battle, and that so much depended upon
+it, I dressed myself with feverish care, in a soft white satin gown,
+which was cut lower than I had ever worn before, with slippers to match,
+a tight band of pearls about my throat and another about my head.
+
+When Price had finished dressing me she said:
+
+"Well, if his lordship prefers anybody else in the world to-night I
+shan't know where he puts his eyes."
+
+The compliment was a crude one, but I had no time to think of that, for
+my heart was fluttering with hopes and fears, and I think any woman
+would forgive me under the circumstances if I told myself, as I passed
+the tall mirrors on the stairs, that I too was beautiful.
+
+The dining-room was crowded when I entered it with my guests, and seeing
+that we were much observed it flashed upon me that my husband and I had
+become a subject of gossip. Partly for that reason I strangled the ugly
+thing that was writhing in my bosom, and put Alma (who had flown to me
+with affectionate rapture) next to my husband, and the colonel
+commanding on the Citadel in the seat beside me.
+
+Throughout the dinner, which was very long, I was very nervous, and
+though I did my best to keep up conversation with the colonel, I knew
+quite well that I was listening to what was being said at the other side
+of my big round table, and as often as any mention was made of "Margaret
+Mary" I heard it.
+
+More than once Alma lifted her glass with a gracious nod and smile,
+crying, "Mary dearest!" and then in another moment gave my husband one
+of her knowing glances which seemed to me to say, "Look at that foolish
+little wife of yours!"
+
+By the time we returned to the hall for coffee we were rather a noisy
+party, and even the eyes of the ladies betrayed the fact that they had
+dined. The talk, which had grown louder, was also a little more free,
+and God forgive me, I joined in it, being feverishly anxious to outdo
+Alma, and be looked upon as a woman of the world.
+
+Towards eleven o'clock, the red-coated orchestra began to play a waltz,
+and then the whole variegated company of ladies, soldiers, and diplomats
+stood up to dance, and the colonel asked me to join him.
+
+I was ashamed to tell him that I had never danced except with a
+schoolgirl, so I took his hand and started. But hardly had we begun,
+when I made mistakes, which I thought everybody saw (I am sure Alma saw
+them), and before we had taken many turns my partner had to stop,
+whereupon I retired to my seat with a forced laugh and a sense of
+confusion.
+
+It was nearly twelve when they began the Cotillon, which Alma and my
+husband led with supreme self-possession. As one of the hostesses I sat
+in the front row of the square, and when I was taken out I made further
+mistakes, which also Alma saw and communicated by smiles to my husband.
+
+Before the Cotillon came to an end the night was far spent and then the
+company, which had become very boisterous, began to look for some new
+excitement, no matter how foolish. One or other started "turkey trot"
+and "grizzly bear" and finally Alma, with memories of the winter sports
+at St. Moritz, proposed that they should toboggan down the great
+staircase.
+
+The suggestion was welcomed with a shout, and a broad board was
+immediately laid on the first long flight of stairs for people to slide
+on.
+
+Soldiers went first, and then there were calls for the ladies, when Alma
+took her turn, tucking her dress under her at the top and alighting
+safely on her feet at the bottom. Other ladies followed her example,
+with similar good fortune, and then Alma, who had been saying "Such fun!
+Such lots of fun!" set up a cry of "Margaret Mary."
+
+I refused at first, feeling ashamed of even looking at such unwomanly
+folly, but something Alma said to my husband and something that was
+conveyed by my husband's glance at me set my heart afire and, poor
+feverish and entangled fool that I was, I determined to defy them.
+
+So running up to the top and seating myself on the toboggan I set it in
+motion. But hardly had I done so when it swayed, reeled, twisted and
+threw me off, with the result that I rolled downstairs to the bottom.
+
+Of course there were shrieks of laughter, and if I had been in the
+spirit of the time and place I suppose I should have laughed too, and
+there would have been an end of the matter. But I had been playing a
+part, a tragic part, and feeling that I had failed and covered myself
+with ridicule, I was overwhelmed with confusion.
+
+I thought my husband would be angry with me, and feel compromised by my
+foolishness, but he was not; he was amused, and when at last I saw his
+face it was running in rivulets from the laughter he could not restrain.
+
+That was the end of all things, and when Alma came up to me, saying
+everything that was affectionate and insincere, about her "poor dear
+unfortunate Margaret Mary" (only women know how to wound each other so),
+I brushed her aside, went off to my bedroom, and lay face down on the
+sofa, feeling that I was utterly beaten and could fight no more.
+
+Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though I did not look up
+I heard him say, in a tone of indulgent sympathy that cut me to the
+quick:
+
+"You've been playing the wrong part, my child. A Madonna, yes, but a
+Venus, no! It's not your _métier_."
+
+"What's the good? What's the good? What's the good?" I asked myself.
+
+I thought my heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+With inexpressible relief I heard the following day that we were to
+leave for Rome immediately.
+
+Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to me in the least.
+Outside the atmosphere of this place, so artificial, so unrelated to
+nature, her power over my husband would be gone. Once in the Holy City
+everything would be different. Alma would be different, I should be
+different, above all my husband would be different. I should take him to
+the churches and basilicas; I should show him the shrines and papal
+processions, and he would see me in my true "part" at last!
+
+But what a deep disappointment awaited me!
+
+On reaching Rome we put up at a fashionable hotel in the new quarter of
+the Ludovisi, and although that was only a few hundred yards from the
+spot on which I had spent nine happy years it seemed to belong to
+another world altogether. Instead of the church domes and the monastery
+bells, there were the harsh clang of electric trams, the thrum and throb
+of automobiles, the rattle of cars and the tramp of soldiers.
+
+Then I realised that there were two Romes--an old Rome and a new one,
+and that the Rome we had come to hardly differed from the Cairo we had
+left behind.
+
+There was the same varied company of people of all nations, English,
+Americans, French, German; the same nomad tribes of the rich and
+dissolute, pitching their tents season by season in the sunny resorts of
+Europe; the same aimless society, the same debauch of fashion, the same
+callous and wicked luxury, the same thirst for selfish pleasures, the
+same busy idleness, the same corruption of character and sex.
+
+This made me very unhappy, but from first to last Alma was in the
+highest spirits. Everybody seemed to be in Rome that spring, and
+everybody seemed to be known either to her or to my husband. For Alma's
+sake we were invited everywhere, and thus we saw not only the life of
+the foreign people of the hotels but that of a part (not the better
+part) of the Roman aristocracy.
+
+Alma was a great success. She had the homage of all the men, and being
+understood to be rich, and having the gift of making every man believe
+he was her special favourite, she was rarely without a group of Italian
+noblemen about her chair.
+
+With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning lay with
+my husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for that. They
+seemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing against him that,
+having married me (as everybody appeared to know) for the settlement of
+his financial difficulties, he had transferred his attentions, even on
+his honeymoon, to this brilliant and alluring creature.
+
+As for me, I was made to realise that I was a person of a different
+class altogether. When people wished to be kind they called me
+_spirituelle_, and when they were tempted to be the reverse they voted
+me insipid.
+
+As a result I became very miserable in this company, and I can well
+believe that I may have seemed awkward and shy and stupid when I was in
+some of their grey old palaces full of tapestry and bronze, for I
+sometimes found the talk there so free (especially among the women) that
+the poisoned jokes went quivering through me.
+
+Things I had been taught to think sacred were so often derided that I
+had to ask myself if it could be Rome, my holy and beloved Rome--this
+city of license and unbelief.
+
+But Alma was entirely happy, especially when the talk turned on conjugal
+fidelity, and the faithful husband was held up to ridicule. This
+happened very often in one house we used to go to--that of a Countess of
+ancient family who was said to have her husband and her lover at either
+side of her when she sat down to dinner.
+
+She was a large and handsome person of middle age, with a great mass of
+fair hair, and she gave me the feeling that in her case the body of a
+woman was inhabited by the soul of a man.
+
+She christened me her little Irish _bambino_, meaning her child; and one
+night in her drawing-room, after dinner, before the men had joined us,
+she called me to her side on the couch, lit a cigarette, crossed her
+legs, and gave us with startling candour her views of the marriage bond.
+
+"What can you expect, you women?" she said. "You run after the men for
+their titles--they've very little else, except debts, poor things--and
+what is the result? The first result is that though you have bought them
+you belong to them. Yes, your husband owns his beautiful woman, just as
+he owns his beautiful horse or his beautiful dog."
+
+This was so pointed that I felt my face growing crimson, but Alma and
+the other women only laughed, so the Countess went on:
+
+"What then? Once in a blue moon each goes his and her own way without
+sin. You agree to a sort of partnership for mutual advantage in which
+you live together in chastity under the same roof. What a life! What an
+ice-house!"
+
+Again the other women laughed, but I felt myself blushing deeply.
+
+"But in the majority of cases it is quite otherwise. The business
+purpose served, each is open to other emotions. The man becomes
+unfaithful, and the woman, if she has any spirit, pays him out tit for
+tat--and why shouldn't she?"
+
+After that I could bear no more, and before I knew what I was saying I
+blurted out:
+
+"But I find that wrong and wicked. Infidelity on the part of the man
+does not justify infidelity in the woman. The prayer-book says so."
+
+Alma burst out laughing, and the Countess smiled and continued:
+
+"Once in a hundred years there comes a great passion--Dante and
+Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura. The woman meets the right man too late.
+What a tragedy! What a daily and hourly crucifixion! Unless," said the
+Countess with emphasis, "she is prepared to renounce the law and reject
+society and live a life of complete emancipation. But in a Catholic
+country, where there is no divorce, what woman can afford to do that?
+Nobody in the higher classes can--especially if she has to sacrifice her
+title. So the wise woman avoids scandal, keeps her little affair with
+her lover to herself, and . . . and that's marriage, my dears."
+
+A twitter of approval, led by Alma, came from the other women, but I was
+quivering with anger and I said:
+
+"Then marriage is an hypocrisy and an imposture. If I found I loved
+somebody better than my husband, I should go to him in spite of the law,
+and society, and title and . . . and everything."
+
+"Of course you would, my dear," said the Countess, smiling at me as at a
+child, "but that's because you are such a sweet, simple, innocent little
+Irish _bambino_."
+
+It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited to the
+Roman Hunt. I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to use me in
+order to "save her face" in relation to my husband, induced me to drive
+them out in a motor-car to the place on the Campagna where they were to
+mount their horses.
+
+"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "How could we possibly go without you?"
+
+It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my husband
+in his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San Giovanni, and
+past the _osterie_ where the pleasure-loving Italian people were playing
+under the pergolas with their children, until we came to the
+meeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane.
+
+A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there with their
+horses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband with great
+cordiality. What they thought of me I do not know, except that I was a
+childish and complacent wife; and when at the sound of the horn the hunt
+began, and my husband and Alma went prancing off with the rest, without
+once looking back, I asked myself in my shame and distress if I could
+bear my humiliation much longer.
+
+But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice on the
+other side of the car said:
+
+"Good morning, Lady Raa."
+
+It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put into
+Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he had
+run up to look at Rome.
+
+"But have you heard the news?" he cried.
+
+"What news?"
+
+"About the South Pole Expedition--they're on their way home."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week."
+
+"And . . . and . . . and Martin Conrad?"
+
+"He's well, and what's better, he has distinguished himself."
+
+"I . . . I . . . I knew he would."
+
+"So did I! The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart half a
+chance he would come out top! Do or die--that was his watch-word."
+
+"I know! I know!"
+
+His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyous
+rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with "Yes," "Yes," "Yes") he told
+of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the London
+papers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned--how he had been
+put in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had worked
+wonders.
+
+"How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!" I said.
+
+"Isn't it?" said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quick
+questions and replies like children playing at battledore and
+shuttlecock. Then he said:
+
+"But I'm after thinking it's mortal strange I never heard him mention
+you. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that was
+a man--a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling him--that's short for
+Maloney, I suppose."
+
+"For Mary," I said.
+
+"Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of St.
+Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of that
+before? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye've a right to be
+proud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds of you. I was
+mortal jealous of Mally, I remember. 'Mally's a stunner,' he used to
+say. 'Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it, in spite of the devil and
+hell.'"
+
+The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman in me
+made me say--I couldn't help it--
+
+"I dare say he's had many girl friends since my time, though?"
+
+"Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him in
+Dublin--they're the queens of the world too, those Dublin girls--but
+never a skute of the eye was he giving to the one of them. I used to
+think it was work, but maybe it wasn't . . . maybe it was. . . ."
+
+I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say--I didn't know
+what would happen to me if he did--so I jumped in by telling him that,
+if he would step into the car, I would drive him back to Rome.
+
+He did so, and all the way he talked of Martin, his courage and resource
+and the hardships he had gone through, until (with backward thoughts of
+Alma and my husband riding away over the Campagna) my heart, which had
+been leaping like a lamb, began to ache and ache.
+
+We returned by the Old Appian Way, where the birds were building their
+nests among the crumbling tombs, through the Porta San Paolo, and past
+the grave of the "young English poet" of whom I have always thought it
+was not so sad that he died of consumption as in the bitterness of a
+broken heart.
+
+All this time I was so much at home with the young Irish doctor, who was
+Martin's friend, that it was not until I was putting him down at his
+hotel that I remembered I did not even know his name.
+
+It was O'Sullivan.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Every day during our visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the Reverend
+Mother's invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral taint had
+prevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by going to
+Benediction at her Convent church the very next day.
+
+It happened, however, that this was the time when the Artists' Club of
+Rome were giving a Veglione (a kind of fancy-dress ball), and as Alma
+and my husband desired to go to it, and were still in the way of using
+me to keep themselves in countenance, I consented to accompany them on
+condition that I did not dress or dance, and that they would go with me
+to Benediction the following day.
+
+"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "We'll do whatever you like. Of course we
+will."
+
+I wore my soft satin without any ornaments, and my husband merely put
+scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in
+a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her
+limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a
+great vampire bat.
+
+It was eleven o'clock before we reached the theatre, but already the
+auditorium was full, and so well had the artists done their work of
+decoration, making the air alive with floating specks of many-coloured
+lights, like the fire-flies at Nemi, that the scene was one of
+enchantment.
+
+It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls was the
+street, with the clanging electric bells and people hurrying by with
+their collars up, for the night was cold, and it had begun to rain as we
+came in, and one poor woman, with a child under her shawl, was standing
+by the entrance trying to sell evening papers.
+
+I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my husband and
+their friends were below on the level of the _poltroni_ (the stalls)
+that had been arranged for the dancing, which began immediately after we
+arrived and went on without a break until long after midnight.
+
+Then there was supper on the stage, and those who did not eat drank a
+good deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the influence of
+alcohol. As a consequence many of the people, especially some of the
+women (not good women I fear), seemed to lose all control of themselves,
+singing snatches of noisy songs, sipping out of the men's glasses,
+taking the smoke of cigarettes out of the men's mouths, sitting on the
+men's knees, and even riding astride on the men's arms and shoulders.
+
+I bore these sights as long as I could, making many fruitless appeals to
+my husband to take me home; and I was just about to leave of myself,
+being sick of the degradation of my sex, when a kind of rostrum, with an
+empty chair on top of it, was carried in on the shoulders of a number of
+men.
+
+This was for the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty, and as it passed
+round the arena, with the mock judges in paper coronets, walking ahead
+to make their choice, some of the women, lost to all sense of modesty,
+were shouting "Take _me_! Take _me_!"
+
+I felt sure they would take Alma, so I reached forward to get a better
+view of her, where she stood below my box; but as they approached her,
+with the chair still empty, I saw her make a movement in my direction
+and say something to the judges about "the little nun," which made my
+husband nod his head and then laugh uproariously.
+
+At the next moment, before I knew what they were doing, six or seven men
+jumped into my box, lifted me on to the rostrum and placed me in the
+chair, whereupon the whole noisy company in the theatre broke into wild
+shouts of salutation and pelted me with flowers and confetti.
+
+If there was any pride there was more mortification in the position to
+which Alma and my husband had exposed me, for as I was being carried
+round the arena, with the sea of foaming faces below me, all screaming
+out of their hot and open mouths, I heard the men cry:
+
+"Smile, Signorina!"
+
+"Not so serious, Mademoiselle!"
+
+It would do no good to say what memories of other scenes flashed back
+on my mind as I was being borne along in the mad procession. I felt as
+if it would last for ever. But it came to an end at length, and as soon
+as I was released, I begged my husband again to take me home, and when
+he said, "Not yet; we'll all be going by-and-by," I stole away by
+myself, found a cab, and drove back to the hotel.
+
+The day was dawning as I passed through the stony streets, and when I
+reached my room, and pulled down my dark green blinds, the bell of the
+Capuchin monastery in the Via Veneto was ringing and the monks were
+saying the first of their offices.
+
+I must have been some time in bed, hiding my hot face in the
+bed-clothes, when Price, my maid, came in to apologise for not having
+seen me come back alone. The pain of the woman's scrutiny was more than
+I could bear at that moment, so I tried to dismiss her, but I could not
+get her to go, and at last she said:
+
+"If you please, my lady, I want to say something."
+
+I gave her no encouragement, yet she continued.
+
+"I daresay it's as much as my place is worth, but I'm bound to say it."
+
+Still I said nothing, yet she went on:
+
+"His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back half an
+hour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . . coming out of
+Madame's room."
+
+"Go away, woman, go away," I cried in the fierce agony of my shame, and
+she went out at last, closing the door noisily behind her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's church.
+But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my room
+into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leading
+me, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the Sacred
+Heart.
+
+It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on the
+paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monastery
+was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on the
+Pope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter's striking
+nine.
+
+There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and by
+that I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus,
+were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of the
+church, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their night
+prayers.
+
+Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices rising and
+falling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffled
+sound of their evening hymn--
+
+     "_Ave maris stella
+         Dei Mater Alma--_"
+
+I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter
+pain--the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was a
+girl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there now
+who knew nothing of me.
+
+I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint,
+my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; and
+then I remembered where I was and what had happened to me.
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+     To thy shelter take me_."
+
+I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and I
+dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Not long after that we left Italy on our return to England. We were to
+reach home by easy stages so as to see some of the great capitals of
+Europe, but I had no interest in the journey.
+
+Our first stay was at Monte Carlo, that sweet garden of the
+Mediterranean which God seems to smile upon and man to curse.
+
+If I had been allowed to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of nature I
+think I could have been content, but Alma, with her honeyed and
+insincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual plea of keeping her
+in countenance.
+
+I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis
+d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and
+its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery and
+despair.
+
+As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower fêtes in the
+streets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and think I was on my native
+rocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit in my room and watch the poor
+wounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps as they tumbled and ducked into
+the sea after the shots fired, by cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen,
+from the rifle-range below.
+
+In Monte Carlo my husband's vices seemed to me to grow rank and fast.
+The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first he won and
+then he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then his nature became
+still more ugly and repulsive.
+
+One evening towards eight o'clock, I was in my room, trying to comfort a
+broken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through the open window,
+when my husband entered with wild eyes.
+
+"The red's coming up at all the tables," he cried breathlessly. "Give me
+some money, quick!"
+
+I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse.
+
+"You've a cheque book--give me a cheque, then."
+
+I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that
+night, the banks being closed.
+
+"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stop
+fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn."
+
+The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer
+in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted
+and went out hurriedly without more words.
+
+After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings
+about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place"
+immediately or we should all be ruined.
+
+Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great
+French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must
+be the sink of every kind of corruption.
+
+We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysées, and there (as
+well as in the cafés in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on
+Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and
+Americans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strange
+that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to
+do, merely loafing round it like tramps--the richest being the idlest,
+and the idlest the most immoral.
+
+My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he
+spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma's
+instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.
+
+"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us in
+places like those?"
+
+I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged
+around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself that
+if I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason or
+under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch
+by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the
+contaminations of his company.
+
+As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no
+efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went
+together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of
+the society papers throughout Europe.
+
+I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from
+those sources--that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut
+out of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she did
+the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night
+was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a
+queen--princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members
+of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other
+countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock with
+every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after
+supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the
+dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a _Chaîne diabolique_ at
+seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and
+the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.
+
+I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the
+Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced
+upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when--the priest
+standing at the foot of the altar--the choir sang the _Kyrie eleison_,
+down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being
+washed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage.
+
+The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the _Gloria in
+excelsis_, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my
+sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure
+hung above me.
+
+"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."
+
+It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the
+church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of
+purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred
+Heart.
+
+It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early
+morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in
+the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysées on my way back to the
+hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a
+little company of young girls returning to school after their first
+communion.
+
+How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and
+stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they
+were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing
+unseen in the leaves above them.
+
+It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but
+turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great
+and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such
+strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in
+my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.
+
+But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires
+of passion!
+
+As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroom
+from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my
+husband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I was
+beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and coming
+over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:
+
+"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I can't help
+that. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman and
+have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and see
+if you can stand any more."
+
+With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room,
+but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood,
+and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hear
+in my husband's bedroom.
+
+There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other a
+woman's soft and cautious.
+
+There was no need to tell myself whose voices they were, and neither did
+I ask myself any questions. I did not put to my mind the pros and cons
+of the case for myself or the case for my husband. I only thought and
+felt and behaved as any other wife would think and feel and behave at
+such a moment. An ugly and depraved thing, which my pride or my
+self-respect had never hitherto permitted me to believe in, suddenly
+leapt into life.
+
+I was outraged. I was a victim of the treachery, the duplicity, the
+disloyalty, and the smothered secrecy of husband and friend.
+
+My heart and soul were aflame with a sense of wrong. All the sweetening
+and softening and purifying effects of the sacrament were gone in an
+instant, and, moving stealthily across the carpet towards my husband's
+door, I swiftly turned the handle.
+
+The door was locked.
+
+I heard a movement inside the room and in a moment I hurried from the
+salon into the corridor, intending to enter by another door. As I was
+about to do so I heard the lock turned back by a cautious hand within.
+Then I swung the door open and boldly entered the room.
+
+Nobody was there except my husband.
+
+But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in the
+adjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind them.
+
+I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were down and
+the air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as might have
+been brought back in people's clothes from that shameless woman's salon.
+
+My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me with a
+half-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered. His
+prominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was trying to
+carry things off with an air.
+
+"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the first
+time . . . the very first time that. . . ."
+
+I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe, but I
+said:
+
+"Is that all you've got to say to me?"
+
+"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . ."
+
+"You understand quite well," I answered, and then looking towards the
+door of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you understand."
+
+My husband began to laugh--a drunken, idiotic laugh.
+
+"Oh, you mean that . . . perhaps you imagine that. . . ."
+
+"Listen," I said. "This is the end of everything between you and me."
+
+"The end? Why, I thought that was long ago. In fact I thought everything
+ended before it began."
+
+"I mean. . . ." I knew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can no
+longer keep up the farce of being your wife."
+
+"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce is
+exactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever since the
+day we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you have only
+yourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife is no company
+for anybody but the saints and angels?"
+
+His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the thought
+that after all in his own gross way my husband had something to say for
+himself.
+
+Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without another
+word. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face must have
+been more powerful than my speech, for after a few seconds in which he
+went on saying in his drawling way that I had been no wife to him, and
+if anything had happened I had brought it on myself, he stopped, and
+neither of us spoke for a moment.
+
+Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should faint, I
+turned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low, perhaps in
+mockery, as I passed out.
+
+When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost dropped, and
+so cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot bottles to my
+feet.
+
+And then the tears came and I cried like a child.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was far from well next morning and Price wished to keep me in bed, but
+I got up immediately when I heard that my husband was talking of
+returning to London.
+
+Our journey was quite uneventful. We three sat together in the railway
+carriage and in the private cabin on the steamer, with no other company
+than Bimbo, my husband's terrier, and Prue, Alma's Pekinese spaniel.
+
+Although he made no apology for his conduct of the day before my husband
+was quiet and conciliatory, and being sober he looked almost afraid, as
+if telling himself that he might have to meet my father soon--the one
+man in the world of whom he seemed to stand in fear.
+
+Alma looked equally frightened, but she carried off her nervousness with
+a great show of affection, saying she was sorry I was feeling "badly,"
+that France and the South did not agree with me, and that I should be
+ever so much better when I was "way up north."
+
+We put up at a well-known hotel near Trafalgar Square, the same that in
+our girlhood had been the subject of Alma's dreams of future bliss, and
+I could not help observing that while my husband was selecting our rooms
+she made a rather ostentatious point of asking for an apartment on
+another floor.
+
+It was late when we arrived, so I went to bed immediately, being also
+anxious to be alone that I might think out my course of action.
+
+I was then firmly resolved that one way or other my life with my husband
+should come to an end; that I would no longer be befouled by the mire he
+had been dragging me through; that I should live a clean life and drink
+a pure draught, and oh, how my very soul seemed to thirst for it!
+
+This was the mood in which I went to sleep, but when I awoke in the
+morning, almost before the dawn, the strength of my resolution ebbed
+away. I listened to the rumble of the rubber-bound wheels of the
+carriages and motor-cars that passed under my window and, remembering
+that I had not a friend in London, I felt small and helpless. What could
+I do alone? Where could I turn for assistance?
+
+Instinctively I knew it would be of no use to appeal to my father, for
+though it was possible that he might knock my husband down, it was not
+conceivable that he would encourage me to separate from him.
+
+In my loneliness and helplessness I felt like a shipwrecked sailor, who,
+having broken away from the foundering vessel that would have sucked him
+under, is yet tossing on a raft with the threatening ocean on every
+side, and looking vainly for a sail.
+
+At last I thought of Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, and decided to
+send a telegram to him asking for the name of some solicitor in London
+to whom I could apply for advice.
+
+To carry out this intention I went down to the hall about nine o'clock,
+when people were passing into the breakfast-room, and visitors were
+calling at the bureau, and livened page-boys were shouting names in the
+corridors.
+
+There was a little writing-room at one side of the hall and I sat there
+to write my telegram. It ran--
+
+"Please send name and address reliable solicitor London whom I can
+consult on important business."
+
+I was holding the telegraph-form in my hand and reading my message again
+and again to make sure that it would lead to no mischief, when I began
+to think of Martin Conrad.
+
+It seemed to me that some one had mentioned his name, but I told myself
+that must have been a mistake,--that, being so helpless and so much in
+need of a friend at that moment, my heart and not my ears had heard it.
+
+Nevertheless as I sat holding my telegraph-form I became conscious of
+somebody who was moving about me. It was a man, for I could smell the
+sweet peaty odour of his Harris tweeds.
+
+At length with that thrill which only the human voice can bring to us
+when it is the voice of one from whom we have been long parted, I heard
+somebody say, from the other side of the desk:
+
+"Mary, is it you?"
+
+I looked up, the blood rushed to my face and a dazzling mist floated
+before my eyes, so that for a moment I could hardly see who was there.
+But I _knew_ who it was--it was Martin himself.
+
+He came down on me like a breeze from the mountain, took me by both
+hands, telegram and all, and said:
+
+"My goodness, this is stunning!"
+
+I answered, as well as I could for the confusion that overwhelmed me.
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!"
+
+"How well you are looking! A little thin, perhaps, but such a colour!"
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!" I repeated, though I knew I was only blushing.
+
+"When did you arrive?"
+
+I told him, and he said:
+
+"_We_ came into port only yesterday. And to think that you and I should
+come to the same hotel and meet on the very first morning! It's like a
+fate, as our people in the island say. But it's stunning, perfectly
+stunning!"
+
+A warm tide of joy was coursing through me and taking away my breath,
+but I managed to say:
+
+"I've heard about your expedition. You had great hardships."
+
+"That was nothing! Just a little pleasure-trip down to the eighty-sixth
+latitude."
+
+"And great successes?"
+
+"That was nothing either. The chief was jolly good, and the boys were
+bricks."
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!" I said again, for a kind of dumb joy had taken
+possession of me, and I went on saying the same thing over and over
+again, as people do when they are very happy.
+
+For two full minutes I felt happier than I had ever been in my life
+before; and then an icy chill came over me, for I remembered that I had
+been married since I saw Martin Conrad last and I did not know how I was
+to break the news to him.
+
+Just then my husband and Alma came down the lift, and seeing me with a
+stranger, as they crossed the hall to go into the breakfast-room, they
+came up and spoke.
+
+I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was necessary to
+reveal everything in a word. I looked at Martin Conrad when I presented
+him to my husband and he did not move a muscle. Then I looked at my
+husband and under a very small bow his face grew dark.
+
+I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stood
+together--Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health,
+and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wasted
+strength--and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul the
+contrast humbled me.
+
+When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while she
+gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she always
+did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in this
+instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than a
+lighted vesta on a running stream.
+
+After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was staying
+in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day.
+
+"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world," said Martin.
+
+"Then," said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will see
+more of your friend Mary."
+
+"Yes," said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more of your
+friend Mary."
+
+"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You _bet_ I will," said Martin,
+looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed as she passed
+into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the first
+time in her life a man's face had frightened her.
+
+"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone.
+
+"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into port
+and he . . ."
+
+"Dr. O'Sullivan?"
+
+"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he speaks of
+you! But now . . . now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must be
+off about my business."
+
+"Don't go yet," I said.
+
+"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the
+Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . ."
+
+"Then you must go."
+
+"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by the way,
+now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you . . . Italy,
+Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale . . . a little
+pale, aren't you?"
+
+I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after a
+moment he asked:
+
+"How long are you staying in London?"
+
+I told him I did not know, whereupon he said:
+
+"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports for
+the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything . . . do
+you want me now?"
+
+"No-o, no, not now," I answered.
+
+"Well, if you _do_ want me for anything--anything at all, mind, just
+pass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and the
+Royal Geographical Society may go to the . . . Well, somewhere."
+
+I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the bottom of
+my heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how little and lonely I
+was, while here was a big brave man who could protect me from every
+danger.
+
+We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and held it,
+feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be lost in the
+human ocean outside and I should see no more of him.
+
+At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my throat, I
+said:
+
+"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so happy to
+see anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't you?"
+
+"Won't I? Bet your life I will," he said, and then, as if seeing that my
+lip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he broke into a
+cheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to give me a "heise"
+as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the last moment.
+
+"Look here--keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones" (my husband
+and Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just tell them there's
+an ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to go 'asploring.' See?
+So-long!"
+
+It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I came to
+myself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau and the
+page-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my telegraph-form,
+crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my left hand.
+
+I tore it up and went in to breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH PART
+
+I FALL IN LOVE
+
+FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+During our first day in London my husband had many visitors, including
+Mr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and arrange about.
+
+I dare say a great many events had happened during our six months'
+absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr.
+Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from the
+stage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seat
+of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove from London to Brighton.
+
+This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the following
+day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up for
+the races.
+
+In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual, attracted
+universal admiration, was of course included, but I did not observe that
+any provision was made for me, though that circumstance did not distress
+me in the least, because I was waiting for Martin's message.
+
+It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, running
+into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said his
+fellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home,
+and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship,
+which was lying off Tilbury.
+
+It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, and
+that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:
+
+"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you a
+world of good, dear."
+
+I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in
+their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a
+fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as
+I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.
+
+A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster
+Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman.
+It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned
+London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is
+also the most beautiful.
+
+How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air of
+early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joy
+it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale into
+the cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointing
+out and naming everything.
+
+St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden cross
+on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'
+Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of the
+barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coasting
+traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface of
+the stream.
+
+After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then the
+great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of the
+lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers and
+sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the great
+liners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to their
+rusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows
+of eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish.
+
+At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either
+side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the
+flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, lay
+Martin's ship.
+
+She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the _Mary_ but
+now re-christened the _Scotia_, and it would be silly to say how my eyes
+filled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into the
+deep Antarctic and brought him safely back again.
+
+"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin.
+
+"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt entirely
+happy.
+
+We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour late
+for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it was
+worth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up and
+received me like a queen--making me feel, as I never felt before, the
+difference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and the
+manners of the men who do things.
+
+"Holloa!" they cried.
+
+"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you
+were not coming," said the commander, and then he put me to sit between
+himself and Martin.
+
+The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment,
+and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was
+the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart
+of a woman.
+
+They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and
+the sense of space about them--large space--as if they had come out of
+the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look
+at them.
+
+They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the
+womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none
+the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits
+of their love for them.
+
+So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called
+insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away
+softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking
+all sorts of questions.
+
+Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much;
+but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because
+everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes,
+and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for
+some unexplained reason was called Treacle.
+
+It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn't
+that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it was
+strange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen") called
+"Doctor," it was also very charming.
+
+After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the
+commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which
+had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it
+came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled,
+unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart,
+clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.
+
+Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when I
+associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock in
+his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled the
+coffee.
+
+"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?" asked
+the commander.
+
+"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded," I answered.
+
+"By what?"
+
+"By his eyes," I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answer
+the men shrieked with laughter.
+
+"She's got you there, doc," cried somebody.
+
+"She has sure," said Martin, who had said very little down to that
+moment, but was looking supremely happy.
+
+At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to see
+them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship except
+Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew,
+including Treacle.
+
+I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy of
+every moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of my
+troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went
+with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and
+sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and
+the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum
+and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the
+men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the
+dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the
+empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the
+Zoo to be taken care of.
+
+Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more than
+anything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I should
+like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bed
+like a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother's cottage with the
+roses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind going
+to the Antarctic myself if I could live in such comfortable quarters.
+
+Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five minutes,
+when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the saloon, and
+then I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to me. And no sooner
+had I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to the
+floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on
+my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on
+me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in
+every girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had been thinking
+of me.
+
+"I'll bet you anything," I said, (I had caught Martin's style) "you
+can't remember where you and I first saw each other."
+
+He could--it was in the little dimity-white room in his mother's house
+with its sweet-smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch.
+
+"Well, you don't remember what you were doing when we held our first
+conversation?"
+
+He did--he was standing on his hands with his feet against the wall and
+his inverted head close to the carpet.
+
+"But you've forgotten what happened next?"
+
+He hadn't--I had invited William Rufus and himself into bed, and they
+had sat up on either side of me.
+
+Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He had died
+of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried him
+in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for the
+loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in our
+joint names--all of his own inditing. It ran--he spelled it out to me--
+
+     "HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED
+       BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN CONRAD
+         AND MARY O'NEILL."
+
+Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they were
+soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into the
+vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of my
+native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked of
+Tommy the Mate and his "starboard eye," called each other "bogh mulish,"
+said things were "middling," spoke of the "threes" (trees) and the
+"tunder" (thunder), and remembered that "our Big Woman was a wicked
+devil and we wouldn't trust but she'd burn in hell."
+
+How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing; we
+laughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this was
+partly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always hovering
+on the edge of tragic things.
+
+Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his letters to
+my father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned out so terribly
+true; but we had our serious moments for all that, and one of them was
+when we were bending over a large chart which he had spread out on the
+table to show me the course of the ship through the Great Unknown,
+leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close that our heads almost touched,
+and I could see myself in his eyes as he turned to speak to me.
+
+"You were a little under the weather yesterday, shipmate--what was the
+cause of it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, we . . . we can talk of that another time, can't we?" I answered,
+and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why, unless it was
+because we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the doors of each
+other's souls.
+
+Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever passed so
+quickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going back, or I should
+be late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards we were in the launch,
+which had returned to fetch us.
+
+I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming off I
+kissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at the top of
+the companion, taking the compliment to himself, returned the salute
+with affectionate interest, which sent Martin and me into our last wild
+shriek of laughter.
+
+The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had been,
+everything looking different the other way round, for the sunset was
+like a great celestial fire which had been lighted in the western sky,
+and the big darkening city seemed to have turned its face to it.
+
+Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for going
+down to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some machinery
+that was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and while I sat
+close up to him, looking into his flashing eyes--they were still as blue
+as the bluest sea--I said, again and again: "How splendid! How glorious!
+What a great, great thing it will be for the world."
+
+"Won't it?" he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy's.
+
+Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going, and we
+were back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of the sad and
+serious subject I had intended to speak about I had said nothing at
+all.
+
+But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as we
+drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy
+people were returning from the Derby, including costers' donkey carts in
+which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys
+were wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty
+lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the
+"Honeysuckle and the Bee."
+
+     "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
+     Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see_."
+
+As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach,
+called the "Phoebus," drawing up at the covered way in front of it, and
+a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us.
+
+It was Alma, with my husband's and Mr. Eastcliff's party back from the
+races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me high
+compliments on my improved appearance.
+
+"Didn't I say the river air would do you good, dearest?" she said, and
+then she added something else, which would have been very sweet if it
+had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girl
+beautiful than to make her happy.
+
+There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excused
+myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure,
+I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to my
+own room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind.
+
+I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and done
+by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all by
+Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in a
+world of dream.
+
+My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derby
+dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me in
+the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bed
+early--partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go over
+everything again and yet again.
+
+I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of my
+memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, I
+thought I heard Martin calling "shipmate," and I said "Yes," quite loud,
+as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-land
+which lies on the frontier of sleep.
+
+How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!
+
+Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that moment
+I did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious of
+a great flood of joy. I cannot but think it strange that, though Nature
+had been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had been
+saying. I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been looking
+for love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediately
+when it had come to me of itself.
+
+But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the sunrise was
+filling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought of Martin was the
+first that was springing from the mists of sleep to my conscious mind,
+and I was asking myself how it happened that I was feeling so glad,
+while I had so many causes for grief, then suddenly--suddenly as the sun
+streams through the cloud-scud over the sea--I knew that what had long
+been predestined had happened, that the wondrous new birth, the great
+revelation, the joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in the
+world had come at last to me.
+
+I was in love.
+
+I was in love with Martin Conrad.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+My joy was short-lived. No sooner had I become aware that I loved Martin
+Conrad, than my conscience told me I had no right to do so. I was
+married, and to love another than my husband was sin.
+
+It would be impossible to say with what terror this thought possessed
+me. It took all the sunlight out of my sky, which a moment before had
+seemed so bright. It came on me like a storm of thunder and lightning,
+sweeping my happiness into the abyss.
+
+All my religion, everything I had been taught about the sanctity of the
+sacrament of marriage seemed to rise up and accuse me. It was not that I
+was conscious of any sin against my husband. I was thinking only of my
+sin against God.
+
+The first effect was to make me realise that it was no longer possible
+for me to speak to Martin about my husband and Alma. To do this now
+that I knew I loved him would be deceitful, mean, almost treacherous.
+
+The next effect was to make me see that all thought of a separation must
+now be given up. How could I accuse my husband when I was myself in the
+same position? If he loved another woman, I loved another man.
+
+In my distress and fright I saw only one means of escape either from the
+filthy burden to which I was bound or the consciousness of a sinful
+heart, and that was to cure myself of my passion. I determined to do so.
+I determined to fight against my love for Martin Conrad, to conquer it
+and to crush it.
+
+My first attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort to keep
+myself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see Martin alone.
+
+For three or four days I did my best to carry out this purpose, making
+one poor excuse after another, when (as happened several times a day) he
+came down to see me--that I was just going out or had just come in, or
+was tired or unwell.
+
+It was tearing my heart out to deny myself so, but I think I could have
+borne the pain if I had not realised that I was causing pain to him
+also.
+
+My maid, whose head was always running on Martin, would come hack to my
+room, after delivering one of my lying excuses, and say:
+
+"You should have seen his face, when I told him you were ill. It was
+just as if I'd driven a knife into him."
+
+Everybody seemed to be in a conspiracy to push me into Martin's
+arms--Alma above all others. Being a woman she read my secret, and I
+could see from the first that she wished to justify her own conduct in
+relation to my husband by putting me into the same position with Martin.
+
+"Seen Mr. Conrad to-day?" she would ask.
+
+"Not to-day," I would answer.
+
+"Really? And you such old friends! And staying in the same hotel, too!"
+
+When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband of his
+intention of asking Martin to dinner, and thereupon a night was fixed
+and a party invited.
+
+Martin came, and I was only too happy to meet him in company, though the
+pain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my husband and his
+friends, and the difference of the atmosphere in which he lived from
+that to which I thought I was doomed for ever, was almost more than I
+could bear.
+
+I think they must have felt it themselves, for though their usual
+conversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings, I noticed they
+were silent while Martin in his rugged, racy poetic way (for all
+explorers are poets) talked of the beauty of the great Polar night, the
+cloudless Polar day, the midnight calm and the moonlight on the
+glaciers, which was the loveliest, weirdest, most desolate, yet most
+entrancing light the world could show.
+
+"I wonder you don't think of going back to the Antarctic, if it's so
+fascinating," said Alma.
+
+"I do. Bet your life I do," said Martin, and then he told them what he
+had told me on the launch, but more fully and even more rapturously--the
+story of his great scheme for saving life and otherwise benefiting
+humanity.
+
+For hundreds of years man, prompted merely by the love of adventure, the
+praise of achievement, and the desire to know the globe he lived on, had
+been shouldering his way to the hitherto inviolable regions of the
+Poles; but now the time had come to turn his knowledge to account.
+
+"How?" said my husband.
+
+"By putting himself into such a position," said Martin, "that he will be
+able to predict, six, eight, ten days ahead, the weather of a vast part
+of the navigable and habitable world--by establishing installations of
+wireless telegraphy as near as possible to the long ice-barrier about
+the Pole from which ice-floes and icebergs and blizzards come, so that
+we can say in ten minutes from the side of Mount Erebus to half the
+southern hemisphere, 'Look out. It's coming down,' and thus save
+millions of lives from shipwreck, and hundreds of millions of money."
+
+"Splendid, by Jove!" said Mr. Eastcliff.
+
+"Yes, ripping, by jingo!" said Mr. Vivian.
+
+"A ridiculous dream!" muttered my husband, but not until Martin had
+gone, and then Alma, seeing that I was all aglow, said:
+
+"What a lovely man! I wonder you don't see more of him, Mary, my love.
+He'll be going to the ends of the earth soon, and then you'll be sorry
+you missed the chance."
+
+Her words hurt me like the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them,
+and when some days later Martin called to take me to the Geographical
+Society, where his commander, Lieutenant ---- was to give an account of
+their expedition, I could not find it in my heart to refuse to go.
+
+Oh, the difference of this world from that in which I had been living
+for the past six months! All that was best in England seemed to be
+there, the men who were doing the work of the world, and the women who
+were their wives and partners.
+
+The theatre was like the inside of a dish, and I sat by Martin's side on
+the bottom row of seats, just in front of the platform and face to face
+with the commander.
+
+His lecture, which was illustrated by many photographic lantern slides
+of the exploring party, (including the one that had been shown to me on
+the ship) was very interesting, but terribly pathetic; and when he
+described the hardships they had gone through in a prolonged blizzard on
+a high plateau, with food and fuel running low, and no certainty that
+they would ever see home again, I found myself feeling for Martin's hand
+to make sure that he was there.
+
+Towards the end the commander spoke very modestly of himself, saying he
+could never have reached the 87th parallel if he had not had a crew of
+the finest comrades that ever sailed on a ship.
+
+"And though they're all splendid fellows," he said, "there's one I can
+specially mention without doing any wrong to the rest, and that's the
+young doctor of our expedition--Martin Conrad. Martin has a scheme of
+his own for going down to the Antarctic again to make a great experiment
+in the interests of humanity, and if and when he goes I say, 'Good luck
+to him and God bless him!'"
+
+At these generous words there was much applause, during which Martin sat
+blushing like a big boy when he is introduced to the girl friends of his
+sister.
+
+As for me I did not think any speech could have been so beautiful, and I
+felt as if I could have cried for joy.
+
+When I got back to the hotel I _did_ cry, but it was for another reason.
+I was thinking of my father and wondering why he did not wait.
+
+"Why, why, why?" I asked myself.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Next day, Martin came rushing down to my sitting-room with a sheaf of
+letters in his hand, saying:
+
+"That was jolly good of the boss, but look what he has let me in for?"
+
+They were requests from various newspapers for portraits and interviews,
+and particularly from one great London journal for a special article to
+contain an account of the nature and object of the proposed experiment.
+
+"What am I to do?" he said. "I'm all right for stringing gabble, but I
+couldn't _write_ anything to save my soul. Now, you could. I'm sure you
+could. You could write like Robinson Crusoe. Why shouldn't you write the
+article and I'll tell you what to put into it?"
+
+There was no resisting that. And down at the bottom of my secret heart I
+was glad of the excuse to my conscience that I could not any longer run
+away from Martin because I was necessary to help him.
+
+So we sat together all day long, and though it was like shooting the
+rapids to follow Martin's impetuous and imaginative speech, I did my
+best to translate his disconnected outbursts into more connected words,
+and when the article was written and read aloud to him he was delighted.
+
+"Stunning! Didn't I say you could write like Robinson Crusoe?"
+
+In due course it was published and made a deep impression, for wherever
+I went people were talking of it, and though some said "Fudge!" and
+others, like my husband, said "Dreams!" the practical result was that
+the great newspaper started a public subscription with the object of
+providing funds for the realisation of Martin's scheme.
+
+This brought him an immense correspondence, so that every morning he
+came down with an armful of letters and piteous appeals to me to help
+him to reply to them.
+
+I knew it would be dangerous to put myself in the way of so much
+temptation, but the end of it was that day after day we sat together in
+my sitting-room, answering the inquiries of the sceptical, the
+congratulations of the convinced, and the offers of assistance that came
+from people who wished to join in the expedition.
+
+What a joy it was! It was like the dawn of a new life to me. But the
+highest happiness of all was to protect Martin against himself, to save
+him from his over-generous impulses--in a word, to mother him.
+
+Many of the letters he received were mere mendicancy. He was not rich,
+yet he could not resist a pitiful appeal, especially if it came from a
+woman, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him from ruining
+himself.
+
+Sometimes I would see him smuggle a letter into his side pocket, with--
+
+"H'm! That will do later."
+
+"What is it?" I would ask.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he would answer.
+
+"Hand it out, sir," I would say, and then I would find a fierce delight
+in sending six freezing words of refusal to some impudent woman who was
+trying to play upon the tender side of my big-hearted boy.
+
+Oh, it was delightful! My whole being seemed to be renewed. If only the
+dear sweet hours could go on and on for ever!
+
+Sometimes my husband and Alma would look in upon us at our work, and
+then, while the colour mounted to my eyes, Martin would say:
+
+"I'm fishing with another man's floats, you see."
+
+"I see," my husband would reply, fixing his monocle and showing his
+front teeth in a painful grin.
+
+"Just what dear Mary loves, though," Alma would say. "I do believe she
+would rather he sitting in this sunless room, writing letters for Mr.
+Conrad, than wearing her coronet at a King's coronation."
+
+"Just so, ma'am; there _are_ women like that," Martin would answer,
+looking hard at her; and when she had gone, (laughing lightly but with
+the frightened look I had seen before) he would say, as if speaking to
+himself:
+
+"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put my
+foot on it."
+
+At length the climax came. One day Martin rushed downstairs almost
+beside himself in his boyish joy, to say that all the money he needed
+had been subscribed, and that in honour of the maturing of the scheme
+the proprietor of the newspaper was to give a public luncheon at one of
+the hotels, and though no women were to be present at the "feed" a few
+ladies were to occupy seats in a gallery, and I was to be one of them.
+
+I had played with my temptation too long by this time to shrink from the
+dangerous exaltation which I knew the occasion would cause, so when the
+day came I went to the hotel in a fever of pleasure and pride.
+
+The luncheon was nearly over, the speeches were about to begin, and the
+ladies' gallery was buzzing like a hive of bees, when I took my seat in
+it. Two bright young American women sitting next to me were almost as
+excited as myself, and looking down at the men through a pair of
+opera-glasses they were asking each other which was Martin, whereupon my
+vanity, not to speak of my sense of possession, was so lifted up that I
+pointed him out to them, and then borrowed their glasses to look at the
+chairman.
+
+He seemed to me to have that light of imagination in his eyes which was
+always blazing in Martin's, and when he began to speak I thought I
+caught the note of the same wild passion.
+
+He said they were that day opening a new chapter in the wonderful book
+of man's story, and though the dangers of the great deep might never be
+entirely overcome, and the wind would continue to blow as it listed, yet
+the perils of the one and the movements of the other were going to be
+known to, and therefore checked by, the human family.
+
+After that, and a beautiful tribute to Martin as a man, (that everybody
+who had met him had come to love him, and that there must be something
+in the great solitudes of the silent white world to make men simple and
+strong and great, as the sea made them staunch and true) he drank to the
+success of the expedition, and called on Martin to respond to the toast.
+
+There was a great deal of cheering when Martin rose, but I was so
+nervous that I hardly heard it. He was nervous too, as I could plainly
+see, for after a few words of thanks, he began to fumble the sheets of a
+speech which he and I had prepared together, trying to read it, but
+losing his place and even dropping his papers.
+
+Beads of perspiration were starting from my forehead and I knew I was
+making noises in my throat, when all at once Martin threw his papers on
+the table and said, in quite another voice:
+
+"Ship-mates, I mean gentlemen, I never could write a speech in my life,
+and you see I can't read one, but I know what I want to say and if
+you'll take it as it comes here goes."
+
+Then in the simple style of a sailor, not always even grammatical yet
+splendidly clear and bold and natural, blundering along as he used to do
+when he was a boy at school and could not learn his lessons, but with
+his blue eyes ablaze, he told of his aims and his expectations.
+
+And when he came to the end he said:
+
+"His lordship, the chairman, has said something about the good effects
+of the solitudes of Nature on a man's character. I can testify to that.
+And I tell you this--whatever you are when you're up here and have
+everything you want, it's wonderful strange the way you're asking the
+Lord to stretch out His hand and help you when you're down there, all
+alone and with an empty hungry stomach.
+
+"I don't know where you were last Christmas Day, shipmates . . . I mean
+gentlemen, but I know where I was. I was in the 85th latitude, longitude
+163, four miles south and thirty west of Mount Darwin. It was my own bit
+of an expedition that my commander has made too much of, and I believe
+in my heart my mates had had enough of it. When we got out of our
+sleeping bags that morning there was nothing in sight but miles and
+miles of rolling waves of snow, seven thousand feet up on a windy
+plateau, with glaciers full of crevasses shutting us off from the sea,
+and not a living thing in sight as far as the eye could reach.
+
+"We were six in company and none of us were too good for Paradise, and
+one--he was an old Wapping sailor, we called him Treacle--had the name
+of being a shocking old rip ashore. But we remembered what day it was,
+and we wanted to feel that we weren't cut off entirely from the world of
+Christian men--our brothers and sisters who would be going to church at
+home. So I dug out my little prayer-book that my mother put in my kit
+going away, and we all stood round bare-headed in the snow--a shaggy old
+lot I can tell you, with chins that hadn't seen a razor for a month--and
+I read the prayers for the day, the first and second Vespers, and
+Laudate Dominum and then the De Profundis.
+
+"I think we felt better doing that, but they say the comical and the
+tragical are always chasing each other, which can get in first, and it
+was so with us, for just as I had got to an end with the solemn words,
+'Out of the depths we cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear our cry,' in
+jumps old Treacle in his thickest cockney, 'And Gawd bless our pore ole
+wives and sweethearts fur a-wye.'"
+
+If Martin said any more nobody heard it. The men below were blowing
+their noses, and the women in the gallery were crying openly.
+
+"Well, the man who can talk like that may open all my letters and
+telegrams," said one of the young American women, who was wiping her
+eyes without shame.
+
+What I was doing, and what I was looking like, I did not know until the
+lady, who had lent me the opera-glasses leaned over to me and said:
+
+"Excuse me, but are you his wife, may I ask?"
+
+"Oh no, no," I said nervously and eagerly, but only God knows how the
+word went through and through me.
+
+I had taken the wrong course, and I knew it. My pride, my joy, my
+happiness were all accusing me, and when I went to bed that night I felt
+as if I had been a guilty woman.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I tried to take refuge in religion. Every day and all day I humbly
+besought the pardon of heaven for the sin of loving Martin Conrad.
+
+The little religious duties which I had neglected since my marriage
+(such as crossing myself at rising from the table) I began to observe
+afresh, and being reminded by Martin's story that I had promised my
+mother to say a De Profundis for her occasionally I now said one every
+day. I thought these exercises would bring me a certain relief, but they
+did not.
+
+I searched my Missal for words that applied to my sinful state, and
+every night on going to bed I prayed to God to take from me all unholy
+thoughts, all earthly affections. But what was the use of my prayers
+when in the first dream of the first sleep I was rushing into Martin's
+arms?
+
+It was true that my love for Martin was what the world would call a pure
+love; it had no alloy of any kind; but all the same I thought I was
+living in a condition of adultery--adultery of the heart.
+
+Early every morning I went to mass, but the sense I used to have of
+returning from the divine sacrifice to the ordinary occupations of life
+with a new spirit and a clean heart I could feel no longer.
+
+I went oftener to confession than I had done before--twice a week to
+begin with, then every other day, then every day. But the old joy, the
+sense of purity and cleansing, did not come. I thought at first the
+fault might be with my Confessor, for though I knew I was in the
+presence of God, the whispering voice behind the grating, which used to
+thrill me with a feeling of the supernatural, was that of a young man,
+and I asked myself what a young priest could know by experience of the
+deep temptations of human love.
+
+This was at the new Cathedral at Westminster, so I changed to a little
+Catholic church in a kind of mews in Mayfair, and there my Confessor was
+an older man whose quivering voice seemed to search the very depths of
+my being. He was deeply alarmed at my condition and counselled me to
+pray to God night and day to strengthen me against temptation.
+
+"The Evil One is besieging your soul, my child," he said. "Fight with
+him, my daughter."
+
+I tried to follow my ghostly father's direction, but how hard it was to
+do so! Martin had only to take my hand and look into my eyes and all my
+good resolutions were gone in a moment.
+
+As a result of the fierce struggle between my heart and my soul my
+health began to fail me. From necessity now, and not from design, I had
+to keep my room, but even there my love for Martin was always hanging
+like a threatening sword over my head.
+
+My maid Price was for ever singing his praises. He was so bright, so
+cheerful, so strong, so manly; in fact, he was perfect, and any woman in
+the world might be forgiven if she fell in love with him.
+
+Her words were like music in my ears, and sometimes I felt as if I
+wanted to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. But at other
+moments I reproved her, telling her it was very wicked of her to think
+so much of the creature instead of fixing her mind on the Creator--a
+piece of counsel which made Price, who was all woman, open her sparkling
+black eyes in bewilderment.
+
+Nearly every morning she brought me a bunch of flowers, which Martin had
+bought at Covent Garden, all glittering from the sunshine and damp with
+the dew. I loved to have them near me, but, finding they tempted me to
+think more tenderly of him who sent them, I always contrived by one
+excuse or another to send them into the sitting-room that they might be
+out of my sight at all events.
+
+After a while Price, remembering my former artifice, began to believe
+that I was only pretending to be ill, in order to draw Martin on, and
+then taking a certain liberty with me, as with a child, she reproved me.
+
+"If I were a lady I couldn't have the heart," she said, "I really
+couldn't. It's all very well for us women, but men don't understand such
+ways. They're only children, men are, when you come to know them."
+
+I began to look upon poor Price as a honeyed fiend sent by Satan to
+seduce me, and to say the truth she sometimes acted up to the character.
+One day she said:
+
+"If I was tied to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love me, and
+somebody else, worth ten of him was ready and waiting, I would take the
+sweet with the bitter, I would. We women must follow our hearts, and why
+shouldn't we?"
+
+Then I scolded her dreadfully, asking if she had forgotten that she was
+speaking to her mistress, and a married woman; but all the while I knew
+that it was myself, not my maid, I was angry with, for she had only been
+giving voice to the thoughts that were secretly tormenting me.
+
+I had been in bed about a week when Price came with a letter in her hand
+and a look of triumph in her black eyes and said:
+
+"There, my lady! What did I tell you? You've had it all your own way and
+now you've driven him off. He has left the hotel and gone to live on his
+ship."
+
+This frightened me terribly, and partly for that reason I ordered her
+out of the room, telling her she must leave me altogether if she ever
+took such liberties again. But I'm sure she saw me, as she was going
+through the door, take up Martin's letter, which I had thrown on to the
+table, and press it to my lips.
+
+The letter was of no consequence, it was merely to tell me that he was
+going down to Tilbury for a few days, to take possession of his old ship
+in the name of his company, but it said in a postscript:
+
+"If there's anything I can do for you, pass me the word and I'll come up
+like quick-sticks."
+
+"What can I do? What can I do?" I thought. Everything my heart desired
+my soul condemned as sinful, and religion had done nothing to liberate
+me from the pains of my guilty passion.
+
+All this time my husband and Alma were busy with the gaieties of the
+London season, which was then in full swing, with the houses in Mayfair
+being ablaze every night, the blinds up and the windows open to cool the
+overheated rooms in which men and women could be seen dancing in
+closely-packed crowds.
+
+One night, after Alma and my husband had gone to a reception in
+Grosvenor Square, I had a sudden attack of heart-strain and had to be
+put to bed, whereupon Price, who had realised that I was really ill,
+told Hobson, my husband's valet, to go after his master and bring him
+back immediately.
+
+"It'll be all as one, but I'll go if you like," said Hobson.
+
+In half an hour he came back with my husband's answer. "Send for a
+doctor."
+
+This put Price into a fever of mingled anger and perplexity, and not
+knowing what else to do she telegraphed to Martin on his ship, telling
+him that I was ill and asking what doctor she ought to call in to see
+me.
+
+Inside an hour a reply came not from Tilbury but from Portsmouth saying:
+
+"Call Doctor ---- of Brook Street. Am coming up at once."
+
+All this I heard for the first time when Price, with another triumphant
+look, came into my bedroom flourishing Martin's telegram as something
+she had reason to be proud of.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you telegraphed to Mr. Conrad?" I said.
+
+"Why _not?_" said Price. "When a lady is ill and her husband pays no
+attention to her, and there's somebody else not far off who would give
+his two eyes to save her a pain in her little finger, what is a woman to
+do?"
+
+I told her what she was _not_ to do. She was not to call the doctor
+under any circumstances, and when Martin came she was to make it plain
+to him that she had acted on her own responsibility.
+
+Towards midnight he arrived, and Price brought him into my room in a
+long ulster covered with dust. I blushed and trembled at sight of him,
+for his face betrayed the strain and anxiety he had gone through on my
+account, and when he smiled at seeing that I was not as ill as he had
+thought, I was ashamed to the bottom of my heart.
+
+"You'll be sorry you've made such a long journey now that you see
+there's so little amiss with me," I said.
+
+"Sorry?" he said. "By the holy saints, I would take a longer one every
+night of my life to see you looking so well at the end of it."
+
+His blue eyes were shining like the sun from behind a cloud, and the
+cruellest looks could not have hurt me more.
+
+I tried to keep my face from expressing the emotion I desired to
+conceal, and asked if he had caught a train easily from Portsmouth,
+seeing he had arrived so early.
+
+"No. Oh no, there was no train up until eleven o'clock," he said.
+
+"Then how did you get here so soon?" I asked, and though he would not
+tell me at first I got it out of him at last--he had hired a motor-car
+and travelled the ninety miles to London in two hours and a half.
+
+That crushed me. I could not speak. I thought I should have choked.
+Lying there with Martin at arm's length of me, I was afraid of myself,
+and did not know what I might do next. But at last, with a great effort
+to control myself, I took his hand and kissed it, and then turned my
+face to the wall.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, my
+husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology,
+saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I said:
+
+"James, I want you to take me home."
+
+"Home? You mean . . . Castle Raa?"
+
+"Y-es."
+
+He hesitated, and I began to plead with him, earnestly and eagerly, not
+to deny me what I asked.
+
+"Take me home, I beg, I pray."
+
+At length, seeming to think I must be homesick, he said:
+
+"Well, you know my views about that God-forsaken place, but the season's
+nearly at an end, and I don't mind going back on one condition--that you
+raise no objection to my inviting a few friends to liven it up a bit?"
+
+"It is your house," I said. "You must do as you please in it."
+
+"Very good; that's settled," he said, getting up to go. "And I dare say
+it will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this church-going and
+confessing to priests, who are always depressing people even when
+they're not making mischief."
+
+Hardly had my husband left me when Alma came into my sitting-room in the
+most affectionate and insincere of her moods.
+
+"My poor, dear sweet child," she said. "If I'd had the least idea you
+were feeling so badly I shouldn't have allowed Jimmy to stay another
+minute at that tiresome reception. But how good it was of Mr. Conrad to
+come all that way to see you! That's what I call being a friend now!"
+
+Then came the real object of her visit--I saw it coming.
+
+"I hear you're to have a house-party at Castle Raa. Jimmy's in his room
+writing piles of invitations. He has asked me and I should love to go,
+but of course I cannot do so without _you_ wish it. Do you?"
+
+What could I say? What I _did_ say I scarcely know. I only know that at
+the next minute Alma's arms were round my neck, and she was saying:
+
+"You dear, sweet, unselfish little soul! Come let me kiss you."
+
+It was done. I had committed myself. After all what right had I to raise
+myself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter, anyway? I was
+flying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to save my husband
+from his.
+
+Price had been in the room during this interview and when it was over I
+was ashamed to look at her.
+
+"I can't understand you, my lady; I really can't," she said.
+
+Next day I wrote a little letter to Martin on the _Scotia_ telling him
+of our change of plans, but forbidding him to trouble to come up to say
+good-bye, yet half hoping he would disregard my injunction.
+
+He did. Before I left my bedroom next morning I heard his voice in the
+sitting-room talking to Price, who with considerable emphasis was giving
+her views of Alma.
+
+When I joined him I thought his face (which had grown to be very
+powerful) looked hard and strained; but his voice was as soft as ever
+while he said I was doing right in going home and that my native air
+must be good for me.
+
+"But what's this Price tells me--that Madame is going with you?"
+
+I tried to make light of that, but I broke down badly, for his eyes were
+on me, and I could see that he thought I was concealing the truth.
+
+For some minutes he looked perplexed, as if trying to understand how it
+came to pass that sickening, as he believed I was, at the sight of my
+husband's infidelities I was yet carrying the provocative cause of them
+away with me, and then he said again:
+
+"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put my
+foot on it. I will, too, one of these days--bet your life I will."
+
+It hurt me to hide anything from him, but how could I tell him that it
+was not from Alma I was flying but from himself?
+
+When the day came for our departure I hoped I might get away without
+seeing Martin again. We did get out of the hotel and into the railway
+station, yet no sooner was I seated in the carriage than (in the cruel
+war that was going on within me) I felt dreadfully down that he was not
+there to see me off.
+
+But at the very last moment, just as Alma with her spaniel under her
+arm, and my husband with his terrier on a strap, were about to step into
+the train, up came Martin like a gust of mountain wind.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried. "I shall be seeing you soon. Everything's settled
+about the expedition. We're to sail the first week in September, so as
+to get the summer months in the Antarctic. But before that I must go
+over to the island to say good-bye to the old folks, and I'll see you at
+your father's I suppose."
+
+Then Alma gave my husband a significant glance and said:
+
+"But, Mary, my love, wouldn't it be better for Mr. Conrad to come to
+Castle Raa? You won't be able to go about very much. Remember your
+delicate condition, you know."
+
+"Of course, why of course," said my husband. "That's quite true, and if
+Mr. Conrad will do me the honour to accept my hospitality for a few
+days. . . ."
+
+It was what I wanted above everything on earth, and yet I said:
+
+"No, no! It wouldn't be fair. Martin will be too busy at the last
+moment."
+
+But Martin himself jumped in eagerly with:
+
+"Certainly! Delighted! Greatest pleasure in the world."
+
+And then, while Alma gave my husband a look of arch triumph to which he
+replied with a painful smile, Martin leaned over to me and whispered"
+
+"Hush! I want to! I must!" though what he meant by that I never knew.
+
+He continued to look at me with a tender expression until we said
+good-bye; but after the carriage door had been closed and the engine had
+throbbed, and the guard had whistled, I thought I had never seen his
+strong face so stern as when the train moved from the platform.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+We reached Ellan towards the close of the following day. It was the
+height of the holiday season, and the island seemed to be ablaze with
+lights.
+
+Two motor-cars were waiting for us at the pier, and in a little while we
+were driving out of Blackwater through congested masses of people who
+were rambling aimlessly through the principal streets.
+
+Our way was across a stone bridge that crossed the harbour at its inner
+end, and then up a hill that led to a headland overlooking the sea.
+Within half an hour we drew up at a pair of large gate posts which were
+much decayed and leaning heavily out of the perpendicular.
+
+The chauffeur of the first of our ears got down to open the gate, and
+after it had clashed to behind us, we began to ascend a very steep drive
+that was bordered by tall elm trees. It was now almost dark, and the
+rooks, which had not yet gone off to the mountains, were making their
+evening clamour.
+
+"Well, my dear, you're at home at last, and much good may it do you,"
+said my husband.
+
+I made no answer to this ungracious speech, but Alma was all excitement.
+
+"So this is Castle Raa! What a fascinating old place!" she said, and as
+we drove through the park she reached out of the car to catch a first
+glimpse of the broad terraces and winding ways to the sea which had been
+reflected in her memory since she was a child.
+
+I felt no such anxiety. Never did a young bride approach the home of her
+husband with less curiosity, but as our motor-car toiled up the drive I
+could not help seeing the neglected condition of the land, with boughs
+of trees lying where they had fallen in the storms, as well as broken
+gates half off their hinges and swinging to the wind.
+
+The house itself, when we came in sight of it, was a large castellated
+building with many lesser turrets and one lofty octagonal tower, covered
+entirely with ivy, which, being apparently unshorn for years, hung in
+long trailers down the walls, and gave the whole pile the appearance of
+a huge moss-covered rock of the sea planted on a promontory of the land.
+
+As our car went thundering up to the great hall door nearly the whole of
+the servants and some of the tenant farmers (under the direction of the
+tall, sallow man who had been my husband's guardian in former days, and
+was now his steward) were waiting to welcome us, as well as Lady
+Margaret Anselm, who was still reserved and haughty in her manner,
+though pleasant enough with me.
+
+My husband nodded to all, shook hands with some, presented Alma to his
+aunt as "one of Mary's old school friends," (a designation which, as I
+could see, had gone ahead of her) and then we passed into the house.
+
+I found the inside corresponded with the outside in its appearance of
+neglect and decay, the big square hall having rusty and disjointed
+armour on its wainscotted walls and the mark of water on the floor,
+which had come from a glass dome over the well of the stairs, for it had
+rained while we were on the sea.
+
+The drawing-room had faded curtains over the windows, faded velvet on
+the square sofa and stiff chairs, faded carpets, faded samplers, and
+faded embroidery on faded screens.
+
+The dining-room (the sedate original of my father's rather garish copy)
+was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund portraits of the male
+O'Neills from the early ones of the family who had been Lords of Ellan
+down to the "bad Lord Raa," who had sworn at my grandmother on the high
+road.
+
+I felt as if no woman could have made her home here for at least a
+hundred years, and I thought the general atmosphere of the house was
+that of the days when spendthrift noblemen, making the island a refuge
+from debt, spent their days in gambling and their nights in drinking
+bumpers from bowls of whiskey punch to the nameless beauties they had
+left "in town."
+
+They were all gone, all dead as the wood of the worm-eaten wainscotting,
+but the sound of their noisy merry-making seemed to cling to the rafters
+still, and as I went up to my rooms the broad oaken staircase seemed to
+be creaking under their drunken footsteps.
+
+My own apartments, to which Lady Margaret conducted me, were on the
+southern side of the house--a rather stuffy bedroom with walls covered
+by a kind of pleated chintz, and a boudoir with a stone balcony that had
+a flight of steps going down to a terrace of the garden, which
+overlooked a glen and had a far view of the sea.
+
+On the opposite side of the landing outside (which was not immediately
+off the great staircase though open to the view of it) there was a
+similar suite of rooms which I thought might be my husband's, but I was
+told they were kept for a guest.
+
+Being left alone I had taken off my outer things and was standing on my
+balcony, listening to the dull hum of the water in the glen, the rustle
+of the trees above it, the surge of the sea on the rocks below, the
+creaking of a rusty weathercock and the striking of a court-yard clock,
+when I also heard the toot and throb of another motor-car, and as soon
+as it came up I saw that it contained Aunt Bridget in the half-moon
+bonnet and Betsy Beauty, who was looking more than ever like a country
+belle.
+
+When I went down to the drawing-room Lady Margaret was pouring out tea
+for them, and at sight of me Aunt Bridget cried,
+
+"Sakes alive, here she is herself!"
+
+"But how pale and pinched and thin!" said Betsy Beauty.
+
+"Nonsense, girl, that's only natural," said my Aunt Bridget, with
+something like a wink; and then she went on to say that she had just
+been telling her ladyship that if I felt lonely and a little helpless on
+first coming home Betsy would be pleased to visit me.
+
+Before I could reply my husband came in, followed shortly by Alma, who
+was presented as before, as "Mary's old school-fellow"; and then, while
+Betsy talked to Alma and my husband to his kinswoman, Aunt Bridget, in
+an undertone, addressed herself to me.
+
+"You're that way, aren't you? . . . No? Goodness me, girl, your father
+_will_ be disappointed!"
+
+Just then a third motor-car came throbbing up to the house, and Betsy
+who was standing by the window cried:
+
+"It's Uncle Daniel with Mr. Curphy and Nessy."
+
+"Nessy, of course," said Aunt Bridget grumpily, and then she told me in
+a confidential whisper that she was a much-injured woman in regard to
+"that ungrateful step-daughter," who was making her understand the words
+of Scripture about the pang that was sharper than a serpent's tooth.
+
+As the new-comers entered I saw that Nessy had developed an old maid's
+idea of smartness, and that my father's lawyer was more than ever like
+an over-fatted fish; but my father himself (except that his hair was
+whiter) was the same man still, with the same heavy step, the same loud
+voice and the same tempestuous gaiety.
+
+"All here? Good! Glad to be home, I guess! Strong and well and hearty, I
+suppose? . . . Yes, sir, yes! I'm middling myself, sir. Middling, sir,
+middling!"
+
+During these rugged salutations I saw that Alma, with the bad manners of
+a certain type of society woman, looked on with a slightly impertinent
+air of amused superiority, until she encountered my father's masterful
+eyes, which nobody in the world could withstand.
+
+After a moment my father addressed himself to me.
+
+"Well, gel," he said, taking me by the shoulders, as he did in Rome,
+"you must have cut a dash in Egypt, I guess. Made the money fly, didn't
+you? No matter! My gold was as good as anybody else's, and I didn't
+grudge it. You'll clear me of that, anyway."
+
+Then there was some general talk about our travels, about affairs on the
+island (Mr. Curphy saying, with a laugh and a glance in my direction,
+that things were going so well with my father that if all his schemes
+matured he would have no need to wait for a descendant to become the
+"uncrowned King of Ellan"), and finally about Martin Conrad, whose great
+exploits had become known even in his native country.
+
+"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" said my father. "I wouldn't have
+believed it of him. I wouldn't really. Just a neighbour lad without a
+penny at him. And now the world's trusting him with fifty thousand
+pounds, they're telling me!"
+
+"Well, many are called but few are chosen," said Mr. Curphy with another
+laugh.
+
+After that, and some broken conversation, Aunt Bridget expressed a
+desire to see the house, as the evening was closing in and they must
+soon be going back.
+
+Lady Margaret thereupon took her, followed by the rest of us, over the
+principal rooms of the Castle; and it was interesting to see the awe
+with which she looked upon everything--her voice dropping to a whisper
+in the dining-room. I remember, as if the scene of carousing of the old
+roysterers had been a sort of sanctuary.
+
+My father, less impressed, saw nothing but a house in bad repair, and
+turning to my husband, who had been obviously ill at ease, he said:
+
+"Go on like this much longer, son-in-law, and you'll be charging
+two-pence a head to look at your ruins. Guess I must send my architect
+over to see what he can do for you."
+
+Then taking me aside he made his loud voice as low as he could and said:
+
+"What's this your Aunt Bridget tells me? Nine months married and no
+sign yet? Tut, tut! That won't do, gel, that won't do."
+
+I tried to tell him not to spend money on the Castle if he intended to
+do so in expectation of an heir, but my heart was in my mouth and what I
+really said I do not know. I only know that my father looked at me for a
+moment as if perplexed, and then burst into laughter.
+
+"I see! I see!" he said. "It's a doctor you want. I must send Conrad to
+put a sight on you. It'll be all right, gel, it'll be all right! Your
+mother was like that when you were coming."
+
+As we returned to the hall Betsy Beauty whispered that she was surprised
+Mr. Eastcliff had married, but she heard from Madame that we were to
+have a house-party soon, and she hoped I would not forget her.
+
+Then Aunt Bridget, who had been eyeing Alma darkly, asked me who and
+what she was and where she came from, whereupon I (trying to put the
+best face on things) explained that she was the daughter of a rich New
+York banker. After that Aunt Bridget's countenance cleared perceptibly
+and she said:
+
+"Ah, yes, of course! I thought she had a quality toss with her."
+
+The two motor-cars had been drawn up to the door, and the two parties
+had taken their seats in them when my father, looking about him, said to
+my husband:
+
+"Your garden is as rough as a thornbush, son-in-law. I must send Tommy
+the Mate to smarten it up a bit. So long! So long!"
+
+At the next moment they were gone, and I was looking longingly after
+them. God knows my father's house had never been more than a
+stepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to it
+and felt like a child who was being left behind at school.
+
+What had I gained, by running away from London? Nothing at all. Already
+I knew I had brought my hopeless passion with me.
+
+And now I was alone.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next day Lady Margaret came to my room to say good-bye, telling me she
+had only stayed at Castle Raa to keep house and make ready for me, and
+must now return to her own home, which was in London.
+
+I was sorry, for my heart had warmed to her, and when I stood at the
+door and saw her drive off with my husband to catch the afternoon
+steamer, I felt I had lost both sympathy and protection.
+
+Alma's feelings were less troubled, and as we turned back into the house
+I could see that she was saying to herself:
+
+"Thank goodness, _she's_ gone away."
+
+A day or two later Doctor Conrad came, according to my father's
+instructions, and I was glad to see his close-cropped iron-grey head
+coming up the stairs towards my room.
+
+Naturally our first conversation was about Martin, who had written to
+tell his parents of our meeting in London and to announce his intended
+visit. It was all very exciting, and now his mother was working morning
+and night at the old cottage, to prepare for the arrival of her son.
+Such scrubbing and scouring! Such taking up of carpets and laying them
+down again, as if the darling old thing were expecting a prince!
+
+"It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she's done with it," said the
+Doctor.
+
+"I'm sure it will," I said. "It always was, and it always will be."
+
+"And how are we ourselves," said the doctor. "A little below par, eh?
+Any sickness? No? Nausea? No? Headache and a feeling of lassitude, then?
+No?"
+
+After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking puzzled,
+when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark any longer, I
+told him there was nothing amiss with my health, but I was unhappy and
+had been so since the time of my marriage.
+
+"I see," he said. "It's your mind and not your body that is sick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll speak to Father Dan," he said. "Good-bye! God bless you!"
+
+Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her softest
+mode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from extreme nervous
+exhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and anxieties of every
+kind.
+
+"So if there's anything I can do while I'm here, dearest, . . . such as
+looking after the house and the servants. . . . No, no, don't deny me;
+it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . . So we'll say that's settled,
+shall we? . . . You dear, sweet darling creature!"
+
+I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside two days I
+realised that Alma had taken possession of the house, and was ordering
+and controlling everything.
+
+Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to gain by
+it--the housekeeper in particular--for Alma was no skinflint and she was
+making my husband's money flow like water, but it was less agreeable to
+my maid, who said:
+
+"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interest
+in anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll walk over the
+mistress herself before long--mark my word but she will."
+
+It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price came
+to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such a
+strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was that
+of a child, a woman or a dear old man.
+
+I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairs
+and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed)
+as when I was a child and made cupboards of its vertical pockets,
+carrying the same funny little bag which he had taken to Rome and used
+for his surplice at funerals, and mopping his forehead and flicking his
+boots with a red print handkerchief, for the day was hot and the roads
+were dusty.
+
+He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he would
+have tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from the
+Presbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he would
+not stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, "if it would not be
+troublesome and inconvenient."
+
+So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it to the
+guest's room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir immediately.
+
+But hardly had I taken him upstairs and we had got seated in my private
+room, when the maid knocked at the door to say that the housekeeper
+wished to speak with me, and on going out, and closing the door behind
+me, I found her on the landing, a prim little flinty person with quick
+eyes, thin lips and an upward lift of her head.
+
+"Sorry, my lady, but it won't be convenient for his reverence to stay in
+the house to-night," she said.
+
+"Why so?" I said.
+
+"Because Madame has ordered all the rooms to be got ready for the
+house-party, and this one," (pointing to the guest's room opposite) "is
+prepared for Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff, and we don't know how soon they may
+arrive."
+
+I felt myself flushing up to the eyes at the woman's impudence, and it
+added to my anger that Alma herself was standing at the head of the
+stairs, looking on and listening. So with a little spurt of injured
+pride I turned severely on the one while really speaking to the other,
+and said:
+
+"Be good enough to make this room ready for his reverence without one
+moment's delay, and please remember for the future, that I am mistress
+in this house, and your duty is to obey me and nobody else whatever."
+
+As I said this and turned back to my boudoir, I saw that Alma's deep
+eyes had a sullen look, and I felt that she meant to square accounts
+with me some day; but what she did was done at once, for going
+downstairs (as I afterwards heard from Price) she met my husband in the
+hall, where, woman-like, she opened her battery upon him at his weakest
+spot, saying:
+
+"Oh, I didn't know your wife was priest-ridden."
+
+"Priest-ridden?"
+
+"Precisely," and then followed an explanation of what had happened, with
+astonishing embellishments which made my husband pale with fury.
+
+Meantime I was alone with Father Dan in my room, and while I poured out
+his tea and served him with bread and butter, he talked first about
+Martin (as everybody seemed to do when speaking to me), saying:
+
+"He was always my golden-headed boy, and it's a mighty proud man I am
+entirely to hear the good news of him."
+
+More of the same kind there was, all music to my ears, and then Father
+Dan came to closer quarters, saying Doctor Conrad had dropped a hint
+that I was not very happy.
+
+"Tell your old priest everything, my child, and if there is anything he
+can do. . . ."
+
+Without waiting for more words I sank to my knees at his feet, and
+poured out all my troubles--telling him my marriage had been a failure;
+that the sanctifying grace which he had foretold as the result of the
+sacrament of holy wedlock had not come to pass; that not only did I not
+love my husband, but my husband loved another woman, who was living here
+with us in this very house.
+
+Father Dan was dreadfully distressed. More than once while I was
+speaking he crossed himself and said, "Lord and His Holy Mother love
+us;" and when I came to an end he began to reproach himself for
+everything, saying that he ought to have known that our lad (meaning
+Martin) did not write those terrible letters without being certain they
+were true, and that from the first day my husband came to our parish the
+sun had been darkened by his shadow.
+
+"But take care," he said. "I've told nobody about the compact we made
+with your husband--nobody but our Blessed Lady herself--and you mustn't
+think of that as a way out of your marriage. No, nor of any other way,
+no matter what, which the world, and the children of the world, may talk
+about."
+
+"But I can't bear it, I can't bear it," I cried.
+
+"Hush! Hush! Don't say that, my daughter. Think of it as one of the
+misfortunes of life which we all have to suffer. How many poor women
+have to bear the sickness and poverty, not to speak of the drunkenness
+and death, of their husbands! Do they think they have a right to run
+away from all that--to break the sacred vows of their marriage on
+account of it? No, my child, no, and neither must you. Some day it will
+all come right. You'll see it will. And meantime by the memory of your
+mother--that blessed saint whom the Lord has made one of his own. . . ."
+
+"Then what can I do?"
+
+"Pray, my child, pray for strength to bear your trials and to resist all
+temptation. Say a rosary for the Blessed Virgin every morning before
+breaking your fast. I'll say a rosary, too. You'll see yet this is only
+God's love for you, and you'll welcome His holy will."
+
+While my dear father and friend was counselling me so I heard my husband
+speaking in his loud, grating tones on the landing outside, and before I
+could rise from my knees he had burst open the door and entered the
+room.
+
+His face was deadly white and he was like a man out of his right mind.
+
+"Mary," he said, looking down at me where I knelt with my hands crossed
+on my bosom, "when did I give you permission to introduce a priest into
+my house? Isn't it enough for a man to have a wife who is a Catholic
+without having the church and its ministers shunted into his home
+without his permission?"
+
+I was so taken aback by this furious assault that at first I could not
+speak, but Father Dan interposed to defend me, saying with beautiful
+patience, that his visit had been quite unexpected on my part, and that
+I had asked him to stay overnight only because he was an old man, and
+had had a long walk from his parish.
+
+"I'm much obliged to your reverence," said my husband, who was quivering
+with fury, "but my wife is perfectly capable of answering for herself
+without your assistance, and as for your parish you would have done
+better to stay there instead of coming to meddle in this one."
+
+"Aren't you measuring me by your own yard, sir?" said Father Dan, and at
+that straight thrust my husband broke into ungovernable rage.
+
+"Everybody knows what a Popish priest is," he said. "A meddlesome
+busybody who pokes his nose into other men's secrets. But priest or no
+priest, I'll have no man coming to my house to make mischief between
+husband and wife."
+
+"Are you sure," said Father Dan, "that some woman isn't in your house
+already, making mischief between wife and husband?"
+
+That thrust too went home. My husband looked at me with flashing eyes
+and then said:
+
+"As I thought! You've been sent for to help my wife to make a great
+to-do of her imaginary grievances. You're to stay in the house too, and
+before long we'll have you setting up as master here and giving orders
+to my servants! But not if I know it! . . . Your reverence, if you have
+any respect for your penitent, you'll please be good enough to leave my
+wife to _my_ protection."
+
+I saw that Father Dan had to gulp down his gathering anger, but he only
+said:
+
+"Say no more, my lord. No true priest ever comes between a man and the
+wife whom God has given him. It's his business to unite people, not to
+put them apart. As for this dear child, I have loved her since she was
+an infant in arms, and never so much as at the present speaking, so I
+don't need to learn my duty from one who appears to care no more for her
+than for the rind of a lemon. I'll go, sir," said the old man, drawing
+himself up like a wounded lion, "but it's not to your protection I
+leave her--it's to that of God's blessed and holy love and will."
+
+My husband had gone before the last words were spoken, but I think they
+must have followed him as he went lunging down the stairs.
+
+During this humiliating scene a hot flush of shame had come to my cheeks
+and I wanted to tell Father Dan not to let it grieve him, but I could do
+nothing but stoop and kiss his hand.
+
+Meantime two or three of the servants had gathered on the landing at the
+sound of my husband's voice, and among them was the flinty housekeeper
+holding the Father's little bag, and she gave it back to him as he
+passed her.
+
+Then, all being over, the woman came into my room, with an expression of
+victorious mischief in her eyes and said:
+
+"Your ladyship had better have listened to them as knows, you see."
+
+I was too benumbed by that cruel stroke to reply, but Price said enough
+for both of us.
+
+"If them as knows," she said, "don't get out of this room inside two
+seconds they'll get their ugly faces slapped."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I thought I had reached the end of my power of endurance, and that
+night, before going to bed, while my maid was taking down my hair, and I
+was thinking of Martin and asking myself if I should put up with my
+husband's brutalities any longer, I heard her say:
+
+"If I were a lady married to the wrong man, I'd have the right one if I
+had to go through the divorce court for him."
+
+Now that was so exactly the thought that was running riot in my own
+tormented mind, that I flew at her like a wild cat, asking her how she
+dared to say anything so abominably wicked, and telling her to take her
+notice there and then.
+
+But hardly had she left the room, when my heart was in my mouth again,
+and I was trembling with fear lest she should take me at my word and
+then the last of my friends would be gone.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Within the next few days the house-party arrived. There would be twenty
+of them at least, not counting valets and ladies' maids, so that large
+as Castle Raa was the house was full.
+
+They were about equally divided as to sex and belonged chiefly to my
+husband's class, but they included Mr. Eastcliff's beautiful wife,
+Camilla, and Alma's mother, who, much to Alma's chagrin, had insisted
+upon being invited.
+
+My husband required me to receive them, and I did so, though I was only
+their nominal hostess, and they knew it and treated me accordingly.
+
+I should be ashamed to speak of the petty slights they put upon me, how
+they consulted Alma in my presence and otherwise wounded my pride as a
+woman by showing me that I had lost my own place in my husband's house.
+
+I know there are people of the same class who are kind and considerate,
+guileless and pure, the true nobility of their country--women who are
+devoted to their homes and children, and men who spend their wealth and
+strength for the public good--but my husband's friends were not of that
+kind.
+
+They were vain and proud, selfish, self-indulgent, thoroughly insincere,
+utterly ill-mannered, shockingly ill-informed, astonishingly
+ill-educated (capable of speaking several languages but incapable of
+saying a sensible word in any of them), living and flourishing in the
+world without religion, without morality, and (if it is not a cant
+phrase to use) without God.
+
+What their conduct was when out shooting, picnicking, driving, riding,
+motoring, and yachting (for Mr. Eastcliff had arrived in his yacht,
+which was lying at anchor in the port below the glen), I do not know,
+for "doctor's orders" were Alma's excuse for not asking me to accompany
+them.
+
+But at night they played bridge (their most innocent amusement), gambled
+and drank, banged the piano, danced "Grizzly Bears," sang duets from the
+latest musical comedies, and then ransacked the empty houses of their
+idle heads for other means of killing the one enemy of their
+existence--Time.
+
+Sometimes they would give entertainments in honour of their dogs, when
+all the animals of all the guests (there seemed to be a whole kennel of
+them) would be dressed up in coats of silk and satin with pockets and
+pocket-handkerchiefs, and then led downstairs to the drawing-room, where
+Alma's wheezy spaniel and my husband's peevish terrier were supposed to
+receive them.
+
+Sometimes they would give "freak dinners," when the guests themselves
+would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, the
+male imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the female
+the over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness,
+they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, the
+usual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses in
+the family portraits, which, hit and covered with a sprawling mess,
+looked so ridiculous as to provoke screams of laughter.
+
+The talk at table was generally of horses and dogs, but sometimes it was
+of love, courtship and marriage, including conjugal fidelity, which was
+a favourite subject of ridicule, with both the women and the men.
+
+Thus my husband would begin by saying (he often said it in my hearing)
+that once upon a time men took their wives as they took their horses, on
+trial for a year and a day, and "really with some women there was
+something to say for the old custom."
+
+Then Mr. Vivian would remark that it was "a jolly good idea, by Jove,"
+and if he "ever married, by the Lord that's just what he would do."
+
+Then Mr. Eastcliff would say that it was a ridiculous superstition that
+a woman should have her husband all to herself, "as if he were a kind of
+toothbrush which she could not share with anybody else," and somebody
+would add that she might as reasonably want her dentist or her
+hairdresser to be kept for her own use only.
+
+After that the ladies, not to be left behind, would join in the off-hand
+rattle, and one of them would give it as her opinion that a wife might
+have an incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be well off.
+
+"Ugh!" said Alma one night, shrugging her shoulders. "Think of a poor
+woman being tied for life to an entirely faithful husband!"
+
+"I adore the kind of man who goes to the deuce for a woman--Parnell, and
+Gambetta and Boulanger and that sort," said a "smart" girl of three or
+four-and-twenty, whereupon Camilla Eastcliff (she was a Russian) cried:
+
+"That's vhy the co-respondents in your divorce courts are so sharming.
+They're like the villayns in the plays--always so dee-lightfully
+vicked."
+
+Oh, the sickening horror of it all! Whether it was really moral
+corruption or only affectation and pose, it seemed equally shocking, and
+though I bore as much of it as I could with a cheerful face, I escaped
+as often as possible to the clean atmosphere of my own room.
+
+But even there I was not always allowed to be alone, for Alma's mother
+frequently followed me. She was a plump little person in a profuse
+ornamentation of diamond rings and brooches, with little or no
+education, and a reputation for saying risky things in blundering French
+whereof the principal humour lay in the uncertainty as to whether she
+knew their meaning or not.
+
+Nevertheless she was the only good-hearted woman in the house, and I
+really believe she thought she was doing a kind act in keeping me
+company. But oh, how I suffered from her long accounts of her former
+"visits" to my house, whereby I learned, without wishing to, what her
+origin had been (the daughter of a London postman); what position she
+had held in Castle Raa in her winsome and reckless youth (one that need
+not be defined); how she had met her husband in New York and he had
+married her to save the reputation of his child; and finally how the
+American ladies of society had refused to receive her, and she had vowed
+to be revenged on them by marrying Alma to the highest title in Europe
+that could be bought with money.
+
+"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of harm to
+those people. They used to think I thought myself better blood nor they
+were, but I never thought no such thing, I assure you. Only when they
+turned nasty after my marriage I made up my mind--just as your father
+did--as Alma should marry a bigger husband nor any of them, even if he
+wasn't worth a dime and 'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead."
+
+But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating than her
+sympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to be mistress of
+a noble house--how could it be expected of me?--whereas Alma was just as
+if she had been born to it, and therefore it was lucky for me that I had
+her there to show me how to do things.
+
+"Alma's gotten such _ton!_ Such distangy manners!" she would say.
+
+The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before,
+the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I looked
+into the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoble
+bondage, I told myself that nothing--no sacrament or contract, no law of
+church or state--could make me endure it.
+
+From day to day my maid came to me with insidious hints about Alma and
+my husband. I found myself listening to them. I also found myself
+refreshing my memory of the hideous scene in Paris, and wondering why I
+had condoned the offence by staying an hour longer under my husband's
+protection.
+
+And then there was always another force at work within me--my own secret
+passion. Though sometimes I felt myself to be a wretched sinner and
+thought the burden I had to bear was heaven's punishment for my guilty
+love, at other times my whole soul rose in revolt, and I cried out not
+merely for separation from my husband but for absolute sundering.
+
+Twice during the painful period of the house-party I heard from Martin.
+His first letter was full of accounts of the far-reaching work of his
+expedition--the engaging of engineers, electricians, geologists and
+masons, and the shipping of great stores of wireless apparatus--for his
+spirits seemed to be high, and life was full of good things for him.
+
+His second letter told me that everything was finished, and he was to
+visit the island the next week, going first to "the old folks" and
+coming to me for a few days immediately before setting sail.
+
+That brought matters to a head, and compelled me to take action.
+
+It may have been weak of me, but not wanting a repetition of the scene
+with Father Dan, (knowing well that Martin would not bear it with the
+same patience) I sent the second letter to Alma, asking if the
+arrangement would be agreeable. She returned it with the endorsement
+(scribbled in pencil across the face), "Certainly; anything to please
+_you_, dear."
+
+I submitted even to that. Perhaps I was a poor-spirited thing, wanting
+in proper pride, but I had a feeling that it was not worth while to
+waste myself in little squibs of temper, because an eruption was coming
+(I was sure of that) in which Martin would be concerned on my side, and
+then everybody and everything would be swept out of the path of my life
+for ever.
+
+Martin came. In due course I read in the insular newspapers of his
+arrival on the island--how the people had turned out in crowds to cheer
+him at the pier, and how, on reaching our own village the neighbours (I
+knew the names of all of them) had met him at the railway station and
+taken him to his mother's house, and then lighted fires on the mountains
+for his welcome home.
+
+It cut me to the heart's core to think of Martin amid thrilling scenes
+like those while I was here among degrading scenes like these. My love
+for Martin was now like a wound and I resolved that, come what might,
+before he reached Castle Raa I should liberate myself from the thraldom
+of my false position.
+
+Father Dan's counsels had faded away by this time. Though I had prayed
+for strength to bear my burden there had been no result, and one
+morning, standing before the figure of the Virgin in my bedroom, I felt
+an impulse to blow out her lamp and never to light it again.
+
+The end of it all was that I determined to see the Bishop and my
+father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, and perhaps my father himself, that I
+might know one way or the other where I was, and what was to become of
+me. But how to do this I could not see, having a houseful of people who
+were nominally my guests.
+
+Fortune--ill-fortune--favoured me. News came that my father had suddenly
+fallen ill of some ailment that puzzled the doctors, and making this my
+reason and excuse I spoke to my husband, asking if I might go home for
+two or three days.
+
+"Why not?" he said, in the tone of one who meant, "Who's keeping you?"
+
+Then in my weakness I spoke to Alma, who answered:
+
+"Certainly, my sweet girl. We shall miss you _dreadfully_, but it's your
+duty. And then you'll see that _dear_ Mr. . . . What d'ye callum?"
+
+Finally, feeling myself a poor, pitiful hypocrite, I apologised for my
+going away to the guests also, and they looked as if they might say:
+"We'll survive it, perhaps."
+
+The night before my departure my maid said:
+
+"Perhaps your ladyship has forgotten that my time's up, but I'll stay
+until you return if you want me to."
+
+I asked her if she would like to stay with me altogether and she said:
+
+"Indeed I should, my lady. Any woman would like to stay with a good
+mistress, if she _is_ a little quick sometimes. And if you don't want me
+to go to your father's I may be of some use to you here before you come
+back again."
+
+I saw that her mind was still running on divorce, but I did not reprove
+her now, for mine was turning in the same direction.
+
+Next morning most of the guests came to the hail door to see me off, and
+they gave me a shower of indulgent smiles as the motor-car moved away.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Before going to my father's house I went to the Bishop's. Bishop's Court
+is at the other side of the island, and it was noon before I drove under
+its tall elm trees, in which a vast concourse of crows seemed to be
+holding a sort of general congress.
+
+The Bishop was then at his luncheon, and after luncheon (so his liveried
+servant told me) he usually took a siesta. I have always thought it was
+unfortunate for my interview that it came between his food and his
+sleep.
+
+The little reception-room into which I was shown was luxuriously, not to
+say gorgeously, appointed, with easy chairs and sofas, a large portrait
+of the Pope, signed by the Holy Father himself, and a number of pictures
+of great people of all kinds--dukes, marquises, lords, counts--as well
+as photographs of fashionable ladies in low dress inscribed in several
+languages to "My dear Father in God the Lord Bishop of Ellan."
+
+The Bishop came to me after a few minutes, smiling and apparently at
+peace with all the world. Except that he wore a biretta he was
+dressed--as in Rome--in his long black soutane with its innumerable
+buttons, his silver-buckled shoes, his heavy gold chain and jewelled
+cross.
+
+He welcomed me in his smooth and suave manner, asking if he could offer
+me a little refreshment; but, too full of my mission to think of eating
+and drinking, I plunged immediately into the object of my visit.
+
+"Monsignor," I said, "I am in great trouble. It is about my marriage."
+
+The smile was smitten away from the Bishop's face by this announcement.
+
+"I am sorry," he said. "Nothing serious, I trust?"
+
+I told him it was very serious, and straightway I began on the spiritual
+part of my grievance--that my husband did not love me, that he loved
+another woman, that the sacred sacrament of my marriage. . . .
+
+"Wait," said the Bishop, and he rose to close the window, for the
+clamour of the crows was deafening--a trial must have been going on in
+the trees. Returning to his seat he said:
+
+"Dear lady, you must understand that there is one offence, and only one,
+which in all Christian countries and civilised communities is considered
+sufficient to constitute a real and tangible grievance. Have you any
+evidence of that?"
+
+I knew what he meant and I felt myself colouring to the roots of my
+hair. But gulping down my shame I recounted the story of the scene in
+Paris and gave a report of my maid's charges and surmises.
+
+"Humph!" said the Bishop, and I saw in a moment that he was going to
+belittle my proofs.
+
+"Little or no evidence of your own, apparently. Chiefly that of your
+maid. And ladies' maids are notorious mischief-makers."
+
+"But it's true," I said. "My husband will not deny it. He cannot."
+
+"So far as I am able to observe what passes in the world," said the
+Bishop, "men in such circumstances always can and do deny it."
+
+I felt my hands growing moist under my gloves. I thought the Bishop was
+trying to be blind to what he did not wish to see.
+
+"But I'm right, I'm sure I'm right," I said.
+
+"Well, assuming you _are_ right, what is it, dear lady, that you wish me
+to do?"
+
+For some minutes I felt like a fool, but I stammered out at length that
+I had come for his direction and to learn what relief the Church could
+give me.
+
+"H'm!" said the Bishop, and then crossing one leg over the other, and
+fumbling the silver buckle of his shoe, he said:
+
+"The Church, dear lady, does indeed provide alleviation in cases of dire
+necessity. It provides the relief of separation--always deploring the
+necessity and hoping for ultimate reconciliation. But to sanction the
+separation of a wife from her husband because--pardon me, I do not say
+this is your case--she finds that he does not please her, or
+because--again I do not say this is your case--she fancies that somebody
+else pleases her better. . . ."
+
+"Monsignor," I said, feeling hot and dizzy, "we need not discuss
+separation. I am thinking of something much more serious."
+
+Never shall I forget the expression of the Bishop's face. He looked
+aghast.
+
+"My good lady, surely you are not thinking of divorce?"
+
+I think my head must have dropped as in silent assent, for in a
+peremptory and condemnatory manner the Bishop took me to task, asking if
+I did not know that the Catholic Church did not recognise divorce under
+any circumstances, and if I had forgotten what the Holy Father himself
+(pointing up to the portrait) had said to me--that when I entered into
+the solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full
+consciousness that it could not be broken but by death.
+
+"The love in which husband and wife contract to hold each other in holy
+wedlock is typified by the love of Christ for His Church, and as the one
+can never be broken, neither can the other."
+
+"But my husband does not love me," I said. "Neither do I love him, and
+therefore the contract between us is broken already."
+
+The Bishop was very severe with me for this, telling me that as a good
+child of the Church, I must never, never say that again, for though
+marriage was a contract it differed from all other contracts whatsoever.
+
+"When you married your husband, dear lady, you were bound to him not by
+your own act alone, but by a mysterious power from which neither of you
+can ever free yourself. The power that united you was God, and whom God
+has joined together no man may put asunder."
+
+I felt my head drooping. The Bishop was saying what I had always been
+taught, though in the torment of my trouble and the fierce fire of my
+temptation I had forgotten it.
+
+"The civil law _might_ divorce you," continued the Bishop. "I don't
+know--I can say nothing about that. But it would have _no right_ to do
+so because the law can have no right to undo what God Himself has done."
+
+Oh, it was cruel! I felt as if the future of my life were darkening
+before me--as if the iron bars of a prison were closing upon me, and
+fetters were being fixed on every limb.
+
+"But even if the civil law _could_ and _would_ divorce you," said the
+Bishop, "think of the injury you would be inflicting on the Church.
+Yours was what is called a mixed marriage, and the Church does not
+favour such marriages, but it consented in this case, and why? Because
+it hoped to bring back an erring family in a second generation to the
+fold of the faith. Yet what would you be doing? Without waiting for a
+second generation you would he defeating its purpose."
+
+A cold chill seemed to creep to my heart at these words. Was it the
+lost opportunity the Bishop was thinking of, instead of the suffering
+woman with her bruised and bleeding soul?
+
+I rose to go. The Bishop rose with me, and began to counsel forgiveness.
+
+"Even if you _have_ suffered injury, dear lady," he said--"I don't say
+you haven't--isn't it possible to forgive? Remember, forgiveness is a
+divine virtue, enjoined on us all, and especially on a woman towards the
+man she has married. Only think! How many women have to practise
+it--every day, all the world over!"
+
+"Ah, well!" I said, and walked to the door.
+
+The Bishop walked with me, urging me, as a good daughter of the Church,
+to live at peace with my husband, whatever his faults, and when my
+children came (as please God they would) to "instil into them the true
+faith with all a mother's art, a mother's tenderness," so that the
+object of my marriage might be fulfilled, and a good Catholic become the
+heir to Castle Raa.
+
+"So the Church can do nothing for me?" I said.
+
+"Nothing but pray, dear lady," said the Bishop.
+
+When I left him my heart was in fierce rebellion; and, since the Church
+could do nothing, I determined to see if the law could do anything, so I
+ordered my chauffeur to drive to the house of my father's advocate at
+Holmtown.
+
+The trial in the trees was over by this time, and a dead crow tumbled
+from one of the tall elms as we passed out of the grounds.
+
+Holmtown is a little city on the face of our bleak west coast, dominated
+by a broad stretch of sea, and having the sound of the waves always
+rumbling over it. Mr. Curphy's house faced the shore and his office was
+an upper room plainly furnished with a writing desk, a deal table, laden
+with law books and foolscap papers, a stiff arm-chair, covered with
+American leather, three or four coloured engravings of judges in red and
+ermine, a photograph of the lawyer himself in wig and gown, an
+illuminated certificate of his membership of a legal society, and a
+number of lacquered tin boxes, each inscribed with the name of a
+client--the largest box bearing the name of "Daniel O'Neill."
+
+My father's advocate received me with his usual bland smile, gave me his
+clammy fat hand, put me to sit in the arm-chair, hoped my unexpected
+visit did not presage worse news from the Big house, and finally asked
+me what he could do.
+
+I told my story over again, omitting my sentimental grievances and
+coming quickly, and with less delicacy, to the grosser facts of my
+husband's infidelity.
+
+The lawyer listened with his head aside, his eyes looking out on the sea
+and his white fingers combing his long brown beard, and before I had
+finished I could see that he too, like the Bishop, had determined to see
+nothing.
+
+"You may be right," he began. . . .
+
+"I _am_ right!" I answered.
+
+"But even if you _are_, I am bound to tell you that adultery is not
+enough of itself as a ground for divorce."
+
+"Not enough?"
+
+"If you were a man it would be, but being a woman you must establish
+cruelty as well."
+
+"Cruelty? Isn't it all cruelty?" I asked.
+
+"In the human sense, yes; in the legal sense, no," answered the lawyer.
+
+And then he proceeded to explain to me that in this country, unlike some
+others, before a woman could obtain a divorce from her husband she had
+to prove that he had not only been unfaithful to her, but that he had
+used violence to her, struck her in the face perhaps, threatened her or
+endangered her life or health.
+
+"Your husband hasn't done that, has he? No? I thought not. After all
+he's a gentleman. Therefore there is only one other ground on which you
+could establish a right to divorce, namely desertion, and your husband
+is not likely to run away. In fact, he couldn't. It isn't to his
+interest. We've seen to all that--_here_," and smiling again, the lawyer
+patted the top of the lacquered box that bore my father's name.
+
+I was dumbfounded. Even more degrading than the fetters whereby the
+Church bound me to my marriage were the terms on which the law would
+release me.
+
+"But assuming that you _could_ obtain a divorce," said the lawyer, "what
+good would it do you? You would have to relinquish your title."
+
+"I care nothing about my title," I replied.
+
+"And your position."
+
+"I care nothing about that either."
+
+"Come, come," said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been an angry
+child on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or spleen break
+up a marriage that is so suitable from the points of property and
+position. And then think of your good father. Why did he spend all that
+money in setting a ruined house on its legs again? That he might carry
+on his name in a noble family, and through your children, and your
+children's children. . . ."
+
+"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and sore.
+
+"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I can yet
+see, nothing," said the lawyer.
+
+"Good-day, sir," I said, and before he could have known what I was doing
+I had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying downstairs.
+
+My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I would
+appeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he was at least
+a man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the law, without
+bowels of compassion or sense of human suffering.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no one to
+welcome me when I arrived.
+
+Aunt Bridget was out shopping, and Betsy Beauty (in the sulks with me,
+as I afterwards heard, for not asking her to the house-party) had run
+upstairs on hearing our horn, so I went direct to my father's room.
+
+Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door to let
+me in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her. Never had her
+ungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red head seemed to me
+so repugnant. I saw at once that she was giving herself the airs of
+housekeeper, and I noticed that she was wearing the bunch of keys which
+used to dangle from Aunt Bridget's waist when I was a child.
+
+"Your father is ill," she said.
+
+I told her I knew that, and it was one of the reasons I was there.
+
+"Seriously ill," she said, standing with her back to the door. "The
+doctor says he is to be kept perfectly quiet."
+
+Indignant at the effrontery of the woman who was trying to keep me out
+of my father's room, I said:
+
+"Let me pass, please."
+
+"S'sh! He has a temperature, and I don't choose that anybody shall
+disturb him to-day."
+
+"Let me pass," I repeated, and I must have pitched my voice so high that
+my father heard it.
+
+"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon Nessy
+beat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's room.
+
+His massive and powerful head was propped up with pillows in the
+camp-bed which was all he ever slept on, and he was looking so ill and
+changed in so short a time that I was shocked, as well as ashamed at the
+selfishness of having thought only of myself all the morning.
+
+But he would listen to no sympathy, protesting there was little or
+nothing the matter with him, that "Conrad was croaking about cancer,"
+but the doctor was a fool.
+
+"What about yourself, though?" he said. "Great doings at the Castle,
+they're telling me."
+
+I thought this a favourable opportunity to speak about my own affairs,
+so I began on my story again, and though I found it harder to tell now
+that my listener was my father, I struggled on and on, as well as I
+could for the emotion that was choking me.
+
+I thought he would pity me. I expected him to be angry. Although he was
+showing me some of the contemptuous tenderness which he had always
+assumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I felt sure that
+he would want to leap out of bed that he might take my husband by the
+throat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. But what happened was
+something quite different.
+
+Hardly had I begun when he burst out laughing.
+
+"God bless my soul," he cried, "you're never going to lose your stomach
+over a thing like that?"
+
+I thought he had not understood me, so I tried to speak plainer.
+
+"I see," he said. "Sweethearting some other woman, is he? Well, what of
+it? He isn't the first husband who has done the like, and I guess he
+won't be the last."
+
+Still I thought I had not made myself clear, so I said my husband had
+been untrue to me, that his infidelities under my own roof had degraded
+me in my own eyes and everybody else's, that I could not bear to live
+such a life any longer and consequently. . . .
+
+"Consequently," said my father, "you come to me to fight your battles
+for you. No, no, fight them yourself, gel. No father-in-law ought to
+interfere."
+
+It was a man's point of view I suppose, but I was ready to cry with
+vexation and disappointment, and though I conquered the impulse to do
+that I could go no farther.
+
+"Who's the woman?" he asked.
+
+I told him it was one of our house-party.
+
+"Then cut her out. I guess you're clever enough to do it, whoever she
+is. You've got the looks too, and I don't grudge you the money. Cut her
+out--that's the best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're
+the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come
+whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's
+apron-strings at the first scratch she gets outside."
+
+He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his pillows,
+saying:
+
+"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always vapouring
+about their husbands, as if married life ought to be a garden of Eden.
+One woman, one man, and all the rest of the balderdash. I sot your Aunt
+Bridget on you before, gel, and I'll have to do it again I'm thinking.
+But go away now. If I'm to get better I must have rest. Nessy!"
+(calling) "I've a mort o' things to do and most everything is on my
+shoulders. Nessy! My medicine! Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has that
+girl gone to?"
+
+"I'm here, Daniel," said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room; and as I
+went out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and broken spirit
+and the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her coaxing him in her
+submissive and insincere tones, while he blamed and scolded her.
+
+Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's room.
+Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She, at least,
+would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was doomed to another
+disappointment.
+
+"Goodness me, girl," she cried, "what's this your father tells me? One
+of your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll go bail.
+Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like that into the
+house with your husband--so smart and such a quality toss with her. If
+you were lonely coming home why didn't you ask your aunt or your first
+cousin? There would have been no trouble with your husband then--not
+about me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"
+
+"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame.
+
+If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not have
+looked more shocked.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman of
+our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your father
+say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to think
+about me?"
+
+I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made it
+must take the consequences.
+
+"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have married
+the wrong man of their own free will, but if every woman who has made a
+rue-bargain were to try to get out of it your way where would the world
+be, I wonder? Perhaps you think you could marry somebody else, but you
+couldn't. What decent man wants to marry a divorced woman even if she
+_is_ the injured party?"
+
+"Then you think I ought to submit--tamely submit to such infidelities?"
+I asked.
+
+"Sakes alive," said Aunt Bridget, "what else can you do? Men are
+polygamous animals, and we women have to make up our minds to it.
+Goodness knows I had to when the old colonel used to go hanging around
+those English barmaids at the 'Cock and Hen.' Be a little blind,
+girl--that's what nine wives out of ten have to be every day and every
+night and all the world over."
+
+"Will that make my husband any better?" I asked.
+
+"I don't say it will," said Aunt Bridget. "It will make _you_ better,
+though. What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve for. That's
+something, isn't it?"
+
+When I went to bed that night my whole soul was in revolt. The Church,
+the law, society, parental power, all the conventions and
+respectabilities seemed to be in a conspiracy to condone my husband's
+offence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of hypocrisy and
+therefore immorality and shame. I would die rather than endure it. Yes,
+I would die that very day rather than return to my husband's house and
+go through the same ordeal again.
+
+But next morning when I thought of Martin, as I always did on first
+awakening, I told myself that I would live and be a clean woman in my
+own eyes _whatever the World might think of me_.
+
+Martin was now my only refuge, so I would tell him everything. It would
+be hard to do that, but no matter, I would crush down my modesty and
+tell him everything. And then, whatever he told me to do I should do it.
+
+I knew quite well what my resolution meant, what it implied and
+involved, but still I thought, "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do
+it_."
+
+I remembered what the Countess in Rome had said about a life of
+"complete emancipation" as an escape from unhappy marriage, and even yet
+I thought "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do it_."
+
+After coming to that conclusion I felt more at ease and got up to dress.
+
+It was a beautiful morning, and I looked down into the orchard, where
+the apples were reddening under the sunshine and the gooseberries were
+ripening under their hanging boughs, when in the quiet summer air I
+heard a footstep approaching.
+
+An elderly woman in an old-fashioned quakerish bonnet was coming up the
+drive. She carried a little bunch of red and white roses, and her face,
+which was very sweet and simple, wore the pathetic expression of a child
+in trouble.
+
+It was Martin's mother. She was coming to see me, and at the first sight
+of her something told me that my brave resolution was about to be
+broken, and I was going to be shaken to the depths of my being.
+
+I heard the bell of the front door ringing. After a moment a maid came
+up and said:
+
+"Mrs. Doctor Conrad has called to see your ladyship."
+
+"Bring her here," I answered.
+
+My heart was in my mouth already.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+When Martin's mother came into the room she looked nervous and almost
+frightened, as if she had charged herself with a mission which she was
+afraid to fulfil. But I put her to sit in my mother's easy chair and sat
+on the arm of it myself, and then she seemed calmer and more
+comfortable.
+
+In spite of the silver threads in the smooth hair under her poke bonnet
+her dear face was still the face of a child, and never before had it
+seemed to me so helpless and child-like.
+
+After a moment we began to talk of Martin. I said it must be a great
+happiness to her to have him back after his long and perilous voyage;
+and she answered that it was, but his visit was so short, only four days
+altogether, although the doctor and she had looked forward to it so
+long.
+
+"That's not Martin's fault, though," she said. "He's such a good son. I
+really, really think no mother ever had such a good son. But when
+children grow up they can't always be thinking of the old people, can
+they? That's why I say to the doctor, 'Doctor,' I say, 'perhaps we were
+the same ourselves when we were young and first loved each other.'"
+
+Already I thought I saw vaguely what the dear soul had come to tell me,
+but I only said I supposed Martin was still with them.
+
+She told me no, he had gone to King George's. That was his old school,
+and being prize-giving day the masters had asked him to the sports and
+to the dinner that was to be given that night before the breaking-up for
+the holidays.
+
+"The boys will give him a cheer, I know they will," she said.
+
+I said of course he would be back to-morrow, but again she said no; he
+had gone for good, and they had said good-bye to him. When he left King
+George's he was to go on to Castle Raa. Didn't I know that? He had said
+he would telegraph to me. But being from home perhaps I had not yet
+received his message. Oh yes, he was going on to the Castle to-morrow
+night and would stay there until it was time to leave the island.
+
+"I'm so glad," I said, hardly knowing with what fervour I had said it,
+until I saw the same expression of fear come back to the sweet old face.
+
+"Martin will be glad, too," she said, "and that's why I've come
+to see you."
+
+"That?"
+
+"You won't be cross with me, will you? But Martin is so fond of
+you. . . . He always has been fond of you, ever since he was a
+boy . . . but this time. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time I thought . . . I really, really thought he was too fond of
+you."
+
+I had to hold my breast to keep down the cry of joy that was rising to
+my throat, but the dear soul saw nothing.
+
+"Not that he said so--not to say said so, but it's a mother to see
+things, isn't it? And he was talking and talking so much about Mary
+O'Neill that I was frightened--really frightened."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+"He's so tender-hearted, you see. And then you . . . you're such a
+wonderful woman grown. Tommy the Mate says there hasn't been the like of
+you on this island since they laid your mother under the sod. It's truth
+enough, too--gospel truth. And Martin--Martin says there isn't your
+equal, no, not in London itself neither. So . . . so," she said,
+trembling and stammering, "I was thinking . . . I was thinking he was
+only flesh and blood like the rest of us, poor boy, and if he got to be
+_too_ fond of you . . . now that you're married and have a husband, you
+know. . . ."
+
+The trembling and stammering stopped her for a moment.
+
+"They're saying you are not very happy in your marriage neither. Times
+and times I've heard people saying he isn't kind to you, and they
+married you against your will. . . . So I was telling myself if that's
+so, and Martin and you came together now, and you encouraged him, and
+let him go on and anything came of it . . . any trouble or disgrace or
+the like of that . . . it would be such a terrible cruel shocking thing
+for the boy . . . just when everybody's talking about him and speaking
+so well too."
+
+It was out at last. Her poor broken-hearted story was told. Being a
+married woman, unhappily married, too, I was a danger to her beloved
+son, and she had come to me in her sweet, unmindful, motherly
+selfishness to ask me to protect him _against myself_.
+
+"Whiles and whiles I've been thinking of it," she said. "'What will I
+do?' I've been asking myself, and sometimes I've been thinking I would
+speak to Martin. I didn't dare do it, though. But when I heard last
+night that you had come home to see your father, I said: 'Doctor, I'll
+go over and speak to herself.' 'You'll never do that, Christian Ann,'
+said the doctor. 'Yes, I will,' I said. 'I'll speak to the young
+mistress herself. She may be a great lady now, but haven't I nursed her
+on my knee? She'll never do anything to harm my boy, if I ask her not
+to. No indeed she won't. Not Mary O'Neill. I'll never believe it of her.
+Never in this world.'"
+
+The sweet old face was beaming but it was wet with tears, too, and while
+trying to get out her pocket-handkerchief, she was fumbling with the
+flowers which she was still holding and passing from hand to hand.
+
+"Let me take the roses," I said as well as I could, for I could scarcely
+say anything.
+
+"I brought them for you," she said, and then she laughed, a little
+confusedly, at her own forgetfulness.
+
+"To be sure they're nothing to the green-house ones you'll have at the
+Castle, but I thought you'd like them for all that. They're from the
+tree outside the window of your own little room. We call it your room
+still--the one you slept in when you came in your little velvet frock
+and pinnie, singing carols to my door. 'Mary O'Neill's room,' Martin
+called it then, and it's been the same to us ever since."
+
+This touched me so deeply that, before I knew what I was doing, I was
+putting my arm about her waist and asking her to tell me what she wished
+me to do and I would do it.
+
+"Will you, though?" she said, and then one by one she propounded the
+artless little schemes she had concocted to cure Martin of what she
+conceived to be his love for me.
+
+Her first thought was that I might make excuse of my father's illness to
+remain where I was until the time came for Martin to leave the island;
+but she repented of this almost immediately, remembering that Martin was
+set on seeing me, ('I _must_ see her,' he had said) and if he did not
+see me he would be so downhearted.
+
+Then she thought I might praise up my husband to Martin, saying what a
+fine man he was to be sure, and how good he had been to me, and what a
+proud woman I was to be married to him; but she was ashamed of that
+almost as soon as she had said it, for it might not be true, and Martin
+might see I was pretending.
+
+Finally, she suggested that in order to create a coolness between Martin
+and myself I might try not to be so nice to him, speaking short to him
+sometimes, and even harsh and angry; but no, that would be too cruel,
+especially from me, after all these years, just when he was going so far
+away, too, and only the Lord and the blessed saints knew what was to
+become of him.
+
+It was Martin, Martin, always Martin. Still in her sweet motherly
+selfishness she could think of nobody else. Fondly as she loved me, it
+never occurred to her for a moment that if I did what she wished and
+sent Martin away from me, I too would suffer. But a harder heart than
+mine would have melted at the sight of her perplexity and distress, and
+when with a helpless look she said:
+
+"I don't know what you are to do--I really, really don't," I comforted
+her (needing comfort so much myself), and told her I would find a way of
+my own to do what she desired.
+
+"Will you, though?" she said.
+
+"Indeed I will."
+
+"And you won't send him away sore-hearted, either?"
+
+"Indeed I won't."
+
+"I knew you would say that. May the Lord and His holy Mother bless you!"
+
+She was weeping tender, copious, blessed tears by this time, but there
+were smiles behind them.
+
+"Not that there's another woman in the world I would rather give him to
+if things were as they used to be. But they're different now, are they
+not?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, they're different now," I answered.
+
+"But are you sure you're not cross with me for coming?"
+
+"Oh, no, no," I said, and it was all I _could_ say for my voice was
+failing me.
+
+She gave a sigh of inexpressible relief and then rose to go.
+
+"I must be going now. The doctor is digging in the garden and he hasn't
+had his breakfast. But I put the pot on the _slouree_ to boil and it
+will be ready for the porridge."
+
+She got as far as the door and then turned and said:
+
+"I wish I had a photo of you--a right one, just as you are at this very
+minute. I'd hang it in your own room, and times and times in the day I'd
+be running upstairs to look at it. But it's all as one. I've got a photo
+of you here," (touching her breast) "and sometimes I can see it as plain
+as plain."
+
+I could not speak after that, but I kissed her as she was going out, and
+she said:
+
+"That's nice, now! Good-bye, _my chree!_ You'll not be going home until
+to-morrow, it's like, so perhaps I'll be putting another sight on you.
+Good-bye!"
+
+I went to the window to watch her as she walked down the drive. She was
+wiping her eyes, but her head was up and I thought her step was light,
+and I was sure her face was shining.
+
+God bless her! The dear sweet woman! Such women as she is, and my mother
+was--so humble and loving, so guileless and pure, never saying an unkind
+word or thinking an unkind thought--are the flowers of the world that
+make the earth smell sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she was gone and I remembered the promise I had made to her I asked
+myself what was to become of me. If I could neither divorce my husband
+under any circumstances without breaking a sacrament of the Church, nor
+love Martin and be loved by him without breaking the heart of his
+mother, where was I?
+
+I intended to go home the following morning; I was to meet Martin the
+following night. What was I to say? What was I to do?
+
+All day long these questions haunted me and I could find no answers. But
+towards evening I took my troubles where I had often taken them--to
+Father Dan.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+The door of the Presbytery was opened by Father Dan's Irish housekeeper,
+a good old soul whose attitude to her master was that of a "moithered"
+mother to a wilful child.
+
+All the way up the narrow staircase to his room, she grumbled about his
+reverence. Unless he was sickening for the scarlet fever she didn't know
+in her seven sinses what was a-matter with him these days. He was as
+white as a ghost, and as thin as a shadder, and no wonder neither, for
+he didn't eat enough to keep body and soul together.
+
+Yesterday itself she had cooked him a chicken as good as I could get at
+the Big House; "done to a turn, too, with a nice bit of Irish bacon on
+top, and a bowl of praties biled in their jackets and a basin of
+beautiful new buttermilk;" but no, never a taste nor a sup did he take
+of it.
+
+"It's just timpting Providence his reverence is, and it'll be glory to
+God if you'll tell him so."
+
+"What's that you're saying about his reverence, Mrs. Cassidy?" cried
+Father Dan from the upper landing.
+
+"I'm saying you're destroying yourself with your fasting and praying and
+your midnight calls at mountain cabins, and never a ha'porth of anything
+in your stomach to do it on."
+
+"Whisht then, Mrs. Cassidy, it's tay-time, isn't it? So just step back
+to your kitchen and put on your kittle, and bring up two of your best
+china cups and saucers, and a nice piece of buttered toast, not
+forgetting a thimbleful of something neat, and then it's the mighty
+proud woman ye'll be entoirely to be waiting for once on the first lady
+in the island. . . . Come in, my daughter, come in."
+
+He was laughing as he let loose his Irish tongue, but I could see that
+his housekeeper had not been wrong and that he looked worn and troubled.
+
+As soon as he had taken me into his cosy study and put me to sit in the
+big chair before the peat and wood fire, I would have begun on my
+errand, but not a word would he hear until the tea had come up and I had
+taken a cup of it.
+
+Then stirring the peats for light as well as warmth, (for the room was
+dark with its lining of books, and the evening was closing in) he said:
+
+"Now what is it? Something serious--I can see that much."
+
+"It _is_ serious, Father Dan."
+
+"Tell me then," he said, and as well as I could I told him my story.
+
+I told him that since I had seen him last, during that violent scene at
+Castle Raa, my relations with my husband had become still more painful;
+I told him that, seeing I could not endure any longer the degradation of
+the life I was living, I had thought about divorce; I told him that
+going first to the Bishop and afterwards to my father's advocate I had
+learned that neither the Church nor the law, for their different
+reasons, could grant me the relief I required; and finally, in a faint
+voice (almost afraid to hear myself speak it), I told him my solemn and
+sacred secret--that whatever happened I could not continue to live where
+I was now living because I loved somebody else than my husband.
+
+While I was speaking Father Dan was shuffling his feet and plucking at
+his shabby cassock, and as soon as I had finished he flashed out on me
+with an anger I had never seen in his face or heard in his voice before.
+
+"I know who it is," he said. "It's Martin Conrad."
+
+I was so startled by this that I was beginning to ask how he knew, when
+he cried:
+
+"Never mind how I know. Perhaps you think an old priest has no eyes for
+anything but his breviary, eh? It's young Martin, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The wretch, the rascal, the scoundrel! If he ever dares to come to this
+house again, I'll slam the door in his face."
+
+I knew he loved Martin almost as much as I did, so I paid no heed to the
+names he was calling him, but I tried to say that I alone had been to
+blame, and that Martin had done nothing.
+
+"Don't tell me he has done nothing," cried Father Dan. "I know what he
+has done He has told you he loves you, hasn't he?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He has been colloguing with you, then, and getting you to say things?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Pitying and sympathising with you, anyway, in your relations with your
+husband?"
+
+"Not for one moment."
+
+"He had better not! Big man as he is in England now, I'll warm his
+jacket for him if he comes here making mischief with a child of mine.
+But thank the Lord and the holy saints he's going away soon, so you'll
+see no more of him."
+
+"But he is coming to Castle Raa," I said, "and I am to see him to-morrow
+night."
+
+"That too! The young scoundrel!"
+
+I explained that my husband had invited him, being prompted to do so by
+the other woman.
+
+"Worse and worse!" cried Father Dan. "Don't you see that they're laying
+a trap for you, and like two young fools you're walking directly into
+it. But no matter! You mustn't go."
+
+I told him that I should be compelled to do so, for Martin was coming on
+my account only, and I could neither tell him the truth nor make an
+excuse that would not be a falsehood.
+
+"Well, well, perhaps you're right there. It's not the best way to meet
+temptation to be always running away from it. That's Irish, but it's
+true enough, though. You must conquer this temptation, my child; you
+must fight it and overcome it."
+
+"But I've tried and tried and I cannot," I said.
+
+And then I told him the story of my struggle--how love had been no
+happiness to me but only a cruel warfare, how I had suffered and prayed
+and gone to mass and confession, yet all to no purpose, for my affection
+for Martin was like a blazing fire which nothing could put out.
+
+Father Dan's hands and lips were trembling while I spoke and I could see
+that he was shuddering with pity for me, so I went on to say that if God
+had put this pure and holy love into my heart could it be wrong--
+
+"Stop a minute," cried Father Dan. "Who says God put it there? And who
+informed you it was pure and holy? Let us see where we are. Come, now.
+You say the Bishop told you that you could never be divorced under any
+circumstances?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet you wish to leave your husband?"
+
+"How can I help it? The life I have been living is too horrible."
+
+"Never mind that now. You wish to leave your husband, don't you?"
+
+"I . . . I must."
+
+"And you want to go to this . . . this young . . . in short, you want to
+go to Martin Conrad? That's the plain truth, isn't it? Don't deny it.
+Very well, let us call things by their proper names. What is the fact?
+You are asking me--me, your spiritual Father--to allow you to live a
+life of open adultery. That's what it comes to. You know it is, and God
+and His holy Mother have mercy on your soul!"
+
+I was so startled and shocked by his fierce assault, and by the cruel
+climax it had come to, that I flung up my hands to my face and kept them
+there, for I felt as if my brain had been stunned and my heart was
+bursting.
+
+How long I sat like this, with my hidden face to the fire, I do not
+know; but after a long silence in which I heard nothing but my own
+heaving breath, I became aware that Father Dan had drawn one of my hands
+down to his knee and was smoothing it with his own.
+
+"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth," he
+said. "It's hard to bear; I know it's hard; but it's as hard for him as
+for you, my child. Think--only think what he is trying to save you from.
+If you do what you wish to do, you will put yourself out of communion.
+If you put yourself out of communion, you will cease to be a Catholic.
+What will become of you then, my daughter? What will be left to replace
+the consolations of the Church--in sorrow, in suffering, in the hour of
+death? Have you never thought of that?"
+
+I never had. It was thrilling through and through me.
+
+"You say you cannot live any longer with your husband because he has
+broken the vow he made to you at your marriage. But think how many many
+thousands of poor women all the world over are doing it every
+day--living with adulterous husbands for the sake of their homes and
+children. And not for the sake of their homes and children only, but for
+the sake of their souls and their religion. Blessed, blessed martyrs,
+though we know nothing about them, holding society and the Church and
+the human family together."
+
+I was trembling all over. I felt as if Father Dan were trying to take
+away from me the only sweet and precious thing in my life that was left.
+
+"Then you think you cannot live without the one you love, because all
+your heart is full of him. But think of the holy women, the holy saints,
+who have gone through the same temptation--fighting against it with all
+the strength of their souls until the very wounds of our blessed Lord
+have been marked on their bodies."
+
+He was creeping closer to my side. His voice was quivering at my ear. I
+was struggling hard, and still trembling all over.
+
+"Hold fast by the Church, my child. It is your only refuge. Remember
+that God made your marriage and you cannot break it without forsaking
+your faith. Can anything be good that is bought at such a price? Nothing
+in this world! When you meet to-morrow night--you two children--tell him
+that. Tell him I told you to say so. . . . I love you both. Don't break
+your old priest's heart. He's in trouble enough for you already. Don't
+let him think that he must lose you altogether. And then remember your
+mother, too--that saint in heaven who suffered so long and was patient
+. . . Everything will depend upon you, my child. In matters of this kind
+the woman is the stronger vessel. Be strong for him also. Renounce your
+guilty love, my daughter--"
+
+"But I cannot, I cannot," I said. "I love him, and I cannot give him
+up!"
+
+"Let us ask God to help you," said Father Dan, and still holding my hand
+he drew me down to my knees and knelt beside me. The room was dark by
+this time, and only the sullen glow from the peat fire was on our faces.
+
+Then in a low voice, so low that it was like his throbbing whisper
+before the altar, when he raised the Sacred host, Father Dan prayed for
+me (calling me his dear child whom God had committed to his care) that I
+might keep my marriage vow and be saved from the temptation to break it.
+
+His beautiful prayer or his throbbing voice, or both together, had a
+great effect upon me, and when I rose to my feet, I felt stronger.
+Although Martin was as dear to me as ever, I thought I saw my way at
+last. If he loved me as I loved him, I had to be brave for both of us. I
+had to oppose to the carnal instinct of love the spiritual impulse of
+renunciation. Yes, yes, that was what I had to do.
+
+Father Dan saw me to the door.
+
+"Give my love to my boy," he said, "and don't forget what I told you to
+tell him."
+
+"I'll tell him," I replied, for though I knew my heart was bleeding I
+felt calm and more courageous.
+
+It was milking time and the cows were lowing in the byre when I crossed
+the fields and the farm-yard on my way back to my father's house.
+
+Early next morning I left it for Castle Raa.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Although it was mid-day before I reached the Castle, the gate to the
+park had not been opened, the drive was deserted and even the great door
+to the house itself was closed.
+
+And when, in answer to my ringing, one of the maids came after a certain
+delay, wearing neither apron nor cap, I found the hall empty and no sign
+of life in the house, except a shrill chorus of laughter which came from
+the servants' quarters.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" I asked, but before the girl could reply,
+Price who had come down to take my wraps said:
+
+"I'll tell your ladyship presently."
+
+As we were going upstairs she told me that the entire house-party had
+that morning gone off on a cruise in Mr. Eastcliff's yacht, that they
+would be away several days, and that Madame had left a letter for me
+which was supposed to explain everything.
+
+I found it on the mantelpiece in my boudoir under an open telegram which
+had been stuck into the edge of the bevelled glass. The telegram, which
+was addressed to me, was from Martin.
+
+     _"Expect to arrive to-morrow evening. Staying until Wednesday
+     afternoon. If not convenient wire Principal's House, King George's
+     College."_
+
+"To-morrow'?"
+
+"That means to-day," said Price. "The telegram came yesterday. Madame
+opened it and she told me to say--"
+
+"Let me read her letter first," I said.
+
+The letter ran as follows:
+
+     _"My Dearest Mary,
+
+     "You will be astonished to find the house empty and all your
+     racketty guests gone. Let me explain, and if you are angry about
+     what has happened you must lay all the blame on me.
+
+     "Well, you see, my dear, it was arranged nearly a month ago that
+     before we left your delightful house we should make a little cruise
+     round your charming island. But we had not expected that this would
+     come off so soon, when suddenly and unexpectedly that silly Mr.
+     Eastcliff, who has no more brains than a spring chicken, remembered
+     that he had promised to visit a friend who has taken a shoot in
+     Skye. Result--we had to make the cruise immediately or not at all,
+     and yet behold! our hostess was away on an urgent call of sickness,
+     and what in the world were we to do without her?
+
+     "Everybody was in a quandary--that wise Mr. Vivian saying it would
+     be 'jolly bad form by Jove' to go without you, while Mr. Eastcliffs
+     'deelightfully vicked' little Camilla declared it would be
+     'vilaynous,' and your husband vowed that his Margaret Mary could
+     not possibly be left behind.
+
+     "It was then that a certain friend of yours took the liberty of
+     remembering that you did not like the sea, and that even if you had
+     been here and had consented to go with us it would have been only
+     out of the sweetness of your heart, which I've always known to be
+     the tenderest and most unselfish in the world.
+
+     "This seemed to satisfy the whole house and everybody was at ease,
+     when lo! down on us like a thunderbolt came the telegram from Mr.
+     Conrad. Thinking it might require to be repeated, I took the
+     liberty of opening it, and then we were in a plight, I assure you.
+
+     "What on earth was he to think of our leaving the house when he was
+     on the point of arriving? And, above all, how were we to support
+     the disappointment of missing him--some of us, the women
+     especially, and myself in particular, being just crazy to see him
+     again?
+
+     "This nearly broke down our plans altogether, but once more I came
+     to the rescue by remembering that Mr. Conrad was not coming to see
+     us but you, and that the very kindest thing we could do for a
+     serious person of his kind would be to take our racketty presence
+     out of the way.
+
+     "That contented everybody except my mother, who--would you believe
+     it?--had gotten some prudish notions into her head about the
+     impropriety of leaving you alone, and declared her intention of
+     staying behind to keep you in countenance! We soon laughed her out
+     of that, though, and now, to relieve you of her company, we are
+     carrying her away with us--which will be lots of fun, for she's as
+     fond of water as a cat and will fancy she is seasick all the time.
+
+     "Good-bye, dearest! We're just off. I envy you. You happy, happy
+     girl! I am sure you will have such a good time. What a man! As
+     natural as nature! I see, by the insular paper that your islanders
+     adore him.
+
+     "Hope you found your father better. Another wonderful man! Such an
+     original type, too! Good-bye, my dearest dear_, ALMA.
+
+     "_P.S. Have missed you so much, darling! Castle Raa wasn't the same
+     place without you--I assure you it wasn't_."
+
+While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what the
+beautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by, was
+visibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me the
+benefit of her own interpretation.
+
+I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into little
+screams of indignation.
+
+"Well, the huzzy! The wicked huzzy! That's all she is, my lady, begging
+your pardon, and there's no other name for her. Arranged a month ago,
+indeed! It was never thought of until last night after Mr. Conrad's
+telegram came."
+
+"Then what does it mean?"
+
+"I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you'll promise not to fly
+out at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, and
+wouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so. And seeing that
+you can't be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic,
+she thinks your husband, who isn't, might be tempted to divorce you. So
+she's setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it while
+she's away, and if you do. . . ."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Oh, trust _me_, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my ears closed
+while your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid of
+hers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behind
+to watch. But there's somebody else in the house who thinks she has a
+grievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will do
+anything . . . Hush!"
+
+Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going on
+tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the little
+housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position while
+pretending that she had slipped.
+
+"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said.
+
+I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her no
+further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her
+orders from Price--an announcement which caused my maid to stand several
+inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs
+with her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo.
+
+All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimes
+wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, who
+after inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive;
+sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imagine
+that this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering my
+resolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight that
+was before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone.
+
+More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting him off,
+and though I told myself that to do so would not be renunciation but
+merely flight from temptation, I always knew at the bottom of my heart
+that I really wanted him to come.
+
+Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be strong--strong in
+every word and look--and if Alma was daring me I should defy her, and
+she would see that I should neither yield nor run away.
+
+Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong faith in my
+power to resist temptation. But I must leave it to those who know better
+than I the way to read a woman's heart to say how it came to pass that
+towards five o'clock, when I heard the sound of wheels and going on to
+my balcony saw a jaunting-car at the front entrance, and then
+opening my door heard Martin's great voice in the hall, I flew
+downstairs--literally flew--in my eagerness to welcome him.
+
+There he was in his brown Harris tweeds and soft slouch hat with such an
+atmosphere of health and sweep of winds about him as almost took away my
+breath.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried, and I am sure his eyes brightened at the sight of me
+for they were like the sea when the sun shines on it.
+
+"You're better, aren't you?" he said. "No need to ask that, though--the
+colour in your face is wonderful."
+
+In spite of my resolution, and the attempt I made to show him only a
+kind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed. Also I could
+not help it if, while going upstairs and telling him what had happened
+to the house-party, I said he was doomed to the disappointment of having
+nobody except myself for company, and then, woman-like, waited eagerly
+for what he would say.
+
+"So they're all gone except yourself, are they?" he said.
+
+"I'm afraid they are," I answered.
+
+"Well, if it had been the other way about, and you had gone and they had
+stayed, by the stars of God, I _should_ have been disappointed. But
+things being as they are, we'll muddle through, shan't we?"
+
+Not all the vows in the world could prevent me from finding that answer
+delightful, and when, on entering my boudoir, he said:
+
+"Sorry to miss Madame though. I wanted a word with that lady before I
+went down to the Antarctic," I could not resist the mischievous impulse
+to show him Alma's letter.
+
+While he read it his bright face darkened (for all the world like a
+jeweller's window when the shutter comes down on it), and when he had
+finished it he said once more:
+
+"I hate that woman! She's like a snake. I'd like to put my foot on it."
+
+And then--
+
+"She may run away as much as she likes, but I _will_ yet, you go bail, I
+will."
+
+He was covered with dust and wanted to wash, so I rang for a maid, who
+told me that Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff's rooms had been prepared for Mr.
+Conrad. This announcement (though I tried to seem unmoved) overwhelmed
+me with confusion, seeing that the rooms in question almost communicated
+with my own. But Martin only laughed and said:
+
+"Stunning! We'll live in this wing of the house and leave the rest of
+the old barracks to the cats, should we?"
+
+I was tingling with joy, but all the same I knew that a grim battle was
+before me.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+By the time he returned from his room I had tea served in my boudoir,
+and while we sat facing the open door to the balcony he told me about
+his visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the previous night
+the Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung
+"Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition until
+they made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys when
+they are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he had
+been the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him
+until driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was
+out of bed this morning the smallest scholar in the junior house, a tiny
+little cherub with the face of his mother, had come knocking at his door
+to ask if he wanted a cabin boy.
+
+Martin laughed as if he had been a boy himself (which he always was and
+always will be) while telling me these stories, and I laughed too,
+though with a certain tremor, for I was constantly remembering my
+resolution and feeling afraid to be too happy.
+
+After tea we went out on to the balcony, and leaned side by
+side over the crumbling stone balustrade to look at the lovely
+landscape--loveliest when the sun is setting on it--with the
+flower-garden below and the headland beyond, covered with heather and
+gorse and with a winding white path lying over it like the lash of a
+whip until it dipped down to the sea.
+
+"It's a beautiful old world, though, isn't it?" said Martin.
+
+"Isn't it?" I answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and smiled.
+
+Then we heard the light _shsh_ of a garden hose, and looking down saw an
+old man watering the geraniums.
+
+"Sakes alive! It's Tommy the Mate," cried Martin, and leaving me on the
+balcony he went leaping down the stone stairway to greet his old
+comrade.
+
+"God bless me!" said Tommy. "Let me have a right look at ye. Yes, yes,
+it's himself, for sure."
+
+A little gale of tender memories floated up to me from my childhood at
+seeing those two together again, with Martin now standing head and
+shoulders above the old man's Glengarry cap.
+
+"You've been over the highways of the sea, farther than Franklin
+himself, they're telling me," said Tommy, and when Martin, laughing
+merrily, admitted that he had been farther south at all events, the old
+sailor said:
+
+"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling the
+omadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"
+
+Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he said:
+
+"You haven't got a woman yet though? . . . No, I thought not. You're
+like myself, boy--there's not many of them sorts _in_ for you."
+
+After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man talked about
+me, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying they were putting a
+power of gold on my fingers, but he would be burning candles to the
+miracles of God to see the colour of it in my cheeks too.
+
+"She's a plant that doesn't take kindly to a hot-house same as this,"
+(indicating the house) "and she'll not be thriving until somebody's
+bedding her out, I'm thinking."
+
+It was Saturday, and after dinner Martin proposed that we should walk to
+the head of the cliff to see Blackwater by night, which was a wonderful
+spectacle, people said, at the height of the season, so I put a silk
+wrap over my head and we set out together.
+
+There was no moon and few stars were visible, but it was one of those
+luminous nights in summer which never forget the day. Therefore we
+walked without difficulty along the white winding path with its nutty
+odour of the heather and gorse until we came near the edge of the cliff,
+and then suddenly the town burst upon our view, with its promenades,
+theatres, and dancing palaces ablaze with electric light, which was
+reflected with almost equal brilliance in the smooth water of the bay.
+
+We were five miles from Blackwater, but listening hard we thought we
+could hear, through the boom of the sea on the dark cliffs below us, the
+thin sounds of the bands that were playing in the open-air pavilions,
+and looking steadfastly we thought we could see, in the black patches
+under the white light, the movement of the thousands of persons who were
+promenading along "the front."
+
+This led Martin to talk of my father, saying as we walked back, with the
+dark outlines of the sleeping mountains confronting us, what a
+marvellous man he had been to transform in twenty years the little
+fishing and trading port into a great resort for hundreds of thousands
+of pleasure-seekers.
+
+"But is he any better or happier for the wealth it has brought him, and
+for the connections he has bought with it? Is anybody any better?" said
+Martin.
+
+"I know one who isn't," I answered.
+
+I had not meant to say that. It had slipped out unawares, and in my
+confusion at the self-revelation which it seemed to make, I tripped in
+the darkness and would have fallen if Martin had not caught me up.
+
+In doing this he had to put his arms about me and to hold me until I was
+steady on my feet, and having done so he took my hand and drew it
+through his arm and in this way we walked the rest of the way back.
+
+It would be impossible and perhaps foolish to say what that incident
+meant to me. I felt a thrill of joy, a quivering flood of delight which,
+with all the raptures of my spiritual love, had never come to me before.
+
+Every woman who loves her husband must know what it is, but to me it was
+a great revelation. It was just as if some new passion had sprung into
+life in me at a single moment. And it had--the mighty passion that lies
+at the root of our being, the overwhelming instinct of sex which, taking
+no account of religion and resolutions, sweeps everything before it like
+a flood.
+
+I think Martin must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to
+speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness
+that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but
+the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of
+the sea which we were leaving behind us--nothing but that and the quick
+beating in my own breast.
+
+When we came to the garden the frowning face of the old house was in
+front of us, and it was all in darkness, save for the light in my room
+which came out on to the balcony. Everything was quiet. The air was
+breathless. There was not a rustle in the trees.
+
+We took two or three turns on the lawn in front of my windows, saying
+nothing but feeling terribly, fearfully happy. After a few moments (or
+they seemed few) a cuckoo clock on my desk struck eleven, and we went up
+the stone stairway into my boudoir and parted for the night.
+
+Even then we did not speak, but Martin took my hand and lifted my
+fingers to his lips, and the quivering delight I had been feeling ever
+since I slipped on the headland rushed through me again.
+
+At the next moment I was in my room. I did not turn on the light. I
+undressed in the darkness and when my maid came I was in bed. She
+wanted to tell me about a scene with the housekeeper in the kitchen, but
+I said:
+
+"I don't want to talk to-night, Price."
+
+I did not know what was happening to me. I only knew, for the first time
+that night, that above everything else I was a woman, and that my
+renunciation, if it was ever to come to pass, would be a still more
+tragic thing than I had expected.
+
+My grim battle had begun.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke in the morning I took myself severely to task. Was this how
+I was fulfilling the promise I had made to Martin's mother, or preparing
+to carry out the counsel of Father Dan?
+
+"I must be more careful," I told myself. "I must keep a stronger hold of
+myself."
+
+The church bells began to ring, and I determined to go to mass. I wanted
+to go alone and much as I grudged every minute of Martin's company which
+I lost, I was almost glad when, on going into the boudoir with my missal
+in my hand, I found him at a table covered with papers and heard him
+say:
+
+"Helloa! See these letters and telegrams? Sunday as it is I've got to
+answer them."
+
+Our church was a little chapel-of-ease on the edge of my husband's
+estate, opened, after centuries of neglect, by the bad Lord Raa, in his
+regenerate days, for the benefit of the people of his own village. It
+was very sweet to see their homely faces as they reverently bowed and
+rose, and even to hear their creachy voices when they joined in the
+singing of the Gloria.
+
+Following the gospel there was a sermon on the words "Lead us not into
+temptation but deliver us from evil." The preacher was a young curate,
+the brother of my husband's coachman; and it occurred to me that he
+could know very little of temptation for himself, but the instruction he
+gave us was according to the doctrine of our Church, as I had received
+it from the Reverend Mother and the Cardinals who used to hold retreats
+at the convent.
+
+"Beware of the temptations of the flesh, my children," said the priest.
+"The Evil One is very subtle, and not only in our moments of pride and
+prosperity, but also in our hours of sorrow and affliction, he is for
+ever waiting and watching to betray us to our downfall and damnation."
+
+In the rustling that followed the sermon a poor woman who sat next to
+me, with a print handkerchief over her head, whispered in my ear that
+she was sorry she had not brought her husband, for he had given way to
+drink, poor fellow, since the island had had such good times and wages
+had been so high.
+
+But the message came closer home to me. Remembering the emotions of the
+night before, I prayed fervently to be strengthened against all
+temptation and preserved from all sin. And when the mass was resumed I
+recalled some of the good words with which I had been taught to assist
+at the Holy Sacrifice--praying at the _Credo_ that as I had become a
+child in the bosom of the Church I might live and die in it.
+
+When the service was over I felt more at ease and I emptied my purse, I
+remember, partly into the plate and partly to the poor people at the
+church door.
+
+It was in this spirit that I returned home in the broad sunshine of
+noonday. But half way up the drive I met Martin walking briskly down to
+meet me. He was bareheaded and in flannels; and I could not help it if
+he looked to me so good, so strong, and so well able to protect a woman
+against every danger, that the instructions I had received in church,
+and the resolutions I had formed there, seemed to run out of my heart as
+rapidly as the dry sand of the sea-shore runs through one's fingers.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried, as usual. "The way I've been wasting this wonderful
+morning over letters and telegrams! But not another minute will I give
+to anything under the stars of God but you."
+
+If there was any woman in the world who could have resisted that
+greeting I was not she, and though I was a little confused I was very
+happy.
+
+As we walked back to the house we talked of my father and his sudden
+illness, then of his mother and my glimpse of her, and finally of
+indifferent things, such as the weather, which had been a long drought
+and might end in a deluge.
+
+By a sort of mutual consent we never once spoke of the central subject
+of our thoughts--my marriage and its fatal consequences--but I noticed
+that Martin's voice was soft and caressing, that he was walking close to
+my side, and that as often as I looked up at him he was looking down at
+me and smiling.
+
+It was the same after luncheon when we went out into the garden and sat
+on a seat in the shrubbery almost immediately facing my windows, and he
+spread a chart on a rustic table and pointing to a red line on it said:
+
+"Look, this is the course of our new cruise, please God."
+
+He talked for a long time, about his captain and crew; the scientific
+experts who had volunteered to accompany him, his aeronautic outfit, his
+sledges and his skis; but whatever he talked about--if it was only his
+dogs and the food he had found for them--it was always in that soft,
+caressing voice which made me feel as if (though he never said one word
+of love) he were making love to me, and saying the sweetest things a man
+could say to a woman.
+
+After a time I found myself answering in the same tones, and even when
+speaking on the most matter-of-fact subjects I felt as if I were saying
+the sweetest things a woman could say to a man.
+
+We sat a long time so, and every moment we were together seemed to make
+our relation more perilous, until at length the sweet seductive twilight
+of the shortening autumn day began to frighten me, and making excuse of
+a headache I said I must go indoors.
+
+He walked with me up the stone-stairway and into my boudoir, until we
+got to the very door of my room, and then suddenly he took up both my
+hands and kissed them passionately.
+
+I felt the colour rushing to my cheeks and I had an almost irresistible
+impulse to do something in return. But conquering it with a great
+effort, I turned quickly into my bedroom, shut the door, pulled down the
+blinds and then sat and covered my face and asked myself, with many
+bitter pangs, if it could possibly be true (as I had been taught to
+believe) that our nature was evil and our senses were always tempting us
+to our destruction.
+
+Several hours passed while I sat in the darkness with this warfare going
+on between my love and my religion, and then Price came to dress me for
+dinner, and she was full of cheerful gossip.
+
+"Men are _such_ children," she said; "they can't help giving themselves
+away, can they?"
+
+It turned out that after I had left the lawn she had had some
+conversation with Martin, and I could see that she was eager to tell me
+what he had said about myself.
+
+"The talk began about your health and altered looks, my lady. 'Don't
+you think your mistress is looking ill?' said he. 'A little,' I said.
+'But her body is not so ill as her heart, if you ask me,' said I."
+
+"You never said that, Price?"
+
+"Well, I could not help saying it if I thought so, could I?"
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He didn't say anything then, my lady, but when I said, 'You see, sir,
+my lady is tied to a husband she doesn't love,' he said, 'How can she,
+poor thing? 'Worse than that,' I said, 'her husband loves another
+woman.' 'The fool! Where does he keep his eyes?' said he. 'Worse still,'
+said I, 'he flaunts his infidelities in her very face.' 'The brute!' he
+said, and his face looked so fierce that you would have thought he
+wanted to take his lordship by the throat and choke him. 'Why doesn't
+she leave the man?' said he. 'That's what I say, sir, but I think it's
+her religion,' I said. 'Then God help her, for there's no remedy for
+that,' said he. And then seeing him so down I said, 'But we women are
+always ruled by our hearts in the long run.' 'Do you think so?' said he.
+'I'm sure of it,' said I, 'only we must have somebody to help us,' I
+said. 'There's her father,' said he. 'A father is of no use in a case
+like this,' I said, 'especially such a one as my lady's is, according to
+all reports. No,' said I, 'it must be somebody else--somebody who cares
+enough for a woman to risk everything for her, and just take her and
+make her do what's best for herself whether she likes it or not. Now if
+somebody like that were to come to my lady, and get her out of her
+trouble,' I said. . . . 'Somebody will,' said he. 'Make your mind easy
+about that. Somebody will,' he said, and then he went on walking to and
+fro."
+
+Price told this story as if she thought she was bringing me the gladdest
+of glad tidings; but the idea that Martin had come back into my life to
+master me, to take possession of me, to claim me as his own (just as he
+did when I was a child) and thereby compel me to do what I had promised
+his mother and Father Dan not to do--this was terrifying.
+
+But there was a secret joy in it too, and every woman will know what I
+mean if I say that my heart was beating high with the fierce delight of
+belonging to somebody when I returned to the boudoir where Martin was
+waiting to sit down to dinner.
+
+Then came a great surprise.
+
+Martin was standing with his back to the fire-place, and I saw in a
+moment that the few hours which had intervened had changed him as much
+as they had changed me.
+
+"Helloa! Better, aren't we?" he cried, but he was now cold, almost
+distant, and even his hearty voice seemed to have sunk to a kind of
+nervous treble.
+
+I could not at first understand this, but after a while I began to see
+that we two had reached the point beyond which it was impossible to go
+without encountering the most tremendous fact of our lives--my marriage
+and all that was involved by it.
+
+During dinner we spoke very little. He seemed intentionally not to look
+at me. The warm glances of his sea-blue eyes, which all the afternoon
+had been making the colour mount to my cheeks, had gone, and it sent a
+cold chill to my heart to look across the table at his clouded face. But
+sometimes when he thought my own face was down I was conscious that his
+eyes were fixed on me with a questioning, almost an imploring gaze. His
+nervousness communicated itself to me. It was almost as if we had begun
+to be afraid of each other and were hovering on the brink of fatal
+revelations.
+
+When dinner was over, the table cleared and the servants gone, I could
+bear the strain no longer, so making excuse of a letter I had to write
+to the Reverend Mother I sat down at my desk, whereupon Martin lit a
+cigar and said he would stroll over the headland.
+
+I heard his footsteps going down the stone stairway from the balcony; I
+heard their soft thud on the grass of the lawn; I heard their sharper
+crackle on the gravel of the white path, and then they mingled with the
+surge and wash of the flowing tide and died away in the distance.
+
+I rose from the desk, and going over to the balcony door looked out into
+the darkness. It was a beautiful, pathetic, heart-breaking night. No
+moon, but a perfect canopy of stars in a deep blue sky. The fragrance of
+unseen flowers--sweetbriar and rose as well as ripening fruit--came up
+from the garden. There was no wind either, not even the rustle of a
+leaf, and the last bird of evening was silent. All the great orchestra
+of nature was still, save for the light churning of the water running in
+the glen and the deep organ song of the everlasting sea.
+
+"What can I do?" I asked myself.
+
+Now that Martin was gone I had begun to understand him. His silence had
+betrayed his heart to me even more than his speech could have done.
+Towering above him like a frowning mountain was the fact that I was a
+married woman and he was trying to stand erect in his honour as a man.
+
+"He must be suffering too," I told myself.
+
+That was a new thought to me and it cut me to the quick.
+
+When it came to me first I wanted to run after him and throw myself into
+his arms, and then I wanted to run away from him altogether.
+
+I felt as if I were on the brink of two madnesses--the madness of
+breaking my marriage vows and the madness of breaking the heart of the
+man who loved me.
+
+"Oh, what can I do?" I asked myself again.
+
+I wanted him to go; I wanted him to stay; I did not know what I wanted.
+At length I remembered that in ordinary course he would be going in two
+days more, and I said to myself:
+
+"Surely I can hold out that long."
+
+But when I put this thought to my breast, thinking it would comfort me,
+I found that it burnt like hot iron.
+
+Only two days, and then he would be gone, lost to me perhaps for ever.
+Did my renunciation require that? It was terrible!
+
+There was a piano in the room, and to strengthen and console myself in
+my trouble I sat down to it and played and sang. I sang "Ave Maria
+Stella."
+
+I was singing to myself, so I know I began softly--so softly that my
+voice must have been a whisper scarcely audible outside the room--
+
+     "_Hail thou star of ocean,
+     Portal of the sky_."
+
+But my heart was full and when I came to the verses which always moved
+me most--
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+     To thy shelter take us_"--
+
+my voice, without my knowing it, may have swelled out into the
+breathless night until it reached Martin, where he walked on the dark
+headland, and sounded to him like a cry that called him back.
+
+I cannot say. I only know that when with a thickening throat I had come
+to an end, and my forehead had fallen on to the key-board, and there was
+no other sound in the air but the far-off surging of the sea. I heard
+somebody calling me in a soft and tremulous whisper,
+
+"Mary!"
+
+It was he. I went out to the balcony and there he was on the lawn below.
+The light of the room was on him and never before had I seen his strong
+face so full of agitation.
+
+"Come down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
+
+I could not resist him. He was my master. I had to obey.
+
+When I reached the bottom of the stairway he took my hand, and I did not
+know whether it was his hand or mine that was trembling. He led me
+across the lawn to the seat in the shrubbery that almost faced my
+windows. In the soft and soundless night I could hear his footsteps on
+the turf and the rustle of my dress over the grass.
+
+We sat, and for a moment he did not speak. Then with a passionate rush
+of words he said:
+
+"Mary, I hadn't meant to say what I'm going to say now, but I can't do
+anything else. You are in trouble, and I can't stand by and see you so
+ill-used. I can't and I won't!"
+
+I tried to answer him, but my throat was fluttering and I could not
+speak.
+
+"It's only a few days before I ought to sail, but they may be enough in
+which to do something, and if they're not I'll postpone the expedition
+or put it off, or send somebody in my place, for go away I cannot and
+leave you like this."
+
+I tried to say that he should not do that whatever happened to me, but
+still I could not speak.
+
+"Mary. I want to help you. But I can only do so if you give me the
+_right_ to do it. Nobody must tell me I'm a meddler, butting in where I
+have no business. There are people enough about you who would be only
+too ready to do that--people related to you by blood and by law."
+
+I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my ears
+like the string of a bow.
+
+"There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right of
+blood, and you know what that is."
+
+My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face which was
+so close to mine.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I have always cared for you. Surely you know that. By
+the saints of God I swear there has never been any other girl for me,
+and now there never will he. Perhaps I ought to have told you this
+before, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome. But it didn't
+seem fair, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."
+
+His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was breaking also.
+
+"All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are here and
+you are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help you, to rescue
+you, to drag you out of this horrible situation before I go away. Let me
+do it. Give me the right of one you care enough for to allow him to
+speak on your behalf."
+
+I knew what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of
+a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of
+Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak I
+struggled to pray.
+
+"Don't say you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man. I shall
+go at once too--to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heart
+bleeds to look at you and I can't stay here any longer to see you
+suffer. It is not torture to me--it's hell!"
+
+And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment came. Martin
+laid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous voice:
+
+"Mary . . . Mary . . . I . . . I love you!"
+
+I could hear no more. I could not think or pray or resist any longer.
+The bitter struggle was at an end. Before I knew what I was doing I was
+dropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of joy was gathering
+me in his arms.
+
+I was his. He had taken his own. Nothing counted in the presence of our
+love. To be only we two together--that was everything. The world and the
+world's laws, the Church and the Canons of the Church were blotted out,
+forgotten, lost.
+
+For some moments I hardly breathed. I was only conscious that over my
+head Martin was saying something that seemed to come to me with all the
+deep and wonderful whispers of his heart.
+
+"Then it's true! It's true that you love me! Yes, it's true! It's true!
+No one shall hurt you again. Never again! No, by the Lord God!"
+
+And then suddenly--as suddenly as the moment of intoxication had come to
+me--I awoke from my delirium. Some little thing awakened me. I hardly
+know what it was. Perhaps it was only the striking of the cuckoo clock
+in my room.
+
+"What are we doing?" I said.
+
+Everything had rolled back on me--my marriage, Father Dan's warning, my
+promise to Martin's mother.
+
+"Where are we?" I said.
+
+"Hush! Don't speak," said Martin. "Let us think of nothing
+to-night--nothing except our love."
+
+"Don't say that," I answered. "We are not free to love each other," and
+then, trying to liberate myself from his encircling arms I cried:
+
+"God help me! God forgive me!"
+
+"Wait!" said Martin, holding me a moment longer. "I know what you feel,
+and I'm not the man to want a girl to wrong her conscience. But there's
+one question I must ask you. If you _were_ free, could you love me
+then?"
+
+"Don't ask me that. I must not answer it."
+
+"You must and shall," said Martin. "Could you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's enough for me--enough for to-night anyway. Have no fear. All
+shall be well. Go to your room now."
+
+He raised me to my feet and led me back to the foot of the balcony, and
+there he kissed my hand and let me go.
+
+"Good night!" he said softly.
+
+"Good night!" I answered.
+
+"God bless you, my pure sweet girl!"
+
+At the next moment I was in my room, lying face down on my bed--seeing
+no hope on any side, and sobbing my heart out for what might have been
+but for the hard law of my religion and the cruel tangle of my fate.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next morning, Monday morning, while I was breakfasting in my bedroom,
+Price came with a message from Martin to say that he was going into the
+glen and wished to know if I would go with him.
+
+I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what steps he
+intended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled with the
+thought of the answer I had to give him--that divorce for me, under any
+circumstances, was quite impossible.
+
+Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I felt
+like a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon him--dooming his dearest
+hopes to painful and instant death.
+
+I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like a boy
+let loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted me with a
+cry of joy that was almost heart-breaking.
+
+Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew was
+thick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits wished to
+carry me across, and it was only with an effort that I prevented him
+from doing so.
+
+The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was almost
+cruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do in it I
+thought I should never be able to get it out of my sight--with its
+slumberous gloom like that of a vast cathedral, its thick arch of
+overhanging boughs through which the morning sunlight was streaming
+slantwards like the light through the windows of a clerestory, its
+running water below, its rustling leaves above, and the chirping of its
+birds on every side, making a sound that was like the chanting of a
+choir in some far-off apse and the rumbling of their voices in the roof.
+
+Two or three times, as we walked down the glen towards a port (Port Raa)
+which lay at the seaward end of it. Martin rallied me on the settled
+gravity of my face and then I had to smile, though how I did so I do not
+know, for every other minute my heart was in my mouth, and never more so
+than when, to make me laugh, he rattled away in the language of his
+boyhood, saying:
+
+"Isn't this stunning? Splendiferous, eh?"
+
+When we came out at the mouth of the port, where a line of little
+stunted oaks leaned landward as with the memory of many a winter's
+storm, Martin said:
+
+"Let us sit down here."
+
+We sat on the sloping bank, with the insects ticking in the grass, the
+bees humming in the air, the sea fowl screaming in the sky, the broad
+sea in front, and the little bay below, where the tide, which was going
+out, had left behind it a sharp reef of black rocks covered with
+sea-weed.
+
+A pleasure-steamer passed at that moment with its flags flying, its
+awnings spread, its decks crowded with excursionists, and a brass hand
+playing one of Sousa's marches, and as soon as it had gone, Martin said:
+
+"I've been thinking about our affair, Mary, how to go to work and all
+that, and of course the first thing we've got to do is to get a
+divorce."
+
+I made no answer, and I tried not to look at him by fixing my eyes upon
+the sea.
+
+"You have evidence enough, you know, and if you haven't there's
+Price--she has plenty. So, since you've given me the right to speak for
+you, dear, I'm going to speak to your father first"
+
+I must have made some half-articulate response, for not understanding me
+he said:
+
+"Oh, I know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear what
+I've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all you're his
+daughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion . . ."
+
+Again I must have made some effort to speak, for he said:
+
+"Yes, he's ill, but he has only to set Curphy to work and the lawyer
+will do the rest."
+
+I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out somehow that I
+had seen my father already.
+
+"On this subject?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being ashamed to
+repeat it.
+
+"That was only bluff, though," said Martin. "The real truth is that you
+would cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his pride. Then
+there would no longer be any possibility of establishing a family and
+that would disturb his plans. No matter! We can set Curphy to work
+ourselves."
+
+"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also," I said.
+
+"And what did _he_ say?"
+
+I told him what the lawyer had said and he was aghast.
+
+"Good heavens! What an iniquity! In England too! But never mind! There
+are other countries where this relic of the barbaric ages doesn't exist.
+We'll go there. We must get you a divorce somehow."
+
+My time had come. I could keep back the truth no longer.
+
+"But Martin," I said, "divorce is impossible for me--quite impossible."
+
+And then I told him that I had been to see the Bishop also, and he had
+said what I had known before, though in the pain of my temptation I had
+forgotten it, that the Catholic Church did not countenance divorce
+under any circumstances, because God made marriages and therefore no man
+could dissolve them.
+
+Martin listened intently, and in his eagerness to catch every word he
+raised himself to a kneeling position by my side, so that he was looking
+into my face.
+
+"But Mary, my dear Mary," he said, "you don't mean to say you will allow
+such considerations to influence you?"
+
+"I am a Catholic--what else can I do?" I said.
+
+"But think--my dear, dear girl, think how unreasonable, how untrue, how
+preposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made your marriage?
+Yours? God married you to that notorious profligate? Can you believe
+it?"
+
+His eyes were flaming. I dared not look at them.
+
+"Then think again. They say there's no divorce in the Catholic Church,
+do they? But what are they talking about? Morally speaking you are a
+divorced woman already. Anybody with an ounce of brains can see that.
+When you were married to this man he made a contract with you, and he
+has broken the terms of it, hasn't he? Then where's the contract now? It
+doesn't any longer exist. Your husband has destroyed it."
+
+"But isn't marriage different?" I asked.
+
+And then I tried to tell him what the Bishop had said of the contract of
+marriage being unlike any other contract because God Himself had become
+a party to it.
+
+"What?" he cried. "God become a party to a marriage like yours? My dear
+girl, only think! Think of what your marriage has been--the pride and
+vanity and self-seeking that conceived it, the compulsion that was put
+upon you to carry it through, and then the shame and the suffering and
+the wickedness and the sin of it! Was God a party to the making of a
+marriage like that?"
+
+In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and came
+back to me.
+
+"Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved. It
+means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so
+degrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must let
+him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and his
+example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives in
+himself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is that what the Church
+asks of you?"
+
+I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me about
+separation, but he interrupted me with a shout.
+
+"Separation? Did he say that? If the Church has no right to divorce you
+what right has it to separate you? Oh, I see what it will say--hope of
+reconciliation. But if you were separated from your husband would you
+ever go back to him? Never in this world. Then what would your
+separation be? Only divorce under another name."
+
+I was utterly shaken. Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin was
+saying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I could not
+help it if I thought Martin's clear mind was making dust and ashes of
+everything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to me.
+
+"Then what can I do?" I asked.
+
+I thought his face quivered at that question. He got up again, and stood
+before me for a moment without speaking. Then he said, with an obvious
+effort--
+
+"If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and if you
+and I cannot marry without that, then . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I didn't mean to propose it . . . God knows I didn't, but when a woman
+. . . when a woman has been forced into a loveless marriage, and it is
+crushing the very soul out of her, and the iron law of her Church will
+not permit her to escape from it, what crime does she commit if
+she . . ."
+
+"Well?" I asked, though I saw what he was going to say.
+
+"Mary," he said, breathing, hard and fast, "you must come to me."
+
+I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to.
+
+"Oh, I know," he said. "It's not what we could wish. But we'll be open
+about it. We'll face it out. Why shouldn't we? I shall anyway. And if
+your father and the Bishop say anything to me I'll tell them what I
+think of the abominable marriage they forced you into. As for you, dear,
+I know you'll have to bear something. All the conventional canting
+hypocrisies! Every man who has bought his wife, and every woman who has
+sold herself into concubinage--there are thousands and thousands of them
+all the world over, and they'll try . . . perhaps they'll try . . . but
+let them try. If they want to trample the life out of you they'll have
+to walk over me first--yes, by God they will!"
+
+"But Martin . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you mean that I . . . I am . . . to . . . to live with you without
+marriage?"
+
+"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he tried to
+show me that love was everything, and if people loved each other nothing
+else mattered--religious ceremonies were nothing, the morality of
+society was nothing, the world and its back-biting was nothing.
+
+The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn between
+love and pity I had to face it.
+
+"Martin, I . . . I can't do it," I said.
+
+He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not look
+back, for I knew he was suffering.
+
+"You think it would be wrong?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A sin?"
+
+I tried to say "Yes" again, but my reply died in my throat.
+
+There was another moment of silence and then, in a faltering voice that
+nearly broke me down, he said:
+
+"In that case there is nothing more to say. . . . There isn't, is
+there?"
+
+I made an effort to speak, but my voice would not come.
+
+"I thought . . . as there was no other way of escape from this terrible
+marriage . . . but if you think . . ."
+
+He stopped, and then coming closer he said:
+
+"I suppose you know what this means for you, Mary--that after all the
+degradation you have gone through you are shutting the door to a
+worthier, purer life, and that . . ."
+
+I could bear no more. My heart was yearning for him, yet I was compelled
+to speak.
+
+"But would it be a purer life, Martin, if it began in sin? No, no, it
+wouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to deny myself
+the happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the miseries my husband
+has inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be happiness, because our sin
+would stand between us. That would always be there, Martin--every day,
+every night, as long as ever we lived. . . . We should never know one
+really happy hour. I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myself
+and I should make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, I
+beg--I beseech you."
+
+I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence between us.
+Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness that nearly broke
+my heart:
+
+"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours, dear. If
+_you_ can bear the present condition of things, I ought to be able to.
+Let us go back to the house."
+
+He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All the
+brightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The tide was
+now far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The shore was a
+stretch of jagged black rocks covered with sea-weed.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he had only
+pretended to submit to my will, and before the day was over I had proof
+of it.
+
+During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we went out to
+the balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood there.
+
+It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, and
+with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not far
+off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and the
+distant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at a
+soldier's funeral.
+
+Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morning
+re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit up
+on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating _café
+chantant_ full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a rugged
+song which Martin and I had known all our lives--
+
+     _Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
+     Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be_.
+
+When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:
+
+"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's something
+I want to know. . . . If you cannot divorce your husband, and if . . .
+if you cannot come to me what . . . what is left to us?"
+
+I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as much
+for myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual heights
+and beauties of renunciation.
+
+"Does that mean that we are to . . . to part?" he said. "You going your
+way and I going mine . . . never to meet again?"
+
+That cut me to the quick, so I said--it was all I could trust myself to
+say--that the utmost that was expected of us was that we should govern
+our affections--control and conquer them.
+
+"Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?" he said.
+
+That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that is
+struggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love was
+guilty love it was our duty to destroy it.
+
+"Is that possible?" he said.
+
+"We must ask God to help us," I answered, and then, while his head was
+down and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to say that though
+he was suffering now he would soon get over this disappointment.
+
+"Do you _wish_ me to get over it?" he asked.
+
+This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I knew at
+the bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did not and could
+not wish it.
+
+"We have known and cared for each other all our lives, Mary--isn't that
+so? It seems as if there never was a time when we didn't know and care
+for each other. Are we to pray to God, as you say, that a time may come
+when we shall feel as if we had never known and cared for each other at
+all?"
+
+My throat was fluttering--I could not answer him.
+
+"_I_ can't," he said. "I never shall--never as long as I live. No
+prayers will ever help me to forget you."
+
+I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he said in a
+thicker voice:
+
+"And you . . . will you be able to forget _me_? By praying to God will
+you be able to wipe me out of your mind?"
+
+I felt as if something were strangling me.
+
+"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is everything
+to her . . . everything except her religion. Will it be possible--this
+renunciation . . . will it be possible for you either?"
+
+I felt as if all the blood in my body were running away from me.
+
+"It will not. You know it will not. You will never be able to renounce
+your love. Neither of us will he able to renounce it. It isn't possible.
+It isn't human. . . . Well, what then? If we continue to love each
+other--you here and I down there--we shall be just as guilty in the eyes
+of the Church, shan't we?"
+
+I did not answer him, and after a moment he came closer to me on the
+seat and said almost in a whisper:
+
+"Then think again, Mary. Only give one glance to the horrible life that
+is before you when I am gone. You have been married a year . . . only a
+year . . . and you have suffered terribly. But there is worse to come.
+Your husband's coarse infidelity has been shocking, but there will be
+something more shocking than his infidelity--his affection. Have you
+never thought of _that_?"
+
+I started and shuddered, feeling as if somebody must have told him the
+most intimate secret of my life. Coming still closer he said:
+
+"Forgive me, dear. I'm bound to speak plainly now. If I didn't I should
+never forgive myself in the future . . . Listen! Your husband will get
+over his fancy for this . . . this woman. He'll throw her off, as he has
+thrown off women of the same kind before. What will happen then? He'll
+remember that you belong to him . . . that he has rights in you . . .
+that you are his wife and he is your husband . . . that the infernal law
+which denies you the position of an equal human being gives him a
+right--a legal right--to compel your obedience. Have you never thought
+of _that_?"
+
+For one moment we looked into each other's eyes; then he took hold of my
+hand and, speaking very rapidly, said:
+
+"That's the life that is before you when I am gone--to live with this
+man whom you loathe . . . year after year, as long as life lasts . . .
+occupying the same house, the same room, the same . . ."
+
+I uttered an involuntary cry and he stopped.
+
+"Martin," I said, "there is something you don't know."
+
+And then, I told him--it was forced out of me--my modesty went down in
+the fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do not know whether it was
+my pride or my shame or my love that compelled me to tell him, but I
+_did_ tell him--God knows how--that I could not run the risk he referred
+to because I was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been.
+
+The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but still I
+covered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of my marriage
+day and the day after, and of the compact I had entered into with my
+husband that only when and if I came to love him should he claim my
+submission as a wife.
+
+While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me, for I
+could feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I had finished
+he leapt up and cried excitedly:
+
+"And that compact has been kept?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come in and
+let me tell you how! Come in, come in!"
+
+He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him. His face
+was as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made me sit down and
+then sat on the table in front of me.
+
+"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we signed
+a deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he would give me
+his ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn't
+given me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much waste
+paper."
+
+It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest contract, the
+marriage service would have been a witness before God that we meant to
+live together as man and wife. But I never had, therefore what was the
+marriage service? Only an empty ceremony!
+
+"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I defy any
+priest in the world to prove the contrary."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free--morally free at all
+events. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in this
+house any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, and
+then, when I tome back from the Antarctic . . ."
+
+He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I had
+remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan had
+described them.
+
+"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"
+
+"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would be
+clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morning
+would not apply."
+
+"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinful
+life, wouldn't it?"
+
+"But you wouldn't be."
+
+"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut out
+of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out of
+the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . . . what would become
+of me then?"
+
+"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this is not
+the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why should
+a mere ceremony--even if we cannot do away with it--darken a woman's
+life for ever?"
+
+My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for
+salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what
+Father Dan had said I was to say.
+
+"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he
+know--what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man
+has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why
+should a marriage service stand between us?"
+
+"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break
+the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up
+my religion."
+
+After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:
+
+"You mean that, Mary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting him
+that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I told
+him--what I had never meant to tell--how long and how deeply I had loved
+him, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying
+without the consolations of the Church.
+
+"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman if
+I did, and you don't want that, do you?"
+
+He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showed
+the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild look
+came into his eyes and he said:
+
+"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless,
+and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement you
+would take it in spite of everything."
+
+His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to listen to
+it.
+
+"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to you? Not
+I. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that I was willing
+to make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if only I could rescue
+you from the misery of your abominable marriage."
+
+Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:
+
+"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my love is
+sinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So I'm only
+making mischief here and the sooner I get away the better for
+everybody."
+
+He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and looking
+out into the darkness said, between choking laughter and sobs:
+
+"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you any
+longer. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth, because you
+were the home of her who would follow me to the ends of the earth if I
+wanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than a wretched ceremony,
+and would sacrifice my happiness to a miserable bit of parchment."
+
+My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as now. I
+had to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his arms.
+
+"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay where
+I'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the better, too.
+I thought I should be counting the days down there until I could come
+home again. But why should I? And why should I care what happens to me?
+It's all as one now."
+
+He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on his
+gloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half fearing
+it) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must do what he
+wished because I belonged to him.
+
+But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst into a
+flood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house.
+
+Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the bitter cry
+of a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say, "Take me. Do what
+you like with me. I am yours."
+
+I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then I went
+into my room and locked the door.
+
+I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I began to
+have a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not have insulted
+me like that if he had not loved me to the very verge of madness itself.
+
+Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should lock up
+the house--meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to bed."
+
+I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn passing to
+and fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then I had a feeling,
+amounting to certainty, that he was listening to hear if I was sobbing,
+and that if I had been he would have broken down my bedroom door to get
+to me.
+
+At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt the
+balcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own room.
+
+The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical fever.
+Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in the cruel
+battle between her religion and her love seemed to flood body and
+soul--joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture--so that I determined (not
+without cause) to make excuse of a headache to stay in bed.
+
+Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged myself
+with the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly of losing
+the few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could not without
+danger meet him again.
+
+I was afraid of him, but I was still more afraid of myself.
+
+Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house, and
+knowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent another
+day in his company it would be impossible to say what might happen.
+
+As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all day in my
+room, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding him good-bye and
+good-luck. It would be a cold end to a long friendship and my heart was
+almost frozen at the thought of it, but it was all I dared do and I saw
+no help for it.
+
+But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate for me!
+
+First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she bombarded
+me with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard that I was ill
+he had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood had been taken out
+of him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but Price, who was artful,
+only laughed and said:
+
+"Men _are_ such funny things, bless them! To think of that fine young
+man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion,
+being scared to death because a little lady has a headache."
+
+All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, and
+towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, saying
+that Tommy the Mate had sent them.
+
+"Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly thing,
+who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I was
+forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, and
+that he had told her not to say so.
+
+"What's he doing now?" I asked.
+
+"Writing a letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it
+up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, I
+can tell you."
+
+I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon it
+came up to me.
+
+It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted
+me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a
+great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with
+all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and
+even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin--my boy
+who could never learn his lessons.
+
+_"Dear Mary,--I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I think
+it's all my fault I am ready to kick myself.
+
+"Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think what
+might happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinking
+it over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anything
+to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so
+when we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on the
+subject--that's a promice.
+
+"I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jaunting
+car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the
+expedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won't
+matter because it's something worse.
+
+"But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to
+the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a
+sand-boy.
+
+"Yours,
+
+"Mart."_
+
+To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate
+verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to
+dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account,
+seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in
+the hands of God.
+
+Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth,
+and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mate
+at the other end of the lawn.
+
+I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I did
+not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yet
+never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the soft
+white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over
+my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck.
+
+Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he had
+dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not know
+what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because it
+was Martin and that was all that mattered to me.
+
+I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was shod in
+white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering
+as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree
+with its little dark head against the sky.
+
+"It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, a truce," I answered, which meant that as this was to be our last
+evening together all painful subjects were to be put aside.
+
+Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look at
+the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with
+low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with
+visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and
+greedy darkness.
+
+During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the one
+subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at being
+children, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St. Mary's Rock.
+
+Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had thought
+so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I called
+him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at every racy word that
+came up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked with
+laughter.
+
+When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When he
+mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" And
+after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island in
+the name of the English crown, and raise the Union Jack on it, I said:
+"Do or die, we allus does that when we're out asploring."
+
+How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed because he
+was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as no
+woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all this
+make-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened me
+for a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as we
+could carry on the game.
+
+It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter had
+tears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting,
+because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, and
+we were compelled to realise what life had done for us.
+
+Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our boat,
+leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising tide
+threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my last
+despairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . and you'll have to give me up
+. . . and leave me here, and save yourself."
+
+It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth ready to
+break up under our feet.
+
+To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared not
+sing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sang
+some of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment I
+twisted round on the piano stool and said:
+
+"I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin's
+company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat with
+William Rufus on my lap."
+
+"I'll bet you anything I can," said Martin.
+
+"Oh, no, you can't," I said.
+
+"Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all," said Martin, and then
+I sang--
+
+     _"Oh, Sally's the gel for me,
+     Our Sally's the gel for me,
+     I'll marry the gel that I love best,
+     When I come back from sea."_
+
+But that arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone and it
+seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try the
+rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on the
+pleasure-steamer the night before.
+
+He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a
+corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he banged
+away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sang
+together in a wild delightful discord--
+
+     _"Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
+     Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be."_
+
+We laughed again when that was over, but I knew I could not keep it up
+much longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my boudoir
+and seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand feet above the
+icy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling through blizzards
+over rolling waves of snow.
+
+Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightning
+for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling along
+them like cannon-balls, and Martin said:
+
+"It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there."
+
+When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off early in
+the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do in
+Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort."
+
+In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself
+down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at
+last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the
+whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the
+beginning of the new.
+
+My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our
+eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and
+trembling.
+
+"So this is . . . the end," he said.
+
+"Yes . . . the end," I answered.
+
+"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he said. "I
+shall always remember it."
+
+I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that
+would make him forget this one.
+
+"Never in this world!" he answered.
+
+I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return to
+fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said:
+
+"Aw, well, that's all as one now."
+
+I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that he
+and I had been such great, great friends.
+
+He looked at me again, and answered:
+
+"That's all as one also."
+
+I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myself
+in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of
+renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts
+and desires.
+
+"Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you anything."
+
+That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise I
+should always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken,
+the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned.
+
+"All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then my
+throat became so thick that I could not say any more.
+
+After a few moments he said:
+
+"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don't
+know what is going to happen."
+
+"All that is in God's hands," I said.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now."
+
+It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hard
+with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair.
+
+"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for
+you."
+
+And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the
+love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I
+actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot
+some day.
+
+"No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me.
+If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if you
+were dead."
+
+There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy
+in it too.
+
+He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In
+spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as
+if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety.
+Nevertheless I said:
+
+"We must say good-night and good-bye now."
+
+"And if it is for ever?"
+
+"Don't say that."
+
+"But if it is?"
+
+"Well, then . . . for ever."
+
+"At least give me something to take away with me," he said.
+
+"Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchief
+which I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up.
+
+I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were
+trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it
+had been the night before.
+
+There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but
+the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips,
+dropped it gently and walked over to the door.
+
+But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him,
+longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my
+heart could warm itself.
+
+Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all
+control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty
+surging river.
+
+Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and
+snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me
+tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a
+quivering, husky voice:
+
+"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because
+you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love
+each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you
+are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."
+
+My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a
+roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman,
+and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession
+of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I
+wanted to give myself up to it.
+
+But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room,
+clashing the door behind him.
+
+I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone
+out with him.
+
+The room seemed to become dark.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through and
+through like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone, that I
+should never see him again, and that I had driven him away from me.
+
+Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of consecutive
+thought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt above everything
+else was that the remedy I had proposed to myself for my unhappy
+situation--renunciation--was impossible, because Martin was a part of my
+own being and without him I could not live.
+
+"Martin! Martin! My love! My love!" cried the voice of my heart.
+
+In fear lest I had spoken the words aloud, and in terror of what I might
+do under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and locked and
+bolted the door.
+
+But the heart knows nothing of locks and bolts, and a moment afterwards
+my spirit was following Martin to his room. I was seeing him as I had
+seen him last, with his face full of despair, and I was accusing myself
+of the pain I had caused him.
+
+I had conquered Martin, but I had conquered myself also. I had compelled
+him to submit, but his submission had vanquished me.
+
+Even if I had a right to impose renunciation on myself, what right had I
+to impose it upon him, who did not desire it, did not think it
+necessary, was not reconciled to it, and only accepted it out of
+obedience to my will?
+
+He loved me. No man ever loved a woman more dearly. He deserved to be
+loved in return. He had done nothing to forfeit love. He was bound by no
+ties. And yet I was driving him away from me. What right had I to do so?
+
+I began to see that I had acted throughout with the most abominable
+selfishness. In his great love he had said little or nothing about
+himself. But why had _I_ not thought of him? In the struggles of my
+religious conscience I had been thinking of myself alone, but Martin had
+been suffering too, and I had never once really thought of that? What
+_right_ had I to make him suffer?
+
+After a while I began to prepare for bed, but it took me long to
+undress, for I stopped every moment to think.
+
+I thought of the long years Martin had been waiting for me and while I
+was telling myself that he had kept pure for my sake, my heart was
+beating so fast that I could hardly bear the strain of it.
+
+It cut me still deeper to think that even as there had been no other
+woman for him in the past so there would be no other in the future.
+Never as long as he lived! I was as sure of that as of the breath I
+breathed, and when I remembered what he had said about wearing the
+willow for me as if I were dead I was almost distracted.
+
+His despairing words kept ringing mercilessly in my ears--"It's all as
+one now"; "How happy we might have been." I wanted to go to him and tell
+him that though I was sending him away still I loved him, and it was
+_because_ I loved him that I was sending him away.
+
+I had made one step towards the door before I remembered that it was too
+late to carry out my purpose. The opportunity had passed. Martin had
+gone to his room. He might even be in bed by this time.
+
+But there are spiritual influences which control our bodies
+independently of our will. I put on my dressing-gown (being partly
+undressed) and went back to the boudoir. I hardly knew what impulse
+impelled me to do so, and neither do I know why I went from the boudoir
+to the balcony unless it was in hope of the melancholy joy of standing
+once more where Martin and I had stood together a little while ago.
+
+I was alone now. The low thunder was still rolling along the cliffs, but
+I hardly heard it. The white sheet lightning was still pulsing in the
+sky and rising, as it seemed, out of the sea, but I hardly saw it.
+
+At one moment I caught a glimpse of a solitary fishing boat, under its
+brown lugger sails, heading towards Blackwater; at the next moment my
+eyes were dazzled as by a flashlight from some unseen battleship.
+
+Leaning over the balcony and gazing into the intermittent darkness I
+pictured to myself the barren desolation of Martin's life after he had
+left me. Loving me so much he might fall into some excess, perhaps some
+vice, and if that happened what would be the measure of my
+responsibility?
+
+Losing me he might lose his faith in God. I had read of men becoming
+spiritual castaways after they had lost their anchorage in some great
+love, and I asked myself what should I do if Martin became an infidel.
+
+And when I told myself that I could only save Martin's soul by
+sacrificing my own I was overwhelmed by a love so great that I thought I
+could do even that.
+
+"Martin! Martin! Forgive me, forgive me," I cried.
+
+I felt so hot that I opened my dressing-gown to cool my bare breast.
+After a while I began to shiver and then fearing I might take cold I
+went back to the boudoir, and sat down.
+
+I looked at my cuckoo clock. It was half-past twelve. Only half an hour
+since Martin had left me! It seemed like hours and hours. What of the
+years and years of my life that I had still to spend without him?
+
+The room was so terribly silent, yet it seemed to be full of our dead
+laughter. The ghost of our happiness seemed to haunt it. I was sure I
+could never live in it again.
+
+I wondered what Martin would be doing now. Would he be in bed and
+asleep, or sitting up like this, and thinking of me as I was thinking of
+him?
+
+At one moment I thought I heard his footsteps. I listened, but the sound
+stopped. At another moment, covering my face with my hands, I thought I
+saw him in his room, as plainly as if there were no walls dividing us.
+He was holding out his hands to me, and his face had the yearning,
+loving, despairing expression which it had worn when he looked back at
+me from the door.
+
+At yet another moment I thought I heard him calling me.
+
+"Mary!"
+
+I listened again, but again all was still, and when I told myself that
+if in actual fact he had spoken my name it was perhaps only to himself
+(as I was speaking his) my heart throbbed up to my throat.
+
+Once more I heard his voice.
+
+"Mary!"
+
+I could bear no more. Martin wanted me. I must go to him. Though body
+and soul were torn asunder I must go.
+
+Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was walking
+across the corridor in the direction of Martin's room.
+
+The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my footsteps
+were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of the
+grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, but
+none the less I felt afraid.
+
+Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laid
+on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:
+
+"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what will
+happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex will
+turn against you. You will be a bad woman."
+
+I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the voice of
+my Church--my Church, the mighty, irresistible power that was separating
+me from Martin. I was its child, born in its bosom, but if I broke its
+laws it would roll over me like a relentless Juggernaut.
+
+It was not at first that I could understand why the Church should set
+itself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying out for life and
+love and liberty. But the Church, in its inexorable, relentless voice,
+was saying, "Thou Shalt Not!"
+
+After a moment of impenetrable darkness, within and without, I thought I
+saw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the world. It stood
+for purity, which alone could hold the human family together. If all
+women who had made unhappy marriages were to do as I was thinking of
+doing (no matter under what temptation) the world would fall to wreck
+and ruin.
+
+Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I groped my way
+back to the boudoir and closed the door.
+
+Then a strange thing happened--one of those little accidents of life
+which seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of Fate. A shaft of light
+from my bedroom, crossing the end of my writing-desk, showed me a copy
+of a little insular newspaper.
+
+The paper, which must have come by the evening post, had probably been
+opened by Martin, and for that reason only I took it up and glanced at
+it.
+
+The first thing that caught my eye was a short report headed "Charity
+Performance."
+
+It ran:
+
+_"The English ladies and gentlemen from Castle Raa who are cruising
+round the island in the handsome steam yacht, the_ Cleopatra, _gave a
+variety entertainment last night in aid of the Catholic Mission at the
+Palace, Ravenstown.
+
+"At the end of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was present in
+person and watched every item of the programme with obvious enjoyment,
+proposed a vote of thanks in his usual felicitous terms, thanking Lord
+Raa for this further proof of his great liberality of mind in helping a
+Catholic charity, and particularly mentioning the beautiful and
+accomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by
+her serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always be
+indebted for the handsome sum which had been the result of her
+disinterested efforts in promoting the entertainment.
+
+"It is understood that the_ Cleopatra _will leave Ravenstown Harbour
+to-morrow morning on her way back to Port Raa."_
+
+That was the end of everything. It came upon me like a torrent and swept
+all my scruples away.
+
+Such was the purity of the Church--threatening _me_ with its censures
+for wishing to follow the purest dictates of my heart, yet taking money
+from a woman like Alma, who was bribing it to be blind to her misconduct
+and to cover her with its good-will!
+
+My husband too--his infidelities were flagrant and notorious, yet the
+Church, through its minister, was flattering his vanity and condoning
+his offences!
+
+He was coming back to me, too--this adulterous husband, and when he came
+the Church would require that I should keep "true faith" with him,
+whatever his conduct, and deny myself the pure love that was now awake
+within me.
+
+But no, no, no! Never again! It would be a living death. Accursed be the
+power that could doom a woman to a living death!
+
+Perhaps I was no longer sane--morally sane--and if so God and the Church
+will forgive me. But seeing that neither the Church nor the Law could
+liberate me from this bond which I did not make, that both were
+shielding the evil man and tolerating the bad woman, my whole soul rose
+in revolt.
+
+I told myself now that to leave my husband and go to Martin would be to
+escape from shame to honour.
+
+I saw Martin's despairing face again as I had seen it at the moment of
+our parting, and my brain rang with his passionate words. "You are my
+wife. I am your real husband. We love each other. We shall continue to
+love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you
+are mine and always will be."
+
+Something was crying out within me: "Love him! Tell him you love him.
+Now, now! He is going away. To-morrow will be too late. Go to him. This
+will be your true marriage. The other was only legalised and sanctified
+prostitution."
+
+I leapt up, and tearing the door open, I walked with strong steps across
+the corridor towards Martin's room.
+
+My hair was down, my arms were bare in the ample sleeves of my
+dressing-gown, and my breast was as open as it had been on the balcony,
+but I thought nothing of all that.
+
+I did not knock at Martin's door. I took hold of the handle as one who
+had a right. It turned of itself and the door opened.
+
+My mind was in a whirl, black rings were circling round my eyes, but I
+heard my trembling, quivering, throbbing voice, as if it had been the
+voice of somebody else, saying:
+
+"Martin, I am coming in."
+
+Then my heart which had been beating violently seemed to stop. My limbs
+gave way. I was about to fall.
+
+At the next moment strong arms were around me. I had no fear. But there
+was a roaring in my brain such as the ice makes when it is breaking up.
+
+     Oh, you good women, who are happy in the love that guards you,
+     shields you, shelters you, wraps you round and keeps you pure and
+     true, tread lightly over the prostrate soul of your sister in her
+     hour of trial and fierce temptation.
+
+     And you blessed and holy saints who kneel before the Mother of all
+     Mothers, take the transgression of her guilty child to Him
+     who--long ago in the house of the self-righteous Pharisee--said to
+     the woman who was a sinner and yet loved much--the woman who had
+     washed His feet with her tears and dried them with the hair of her
+     head--"Thy sins are forgiven thee."
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH PART
+
+I BECOME A MOTHER
+
+SEVENTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next morning, at half-past eight, my Martin left me.
+
+We were standing together in the boudoir between the table and the fire,
+which was burning briskly, for the sultry weather had gone in the night,
+and the autumn air was keen, though the early sun was shining.
+
+At the last moment he was unwilling to go, and it was as much as I could
+do to persuade him. Perhaps it is one of the mysteries which God alone
+can read that our positions seemed to have been reversed since the day
+before.
+
+He was confused, agitated, and full of self reproaches, while I felt no
+fear and no remorse, but only an indescribable joy, as if a new and
+gracious life had suddenly dawned on me.
+
+"I don't feel that I can leave England now," he said.
+
+"You can and you must," I answered, and then I spoke of his expedition
+as a great work which it was impossible to put off.
+
+"Somebody else must do it, then," he said.
+
+"Nobody else can, or shall," I replied.
+
+"But our lives are for ever joined together now, and everything else
+must go by the board."
+
+"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake, Martin. I refuse and forbid
+it."
+
+Everything had been arranged, everything settled, great sums of money
+had been subscribed out of faith in him, and him only, and a large
+company was ready and waiting to sail under his command. He was the Man
+of Destiny, therefore nothing--nothing whatever--must keep him back.
+
+"Then if I must go, you must go too," he said. "I mean you must go with
+me to London and wait there until I return."
+
+"That is impossible," I answered.
+
+The eyes of the world were on him now, and the heart of the world was
+with him. If I did what he desired it would reflect dishonour on his
+name, and he should not suffer for my sake under any circumstances.
+
+"But think what may happen to you while I am away," he said.
+
+"Nothing will happen while you are away, Martin."
+
+"But how can you be so sure of the future when God alone knows what it
+is to be?"
+
+"Then God will provide for it," I said, and with that last answer he had
+to be satisfied.
+
+"You must take a letter from me at all events," said Martin, and sitting
+at my desk he began to write one.
+
+It is amazing to me now when I come to think of it that I could have
+been so confident of myself and so indifferent to consequences. But I
+was thinking of one thing only--that Martin must go on his great errand,
+finish his great work and win his great reward, without making any
+sacrifice for me.
+
+After a few minutes he rose from the desk and handed me his letter.
+
+"Here it is," he said. "If the worst comes to the worst you may find it
+of some use some day."
+
+I took it and doubled it and continued to hold it in my hand.
+
+"Aren't you going to look at it!" he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not even to see whom it is written to?"
+
+"That is unnecessary."
+
+I thought I knew it was written to my husband or my father, and it did
+not matter to me which, for I had determined not to use it.
+
+"It is open--won't you see what it says?"
+
+"That is unnecessary also."
+
+I thought I knew that Martin had tried to take everything upon himself,
+and I was resolved that he should not do so.
+
+He looked at me with that worshipful expression which seen in the eyes
+of the man who loves her, makes a woman proud to be alive.
+
+"I feel as if I want to kiss the hem of your dress, Mary," he said, and
+after that there was a moment of heavenly silence.
+
+It was now half-past eight--the hour when the motor-car had been ordered
+round to take him to the town--and though I felt as if I could shed
+drops of my blood to keep back the finger of my cuckoo clock I pointed
+it out and said it was time for him to go.
+
+I think our parting was the most beautiful moment of all my life.
+
+We were standing a little apart, for though I wanted to throw my arms
+about his neck at that last instant I would not allow myself to do so,
+because I knew that that would make it the harder for him to go.
+
+I could see, too, that he was trying not to make it harder for me, so we
+stood in silence for a moment while my bosom heaved and his breath came
+quick.
+
+Then he took my right hand in both of his hands and said: "There is a
+bond between us now which can never be broken."
+
+"Never," I answered.
+
+"Whatever happens to either of us we belong to each other for ever."
+
+"For ever and ever," I replied.
+
+I felt his hands tighten at that, and after another moment of silence,
+he said:
+
+"I may be a long time away, Mary."
+
+"I can wait."
+
+"Down there a man has to meet many dangers."
+
+"You will come back. Providence will take care of you."
+
+"I think it will. I feel I shall. But if I don't. . . ."
+
+I knew what he was trying to say. A shadow seemed to pass between us. My
+throat grew thick, and for a moment I could not speak. But then I heard
+myself say:
+
+"Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot quench it."
+
+His hands quivered, his whole body trembled, and I thought he was going
+to clasp me to his breast as before, but he only drew down my forehead
+with his hot hand and kissed it.
+
+That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to pass before my eyes, and
+when it cleared the door of the room was open and my Martin was gone.
+
+I stood where he had left me and listened.
+
+I heard his strong step on the stone flags of the hall--he was going out
+at the porch.
+
+I heard the metallic clashing of the door of the automobile--he was
+already in the car.
+
+I heard the throb of the motor and ruckling of the gravel of the
+path--he was moving away.
+
+I heard the dying down of the engine and the soft roll of the rubber
+wheels--I was alone.
+
+For some moments after that the world seemed empty and void. But the
+feeling passed, and when I recovered my strength I found Martin's letter
+in my moist left hand.
+
+Then I knelt before the fire, and putting the letter into the flames I
+burnt it.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+Within, two hours of Martin's departure I had regained complete
+possession of myself and was feeling more happy than I had ever felt
+before.
+
+The tormenting compunctions of the past months were gone. It was just as
+if I had obeyed some higher law of my being and had become a freer and
+purer woman.
+
+My heart leapt within me and to give free rein to the riot of my joy I
+put on my hat and cloak to go into the glen.
+
+Crossing the garden I came upon Tommy the Mate, who told me there had
+been a terrific thunderstorm during the night, with torrential rain,
+which had torn up all the foreign plants in his flower-beds.
+
+"It will do good, though," said the old man. "Clane out some of their
+dirty ould drains, I'm thinkin'."
+
+Then he spoke of Martin, whom he had seen off, saying he would surely
+come back.
+
+"'Deed he will though. A boy like yander wasn't born to lave his bark in
+the ice and snow . . . Not if his anchor's at home, anyway"--with a
+"glime" in my direction.
+
+How the glen sang to me that morning! The great cathedral of nature
+seemed to ring with music--the rustling of the leaves overhead, the
+ticking of the insects underfoot, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing
+of the cattle, the light chanting of the stream, the deep organ-song of
+the sea, and then the swelling and soaring Gloria in my own bosom, which
+shot up out of my heart like a lark out of the grass in the morning.
+
+I wanted to run, I wanted to shout, and when I came to the paths where
+Martin and I had walked together I wanted--silly as it sounds to say
+so--to go down on my knees and kiss the very turf which his feet had
+trod.
+
+I took lunch in the boudoir as before, but I did not feel as if I were
+alone, for I had only to close my eyes and Martin, from the other side
+of the table, seemed to be looking across at me. And neither did I feel
+that the room was full of dead laughter, for our living voices seemed to
+be ringing in it still.
+
+After tea I read again my only love-letter, revelling in the dear
+delightful errors in spelling which made it Martin's and nobody else's,
+and then I observed for the first time what was said about "the boys of
+Blackwater," and their intention of "getting up a spree."
+
+This suggested that perhaps Martin had not yet left the island but was
+remaining for the evening steamer, in order to be present at some sort
+of celebrations to be given in his honour.
+
+So at seven o'clock--it was dark by that time--I was down at the Quay,
+sitting in our covered automobile, which had been drawn up in a
+sheltered and hidden part of the pier, almost opposite the outgoing
+steamer.
+
+Shall I ever forget the scene that followed?
+
+First, came a band of music playing one of our native songs, which was
+about a lamb that had been lost in the snow, and how the Big Man of the
+Farm went out in search of it, and found it and brought it home in his
+arms.
+
+Then came a double row of young men carrying flags and banners--fine,
+clean-limbed lads such as make a woman's heart leap to look at them.
+
+Then came Martin in a jaunting car with a cheering crowd alongside of
+him, trying to look cheerful but finding it fearfully hard to do so.
+
+And then--and this touched me most of all--a double line of girls in
+knitted woollen caps (such as men wear in frozen regions) over their
+heads and down the sides of their comely faces.
+
+I was crying like a child at the sight of it all, but none the less I
+was supremely happy.
+
+When the procession reached the gangway Martin disappeared into the
+steamer, and then the bandsmen ranged themselves in front of it, and
+struck up another song:
+
+     "_Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,
+     Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth_."
+
+In another moment every voice in the crowd seemed to take up the
+refrain.
+
+That brought Martin on to the captain's bridge, where he stood
+bareheaded, struggling to smile.
+
+By this time the last of the ship's bells had rung, the funnels were
+belching, and the captain's voice was calling on the piermen to clear
+away.
+
+At last the hawsers were thrown off and the steamer started, but, with
+Martin still standing bareheaded on the bridge, the people rushed to the
+end of the pier to see the last of him.
+
+There they sang again, louder than ever, the girls' clear voices above
+all the rest, as the ship sailed out into the dark sea.
+
+     _"Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,
+     Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth."_
+
+As well as I could, for the mist in my eyes was blinding me, I watched
+the steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay, round, the
+revolving light that stands on the point of it--stretching my neck
+through the window of the car, while the fresh wind from the sea smote
+my hot face and the salt air licked my parched lips. And then I fell
+back in my seat and cried for sheer joy of the love that was shown to
+Martin.
+
+The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black river
+running in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and I heard
+their voices as they passed the car.
+
+One voice--a female voice--said:
+
+"Well, what do you think of _our_ Martin Conrad?"
+
+And then another voice--a male voice--answered:
+
+"By God he's a Man!"
+
+Within a few minutes the pier was deserted, and the chauffeur was
+saying:
+
+"Home, my lady?"
+
+"Home," I answered.
+
+Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat on a dark
+and stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous wave and for
+some breathless moments you fear they will never rise.
+
+But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer again now
+far out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my Martin was there he
+was thinking of me and looking back towards the house in which he had
+left me behind him.
+
+When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every window was
+ablaze.
+
+The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She told me
+that the yachting party had come back, and were now in their bedrooms
+dressing for dinner.
+
+As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of laughter from
+behind several of the closed doors, mingled with the muffled humming of
+various music-hall ditties.
+
+And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me, and I
+knew that I had become another woman.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I
+continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted
+windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question
+which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Why
+had I left her behind me?
+
+In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of my
+own aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her brave
+determination to share responsibility for whatever the future might have
+in store for us--Why had I left her behind me?
+
+The woman God gave me was mine--why had I left her in the house of a man
+who, notwithstanding his infidelities and brutalities, had a right in
+the eyes of the law, the church, and the world to call her his wife and
+to treat her accordingly?
+
+Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for one
+moment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for the shadow
+of a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to me of her
+queenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in the world must
+give herself to the man she loves if their union is to be pure and true.
+
+But why did I not see then, as I see now, that it is the law of
+Nature--the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of Nature--that
+the woman shall bear the burden, the woman shall pay the price?
+
+It is over now, and though many a time since my sweet girl has said out
+of her stainless heart that everything has worked out for the best, and
+suffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive, when I think of
+what she went through for me, while I was out of all reach and sight, I
+know I shall never forgive myself for leaving her behind--never, never
+never.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+As this will be the last time I shall have to speak of my husband's
+guests, I wish to repeat that I am trying to describe them without
+malice exactly as they were--selfish, cruel, ill-mannered, and
+insincere.
+
+The dinner-bell rang while I was dressing, and on going downstairs a few
+minutes afterwards I found that there had been no attempt to wait for
+me.
+
+Already the whole party were assembled at the table, my husband being at
+the foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in the place of the
+hostess at the head.
+
+This in my altered mood, was more than I could bear, so, while the
+company made some attempt to welcome me with rather crude salutations,
+and old Mrs. Lier cried, "Come along here, my pore dear, and tell me how
+you've gotten on while we've been away" (indicating an empty seat by her
+side), I walked boldly up to Alma, put my hand on the back of her chair
+and said, "If you please."
+
+Alma looked surprised. But after a moment she carried off the difficult
+situation by taking the seat which had been reserved for me beside her
+mother, by congratulating me on my improved appearance and herself on
+relief from the necessity of filling my place and discharging my
+responsible duties.
+
+My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the awkward
+incident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that he supposed my
+father (of whom he was always in fear) had told me to assert myself. But
+Alma, with surer instinct, was clearly thinking of Martin, and almost
+immediately she began to speak of him.
+
+"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are crazy
+about him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope you gave him
+our regrets and excuses--did you?"
+
+The evil one must have taken hold of me by this time, for I said:
+
+"I certainly did not, Alma."
+
+"Why not, my love?"
+
+"Because we have a saying in our island that it's only the ass that eats
+the cushag"--a bitter weed that grows in barren places.
+
+Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this rather
+intemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the incidents of
+the cruise.
+
+I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the Bishop by
+her entertainment, she had set herself to capture the "aristocracy" of
+our island by inviting them to a dance on the yacht, while it lay at
+anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledore
+and shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the same
+that had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my husband and his
+guests.
+
+"I say, Jimmy," cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you remember
+the old gal in the gauze who--etc . . . ?"
+
+"But do you remember," cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or Bum
+Bailiff with the bottle-nose who--etc . . . ?"
+
+"Killing, wasn't it, Vivian?" said one of the ladies.
+
+"Perfectly killing," said everybody.
+
+This shocking exhibition of bad manners had not gone on very long before
+I became aware that it was being improvised for my benefit.
+
+After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of hers, and
+Mr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him her "crush," she
+turned to me and said, with her smiling face slightly drawn down on one
+side:
+
+"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who do not
+eat cushags, poor dears, are the funniest people alive as guests."
+
+"Not funnier," I answered, "than the people who laugh at them as hosts."
+
+It was not easy to laugh at that, so to cover Alma's confusion the men
+turned the talk to their usual topic, horses and dogs, and I heard a
+great deal about "laying on the hounds," which culminated in a rather
+vulgar story of how a beater who "wasn't nippy on his pins" had been
+"peppered from behind," whereupon he had "bellowed like a bull" until
+"soothed down by a sov."
+
+I cannot say how long the talk would have continued in this manner if
+old Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a serious
+subject.
+
+It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel had
+died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death was
+nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during the
+period of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government had
+required on our return from abroad.
+
+The dog having died at sea, I presumed it had been buried there, but no,
+that seemed to shock the company as an unfeeling supposition. The ship's
+carpenter had made a coffin for it--a beautiful one of mahogany with a
+plate-glass inset at the head, and a gilt-lettered inscription below,
+giving the dog's name, Prue, and its age, three.
+
+In this condition it had been brought ashore, and was now lying in a
+kind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to be buried
+in the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the company, all dressed
+in black, were to follow in procession as at a human funeral.
+
+I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these incredible
+arrangements, and at the close of it I said in a clear, emphatic voice:
+
+"I must ask you to be good enough not to do that, please."
+
+"Why not, my dear?" said Alma.
+
+"Because I do not wish and cannot permit it," I answered.
+
+There was an awkward pause after this unexpected pronouncement, and when
+the conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not always added
+to my happiness) caught the half-smothered words:
+
+"Getting a bit sidey, isn't she?"
+
+Nevertheless, when I rose to leave the dining-room, Alma wound her arm
+round my waist, called me her "dear little nun," and carried me off to
+the hall.
+
+There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk became
+as free, as it often is among fashionable ladies of a certain class.
+
+Mr. Eastcliff's Camilla told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a
+"dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman (the
+same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeated
+the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "A
+parlour-maid wants a situation in a family where a footman is kept."
+
+The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it was
+redoubled when Alma's mother, from the depths of an arm-chair, said,
+with her usual solemnity, that she "didn't see nothing to laugh at" in
+that, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as they had."
+
+Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert myself once
+for all I said:
+
+"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of conversation. I
+don't like it."
+
+At last the climax came.
+
+About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which had
+been put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless you!" and
+next day there came a newspaper containing an account of his last night
+at Tilbury.
+
+He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his old
+commander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to be in
+London, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal which had
+promoted his expedition.
+
+They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I remembered
+it!), finishing up the evening with a dance on deck in the moonlight;
+and when the time came to break up, Martin had made one of his
+sentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much grammar), in
+which he said that in starting out for another siege of the South Pole
+he "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain under the third button
+of his double-breasted waistcoat, of the dear ones they were leaving
+behind, and of the unknown regions whither they were tending where
+dancing would be forgotten."
+
+I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenial
+company; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it on
+the table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfast
+next morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before the
+fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in a
+mock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fat
+body (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter.
+
+It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down and
+flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly in
+their midst before they were aware of my presence.
+
+"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "we
+were just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night in
+England."
+
+"So I see," I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I quietly took
+the paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb and first finger
+(as if the contamination of her touch had made it unclean) and carried
+it to the fire and burnt it.
+
+This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff went
+over to the open door and said:
+
+"Deuced fine day for a motor drive, isn't it?"
+
+That gentleman had hitherto shown no alacrity in establishing the truth
+of Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his visit to "his
+friend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he found himself too
+deeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to remain longer, while the
+rest of the party became so absorbed in the Perth and Ayr races,
+salmon-fishing on the Tay, and stag-shooting in the deer-forests of
+Invercauld, that within a week thereafter I had said good-bye to all of
+them.
+
+All save Alma.
+
+I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of my
+guests when Alma followed me to my room and said:
+
+"My dear, sweet girl, I want you to do me the greatest kindness."
+
+She had to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old
+dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to
+wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest
+steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port,
+perhaps I would not mind . . . just for a week or two longer. . . .
+
+What _could_ I say? What I did say was what I had said before, with
+equal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal danger. A word,
+half a word, and almost before it was spoken, Alma's arms were about my
+neck and she was calling me her "dearest, sweetest, kindest friend in
+the world."
+
+My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma left
+the boudoir when she was twitching at my arm and whispering in my ear:
+
+"My lady, my lady, don't you see what the woman wants? She's watching
+you."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+My husband was the next to go.
+
+He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or four
+weeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any case I was
+not the sort of person to feel lonely.
+
+Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer, I
+asked if that was all that was taking him to London.
+
+"Perhaps not all," he answered, and then, with a twang of voice and a
+twitch of feature, he said:
+
+"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . to tell you
+the truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me."
+
+With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come to a
+close. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute as before
+and began to brood upon Price's warning.
+
+My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself as
+mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage)
+she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing Alma to remain
+in it.
+
+"She's deceiving you, my lady," said Price. "_Her_ waiting for a steamer
+indeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not fly out at me again
+and pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you what's she's waiting
+for."
+
+"What?"
+
+"She's waiting for . . . she thinks . . . she fancies . . . well, to
+tell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing suspects that
+something is going to happen to your ladyship, and she's just waiting
+for the chance of telling his lordship."
+
+I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming trouble
+took frequent possession of my mind.
+
+I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly monster
+created by the nervous strain I had been going through, and for a time I
+succeeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing would happen
+during his absence, and I compelled myself to believe that nothing would
+or could.
+
+Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place
+to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land
+became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black
+boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering
+winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings
+dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa.
+
+I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic spell which
+she had exercised over me when I was a child asserted itself again, but
+now it seemed to me to be always evil and sometimes almost demoniacal.
+
+I had a feeling that she was watching me day and night. Occasionally,
+when she thought I was looking down, I caught the vivid gaze of her
+coal-black eyes looking across at me through her long sable-coloured
+eyelashes.
+
+Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself
+creeping away from her and even shrinking from her touch.
+
+More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had said of
+her: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put my foot on
+it."
+
+The feeling that I was alone in this great gaunt house with a woman who
+was waiting and watching to do me a mischief, that she might step into
+my shoes, was preying upon my health and spirits.
+
+Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and exhaustion for which I could
+not account. Looking into my glass in the morning, I saw that my nose
+was becoming pinched, my cheeks thin, and my whole face not merely pale,
+but grey.
+
+Alma saw these changes in my appearance, and in the over-sweet tones of
+her succulent voice she constantly offered me her sympathy. I always
+declined it, protesting that I was perfectly well, but none the less I
+shrank within myself and became more and more unhappy.
+
+So fierce a strain could not last very long, and the climax came about
+three weeks after my husband had left for London.
+
+I was rising from breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was suddenly
+seized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment, I fainted
+right away.
+
+On recovering consciousness I found myself stretched out on the floor
+with Alma and her mother leaning over me.
+
+Never to the last hour of my life shall I forget the look in Alma's eyes
+as I opened my own. With her upper lip sucked in and her lower one
+slightly set forward she was giving her mother a quick side-glance of
+evil triumph.
+
+I was overwhelmed with confusion. I thought I might have been speaking
+as I was coming to, mentioning a name perhaps, out of that dim and
+sacred chamber of the unconscious soul into which God alone should see.
+I noticed, too, that my bodice had been unhooked at the back so as to
+leave it loose over my bosom.
+
+As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were open, she put her arm under my
+head and began to pour out a flood of honeyed words into my ears.
+
+"My dear, sweet darling," she said, "you scared us to death. We must
+send for a doctor immediately--your own doctor, you know."
+
+I tried to say there was no necessity, but she would not listen.
+
+"Such a seizure may be of no consequence, my love. I trust it isn't. But
+on the other hand, it may be a serious matter, and it is my duty,
+dearest, my duty to your husband, to discover the cause of it."
+
+I knew quite well what Alma was thinking of, yet I could not say more
+without strengthening her suspicions, so I asked for Price, who helped
+me up to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed while she gave me
+brandy and other restoratives.
+
+That was the beginning of the end. I needed no doctor to say what had
+befallen me. It was something more stupendous for me than the removal of
+mountains or the stopping of the everlasting coming and going of the
+sea.
+
+The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood, the most sacred, the most
+divine, the mighty mystery of a new life had come to me as it comes to
+other women. Yet how had it come? Like a lowering thunderstorm.
+
+That golden hour of her sex, which ought to be the sweetest and most
+joyful in a woman's life--the hour when she goes with a proud and
+swelling heart to the one she loves, the one who loves her, and with her
+arms about his neck and her face hidden in his breast whispers her great
+new secret, and he clasps her more fondly than ever to his heart,
+because another and closer union has bound them together--that golden
+hour had come to me, and there was none to share it.
+
+O God! O God! How proudly I had been holding up my head! How I had been
+trampling on the conventions of morality, the canons of law, and even
+the sacraments of religion, thinking Nature, which had made our hearts
+what they are, did not mean a woman to be ashamed of her purest
+instincts!
+
+And now Nature herself had risen up to condemn me, and before long the
+whole world would be joining in her cry.
+
+If Martin had been there at that moment I do not think I should have
+cared what people might think or say of a woman in my condition. But he
+was separated from me by this time by thousands of miles of sea, and
+was going deeper and deeper every day into the dark Antarctic night.
+
+How weak I felt, how little, how helpless! Never for a moment did I
+blame Martin. But I was alone with my responsibility, I was still living
+in my husband's house, and--worst of all--another woman knew my secret.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Early next day Doctor Conrad came to see me. I thought it significant
+that he came in my father's big motor-car--a car of great speed and
+power.
+
+I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at the
+first glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I knew what
+Alma had said in the letter which had summoned him.
+
+In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I could have
+wished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that his face
+brightened at each of my replies, and at the end of them he said:
+
+"There is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall be better than ever
+by-and-by."
+
+Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying something that
+would be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listened
+with my head down and my face towards the fire.
+
+He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, for
+he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing in
+such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and to
+look hopefully to the future.
+
+"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeable
+people--old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and happy faces."
+
+I said "Yes" and "Yes," knowing only too well how impossible it all was;
+and then his talk turned on general topics--my father, whose condition
+made his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose name
+caused his gentle old eyes to gleam with sunshine.
+
+She had charged him with a message to me.
+
+"Tell her," she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for me in
+the autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for her."
+
+That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by what came
+next.
+
+"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing for you.
+'She's a great lady now,' said she, 'but maybe great ladies have their
+troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to rest
+her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room is
+always waiting for her.'"
+
+"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my great
+relief, he talked on other subjects.
+
+The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heaven
+alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hour
+of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, but
+sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should have
+screamed.
+
+When he rose to go he repeated his warnings.
+
+"You'll remember what I said about being bright and cheerful?"
+
+"I'll try."
+
+"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"
+
+"Ye-s."
+
+Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of I
+her warmest and insincerest congratulations.
+
+"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I
+right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you!
+But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write to
+your husband and tell him all about it."
+
+Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul,
+redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began by
+congratulating herself on her perspicacity.
+
+"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said to
+Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said Alma, but it's
+us married women to know, isn't it?"
+
+After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience--to take
+my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c.,--she told me how
+fortunate I was to have Alma in the house at such a moment.
+
+"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and she's such a
+happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it,
+but she's actually talking of staying with you until the December
+sailing, at all events."
+
+The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soul
+as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdom
+had only begun.
+
+Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually cold
+grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that her
+visit was not an unselfish one.
+
+"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I give
+you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only way
+with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, I
+must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be sure I had enough on my
+hands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"
+
+Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to say that
+what was coming would be a bond between me and my husband.
+
+"It always is. It was in my case, anyway. The old colonel didn't behave
+very well after our marriage, and times and times I was telling myself I
+had made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I thought, 'I might have
+done better, but I might have done worse, and he's the father of my
+offspring, anyway.'"
+
+Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk of Alma
+and her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my husband--the
+young one with the big eyes and "the quality toss with her?" Then why
+did I have a person like that about the house?
+
+"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your aunt
+and your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank the saints I
+don't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for you what I did for
+your poor mother, and _I_ can't say more than that, can I?"
+
+I must have made some kind of response, for Aunt Bridget went on to say
+it might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to leave the Big
+House either.
+
+"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own
+stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way that
+Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I do
+believe she'll marry the man some day."
+
+To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's health.
+
+"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the man. He
+would have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't hear of it.
+He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and talking about a
+great entertainment."
+
+"Entertainment?"
+
+"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to know
+that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of your
+coming home after your marriage--that's all it's to be on the outside,
+anyway."
+
+I made some cry of pain, and Aunt Bridget said:
+
+"Oh, I know what you're going to say--why doesn't he wait? I'll tell you
+why if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any one. Your father is a
+sick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes when Conrad talks about
+cancer, he knows Death's hand is over him. And thinking it may fall
+before your time has come, he wants to take time by the forelock and see
+a sort of fulfilment of the hope of his life--and you know what that
+is."
+
+It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father was now
+so tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my heart that I
+might never look upon his face again.
+
+I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit my
+father came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the lawn
+when his big car came rolling up the drive.
+
+I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly white, his
+lips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to have sunk into
+his shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his clothes seemed to
+hang on them; but the stern mouth was there still, and so was the
+masterful lift of the eyebrows.
+
+Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said:
+
+"Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn't take rest without
+putting a sight on you."
+
+After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always was
+and will be (about it's being good for a woman to have children because
+it saved her from "losing her stomach" over imaginary grievances), he
+led me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to show
+to my mother, back to the house and into the drawing-room.
+
+Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the other
+knitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but he waved
+them back to their places.
+
+"Set down, ma'am. Take your seat, mother. I'm only here for a minute to
+talk to my gel about her great reception."
+
+"Reception?" said Alma.
+
+"Hasn't she told you about it?" he said, and being answered that I had
+not, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma, whose
+former attitude towards my father had changed to one of flattery and
+subservience, lifted her hands and cried:
+
+"How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you were to be
+kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for that purpose?"
+
+In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after another--it would
+be expensive, we could not afford it.
+
+"Who asks you to afford it? It's my affair, isn't it?" said my father.
+
+I was unwell, and therefore unable to undertake the hard work of such an
+entertainment--but that was the worst of excuses, for Alma jumped in
+with an offer of assistance.
+
+"My dearest child," she said, "you know how happy I shall be to help
+you. In fact, I'll do all the work and you shall have all the glory."
+
+"There you are, then," cried my father, slapping me on the shoulder, and
+then, turning to Alma, he told her to set to work without a day's delay.
+
+"Let everything be done correct even if it costs me a bit of money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"A rael big thing, ma'am, such as nobody has ever seen before."
+
+"Yes indeed, sir."
+
+"Ask all the big people on the island--Nessy MacLeod shall send you a
+list of them."
+
+"I will, sir."
+
+"That'll do for the present--I guess I must be going now, or old Conrad
+will be agate of me. So long, gel, so long."
+
+I was silenced, I was helpless, I was ashamed.
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that, besides the desire of
+celebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had another and
+still more secret object--that of throwing dust in the eyes of his
+advocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who (having expected him to
+make money for them by magic) were beginning to whisper that all was not
+well with his financial schemes.
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment
+the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in
+health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance
+equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under
+the very wing of Death.
+
+But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satan
+himself were torturing me.
+
+The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might return
+home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world
+of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would
+tumble about my head like a pack of cards.
+
+He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political duties
+would keep him in London a little longer, he said:
+
+"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception in
+honour of our home-coming. But why _now_, instead of three months ago?
+_Do you know the reason?_"
+
+As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up from my
+feet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The conviction
+was being forced upon me that I had no right in my husband's house.
+
+It made no difference that my husband's house was mine also, in the
+sense that it could not exist without me--I had no right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that my marriage had been no marriage--I had no
+right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly bad
+husband--I had no right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife--I had no
+right to be there.
+
+Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, with
+the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture.
+Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her opinion of my
+attitude towards Alma, and one night she said:
+
+"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The nasty-minded
+thing is making mischief with his lordship. She's writing to him every
+day. . . . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my eyes and my ears open
+downstairs for nothing. You'll have no peace of your life, my lady,
+until you turn that woman out of the house."
+
+Then in a fit of despair, hardly knowing what I was doing, I covered my
+face with my hands and said:
+
+"I had better turn myself out instead, perhaps."
+
+The combing of my hair suddenly stopped, and at the next moment I heard
+Price saying in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off:
+
+"Goodness gracious me! Is it like that, my lady?"
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Alma was as good as her word.
+
+She did everything without consulting me--fixed the date of the
+reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent out
+invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which came
+from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting.
+
+These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issued
+reached the grand total of five hundred.
+
+As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so many
+guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed,
+and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up a
+vast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlands
+beyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together.
+
+While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. I
+heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. The
+reception was to surpass in grandeur any fête ever held in Ellan. Not
+knowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened by
+this extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from the
+sight of it.
+
+I could not escape.
+
+I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and that she
+was trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the easiest means to
+gain her own ends. For this reason, among others, the woman in me would
+not let me fly, so I remained and went through a purgatory of suffering.
+
+Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was always
+urging me to remain, saying:
+
+"Why should you go, my lady? You are your husband's wife, aren't you?
+Fight it out, I say. Ladies do so every day. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+Before long the whole island seemed to be astir about our reception.
+Every day the insular newspapers devoted columns to the event, giving
+elaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could accomplish for a
+single night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was much
+eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan," as well as praise
+of Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality," but little or no
+mention of myself.
+
+Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of the
+forthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our insular
+manners some of the visits I received were painfully embarrassing.
+
+One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, who
+smiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he thanked
+me for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to break up a
+marriage which was so suitable from points of property and position.
+
+"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his hopes," he
+said. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How good! How
+gratifying!"
+
+The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever,
+congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that the
+object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become the
+heir of Castle Raa.
+
+More delicate, but also more distressing, was a letter from Father Dan,
+saying he had been forbidden my husband's house and therefore could not
+visit me, but having heard an angel's whisper of the sweet joy that was
+coming to me, he prayed the Lord and His Holy Mother to carry me safely
+through.
+
+"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my dear
+child, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And now I know
+you have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage has fulfilled its
+mission, as I always knew it would. So God bless you, my daughter, and
+keep you pure and fit for eternal union with that blessed saint, your
+mother, whom the Lord has made His own."
+
+More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my
+husband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outraged
+vanity (as I say, the _woman_ in me), would not let me go.
+
+Three weeks passed.
+
+The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily painted
+bannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at sunset. A
+covered corridor connecting the theatre with the house was being lined
+with immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by lamps that resembled
+stars.
+
+A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been too
+much occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I confined
+myself, came up to give me my instructions.
+
+The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock. I was to be dressed as
+Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room. At the sound of
+a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of
+pages, and accompanied by my husband. After we had taken our places in a
+private box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall,
+was to give a performance lasting until midnight. Then there was to be a
+cotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the
+dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of
+butterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to be
+liberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through the
+sunlit space.
+
+I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and
+the object which I supposed it was intended to serve.
+
+The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the real
+cause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly be aware of
+what was being done in his name and with his money, and begging him to
+put an end to the entertainment altogether.
+
+The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod. I can see her
+still as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with red hair and
+irregular features.
+
+"Cousin Mary," she said, seating herself stiffly on the only
+stiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, "your letter has
+been received, but your father has not seen it, his health being such as
+makes it highly undesirable that he should be disturbed by unnecessary
+worries."
+
+I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, but
+urgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from my
+father I should deliver it myself.
+
+"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter is, having
+opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathy
+with what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has set
+his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that it
+shall be put off."
+
+I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken an
+unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her by
+what right did she, who had entered my father's house as a dependent,
+dare to keep his daughter's letter from him.
+
+"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were always
+self-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I am sorry to
+see that neither marriage nor education at a convent has chastened your
+ungovernable temper. But I have told you that I do not choose that you
+shall injure your father's health by disturbing his plans, and you shall
+certainly not do so."
+
+"Then take care," I answered, "that in protecting my father's health you
+do not destroy it altogether."
+
+In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my meaning,
+for after a moment of silence she said:
+
+"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in the
+future, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I shall not
+consider that I am in any way responsible for it."
+
+At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from various
+parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some of
+them advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list of
+steamers' sailings.
+
+Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torture
+can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myself
+if I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned.
+
+But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, saying
+she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards the
+end, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look of
+triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand.
+
+"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game in
+your own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing."
+
+The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized the
+arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law
+(not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessed
+that both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeper
+under the inspiration of her mistress.
+
+Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter
+and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with
+Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcoming
+entertainment.
+
+Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of my
+maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawer
+Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leaving
+London by the early train the following morning and would arrive at
+Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.
+
+"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him!
+But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . . No? Ah, I see,
+you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happy
+you!"
+
+It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There was
+no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me in
+the net of my sin, so that I could not fly away.
+
+At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed for
+the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband at
+Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwards
+I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to me
+directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When,
+after a while, I asked what had become of him, I was told that he was in
+the library with Alma, and that they were alone.
+
+Two hours passed.
+
+To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had behaved
+to me. I remembered that he had married me from the most mercenary
+motives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money that came
+through me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I had made to love
+him; that he had humiliated me by gross infidelities committed on my
+honeymoon. I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris, and the
+insults I had received under my own roof.
+
+It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault in
+breaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall be
+greater than that of the man I do not know. I only know that I was
+trembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being dressed for
+dinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard my husband's
+footsteps approach my door.
+
+I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held on to the
+mantelpiece as my husband came into the room.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality, which
+pierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I could see at a
+glance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from his slow
+grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which replaced it trembled.
+
+Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation he
+plunged immediately into the matter that was uppermost in his mind.
+
+"I am still at a loss to account for this affair of your father's," he
+said. "Of course I know what it is supposed to be--a reception in honour
+of our home-coming. That explanation may or may not be sufficient for
+these stupid islanders, but it's rather too thin for me. Can you tell me
+what your father means by it?"
+
+I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a sheep
+that walks up to a barking dog:
+
+"Hadn't you better ask that question of my father himself?"
+
+"Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn't, so I ask you. Your
+father is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things he will
+not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not spend five or
+ten thousand pounds for nothing. He isn't a fool exactly."
+
+"Thank you," I said. I could not help it. It was forced out of me.
+
+My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the bully in him, which
+always lay underneath, came uppermost.
+
+"Look here, Mary," he said. "I came for an explanation and I intend to
+have one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, but
+you must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so we
+might as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that the doctor has made
+certain statements about your own condition, and that your father is
+giving this entertainment because . . . well, because he is expecting an
+heir?"
+
+To my husband's astonishment I answered:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how that
+condition came about?"
+
+Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer.
+
+"Can't you speak?" he said.
+
+But still I remained silent.
+
+"You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I ask you
+again how does that condition come about?"
+
+I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came to
+me and I said:
+
+"Why do you ask? You seem to know already."
+
+"I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that's what you mean.
+But I'm your husband and have a right to know from _you_. How does your
+condition come about, I ask you?"
+
+I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was the
+desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping to
+my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had intercepted
+and threw it on the table.
+
+He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents were
+not news, and then asked how I came by it.
+
+"It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of posting
+it," I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of such letters
+which had been inspired, if not written, by your friend Alma."
+
+"My friend Alma!"
+
+"Yes, your friend Alma."
+
+His face assumed a frightful expression and he said:
+
+"So that's how it is to be, is it? In spite of the admission you have
+just made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the letter) "is a
+trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it. You're going to
+brazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your position
+as a married woman?"
+
+I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could not
+speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say:
+
+"But it doesn't matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the
+accusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of any
+consequence--is it true?"
+
+My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as if
+I were throwing myself over a precipice but I answered:
+
+"It is perfectly true."
+
+I think that was the last thing he expected. After a moment he said:
+
+"Then you have broken your marriage vows--is that it?"
+
+"Yes, if you call it so."
+
+"Call it so? Call it so? Good heavens, what do _you_ call it?"
+
+I did not reply, and after another moment he said:
+
+"But perhaps you wish me to understand that this man whom I was so
+foolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and betrayed my
+wife. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"No," I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better than you
+did, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself."
+
+I shall never forget the look with which my husband received this
+confession. He drew himself up with the air of an injured man and said:
+
+"What? You mean that you yourself . . . deliberately . . . Good God!"
+
+He stopped for a moment and then said with a rush:
+
+"I suppose you've not forgotten what happened at the time of our
+marriage . . . your resistance and the ridiculous compact I submitted
+to? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence, your
+convent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions of
+matrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . . after
+all my complacency . . . that you have deliberately. . . . In the name
+of God do you know what you are? There's only one name for a woman who
+does what you've done. Do you want me to tell you what that name is?"
+
+I was quivering with shame, but my mind, which was going at lightning
+speed, was thinking of London, of Cairo, of Rome, and of Paris.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" he cried, lifting his voice in his rage. "Don't
+you understand what a letter like this is calling you?"
+
+My heart choked. But the thought that came to me--that, bad as his own
+life had been, he considered he had a right to treat me in this way
+because he was a man and I was a woman--brought strength out of my
+weakness, so that when he went on to curse my Church and my religion,
+saying this was all that had come of "the mummery of my masses," I fired
+up for a moment and said:
+
+"You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong, it is
+I, and not my Church, that is to blame for it."
+
+"_If_ you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you lost all sense
+of a woman's duty to her husband? While you have been married to me and
+I have been fool enough not to claim you as a wife because I thought you
+were only fit company for the saints and angels, you have been
+prostituting yourself to this blusterer, this . . ."
+
+"That is a lie," I said, stepping up to him in the middle of the floor.
+"It's true that I am married to you, but _he_ is my real husband and you
+. . . you are nothing to me at all."
+
+My husband stood for a moment with his mouth agape. Then he began to
+laugh--loudly, derisively, mockingly.
+
+"Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though, and when
+your time comes you'll expect it to cover your disgrace."
+
+His face had become shockingly distorted. He was quivering with fury.
+
+"That's not the worst, either," he cried. "It's not enough that you
+should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, but
+you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what it
+all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that
+you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this
+man's . . . bastard?"
+
+And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted his
+arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek.
+
+The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-fold
+worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When my
+mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me so
+tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths of
+shame.
+
+I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next moment
+Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, as
+before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing outside the door.
+But even that did not serve to restrain him.
+
+"No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy
+to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you shall!
+And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your father."
+
+And with that he swung out of the room and went lunging down the stairs.
+
+I was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the blow from my
+husband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after clashing the door
+in the face of the housekeeper, said, with her black eyes ablaze:
+
+"Well, if ever I wanted to be a man before to-day!"
+
+News of the scene went like wildfire through the house, and Alma's
+mother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way she told me
+of a similar insult she had suffered at the hands of the "bad Lord Raa,"
+and how it had been the real reason of her going to America.
+
+"Us married ladies have much to put up with. But cheer up, dearie. I
+guess you'll have gotten over it by to-morrow morning."
+
+When she was gone I sat down before the fire. I did not cry. I felt as
+if I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand fathoms too
+deep for tears. I do not think I wept again for many months afterwards,
+and then it was a great joy, not a great grief, that brought me a burst
+of blessed tears.
+
+But I could hear my dear good Price crying behind me, and when I said:
+
+"Now you see for yourself that I cannot remain in this house any
+longer," she answered, in a low voice:
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"I must go at once--to-night if possible."
+
+"You shall. Leave everything to me, my lady."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The bell rang, but of course I did not go down to dinner.
+
+As soon as Price had gone off to make the necessary arrangements I
+turned the key in the lock of my door, removed my evening gown, and
+began to dress for my flight.
+
+My brain was numb, but I did my best to confront the new situation that
+was before me.
+
+Hitherto I had been occupied with the problem of whether I should or
+should not leave my husband's house; now I had to settle the question of
+where I was to go to.
+
+I dared not think of home, for (Nessy MacLeod and Aunt Bridget apart)
+the house of my father was the last place I could fly to at a moment
+when I was making dust and ashes of his lifelong expectations.
+
+Neither dared I think of Sunny Lodge, although I remembered, with a tug
+of tenderness, Christian Ann's last message about Mary O'Neill's little
+room that was always waiting for me--for I thought of how I had broken
+my pledge to her.
+
+The only place I could think of was that which Martin had mentioned when
+he wished to carry me away--London. In the mighty world of London I
+might hide myself from observation and wait until Martin returned from
+his expedition.
+
+"Yes, yes, London," I told myself in my breathless excitement, little
+knowing what London meant.
+
+I began to select the clothes I was to carry with me and to wear on my
+journey. They must be plain, for I had to escape from a house in which
+unfriendly eyes would be watching me. They must be durable, for during
+my time of waiting I expected to be poor.
+
+I hunted out some of the quaker-like costumes which had been made for me
+before my marriage; and when I had put them on I saw that they made a
+certain deduction from my appearance, but that did not matter to me
+now--the only eyes I wished to look well in being down in the Antarctic
+seas.
+
+Then I tried to think of practical matters--how I was to live in London
+and how, in particular, I was to meet the situation that was before me.
+Surely never did a more helpless innocent confront such a serious
+problem. I was a woman, and for more than a year I had been a wife, but
+I had no more experience of the hard facts of material existence than a
+child.
+
+I thought first of the bank-book which my father had sent me with
+authority to draw on his account. But it was then nine o'clock, the
+banks were closed for the day, and I knew enough of the world to see
+that if I attempted to cash a cheque in the morning my whereabouts would
+he traced. That must never happen, I must hide myself from everybody;
+therefore my bank-book was useless.
+
+"Quite useless," I thought, throwing it aside like so much waste paper.
+
+I thought next of my jewels. But there I encountered a similar
+difficulty. The jewels which were really mine, having been bought by
+myself, had been gambled away by my husband at Monte Carlo. What
+remained were the family jewels which had come to me as Lady Raa; but
+that was a name I was never more to bear, a person I was never more to
+think about, so I could not permit myself to take anything that belonged
+to her.
+
+The only thing left to me was my money. I had always kept a good deal
+of it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to put it in
+the plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish prodigality to the
+boys who tossed somersaults behind the carriage in the road.
+
+Now I found it all over my room--in my purse, in various drawers, and on
+the toilet-tray under my dressing-glass. Gathered together it counted up
+to twenty-eight pounds. I owed four pounds to Price, and having set them
+aside, I saw that I had twenty-four pounds left in notes, gold, and
+silver.
+
+Being in the literal and unconventional sense utterly ignorant of the
+value of sixpence, I thought this a great sum, amply sufficient for all
+my needs, or at least until I secured employment--for I had from the
+first some vague idea of earning my own living.
+
+"Martin would like that," I told myself, lifting my head with a thrill
+of pride.
+
+Then I began to gather up the treasures which were inexpressibly more
+dear to me than all my other possessions.
+
+One of them was a little miniature of my mother which Father Dan had
+given me for a wedding-present when (as I know now) he would rather have
+parted with his heart's blood.
+
+Another was a pearl rosary which the Reverend Mother had dropped over my
+arm the last time she kissed me on the forehead; and the last was my
+Martin's misspelt love-letter, which was more precious to me than
+rubies.
+
+Not for worlds, I thought, would I leave these behind me, or ever part
+with them under any circumstances.
+
+Several times while I was busy with such preparations, growing more and
+more nervous every moment, Price came on tip-toe and tapped softly at my
+door.
+
+Once it was to bring me some food and to tell me, with many winks (for
+the good soul herself was trembling with excitement), that everything
+was "as right as ninepence." I should get away without difficulty in a
+couple of hours, and until to-morrow morning nobody would be a penny the
+wiser.
+
+Fortunately it was Thursday, when a combined passenger and cargo steamer
+sailed to Liverpool. Of course the motor-car would not be available to
+take me to the pier, but Tommy the Mate, who had a stiff cart in which
+he took his surplus products to market, would be waiting for me at
+eleven o'clock by the gate to the high road.
+
+The people downstairs, meaning my husband and Alma and her mother, were
+going off to the pavilion (where hundreds of decorators were to work
+late and the orchestra and ballet were to have a rehearsal), and they
+had been heard to say that they would not be back until "way round about
+midnight."
+
+"But the servants?" I asked.
+
+"They're going too, bless them," said Price. "So eat your dinner in
+peace, my lady, and don't worry about a thing until I come back to fetch
+you."
+
+Another hour passed. I was in a fever of apprehension. I felt like a
+prisoner who was about to escape from a dungeon.
+
+A shrill wind was coming up from the sea and whistling about the house.
+I could hear the hammering of the workmen in the pavilion as well as the
+music of the orchestra practising their scores.
+
+A few minutes before eleven Price returned, carrying one of the smaller
+of the travelling-trunks I had taken to Cairo. I noticed that it bore no
+name and no initials.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "They've gone off, every mother's son and
+daughter of them--all except the housekeeper, and I've caught her out,
+the cat!"
+
+That lynx-eyed person had begun to suspect. She had seen Tommy
+harnessing his horse and had not been satisfied with his
+explanation--that he was taking tomatoes to Blackwater to be sent off by
+the Liverpool steamer.
+
+So to watch events, without seeming to watch them, the housekeeper (when
+the other servants had gone off to the rehearsal) had stolen upstairs to
+her room in the West tower overlooking the back courtyard.
+
+But Price had been more than a match for her. Creeping up behind, she
+had locked the door of the top landing, and now the "little cat" might
+scream her head off through the window, and (over the noises of the wind
+and the workmen) it would be only like "tom" shrieking on the tiles.
+
+"We must be quick, though," said Price, tumbling into my
+travelling-trunk as many of my clothes as it would hold.
+
+When it was full and locked and corded she said:
+
+"Wait," and stepped out on the landing to listen.
+
+After a moment she returned saying:
+
+"Not a sound! Now for it, my lady."
+
+And then, tying her handkerchief over her head to keep down her hair in
+the wind, she picked up the trunk in her arms and crept out of the room
+on tiptoe.
+
+The moment had come to go, yet, eager as I had been all evening to
+escape from my husband's house, I could scarcely tear myself away, for
+I was feeling a little of that regret which comes to us all when we are
+doing something for the last time.
+
+Passing through the boudoir this feeling took complete possession of me.
+Only a few hours before it had been the scene of my deepest degradation,
+but many a time before it had been the place of my greatest happiness.
+
+_"You are my wife. I am your real husband. No matter where you are or
+what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."_
+
+Half-closing the door, I took a last look round--at the piano, the desk,
+the table, the fireplace, all the simple things associated with my
+dearest memories. So strong was the yearning of my own soul that I felt
+as if the soul of Martin were in the room with me at that moment.
+
+I believe it was.
+
+"Quick, my lady, or you'll lose your steamer," whispered Price, and then
+we crossed the landing (which was creaking again) and crept noiselessly
+down a back staircase. We were near the bottom when I was startled by a
+loud knocking, which seemed to come from a distant part of the house. My
+heart temporarily stopped its beating, but Price only laughed and
+whispered:
+
+"There she is! We've fairly caught her out, the cat."
+
+At the next moment Price opened an outer door, and after we had passed
+through she closed and locked it behind us.
+
+We were then in the courtyard behind the house, stumbling in the
+blinding darkness over cobble-stones.
+
+"Keep close to me, my lady," said Price.
+
+After a few moments we reached the drive. I think I was more nervous
+than I had ever been before. I heard the withered leaves behind me
+rustling along the ground before the wind from the sea, and thought they
+were the footsteps of people pursuing us. I heard the hammering of the
+workmen and the music of the orchestra, and thought they were voices
+screaming to us to come back.
+
+Price, who was forging ahead, carried the trunk in her arms as if it had
+been a child, but every few minutes she waited for me to come up to her,
+and encouraged me when I stumbled in the darkness.
+
+"Only a little further, my lady," she said, and I did my best to
+struggle on.
+
+We reached the gate to the high road at last. Tommy the Mate was there
+with his stiff cart, and Price, who was breathless after her great
+exertion, tumbled my trunk over the tail-board.
+
+The time had come to part from her, and, remembering how faithful and
+true she had been to me, I hardly knew what to say. I told her I had
+left her wages in an envelope on the dressing-table, and then I
+stammered something about being too poor to make her a present to
+remember me by.
+
+"It doesn't need a present to help me to remember a good mistress, my
+lady," she said.
+
+"God bless you for being so good to me," I answered, and then I kissed
+her.
+
+"I'll remember you by that, though," she said, and she began to cry.
+
+I climbed over the wheel of the stiff cart and seated myself on my
+trunk, and then Tommy, who had been sitting on the front-board with his
+feet on the outer shaft, whipped up his horse and we started away.
+
+During the next half-hour the springless cart bobbed along the dark road
+at its slow monotonous pace. Tommy never once looked round or spoke
+except to his horse, but I understood my old friend perfectly.
+
+I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be overtaken and carried back.
+Again and again I looked behind. At one moment, when a big motor-car,
+with its two great white eyes, came rolling up after us, my stormy heart
+stood still. But it was not my husband's car, and in a little while its
+red tail-light disappeared in the darkness ahead.
+
+We reached Blackwater in time for the midnight steamer and drew up at
+the landward end of the pier. It was cold; the salt wind from the sea
+was very chill. Men who looked like commercial travellers were hurrying
+along with their coat-collars turned up, and porters with heavy trunks
+on their shoulders were striving to keep pace with them.
+
+I gave my own trunk to a porter who came up to the cart, and then turned
+to Tommy to say good-bye. The old man had got down from the shaft and
+was smoothing his smoking horse, and snuffling as if he had caught a
+cold.
+
+"Good-bye, Tommy," I said--and then something more which I do not wish
+to write down.
+
+"Good-bye, lil missie," he answered (that cut me deep), "I never
+believed ould Tom Dug would live to see ye laving home like this . . .
+But wait! Only wait till himself is after coming back, and I'll go bail
+it'll be the divil sit up for some of them."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+It was very dark. No more than three or four lamps on the pier were
+burning, but nevertheless I was afraid that the pier-master would
+recognise me.
+
+I thought he did so as I approached the gangway to the saloon, for he
+said:
+
+"Private cabin on main deck aft."
+
+Nervous as I was, I had just enough presence of mind to say "Steerage,
+please," which threw him off the scent entirely, so that he cried, in
+quite a different voice:
+
+"Steerage passengers forward."
+
+I found my way to the steerage end of the steamer; and in order to
+escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to the
+steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with an
+open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swinging
+from a rafter overhead.
+
+The porter found me there, and in my foolish ignorance of the value of
+money I gave him half a crown for his trouble. He first looked at the
+coin, then tested it between his teeth, then spat on it, and finally
+went off chuckling.
+
+The first and second bells rang. I grudged every moment of delay before
+the steamer sailed, for I still felt like a prisoner who was running
+away and might even yet be brought back.
+
+Seating myself in the darkest corner of the cabin, I waited and watched.
+There were only two other steerage passengers and they were women.
+Judging by their conversation I concluded that they were cooks from
+lodging-houses on "the front," returning after a long season to their
+homes in Liverpool. Both were very tired, and they were spreading their
+blankets on the bare bunks so as to settle themselves for the night.
+
+At last the third bell rang. I heard the engine whistle, the funnel
+belch out its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the gangways being
+taken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I saw the grey pier
+gliding behind us.
+
+After a few moments, with a feeling of safety and a sense of danger
+passed, I went up on deck. But oh, how little I knew what bitter pain I
+was putting myself to!
+
+We were just then swinging round the lighthouse which stands on the
+south-east headland of the bay, and the flash of its revolving light in
+my face as I reached the top of the cabin stairs brought back the memory
+of the joyous and tumultuous scenes of Martin's last departure.
+
+That, coupled and contrasted with the circumstances of my own flight,
+stealthily, shamefully, and in the dead of night, gave me a pang that
+was almost more than I could bear.
+
+But my cup was not yet full. A few minutes afterwards we sailed in the
+dark past the two headlands of Port Raa, and, looking up, I saw the
+lights in the windows of my husband's house, and the glow over the glass
+roof of the pavilion.
+
+What would happen there to-morrow morning when it was discovered that I
+was gone? What would happen to-morrow night when my father arrived,
+ignorant of my flight, as I felt sure the malice of my husband would
+keep him?
+
+Little as I knew then of my father's real motives in giving that bizarre
+and rather vulgar entertainment, I thought I saw and heard everything
+that would occur.
+
+I saw the dazzling spectacle, I saw the five hundred guests, I saw Alma
+and my husband, and above all I saw my father, the old man stricken with
+mortal maladies, the wounded lion whom the shadow of death itself could
+not subdue, degraded to the dust in his hour of pride by the act of his
+own child.
+
+I heard his shouts of rage, his cries of fury, his imprecations on me as
+one who should never touch a farthing of his fortune. And then I heard
+the whispering of his "friends," who were telling the "true story" of my
+disappearance, the tale of my "treacheries" to my husband--just as if
+Satan had willed it that the only result of the foolish fête on which my
+father had wasted his wealth like water should be the publication of my
+shame.
+
+But the bitterest part of my experience was still to come. In a few
+minutes we sailed past the headlands of Port Raa, the lights of my
+husband's house shot out of view like meteors on a murky night, and the
+steamer turned her head to the open sea.
+
+I was standing by a rope which crossed the bow and holding on to it to
+save myself from falling, for, being alone with Nature at last, I was
+seeing my flight for the first time in full light.
+
+I was telling myself that as surely as my flight became known Martin's
+name would be linked with mine, and the honour that was dearer to me
+than, my own would be buried in disgrace.
+
+O God! O God! Why should Nature be so hard and cruel to a woman? Why
+should it be permitted that, having done no worse than obey the purest
+impulses of my heart, the iron law of my sex should rise up to condemn
+both me and the one who was dearer to my soul than life itself?
+
+I hardly know how long I stood there, holding on to that rope. There was
+no sound now except the tread of a sailor in his heavy boots, an
+inarticulate call from the bridge, an answering shout from the wheel,
+the rattling of the wind in the rigging, the throbbing of the engine in
+the bowels of the ship, and the monotonous wash of the waves against her
+side.
+
+Oh, how little I felt, how weak, how helpless!
+
+I looked up towards the sky, but there seemed to be no sky, no moon, and
+no stars, only a vaporous blackness that came down and closed about me.
+
+I looked out to the sea, but there seemed to be no sea, only a hissing
+splash of green spray where the steamer's forward light fell on the
+water which her bow was pitching up, and beyond that nothing but a
+threatening and thundering void.
+
+I did not weep, but I felt as other women had felt before me, as other
+women have felt since, as women must always feel after they have sinned
+against the world and the world's law, that there was nothing before me
+but the blackness of night.
+
+"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my cry."
+
+But all at once a blessed thought came to me. We were travelling
+eastward, and dark as the night was now, in a few hours the day would
+dawn, the sun would shine in our faces and the sky would smile over our
+heads!
+
+It would be like that with me. Martin would come back. I was only going
+to meet him. It was dark midnight with me now, but I was sailing into
+the sunrise!
+
+Perhaps I was like a child, but I think that comforted me.
+
+At all events I went down to the little triangular cabin with a cheerful
+heart, forgetting that I was a runaway, a homeless wanderer, an outcast,
+with nothing before me but the wilderness of London where I should be
+friendless and alone.
+
+The fire had gone out by this time, the oil-lamp was swinging to the
+motion of the ship, the timbers were creaking, and the Liverpool women
+were asleep.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At eight o'clock next morning I was in the train leaving Liverpool for
+London.
+
+I had selected a second-class compartment labelled "For Ladies," and my
+only travelling companion was a tall fair woman, in a seal-skin coat and
+a very large black hat. She had filled the carriage with the warm odour
+of eau-de-Cologne and the racks on both sides with her luggage, which
+chiefly consisted of ladies' hat boxes of various shapes and sizes.
+
+Hardly had we started when I realised that she was a very loquacious and
+expansive person.
+
+Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In London
+perhaps? No? Probably I lived in the country? Yes? That was charming,
+the country being so lovely.
+
+I saw in a moment that if my flight was to be carried out to any purpose
+I should have to conceal my identity; but how to do so I did not know,
+my conscience never before having had to accuse me of deliberate
+untruth.
+
+Accident helped me. My companion asked me what was my husband's
+profession, and being now accustomed to think of Martin as my real
+husband, I answered that he was a commander.
+
+"You mean the commander of a ship?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah, yes, you've been staying in Liverpool to see him off on a voyage.
+How sweet! Just what I should do myself if my husband were a sailor."
+
+Then followed a further battery of perplexing questions.
+
+Had my husband gone on a long voyage? Yes? Where to? The South. Did I
+mean India, Australia, New Zealand? Yes, and still farther.
+
+"Ah, I see," she said again. "He's probably the captain of a tramp
+steamer, and will go from port to port as long as he can find a cargo."
+
+Hardly understanding what my companion meant by this, I half agreed to
+it, and then followed a volley of more personal inquiries.
+
+I was young to be married, wasn't I? Probably I hadn't been married
+very long, had I? And not having settled myself in a home perhaps I was
+going up to London to wait for my husband? Yes? How wise--town being so
+much more cheerful than the country.
+
+"Any friends there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"None whatever?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"But won't you be lonely by yourself in London?"
+
+"A little lonely perhaps."
+
+Being satisfied that she had found out everything about me, my
+travelling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told me
+something about herself.
+
+She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the West End of London.
+Occasionally she made personal visits to the provinces to take orders
+from the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she found it more
+profitable to remain in town, where her connection was large, among
+people who could pay the highest prices.
+
+By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay in
+getting into the station, my travelling companion put her head out of
+the window to inquire the cause. She was told that a night train from
+Scotland was in front of us, and we should have to be coupled on to it
+before we could proceed to London.
+
+This threw her into the wildest state of excitement.
+
+"I see what it is," she said. "The shooting season is over and the
+society people are coming down from the moors. I know lots and lots of
+them. They are my best customers--the gentlemen at all events."
+
+"The gentlemen?"
+
+"Why, yes," she said with a little laugh.
+
+After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotch
+train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen in
+knickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the platform.
+
+My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names,
+generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones.
+
+Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised, passed
+close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself from
+observation behind the curtain of the window.
+
+"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He married
+Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I may tell you."
+
+I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hidden
+my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still more
+confidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers,
+and I caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind of
+fashionable Bohemia.
+
+More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the number of her
+clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subject
+of discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to close my eyes and be
+silent.
+
+My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, from
+Rugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the tickets were
+being collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion-glass and
+then interested herself afresh in my affairs.
+
+"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"
+
+I repeated that I had none.
+
+"Then you will go to an hotel, I suppose?"
+
+I answered that I should have to look for something less expensive.
+
+"In that case," she said, "I think I know something that will suit you
+exactly."
+
+It was a quiet boarding establishment in Bloomsbury--comfortable house,
+reasonable terms, and, above all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it was
+kept by her own sister, and if I liked she would take me along in her
+cab and drop me at the door. Should she?
+
+Looking back at that moment I cannot but wonder that after what I had
+heard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the last hour
+I had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so that when my
+companion offered me a shelter in that great, noisy, bewildering city in
+which I had intended to hide myself, but now feared I might be submerged
+and lost, with a willing if not a cheerful heart I accepted.
+
+Half an hour afterwards our cab drew up in a street off Russell Square
+at a rather grimy-looking house which stood at the corner of another and
+smaller square that was shut off by an iron railing.
+
+The door was opened by a young waiter of sixteen or seventeen years,
+who was wearing a greasy dress-suit and a soiled shirt front.
+
+My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at the
+same moment a still larger and perhaps grosser woman than my friend,
+with the same features and complexion, came out of a room to the left
+with, a serviette in her hand.
+
+"Sophie!"
+
+"Jane!" cried my companion, and pointing to me she said:
+
+"I've brought you a new boarder."
+
+Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me, who and what I
+was, and why I had come up to London.
+
+"I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much, you
+know."
+
+"Why, no, certainly not," said the sister.
+
+At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing, my trunk into the house
+on his shoulder and my travelling companion was bidding me good-bye and
+saying she would look me up later.
+
+When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of hot
+food, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear the
+clink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishes in the room the
+landlady had come from.
+
+"You'd like to go up to your bedroom at once, wouldn't you?" she said.
+
+We went up two flights of stairs covered with rather dirty druggeting,
+along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and finally up a
+third flight that was bare to the boards, until we came to a room which
+seemed to be at the top of the house and situated in its remotest
+corner.
+
+It was a very small apartment, hardly larger than the room over the hall
+at home in which Aunt Bridget had made me sleep when I was a child, and
+it was nearly as cold and cheerless.
+
+The wall-paper, which had once been a flowery pink, was now pale and
+patternless; the Venetian blind over the window (which looked out on the
+smaller square) had lost one of its cords and hung at an irregular
+angle; there was a mirror over the mantelpiece with the silvering much
+mottled, and a leather-covered easy chair whereof the spring was broken
+and the seat heavily indented.
+
+"I dare say this will do for the present," said my landlady, and though
+my heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree.
+
+"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a week," she
+added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I assented, whereupon
+my landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and I could come downstairs
+when I was ready.
+
+A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face, brought me a
+fat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found my
+way down to the dining-room.
+
+What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was a large
+chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need of
+refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twenty
+persons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the top.
+
+The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me at
+that first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes,
+many of them rather shabby and some almost grotesque.
+
+Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I entered,
+and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the door until the
+landlady called to me.
+
+"Come up here," she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat by
+her side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she whispered:
+
+"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is it?"
+
+I had no time to deliberate.
+
+"O'Neill," I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising her
+voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of her
+family, said:
+
+"Mrs. O'Neill, my dears."
+
+Then the ladies at the table inclined their heads at me and smiled,
+while the men (especially those who were the most strangely dressed)
+rose from their seats and bowed deeply.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable to me.
+
+Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very home of
+idle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle.
+
+I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I realised that
+my fellow-guests were the most reserved and self-centred of all possible
+people.
+
+One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a colonel in
+the Indian army, was understood to be a student of Biblical prophecy,
+having collected some thousands of texts which established the identity
+of the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel.
+
+Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken orders
+without securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of the
+world and (after forty years of continuous labour) to have reached the
+century before Christ.
+
+An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actress
+who was studying in secret for a season at the National Theatre.
+
+Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since been told
+that every great city has many such groups of people, the great
+prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors whom
+the world does not know--the odds and ends of humanity, thrown aside by
+the rushing river of life into the gulley-ways that line its banks, the
+odd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whom
+there is no place in the family, in society, or in the business of the
+world.
+
+It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have been
+safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London into
+which chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one unfortunate
+happening.
+
+That was the arrival of the daily newspaper.
+
+There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the morning
+and was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by an unwritten
+law of the house) it was the duty as well as the honour of the person
+who had first finished breakfast to take it up and read the most
+startling part of the news to the rest of the company.
+
+Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I was
+startled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to the
+fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:
+
+"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress."
+
+"Read it," said the old clergyman.
+
+The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand, and
+when I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what was
+coming, and it came.
+
+The old colonel read:
+
+_"A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious disappearance of
+the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late on
+Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning.
+
+"It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little more
+than a year ago, and her disappearance is the more unaccountable from
+the fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied in
+preparing for a fête in honour of her return home after a long and happy
+honeymoon.
+
+"The pavilion in which the fête was to have been held had been erected
+on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea,
+and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out
+on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in
+the darkness and fell over the cliffs.
+
+"The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Ellan
+until the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Friday
+evening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion.
+
+"Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken husband."_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost irresistible
+impulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my house-mates looked
+into my face they must see that I was the person indicated.
+
+They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Most
+mysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her fête
+too!") they began to discuss disappearances in general, each
+illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study.
+
+"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays," said one.
+
+"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his spectacles,
+"why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear when
+whole nations--the ten tribes for example. . . ."
+
+"But that's a different thing altogether," said the old clergyman. "Now
+if you had quoted Biblical examples--Elisha or perhaps Jonah. . . ."
+
+After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rose
+from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room.
+
+It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed--how
+newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire into
+the circumstances of my disappearance; how the theory of accident gave
+place to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the theory
+of flight; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried my
+trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was a
+maid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown (his proper
+fee being threepence); how two female passengers had declared that a
+person answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool;
+how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how,
+finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my
+disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped from
+mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea.
+
+But then came another development.
+
+My father, who was reported to have received the news of my departure in
+a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses (raging and
+storming at my husband like a man demented), having come to the
+conclusion that I, being in a physical condition peculiar to women, had
+received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered five
+hundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery,
+which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-broken
+family but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and
+inheritance.
+
+With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal
+appearance.
+
+_"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair;
+lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression;
+unusually sunny smile."_
+
+It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard
+these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even
+the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knife
+and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth,
+which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes.
+
+They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But all
+the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in
+Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great
+agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry.
+"Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"
+
+That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legal
+powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terror
+that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a
+public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the
+legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that
+would bring not only upon me but upon Martin.
+
+I had some reason for this fear.
+
+After my father's offer of a reward there came various spiteful
+paragraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the clumsier
+hand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that, if my
+disappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only
+"shock" I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumour
+having for some time associated my name with that of a person who was
+not unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration.
+
+It was terrible.
+
+Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic of
+conversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must have
+provided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in the
+drawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always being
+discussed.
+
+After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all London was
+discussing my disappearance.
+
+It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of the day
+everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and having
+nothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so I
+was compelled to pass certain newsvendors' stalls, and I saw for several
+days that nearly every placard had something about "the missing
+peeress."
+
+When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a
+sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has when
+she is going down a dark corridor at night--that noiseless footsteps are
+coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder.
+
+But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our
+boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said
+nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read that
+cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant at
+me.
+
+One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me according to her
+promise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw that, while the old
+colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearthrug about
+some disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she was
+looking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I was
+ruckling up the discoloured chintz of my chair.
+
+Then in a moment--I don't know why--it flashed upon me that my
+travelling companion was in correspondence with my father.
+
+That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made pretence
+of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, where
+the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid them
+on my forehead to relieve my headache--though she increased it, poor
+thing, by talking perpetually.
+
+Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from my
+name, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a visit from a
+Sister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals to attend to the
+sick.
+
+I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling that
+my identity was suspected I dared not give cause for further suspicion,
+so I compelled myself to agree.
+
+A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with my
+back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face an
+attack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle hand
+knocked at my door.
+
+"Come in," I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a
+swinging bough.
+
+And then an astonishing thing happened.
+
+A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behind
+her. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little Sisters of
+the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face in an instant.
+
+A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me at
+the sight of her.
+
+It was Mildred Bankes.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+"Mary," said Mildred, "speak low and tell me everything."
+
+She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in both
+of mine, and told her.
+
+I told her that I had fled from my husband's house because I could not
+bear to remain there any longer.
+
+I told her that my father had married me against my will, in spite of
+my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I had any right
+to resist him.
+
+I told her that my father--God forgive me if I did him a wrong--did not
+love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, and
+that if he were searching for me now it was only because my absence
+disturbed his plans and hurt his pride.
+
+I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he had
+married me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and secure
+an income.
+
+I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but he loved
+somebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me, and therefore
+(for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under any
+circumstances.
+
+While I was speaking I felt Mildred's hand twitching between mine, and
+when I had finished she said:
+
+"But, my dear child, they told me your friends were broken-hearted about
+you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, and
+therefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home."
+
+"It's not true, it's not true," I said.
+
+And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me
+how she came to be there--that the woman who had travelled with me in
+the train from Liverpool, seeing my father's offer of a reward, had
+written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody
+to establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London for
+this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish
+priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had been
+prohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his
+lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had
+been together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now
+to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people.
+
+"And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs," she said in a
+whisper, "and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they
+may apply for an order to send you home."
+
+This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred to
+save me.
+
+"Oh, Mildred, save me, save me," I cried.
+
+"But how can I? how can I?" she asked.
+
+I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I told
+her the rest of my story.
+
+I told her that if I had fled from my husband's house it was not merely
+because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, loved
+somebody else--somebody who was far away but was coming back, and there
+was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or
+suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from
+every danger, and we should love each other eternally.
+
+If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this was
+the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in a
+rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they were
+about to start from their sockets.
+
+"But, my dear, dear child," she said, "this is worse and worse. Your
+father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrong
+too. Don't you see you have?"
+
+I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did not
+believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had
+been forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that after
+all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join
+my life to his--whoever he was--who had led me to forget my duty as a
+wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:
+
+"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet."
+
+"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I
+was going to say.
+
+"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merely
+because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."
+
+I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like
+Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of
+reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.
+
+"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?"
+she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does your husband know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath
+her breath:
+
+"Oh Mother of my God!"
+
+I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I
+said:
+
+"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will you
+not?"
+
+There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chair
+as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:
+
+"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come up
+soon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the Sacred
+Heart, and what am I to say to them?"
+
+"Say no," I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know anything to
+the contrary. Nobody will know."
+
+"Nobody?"
+
+I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to
+excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.
+
+"It is Alma," I said.
+
+"Alma? Alma Lier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had
+tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who
+was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.
+
+And then I spoke of Martin again--I could not help it--saying that the
+shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than
+anything else that could befall me in this world.
+
+"If you only knew who he is," I said, "and the honour he is held in, you
+would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any
+disgrace should fall on him through me."
+
+I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did not
+intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my great
+love I could not help doing so.
+
+"You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred--the very first. Don't
+you remember the morning after I arrived at school? They had torn me
+away from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were so
+sweet and kind. You took me into church for my first visitation, and
+then into the garden for my first rosary--don't you remember it?"
+
+Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very white.
+
+"And then don't you remember the day the news came that my mother was
+very ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off at the station,
+and don't you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train?
+You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would be
+so different. You didn't think we should meet like this, did you?"
+
+Mildred's face was growing deadly white.
+
+"My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I was all
+she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father's
+house, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend Mother was very
+kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun. Yes
+indeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows."
+
+Mildred's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering and
+she was breathing audibly.
+
+"How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the snow-white
+sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the Little
+Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and long
+white veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if my father had not
+come for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now."
+
+Mildred's lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our Lady for
+strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder.
+
+"But God knows best what our hearts are made for," I said. "He knows
+that mine was made for love. And though you may not think it I know God
+knows that he who is away is my real husband--not the one they married
+me to. You will not separate us, will you? All our happiness--his and
+mine--is in your hands. You will save us, will you not?"
+
+Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a few
+moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then that
+Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. At
+length she said:
+
+"Mary, you don't know what you are asking me to do. When I took my vows
+I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter what
+the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Day
+of Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I? How can I? Remember my
+vows, my duty."
+
+I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all my
+life. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me,
+one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the men
+downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterest
+reproaches.
+
+"You religious women are always talking about your duty," I cried. "You
+never think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, always
+duty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out of the convent, with
+your crosses and rosaries, know about love--real love--the blazing fire
+in a woman's heart when she loves somebody so much that she would give
+her heart's blood for him--yes, and her soul itself if need be."
+
+What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doing
+until I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath.
+
+Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches,
+and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in my
+chair with both her hands covering her face and the tears trickling
+through her fingers on to the linen of her habit.
+
+That conquered me in a moment.
+
+I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about her
+neck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her side
+again and asked her to forgive me.
+
+"Forgive me, sister," I said. "I see now that God has brought us to this
+pass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you think is right.
+I shall always know you couldn't have done otherwise. _He_ will know
+too. And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . .
+and that when he comes home he will find. . . ."
+
+But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head on
+Mildred's lap.
+
+During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps coming
+up the stairs.
+
+"Listen! They're here," said Mildred. "Get up. Say nothing. Leave
+everything to me."
+
+I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her eyes, got
+up from the chair and stood with her back to the fire-place.
+
+There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered it, but
+my landlady came into the room, followed by three men in tall silk hats.
+
+"Excuse us, my dear," she said, in an insincere voice. "These gentlemen
+are making an examination of the house, and they wish to see your room.
+May they?"
+
+I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and watching
+intently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I could see
+they were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say as plainly as
+words could speak:
+
+"Is it she?"
+
+Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence and
+then--may the holy Virgin bless her!--she shook her head.
+
+I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who had
+looked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to talk
+together in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects.
+
+"So there's nothing to do here, apparently."
+
+"Apparently not."
+
+"Let's go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled you."
+
+I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as they
+passed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as they went
+down the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would burst, I turned
+to throw myself at Sister Mildred's feet.
+
+But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my bed,
+praying fervently.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my father
+gave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the day the
+milliner's clue failed him I moved about freely.
+
+Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being lost.
+
+Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was practically cut
+off from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up (in the interests of
+her work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat at the top of a lofty
+building near Piccadilly, where her lighted window always reminded me of
+a lighthouse on the edge of a dangerous reef. But in giving me her
+address she warned me not to come to her except in case of urgent need
+partly because further intercourse might discredit her denial, and
+partly because it would not be good for me to be called "one of Sister
+Veronica's girls"--that being Mildred's name as a nun.
+
+Oh the awful loneliness of London!
+
+Others just as friendless have wandered in the streets of the big city.
+I knew I was not the first, and I am sure I have not been the last to
+find London the most solitary place in the world. But I really and truly
+think there was one day of the week when, from causes peculiar to my
+situation, my loneliness must have been deeper than that of the most
+friendless refugee.
+
+Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once a week
+or once a month a letter containing a remittance from some unknown
+source, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his other
+obligations.
+
+I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I had not
+made but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's wife) I used
+to go out once a week under pretence of calling at a shipping office to
+draw part of my husband's pay.
+
+In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I selected
+Saturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of encountering my
+husband, or my husband's friends in the West End streets, I chose the
+less conspicuous thoroughfares at the other side of the river.
+
+Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or dry, down
+the Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall, round the
+eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and past Westminster Pier (dear
+to me from one poignant memory), and so on and on into the monotonous
+and inconspicuous streets beyond.
+
+Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway across
+Hungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most painful
+moments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so helpless and so
+lonely.
+
+The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark river
+flowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, the
+automobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the electric
+cars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open flares blazing
+over the theatres--all the never-resting life of London--and myself in
+the midst of the tumultuous solitude, a friendless and homeless girl.
+
+But God in His mercy saved me from all that--saved me too, in ways in
+which it was only possible to save a woman.
+
+The first way was through my vanity.
+
+Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was shocked to see
+that what with my loneliness and my weary walks I was losing my looks,
+for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was pinched, my eyes were heavy with
+dark rings underneath them, and I was plainer than Martin had ever seen
+me.
+
+This frightened me.
+
+It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did after that
+to improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake, because every
+girl whose sweetheart is away knows quite well, and it is not important
+that anybody else should.
+
+There was a florist's shop in Southampton Row, and I went there every
+morning for a little flower which I wore in the breast of my bodice,
+making believe to myself that Martin had given it to me.
+
+There was a jeweller's shop there too, and I sold my wedding ring
+(having long felt as if it burnt my finger) and bought another wedding
+ring with an inscription on the inside "_From Martin to Mary_."
+
+As a result of all this caressing of myself I saw after a while, to my
+great joy, that my good looks were coming back; and it would be silly to
+say what a thrill of delight I had when, going into the drawing-room of
+our boarding-house one day, the old actress called me "Beauty" instead
+of the name I had hitherto been known by.
+
+The second way in which God saved me from my loneliness was through my
+condition.
+
+I did not yet know what angel was whispering to me out of the physical
+phase I was passing through, when suddenly I became possessed by a
+passion for children.
+
+It was just as if a whole new world of humanity sprang into life for me
+by magic. When I went out for my walks in the streets I ceased to be
+conscious of the faces of men and women, and it seemed as if London were
+peopled by children only.
+
+I saw no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants on an
+ant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without peering under
+the lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose angel eyes looked
+up at me.
+
+There was an asylum for children suffering from incurable diseases in
+the smaller square beside our boarding-house, and every morning after
+breakfast, no matter how cold the day might be, I would open my window
+to hear the cheerful voices of the suffering darlings singing their
+hymn:
+
+     "_There's a Friend for little children,
+     Above the bright blue sky_."
+
+Thus six weeks passed, Christmas approached, and the sad old city began
+to look glad and young and gay.
+
+Since a certain night at Castle Raa I had had a vague feeling that I had
+thrown myself out of the pale of the Church, therefore I had never gone
+to service since I came to London, and had almost forgotten that
+confession and the mass used to be sweet to me.
+
+But going home one evening in the deepening London fog (for the weather
+had begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a Catholic
+church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a
+little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in
+the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at
+it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a
+black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make them behave.
+
+This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But it also
+made me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the public dinner,
+about saying the prayers for the day with his comrades, that they might
+feel that they were not cut off from the company of Christian men.
+
+So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely plateau
+that guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the difference of
+time) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to be doing the same
+thing as Martin at the same moment.
+
+With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and found
+Christmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my way
+upstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly which
+the old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to her.
+
+They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight of me,
+whereupon the old actress cried:
+
+"Ah, here's Beauty!"
+
+Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal on
+Christmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime.
+
+"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and alleys round
+about, but perhaps you won't mind that," she said.
+
+I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the following
+afternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the dress-circle of the
+great theatre, from which I could see both the stage and the auditorium.
+
+The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor, and I
+could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put the
+girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled heads of
+the boys.
+
+How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the wicked
+sisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright when the
+glittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their little dangling
+feet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid went off to the ball
+behind six little ponies which pranced along under the magical moonlight
+in the falling snow!
+
+But the part of the performance which they liked best was their own part
+when, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs they sang in
+their lanes and alleys:
+
+     "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
+     Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips yew see_."
+
+That was so loaded with the memory of one of the happiest days of my
+life (the day I went with Martin to see the _Scotia_) that, in the
+yearning of the motherhood still unborn in me, I felt as if I should
+like to gather the whole screaming houseful of happy children to my
+breast.
+
+But oh why, why, why, does not Providence warn us when we are on the
+edge of tragic things?
+
+The pantomime rehearsal being over I was hurrying home (for the evening
+was cold, though I was so warm within) when I became aware of a number
+of newsmen who were flying up from the direction of the Strand, crying
+their papers at the top of their voice.
+
+I did not usually listen to such people, but I was compelled to do so
+now, for they were all around me.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+The cry fell on me like a thunderbolt. An indescribable terror seized
+me. I felt paralysed and stood dead still. People were buying copies of
+the papers, and at first I made a feeble effort to do the same. But my
+voice was faint; the newsman did not hear me and he went flying past.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--reported loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+After that I dared not ask for a paper. Literally I dared not. I dared
+not know the truth. I dared not see the dreadful fact in print.
+
+So I began to hurry home. But as I passed through the streets, stunned,
+stupefied, perspiring, feeling as if I were running away from some
+malignant curse, the newsmen seemed to be pursuing me, for they were
+darting out from every street.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+Faster and faster I hurried along. But the awful cry was always ringing
+in my ears, behind, before, and on either side.
+
+When I reached our boarding-house my limbs could scarcely support me. I
+had hardly strength enough to pull the bell. And before our young waiter
+had opened the door two news men, crossing the square, were crying:
+
+"_Paper--third edition--reported loss of the 'Scotia.'_"
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old clergyman were
+standing by the dining-room door. They were talking excitedly, and while
+I was going upstairs, panting hard and holding on by the handrail, I
+heard part of their conversation.
+
+"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"
+
+"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper."
+
+Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed me
+that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain
+recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as
+a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar.
+
+After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below.
+Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such a
+casual tone:
+
+"Rather sad--this South Pole business, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, if it's true."
+
+"Doesn't seem much doubt about that--unless there are two ships of the
+same name, you know."
+
+At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just then
+the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to tea.
+
+As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a newspaper.
+
+"Here we are," he was saying. "Reported loss of the _Scotia_--Appalling
+Antarctic Calamity."
+
+I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old actress
+made room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table.
+
+"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered.
+
+"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the old
+colonel, standing back to the fire, began to read.
+
+_"Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large fragments of
+a ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas. Among them were the
+bulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and the stern of a boat,
+bearing the name 'Scotia.'
+
+"Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to the schooner
+of the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few weeks ago, and the
+character of some of the remnants (being vital parts of a ship's
+structure) lead to the inference that the vessel herself must have
+foundered."_
+
+"Well, well," said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of buttered
+toast.
+
+The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could scarcely
+see; I could scarcely hear.
+
+_"Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the 'Scotia' may not
+be still afloat, or that the members of the expedition may not have
+reached a place of safety, but the presence of large pieces of ice
+attached to some of the fragments seem to the best authorities to favour
+the theory that the unfortunate vessel was struck by one of the huge
+icebergs which have lately been floating up from the direction of the
+Admiralty Mountains, and in that case her fate will probably remain one
+of the many insoluble mysteries of the ocean."_
+
+"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate," said the old
+clergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . ."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+_"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the families of
+all the explorers who have apparently perished in a brave effort to
+protect mankind from one of the worst dangers of the great deep, the
+entire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it may be) of the heroic
+young Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who certainly belonged to the
+ever-diminishing race of dauntless and intrepid souls who seem to be
+born will that sacred courage which leads men to render up their lives
+at the lure of the Unknown and the call of a great idea."_
+
+I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the shrieking of
+waves about my face; at the next the rolling of billows over my head.
+
+_"Though it seems only too certain . . . this sacred courage quenched
+. . . let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . . only wasted
+lives . . . lives given up . . . inglorious ease . . . pursuit of idle
+amusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left behind . . . take
+comfort . . . inspiring thought . . . if lost . . . not died in vain . . .
+Never pleasure but Death . . . the lure that draws true hearts. . . ."_
+
+I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating on my
+brain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance.
+
+"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our landlady.
+
+I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to the
+table cloth to prevent myself from falling.
+
+The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same moment
+the old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on the ground of
+faintness, and the heat of the house after my quick walk home from the
+theatre.
+
+Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor with my
+head on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It was all over.
+The great love which had engrossed my life had gone.
+
+In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of the
+world's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only think of
+my own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had been torn out
+of my breast.
+
+"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart--why, when I was so
+utterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the light by which I
+lived been quenched.
+
+After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on the bed.
+The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them down
+again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below.
+
+"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"
+
+"What peeress?"
+
+"Don't you remember--the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"
+
+"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."
+
+"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived
+to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ."
+
+"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."
+
+The long night passed.
+
+Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with galloping
+footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every few
+minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bells
+of a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it was
+Christmas morning.
+
+I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in the
+blank reaches of that short space between night and day (like the
+slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when London
+rests, I fell into a troubled doze.
+
+I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning
+consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memory
+rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if my
+heart were bleeding.
+
+The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room the
+window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was my
+first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there had
+been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would have
+broken.
+
+The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "a
+merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.
+
+The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, but
+I did not touch it.
+
+Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, finding
+me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes," and
+while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grate
+she talked of the news in the newspaper.
+
+"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad a
+collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly well
+right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives for
+nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives and
+children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Not
+me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I, ''alf your time you never
+knows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I
+_am_ a-talking sense,' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."
+
+After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. I
+tried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from the
+same disaster--especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. I
+pictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright
+silver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the
+_slouree_ now. The light of that house was out, and two old people were
+sitting on either side of a cold hearth.
+
+I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and told
+myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hitherto
+been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin would
+come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence of
+nothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only a
+cemetery of the soul.
+
+"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.
+
+Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such different
+plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I was
+at last compelled to think of something besides my own loss.
+
+My unborn child!
+
+No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, though
+millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming that
+is doomed before its birth to be fatherless--there is nothing in the
+world like that.
+
+I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know.
+If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring in
+spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he could
+not be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unborn
+child must never, never, never be disclosed.
+
+The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.
+
+It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a
+vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of
+bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.
+
+Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a
+little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather
+fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say
+that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join
+them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:
+
+"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night,
+too!"
+
+Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting of
+the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being played
+on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingled
+with laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing.
+
+I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearly
+forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me had
+brought me near to the blank shadowland which is death.
+
+I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die.
+It was not to be suicide--my religion saved me from that--but death by
+exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it.
+
+Martin was gone--what was there to live for? Had I not better die before
+my child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should be
+with him eternally.
+
+Still I did not weep, but--whether audibly or only in the unconscious
+depths of my soul--more than once I cried to Martin by name.
+
+"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"
+
+I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day and
+staring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the bottom of the
+grate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor outside. At the next
+moment my door was opened noiselessly, and somebody stepped into the
+room.
+
+It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low voice:
+
+"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary--tell me."
+
+I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could not do
+so, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must have rushed
+into my eyes was instantly reflected in hers.
+
+"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my head.
+
+"I thought so from the first," she said. "And now you are thinking of
+. . . of what is to come?"
+
+Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and said:
+
+"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care of you.
+And I will--I will."
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+Surely Chance must be the damnedest conspirator against human happiness,
+or my darling could never have been allowed to suffer so much from the
+report that my ship was lost.
+
+What actually happened is easily told.
+
+Two days after we left Akaroa, N.Z., which was the last we saw of the
+world before we set our faces towards the Unknown, we ran into a heavy
+lumpy sea and made bad weather of it for forty-eight hours.
+
+Going at good speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179 degrees
+E., latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the Admiralty Mountains,
+our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole) we encountered a
+south-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome deck cargo, made the
+handling of the ship difficult.
+
+Nevertheless the _Scotia_ rode bravely for several hours over the
+mountainous seas, though sometimes she rolled fifty degrees from side to
+side.
+
+Towards nightfall we shipped a good deal of water; the sea smashed in
+part of our starboard bulwarks, destroyed the upper deck, washed out the
+galley, carried off two of our life boats and sent other large fragments
+of the vessel floating away to leeward.
+
+At last the pumps became choked, and the water found its way to the
+engine-room. So to prevent further disaster we put out the fires, and
+then started, all hands, to bale out with buckets.
+
+It was a sight to see every man-jack at work on that job (scientific
+staff included), and you would not have thought our spirits were much
+damped, whatever our bodies may have been, if you had been there when I
+cried, "Are we downhearted, shipmates?" and heard the shout that came up
+from fifty men (some of them waist deep in the water):
+
+"No!"
+
+We had a stiff tussle until after midnight, but we stuck hard, and
+before we turned into our bunks, we had fought the sea and beaten it.
+
+Next morning broke fine and clear, with that fresh crisp air of the
+Antarctic which is the same to the explorer as the sniff of battle to
+the warhorse, and no sign of the storm except the sight of some
+lead-white icebergs which had been torn from the islands south-west of
+us.
+
+Everybody was in high spirits at breakfast, and when one of the company
+started "Sweethearts and Wives" all hands joined in the chorus, and
+(voice or no voice) I had a bit of a go at it myself.
+
+It is not the most solemn music ever slung together, but perhaps no
+anthem sung in a cathedral has ascended to heaven with a heartier spirit
+of thanksgiving.
+
+When I went up on deck again, though, I saw that enough of our "wooden
+walls" had gone overboard to give "scarey people" the impression (if
+things were ever picked up, as I knew they would be, for the set of the
+current was to the north-east) that we had foundered, and that made me
+think of my dear one.
+
+We had no wireless aboard, and the ship would not be going back to New
+Zealand until March, so I was helpless to correct the error; but I
+determined that the very first message from the very first station I set
+up on the Antarctic continent should be sent to her to say that I was
+safe and everything going splendid.
+
+What happened on Christmas day is a longer story.
+
+On the eighteenth of December, having landed some of my deck cargo and
+provisions, and sent up my ship to winter quarters, I was on my way,
+with ponies, dogs, and sledges and a large company of men, all in A1
+condition, to the lower summit of Mount Erebus, for I intended to set up
+my first electric-power-wave station there--that being high enough, we
+thought, to permit of a message reaching the plateau of the Polar zone
+and low enough (allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover the
+maximum distance in a northerly direction.
+
+It was a long reach, but we chose the rocky ridges and moraines, trying
+to avoid the crevassed glaciers, and all went well until the twentieth,
+when just as we were reaching the steeper gradients a strong wind sprang
+up, blowing straight down the course before us.
+
+All day long we toiled against it, but the weather grew worse, with
+gusts of sleet and snow, until the wind reached the force of a hurricane
+and the temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero.
+
+There was nothing to do but to wait for the blizzard to blow itself out,
+so we plugged down our tents in the shelter of the rocky side of a
+ravine that had an immense snow-field behind it.
+
+The first night was bad enough, for the canvas of one tent flew into
+ribbons, and the poor chaps in it had to lie uncovered in their
+half-frozen sleeping-bags until morning.
+
+All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third the storm
+continued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine, and whirling
+the snow in dense masses from the snow-field overhead.
+
+Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees below
+zero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and during the
+greater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to our sleeping-bags
+and half buried in the snow that had drifted in on us.
+
+As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody said a De
+Profundis it was between his crackling lips under his frozen beard. We
+had no Christmas dinner either, except a few Plasmon biscuits and a nip
+of brandy and water, which were served out by good old O'Sullivan who
+had come with me as doctor to the expedition.
+
+On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the ponies
+suffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was telling on the
+men too, for some of them were down with dysentery, and the toes of one
+poor chap were black from frostbite.
+
+I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of sleep or
+rather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought with it.
+
+The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to shake off
+the backward thought that I ought not to have left my dear one behind
+me. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss the idea of her
+danger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie like a log in a
+sleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my recollection of her
+self-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences that might come of it.
+
+This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of the
+whirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I could
+see her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday morning when
+she was returning from church in her drooping hat and fluttering veil,
+or as she looked at me with her great "seeing eyes" at the last moment
+of all when she compelled me to come away.
+
+But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep than I
+awoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by my name.
+
+"Martin! Martin!"
+
+It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I
+think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying
+to me to come back.
+
+That was about the one thing in the world that was impossible to me now,
+and yet I knew that getting assurance from somewhere that my dear one
+was being cared for was the only way to set my mind at rest for the job
+that was before me.
+
+It may seem ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but everybody
+who has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes, aloof from the
+tides of life, knows that the soul of man is susceptible down there to
+signs which would seem childish amid the noise and bustle of the world.
+
+It was like that with me.
+
+I shared my tent with O'Sullivan, the chief of our scientific staff, and
+Treacle, who thought it his duty to take care of me, though the work was
+generally the other way about.
+
+The old salt had been badly battered, and I had not liked the way he had
+been mumbling about "mother," which is not a good sign in a stalwart
+chap when his strength is getting low.
+
+So while buttoning up the tent on the night after Christmas Day I was a
+bit touched up to see old Treacle, who had lived the life of a rip,
+fumbling at his breast and hauling something out with an effort.
+
+It was a wooden image of the Virgin (about the length of my hand) daubed
+over with gilt and blue paint, and when he stuck it up in front of his
+face as he lay in his sleeping-bag, I knew that he expected to go out
+before morning, and wished _that_ to be the last thing his old eyes
+should rest on.
+
+I am not much of a man for saints myself (having found that we get out
+of tight places middling well without them), but perhaps what Treacle
+did got down into some secret place of my soul, for I felt calmer as I
+fell asleep, and when I awoke it was not from the sound of my darling's
+voice, but from a sort of deafening silence.
+
+The roaring of the wind had ceased; the blizzard was over; the lamp that
+hung from the staff of the tent had gone out; and there was a sheet of
+light coming in from an aperture in the canvas.
+
+It was the midnight sun of the Antarctic, and when I raised my head I
+saw that it fell full on the little gilded image of the Virgin. Anybody
+who has never been where I was then may laugh if he likes and welcome,
+but that was enough for me. It was all right! Somebody was looking after
+my dear one!
+
+I shouted to my shipmates to get up and make ready, and at dawn, when we
+started afresh on our journey, there may have been dark clouds over our
+heads but the sun was shining inside of us.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded for me,
+because help came immediately.
+
+I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion which every
+mother knows to be the first real and certain consciousness of
+motherhood.
+
+It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great change.
+But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like that of a
+miracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my sorrow, had
+sent one of His ministering angels to comfort me.
+
+It seemed to say:
+
+"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something of
+himself is about to return."
+
+I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house of
+London, because Martin's child was to bear me company--to be a link
+between us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should be together to
+the end.
+
+I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all this--how it seemed
+to be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin left
+Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so that
+when my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter.
+
+And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!
+
+Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, as
+a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy of
+the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears they
+would have dried them.
+
+And then the future!
+
+I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already I
+could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up I
+would talk to her of her father--the brave explorer, the man of destiny,
+who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should always
+be talking of him--we two alone together, because he belonged to us and
+nobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here I
+should tell her--at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our
+love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench.
+
+Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been so
+happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so,
+and it _was_ so.
+
+Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my
+physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. But
+one thing is sure--that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke in
+me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and a
+happier woman.
+
+Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a few
+days later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We had
+first to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find out
+how to face the future.
+
+It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and I
+had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that I
+could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.
+
+Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensively
+during their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic and
+therefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolute
+determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to be
+mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hoped
+to find one that would take me on her recommendation without asking
+further question.
+
+In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home. What a day
+of trial we had! I shall never forget it.
+
+The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the neighbourhood of
+our boarding-house.
+
+It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me exceedingly.
+After we had passed the broad street door, with its large brass plate
+and small brass grille, we were shown into a little waiting-room with
+tiled floor, distempered walls, and coloured pictures of the saints.
+
+The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the inmates, but
+would come downstairs presently, and while we waited we heard the dull
+hum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the singing of the sweet
+music I knew so well.
+
+Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray that I
+might be permitted to remain there. But the desire was damped when the
+Mother entered the room.
+
+She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying her arms
+interlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample sleeves of her
+habit, and her face was so white and expressionless, that it might have
+been cast in plaster of Paris.
+
+In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand. "Mother," she
+said, "I cannot tell you anything about this young lady, and I have come
+to ask if you will take her on my recommendation."
+
+"My dear child," said the Mother, "that would be utterly against our
+rule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from, why she
+is here, and whether she is married or single or a widow--it is quite
+impossible."
+
+Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:
+
+"She can afford to pay a little."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . ."
+
+"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is married
+and can say that her husband consents, or single and can give us
+assurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow and can offer
+satisfactory references . . ."
+
+Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head.
+
+"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say," said the Mother,
+and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the door.
+
+Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was neither
+Catholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a kind of
+Universal Church, admitting inmates of all denominations.
+
+It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a business
+office. After Mildred had written her name and the object of our visit
+on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with an
+open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) was
+signing letters and cheques.
+
+The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and I
+had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for something
+quite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then his
+manner changed painfully.
+
+"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy implies
+something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything to
+be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help the
+woman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, and
+religious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do this
+by help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who and
+what the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . ."
+
+I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I said
+to Mildred:
+
+"Let us go, please."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I have
+seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guilty
+man. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked.
+It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects the
+author of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman,
+and if. . . ."
+
+Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and
+in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office,
+and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me.
+
+Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brick
+house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospital
+in the West End of London.
+
+At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the
+drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion of
+the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a little
+back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a large
+apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance of
+dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces of
+linen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes.
+
+There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell of
+carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the
+screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in the
+room overhead.
+
+After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs,
+followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then the
+Matron came into the parlour.
+
+She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and she
+seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred's
+explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from.
+
+Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with even
+more nervousness than ever, made the same request as before.
+
+The Matron seemed aghast.
+
+"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream of such
+a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen from
+the path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring,
+we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a record
+of every detail of every case. Listen to this," she added, and opening a
+large leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of its
+entries:
+
+_"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was led
+astray_ [that was not the word] _in a lonely road very late at night by
+a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . ."_
+
+But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the room
+and the house into the noisy street outside.
+
+All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that,
+while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort and
+console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than I
+had been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with his
+machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish not
+only me but Martin.
+
+But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die in
+the streets first!
+
+Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainly
+Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street we
+turned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-house
+before we spoke again.
+
+Then she said:
+
+"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all want
+references."
+
+I answered that they should never get them.
+
+"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to become
+of you?"
+
+"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the world
+myself without help from anybody.
+
+There was a silence again until we reached the door of our
+boarding-house, and then Mildred said:
+
+"Mary, your father is a rich man, and however much you may have
+displeased him he cannot wish you to be left to the mercy of the
+world--especially when your time comes. Let me write to him. . . ."
+
+That terrified me, for I saw only one result--an open quarrel between my
+father and my husband about the legitimacy of my child, who would
+probably be taken away from me as soon as it was born.
+
+So taking Mildred by the arm, regardless of the observation of
+passers-by, I begged and prayed and implored of her not to write to my
+father.
+
+She promised not to do so, and we parted on good terms; but I was not
+satisfied, and the only result of our day's journeying was that I became
+possessed of the idea that the whole world was conspiring to rob me of
+my unborn child.
+
+A few days later Mildred called again, and then she said:
+
+"I had another letter from Father Donovan this morning, Mary. Your poor
+priest is broken-hearted about you. He is sure you are in London, and
+certain you are in distress, and says that with or without his Bishop's
+consent he is coming up to London to look for you, and will never go
+back until you are found."
+
+I began to suspect Mildred. In the fever of my dread of losing my child
+I convinced myself that with the best intentions in the world, merely
+out of love for me and pity for my position, she would give me
+up--perhaps in the very hour of my peril.
+
+To make this impossible I determined to cut myself off from her and
+everybody else, by leaving the boarding-house and taking another and
+cheaper lodging far enough away.
+
+I was encouraged in this course by the thought of my diminishing
+resources, and though heaven knows I had not too many comforts where I
+was. I reproached myself for spending so much on my own needs when I
+ought to be economising for the coming of my child.
+
+The end of it all was that one morning early I went down to the corner
+of Oxford Street where the motor-omnibuses seem to come and go from all
+parts of London.
+
+North, south, east, and west were all one to me, leading to labyrinths
+of confused and interminable streets, and I knew as little as a child
+which of them was best for my purpose. But chance seems to play the
+greatest part in our lives, and at that moment it was so with me.
+
+I was standing on the edge of the pavement when a motor-bus labelled
+"Bayswater Road" stopped immediately in front of me and I stepped into
+it, not knowing in the least why I did so.
+
+Late that evening, having found what I wanted, I returned in the mingled
+mist and darkness to the boarding-house to pack up my belongings. That
+was not difficult to do, and after settling my account and sending young
+John for a cab I was making for the door when the landlady came up to
+me.
+
+"Will you not leave your new address, my dear, lest anybody should
+call," she said.
+
+"Nobody will call," I answered.
+
+"But in case there should he letters?"
+
+"There will be no letters," I said, and whispering to the driver to
+drive up Oxford Street, I got into the cab.
+
+It was then quite dark. The streets and shops were alight, and I
+remembered that as I crossed the top of the Charing Cross Road I looked
+down in the direction of the lofty building in which Mildred's window
+would be shining like a lighthouse over Piccadilly.
+
+Poor dear ill-requited Mildred! She has long ago forgiven me. She knows
+now that when I ran away from the only friend I had in London it was
+because I could not help it.
+
+She knows, too, that I was not thinking of myself, and that in diving
+still deeper into the dungeon of the great city, in hiding and burying
+myself away in it, I was asking nothing of God but that He would let me
+live the rest of my life--no matter how poor and lonely--with the child
+that He was sending to be a living link between my lost one and me.
+
+In the light of what happened afterwards, that was all so strange, and
+oh, so wonderful and miraculous!
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My new quarters were in the poorer district which stands at the back of
+Bayswater.
+
+The street was a cul-de-sac (of some ten small houses on either side)
+which was blocked up at the further end by the high wall of a factory
+for the "humanization" of milk, and opened out of a busy thoroughfare of
+interior shops like a gully-way off a noisy coast.
+
+My home in this street was in number one, and I had been attracted to it
+by a printed card in the semi-circular fan-light over the front door,
+saying: "A ROOM TO LET FURNISHED."
+
+My room, which was of fair size, was on the first floor and had two
+windows to the street, with yellow holland blinds and white muslin
+curtains.
+
+The furniture consisted of a large bed, a horse-hair sofa, three
+cane-bottomed chairs, a chest of drawers (which stood between the
+windows), and a mirror over the mantelpiece, which had pink paper, cut
+into fanciful patterns, over the gilt frame, to keep off the flies.
+
+The floor was covered with linoleum, but there were two strips of
+carpet, one before the fire and the other by the bed: the walls were
+papered with a bright red paper representing peonies in bloom; and there
+were three pictures--a portrait of a great Welsh preacher with a bardic
+name ("Dyfed"), an engraving entitled "Feed my Sheep" (showing Jesus
+carrying a lamb), and a memorial card of some member of the family of
+the house, in the form of a tomb with a weeping angel on either side.
+
+I paid five shilling a week for my room, and, as this included the use
+of kettle, cooking utensils, and crockery, I found to my great delight
+at the end of the first week that providing for myself (tea, bread and
+butter, and eggs being my principal food) I had only spent ten shillings
+altogether, which, according to my present needs, left me enough for my
+time of waiting and several weeks beyond.
+
+Every morning I went out with a little hand-bag to buy my provisions in
+the front street; and every afternoon I took a walk in the better part
+of Bayswater and even into the Park (Hyde Park), which was not far off,
+but never near Piccadilly, or so far east as Bloomsbury, lest I should
+meet Sister Mildred or be recognized by the old boarders.
+
+I had no key to my lodgings, but when I returned home I knocked at the
+front door (which was at the top of a short flight of steps from the
+pavement) and then a string was pulled in the cellar-kitchen in which
+the family of my landlady lived, whereupon the bolt was shot back and
+the door opened of itself.
+
+Finding it necessary to account for myself here as at the
+boarding-house, I had adhered to my former name, but said I was the
+widow of a commander lately lost, at sea, which was as near to the truth
+as I dared venture.
+
+I had also made no disguise of the fact that I was expecting a child, a
+circumstance which secured me much sympathy from the kind-hearted souls
+who were now my neighbours.
+
+They were all womanly women, generally the wives of men working in the
+milk factory, and therefore the life of our street was very regular.
+
+At five in the morning you heard the halting step of the old "knocker
+up," who went up and down the street tapping at the bedroom windows with
+a long pole like a fishing-rod. A little before six you heard the
+clashing of many front doors and the echoing footsteps of the men going
+to their work. At half-past seven you heard the whoop of the milkman and
+the rattling of his cans. At half-past eight you heard the little feet
+of the children, like the pattering of rain, going off to the Board
+School round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you
+heard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons,
+the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune
+over a rope stretched from parapet to parapet.
+
+After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women, washed
+and combed, standing knitting at their open doors or exchanging
+confidences across the areas until darkness fell and each of the mothers
+called her children into bed, as an old hen in the farmyard clucks up
+her chickens.
+
+These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied themselves
+from observation of my habits that I was "respectable," they called me
+"our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was "a nice young
+thing," though it was a little against me that I did not go to church or
+chapel, and had confessed to being a Catholic--for several of our
+families (including that of my landlady) were members of the Welsh Zion
+Chapel not far away.
+
+Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had confined
+myself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and very sweet to
+me.
+
+During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I occupied
+myself in the making of clothes for my baby--buying linen and flannel
+and worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh landlady.
+
+This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to come, for
+the heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I hardly know
+whether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish things I did and
+thought and said to myself in those first days when I was alone in my
+room in that back street in Bayswater.
+
+Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I wished
+to call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself, but because
+Martin had said it was the most beautiful in the world. In the end,
+however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was my mother's name
+and she had been a far better woman than I was), and as I finished my
+baby's garments one by one I used to put them away in their drawer,
+saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's binder," or "Isabel Mary's
+christening-robe" as the case might be.
+
+I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes when I
+think of it now, but there were none then, for though there were moments
+when, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for ever blank, I was
+almost happy in my poor surroundings, and if it was a cage I had fixed
+myself in there was always a bird singing inside of it--the bird that
+sang in my own bosom.
+
+"When Isabel Mary comes everything will he all right," I used to think.
+
+This went on for many weeks and perhaps it might have gone on until my
+time was full but for something which, occurring under my eyes, made me
+tremble with the fear that the life I was living and the hope I was
+cherishing were really very wrong and selfish.
+
+Of my landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather hard but
+no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children,
+besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in the
+room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy)
+whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night,
+when, after winding the tall clock on the landing, he went upstairs to
+bed in his stocking feet.
+
+But the outstanding member of the family for me was a shock-headed girl
+of fourteen called Emmerjane, which was a running version of Emma Jane.
+
+I understood that Emmerjane was the illegitimate daughter of Mrs.
+Williams's dead sister, and that she had been born in Carnarvon, which
+still shimmered in her memory in purple and gold.
+
+Emmerjane was the drudge of the family, and I first saw her in the
+street at dusk, mothering a brood of her little cousins, taking Hughie
+by one hand and Katie by the other and telling Gwennie to lay hold of
+Davie lest he should be run over by the milk vans.
+
+Afterwards she became my drudge also--washing my floor, bringing up my
+coals, and cleaning my grate, for sixpence a week, and giving me a great
+deal of information about my neighbours for nothing.
+
+Thus she told me, speaking broad cockney with a Welsh accent, that the
+people opposite were named Wagstaffe and that the creaking noise I heard
+was that of a mangle, which Mrs. Wagstaffe had to keep because her
+husband was a drunkard, who stole her money and came home "a-Saturday
+nights, when the public-houses turned out, and beat her somethink
+shockin'," though she always forgave him the next day and then the
+creaking went on as before.
+
+But the greatest interest of this weird little woman, who had a
+premature knowledge of things a child ought not to know, was in a house
+half-way down the street on the other side, where steam was always
+coming from the open door to the front kitchen.
+
+The people who lived there were named Jones. Mrs. Jones "washed" and had
+a bed-ridden old mother (with two shillings from the Guardians) and a
+daughter named Maggie.
+
+Maggie Jones, who was eighteen, and very pretty, used to work in the
+dairy, but the foreman had "tiken advantage of her" and she had just had
+a baby.
+
+This foreman was named Owen Owens and he lived at the last number on our
+side, where two unmarried sisters "kept house" for him and sat in the
+"singing seat" at Zion.
+
+Maggie thought it was the sisters' fault that Owen Owens did not marry
+her, so she conceived a great scheme for "besting" them, and this was
+the tragedy which, through Emmerjane's quick little eyes and her
+cockney-Welsh tongue, came to me in instalments day by day.
+
+When her baby was a month old Maggie dressed it up "fine" and took it to
+the photographers for its "card di visit." The photographs were a long
+time coming, but when they came they were "heavenly lovely" and Maggie
+"cried to look at them."
+
+Then she put one in an envelope and addressed it to Owen Owens, and
+though it had only to cross the street, she went out after dark to a
+pillar-box a long way off lest anybody should see her posting it.
+
+Next day she said, "He'll have it now, for he always comes home to
+dinner. He'll take it up to his bedroom, look you, and stand it on the
+washstand, and if either of those sisters touch it he'll give them
+what's what."
+
+After that she waited anxiously for an acknowledgment, and every time
+the postman passed down our street her pretty pale face would be at the
+door, saying, "Anything for me to-day?" or "Are you _sure_ there's
+nothing for me, postman?"
+
+At length a letter came, and Maggie Jones trembled so much that she
+dared not open it, but at last she tripped up to her room to be "all of
+herself," and then . . . then there was a "wild screech," and when
+Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead
+faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had
+returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across the
+face--_Maggie Jones's bastard_.
+
+It would be impossible to say how this incident affected me. I felt as
+if a moral earthquake had opened under my feet.
+
+What had I been doing? In looking forward to the child that was to come
+to me I had been thinking only of my own comfort--my own consolation.
+
+But what about the child itself?
+
+If my identity ever became known--and it might at any moment, by the
+casual recognition of a person in the street--how should the position of
+my child differ from that of this poor girl?
+
+A being born out of the pale of the law, as my husband would say it must
+be, an outcast, a thing of shame, without a father to recognise it, and
+with its mother's sin to lash its back for ever!
+
+When I thought of that, much as I had longed for the child that was to
+be a living link between Martin and me, I asked myself if I had any
+right to wish for it.
+
+I felt I had no right, and that considering my helpless position the
+only true motherly love was to pray that my baby might be still-born.
+
+But that was too hard. It was too terrible. It was like a second
+bereavement. I could not and would not do it.
+
+"Never, never, never!" I told myself.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Thinking matters out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concluded
+that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave off
+poverty no real harm could come to my child.
+
+I determined to do so. But there was only one way open to me at
+present--and that was to retrench my expenses.
+
+I did retrench them. Persuading myself that I had no real need of this
+and that, I reduced my weekly outlay.
+
+This gave me immense pleasure, and even when I saw, after a while, that
+I was growing thin and pale, I felt no self-pity of any sort,
+remembering that I had nobody to look well for now, and only the sweet
+and glorious duty before me of providing for my child.
+
+I convinced myself, too, that my altered appearance was natural to my
+condition, and that all I needed was fresh air and exercise, therefore I
+determined to walk every day in the Park.
+
+I did so once only.
+
+It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the air and
+the sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter, seem to be
+washed by showers of sunshine.
+
+I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I was
+rather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening sheaths
+were swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number of ladies and
+gentlemen on horseback coming in my direction.
+
+I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a beautiful
+girl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I thought he would
+see me. But he was too much occupied with his companion to do so.
+
+"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill voice,
+and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me, laughing.
+
+After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, but
+there I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be always
+seeing the sufferings of children.
+
+Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in their
+hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors of
+the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poor
+children of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys.
+
+But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunate
+ones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and I
+seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.
+
+One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a
+dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart
+would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather
+shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he
+burst out on her and cried:
+
+"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."
+
+"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavement
+to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy."
+
+It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, and
+the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure still
+further.
+
+Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried to
+find employment. But there was one delicate impediment then--my
+condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in the
+street, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me.
+When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sent
+Emmerjane on my few errands.
+
+Then my room became my world.
+
+I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what was
+going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came to
+me when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense of
+living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea.
+
+Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy in
+that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain
+I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked
+at my rapidly diminishing store.
+
+I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me _close_, meaning
+mean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myself
+that every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, to
+keep her from poverty and all the evils and injustices that followed in
+its train.
+
+As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and sometimes
+in the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary footstep going down
+the street I would get up, draw aside one of my blinds, and see a light
+burning in some bedroom window opposite, and afterwards hear the muffled
+cry of the small new being who had come as another immigrant into our
+chill little world.
+
+But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady came up to
+my room one day and asked if I had settled with a doctor. When I
+answered no, she held up her hands and cried:
+
+"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time, though."
+
+Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and if I
+wished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor came next
+morning.
+
+He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and a sour
+expression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any hint of a
+consciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must have) that in
+coming to a woman in my condition he was entering one of the sacred
+chambers of human life.
+
+He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come again,
+and then spoke about his fee.
+
+"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance," he said, whereupon
+I went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a shilling, not
+without a certain pang at seeing so much go in a moment after I had been
+saving so long.
+
+The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with oh! such
+a casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh landlady said:
+
+"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food, doctor."
+
+"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I could, out of
+my dry and parched throat, I told him.
+
+"Tut! tut! This will never do," he said. "It's your duty to your child
+to have better food than that. Something light and nourishing every day,
+such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and farinaceous foods
+generally."
+
+I gasped. 'What was the doctor thinking about?
+
+"Remember," he said, with his finger up, "the health of the child is
+intimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the mother is in
+a morbid state it affects the composition of the blood, and does great
+harm to the health of the offspring, both immediately and in after life.
+Don't forget now. Good day!"
+
+That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great love I
+had been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now I learned
+that I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps life-long
+injury!
+
+Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods the
+doctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my dismay
+that I had lost the power of digesting them.
+
+My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my Welsh
+landlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage for me.
+
+The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her first
+interest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her fee.
+
+She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the fortnight, but
+when she saw my face fall (for I could not help thinking how little I
+had left) she said:
+
+"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, for
+instance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth she's
+back at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten and six won't
+hurt you."
+
+I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my room when
+my Welsh landlady said:
+
+"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you."
+
+And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on a
+long series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" had
+died, either at childbirth or soon afterwards.
+
+"It's _after_ a lady feels it if she has to nurse her baby," said the
+nurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for you nor the child if
+you don't do yourself justice."
+
+This was a still more terrible possibility--the possibility that I might
+die and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted me all that day
+and the following night, but the climax came next morning, when
+Emmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the last news of Maggie
+Jones.
+
+Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work," asking if she
+had not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin' another."
+
+Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinking
+everybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the young
+minister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she had gone
+out every day, whether the weather was good or bad or "mejum."
+
+This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to stay out
+late because she was afraid to meet her mother's face) until one wet
+night, less than a week ago, she had come home drenched to the skin,
+taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died.
+
+Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell on
+our street.
+
+It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing no
+games, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawn
+blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with their
+arms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths.
+
+I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the last
+moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down her
+steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed with
+labour) all wet and broken up.
+
+The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have known
+nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midst
+of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there with
+their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out a
+Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had been
+used to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:
+
+     "_Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau
+     Ar doriad boreu wawr_."
+
+I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the next
+moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was on
+her way to her last mother of all--the Earth.
+
+During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child,
+and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came up
+she told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."
+
+I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back with
+a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.
+
+The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. It
+brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father was
+rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence he
+would hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall of
+his plans.
+
+Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could not
+and must not be!
+
+Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "Hail
+Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away.
+
+Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge of
+that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I felt
+and thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) at
+the door of that dark chamber which is Life's greatest mystery.
+
+I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps for
+some good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe.
+
+I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the child that
+was coming to be a link between us.
+
+I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's clothes; in
+choosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and to God, too,
+every night and every morning.
+
+I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept burning
+in the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived together.
+
+I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and victory out
+of the grave. And after that I told myself that, however sweet and
+beautiful, _all this had been selfishness and I must put it away_.
+
+Then I thought of the child itself, who--conceived in sin as my Church
+would say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by society, inheriting my
+physical weaknesses, having lost one of its parents and being liable to
+lose the other--was now in danger of being left to the mercies of the
+world, banned from its birth, penniless and without a protector, to
+become a drudge and an outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot.
+
+This was what I thought and felt.
+
+And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my appointed time
+I knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a fervent prayer, if
+ever my soul went up to God in passionate supplication, it was that the
+child I had longed for and looked forward to as a living link with my
+lost one _might be born dead_.
+
+"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born dead--I pray, I
+beseech Thee."
+
+Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+It was Saturday, the seventh of June. The summer had been a cold one
+thus far; the night was chill and heavy rain was beating against the
+window-pane.
+
+There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several months;
+the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece had been turned
+low, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my little flannel and
+linen garments out of the chest of drawers and laying them on the flat
+steel fender.
+
+I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the moments of
+consciousness came and went with me, like the diving and rising of a
+sea-bird in the midst of swelling waves.
+
+At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh landlady,
+as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were waiting for
+the crisis and fearing for my life.
+
+I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise in my
+ears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a cave.
+
+"She's let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don't know in the
+world what's to happen to her."
+
+"As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so little."
+
+"I'm not afraid of the mother. I'm more afraid of the child, if you ask
+me."
+
+Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear something
+within myself saying:
+
+"Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead."
+
+At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the creaking of
+the mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of the street.
+
+At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the house
+opposite. A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man was
+swearing in a thick hoarse voice.
+
+I knew what had happened--it was midnight, the "public-houses had turned
+out," and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk.
+
+The night passed heavily. I heard myself (as I had done before) calling
+on Martin in a voice of wild entreaty:
+
+"Martin! Martin!"
+
+Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard myself
+praying to the Blessed Virgin:
+
+"Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . ."
+
+But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted me.
+
+"Hush, bâch, hush! It will make it harder for thee."
+
+At length peace came. It seemed to me that I was running out of a
+tempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth, into a
+quiet harbour.
+
+There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and the
+nurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful whispers.
+
+I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the storm I had
+passed through still in my heart and brain. I said:
+
+"Is it dead?"
+
+"Dead?" cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than usual.
+"Dear heart no, but alive and well. A beautiful little girl!"
+
+"Yes, your baby is all right, ma'am," said the doctor, and then my Welsh
+landlady cried:
+
+"Why did'st think it would be dead, bach? As I am a Christian woman
+thee'st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed."
+
+I could bear no more. The dark thoughts of the days before were over me
+still, and with a groan I turned to the wall. Then everything was wiped
+out as by an angel's wing, and I fell into a deep sleep.
+
+When I awoke my dark thoughts were vanishing away like a bad dream in
+the morning. The rain had ceased, the gas had been put out, and I could
+see by the glow on the peonies of the wall-paper that the sun was
+shining with a soft red light through the holland blinds of my windows.
+
+I heard the sparrows chirping on the sills outside; I heard the milkman
+rattling his cans; I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringing
+for early communion.
+
+I closed my eyes and held my breath and listened to the sounds in my own
+room. I heard the kettle singing over the fire; I heard somebody humming
+softly, and beating a foot on the floor in time to the tune and then I
+heard a low voice (it was Emmerjane's) saying from somewhere near my
+bed:
+
+"I dunno but what she's awake. Her breathing ain't a-goin' now."
+
+Then I turned and saw the nurse sitting before the fire with something
+on her lap. I knew what it was. It was my child, and it was asleep. In
+spite of my dark thoughts my heart yearned for it.
+
+And then came the great miracle.
+
+My child awoke and began to cry. It was a faint cry, oh! so thin and
+weak, but it went thundering and thundering through me. There was a
+moment of awful struggle, and then a mighty torrent of love swept over
+me.
+
+It was Motherhood.
+
+My child! Mine! Flesh of my flesh! Oh God! Oh God!
+
+All my desire for my baby's death to save it from the pains of life was
+gone, and my heart, starved so long, throbbed with tenderness. I raised
+myself in bed, in spite of my nurse's protest, and cried to her to give
+me my baby.
+
+"Give her to me. Give her to me."
+
+"By-and-by, by-and-by," said the nurse.
+
+"Now, now! I can wait no longer."
+
+"But you must take some food first. Emmerjane, give her that glass of
+milk and water."
+
+I drank the milk just to satisfy them, and then held out my arms for my
+child.
+
+"Give her to me--quick, quick!"
+
+"Here she is then, the jewel!"
+
+Oh! the joy of that moment when I first took my baby in my arms, and
+looked into her face, and saw my own features and the sea-blue eyes of
+Martin! Oh the rapture of my first eager kiss!
+
+I suppose I must have been rough with my little cherub in the fervour of
+my love, for she began to cry again.
+
+"There! there!" said the nurse. "Be good now, or I must take baby away."
+
+But heaven had taught me another lesson, and instantly, instinctively, I
+put my baby to my breast. Instantly and instinctively, too, my baby
+turned to it with its little mouth open and its little fingers feeling
+for the place.
+
+"Oh God! My God! Oh Mother of my God!"
+
+And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly bliss--the
+happiness of a mother when she first clasps her baby to her breast--I
+began to cry.
+
+I had not cried for months--not since that night in Ellan which I did
+not wish to remember any more--but now my tears gushed out and ran down
+my face like rain.
+
+I cried on Martin once more--I could not help it. And looking down at
+the closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in gratitude to God, who
+had sent me this for all I had suffered.
+
+"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad for the
+milk," said the nurse.
+
+After that I tried to control myself. But I found a fierce and feverish
+delight in suckling my child. It seemed as if every drop my baby drew
+gave me a spiritual as well as a physical joy--cooling my blood and my
+brain and wiping out all my troubles.
+
+Oh mystery of mysteries! Oh miracle of miracles!
+
+My baby was at my breast and my sufferings were at an end.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+That was a long, long day of happiness.
+
+It was both very long and very short, for it passed like a dream.
+
+What wonderful happenings were crowded into it!
+
+First the nurse, from the dizzy heights of her greater experience and
+superior knowledge, indulged my infantile anxieties by allowing me to
+look on while baby was being bathed, and rewarded me for "being good" by
+many praises of my baby's beauty.
+
+"I've nursed a-many in my time," she said, "but I don't mind saying as
+I've never had a bonnier babby on my knee. Look at her legs now, so
+white and plump and dimpled. Have you _ever_ seen anythink so putty?"
+
+I confessed that I never had, and when nurse showed me how to fix the
+binder, and put on the barrow-coat without disturbing baby while asleep,
+I thought her a wonderful woman.
+
+Emmerjane, who had with difficulty been kept out of the room last night
+and was now rushing breathlessly up and down stairs, wished to hold baby
+for a moment, and at length out of the magnificence of my generosity I
+allowed her to do so, only warning her, as she loved her life, to hold
+tight and not let baby fall.
+
+"How'd you mean?" said the premature little mother. "_Me_ let her fall?
+Not much!"
+
+Every hour, according to the doctor's orders, I gave baby the breast. I
+do not know which was my greatest joy--to feast my eyes on her while she
+sucked and to see her little head fall back with her little mouth open
+when she had had enough, or to watch her when she stretched herself and
+hiccoughed, and then grasped my thumb with her little tight fingers.
+
+Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!
+
+Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause of
+wonder.
+
+It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish lip
+would drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no tears in
+her eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded with nurse to
+let me give her the breast again.
+
+The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds were
+kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby's, I
+thought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be poor and shabby,
+but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it was
+in my eyes then.
+
+In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but I
+would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again,
+and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang--as softly as I
+could--a little lullaby.
+
+It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in
+embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knew
+quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who,
+after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to take
+refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritual
+happiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and to
+sing it in my London lodging to my human child.
+
+     "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
+     Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."
+
+I dare say my voice was sweet that day--a mother's voice is always
+sweet--for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to it
+with a look of awed solemnity, she said:
+
+"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come into this
+room."
+
+"So there is, and here she is," I said, beaming down on my sleeping
+child.
+
+But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when night
+fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on my
+lips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was in
+heaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms.
+
+I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches of
+life in my little room.
+
+I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt as if God
+had justified me by His own triumphant law.
+
+The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with my
+baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.
+
+I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of all
+my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.
+
+Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my
+Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.
+
+I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my
+motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I was
+beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my
+baby all to myself.
+
+But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse
+herself.
+
+"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, money
+or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is always
+here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy."
+
+"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.
+
+On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to me
+now, I thought little of it then.
+
+I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and my
+baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon that
+had seemed so dreadful to me before--the great dungeon of London to one
+who is poor and friendless.
+
+But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate in
+my prison-house--my child.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH PART
+
+I AM LOST
+
+_"Is it nothing to you, ye that pass by . . . ?"_
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+
+I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the remainder of my
+darling's story is to be understood I must say what was happening in the
+meantime to me.
+
+God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my dear one
+at home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether a certain dark
+fact which always lay at the back of my mind as a possibility was
+actually coming to pass.
+
+But she would be brave--I know that quite well--and I saw plainly that,
+if I had to get through the stiff job that was before me, I must put my
+shadowy fears away and think only of the dangers I was sure about.
+
+The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost, so as
+soon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers which
+contained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to send her that
+first message from the Antarctic which was to say we had not been
+shipwrecked.
+
+It was a thrilling moment. Exactly at the stroke of midnight on January
+21, while the midnight sun was shining with its dull sullen glow, the
+whole of our company having gathered round, the wireless man prepared to
+despatch my message.
+
+As we were not sure of our machinery I had drawn up the words to suit
+any place into which they might fall if they missed their intended
+destination:
+
+"South Pole Expedition safe. All well. Send greetings to dear ones at
+home."
+
+For some forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy signals into
+the crisp night air, and then the settled calm returned, and we stood in
+breathless silence like beings on the edge of a world waiting for the
+answer to come as from another planet.
+
+It came. After a few minutes we heard from our magnetic detector the
+faint sound of the S signals, and then we broke into a great cheer. It
+was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff were
+congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was not
+inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of a
+great circle, I was thinking of my dear one--that one way or another my
+message would reach her and she would be relieved.
+
+Then in splendid health and spirits--dogs, ponies, and men all A1--we
+started on our journey, making a bee-line for the Pole.
+
+Owing to the heavy weights we had to transport our progress was slow,
+much slower than we had expected; and though the going was fair and we
+kept a steady pace, travelling a good deal by night, it was not until
+the end of March that we reached Mount Darwin, which I had fixed on for
+the second of our electric power stations.
+
+By this time winter was approaching, the nights were beginning to be
+dark and cold, and the altitude (8000 ft.) was telling on some of us.
+
+Nevertheless our second installation got finished about the last week in
+April, and again we gathered round (not quite such a hearty company as
+before) while the wireless man spoke to the operator we had left on
+Erebus.
+
+Again the electrical radiations went crackling into space, and again we
+gave a cheer when the answer came back--all well and instruments in
+perfect order.
+
+Then, late as it was, we began on the last stage of our journey, which
+we knew would be a hard one. Three hundred geographical miles in front;
+temperature down to minus 40°; the sun several weeks gone, and nothing
+before us but thickening twilight, cold winds, snow, the rare aurora and
+the frequent moon.
+
+But the worst fact was that our spirits were low, and do what I would to
+keep a good heart and cheer up the splendid fellows who had come with
+me, I could not help feeling the deepening effect of that sunless gloom.
+
+In spite of this, I broke camp on April 25, and started straight as a
+die for the South.
+
+It was a stiff fight over the upper glacier in latitude 85, with its
+razor-shaped ice, full of snow-covered crevasses, and three days out two
+of our best men fell into one of the worst of them.
+
+I saw the accident from a dozen yards away, and running up I lay on my
+stomach and shouted down, but it was a black bottomless gulf and not a
+sound or a sign came back to me.
+
+This cast a still deeper gloom on our company, who could not be cheered
+up, though I kept telling them we should be on the great plateau soon,
+please God, and then we should have a clear road to the Pole.
+
+We were not much better on top though, for the surface was much broken
+up, and in that brewing place of the winds there seemed to be nothing
+but surging seas of cumulus cloud and rolling waves of snow.
+
+The Polar march was telling on us badly. We were doing no more than
+seven miles at a stretch. So to help my shipmates to keep up their
+spirits (and perhaps to give a bit of a "heise" to my own) I had to sing
+all day long--though my darling is right that I have no more voice than
+a corn-crake.
+
+Sometimes I sang "Ramsey Town," because it did not want much music, but
+generally "Sally's the gel for me," because it had a rattling chorus.
+The men all joined in (scientific experts included), and if the angels
+took any heed of us, I think it must have touched them up to look down
+on our little company of puny men singing away as we trudged through
+that snowy wilderness which makes a man feel so small.
+
+But man can only do his best, and as Father Dan (God bless his old
+heart!) used to say, the angels can do no more. We were making middling
+hard work of it in the 88th parallel, with a temperature as low as 50
+degrees of frost, when a shrieking, blinding blizzard came sweeping down
+on us from the south.
+
+I thought it might blow itself out, but it didn't, so we struck camp in
+a broad half-circle, building igloos (snow huts) with their backs (like
+rain-beaten cattle) to the storm.
+
+There we lay nine days--and it is not worth while now to say how much
+some of our men suffered from frozen fingers, and more from falling
+spirits.
+
+Sometimes I heard them saying (in voices that were intended to be loud
+enough for me to hear) it would have been better to have built winter
+quarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until the return of
+summer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to the
+Pole--a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at this
+season, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of our
+dogs and ponies, for we had killed a lot of them for food.
+
+But I would not give in, for I felt that to go back without finishing my
+job would break my heart; and one day when old Treacle said, "No use,
+guv'nor, let's give it best," I flew at him like a hunted tiger.
+
+All the same I was more than a bit down myself, for there were days when
+death was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a big
+strapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "I
+shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and the kiddies."
+
+God knows I had my own anchor at home, and sometimes it had a devil of a
+tug at me. I fought myself hard, though, and at last in my desire to go
+on and my yearning to go back to my dear one, I made an awful proposal,
+such as a man does not much like to think of after a crisis is over.
+
+"Shipmates," I said, "it isn't exactly my fault that we are here in the
+middle of winter, but here we are, and we must make the best of it. I am
+going forward, and those who want to go with me can go. But those who
+don't want to go can stay; and so that no one may have it on his
+conscience that he has kept his comrades back, whether by weakness or by
+will, I have told the doctor to serve out a dose of something to every
+man, that he may end it whenever he wants to."
+
+To my surprise that awful proposal was joyfully received; and never so
+long as I live shall I forget the sight o' O'Sullivan going round the
+broad circle of my shipmates in the blue gloom of that noonday twilight
+and handing something to every one of them, while nobody spoke, and
+Death seemed to look us in the face.
+
+And now I come to the incident for which I have told this story.
+
+I could not get a wink of sleep that night for thinking of the brave
+fellows I had doomed to death by their own hands (for that was what it
+came to), because their souls were starving and they were thinking of
+home.
+
+My soul was starving too, and whether it was the altitude (now 11,000
+ft.) that was getting into my head, and giving me that draught in the
+brain which only travellers in frozen regions know, or the Power higher
+than Nature which speaks to a man in great solitudes when life is low, I
+cannot say, but as God is my witness, I was hearing again the voices of
+my dear ones so far away.
+
+Sometimes they were the voices of my old people in Ellan, but more
+frequently, and most importunately, it was Mary's voice, calling me by
+my name, and crying to me for help as if she were in the shadow of some
+threatening danger.
+
+"Martin! Martin! Martin!"
+
+When this idea took clear possession of me--it was about three a.m. and
+the hurricane was yowling like a wounded dog--the answering thought came
+quick. I must go back. No matter at what cost or sacrifice--I must go
+back.
+
+It was in vain I reflected that the trouble which threatened my darling
+(whatever it was, and I thought I knew) might be all over before I
+reached her side--I must go back.
+
+And even when I reminded myself that I was within twenty days' march of
+that last point of my journey which was to be the crown and completion
+of it all, I also remembered that my dear one was calling me, and I had
+no choice but to obey.
+
+Next morning, in the first light of the dim Antarctic glow, I crept out
+of my snow hut to look south with powerful glasses in order to make sure
+that there was no reason why I should change my mind.
+
+There was none. Although the snow had ceased the blizzard was blowing a
+hundred miles an hour in cutting gusts, so with a bleeding heart (and
+yet a hot one) I told Treacle to call rip our company, and when they
+stood round me in the shelter of my hut I said:
+
+"Shipmates, I have been thinking things over during the night, and I see
+them differently now. Nature is stronger than man, and the nature that
+is inside of us sometimes hits us harder than that which is without. I
+think it is that way with us here, and I believe there isn't a man of
+you who wouldn't go forward with me if he had nobody to think of except
+himself. . . . Well, perhaps _I_ have somebody to think of, too, so
+we'll stick together, shipmates, and whatever regrets there may be, or
+disappointments, or heart-breakings, we'll . . . we'll go back home."
+
+I think it says something for the mettle my men were made of that there
+was never a cheer after I said that, for they could see what it cost me
+to say it. But by God, there was a shout when I added:
+
+"We've drawn a blank this time, boys, but we'll draw a winner yet, and I
+ask you to swear that you'll come back with me next year, please God, to
+finish the work we've begun."
+
+Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our solemn oath,
+and God knows we meant to keep it.
+
+It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men were
+bustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now but the
+packing of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and ponies, for we
+were leaving everything else behind us.
+
+At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the Union Jack
+on the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a hundred yards off I
+looked back through the gloom and saw it blowing stiffly in the wind.
+
+I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if life has
+another such moment coming for me all I have to say is that I hope I may
+die before I live to see it--which is Irish, but most damnably true.
+
+That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and anybody may
+make what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I can calculate the
+difference of time between London and where we were in the 88th latitude
+it was the very hour of my dear one's peril.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+Two weeks passed and if I suffered from getting up too soon I was never
+conscious of it.
+
+Once or twice, perhaps, in the early days I felt a certain dizziness and
+had to hold on for a moment to the iron rail of my bedstead, but I was
+too much occupied with the tender joys of motherhood to think much about
+myself.
+
+Bathing, dressing, undressing, and feeding my baby were a perpetual
+delight to me.
+
+What a joy it all was!
+
+There must he something almost animal, even voluptuous, in mothers'
+love, for there was nothing I liked so much as having baby naked on my
+knee and devouring its sweet body all over with kisses--putting its
+little fat hands and even its little fat feet into my mouth.
+
+There must be something almost infantile, too, for sometimes after I had
+talked to my darling with a flood of joyous chatter I would even find
+myself scolding her a little, and threatening what I would do if she did
+not "behave."
+
+Oh, mysterious laws of motherhood! Only God can fathom the depths of
+them.
+
+It was just as if sixteen years of my life had rolled back, and I was
+again a child in my mother's room playing with my dolls under the table.
+Only there was something so wonderful now in the sweet eyes that looked
+up at me, that at certain moments I would fall into a long reverie and
+my heart would be full of adoration.
+
+What lengths I went to!
+
+It was the height of the London season when baby came; and sometimes at
+night, looking through my window, I saw the tail-end of the long queue
+of carriages and electric broughams which stretched to the end of the
+street I lived in, from the great houses fronting the Park where balls
+and receptions were being held until the early hours of morning. But I
+never envied the society ladies they were waiting for. On the contrary I
+pitied them, remembering they were childless women for the most part and
+thinking their pleasures were hollow as death compared with mine.
+
+I pitied the rich mothers too--the mothers who banish their babies to
+nurseries to be cared for by servants, and I thought how much more
+blessed was the condition of poor mothers like myself who kept all that
+sweetness to themselves.
+
+How happy I was! No woman coming into a fortune was ever so happy. I
+sang all day long. Sometimes it was the sacred music of the convent in
+which each note, with its own glory of sound, wraps one's heart round as
+with a rainbow, but more frequently it was "Ramsey Town" or "Sally's the
+gel for me," which were only noisy nonsense but dear to me by such
+delicious memories.
+
+My neighbours would come to their doors to listen, and when I had
+stopped I would hear them say:
+
+"Our lady is a 'appy 'cart, isn't she?"
+
+I suppose it was because I was so happy that my looks returned to me,
+though I did not know it was so until one morning, after standing a
+moment at the window, I heard somebody say:
+
+"Our lady seems to be prettier than ever now her baby has come."
+
+I should not have been a woman if I could have resisted that, so I ran
+to the glass to see if it was true, and it was.
+
+The ugly lines that used to be in my cheeks had gone, my hair had
+regained its blue-black lustre, and my eyes had suddenly become bright
+like a darkened room when the shutters are opened and the sunshine
+streams into it.
+
+But the coming of baby did better for me than that. It brought me back
+to God, before whom I now felt so humble and so glad, because he had
+transformed the world for me.
+
+Every Catholic will know why I could not ask for the benediction of the
+Church after childbirth; but he will also know why I was in a fever of
+anxiety to have my baby baptized at the earliest possible moment. It was
+not that I feared her death (I never thought of that in those days), but
+because I lived in dread of the dangers which had darkened my thoughts
+before she was born.
+
+So when baby was nearly a fortnight old I wrote to the Rector of a
+neighbouring Catholic Church asking when I might bring her to be
+baptized, and he sent me a printed reply, giving the day and hour, and
+enclosing a card to be filled up with her name and all other
+particulars.
+
+What a day of joy and rapture was that of my baby's baptism! I was up
+with the sun on the morning appointed to take her to church and spent
+hours and hours in dressing her.
+
+How lovely she looked when I had finished! I thought she was the
+sweetest thing in the world, sweeter than a rosebud under its sparkling
+web of dew when the rising sun is glistening on it.
+
+After I had put on all the pretty clothes I had prepared for her before
+she was born--the christening robe and the pelisse and the knitted
+bonnet with its pink ribbons and the light woollen veil--I lifted her up
+to the glass to look at herself, being such a child myself and so
+wildly, foolishly happy.
+
+"That old Rector won't see anything equal to her _this_ summer morning
+anyway," I thought.
+
+And then the journey to church!
+
+I have heard that unmarried mothers, going out for the first time after
+their confinement, feel ashamed and confused, as if every passer-by must
+know their shameful secret. I was a kind of unmarried mother myself, God
+help me, but I had no such feeling. Indeed I felt proud and gay, and
+when I sailed out with my baby in my arms I thought all the people in
+our street were looking at me, and I am sure I wanted to say "Good
+morning" to everybody I met on my way.
+
+The church was not in a joyous quarter. It stood on the edge of a poor
+and very populous district, with a flaunting public-house immediately
+opposite. When I got to it I found a number of other mothers (all
+working women), with their babies and the godfathers and godmothers they
+had provided for them, waiting at the door.
+
+At this sight I felt very stupid, for I had been thinking so much about
+other things (some of them vain enough perhaps) that I had forgotten the
+necessity for sponsors; and I do not know what I should have done at
+that last moment if the sacristan had not come to my relief--finding me
+two old people who, for a fee of a shilling each, were willing to stand
+godmother and godfather to my darling.
+
+Then the priest came out of the church in his white surplice and stole,
+and we all gathered in the porch for the preliminary part of the
+sacrament.
+
+What an experience it was! Never since my marriage had I been in a state
+of such spiritual exaltation.
+
+The sacristan, showing me some preference, had put me in the middle of
+the row, immediately in front of the priest, so what happened to the
+other children I do not know, having eyes and ears for nothing but the
+baptism of my own baby.
+
+There were some mistakes, but they did not trouble me, although one was
+a little important.
+
+When the priest said, "What name give you this child?" I handed the
+Rector's card to the sacristan, and whispered "Isabel Mary" to the
+godmother, but the next thing I heard was:
+
+"Mary Isabel, what dost thou ask of the Church of God?"
+
+But what did it matter? Nothing mattered except one thing--that my
+darling should be saved by the power of the Holy Sacrament from the dark
+terrors which threatened her.
+
+Oh, it is a fearful and awful thing, the baptism of a child, if you
+really and truly believe in it. And I did--from the bottom of my heart
+and soul I believed in it and trusted it.
+
+In my sacred joy I must have cried nearly all the time, for I had taken
+baby's bonnet off, I remember, and holding it to my mouth I found after
+a while that I was wetting it with my tears.
+
+When the exorcisms were over, the priest laid the end of his stole over
+baby's shoulder and led her (as our prayer books say) into the church,
+and we all followed to the baptistery, where I knelt immediately in
+front of the font, with the old godmother before me, the other mothers
+on either side, and a group of whispering children behind.
+
+The church was empty, save for two charwomen who were sweeping the floor
+of the nave somewhere up by the dark and silent altar; and when the
+sacristan closed the outer door there was a solemn hush, which was
+broken only by the priest's voice and the godparents' muttered
+responses.
+
+"Mary Isabel, dost thou renounce Satan?"
+
+"I do renounce him."
+
+"And all his works?"
+
+"I do renounce them."
+
+"And all his pomps?"
+
+"I do renounce them."
+
+The actual baptism was like a prayer to me. I am sure my whole soul went
+out to it. And though I may have been a sinful woman unworthy to be
+churched, I know, and God knows, that no chaste and holy nun ever prayed
+with a purer heart than I did then, kneeling there with my baby's bonnet
+to my mouth.
+
+"Mary Isabel, I baptize thee in the name of the Father + and of the Son
++ and of the Holy Ghost.+"
+
+Except that baby cried a little when the water was poured on her head
+(as she had cried when the salt was put on her tongue), I knew no more
+after that until I saw the candle in the godfather's hand (which
+signified that my child had been made a Child of Light) and heard the
+priest say:
+
+"Go in peace and the Lord be with thee."
+
+Then I awoke as from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet. The priest
+was going away. The solemn rite was at an end.
+
+I rose from my knees, put a little money in the plate which the
+sacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two old
+sponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put on
+her bonnet and veil.
+
+The spiritual exaltation which had sustained me lasted until I reached
+the street where the other mothers and their friends were laughing and
+joking, in voices that had to be pitched high over the rattle of the
+traffic, about going to the house opposite to "wet the baby's head."
+
+But I think something of the celestial light of the sacrament must have
+been on my face still when I reached home, for I remember that as I
+knocked at the door, and waited for the rope from the kitchen to open
+it, I heard one of my neighbours say:
+
+"Our lady has taken a new lease of life, hasn't she?"
+
+I thought I had--a great new lease of physical and spiritual life.
+
+But how little did I know what Fate had in store for me!
+
+
+
+
+NINETIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was taking off baby's outdoor things when my Welsh landlady came up to
+ask how I had got on, and after I had told her she said:
+
+And now thee'st got to get the jewel registered."
+
+"Registered?"
+
+"Within three weeks. It's the law, look you."
+
+That was the first thing that frightened me. I had filled up truthfully
+enough the card which the Rector had sent me, because I knew that the
+register of my Church must be as sacred as its confessional.
+
+But a public declaration of my baby's birth and parentage seemed to be
+quite another matter--charged with all the dangers to me, to Martin, and
+above all to my child, which had overshadowed my life before she was
+born.
+
+More than once I felt tempted to lie, to make a false declaration, to
+say that Martin had been my husband and Isabel was my legitimate child.
+
+But at length I resolved to speak the truth, the plain truth, telling
+myself that God's law was above man's law, and I had no right to be
+ashamed.
+
+In this mood I set off for the Registry Office. It was a long way from
+where I lived, and carrying baby in my arms I was tired when I got
+there.
+
+I found it to be a kind of private house, with an open vestibule and a
+black-and-white enamelled plate on the door-post, saying "Registry of
+Births and Deaths."
+
+In the front parlour (which reminded me of Mr. Curphy's office in
+Holmtown) there was a counter by the door and a large table covered with
+papers in the space within.
+
+Two men sat at this table, an old one and a young one, and I remember
+that I thought the old one must have been reading aloud from a newspaper
+which he held open in his hand, for as I entered the young one was
+saying:
+
+"Extraordinary! Perfectly extraordinary! And everybody thought they were
+lost, too!"
+
+In the space between the door and the counter two women were waiting.
+Both were poor and obviously agitated. One had a baby in her arms, and
+when it whimpered for its food she unbuttoned her dress and fed it
+openly. The other woman, whose eyes were red as if she had been crying,
+wore a coloured straw hat over which, in a pitiful effort to assume
+black, she had stretched a pennyworth of cheap crêpe.
+
+In his own good time the young man got up to attend to them. He was a
+very ordinary young clerk in a check suit, looking frankly bored by the
+dull routine of his daily labour, and palpably unconscious of the fact
+that every day and hour of his life he was standing on the verge of the
+stormiest places of the soul.
+
+Opening one of two registers which lay on the counter (the Register of
+Births) he turned first to the woman with the child. Her baby, a boy,
+was illegitimate, and in her nervousness she stumbled and stammered, and
+he corrected her sharply.
+
+Then opening the other register (the Register of Deaths) he attended to
+the woman in the crêpe. She had lost her little girl, two years old, and
+produced a doctor's certificate. While she gave the particulars she held
+a soiled handkerchief to her mouth as if to suppress a sob, but the
+young clerk's composure remained undisturbed.
+
+I do not know if it was the agitation of the two poor women that made me
+nervous, but when they were gone and my turn had come, I was hot and
+trembling.
+
+The young clerk, however, who was now looking at me for the first time,
+had suddenly become respectful. With a bow and a smile he asked me if I
+wished to register my child, and when I answered yes he asked me to be
+good enough to step up to the counter.
+
+"And what is your baby's name, please?" he asked.
+
+I told him. He dipped his pen in his metal ink-pot, shook some drops
+back, made various imaginary flourishes over his book and wrote:
+
+"Mary Isabel."
+
+"And now," he said, with another smile, "the full name, profession, and
+place of residence of the father."
+
+I hesitated for a moment, and then, making a call on my resolution, I
+said:
+
+"Martin Conrad, seaman, deceased."
+
+The young clerk looked up quickly.
+
+"Did you say Martin Conrad, ma'am?" he asked, and as well as I could for
+a click in my throat I answered:
+
+"Yes."
+
+He paused as if thinking; then with the same flourish as before he wrote
+that name also, and after he had done so, he twisted his face about to
+the old man, who was sitting behind him, and said, in a voice that was
+not meant to reach me:
+
+"Extraordinary coincidence, isn't it?"
+
+"Extraordinary!" said the old man, who had lowered his newspaper and was
+looking across at me over the rims of his spectacles.
+
+"And now," said the young clerk, "your own name and your maiden name if
+you please."
+
+"Mary O'Neill."
+
+The young clerk looked up at me again. I was holding baby on my left arm
+and I could see that his eye caught my wedding ring.
+
+"Mary Conrad, maiden name O'Neill, I presume?" he said.
+
+I hesitated once more. The old temptation was surging back upon me. But
+making a great pull on my determination to tell the truth (or what I
+believed to be the truth) I answered:
+
+"No, Mary O'Neill simply."
+
+"Ah!" said the young clerk, and I thought his manner changed instantly.
+
+There was silence for some minutes while the young clerk filled up his
+form and made the copy I was to carry away.
+
+I heard the scratching of the young clerk's pen, the crinkling of the
+old man's newspaper, the hollow ticking of a round clock on the wall,
+the dull hum of the traffic in the streets, and the thud-thud-thudding
+in my own bosom.
+
+Then the entry was read out to me and I was asked to sign it.
+
+"Sign here, please," said the young clerk in quite a different tone,
+pointing to a vacant line at the bottom of the hook, and I signed with a
+trembling hand and a feeling of only partial consciousness.
+
+I hardly know what happened after that until I was standing in the open
+vestibule, settling baby on my arm afresh for my return journey, and
+telling myself that I had laid a stigma upon my child which would remain
+with her as long as she lived.
+
+It was a long, long way back, I remember, and when I reached home
+(having looked neither to the right nor left, nor at anything or
+anybody, though I felt as if everybody had been looking at me) I had a
+sense of dimness of sight and of aching in the eyeballs.
+
+I did not sing very much that day, and I thought baby was rather
+restless.
+
+Towards nightfall I had a startling experience.
+
+I was preparing Isabel for bed, when I saw a red flush, like a rash,
+down the left side of her face.
+
+At first I thought it would pass away, but when it did not I called my
+Welsh landlady upstairs to look at it.
+
+"Do you see something like a stain on baby's face?" I asked, and then
+waited breathlessly for her answer.
+
+"No . . . Yes . . . Well," she said, "now that thee'st saying so . . .
+perhaps it's a birthmark."
+
+"A birthmark?"
+
+"Did'st strike thy face against anything when baby was coming?"
+
+I made some kind of reply, I hardly know what, but the truth, or what I
+thought to be the truth, flashed on me in a moment.
+
+Remembering my last night at Castle Raa, and the violent scene which had
+occurred there, I told myself that the flush on baby's face was the mark
+of my husband's hand which, making no impression upon me, had been
+passed on to my child, and would remain with her to the end of her life,
+as the brand of her mother's shame and the sign of what had been called
+her bastardy.
+
+How I suffered at the sight of it! How time after time that night I
+leaned over my sleeping child to see if the mark had passed away! How
+again and again I knelt by her side to pray that if sin of mine had to
+be punished the punishment might fall on me and not on my innocent babe!
+
+At last I remembered baby's baptism and told myself that if it meant
+anything it meant that the sin in which my child had been born, the sin
+of those who had gone before her (if sin it was), had been cast out of
+her soul with the evil spirits which had inspired them.
+
+"_This sign of the Holy Cross + which we make upon her forehead do
+thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate_."
+
+God's law had washed my darling white! What could man's law--his proud
+but puny morality--do to injure her? It could do nothing!
+
+That comforted me. When I looked at baby again the flush had gone and I
+went to bed quite happy.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+I think it must have been the morning of the next day when the nurse who
+had attended me in my confinement came to see how I was going along.
+
+I told her of the dimness of my sight and the aching of my eyeballs,
+whereupon she held up her hands and cried:
+
+"There now! What did I tell you? Didn't I say it is _after_ a lady feels
+it?"
+
+The moral of her prediction was that, being in a delicate state of
+health, and having "let myself low" before baby was born, it was my duty
+to wean her immediately.
+
+I could not do it.
+
+Although the nurse's advice was supported by my Welsh landlady (with
+various prognostications of consumption and rickets), I could not at
+first deny myself the wild joy of nursing my baby.
+
+But a severer monitor soon came to say that I must. I found that my
+money was now reduced to little more than two pounds, and that I was
+confronted by the necessity (which I had so long put off) of looking for
+employment.
+
+I could not look for employment until I had found a nurse for my child,
+and I could not find a nurse until my baby could do without me, so when
+Isabel was three weeks old I began to wean her.
+
+At first I contented myself with the hours of night, keeping a
+feeding-bottle in bed, with the cow's milk warmed to the heat of my own
+body. But when baby cried for the breast during the day I could not find
+it in my heart to deny her.
+
+That made the time of weaning somewhat longer than it should have been,
+but I compromised with my conscience by reducing still further my meagre
+expenses.
+
+Must I tell how I did so?
+
+Although it was the month of July there was a snap of cold weather such
+as sometimes comes in the middle of our English summer, and yet I gave
+up having a fire in my room, and for the cooking of my food I bought a
+small spirit stove which cost me a shilling.
+
+This tempted me to conduct which has since had consequences, and I am
+half ashamed and half afraid to speak of it. My baby linen being little
+I had to wash it frequently, and having no fire I . . . dried it on my
+own body.
+
+Oh, I see now it was reckless foolishness, almost wilful madness, but I
+thought nothing of it then. I was poor and perhaps I was proud, and I
+could not afford a fire. And then a mother's love is as deep as the sea,
+and there was nothing in the wide world I would not have done to keep my
+darling a little longer beside me.
+
+Baby being weaned at last I had next to think of a nurse, and that was a
+still more painful ordeal. To give my child to another woman, who was to
+be the same as a second mother to her, was almost more than I could bear
+to think about.
+
+I _had_ to think of it. But I could only do so by telling myself that,
+when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see her every morning
+and evening and as often as my employment permitted.
+
+This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in the act of
+drawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when my landlady
+came to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would suit me exactly.
+
+Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her friend.
+
+She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the other
+end of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor woman, who
+was not too happily married, had lost a child of her own lately, and was
+now very lonely, being devoted to children.
+
+This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the fact that
+Mrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge of the country.
+
+Already in my mind's eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a tree
+(perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her gently and
+singing to her softly, and almost forgetting that she was not her own
+baby whom she had lost . . . though that was a two-edged sword which cut
+me both ways, being a sort of wild joy with tears lurking behind it.
+
+So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver's address (10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's
+Green, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking her terms and
+stating my own conditions.
+
+A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and misspelt
+letter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working woman
+(perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought), though
+that did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time how poor
+people loved their children.
+
+     _"The terms is fore shillins a weke," she wrote, "but i am that
+     lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete
+     darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as
+     offen as you pleas_."
+
+In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I replied
+at once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next day.
+
+I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I could
+scarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed three
+pillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself to post it.
+
+I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for my Welsh
+landlady (whom I had taken into my confidence about my means) took me to
+task for crying, telling me that I ought to thank God for what had
+happened, which was like a message from heaven, look you, and a
+dispensation of Providence.
+
+I tried to see things in that light, though it was difficult to do so,
+for the darker my prospects grew the more radiant shone the light of the
+little angel by whose life I lived, and the harder it seemed to live
+without her.
+
+"But it isn't like losing my child altogether, is it?" I said.
+
+"'Deed no, and 'twill he better for both of you," said my landlady.
+
+"Although Ilford is a long way off I can go there every day, can't I'!"
+
+"'Deed thee can, if thee'st not minding a journey of nine miles or
+more."
+
+"And if I can get a good situation and earn a little money I may be able
+to have baby back and hire somebody to nurse her, and so keep her all to
+myself."
+
+"And why shouldn't thee?" said my Welsh landlady. "Thee reading print
+like the young minister and writing letters like a copybook!"
+
+So in the fierce bravery of motherly love I dried my eyes and forced
+back my sobs, and began to pack up my baby's clothes, and to persuade
+myself that I was still quite happy.
+
+My purse was very low by this time. After paying my rent and some other
+expenses I had only one pound and a few shillings left.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my journey.
+
+I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out, and I
+thought my eyes were too much like the sky at daybreak--all joyful beams
+with a veil of mist in front of them.
+
+But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I been so
+happy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also sure I was
+doing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to a mother as
+providing for her child?
+
+My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I had
+gathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses for less
+than a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then, so I determined
+to walk all the way.
+
+Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as the corner
+of the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little woman left me,
+after nearly smothering baby with kisses.
+
+"Keep straight as a' arrow and you can't lose your wye," she said.
+
+It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air is
+fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yet
+had time to grow tired and dusty.
+
+I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby's feeding-bottle in my
+pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I had
+nothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did not
+feel her weight.
+
+There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour,
+yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large houses
+in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windows
+most of the blinds were down.
+
+I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when I
+reached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide of
+traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safely
+over.
+
+The great "Mediterranean of Oxford Street" was by this time running at
+full tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stations
+and clambering on to the motor-buses. But in the rush nobody hustled or
+jostled me. A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen--everybody
+made way for her.
+
+Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the dressmakers'
+windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not covet any of them. I
+remembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how little
+happiness they had brought me. And then I felt as if the wealth of the
+world were in my arms.
+
+Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shop
+for the sale of babies' clothes. Already I foresaw a time when baby,
+dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard's
+Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver's garden.
+
+The great street was very long and I thought it would never end. But I
+think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through the
+foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italian
+waiters, standing at the door of their café, asked each other in their
+own language which of us (baby or I) was "the bambino," I turned to them
+and smiled.
+
+Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food,
+and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln's Inn Fields and
+sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle. It was then ten
+o'clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot.
+
+The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the
+streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I
+resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before
+I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me.
+
+I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospital
+nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going my
+way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby. She looked so
+sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along we
+talked.
+
+She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the other end of
+London, the edge of the country, to Ilford.
+
+"Ilford!" she cried. "Why, that's miles and miles away. You'll have to
+'bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it through
+Stratford Market."
+
+I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and she gave
+me a searching look, but said no more on that subject.
+
+Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her myself,
+and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been forced to wean
+her, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . . .
+
+"Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse," she said, and I answered
+yes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford.
+
+"I see," she said, with another searching look, and then it flashed upon
+me that she had formed her own conclusions about what had befallen me.
+
+When we came to a great building in a side street on the left, with
+ambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said she was
+sorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was due in the
+hospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for her.
+
+"But I hope baby's nurse will be a good one. They're not always that,
+you know."
+
+I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The parcel on
+my wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet were beginning to
+drag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced the crowded
+thoroughfares--Newgate with its cruel old prison, the edge of St.
+Paul's, and the corner of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and so on into
+Cheapside.
+
+Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers, clerks, and
+city men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and sometimes running
+along the pavement, making me think of the river by my father's house,
+whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy as a child to be always
+struggling to find out which could get to Murphy's Mouth the first and
+so drown itself in the sea.
+
+People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody brushed me in
+passing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me accidentally he
+stopped to say he was sorry.
+
+Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and what I
+should have done without her when I got to the Mansion house I do not
+know, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the London traffic,
+with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in different directions and its
+tremendous tides of human life flowing every way.
+
+But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle
+of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the
+edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription,
+"The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," a big policeman,
+seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to the drivers and
+shouted to the pedestrians ("Stand a-one side, please"), and then led me
+safely across, as if the Red Sea had parted to let us pass.
+
+It was then twelve o'clock and baby was once more crying for her food,
+so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave her the
+bottle again.
+
+Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden, but it was
+a graveyard--one of the graveyards of the old London churches, enclosed
+by high buildings now, and overlooked by office windows.
+
+Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying there in
+the midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me of one of the
+little islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on which the fuchsia
+and wild rose grow while the river rolls and boils about it.
+
+I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a gnarled and
+blackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when I saw that a
+young girl was sitting beside me.
+
+She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out of a
+confectioner's bag, while she read a paper-covered novel. Presently she
+looked at baby with her little eyes, which were like a pair of shiny
+boot buttons, and said:
+
+"That your child?"
+
+I answered her, and then she asked:
+
+"Do you like children?"
+
+I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them also.
+
+"Can't say I'm particularly gone on them," she said, whereupon I replied
+that that was probably because she had not yet had much experience.
+
+"Oh, haven't I? Perhaps I haven't," she said, and then with a hard
+little laugh, she added "Mother's had nine though."
+
+I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head she
+told me she was a typist.
+
+"Better screw and your evenings off," she said, and then she returned to
+the subject of children.
+
+One of her chums in the office who used to go out with her every night
+to the music-halls got into trouble a year or two ago. As a consequence
+she had to marry. And what was the result? Never had her nose out of the
+wash-tub now!
+
+The story was crude enough, yet it touched me closely.
+
+"But couldn't she have put her baby out to nurse and get another
+situation somewhere?" I asked.
+
+"Matter o' luck," said the girl. "Some can. Some can't. That's their
+look out. Firms don't like it. If they find you've got a child they
+gen'r'lly chuck you."
+
+In spite of myself I was a little down when I started on my journey
+again. I thought the parcel was cutting my wrist and I felt my feet
+growing heavier at every step.
+
+Was Maggie Jones's story the universal one?
+
+If a child were born beyond the legal limits, was it a thing to hide
+away and be ashamed of?
+
+And could it be possible that man's law was stronger than God's law
+after all?
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I had walked so slowly and stopped so often that it was two o'clock in
+the afternoon when I passed through Aldgate.
+
+I was then faint for want of food, so I looked out for a tea-shop or
+restaurant.
+
+I passed several such places before I found the modest house I wanted.
+Then I stepped into it rather nervously and took the seat nearest the
+door.
+
+It was an oblong room with red plush seats along the walls behind a line
+of marble-topped tables. The customers were all men, chiefly clerks and
+warehousemen, I thought, and the attendants were girls in black frocks
+and white aprons.
+
+There seemed to be a constant fire of free-and-easy flirtation going on
+between them. At one table a man in a cloth cap was saying to the girl
+who had served him:
+
+"What's the damage, dearie?"
+
+"One roast, one veg, two breads--'levenpence, and no liberties, mister."
+
+"Sunday off, Em'ly?" said a youth in a red tie at another table, and
+being told it was, he said:
+
+"Then what do you say to 'oppin' up to 'Endon and 'aving a day in a
+boat?"
+
+I had to wait some time before anybody came to attend to me, but at
+length a girl from the other end of the room, who had taken no part in
+these amatory exchanges, stepped up and asked what I wanted.
+
+I ordered a glass of cold milk and a scone for myself and a pint of hot
+milk to replenish baby's bottle.
+
+The girl served me immediately, and after rinsing and refilling the
+feeding-bottle she stood near while the baby used it.
+
+She had quiet eyes and that indefinable expression of yearning
+tenderness which we sometimes see in the eyes of a dear old maid who has
+missed her motherhood.
+
+The shop had been clearing rapidly; and as soon as the men were gone,
+and while the other girls were sitting in corners to read penny
+novelettes, my waitress leaned over and asked me if I did not wish to go
+into the private room to attend to baby.
+
+A moment afterwards I followed her into a small apartment at the end of
+the shop, and there a curious thing occurred.
+
+She closed the door behind us and asked me in an eager whisper to allow
+her to see to baby.
+
+I tried to excuse myself, but she whispered:
+
+"Hush! I have a baby of my own, though they know nothing about it here,
+so you can safely trust me."
+
+I did so, and it was beautiful to see the joy she had in doing what was
+wanted, saying all sorts of sweet and gentle things to my baby (though I
+knew they were meant for her own), as if the starved mother-heart in her
+were stealing a moment of maternal tenderness.
+
+"There!" she said, "She'll be comfortable now, bless her!"
+
+I asked about her own child, and, coming close and speaking in a
+whisper, she told me all about it.
+
+It was a girl and it would be a year old at Christmas. At first she had
+put it out to nurse in town, where she could see it every evening, but
+the foster-mother had neglected it, and the inspector had complained, so
+she had been compelled to take it away. Now it was in a Home in the
+country, ten miles from Liverpool Street, and it was as bonny as a peach
+and as happy as the day is long.
+
+"See," she whispered, taking a card from her breast, after a furtive
+glance towards the door. "I sent two shillings to have her photograph
+taken and the Matron has just sent it."
+
+It was the picture of a beautiful baby girl, and I found it easy to
+praise her.
+
+"I suppose you see her constantly, don't you?" I said.
+
+The girl's face dropped.
+
+"Only on visiting days, once a month, and not always that," she
+answered.
+
+"But how can you live without seeing her oftener?" I asked.
+
+"Matter o' means," she said sadly. "I pay five shillings a week for her
+board, and the train is one-and-eight return, so I have to be careful,
+you see, and if I lost my place what would happen to baby?"
+
+I was very low and tired and down when I resumed my walk. But when I
+thought for a moment of taking omnibuses for the rest of my journey I
+remembered the waitress's story and told myself that the little I had
+belonged to my child, and so I struggled on.
+
+But what a weary march it was during the next two hours! I was in the
+East End now, and remembering the splendour of the West, I could
+scarcely believe I was still in London.
+
+Long, mean, monotonous streets, running off to right and left, miles on
+miles of them without form or feature, or any trace of nature except the
+blue strips of sky overhead.
+
+Such multitudes of people, often badly dressed and generally with set
+and anxious faces, hasting to and fro, hustling, elbowing, jostling each
+other along, as if driven by some invisible power that was swinging an
+unseen scourge.
+
+No gracious courtesy here! A woman with a child in her arms was no
+longer a queen. Children were cheap, and sometimes it was as much as I
+could do to save myself from being pushed off the pavement.
+
+The air seemed to smell of nothing but ale and coarse tobacco. And then
+the noise! The ceaseless clatter of carts, the clang of electric cars,
+the piercing shrieks of the Underground Railway coming at intervals out
+of the bowels of the earth like explosions out of a volcano, and, above
+all, the raucous, rasping, high-pitched voices of the people, often
+foul-mouthed, sometimes profane, too frequently obscene.
+
+A cold, grey, joyless, outcast city, cut off from the rest of London by
+an invisible barrier more formidable than a wall; a city in which the
+inhabitants seemed to live cold, grey, joyless lives, all the same that
+they joked and laughed; a city under perpetual siege, the siege of
+Poverty, in the constant throes of civil war, the War of Want, the daily
+and hourly fight for food.
+
+If there were other parts of the East End (and I am sure there must be)
+where people live simple, natural, human lives, I did not see them that
+day, for my course was down the principal thoroughfares only.
+
+Those thoroughfares, telescoping each other, one after another, seemed
+as if they would never come to an end.
+
+How tired I was! Even baby was no longer light, and the parcel on my
+wrist had become as heavy as lead.
+
+Towards four o'clock I came to a broad parapet which had strips of
+garden enclosed by railings and iron seats in front of them. Utterly
+exhausted, my arms aching and my legs limp, I sank into one of these
+seats, feeling that I could walk no farther.
+
+But after a while I felt better, and then I became aware that another
+woman was sitting beside me.
+
+When I looked at her first I thought I had never in my life seen
+anything so repulsive. She was asleep, and having that expressionless
+look which sleep gives, I found it impossible to know whether she was
+young or old. She was not merely coarse, she was gross. The womanhood in
+her seemed to be effaced, and I thought she was utterly brutalised and
+degraded.
+
+Presently baby, who had also been asleep, awoke and cried, and then the
+woman opened her eyes and looked at the child, while I hushed her to
+sleep again.
+
+There must be something in a baby's face that has a miraculous effect on
+every woman (as if these sweet angels, fresh from God, make us all young
+and all beautiful), and it was even so at that moment.
+
+Never shall I forget the transfiguration in the woman's face when she
+looked into the face of my baby. The expression of brutality and
+degradation disappeared, and through the bleared eyes and over the
+coarsened features there came the light of an almost celestial smile.
+
+After a while the woman spoke to me. She spoke in a husky voice which
+seemed to be compounded of the effects of rum and raw night air.
+
+"That your'n," she said.
+
+I answered her.
+
+"Boy or gel?"
+
+I told her.
+
+"'Ow old?"
+
+I told her that too.
+
+The woman was silent for a moment, and then, with a thickening of the
+husky voice, she said:
+
+"S'pose you'll say I'm a bleedin' liar, but I 'ad a kid as putty as that
+onct--puttier. It was a boy. The nobbiest little b---- as you ever come
+acrost. Your'n is putty, but it ain't in it with my Billie, not by a
+long chalk."
+
+I asked her what had become of her child.
+
+"Lawst 'im," she said. "Used to give sixpence a week to the woman what
+'ad 'alf the 'ouse with me to look after 'im while I was workin' at the
+fact'ry. But what did the bleedin' b---- do? Blimey, if she didn't let
+'im get run over by the dray from the brewery."
+
+"Killed?" I said, clutching at baby.
+
+The woman nodded without speaking.
+
+I asked her how old her child had been.
+
+"More'n four," she said. "Just old enough to run a arrand. It was crool.
+Hit me out, I can tell you. That kid was all I had. Apple o' my eye, in
+a manner of speakin'. When it was gone there wasn't much encouragement,
+was there? The Favver from the Mission came jawin' as 'ow Jesus 'ad
+taken 'im to 'Imself. Rot! When they put 'im down in old Bow I didn't
+care no more for nothin'. Monse and monse I walked about night and day,
+and the bleedin' coppers was allus on to me. They got their own way at
+last. I took the pneumonier and was laid up at the London. And when I
+got out I didn't go back to the fact'ry neither."
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+The woman laughed--bitterly, terribly.
+
+"Do? Don't you _know_?"
+
+I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the child.
+
+"Look here--are you a good gel?" she said.
+
+Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so
+
+"'Ope? Don't you know _that_ neither?"
+
+Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:
+
+"Yes."
+
+She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:
+
+"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how they done
+it, though."
+
+I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as if by
+broken lights from hell, of the life behind--the wrecked hope, the
+shattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last turned
+into one.
+
+Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again. The woman looked at her
+with the same look as before--not so much a smile as a sort of haggard
+radiance.
+
+Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath into baby's
+face, and stretching out a coarse fat finger she tickled her under the
+chin.
+
+Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing this the woman's eyes
+sparkled like sunshine.
+
+"See that," she cried. "S'elp me Jesus, I b'lieve I could 'ave been good
+meself if I'd on'y 'ad somethink like this to keer for."
+
+I am not ashamed to say that more than once there had been tears in my
+eyes while the woman spoke, though her blasphemies had corrupted the air
+like the gases that rise from a dust-heap. But when she touched my child
+I shuddered as if something out of the 'lowest depths had tainted her.
+
+Then a strange thing happened.
+
+I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely support me, and was
+folding my little angel closely in my arms, when the woman rose too and
+said:
+
+"You wouldn't let me carry your kiddie a bit, would you?"
+
+I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know not what The woman
+looked at me again, and after a moment she said:
+
+"S'pose not. On'y I thought it might make me think as 'ow I was carryin'
+Billie."
+
+That swept down everything.
+
+The one remaining window of the woman's soul was open and I dared not
+close it.
+
+I looked down at my child--so pure, so sweet, so stainless; I looked up
+at the woman--so foul, so gross, so degraded.
+
+There was a moment of awful struggle and then . . . the woman and I were
+walking side by side.
+
+And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At five o'clock I was once more alone.
+
+I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now) under the statue
+which is at the back of Bow Church.
+
+I thought I could walk no farther, and although every penny I had in my
+pocket belonged to Isabel (being all that yet stood between her and
+want) I must borrow a little of it if she was to reach Mrs. Oliver's
+that night.
+
+I waited for the first tram that was going in my direction, and when it
+came up I signalled to it, but it did not stop--it was full.
+
+I waited for a second tram, but that was still more crowded.
+
+I reproached myself for having come so far. I told myself how
+ill-advised I had been in seeking for a nurse for my child at the
+farthest end of the city. I reminded myself that I could not hope to
+visit her every day if my employment was to be in the West, as I had
+always thought it would be. I asked myself if in all this vast London,
+with its myriads of homes, there had been no house nearer that could
+have sheltered my child.
+
+Against all this I had to set something, or I think my very heart would
+have died there and then. I set the thought of Ilford, on the edge of
+the country, with its green fields and its flowers. I set the thought of
+Mrs. Oliver, who would love my child as tenderly as if she were her own
+little lost one.
+
+I dare say it was all very weak and childish, but it is just when we are
+done and down, and do not know what we are doing, that Providence seems
+to be directing us, and it was so with me at that moment.
+
+The trams being full I had concluded that Fate had set itself against
+my spending any of Isabel's money, and had made up my mind to make a
+fierce fight over the last stage of my journey, when I saw that a little
+ahead of where I was standing the road divided into two branches at an
+acute angle, one branch going to the right and the other to the left.
+
+Not all Emmerjane's instructions about keeping "as straight as a' arrow"
+sufficed to show me which of the two roads to take and I looked about
+for somebody to tell me.
+
+It was then that I became aware of a shabby old four-wheeled cab which
+stood in the triangular space in front of the statue, and of the driver
+(an old man, in a long coachman's coat, much worn and discoloured, and a
+dilapidated tall hat, very shiny in patches) looking at me while he took
+the nose-bag off his horse--a bony old thing with its head hanging down.
+
+I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to me--to
+the right, over the bridge and through Stratford Market.
+
+I asked how far it was to Ilford.
+
+"Better nor two mile _I_ call it," he answered.
+
+After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a foolish
+question--how long it would take me to get there.
+
+The old driver looked at me again, and said:
+
+"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of you--and you
+carryin' the biby."
+
+I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very tired,
+yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked twenty paces
+when I heard the cab coming up behind and the old driver crying:
+
+"'Old on, missie."
+
+I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down from his
+box, opened the door of his cab and said:
+
+"Ger in."
+
+I told him I could not afford to ride.
+
+"Ger in," he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself for
+having to say it.
+
+Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercely
+through his grizzly beard:
+
+"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and I
+wouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face like
+that."
+
+I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears gushed out
+and that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab.
+
+What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the
+wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the
+mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches of
+marshy fields.
+
+I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy
+monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, for
+after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the old
+driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the open
+window at the back of his seat:
+
+"Stratford Market."
+
+After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then the
+old driver cried "Ilford," and asked what part of it I wished to go to.
+
+I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's Green," and
+then sat back with a lighter heart.
+
+But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passing
+us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery. This made
+me think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsciously
+clasping my baby closer.
+
+The cortèges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sights
+I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things.
+
+I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it in
+my mind's eye--not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble
+cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps with
+roses.
+
+I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharply
+to the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kind
+of alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on the
+one side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with broken
+bottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse,
+interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the more
+wretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it.
+
+Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man jumped from
+his box and opening his cab door, said:
+
+"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation."
+
+There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got out
+of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standing
+on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number
+10.
+
+At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as much
+as I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to fly, and I
+turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing round
+the corner.
+
+It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from Bayswater. I
+could not possibly carry baby back. What _could_ I do?
+
+Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born perhaps of
+my life in the convent) came over me--a feeling that all that had
+happened on my long journey, all I had seen and everything that had been
+said to me, had been intended to prepare me for (and perhaps to save me
+from) the dangers that were to come.
+
+I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength of body
+and spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth still) I stepped
+across the pavement and knocked at the door.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My great-hearted, heroic little woman!
+
+All this time I, in my vain belief that our expedition was of some
+consequence to the world, was trying to comfort myself with the thought
+that my darling must have heard of my safety.
+
+But how could I imagine that she had hidden herself away in a mass of
+humanity--which appears to be the most impenetrable depths into which a
+human being can disappear?
+
+How could I dream that, to the exclusion of all such interests as mine,
+she was occupied day and night, night and day, with the joys and
+sorrows, the raptures and fears of the mighty passion of Motherhood,
+which seems to be the only thing in life that is really great and
+eternal?
+
+Above all, how could I believe that in London itself, in the heart of
+the civilised and religious world, she was going through trials which
+make mine, in the grim darkness of the Polar night, seem trivial and
+easy?
+
+It is all over now, and though, thank God, I did not know at the time
+what was happening to my dear one at home, it is some comfort to me to
+remember that I was acting exactly as if I did.
+
+From the day we turned hack I heard my darling's voice no more. But I
+had a still more perplexing and tormenting experience, and that was a
+dream about her, in which she was walking on a crevassed glacier towards
+a precipice which she could not see because the brilliant rays of the
+aurora were in her eyes.
+
+Anybody may make what he likes of that on grounds of natural law, and
+certainly it was not surprising that my dreams should speak to me in
+pictures drawn from the perils of my daily life, but only one thing
+matters now--that these experiences of my sleeping hours increased my
+eagerness to get back to my dear one.
+
+My comrades were no impediment to that, I can tell you. With their faces
+turned homewards, and the wind at their backs, they were showing
+tremendous staying power, although we had thirty and forty below zero
+pretty constantly, with rough going all the time, for the snow had been
+ruckled up by the blizzard to almost impassable heaps and hummocks.
+
+On reaching our second installation at Mount Darwin I sent a message to
+the men at the foot of Mount Erebus, telling them to get into
+communication (through Macquarie Island) with the captain of our ship in
+New Zealand, asking him to return for us as soon as the ice conditions
+would permit; and this was the last of our jobs (except packing our
+instruments tight and warm) before we started down the "long white
+gateway" for our quarters at the Cape.
+
+With all the heart in the world, though, our going had to be slow. It
+was the middle of the Antarctic winter, when absolute night reigned for
+weeks and we had nothing to alleviate the darkness but the light of the
+scudding moon, and sometimes the glory of the aurora as it encircled the
+region of the unrisen sun.
+
+Nevertheless my comrades sang their way home through the sullen gloom.
+Sometimes I wakened the echoes of those desolate old hills myself with a
+stave of "Sally's the gel," although I was suffering a good deal from my
+darker thoughts of what the damnable hypocrisies of life might be doing
+with my darling, and my desire to take my share of her trouble whatever
+it might be.
+
+The sun returned the second week in August. Nobody can know what relief
+that brought us except those who have lived for months without it. To
+see the divine and wonderful thing rise up like a god over those lone
+white regions is to know what a puny thing man is in the scheme of the
+world.
+
+I think all of us felt like that at sight of the sun, though some
+(myself among the rest) were thinking more of it as a kind of message
+from friends at home. But old Treacle, I remember, who had stood looking
+at it in awed solemnity, said:
+
+"Well, I'm d----!"
+
+After that we got on famously until we reached Winter Quarters, where we
+found everybody well and everything in order, but received one piece of
+alarming intelligence--that the attempt to get into wireless
+communication with our ship had failed, with the result that we should
+have to wait for her until the time originally appointed for her return.
+
+That did not seem to matter much to my shipmates, who, being snugly
+housed from blinding blizzards, settled down to amuse themselves with
+sing-songs and story-tellings and readings.
+
+But, do what I would, to me the delay was dreadful, and every day, in
+the fever of my anxiety to get away as soon as the ice permitted, I
+climbed the slopes of old Erebus with O'Sullivan, to look through
+powerful glasses for what the good chap called the "open wather."
+
+Thank God, our wooden house was large enough to admit of my having a
+cabin to myself, for I should have been ashamed of my comrades hearing
+the cries that sometimes burst from me in the night.
+
+It is hard for civilised men at home, accustomed to hold themselves
+under control, to realise how a man's mind can run away from him when he
+is thousands of miles separated from his dear ones, and has a kind of
+spiritual certainty that evil is befalling them.
+
+I don't think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but I shiver
+even yet at the memory of all the torment I went through during those
+days of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve before me and I
+accused myself of a thousand offences which I had thought dead and
+buried and forgotten.
+
+Some of these were trivial in themselves, such as hot and intemperate
+words spoken in childhood to my good old people at home, disobedience or
+ingratitude shown to them, with all the usual actions of a naughty boy,
+who ought to have been spanked and never was.
+
+But the worst of them concerned my darling, and came with the thought of
+my responsibility for the situation in which I felt sure she found
+herself.
+
+A thousand times I took myself to task for that, thinking what I ought
+and ought not to have done, and then giving myself every bad name and my
+conduct every damning epithet.
+
+Up and down my cabin I would walk with hands buried in my pockets,
+revolving these thoughts and working myself up, against my will, to a
+fever of regret and self-accusation.
+
+Talk about Purgatory--the Purgatory of dear old Father Dan! That was to
+come after death--mine came before, and by the holy saints, I had enough
+of it.
+
+Two months passed like this; and when the water of the Sound was open
+and our ship did not appear, mine was not the only heart that was eating
+itself out, for the spirits of my shipmates had also begun to sink.
+
+In the early part of the Antarctic spring there had been a fearful
+hurricane lasting three days on the sea, with a shrieking, roaring
+chorus of fiends outside, and the conviction now forced itself on my men
+that our ship must have gone down in the storm.
+
+Of course I fought this notion hard, for my last hopes were based on not
+believing it. But when after the lapse of weeks I could hold out no
+longer, and we were confronted by the possibility of being held there
+another year (for how were our friends to know before the ice formed
+again that it was necessary to send relief?), I faced the situation
+firmly--measuring out our food and putting the men on shortened rations,
+twenty-eight ounces each and a thimbleful of brandy.
+
+By the Lord God it is a fearful thing to stand face to face with slow
+death. Some of my shipmates could scarcely bear it. The utter solitude,
+the sight of the same faces and the sound of the same voices, with the
+prospect of nothing else, seemed to drive most of them nearly mad.
+
+There was no sing-songing among them now, and what speaking I overheard
+was generally about the great dinners they had eaten, or about their
+dreams, which were usually of green fields and flower-beds and primroses
+and daisies--daisies, by heaven, in a world that was like a waste!
+
+As for me I did my best to play the game of never giving up. It was a
+middling hard game, God knows, and after weeks of waiting a sense of
+helplessness settled down on me such as I had never known before.
+
+I am not what is called a religious man, but when I thought of my
+darling's danger (for such I was sure it was) and how I was cut off from
+her by thousands of miles of impassable sea, there came an overwhelming
+longing to go with my troubles to somebody stronger than myself.
+
+I found it hard to do that at first, for a feeling of shame came over
+me, and I thought:
+
+"You coward, you forgot all about God when things were going well with
+you, but now that they are tumbling down, and death seems certain, you
+whine and want to go where you never dreamt of going in your days of
+ease and strength."
+
+I got over that, though--there's nothing except death a man doesn't get
+over down there--and a dark night came when (the ice breaking from the
+cliffs of the Cape with a sound that made me think of my last evening at
+Castle Raa) I found myself folding my hands and praying to the God of my
+childhood, not for myself but for my dear one, that He before whom the
+strongest of humanity were nothing at all, would take her into His
+Fatherly keeping.
+
+"Help her! Help her! _I_ can do no more."
+
+It was just when I was down to that extremity that it pleased Providence
+to come to my relief. The very next morning I was awakened out of my
+broken sleep by the sound of a gun, followed by such a yell from Treacle
+as was enough to make you think the sea-serpent had got hold of his old
+buttocks.
+
+"The ship! The ship! Commander! Commander! The ship! The ship!"
+
+And, looking out of my little window I saw him, with six or seven other
+members of our company, half naked, just as they had leapt out of their
+bunks, running like savages to the edge of the sea, where the "Scotia,"
+with all flags flying (God bless and preserve her!), was steaming slowly
+up through a grinding pack of broken ice.
+
+What a day that was! What shouting! What hand-shaking! For O'Sullivan it
+was Donnybrook Fair with the tail of his coat left out, and for Treacle
+it was Whitechapel Road with "What cheer, old cock?" and an unquenchable
+desire to stand treat all round.
+
+But what I chiefly remember is that the moment I awoke, and before the
+idea that we were saved and about to go home had been fully grasped by
+my hazy brain, the thought flashed to my mind:
+
+"Now you'll hear of _her!_"
+
+     M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The door of No. 10 was opened by a rather uncomely woman of perhaps
+thirty years of age, with a weak face and watery eyes.
+
+This was Mrs. Oliver, and it occurred to me even at that first sight
+that she had the frightened and evasive look of a wife who lives under
+the intimidation of a tyrannical husband.
+
+She welcomed me, however, with a warmth that partly dispelled my
+depression and I followed her into the kitchen.
+
+It was the only room on the ground floor of her house (except a
+scullery) and it seemed sweet and clean and comfortable, having a table
+in the middle of the floor, a sofa under the window, a rocking-chair on
+one side of the fireplace, a swinging baby's cot on the other side, and
+nothing about it that was not homelike and reassuring, except two large
+photographs over the mantelpiece of men stripped to the waist and
+sparring.
+
+"We've been looking for you all day, ma'am, and had nearly give you up,"
+she said.
+
+Then she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and pelisse,
+lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her age, kissed her
+on the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her without measure.
+
+"And what's her name, ma'am?"
+
+"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel."
+
+"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she _is_ a
+little angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky little mouth!
+Such blue eyes--blue as the bluebells in the cemet'ry. She's as pretty
+as a waxwork, she really is, and any woman in the world might be proud
+to nurse her."
+
+A young mother is such a weakling that praise of her child (however
+crude) acts like a charm on her, and in spite of myself I was beginning
+to feel more at ease, when Mrs. Oliver's husband came downstairs.
+
+He was a short, thick-set man of about thirty-five, with a square chin,
+a very thick neck and a close-cropped red bullet head, and he was in his
+stocking feet and shirt-sleeves as if he had been dressing to go out for
+the evening.
+
+I remember that it flashed upon me--I don't know why--that he had seen
+me from the window of the room upstairs, driving up in the old man's
+four-wheeler, and had drawn from that innocent circumstance certain
+deductions about my character and my capacity to pay.
+
+I must have been right, for as soon as our introduction was over and I
+had interrupted Mrs. Oliver's praises of my baby's beauty by speaking
+about material matters, saying the terms were to be four shillings, the
+man, who had seated himself on the sofa to put on his boots said, in a
+voice that was like a shot out of a blunderbus:
+
+"Five."
+
+"How'd you mean, Ted?" said Mrs. Oliver, timidly. "Didn't we say four?"
+
+"Five," said the man again, with a still louder volume of voice.
+
+I could see that the poor woman was trembling, but assuming the sweet
+air of persons who live in a constant state of fear, she said:
+
+"Oh yes. It _was_ five, now I remember."
+
+I reminded her that her letter had said four, but she insisted that I
+must be mistaken, and when I told her I had the letter with me and she
+could see it if she wished, she said:
+
+"Then it must have been a slip of the pen in a manner of speaking,
+ma'am. We allus talked of five. Didn't we, Ted?"
+
+"Certainly," said her husband, who was still busy with his boots.
+
+I saw what was going on, and I felt hot and angry, but there seemed to
+be nothing to do except submit.
+
+"Very well, we'll say five then," I said.
+
+"Paid in advance," said the man, and when I answered that that would
+suit me very well, he added:
+
+"A month in advance, you know."
+
+By this time I felt myself trembling with indignation, as well as
+quivering with fear, for while I looked upon all the money I possessed
+as belonging to baby, to part with almost the whole of it in one moment
+would reduce me to utter helplessness, so I said, turning to Mrs.
+Oliver:
+
+"Is that usual?"
+
+It did not escape me that the unhappy woman was constantly studying her
+husband's face, and when he glanced up at her with a meaning look she
+answered, hurriedly:
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, quite usual. All the women in the Row has it. Number
+five, she has twins and gets a month in hand with both of them. But
+we'll take four weeks and I can't say no fairer than that, can I?"
+
+"But why?" I asked.
+
+"Well, you see, ma'am, you're . . . you're a stranger to us, and if baby
+was left on our hands . . . Not as we think you'd leave her chargeable
+as the saying is, but if you were ever ill, and got a bit back with your
+payments . . . we being only pore people. . . ."
+
+While the poor woman was floundering on in this way my blood was boiling
+and I was beginning to ask her if she supposed for one moment that I
+meant to desert my child, when the man, who had finished the lacing of
+his boots, rose to his feet, and said:
+
+"You don't want yer baiby to be give over to the Guardians for the sake
+of a week or two, do you?"
+
+That settled everything. I took out my purse and with a trembling hand
+laid my last precious sovereign on the table.
+
+A moment or two after this Mr. Oliver, who had put on his coat and a
+cloth cap, made for the door.
+
+"Evenin', ma'am," he said, and with what grace I could muster I bade him
+good-bye.
+
+"You aren't a-going to the 'Sun' to-night, are you, Ted?" asked Mrs.
+Oliver.
+
+"Club," said the man, and the door clashed behind him.
+
+I breathed more freely when he was gone, and his wife (from whose face
+the look of fear vanished instantly) was like another woman.
+
+"Goodness gracious," she cried, with a kind of haggard hilarity,
+"where's my head? Me never offering you a cup of tea, and you looking so
+white after your journey."
+
+I took baby back into my arms while she put on the kettle, set a black
+tea-pot on the hob to warm, laid a piece of tablecloth and a thick cup
+and saucer on the end of the table, and then knelt on the fender to
+toast a little bread, talking meantime (half apologetically and half
+proudly) about her husband.
+
+He was a bricklayer by trade, and sometimes worked at the cemetery which
+I could see at the other side of the road (behind the long railings and
+the tall trees), but was more generally engaged as a sort of fighting
+lieutenant to a Labour leader whose business it was to get up strikes.
+Before they were married he had been the "Light Weight Champion of
+Whitechapel," and those were photos of his fights which I could see over
+the mantelpiece, but "he never did no knocking of people about now,"
+being "quiet and matrimonual."
+
+In spite of myself my heart warmed to the woman. I wonder it did not
+occur to me there and then that, living in constant dread of her
+tyrannical husband, she would always be guilty of the dissimulation I
+had seen an example of already and that the effect of it would be
+reflected upon my child.
+
+It did not. I only told myself that she was clearly fond of children and
+would be a kind nurse to my baby. It even pleased me, in my foolish
+motherly selfishness, that she was a plain-featured person, whom baby
+could never come to love as she would, I was sure, love me.
+
+I felt better after I had taken tea, and as it was then seven o'clock,
+and the sun was setting horizontally through the cypresses of the
+cemetery, I knew it was time to go.
+
+I could not do that, though, without undressing baby and singing her to
+sleep. And even then I sat for a while with an aching heart, and Isabel
+on my knee, thinking of how I should have to go to bed that night, for
+the first time, without her.
+
+Mrs. Oliver, in the meantime, examining the surplus linen which I had
+brought in my parcel, was bursting into whispered cries of delight over
+it, and, being told I had made the clothes myself, was saying:
+
+"What a wonderful seamstress you might be if you liked, ma'am."
+
+At length the time came to leave baby, and no woman knows the pain of
+that experience who has not gone through it.
+
+Though I really believed my darling would be loved and cared for, and
+knew she would never miss me, or yet know that I was gone (there was a
+pang even in that thought, and in every other kind of comforting), I
+could not help it, that, as I was putting my cherub into her cot, my
+tears rained down on her little face and awakened her, so that I had to
+kneel by her side and rock her to sleep again.
+
+"You'll be good to my child, won't you, Mrs. Oliver?" I said.
+
+"'Deed I will, ma'am," the woman replied.
+
+"You'll bath her every day, will you not?"
+
+"Night and morning. I allus does, ma'am."
+
+"And rinse out her bottle and see that she has nice new milk fresh from
+the cow?"
+
+"Sure as sure, ma'am. But don't you fret no more about the child, ma'am.
+I've been a mother myself, ma'am, and I'll be as good to your little
+angel as if she was my own come back to me."
+
+"God bless you," I said in a burst of anguish, and after remaining a
+moment longer on my knees by the cot (speaking with all my heart and
+soul, though neither to nurse nor to baby) I rose to my feet, dashed the
+tears from my eyes, and ran out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I knew that my eyes were not fit to be seen in the streets, so I dropped
+my dark veil and hurried along, being conscious of nothing for some time
+except the clang of electric cars and the bustle of passers-by, to whom
+my poor little sorrow was nothing at all.
+
+But I had not gone far--I think I had not, though my senses were
+confused and vague--before I began to feel ashamed, to take myself to
+task, and to ask what I had to cry about.
+
+If I had parted from my baby it was for her own good, and if I had paid
+away my last sovereign I had provided for her for a month, I had nothing
+to think of now except myself and how to get work.
+
+I never doubted that I should get work, or that I should get it
+immediately, the only open question being what work and where.
+
+Hitherto I had thought that, being quick with my pen, I might perhaps
+become secretary to somebody; but now, remembering the typist's story
+("firms don't like it"), and wishing to run no risks in respect of my
+child, I put that expectation away and began to soar to higher things.
+
+How vain they were! Remembering some kind words the Reverend Mother had
+said about me at the convent (where I had taken more prizes than Alma,
+though I had never mentioned it before) I told myself that I, too, was
+an educated woman. I knew Italian, French and German, and having heard
+that some women could make a living by translating books for publishers
+I thought I might do the same.
+
+Nay, I could even write books myself. I was sure I could--one book at
+all events, about friendless girls who have to face the world for
+themselves, and all good women would read it (some good men also),
+because they would see that it must be true.
+
+Oh, how vain were my thoughts! Yet in another sense they were not all
+vanity, for I was not thinking of fame, or what people would say about
+what I should write, but only what I should get for it.
+
+I should get money, not a great deal perhaps, yet enough for baby and
+me, that we might have that cottage in the country, covered with
+creepers and roses, where Isabel would run about the grass by and by,
+and pluck the flowers in the garden.
+
+"So what have _you_ got to cry about, you ridiculous thing," I thought
+while I hurried along, with a high step now, as if my soul had been in
+my feet.
+
+But a mother's visions of the future are like a mirage (always gleaming
+with the fairy palaces which her child is to inhabit some day), and I am
+not the first to find her shadows fade away.
+
+I must have been walking for some time, feeling no weariness at all,
+when I came to the bridge by Bow Church. There I had intended to take a
+tram, but not being tired I went on farther, thinking every stage I
+could walk would be so much money to the good.
+
+I was deep in the Mile End Road, when a chilling thought came to me. It
+was the thought of the distance that would divide me from my child,
+making my visits to her difficult, and putting it out of my power to
+reach her quickly (perhaps even to know in time) if, as happened to
+children, she became suddenly and dangerously ill.
+
+I remembered the long line of telescoping thoroughfares I had passed
+through earlier in the day (with their big hospitals, their big
+breweries, their big tabernacles, their workmen's lodging-houses, their
+Cinema picture palaces, their Jewish theatres, and their numberless
+public houses); and then the barrier of squalid space which would divide
+me from baby, if I obtained employment in the West End, seemed to be
+immeasurably greater and more frightening than the space that had
+divided me from Martin when he was at the other end of the world.
+
+Not all the allurements of my dream were sufficient to reconcile me to
+such a dangerous separation.
+
+"It's impossible," I thought. "Quite impossible."
+
+Insensibly my rapid footsteps slackened. When I reached that part of the
+Mile End Road in which the Jewish tailors live, and found myself
+listening to a foreign language which I afterwards knew to be Yiddish,
+and looking at men with curls at each side of their sallow faces,
+slithering along as if they were wearing eastern slippers without heels,
+I stopped, without knowing why, at the corner of a street where an
+Italian organ-man was playing while a number of bright-eyed Jewish
+children danced.
+
+I was still looking on, hardly thinking of what I saw, when my eyes fell
+on an advertisement, pasted on the window of a sausage-and-ham shop at
+the corner. In large written characters it ran:
+
+     _Seamstress Wanted. Good Wages.
+     Apply No. ---- Washington Street_.
+
+How little are the things on which our destiny seems to hang! In a
+moment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being a good
+seamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I was hurrying
+up the side street and knocking with my knuckles at an open door.
+
+A rather fat and elderly Jewess, covered with rings and gold chains, and
+wearing a manifest black wig, came from a room at one side of the lobby.
+I explained my errand, and after she had looked me over in a sort of
+surprise, as if I had not been the kind of person she expected, she
+said, in a nasal and guttural voice:
+
+"Vait! My daughter, she speaks very vell Ainglish."
+
+Then turning her head over her shoulder, she pitched her voice several
+octaves higher and cried, "Miriam," whereupon there came tripping
+downstairs a Jewish girl of about eighteen, with large black eyes, thick
+black hair, and such a dear good face.
+
+I repeated my application, and after the girl had interpreted my request
+to her mother, I was asked into the lobby, and put through a kind of
+catechism.
+
+Was I a seamstress? No, but I wished to become one. Had I aiver vorked
+on vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my needle.
+
+Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure of her
+own need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and an eager
+whisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with kindling eyes),
+she said,
+
+"Very vell, ve'll see what she can do."
+
+I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of girls
+(all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of waistcoats
+which, lying about on every side, looked like patterns for legs of
+mutton. One girl was basting, another was pressing, and a third was
+sewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars of gimp.
+
+This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told to look
+and see if I could do it. I watched the girl for a moment and then said:
+
+"Let me try."
+
+Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to me, and
+after ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and handed it back.
+
+The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said:
+
+"Very fair, but a leedle slow."
+
+"Let me try again," I said, and my trembling fingers were so eager to
+please that my next button-hole was not only better but more quickly
+made.
+
+"Beautiful!" said the daughter. "And mamma, only think, she's quicker
+than Leah, already. I timed them."
+
+"I muz call your vader, dough," said the Jewess, and she disappeared
+through the doorway.
+
+While I stood talking to the younger Jewess, who had, I could see,
+formed as quick an attachment for me as I for her, I heard another nasal
+and guttural voice (a man's) coming towards us from the hall.
+
+"Is she von of our people?"
+
+"Nein! She's a Skihoah"--meaning, as I afterwards learned, a non-Jewish
+girl.
+
+Then a tall, thin Jew entered the room behind the elderly Jewess. I had
+never before and have never since seen such a patriarchal figure. With
+his long grey beard and solemn face he might have stood for Moses in one
+of the pictures that used to hang on the walls of the convent--except
+for his velvet skull-cap and the black alpaca apron, which was speckled
+over with fluffy bits of thread and scraps of cloth and silk.
+
+He looked at me for a moment with his keen eyes, and after his wife had
+shown him my work, and he had taken a pinch of snuff and blown his nose
+on a coloured handkerchief with the sound of a trumpet, he put me
+through another catechism.
+
+I was trembling lest he should make intimate inquiries, but beyond
+asking my name, and whether I was a Christian, he did not concern
+himself with personal questions.
+
+"Vat vages do you vant?" he asked.
+
+I told him I should be pleased to take whatever was paid to other girls
+doing work of the same kind.
+
+"Ach no! Dese girls are full-timers. You are only a greener [meaning a
+beginner] so you vill not expect anything like so much."
+
+At that his daughter repeated her assurance that I was quicker than the
+girl she had called Leah; but the Jew, with an air of parental majesty,
+told her to be silent, and then said that as I was an "improver" he
+could only take me "on piece," naming the price (a very small one) per
+half-dozen buttons and buttonholes, with the condition that I found my
+own twist and did the work in my own home.
+
+Seeing that I should be no match for the Jew at a bargain, and being so
+eager to get to work at any price, I closed with his offer, and then he
+left the room, after telling me to come back the next day.
+
+"And vhere do you lif, my dear?" said the Jewess.
+
+I told her Bayswater, making some excuse for being in the East End, and
+getting as near to the truth as I dare venture, but feeling
+instinctively, after my sight of the master of the house, that I dared
+say nothing about my child.
+
+She told me I must live nearer to my work, and I said that was exactly
+what I wished to do--asking if she knew where I could find a room.
+
+Fortunately the Jewess herself had two rooms vacant at that moment, and
+we went upstairs to look at them.
+
+Both were at the top of the house, and one of them I could have for two
+shillings a week, but it was dark and cheerless, being at the back and
+looking into the space over the yards in which the tenants dried their
+washing on lines stretched from pulleys.
+
+The other, which would cost a shilling a week more, was a lean slit of a
+room, very sparsely furnished, but it was to the front, and looked down
+into the varied life of the street, so I took it instantly and asked
+when I could move in.
+
+"Ven you like," said the Jewess. "Everyding is ready."
+
+So, early next morning I bade farewell to my good Welsh landlady (who
+looked grave when I told her what I was going to do) and to Emmerjane
+(who cried when I kissed her smudgy face) and, taking possession of my
+new home, began work immediately in my first and only employment.
+
+Perhaps it was a deep decline after the splendours of my dreams, but I
+did not allow myself to think about that. I was near to Ilford and I
+could go to see Isabel every day.
+
+Isabel! Isabel! Isabel! Everything was Isabel, for now that Martin was
+gone my hopes and my fears, my love and my life, revolved on one axis
+only--my child.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My employer was a Polish Jew, named Israel Abramovitch.
+
+He had come to England at the time of the religious persecution in the
+Holy Cities of Russia, set himself up in his trade as a tailor in a
+garret in Whitechapel, hired a "Singer," worked with "green" labour for
+"slop" warehouses, and become in less than twenty years the richest
+foreign Jew in the East End of London, doing some of the "best bespoke"
+work for the large shops in the West and having the reputation (as I
+afterwards found) of being the greatest of Jewish "sweaters."
+
+In spite of this, however, he was in his own way a deeply religious man.
+Strict, severe, almost superstitious in obeying the Levitical laws and
+in practising the sad and rather gloomy symbolism of his faith. A famous
+Talmudist, a pillar of the synagogue, one of the two wardens of the
+Chevra in Brick Lane, and consequently a great upholder of moral
+rectitude.
+
+His house seemed to be a solid mass of human beings, chiefly Jewish
+girls, who worked all day, and sometimes (when regulations could be
+evaded or double gangs engaged) all night, for the Jew drove everybody
+at high speed, not excepting his wife, who cooked the food and pressed
+the clothes at the same time.
+
+In this hive of industry I needed no spur to make me work.
+
+Every morning Mrs. Abramovitch brought up a thick pile of vests to my
+room, and every evening she took them down again, after counting my
+earnings with almost preternatural rapidity and paying me, day by day,
+with unfailing promptitude.
+
+At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings. I was
+delighted, but after I had paid for my room and my food there was not
+enough for baby's board, so the second week I worked later in the
+evenings, and earned fourteen shillings. This was still insufficient,
+therefore I determined to take something from the other end of the day.
+
+"Morning will be better," I thought, remembering the painful noises at
+night, especially about midnight, when people were being thrown out of a
+public-house higher up the street, where there was a placard in the
+window saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to "make anybody
+drunk for fourpence."
+
+Unfortunately (being a little weak) I was always heavy in the mornings,
+but by great luck my room faced the east, so I conceived the idea of
+moving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to the top so that
+the earliest light might fall on my face and waken me.
+
+This device succeeded splendidly, and for many weeks of the late summer
+and early autumn I was up before the sun, as soon as the dawn had
+broadened and while the leaden London daylight was filtering through the
+smoke of yesterday.
+
+By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings, and, as my
+fingers learned to fly over their work, to seventeen and even eighteen.
+
+That was my maximum, and though it left a narrow margin for other needs
+it enabled me at the end of a month to pay another pound for baby's
+board and to put away a little towards her "shortening," which Mrs.
+Oliver was always saying must be soon.
+
+I had to stick close to maintain this average, and I grudged even the
+time occupied in buying and eating my food, though that was not a long
+process in the Mile End Road, which is full of shops where things can be
+bought ready cooked. After the first week I did not even need to go out
+for them, for they were brought round to my room every morning, thus
+enabling me to live without leaving my work.
+
+It was a stiff life, perhaps, but let nobody think I looked upon myself
+as a slave. Though I worked so hard I felt no self-pity. The thought
+that I was working for my child sweetened all my labours. It was such a
+joy to think that baby depended upon me for everything she wanted.
+
+Being so happy in those days I sang a great deal, though naturally not
+in the middle of the day, when our house was going like a mill-wheel,
+but in the early mornings before the electric trams began to clang, or
+the hawkers with their barrows to shout, and when there was no sound
+even in the East End except that ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp in the
+front street which always made me think of the children of Israel in
+Egypt drawing burdens for Pharaoh.
+
+Throwing open my window I sang all sorts of things, but, being such a
+child myself and so fond of make-believe, I loved best to sing my
+lullaby, and so pretend that baby was with me in my room, lying asleep
+behind me in my bed.
+
+     "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
+     Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."
+
+I never knew that I had any other audience than a lark in a cage on the
+other side of the street (perhaps I was in a cage myself, though I did
+not think of that then) which always started singing when I sang, except
+the washerwomen from a Women's Shelter going off at four to their work
+at the West End, and two old widows opposite who sewed Bibles and
+stitched cassocks, which being (so Miriam told me) the worst-paid of all
+sweated labour compelled them to be up as early as myself.
+
+It was not a very hopeful environment, yet for some time, in my little
+top room, I was really happy.
+
+I saw baby every day. Between six and nine every night, I broke off work
+to go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to anybody, and leaving
+the family of the Jew to think it was my time for recreation.
+
+Generally I "trammed" it from Bow Church, because I was so eager to get
+to my journey's end, but usually I returned on foot, for though the
+distance was great I thought I slept better for the walk.
+
+What joyful evenings those were!
+
+Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but that did
+not matter very much. On closer acquaintance I found my baby's nurse to
+be a "heedless" and "feckless" woman; and though I told myself that all
+allowances must be made for her in having a bad husband, I knew in my
+secret heart that I was deceiving myself, and that I ought to listen to
+the voices that were saying "Your child is being neglected."
+
+Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been bathed--but that only
+gave me an excuse for bathing her myself.
+
+Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might be--but
+that only gave me the joy of washing them.
+
+Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed and her
+milk was not quite fresh--but that only gave me the pleasure of scalding
+the one and boiling the other.
+
+More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver to do
+all this--but then what a deep delight it was to be mothering my own
+baby!
+
+Thus weeks and months passed--it is only now I know how many, for in
+those days Time itself had nothing in it for me except my child--and
+every new day brought the new joy of watching my baby's development.
+
+Oh, how wonderful it all was! To see her little mind and soul coming out
+of the Unknown! Out of the silence and darkness of the womb into the
+world of light and sound!
+
+First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her dear
+little toes! Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the gift of
+speech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the "ma-ma-ma"
+which the first time I heard it went prancing through and through me and
+was more heavenly to my ears than the music of the spheres!
+
+What evenings of joy I had with her!
+
+The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the bricklayer
+had got into some trouble by "knocking people about" at the "Rising Sun"
+and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the police.
+
+Then, baby being "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot while I
+sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip
+continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and
+waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the
+fire and the bricklayer's kitchen buzzed softly like a hive of bees.
+
+Oh dear! Oh dear! I may have been down in the depths, yet there is no
+place so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and my sunbeam
+was my child.
+
+And then Martin--baby was constantly making me think of him. Devouring
+her with my eyes, I caught resemblances every day--in her eyes, her
+voice, her smile, and, above all, in that gurgling laugh that was like
+water bubbling out of a bottle.
+
+I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental secrets into
+her ears, just as if she understood, telling her what a great man her
+father had been and how he loved both of us--_would_ have done if he had
+lived longer.
+
+I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was all
+foolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holy
+saints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were whispering all
+this in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him as much alive as if
+he had been constantly by my side.
+
+The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then the
+feeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher phase.
+
+I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it was
+really so sacred and so exalted.
+
+The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent to
+console me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed into the
+startling and rapturous thought that the very soul of Martin had passed
+into my child.
+
+"So Martin is not dead at all," I thought, "not really dead, because he
+lives in baby."
+
+It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it filled my
+heart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little body in which the
+soul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow beautiful and strong and
+worthy of him; how I felt charged with another and still greater
+responsibility to guard and protect her with my life itself if need be.
+
+"Yes, yes, my very life itself," I thought.
+
+Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my hard
+work, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not care.
+
+All that mattered to me then was one thing only--that whereas hitherto I
+had thought Martin was so far gone from me that not Time but only
+Eternity would bring us together, now I felt that he was coming back and
+back to me--nearer and nearer and nearer every day.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My dear, noble little woman was right in more ways than she knew.
+
+At that very time I was in literal truth hurrying home to her as fast as
+the fastest available vessel could carry me.
+
+As soon as we had boarded the _Scotia_ at the Cape and greeted our old
+shipmates, we shouted for our letters.
+
+There were some for all of us and heaps for me, so I scuttled down to my
+cabin, where I sorted the envelopes like a pack of cards, looking for
+the small delicate hand that used to write my letters and speeches.
+
+To my dismay it was not there, and realizing that fact I bundled the
+letters into a locker and never looked at them again until we were two
+days out--when I found they were chiefly congratulations from my
+committee, the proprietor of my newspaper, and the Royal Geographical
+Society, all welcome enough in their way, but Dead Sea fruit to a man
+with an empty, heaving heart.
+
+Going up on deck I found every face about me shining like the aurora,
+for the men had had good news all round, one having come into a fortune
+and another into the fatherhood of twins, and both being in a state of
+joy and excitement.
+
+But all the good fellows were like boys. Some of them (with laughter
+seasoned by a few tears) read me funny bits out of their wives'
+letters--bits too that were not funny, about having "a pretty fit of
+hysterics" at reading bad news of us and "wanting to kiss the newsboy"
+when he brought the paper contradicting it.
+
+I did my best to play the game of rejoicing, pretending I had had good
+news also, and everything was going splendid. But I found it hard enough
+to keep it going, especially while we were sailing back to the world, as
+we called it, and hearing from the crew the news of what had happened
+while we had been away.
+
+First, there was the reason for the delay in the arrival of the ship,
+which had been due not to failure of the wireless at our end, but to a
+breakdown on Macquarie Island.
+
+And then there was the account of the report of the loss of the _Scotia_
+in the gale going out, which had been believed on insufficient evidence
+(as I thought), but recorded in generous words of regret that sent the
+blood boiling to a man's face and made him wish to heaven they could be
+true.
+
+We were only five or six days sailing to New Zealand, but the strain to
+me was terrible, for the thought was always uppermost:
+
+"Why didn't she write a word of welcome to reach me on my return to
+civilisation?"
+
+When I was not talking to somebody that question was constantly haunting
+me. To escape from it I joined the sports of my shipmates, who with
+joyful news in their hearts and fresh food in their stomachs were
+feeling as good as new in spite of all they had suffered.
+
+But the morning we smelt land, the morning the cloud banks above the
+eastern horizon came out hard and fast and sure (no dreamland this
+time), I stood at the ship's bow, saying nothing to anybody, only
+straining my eyes for the yet distant world we were coming back to out
+of that desolate white waste, and thinking:
+
+"Surely I'll have news from her before nightfall."
+
+There was a big warm-hearted crowd on the pier at Port Lyttelton.
+Treacle said, "Gawd. I didn't know there was so many people in the
+world, Guv'nor;" and O'Sullivan, catching sight of a pretty figure under
+a sunshade, tugged at my arm and cried (in the voice of an astronomer
+who has discovered a planet), "Commanther! Commanther! A _girl!_"
+
+Almost before we had been brought to, a company of scientific visitors
+came aboard; but I was more concerned about the telegrams that had come
+at the same moment, so hurrying down to my cabin I tore them open like a
+vulture riving its prey--always looking at the signatures first and
+never touching an envelope without thinking:
+
+"Oh God, what will be inside of it?"
+
+There was nothing from my dear one! Invitations to dine, to lecture, to
+write books, to do this and that and Heaven knows what, but never a word
+from her who was more to me than all the world besides.
+
+This made me more than ever sure of the "voices" that had called me back
+from the 88th latitude, so I decided instantly to leave our ship in New
+Zealand, in readiness for our next effort, and getting across to Sydney
+to take the first fast steamer home.
+
+The good people at Port Lyttelton were loath to let us go. But after I
+had made my excuses, ("crazy to get back to wives and sweethearts, you
+know") they sent a school of boys (stunning little chaps in Eton suits)
+to sing us off with "Forty Years On"--which brought more of my mother
+into my eyes than I knew to be left there.
+
+At Sydney we had the same experience--the same hearty crowds, the same
+welcome, the same invitations, to which we made the same replies, and
+then got away by a fast liner which happened to be ready to sail.
+
+On the way "back to the world" I had slung together a sort of a despatch
+for the newspaper which had promoted our expedition (a lame, limping
+thing for want of my darling's help to make it go), saying something
+about the little we had been able to do but more about what we meant,
+please God, to do some day.
+
+"She'll see that, anyway, and know we're coming back," I thought.
+
+But to make doubly sure I sent two personal telegrams, one to my dear
+one at Castle Raa and the other to my old people at home, asking for
+answers to Port Said.
+
+Out on the sea again I was tormented by the old dream of the crevassed
+glacier; and if anybody wonders why a hulking chap who had not been
+afraid of a ninety-mile blizzard in the region of the Pole allowed
+himself to be kept awake at night by a buzzing in the brain, all I can
+say is that it was so, and I know nothing more about it.
+
+Perhaps my recent experience with the "wireless" persuaded me that if
+two sticks stuck in the earth could be made to communicate with each
+other over hundreds of miles, two hearts that loved each other knew no
+limitations of time or space.
+
+In any case I was now so sure that my dear one had called me home from
+the Antarctic that by the time we reached Port Said, and telegrams were
+pouring in on me, I had worked myself up to such a fear that I dared not
+open them.
+
+From sheer dread of the joy or sorrow that might be enclosed in the
+yellow covers, I got O'Sullivan down in my cabin to read my telegrams,
+while I scanned his face and nearly choked with my own tobacco smoke.
+
+There was nothing from my dear one! Nothing from my people at home
+either!
+
+O'Sullivan got it into his head that I was worrying about my parents,
+and tried to comfort me by saying that old folks never dreamt of
+telegraphing, but by the holy immaculate Mother he'd go bail there would
+be a letter for me before long.
+
+There was.
+
+We stayed two eternal days at Port Said while the vessel was taking coal
+for the rest of the voyage, and almost at the moment of sailing a letter
+arrived from Ellan, which, falling into O'Sullivan's hands first, sent
+him flying through the steamer and shouting at the top of his voice:
+
+"Commanther! Commanther!"
+
+The passengers gave room for him, and told me afterwards of his beaming
+face. And when he burst into my cabin I too felt sure he had brought me
+good news, which he had, though it was not all that I wanted.
+
+"The way I was sure there would be a letter for you soon, and by the
+holy St. Patrick and St. Thomas, here it is," he cried.
+
+The letter was from my father, and I had to brace myself before I could
+read it.
+
+It was full of fatherly love, motherly love, too, and the extravagant
+pride my dear good old people had of me ("everybody's talking of you, my
+boy, and there's nothing else in the newspapers"); but not a word about
+my Mary--or only one, and that seemed worse than none at all.
+
+"You must have heard of the trouble at Castle Raa. Very sad, but this
+happy hour is not the time to say anything about it."
+
+Nothing more! Only reams and reams of sweet parental chatter which (God
+forgive me!) I would have gladly given over and over again for one plain
+sentence about my darling.
+
+Being now more than ever sure that some kind of catastrophe had
+overtaken my poor little woman, I telegraphed to her again, this time
+(without knowing what mischief I was making) at the house of Daniel
+O'Neill--telling myself that, though the man was a brute who had
+sacrificed his daughter to his lust of rank and power and all the rest
+of his rotten aspirations, he was her father, and, if her reprobate of a
+husband had turned her out, he must surely have taken her in.
+
+"Cable reply to Malta. Altogether too bad not hearing from you," I said.
+
+A blind, hasty, cruel telegram, but thank God she never received it!
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Day by day it became more and more difficult for me to throw dust in my
+own eyes about the Olivers.
+
+One evening on reaching their house a little after six, as usual, I
+found the front door open, the kitchen empty save for baby, who, sitting
+up in her cot, was holding quiet converse with her toes, and the two
+Olivers talking loudly (probably by pre-arrangement) in the room
+upstairs.
+
+The talk was about baby, which was "a noosance," interfering with a
+man's sleep by night and driving him out of his home by day. And how
+much did they get for it? Nothing, in a manner of speaking. What did the
+woman (meaning me) think the "bleedin' place" was--"a philanthropic
+institooshun" or a "charity orginisation gime"?
+
+After this I heard the bricklayer thunder downstairs in his heavy boots
+and go out of the house without coming into the kitchen, leaving his
+wife (moral coward that he was) to settle his account with me.
+
+Then Mrs. Oliver came down, with many sighs, expressed surprise at
+seeing me and fear that I might have overheard what had been said in the
+room above.
+
+"Sorry to say I've been having a few words with Ted, ma'am, and tell you
+the truth it was about you."
+
+Ted had always been against her nursing, and she must admit it wasn't
+wise of a woman to let her man go to the public-house to get out of the
+way of a crying child; but though she was a-running herself off her feet
+to attend to the pore dear, and milk was up a penny, she had growd that
+fond of my baby since she lost her own that she couldn't abear to part
+with the jewel, and perhaps if I could pay a little more--Ted said
+seven, but she said six, and a shilling a week wouldn't hurt me--she
+could over-persuade him to let the dear precious stay.
+
+I was trembling with indignation while I listened to the woman's whining
+(knowing well I was being imposed upon), but I was helpless and so I
+agreed.
+
+My complacency had a bad effect on the Olivers, who continued to make
+fresh extortions, until their demands almost drove me to despair.
+
+I thought a climax had been reached when one night a neighbour came to
+the door and, calling Mrs. Oliver into the lobby, communicated some news
+in a whisper which brought her back with a frightened face for her cloak
+and hat, saying "something was a matter with Ted" and she must "run away
+quick to him."
+
+When she returned an hour or two later she was crying, and with sobs
+between her words she told me that Ted (having taken a drop too much)
+had "knocked somebody about" at the "Sun." As a consequence he had
+fallen into the hands of the police, and would be brought before the
+magistrate the following morning, when, being unable to pay the fine, he
+would have to "do time"--just as a strike was a-coming on, too, and he
+was expecting good pay from the Strike Committee.
+
+"And what is to happen to me and the baby while my 'usband is in
+prison?" she said.
+
+I knew it was an act of weakness, but, thinking of my child and the
+danger of its being homeless, I asked what the amount of the fine would
+probably be, and being told ten-and-six, I gave the money, though it was
+nearly all I had in the world.
+
+I paid for my weakness, though, and have reason to remember it.
+
+The extortions of the Olivers had brought me to so narrow a margin
+between my earnings and expenses that I lay awake nearly all that night
+thinking what I could do to increase the one or reduce the other. The
+only thing I found possible was to change to cheaper quarters. So next
+morning, with a rather heavy heart, I asked Mrs. Abramovitch if the room
+at the back of the house was still empty, and hearing that it was I
+moved into it the same day.
+
+That was a small and not a very wise economy.
+
+My new room was cheerless as well as dark, with no sights but the
+clothes that were drying from the pulley-lines and no sounds but the
+whoops of the boys of the neighbourhood playing at "Red Indians" on the
+top of the yard walls.
+
+But it was about the same as the other in size and furniture, and after
+I had decorated it with my few treasures--the Reverend Mother's rosary,
+which I hung on the head of the bed, and my darling mother's miniature,
+which I pinned up over the fire--I thought it looked bright and
+homelike.
+
+All this time, too, I was between the nether and the upper mill-stone.
+
+My employer, the Jew (though he must have seen that I was sweating
+myself much more than the law would have allowed him to sweat me), could
+not forgive himself when he found that I was earning more by "piece"
+than he would have had to pay me by the day, or resist the temptation to
+square accounts with me at the earliest possible opportunity.
+
+Unfortunately, his opportunity came only too quickly, and it led
+(however indirectly) to the most startling fact that has ever, perhaps,
+entered into a woman's life.
+
+I had not been more than three months at the Jew's house when the Jewish
+festivals came round--New Year's Day, the Day of Atonement, and the
+Feast of Tabernacles--which, falling near together and occupying many
+days, disturbed his own habits of work entirely.
+
+One of the tasks he reserved for himself was that of taking the best
+paid of his "best-bespoke" back to the large shops in the West End, and
+waiting for the return orders. But finding that the festivals interfered
+with these journeys, he decided that they should be made by me, who was
+supposed to know the West End (having lived in it) and to present a
+respectable appearance.
+
+I was reluctant to undertake the new duty, for though the Jew was to pay
+me a few shillings a week for it, I saw I could earn more in the time
+with my needle. But when he laid his long, hairy forefinger on the side
+of his nose and said with a significant smile:
+
+"You vill be gradeful, and convenience your employer, mine child," I
+agreed.
+
+Thus it came to pass that not only during the Jewish festivals, but for
+months after they were over, I carried a rather large black bag by tram
+or rail to the district that lies at the back of Piccadilly and along
+Oxford Street as far west as the Marble Arch.
+
+I had to go whenever called upon and to wait as long as wanted, so that
+in the height of the tailoring season I was out in the West End at all
+irregular hours of night, and even returned to my lodgings on one or two
+occasions in the raw sunshine of the early mornings.
+
+The one terror of my West End journeys was that I might meet Sister
+Mildred. I never did. In the multitude of faces which passed through the
+streets, flashing and disappearing like waves under the moon at sea, I
+never once caught a glimpse of a face I knew.
+
+But what sights I saw for all that! What piercing, piteous proofs that
+between the rich and the poor there is a great gulf fixed!
+
+The splendid carriages driving in and out of the Park; the sumptuously
+dressed ladies strolling through Bond Street; the fashionable church
+paraders; the white plumes and diamond stars which sometimes gleamed
+behind the glow of the electric broughams gliding down the Mall.
+
+"I used to be a-toffed up like that onct," I heard an old woman who was
+selling matches say as a lady in an ermine coat stepped out of a theatre
+into an automobile and was wrapped round in a tiger-skin rug.
+
+Sometimes it happened that, returning to the East End after the motor
+'buses had ceased to ply, I had to slip through the silent Leicester
+Square and the empty Strand to the Underground Railway on the
+Embankment.
+
+Then I would see the wretched men and women who were huddled together in
+the darkness on the steps to the river (whose ever-flowing waters must
+have witnessed so many generations of human wreckage), and, glancing up
+at the big hotels and palatial mansions full of ladies newly returned
+from theatres and restaurants in their satin slippers and silk
+stockings, I would wonder how they could lie in their white beds at
+night in rooms whose windows looked down on such scenes.
+
+But the sight that stirred me most (though it did not awaken my charity,
+which shows what a lean-souled thing I was myself) was that of the
+"public women," the street-walkers, as I used to call them, whom I saw
+in Piccadilly with their fine clothes and painted faces, sauntering in
+front of the clubs or tripping along with a light step and trying to
+attract the attention of the men.
+
+I found no pathos in the position of such women. On the contrary, I had
+an unspeakable horror and hatred and loathing of them, feeling that no
+temptation, no poverty, no pressure that could ever be brought to bear
+upon a woman in life or in death excused her for committing so great a
+wrong on the sanctity of her sex as to give up her womanhood at any call
+but that of love.
+
+"Nothing could make me do it," I used to think, "nothing in this world."
+
+But O God! how little I knew then what is in a woman's heart to do when
+she has a child to live for, and is helpless and alone!
+
+I cannot expect anybody to forgive me for what I did (or attempted to
+do), and now that the time has come to tell of it my hand trembles, and
+body and soul seem to be quivering like a flame.
+
+May God (who has brought everything to such a glorious end) have mercy
+on me and forgive me, and help me to be true!
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The worst consequence of my West End journeys was that my nightly visits
+to Ilford were fewer than before, and that the constant narrowing of the
+margin between my income and my expenses made it impossible for me to go
+there during the day.
+
+As a result my baby received less and less attention, and I could not be
+blind to the fact that she was growing paler and thinner.
+
+At length she developed a cough which troubled me a great deal. Mrs.
+Oliver made light of it, saying a few pennyworths of paregoric would
+drive it away, so I hurried off to a chemist, who recommended a soothing
+syrup of his own, saying it was safer and more effectual for a child.
+
+The syrup seemed to stop the cough but to disturb the digestion, for I
+saw the stain of curdled milk on baby's bib and was conscious of her
+increasing weakness.
+
+This alarmed me very much, and little as I knew of children's ailments,
+I became convinced that she stood in need of more fresh air, so I
+entreated Mrs. Oliver to take her for a walk every day.
+
+I doubt if she ever did so, for as often as I would say:
+
+"Has baby been out to-day, nurse?" Mrs. Oliver would make some lame
+excuse and pass quickly to another subject.
+
+At last, being unable to bear the strain any longer, I burst out on the
+woman with bitter reproaches, and then she broke down into tears and
+explained everything. She was behind with her rent, the landlord was
+threatening, and she dared not leave the house for a moment lest he
+should lock her out altogether.
+
+"I don't mind telling you, it's all along of Ted, ma'am. He's on strike
+wages but he spends it at the 'Sun.' He has never been the man to
+me--never once since I married him. I could work and keep the house
+comfortable without him, but he wouldn't let me a-be, because he knows I
+love, him dear. Yes, I do, I love him dear," she continued, breaking
+into hysterical sobs, "and if he came home and killed me I could kiss
+him with my last breath."
+
+This touched me more than I can say. A sense of something tragic in the
+position of the poor woman, who knew the character of the man she loved
+as well as the weakness which compelled her to love him, made me
+sympathise with her for the first time, and think (with a shuddering
+memory of my own marriage) how many millions of women there must be in
+the world who were in a worse position than myself.
+
+On returning to my room that night I began to look about to see if I had
+anything I could sell in order to help Mrs. Oliver, and so put an end to
+the condition that kept my baby a prisoner in her house.
+
+I had nothing, or next to nothing. Except the Reverend Mother's rosary
+(worth no more than three or four shillings) I had only my mother's
+miniature, which was framed in gold and set in pearls, but that was the
+most precious of all my earthly possessions except my child.
+
+Again and again when I looked at it in my darkest hours I had found new
+strength and courage. It had been like a shrine to me--what the image of
+the Virgin was in happier days--and thinking of all that my darling
+mother had done and suffered and sacrificed for my sake when I was
+myself a child, I felt that I could never part with her picture under
+the pressure of any necessity whatever.
+
+"Never," I thought, "never under any circumstances."
+
+It must have been about a week after this that I went to Ilford on one
+of those chill, clammy nights which seem peculiar to the East End of
+London, where the atmosphere, compounded of smoke and fog and thin
+drizzling rain; penetrates to the bone and hangs on one's shoulders like
+a shroud.
+
+Thinking of this, as I thought of everything, in relation to baby, I
+bought, as I was passing a hosier's shop, a pair of nice warm stockings
+and a little woollen jacket.
+
+When I reached the Olivers' I found, to my surprise, two strange men
+stretched out at large in the kitchen, one on the sofa and the other in
+the rocking-chair, both smoking strong tobacco and baby coughing
+constantly.
+
+Before I realised what had happened Mrs. Oliver called me into the
+scullery, and, after closing the door on us, she explained the position,
+in whispers broken by sobs.
+
+It was the rent. These were the bailiff's men put into possession by the
+landlord, and unless she could find two pounds ten by nine o'clock
+to-morrow morning, she and her husband would be sold up and turned into
+the street.
+
+"The home as I've been scraping and pinching to keep together!" she
+cried. "For the sake of two pound ten! . . . You couldn't lend us that
+much, could you?"
+
+I told her I could not, but she renewed her entreaties, asking me to
+think if I had not something I could pawn for them, and saying that Ted
+and she would consider it "a sacred dooty" to repay.
+
+Again I told her I had nothing--I was trying not to think of the
+miniature--but just at that moment she caught sight of the child's
+jacket which I was still holding in my hand, and she fell on me with
+bitter reproaches.
+
+"You've money enough to spend on baby, though. It's crool. Her living in
+lukshry and getting new milk night and day, and fine clothes being
+bought for her constant, and my pore Ted without a roof to cover him in
+weather same as this. It breaks my heart. It do indeed. Take your child
+away, ma'am. Take her to-night, afore we're turned out of house and home
+to-morrow morning."
+
+Before the hysterical cries with which Mrs. Oliver said this had come
+to an end I was on my way back to my room at the Jew's. But it was baby
+I was thinking of in relation to that cold, clammy night--that it would
+be impossible to take her out in it (even if I had somewhere to take her
+to, which I had not) without risk to her health and perhaps her life.
+
+With trembling fingers and an awful pain at my heart I took my mother's
+miniature from the wall and wrapped it up in tissue paper.
+
+A few minutes afterwards I was back in the damp streets, walking fast
+and eagerly, cutting over the lines of the electric trams without
+looking for the crossings.
+
+I knew where I was going to--I was going to a pawnbroker's in the Mile
+End Waste which I had seen on my West End journeys. When I got there I
+stole in at a side door, half-closing my eyes as I did so, by that
+strange impulse which causes us to see nothing when we do not wish to be
+seen.
+
+I shall never forget the scene inside. I think it must have left a scar
+on my brain, for I see it now in every detail--the little dark
+compartment; the high counter; the shelves at the back full of parcels,
+like those of a left-luggage room at a railway station; the heavy,
+baggy, big-faced man in shirt-sleeves with a long cigar held between his
+teeth at the corner of his frothy mouth; and then my own hurried
+breathing; my thin fingers opening the tissue paper and holding out the
+miniature; the man's coarse hands fumbling it; his casual air as he
+looked at it and cheapened it, as if it had been a common thing scarcely
+worthy of consideration.
+
+"What's this 'ere old-fashion'd thing? Portrait of your
+great-grandmother? Hum! Not 'arf bad-looking fice, neither."
+
+I think my eyes must have been blazing like hot coals. I am sure I bit
+my lips (I felt them damp and knew they were bleeding) to prevent myself
+from flinging out at the man in spite of my necessity. But I did my best
+to control my trembling mouth, and when he asked me how much I wanted on
+the miniature I answered, with a gulp in my throat:
+
+"Two pounds ten, if you please, sir."
+
+"Couldn't do it," said the pawnbroker.
+
+I stood speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say next, and then
+the pawnbroker, with apparent indifference, said:
+
+"I'll give you two ten for it out and out."
+
+"You mean I am to _sell_ . . ."
+
+"Yus, take it or leave it, my dear."
+
+It is no use saying what I suffered at that moment. I think I became ten
+years older during the few minutes I stood at that counter.
+
+But they came to an end somehow, and the next thing I knew was that I
+was on my way back to Ilford; that the damp air had deepened into rain;
+that miserable and perhaps homeless beings, ill-clad and ill-fed, were
+creeping along in the searching cold with that shuffling sound which bad
+boots make on a wet pavement; and that I was telling myself with a
+fluttering heart that the sheltering wings of my beautiful mother in
+heaven had come to cover my child.
+
+On reaching the Olivers', hot and breathless, I put three gold coins,
+two sovereigns and a half-sovereign, on to the table to pay off the
+broker's men.
+
+They had been settling themselves for the night, and looked surprised
+and I thought chagrined, but took up the money and went away.
+
+As they were going off one of them called me to the door, and in the
+little space at the foot of the stairs he said, tipping his fingers
+towards the cot:
+
+"If that's your kiddie, miss, I recommend you to get it out o' this 'ere
+place quick--see?"
+
+I stayed an hour or two longer because I was troubled about baby's
+cough; and before I left, being still uneasy, I did what I had never
+done before--wrote my address at the Jew's house, so that I could be
+sent for if I was ever wanted.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDREDTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man seemed to be
+ringing in my ears.
+
+I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house of the
+Olivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to know what to
+do with her.
+
+To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously impossible, and
+to advertise for a nurse for my child was to run the risk of falling
+into the toils of somebody who might do worse than neglect her.
+
+In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant whose
+child had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some moments I
+thought how much better it would be that baby should be "bonny and well"
+instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when I reflected that if I
+took her to a public institution I should see her only once a month, I
+told myself that I could not and would not do so.
+
+"I'll work my fingers to the bone first," I thought.
+
+Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got hold of
+her, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that I first came
+to see that for the child's own sake I must part with her.
+
+Somewhere about the time of my moving into the back room my employer
+made a kind of bower of branches and evergreens over the lead-flat roof
+of an outhouse in his back-yard--a Succah, as Miriam called it, built in
+honour of the Feast of Tabernacles, as a symbol of the time when the
+Israelites in the Wilderness dwelt in booths.
+
+In this Succah the Jew's family ate all their meals during the seven or
+eight days of the Jewish feast, and one morning, as I sat at work by my
+open window, I heard Miriam after breakfast reading something from the
+Books of Moses.
+
+It was the beautiful story of Jacob parting with Benjamin in the days of
+the famine, when there was corn in Egypt only--how the poor old father
+in his great love could not bring himself to give up his beloved son,
+although death threatened him; how Judah pleaded with Jacob to send the
+boy with him into the far country lest they should all die, "both we and
+thou and also our little ones;" and how at last Jacob said, "If it must
+be so, do this," but "if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."
+
+It would be hard to say how deeply this story moved me while I listened
+from my room above. And now that I thought of it again, I saw that I was
+only sacrificing my child to my selfish love of her, and therefore the
+duty of a true mother was to put her into a Home.
+
+It would not be for long. The work I was doing was not the only kind I
+was capable of. After I had liberated myself from the daily extortions
+of the Olivers I should be free to look about for more congenial and
+profitable employment; and then by and by baby and I might live together
+in that sweet cottage in the country (I always pictured it as a kind of
+Sunny Lodge, with roses looking in at the window of "Mary O'Neill's
+little room") which still shone through my dreams.
+
+I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, and
+perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of
+separation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I put
+my faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine, and then
+nothing remained except to select the institution to which my only love
+and treasure was to be assigned.
+
+Accident helped me in this as in other things. One day on my westward
+journey a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was constantly wiping
+her eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine through her tears),
+could not help telling me, out of the overflowing of her poor heart,
+what had just been happening to her.
+
+She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three years old,
+at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part with her, and the
+little darling had looked so pitiful when she came away, it would be the
+best for both of them in the long run.
+
+I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of it,
+telling me something about the founder--a good doctor who had been a
+father to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like herself.
+
+That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning, putting
+on my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew where to find,
+having walked round it on my way back from the West End and heard the
+merry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall.
+
+I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in which
+I entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had done to me, I
+really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favour
+upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman.
+
+Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!
+
+My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, and
+when I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore such
+a businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long "three-decker"
+neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to his
+forehead, said in a freezing voice:
+
+"Well, ma'am, what is _your_ pleasure?"
+
+After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story--how I had a
+child and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was in
+uncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I loved
+my little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; and
+how, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a little
+while, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, that
+I could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . .
+
+Oh dear! Oh dear:
+
+I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayed
+me, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman said
+sharply:
+
+"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to show
+that it is legitimate?"
+
+What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the truth in a
+voice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry office was
+rolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing into my face.
+
+The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell, drew his
+spectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy tones:
+
+"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it."
+
+It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation of this
+experience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening my memory and
+at the same time deadening my pride) I remembered something which I had
+heard the old actress say during my time at the boarding-house about a
+hospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate children--how the good man who
+founded it had been so firm in his determination that no poor mother in
+her sorrow should be put to further shame about her innocent child that
+he had hung out a basket at the gate at night in which she could lay her
+little one, if she liked, and then ring a bell and hide herself away.
+
+It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but after a
+sleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of mingled hope and
+fear, I set off for this hospital.
+
+It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End were
+sitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their Sunday
+papers; but when I reached the West all the church bells were ringing,
+and people wearing black clothes and shiny black gloves were walking
+with measured steps through the wide courtyard that led to the chapel.
+
+I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a Protestant
+church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the gallery
+of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint and
+sweet--the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and the
+girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills--and the service
+began, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the good
+Father of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel
+there some day and hearing her singing in the choir.
+
+When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was shown into
+his room.
+
+I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good people wear
+such wintry weather in their faces that merely to look at them pierces a
+poor woman to the soul?
+
+Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little down),
+saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in that orphanage
+that she had been born outside the pale of the law.
+
+"On the contrary," said the secretary, "that is precisely the kind of
+child this house is intended for."
+
+But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the wish of
+the founder that no questions of any kind should be asked about a
+child's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered all that. Then
+he proceeded to explain that before a child could be received the mother
+must now go before a committee of gentlemen to satisfy them of her
+previous good character, and that the father of her baby had deserted
+both of them.
+
+More than that, he told me that on being received the child was
+immediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it might
+be cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination of their
+shame.
+
+It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which I
+listened to the secretary while he said all this, with the cast-metal
+face of a man who was utterly unconscious of the enormity of the crime
+he was describing.
+
+"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked.
+
+"That is so."
+
+"Who are to ask her all those questions?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And then they are to change her baby's name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is she told what the new name is to be?"
+
+"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number which
+corresponds with the name in our books."
+
+I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling from head
+to foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and why I was
+there--a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking shelter for her
+child--I burst out on the man in all the mad wrath of outraged
+motherhood.
+
+"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a poor
+woman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an inquisition into
+the most secret facts of her life, in public, and before a committee of
+men. And then you take her child, and so far as she is concerned you
+bury it, and give her a ticket to its grave. A hospital? This is no
+hospital. It is a cemetery. And yet you dare to write over your gates
+the words of our Lord--our holy and loving and blessed Lord--who said,
+'Suffer little children. . . .'"
+
+But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps unjustly) or
+afterwards in the silence of my own room and the helpless intoxication
+of my rage?
+
+It was soon stamped out of me.
+
+By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the continued
+extortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement in the
+Underground Railway of a Home for children in the country (asking for
+subscriptions and showing a group of happy little people playing under a
+chestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make one more effort.
+
+"They can't all be machines," I thought, "with the founders' hearts
+crushed out of them."
+
+The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's, and Mrs.
+Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover my bed, but
+nevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for the orphanage.
+
+It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost me
+something to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike appearance
+of the place when I reached it, and still more by finding that it was
+conducted by women, for at last, I thought, the woman-soul would speak
+to me.
+
+But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my request (very
+timidly this time and with such a humble, humble heart) that I might be
+allowed to recover my child as soon as I found myself able to provide
+for her, than she stopped me and said:
+
+"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in London
+on your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we expect the
+parent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rights
+in it until it is sixteen years of age."
+
+"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said.
+
+"Justly severe," said the matron. "Such women should be made to maintain
+their children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard."
+
+How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or what
+happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me,
+within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late that
+night, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park Lane into
+Piccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their painted faces,
+dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading in
+front of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up at the windows.
+
+These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I was
+suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinking
+that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be
+some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who
+loved them.
+
+This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing
+laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps
+talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath
+their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress.
+
+Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she laughed and
+laughed, and feeling as if I _knew_ (because life had that day trampled
+on me also), I said to myself:
+
+"That woman's heart is dead."
+
+This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a side
+glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix.
+
+"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I thought.
+
+It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the woman's
+resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter,
+compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back.
+
+By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God,
+how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in my
+direction, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying:
+
+"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I wonder?"
+
+And then, seeing me, they said:
+
+"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!" "By Jove,
+no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"
+
+Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going to
+speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, who
+was standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after the
+men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead.
+
+Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I cried,
+almost as if the name had been forced out of me:
+
+"Sister Angela!"
+
+The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were going to
+run away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking searchingly
+into my face, said:
+
+"Who are you? . . . I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . that man. And
+now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see."
+
+It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about my
+presence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in my
+eyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do when I
+was a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and my will was
+so broken that I did not attempt to resist her.
+
+We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric light,
+and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern side of it,
+walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian quarter of Soho, we
+stopped at a private door by the side of a café that had an Italian name
+on the window.
+
+"This is where we live. Come in," said Angela, and I followed her
+through a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare stairs.
+
+While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the café, of
+men singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and guitars) one of the
+Italian songs which I remembered to have heard from the piazza outside
+the convent on that night when Sister Angela left me in bed while she
+went off to visit the chaplain:
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
+     Onde sorridere volle il creato._"
+
+"The Italian Club," said Angela. "Only one flight more. Come!"
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on the top
+landing, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in the roof.
+
+As we stepped in I heard rapid breathing, which told me that we were in
+a sick chamber, and then a man's voice, very husky and weak, saying:
+
+"Is that you, Agnes?"
+
+"It's only me, dear," said Angela..
+
+After a moment she turned up the solitary gas-jet, which had been
+burning low, and I saw the shadowy form of a man lying in a bed that
+stood in a corner. He was wasted with consumption, his long bony hands
+were lying on the counterpane, his dark hair was matted over his
+forehead as from sweat, but I could not mistake the large, lively grey
+eyes that looked out of his long thin face. It was Father Giovanni.
+
+Angela went up to him and kissed him, and I could see that his eyes
+lighted with a smile as he saw her coming into the room.
+
+"There's somebody with you, isn't there?" he said.
+
+"Yes. Who do you think it is?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Don't you remember little Margaret Mary at the Sacred Heart?"
+
+"Is this she?"
+
+"Yes," said Angela, and then in a hoarse, angry voice the man said:
+
+"What has she come here for?"
+
+Angela told him that I had seen her on Piccadilly, and being a great
+lady now, I (Oh heaven!) was one of the people who came out into the
+streets at midnight to rescue lost ones.
+
+"She looked as if she wondered what had brought me down to that life, so
+I've fetched her home to see."
+
+I was shocked at Angela's mistake, but before I could gather strength or
+courage to correct her Giovanni was raising himself in bed and saying,
+with a defiant air, his eyes blazing like watch-fires:
+
+"She does it for me, if you want to know. I've been eleven months
+ill--she does it all for me, I tell you."
+
+And then, in one of those outbursts of animation which come to the
+victims of that fell disease, he gave me a rapid account of what had
+happened to them since they ran away from Rome--how at first he had
+earned their living as a teacher of languages; how it became known that
+he was an unfrocked and excommunicated priest who had broken his vows,
+and then his pupils had left him; how they had struggled on for some
+years longer, though pursued by this character as by a malignant curse;
+and how at length his health had quite broken down, and he would have
+starved but for Agnes (Angela being her nun's name), who had stuck to
+him through everything.
+
+While the sick man said this in his husky voice, Angela was sitting on
+the bed by his side with her arm about his waist, listening to him with
+a sort of pride and looking at me with a kind of triumph.
+
+"I dare say you wonder why I didn't try to get work," she said. "I
+_could_ have got it if I had wanted to. I could have got it at the
+Italian laundry. But what was two shillings a day to a man who was
+ordered new milk and fresh eggs five times every twenty-four hours, not
+to speak of the house rent?"
+
+"She ought to have let me die first," said Giovanni, and then, looking
+at me again with his large, glittering, fierce eyes, he said:
+
+"_You_ think she ought to have let me die, don't you?"
+
+"No, no, no," I said--it was all I _could_ say, for their mistake about
+myself was choking me.
+
+Perhaps my emotion appeased both of them, for after a moment Angela beat
+out Giovanni's pillow and straightened his counterpane, and then told
+him to lie down and be quiet, while she brought a chair for me and took
+off her things in her own bedroom.
+
+But hardly had she gone into an adjoining chamber when the sick man
+raised himself again and, reaching over in my direction, told me in a
+hoarse whisper the story of the first night of her present way of
+life--how the doctor had said he must be removed to the hospital; how
+Agnes would not part with him; how the landlord had threatened to turn
+them out; and how at last, after sitting with her head in her hands the
+whole evening, Aggie had got up and gone out and, coming back at
+midnight, had thrown two sovereigns on the table and said, "There you
+are, Giovanni--that's our rent and your eggs and milk for one week,
+anyway."
+
+By this time Angela had returned to the room (her paint and rouge washed
+off, and her gay clothes replaced by a simple woollen jacket over a
+plain underskirt), and she began to beat up an egg, to boil some milk,
+to pour out a dose of medicine, and to do, with all a good woman's tact,
+a good woman's tenderness, the little services of which an invalid
+stands in need.
+
+Oh heavens, how beautiful it was--fearfully, awfully tragically
+beautiful!
+
+I was deeply moved as I sat in silence watching her; and when at length
+Giovanni, who had been holding her hand in his own long, bony ones and
+sometimes putting it to his lips, dropped off to sleep (tired out,
+perhaps, by talking to me), and she, drawing up to where I sat by the
+end of the bed, resumed her self-defence, saying in a whisper that
+ladies like me could not possibly understand what a woman would do, in
+spite of herself, when the life of one she loved was threatened, I could
+bear her mistake no longer, but told her of my real condition--that I
+was no longer a lady, that I had run away from my husband, that I had a
+child, and was living as a poor seamstress in the East End of London.
+
+Angela listened to my story in astonishment; and when I had come to an
+end she was holding my hand and looking into my eyes with just that look
+which she had when she put me to bed for the first time at school, and,
+making her voice very low, told me to be a good child of the Infant
+Jesus.
+
+"It's nearly one o'clock. You can't go back to the East End to-night,"
+she whispered.
+
+"Oh, I must, I must," I said, getting up and making for the door. But
+before I had reached it my limbs gave way, whether from the strain of
+emotion or physical weakness, and if it had not been for Angela I should
+have dropped to the floor.
+
+After that she would hear of no excuses. I must stay until morning. I
+could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay a
+mattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. There
+would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one of
+Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and down all the time
+anyway.
+
+Half an hour later I was in bed in a little room that was separated by a
+thin papered partition from the room of the poor consumptive, and
+Angela, who had brought me a cup of hot milk, was saying in a whisper:
+
+"He's very bad. The doctor says he can't last longer than a week. Sister
+Veronica (you remember her, she's Mildred Bankes that used to be) tried
+to get him into a home for the dying. It was all arranged, too, but at
+the last moment he wouldn't go. He told them that, if they wanted to
+separate him from Agnes, they had better bring his coffin because he
+would be dead before they got him to the door."
+
+When she had gone I lay a long time in the dark, listening to the sounds
+on the other side of the partition.
+
+Giovanni awoke with an alarming fit of coughing, and in the querulous,
+plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids have, he
+grumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a burden he was
+to her, while she, moving about the room in her bare feet, coaxed and
+caressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk or his medicine.
+
+Through all this I would hear at intervals the drumming noises of the
+singing downstairs, which sounded in my ears (as the singers were
+becoming more and more intoxicated) like the swirling and screeching of
+an ironical requiem for the dying man before he was dead:
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
+     Onde sorridere volle il creato_."
+
+But somewhere in those dead hours in which London sleeps everything
+became still, and my mind, which had been questioning the grim darkness
+on the worst of the world's tragedies (what a woman will do for those
+she loves), fell back on myself and I thought of the Christian
+institutions which had turned me from their doors, and then of this
+"street-walker" who had given up her own bed to me and was now lying in
+the next room on a mattress on the floor.
+
+I could not help it if I felt a startling reverence for Angela, as a
+ministering angel faithful unto death, and I remembered that as I fell
+asleep I was telling myself that we all needed God's mercy, God's
+pardon, and that, God would forgive her because she had loved much.
+
+But sleep was more tolerant still I dreamt that Angela died, and on
+reaching the gates of heaven all the saints of God met her, and after
+they had clothed her in a spotless white robe, one of them--it was the
+blessed Mary Magdalene--took her hand and said:
+
+"Here is another of the holy martyrs."
+
+I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my forehead. But I
+dare not say what confused and terrible thoughts came next, except that
+they were about baby--what I might do myself if driven to the last
+extremity. When I slept and dreamt again, it was I who was dead, and it
+was my darling mother who met me and took me to the feet of the Blessed
+Virgin and said:
+
+"Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's heart, this
+is my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong. It was all for
+the sake of her child."
+
+When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off through the
+gloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a nightmare. It
+terrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice
+and some awful forces were trying to push me over it.
+
+The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head, and I
+could faintly hear the Italian criers in the front street:
+
+"Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!"
+
+In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the tenderness that
+had been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling of shame at finding
+myself lying where I was, and I got up to run away that I might cleanse
+my soul of the evil thoughts which had come to me while there.
+
+As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All was
+quiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little rest.
+
+A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room without
+looking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the staircase I opened
+it as noiselessly as I could.
+
+Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so much love.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear, clean,
+frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the worst places,
+seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and drink of the night
+before.
+
+I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I had
+gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I was
+struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of loving
+Martin.
+
+Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous
+landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at the
+bottom of them.
+
+The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in long
+furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in her
+arms, and a nurse.
+
+I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come to
+confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quiet
+and be good and she would not keep her long.
+
+"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber," said the
+child.
+
+The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud and
+happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church,
+while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and bowed
+deeply.
+
+I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the
+carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the
+baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church.
+
+Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were rising
+from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a few
+communicants were still on their knees, and others with light yet
+echoing footsteps were making for the door.
+
+The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional
+boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest,
+I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers
+(once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession:
+
+"_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may
+bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."
+
+But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the
+daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could
+not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the
+coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.
+
+She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed
+eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up
+everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.
+
+God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I
+had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw
+myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition
+and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.
+
+Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced
+child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I
+had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by
+her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very
+soul.
+
+I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that
+because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of
+my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer.
+
+Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I
+had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception.
+
+All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer,
+which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my
+Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.
+
+"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the
+priest, thy Vicar_."
+
+It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had
+intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was
+vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked
+boldly up at the altar.
+
+Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession,
+went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at
+the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it,
+and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a
+cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved
+across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.
+
+"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I
+came here to make my confession, but something has come over me since I
+entered this church, and now I cannot."
+
+"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.
+
+"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a
+kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the
+sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God
+does not care_."
+
+The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence
+he said in a quivering voice:
+
+"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil
+tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at
+this moment."
+
+I shuddered, and the priest added:
+
+"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love are
+suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Look
+round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Think
+of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death,
+at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lama
+sabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"
+
+I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands were
+clasped together.
+
+"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you because
+He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have you
+every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for your
+soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Have
+you lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Then
+take courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for His
+own."
+
+I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, coming
+through the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of the
+supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must have
+been a great as well as a good man.
+
+I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into the
+streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soul
+a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine.
+
+Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter how
+mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all day
+and all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child into
+an orphanage, it was clearly intended that I should keep her with me,
+for my own charge and care and joy.
+
+This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the Jew.
+
+It was Saturday morning, and though the broader thoroughfares of the
+East End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life, the Jew's
+house was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath.
+
+As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was dressing
+for the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: _Lerho daudee likras
+kollo_--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let us
+receive the Sabbath with joy!"
+
+Then came a shock.
+
+When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests
+which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed;
+and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs.
+Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the
+stair, and knew that her husband was coming up to me.
+
+A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed in his
+Sabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of his homely
+calling, the patriarchal appearance which had first struck me was even
+more marked than before. His face was pale, his expression was severe,
+and if his tongue betrayed the broken English of the Polish Jew, I, in
+my confusion and fear, did not notice it then.
+
+My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for neglecting my
+work, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my absence. But at a
+second glance I saw that something had happened, something had become
+known, and that he was there to condemn and denounce me.
+
+"You have been out all night," he said. "Can you tell me where you have
+been?"
+
+I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I had
+slept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my friend
+was, and what, I should be speechless.
+
+The Jew waited for my reply and then said:
+
+"You have given us a name--can you say it is your true and right one?"
+
+Again I made no answer, and after another moment the Jew said:
+
+"Can you deny that you have a child whom you have hidden from our
+knowledge?"
+
+I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak.
+
+"Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your Christian
+marriage?"
+
+I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent; and
+after a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew was
+summing me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he said:
+
+"Then it is true? . . . Very well, you will understand that from this
+day you cease to be in my service."
+
+All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody else had
+come into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to plead for me.
+
+"Father . . ." she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew cried
+passionately:
+
+"Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to speak for
+such a woman."
+
+I heard the girl going slowly down the stairs, and then the Jew,
+stepping up to me and speaking more loudly than before, said:
+
+"Woman, leave my house at once, before you corrupt the conscience of my
+child."
+
+Again I became aware that some one had come into the room. It was Mrs.
+Abramovitch, and she, too, was pleading for me.
+
+"Israel! Calm thyself! Do not give way to injustice and anger. On
+Shobbos morning, too!"
+
+"Hannah," said the Jew, "thou speakest with thy mouth, not thy heart.
+The Christian doth not deny that she hath given thee a false name, and
+is the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she were a Jewish
+woman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and in better days our
+law of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she, because she is a
+Christian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The hand of the Lord would
+go out against me."
+
+"But she is homeless, and she hath been a good servant to thee, Israel.
+Give her time to find another shelter."
+
+There was a moment of silence after that, and then the Jew said:
+
+"Very well! It shall not be said that Israel Abramovitch knows not to
+temper justice with mercy."
+
+And then, my face being still down, I heard him saying over my head:
+
+"You may stay here another week. After that I wash my hands of thee."
+
+With these hard words he turned away, and I heard him going heavily down
+the stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying something in a kind
+voice, which I did not comprehend, and then she followed him.
+
+I do not think I had spoken a word. I continued to stand where the Jew
+had left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking the door of
+his own apartment, and knew that he was going off to his synagogue in
+Brick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back of his head like a
+skull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind him, carrying his
+leather-bound prayer-book.
+
+I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like a dead
+body on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In its place
+there was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life were rolling
+over me.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling!
+
+It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness, in the
+name of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of God, were
+persecuting my poor little woman.
+
+But why speak of myself at all, or interrupt my darling's narrative,
+except to say what was happening in my efforts to reach her?
+
+While we were swinging along in our big liner over the heaving bosom of
+the Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger never left me day
+or night.
+
+That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to haunt my
+sleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora glistening in my
+dear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind her.
+
+The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where I
+expected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port Said to
+the house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at the thought
+of the joy or sorrow ahead of me.
+
+Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was one
+from the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to Marseilles to
+meet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way home with us.
+
+Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of the
+letter I had written for my dear one on the day I left Castle Raa.
+Sixteen months had passed since then, serious things had happened in the
+interval, and I had never thought of that letter before.
+
+It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to her
+husband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my darling
+sending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her during my
+absence.
+
+If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would be that
+my dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits as to
+require help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he must have
+done what I wished, and therefore everything would be well.
+
+There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in all
+this, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was on deck
+searching for my chairman among the people waiting for us on the pier.
+
+I saw him immediately, waving his travelling cap with a flourish of joy,
+and I snatched a little comfort from that.
+
+As soon as the steamer was brought to, he was the first to come aboard,
+and I scanned his face as he hurried up the gangway. It was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," I thought; "a man could not look as happy as that if
+he were bringing me bad news."
+
+A moment afterwards he was shaking my hand, clapping me on the shoulder,
+and saying:
+
+"Splendid! Magnificent! Glorious achievement! Proved your point up to
+the hilt, my boy!"
+
+And when I said something about not having gone all the way he cried:
+
+"Never mind! You'll do it next time," which made some of my shipmates
+who were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye, sir," and then
+one of them (it was good old O'Sullivan) shouted:
+
+"By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's after
+saying that the Commanther was turned back this time by anything less
+than the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you may say there's
+forty-eight of us here to tell him he lies."
+
+"I believe it," said the chairman, and then there were further
+congratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but never a
+word from my dear one.
+
+Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private matter until
+we were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But he had nothing to
+say there, either, except about articles to be written, reports to be
+compiled, and invitations to be accepted.
+
+Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my longing
+to know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not ask from
+fear of a bad answer.
+
+Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a roundabout
+way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been my
+parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebody
+else whom he had seen and spoken to.
+
+"Do you mean Mal . . . I should say Lady . . ."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By the holy saints, the way I was thinking that when I brought you the
+letter at Port Said, and saw the clouds of heaven still hanging on you."
+
+I found that the good fellow had a similar trouble of his own (not yet
+having heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my plan, which
+was that of cross-questioning the chairman about my dear one, and I
+about his, and then meeting secretly and imparting what we had learned.
+
+Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering fellows
+afraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but it grips me
+by the throat to this day to see myself taking our chairman into a quiet
+corner of the smoke-room and saying:
+
+"Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet. She was
+sick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to go with
+anybody except myself. You haven't heard of her, have you?"
+
+And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with:
+
+"The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a good
+heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of a
+great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl . . . a lady, I mane.
+You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir . . . eh?"
+
+Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at last) I
+asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he
+answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did
+not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that
+she was the last person in the world to use it, being (God bless her!)
+of the mettle that makes a woman want to fight her own battles without
+asking help of any one.
+
+This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no reply
+to my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that she
+was where no word could come from her--she was dead!
+
+Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to
+walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and
+condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and jury.
+
+"She is dead. I have killed her," I thought.
+
+Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I ever saw on
+earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of it
+now but for the glorious confidence it brought me.
+
+It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes
+to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as
+certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar
+(where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was
+splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal.
+
+It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my
+shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan
+with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy
+cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of
+courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark,
+when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me,
+as plainly as words could speak:
+
+"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say
+that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried
+home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the
+end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman is
+alive! She may be in danger, and beset by all the powers of the devil,
+but that's just why you have been brought home to save her, and you
+_will_ save her, as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow morning."
+
+There are thoughts which, like great notes in music, grip you by the
+soul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong to. This
+was one of them.
+
+Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my own man
+once more; and though I continued to walk the deck while our good ship
+sped along in the night, it was only because there was a kind of wild
+harmony between the mighty voice of the rolling billows of the Bay and
+the unheard anthem of boundless hope that was singing in my breast.
+
+I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me. It was
+the same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of that
+perpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under the shelter
+of our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking above us:
+
+     "_Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
+               Lead Thou me on_."
+
+But the light was within me now, and I knew as certainly as that the
+good ship was under my feet that I was being carried home at the call of
+the Spirit to rescue my stricken darling.
+
+God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England! Less than a
+week and I should be there!
+
+That was early hours on Saturday morning--the very Saturday when my poor
+little woman, after she had been turned away by those prating
+philanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute.
+
+Let him explain it who can. I cannot.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of my
+bed--stunned, stupefied, unable to think--when Miriam, back from the
+synagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a messenger had come for
+me about six o'clock the night before.
+
+"He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how he came
+to know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to come
+immediately,' he said."
+
+I was hardly conscious of what happened next--hardly aware of passing
+through the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses flying by as they
+seem to do from an express train; of my knees trembling; of my throat
+tightening; and of my whole soul crying out to God to save the life of
+my child until I could get to her.
+
+When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears were
+relieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on her lap.
+
+At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay,
+and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; but
+caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby from her
+without more words.
+
+My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to rouse
+her I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had lasted
+twenty-four hours, during which she had taken no nourishment, with the
+result that she was now very thin.
+
+I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct must have
+come to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby, and she awoke,
+and then took a little food.
+
+But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs. Oliver,
+who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look at her.
+
+Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs. Oliver, not
+me, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody," and I found a
+certain consolation in that.
+
+Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened beyond the
+narrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard the squirling of
+a brass band that was going up the street, with the shuffling of an
+irregular procession.
+
+"It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There's
+Ted, carrying a banner."
+
+A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, which
+was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond,
+with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckle
+your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys." Still later I
+heard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that was
+like driving wind and pelting rain:
+
+     "_The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land,
+     Gawd gave the land to the people_."
+
+But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon (the idea
+that she was really ill having taken complete possession of me) I asked
+where I could find the nearest doctor, and being told, I went off in
+search of him.
+
+The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicating
+baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately.
+
+On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals--easily
+recognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers"
+worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled
+with cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. These
+sights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby
+down the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses.
+
+I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands and
+dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in his
+gig, pulled up at the door.
+
+He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment.
+I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes.
+
+Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I went
+through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we are
+waiting for the doctor's first word.
+
+"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and then
+something about finding out the cause of it.
+
+But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap than
+there came a faintly discoloured vomit.
+
+"What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs. Oliver.
+
+Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her milk,
+but the doctor said sharply:
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her."
+
+Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought down a
+bottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I had myself
+bought for baby's cough.
+
+"As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and opening it,
+he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite, saying as he did
+so:
+
+"If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing syrup
+I'll see what the Inspector has to say."
+
+After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and intimate
+questions--if I had had a great grief or shock or worry while baby was
+coming, and whether and how long I had nursed her.
+
+I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of his
+inquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me next.
+
+He said nothing then, however, except to make his recommendations. And
+remembering my loss of work, my heart sank as he enumerated baby's
+needs--fresh cow's milk diluted with lime water, small quantities of
+meat juice, and twenty to thirty drops of the best brandy three or four
+times a day.
+
+When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but he
+cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the
+kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a
+change in the symptoms.
+
+Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling
+in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor
+to the door.
+
+"Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?"
+
+He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes."
+
+"Dangerously ill?"
+
+Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip
+trembling) he said:
+
+"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses
+of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous
+people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comes
+of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and
+above all fresh air and sunshine."
+
+"Will she get better?"
+
+"If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly."
+
+"And if . . . if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips,
+"will she . . . _die_?"
+
+The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keep
+it firm), and said:
+
+"She _may_."
+
+When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face with
+another of the great mysteries of a woman's life--Death--the death of my
+child, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to.
+
+Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, was
+excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave.
+She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if it
+hadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep after
+walking in percession. . . .
+
+Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last of
+my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor. While she was
+away, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap,
+praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's sea-blue eyes, the
+bricklayer came lunging into the house.
+
+"Where's Lizer?" he said.
+
+I told him and he cried:
+
+"The baiby again! Allus the baiby!"
+
+With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut and
+rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and lit
+it--filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark and
+cough without rousing her.
+
+I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke.
+
+"Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called and
+what he had said about fresh air.
+
+"So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of something I
+want to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o' speaking.
+Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on a
+sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baiby
+they ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacred
+dooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'."
+
+Choking with anger, I said:
+
+"Put out your pipe, please."
+
+"Ma'am to _you_!"
+
+"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody to
+make you."
+
+The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to the
+two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:
+
+"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as is
+interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I've
+forgot 'ow to use 'em."
+
+I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into the
+cot I turned on the man and cried:
+
+"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of my
+baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of a
+drug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'll
+go straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning my
+child."
+
+The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment.
+
+"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the East
+End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped out
+in the 'eat of the moment--see?"
+
+"Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem, the man
+went flying before my face as if I had been a fury.
+
+It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day following, the
+next and the next and the next--how baby became less drowsy, but more
+restless; how being unable to retain her food she grew thinner and
+thinner; how I wished to send for the doctor, but dared not do so from
+fear of his fee; how the little money I had left was barely sufficient
+to buy the food and stimulants which were necessary to baby's cure: how
+I sat for long hours with my little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyes
+into her face; and how I cried to God for the life of my child, which
+was everything I had or wanted.
+
+All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it late
+every night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing happened
+there that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One day Miriam,
+looking at me with her big black eyes, said:
+
+"You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself ill."
+
+"No, no, I am not ill," I answered, and then remembering how necessary
+my life was to the life of my child, I said, "I must not be ill."
+
+At last on the Saturday morning--I know now it must have been Saturday,
+but time did not count with me then--I overheard Mrs. Abramovitch
+pleading for me with her husband, saying they knew I was in trouble and
+therefore I ought to have more time to find lodging, another week--three
+days at all events. But the stern-natured man with his rigid religion
+was inexorable. It was God's will that I should be punished, and who was
+he to step in between the All-high and his just retribution?
+
+"The woman is displeasing to God," he said, and then he declared that,
+the day being Sabbath (the two tall candlesticks and the Sabbath loaves
+must have been under his eyes at the moment), he would give me until
+nine o'clock that night, and if I had not moved out by that time he
+would put my belongings into the street.
+
+I remember that the Jew's threat made no impression upon my mind. It
+mattered very little to me where I was to lodge next week or what roof
+was to cover me.
+
+When I reached the Olivers' that morning I found baby distinctly worse.
+Even the brandy would not stay on her stomach and hence her strength was
+plainly diminishing. I sat for some time looking steadfastly into my
+child's face, and then I asked myself, as millions of mothers must have
+done before me, why my baby should suffer so. Why? Why? Why?
+
+There seemed to be no answer to that question except one. Baby was
+suffering because I was poor. If I had not been poor I could have taken
+her into the country for fresh air and sunshine, where she would have
+recovered as the doctor had so confidently assured me.
+
+And why was I poor? I was poor because I had refused to be enslaved by
+my father's authority when it was vain and wrong, or my husband's when
+it, was gross and cruel, and because I had obeyed the highest that was
+in me--the call of love.
+
+And now God looked down on the sufferings of my baby, who was being
+killed for my conduct--killed by my poverty!
+
+I tremble to say what wild impulses came at that thought. I felt that if
+my baby died and I ever stood before God to be judged I should judge Him
+in return. I should ask Him why, if He were Almighty, He permitted the
+evil in the world to triumph over the good, and if He were our heavenly
+Father why He allowed innocent children to suffer? Was there any _human_
+father who could be so callous, so neglectful, so cruel, as that?
+
+I dare say it was a terrible thing to bring God to the bar of judgment,
+to be judged by His poor weak ignorant creature; but it was also
+terrible to sit with a dying baby on my lap (I thought mine was dying),
+and to feel that there was nothing--not one thing--I could do to relieve
+its sufferings.
+
+My faith went down like a flood during the heavy hours of that day--all
+that I had been taught to believe about God's goodness and the
+marvellous efficacy of the Sacraments of His Church.
+
+I thought of the Sacrament of my marriage, which the Pope told me had
+been sanctioned by my Redeemer under a natural law that those who
+entered into it might live together in peace and love--and then of my
+husband and his brutal infidelities.
+
+I thought of the Sacrament of my baby's baptism, which was to exorcise
+all the devils out of my child--and then of the worst devil in the
+world, poverty, which was taking her very life.
+
+After that a dark shadow crossed my soul, and I told myself that since
+God was doing nothing, since He was allowing my only treasure to be torn
+away from me, I would fight for my child's life as any animal fights for
+her young.
+
+By this time a new kind of despair had taken hold of me. It was no
+longer the paralysing despair but the despair that has a driving force
+in it.
+
+"My child shall not die," I thought. "At least poverty shall not kill
+her!"
+
+Many times during the day I had heard Mrs. Oliver trying to comfort me
+with various forms of sloppy sentiment. Children were a great trial,
+they were allus makin' and keepin' people pore, and it was sometimes
+better for the dears themselves to be in their 'eavenly Father's boosim.
+
+I hardly listened. It was the same as if somebody were talking to me in
+my sleep. But towards nightfall my deaf ear caught something about
+myself--that "it" (I knew what that meant) might be better for me, also,
+for then I should be free of encumbrances and could marry again.
+
+"Of course you could--you so young and good-lookin'. Only the other day
+the person at number five could tell me as you were the prettiest woman
+as comes up the Row, and the Vicar's wife couldn't hold a candle to you.
+'Fine feathers makes fine birds,' says she: 'Give your young lady a nice
+frock and a bit o' colour in her checks, and there ain't many as could
+best her in the West End neither.'"
+
+As the woman talked dark thoughts took possession of me. I began to
+think of Angela. I tried not to, but I could not help it.
+
+And then came the moment of _my_ fiercest trial. With a sense of Death
+hanging over my child I told myself that the only way to drive it off
+was to make _some great sacrifice_.
+
+Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to baby,
+but now I felt that _I myself_ belonged to her. I had brought her into
+the world, and it was my duty to see that she did not suffer.
+
+All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting hard
+with me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself from doing
+what I meant to do.
+
+"_Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee_ . . ."
+
+I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use struggling
+against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it)
+which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me.
+
+"I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die.
+I--must--get--money."
+
+Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coat
+and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins.
+
+"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver.
+
+"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered.
+
+And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again--my sweet child, my
+Isabel--I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, for
+though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories of
+lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars.
+
+At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare)
+because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in the
+shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement,
+where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night's
+shopping.
+
+My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and I know
+I was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror in a
+chemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce as flame.
+
+At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a drunken
+woman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm about the neck
+of a drunken sailor.
+
+"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried.
+
+It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry past
+her she said:
+
+"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never get drunk?
+No? What a bleedin' fool you are! Want to get out o' this 'ere 'ole?
+Tike my tip then--gettin' drunk's on'y way out of it."
+
+Farther on I had to steer my way through jostling companies of young
+people of both sexes who were going (I thought) the same way as the
+woman--girls out of the factories with their free walk, and their
+boisterous "fellers" from the breweries.
+
+It was a cold and savage night. As I approached the side street in which
+I lived I saw by the light of the arc lamps a small group of people, a
+shivering straggle of audience, with the hunched-up shoulders of beings
+thinly clad and badly fed, standing in stupid silence at the corner
+while two persons wearing blue uniforms (a man in a peaked cap and a
+young woman in a poke bonnet) sang a Salvation hymn of which the refrain
+was "It is well, it is well with my soul."
+
+The door of the Jew's house was shut (for the first time in my
+experience), so I had to knock and wait, and while I waited I could not
+help but hear the young woman in the poke bonnet pray.
+
+Her prayer was about "raising the standard of Calvary," and making the
+drunkards and harlots of the East End into "seekers" and "soul yielders"
+and "prisoners of the King of Kings."
+
+Before the last words of the prayer were finished the man in the peaked
+cap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman joined him
+with an accordion:
+
+     "_Shall we gather at the river,
+     Where bright angel feet have trod_. . . ."
+
+The door was opened by the Jew himself, who, assuming a severe manner,
+said something to me in his guttural voice which I did not hear or heed,
+for I pushed past him and walked firmly upstairs.
+
+When I had reached my room and lit the gas, I closed and locked the
+door, as if I were preparing to commit a crime--and perhaps I was.
+
+I did not allow myself to think of what I intended to do that night, but
+I knew quite well, and when at one moment my conscience pressed me hard
+something cried out in my heart:
+
+"Who can blame me since my child's life is in danger?"
+
+I opened my trunk and took out my clothes--all that remained of the
+dresses I had brought from Ellan. They were few, and more than a little
+out of fashion, but one of them, though far from gay, was bright and
+stylish--a light blue frock with a high collar and some white lace over
+the bosom.
+
+I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during the
+week, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad that I
+had not done so.
+
+It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I first
+came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather was
+warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only that
+it was my best and most attractive.
+
+After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinging
+looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face was
+deadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxes
+which lay in the pockets of my trunk.
+
+I knew what they contained--the remains of the cosmetics which I had
+bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husband
+love me. Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out
+(with a hare's foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint my
+pale face--reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering out
+the dark rings under my eyes.
+
+While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadened
+sound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman's treble
+voice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the accordion:
+
+     "_Yes, we'll gather, at the river,
+       Where bright angel feet have trod,
+     With its, crystal tide for ever
+       Flowing by the throne of God_."
+
+The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poor
+vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while I
+listened I laughed--thinking what mockery was to sing of "angel feet"
+and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at the corner of the
+London street in the smoky night air.
+
+"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"
+
+Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of my
+trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I left
+Ellan, I began to pull them on.
+
+I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, and
+trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten by
+a new thought.
+
+I was about to commit suicide--the worst kind of suicide, not the
+suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth after
+death!
+
+After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should never he
+able to think of her again! I should have killed her and buried her and
+stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!
+
+That made a grip at my heart--awakening memories of happy days in my
+childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short period of my great
+love, and even making me think of my life in Rome, with its confessions,
+its masses, and the sweetness of its church bells.
+
+I was saying farewell to Mary O'Neill! And parting with oneself seemed
+so terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready to burst.
+
+"But who can blame me when my child's life is in danger?" I asked myself
+again, still tugging at my long gloves.
+
+By the time I had finished dressing the Salvationists were going off to
+their barracks with their followers behind them. Under the singing I
+could faintly hear the shuffling of bad shoes, which made a sound like
+the wash of an ebbing tide over the teeth of a rocky beach--up our side
+street, past the Women's Night Shelter (where the beds never had time to
+become cool), and beyond the public-house with the placard in the window
+saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to make anybody drunk for
+fourpence.
+
+     "_We'll stand the storm, it won't be long,
+       And we'll anchor in the sweet by-and-by_."
+
+I listened and tried to laugh again, but I could not do so now. There
+was one last spasm of my cruelly palpitating heart, in which I covered
+my face with both hands, and cried:
+
+"For baby's sake! For my baby's sake!"
+
+And then I opened my bedroom door, walked boldly downstairs and went out
+into the streets.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I don't call it Chance that this was the very day of my return to
+England.
+
+If I had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what is
+best in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about a
+guiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we cannot reason
+about and prove.
+
+We were two days late arriving, having made dirty weather of it in the
+Bay of Biscay, which injured our propeller and compelled us to lie to,
+so I will not say that the sense of certainty which came to me off
+Finisterre did not suffer a certain shock.
+
+In fact the pangs of uncertainty grew so strongly upon me as we neared
+home that in the middle of the last night of our voyage I went to
+O'Sullivan's cabin, and sat on the side of his bunk for hours, talking
+of the chances of my darling being lost and of the possibility of
+finding her.
+
+O'Sullivan, God bless him, was "certain sure" that everything would be
+right, and he tried to take things gaily.
+
+"The way I'm knowing she'll be at Southampton in a new hat and feather!
+So mind yer oi, Commanther."
+
+We passed the Channel Islands in the spring of morning, and at
+breakfast-time we picked up the pilot, who had brought out a group of
+reporters. I did my best for the good chaps (though it is mighty hard to
+talk about exploring when you are thinking of another subject), and then
+handed them over to my shipmates.
+
+Towards seven o'clock at night we heaved up to the grey stone pier at
+the head of Southampton Water. It was then dark, so being unable to see
+more than the black forms and waving hands of the crowd waiting for us
+with the lights behind them, I arranged with O'Sullivan that he should
+slip ashore as soon as we got alongside, and see if he could find my
+dear one.
+
+"Will you remember her face?" I asked.
+
+"And why wouldn't I? By the stars of God, there's only one of it in the
+world," he answered.
+
+The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a vain man
+proud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have had a little
+of both feelings if the right woman had been there to share them.
+
+My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door of it
+as long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name, but feeling
+as if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help me!
+
+O'Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that everything was
+ready, and it was time to go ashore.
+
+I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not pretend that
+the warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God knows there was a
+moment when, for want of a face I did not see, I could have turned about
+and gone back to the South Pole there and then, without an instant's
+hesitation.
+
+When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand four-square to
+the storm of hand-shaking that fell on me. And perhaps if I had been in
+better trim I should have found lots of fun in the boyish delight of my
+shipmates in being back, with old Treacle shaking hands with everybody
+from the Mayor of the town to the messenger-boys (crying "What cheer,
+matey?"), while the scientific staff were bringing up their wives to be
+introduced to me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with their
+big sisters at school.
+
+At last O'Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could see
+nothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said:
+
+"Never mind! She'll be waiting for us in London perhaps."
+
+It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got off at
+last in a special train commissioned by our chairman--half of our
+company with their wives and a good many reporters having crammed
+themselves into the big saloon carriage reserved for me.
+
+At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers through my
+window, and as soon as we were well away I took up one of them and tried
+to read it, but column after column fell blank on my eyes, for my mind
+was full of other matters.
+
+The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least. It was
+about the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections, the fall of
+ministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows what--things that had
+looked important when we were in the dumb solitude of Winter Quarters,
+but seemed to be of no account now when I was hungering for something
+else.
+
+At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him about
+Ellan.
+
+"That's my native island, you know--anything going on there?"
+
+The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the failure of
+banks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its biggest financial
+man gone smash.
+
+"Is his name O'Neill?" I asked.
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Anything else happened there while I've been away?"
+
+"No . . . yes . . . well, now that I think of it, there was a big scare
+a year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared mysteriously."
+
+"Was . . . was it Lady Raa?"
+
+"Yes," said the reporter, and then (controlling myself as well as I
+could) I listened to a rapid version of what had become known about my
+dear one down to the moment when she "vanished as utterly as if she had
+been dropped into the middle of the Irish Sea."
+
+It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that flying in an
+express train to London, I was as impatient of space and time as if I
+had been in a ship down south stuck fast in the rigid besetment of the
+ice.
+
+I could not talk, and I dared not think, so I shouted for a sing-song,
+and my shipmates (who had been a little low at seeing me so silent)
+jumped at the proposal like schoolboys let loose from school.
+
+Of course O'Sullivan gave us "The Minsthrel Boy"; and Treacle sang "Yew
+are the enny"; and then I, yes I (Oh, God!), sang "Sally's the gel," and
+every man of my company joined in the ridiculous chorus.
+
+Towards ten o'clock we changed lines on the loop at Waterloo and ran
+into Charing Cross, where we found another and still bigger crowd of
+hearty people behind a barrier, with a group of my committee, my fellow
+explorers, and geographers in general, waiting on the platform.
+
+I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-hearted
+congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face I
+could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard the
+superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotel
+was ready and waiting.
+
+But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nun
+were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary.
+
+The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be Sister
+Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of their
+sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew what
+they had come to say before they said it--that my darling was lost, and
+Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was the
+first man who ought to be told of it.
+
+Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like a
+thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe in
+my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.
+
+Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into the
+automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive like
+the deuce to the hotel.
+
+He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard
+surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, saying
+heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of not
+having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next time
+or leave my bones on the way.
+
+We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling had
+stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room I
+locked the door and said:
+
+"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."
+
+Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow for
+me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly got
+further than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had sworn
+by him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he had
+found my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards the
+Sister.
+
+She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something of
+my dear one's story--how she had fled from home on my account, and for
+my sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury;
+how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how
+(Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared on
+the approach of another event of still more serious consequence.
+
+It was no time for modesty, not from me at all events, so while the
+Father's head was down, I asked plainly if there was a child, and was
+told there was, and the fear of having it taken from her (I could
+understand that) was perhaps the reason my poor darling had hidden
+herself away.
+
+"And now, when, where, and by whom was she seen last?" I asked.
+
+"Last week, and again to-day, to-night, here in the West End--by a
+fallen woman," answered the Sister.
+
+"And what conclusion do you draw from that?"
+
+The Sister hesitated for a moment and then said:
+
+"That her child is dead; that she does not know you are alive; and that
+she is throwing herself away, thinking there is nothing left to live
+for."
+
+"What?" I cried. "You believe that? Because she left that brute of a
+husband . . . and because she came to me . . . you believe that she
+could. . . . Never! Not Mary O'Neill! She would beg her bread, or die in
+the streets first."
+
+I dare say my thickening voice was betraying me; but when I looked at
+Mildred and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and heard her excuses
+(it was "what hundreds of poor women were driven to every day"), I was
+ashamed and said so, and she put her kind hand in my hand in token of
+her forgiveness.
+
+"But what's to be done now?" she asked.
+
+O'Sullivan was for sending for the police, but I would not hear of that.
+I was beginning to feel as I used to do when I lost a comrade in a
+blizzard down south, and (without a fact or a clue to guide me) sent a
+score of men in a broad circle from the camp (like spokes in a wheel) to
+find him or follow back on their tracks.
+
+There were only four of us, but I mapped out our courses, where we were
+to go, when we were to return, and what we were to do if any of us found
+my lost one--take her to Sister's flat, which she gave the address of.
+
+It was half-past eleven when we started on our search, and I dare say
+our good old Father Dan, after his fruitless journeys, thought it a
+hopeless quest. But I had found myself at last. My spirits which had
+been down to zero had gone up with a bound. I had no ghost of an idea
+that I had been called home from the 88th latitude for nothing. And I
+had no fear that I had come too late.
+
+Call it frenzy if you like--I don't much mind what people call it. But I
+was as sure as I have ever been of anything in this life, or ever expect
+to be, that the sufferings of my poor martyred darling were at an end,
+and that within an hour I should be holding her in my arms.
+
+     M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There must be a physical power in fierce emotion to deprive us of the
+use of our senses of hearing and even of sight, for my memory of what
+happened after I left the Jew's has blank places in it.
+
+Trying to recall the incidents of that night is like travelling on a
+moorland road under a flying moon, with sometimes the whitest light in
+which everything is clearly seen, and then the blackest darkness.
+
+I remember taking the electric car going west, and seeing the
+Whitechapel Road shooting by me, with its surging crowds of pedestrians,
+its public-houses, its Cinema shows, and its Jewish theatres.
+
+I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through that dead
+belt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is alive like a
+beehive by day and silent and deserted by night.
+
+I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking up
+cigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a flock of
+sheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven through the
+echoing streets from the river-side towards the slaughter-houses near
+Smithfield Market.
+
+I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the cathedral
+were very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But on Ludgate Hill
+the traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet Street crowds of people
+were standing in front of the newspaper offices, reading large placards
+in written characters which were pasted on the windows.
+
+I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their news
+was nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and for whom
+the world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round one of the
+crowds, which extended to the middle of the street, somebody said:
+
+"He has landed at Southampton, it seems."
+
+I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on the
+fringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people, who seemed
+to be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a noise like the
+crackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:
+
+"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait yet."
+
+Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church into
+Leicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were swinging
+along with a high step and laughing loudly, and that one of them was
+Angela, and that she stopped on seeing me and cried:
+
+"Hello! Here I am again, you see! _Giovanni's dead, and I don't care a
+damn!_"
+
+I remember that she said something else--it was about Sister Mildred,
+but my mind did not take it in--and at the next moment she left me, and
+I heard her laughter once more as she swept round the corner.
+
+I hardly know what happened next, for here comes one of the blank places
+in my memory, with nothing to light it except vague thoughts of Martin
+(and that soulless night in Bloomsbury when the newspapers announced
+that he was lost), until, wandering aimlessly through streets and
+streets of people--such multitudes of people, no end of people--I found
+myself back at Charing Cross.
+
+The waiting crowd was now larger and more excited than before, and the
+traffic at both sides of the station was stopped.
+
+"He's coming! He's coming! Here he is!" the people cried, and then there
+were deafening shouts and cheers.
+
+I recall the sight of a line of policemen pushing people back (I was
+myself pushed back); I recall the sight of a big motor-car containing
+three men and a woman, ploughing its way through; I recall the sight of
+one of the men raising his cap; of the crowd rushing to shake hands with
+him; then of the car swinging away, and of the people running after it
+with a noise like that of the racing of a noisy river.
+
+It is the literal truth that never once did I ask myself what this
+tumult was about, and that for some time after it was over--a full hour
+at least--I had a sense of walking in my sleep, as if my body were
+passing through the streets of the West End of London while my soul was
+somewhere else altogether.
+
+Thus at one moment, as I was going by the National Gallery and thought I
+caught the sound of Martin's name, I felt as if I were back in Glen Raa,
+and it was I myself who had been calling it.
+
+At another moment, when I was standing at the edge of the pavement in
+Piccadilly Circus, which was ablaze with electric light and thronged
+with people (for the theatres and music-halls were emptying, men in
+uniform were running about with whistles, policemen were directing the
+traffic, and streams of carriages were flowing by), I felt as if I were
+back in my native island, where I was alone on the dark shore while the
+sea was smiting me.
+
+Again, after a brusque voice had said, "Move on, please," I followed the
+current of pedestrians down Piccadilly--it must have been
+Piccadilly--and saw lines of "public women," chiefly French and Belgian,
+sauntering along, and heard men throwing light words to them as they
+went by, I was thinking of the bleating sheep and the barking dog.
+
+And again, when I was passing a men's club and the place where I had met
+Angela, my dazed mind was harking back to Ilford (with a frightened
+sense of the length of time since I had been there--"Good heavens, it
+must be five hours at least!"), and wondering if Mrs. Oliver was giving
+baby her drops of brandy and her spoonfuls of diluted milk.
+
+But somewhere about midnight my soul seemed to take full possession of
+my body, and I saw things clearly and sharply as I turned out of Oxford
+Street into Regent Street.
+
+The traffic was then rapidly dying down, the streets were darker, the
+cafés were closing, men and women were coming Pout of supper rooms,
+smoking cigarettes, getting into taxis and driving away; and another
+London day was passing into another night.
+
+People spoke to me. I made no answer. At one moment an elderly woman
+said something to which I replied, "No, no," and hurried on. At another
+moment, a foreign-looking man addressed me, and I pushed past without
+replying. Then a string of noisy young fellows, stretching across the
+broad pavement arm-in-arm, encircled me and cried:
+
+"Here we are, my dear. Let's have a kissing-bee."
+
+But with angry words and gestures I compelled them to let me go,
+whereupon one of the foreign women who were sauntering by said
+derisively:
+
+"What does she think she's out for, I wonder?"
+
+At length I found myself standing under a kind of loggia at the corner
+of Piccadilly Circus, which was now half-dark, the theatres and
+music-halls being closed, and only one group of arc lamps burning on an
+island about a statue.
+
+There were few people now where there had been so dense a crowd awhile
+ago; policemen were tramping leisurely along; horse-cabs were going at
+walking pace, and taxis were moving slowly; but a few gentlemen (walking
+home from their clubs apparently) were passing at intervals, often
+looking at me, and sometimes speaking as they went by.
+
+Then plainly and pitilessly the taunt of the foreign woman came back to
+me--what was I there for?
+
+I knew quite well, and yet I saw that not only was I not doing what I
+came out to do, but every time an opportunity had offered I had resisted
+it. It was just as if an inherited instinct of repulsion had restrained
+me, or some strong unseen arm had always snatched me away.
+
+This led me--was it some angel leading me?--to think again of Martin and
+to remember our beautiful and sacred parting at Castle Raa.
+
+"Whatever happens to either of us, we belong to each other for ever," he
+had said, and I had answered, "For ever and ever."
+
+It was a fearful shock to think of this now. I saw that if I did what I
+had come out to do, not only would Mary O'Neill be dead to me after
+to-night, but Martin Conrad would be dead also.
+
+When I thought of that I realised that, although I had accepted, without
+question, the newspaper reports of Martin's death, he had never hitherto
+been dead to me at all. He had lived with me every moment of my life
+since, supporting me, sustaining me and inspiring me, so that nothing I
+had ever done--not one single thing--would have been different if I had
+believed him to be alive and been sure that he was coming back.
+
+But now I was about to kill Martin Conrad as well as Mary O'Neill, by
+breaking the pledge (sacred as any sacrament) which they had made for
+life and for eternity.
+
+Could I do that? In this hideous way too? Never! Never! Never! I should
+die in the streets first.
+
+I remember that I was making a movement to go back to Ilford (God knows
+how), when, on the top of all my brave thinking, came the pitiful
+thought of my child. My poor helpless little baby, who had made no
+promise and was party to no pledge. She needed nourishment and fresh air
+and sunshine, and if she could not get them--if I went back to her
+penniless--she would die!
+
+My sweet darling! My Isabel, my only treasure! Martin's child and mine!
+
+That put a quick end to all my qualms. Again I bit my lip until it bled,
+and told myself that I should speak to the Very next man who came along.
+
+"Yes, the very next man who comes along," I thought.
+
+I was standing at that moment in the shadow of one of the pilasters of
+the loggia, almost leaning against it, and in the silence of the street
+I heard distinctly the sharp firm step of somebody coming my way.
+
+It was a man. As he came near me he slowed down, and stopped. He was
+then immediately behind me. I heard his quick breathing. I felt that his
+eyes were fixed on me. One sidelong glance told me that he was wearing a
+long ulster and a cap, that he was young, tall, powerfully built, had a
+strong, firm, clean-shaven face, and an indescribable sense of the open
+air about him.
+
+"Now, now!" I thought, and (to prevent myself from running away) I
+turned quickly round to him and tried to speak.
+
+But I said nothing. I did not know what women say to men under such
+circumstances. I found myself trembling violently, and before I was
+aware of what was happening I had burst into tears.
+
+Then came another blinding moment and a tempest of conflicting feelings.
+
+I felt that the man had laid hold of me, that his strong hands were
+grasping my arms, and that he was looking into my face. I heard his
+voice. It seemed to belong to no waking moment but to come out of the
+hours of sleep.
+
+"Mary! Mary!"
+
+I looked up at him, but before my eyes could carry the news to my brain
+I knew who it was--I knew, I knew, I knew!
+
+"Don't be afraid! It's I!"
+
+Then something--God knows what--made me struggle to escape, and I cried:
+
+"Let me go!"
+
+But even while I was struggling--trying to fly away from my greatest
+happiness--I was praying with all my might that the strong arms would
+hold me, conquer me, master me.
+
+They did. And then something seemed to give way within my head, and
+through a roaring that came into my brain I heard the voice again, and
+it was saying:
+
+"Quick, Sister, call a cab. Open the door, O'Sullivan. No, leave her to
+me. I've got her, thank God!"
+
+And then blinding darkness fell over me and everything was blotted out.
+
+But only a moment afterwards (or what seemed to be a moment) memory came
+back in a great swelling wave of joy. Though I did not open my eyes I
+knew that I was safe and baby was safe, and all was well. Somebody--it
+was the same beloved voice again--was saying:
+
+"Mally! My Mally! My poor, long-suffering darling! My own again, God
+bless her!"
+
+It was he, it was Martin, my Martin. And, oh Mother of my Lord, he was
+carrying me upstairs in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH PART
+
+I AM FOUND
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My return to consciousness was a painful, yet joyful experience. It was
+almost like being flung in a frail boat out of a tempestuous sea into a
+quiet harbour.
+
+I seemed to hear myself saying, "My child shall not die. Poverty shall
+not kill her. I am going to take her into the country . . . she will
+recover. . . . No, no, it is not Martin. Martin is dead. . . . But his
+eyes . . . don't you see his eyes. . . . Let me go."
+
+Then all the confused sense of nightmare seemed to be carried away as by
+some mighty torrent, and there came a great calm, a kind of morning
+sweetness, with the sun shining through my closed eyelids, and not a
+sound in my ears but the thin carolling of a bird.
+
+When I opened my eyes I was in bed in a room that was strange to me. It
+was a little like the Reverend Mother's room in Rome, having pictures of
+the Saints on the walls, and a large figure of the Sacred Heart over the
+mantelpiece; but there was a small gas fire, and a canary singing in a
+gilded cage that hung in front of the window.
+
+I was trying to collect my senses in order to realize where I was when
+Sister Mildred's kind face, in her white wimple and gorget, leaned over
+me, and she said, with a tender smile, "You are awake now, my child?"
+
+Then memory came rushing back, and though the immediate past was still
+like a stormy dream I seemed to remember everything.
+
+"Is it true that I saw. . . ."
+
+"Yes," said Mildred.
+
+"Then he was not shipwrecked?"
+
+"That was a false report. Within a month or two the newspapers had
+contradicted it."
+
+"Where is he?" I asked, rising from my pillow.
+
+"Hush! Lie quiet. You are not to excite yourself. I must call the
+doctor."
+
+Mildred was about to leave the room, but I could not let her go.
+
+"Wait! I must ask you something more."
+
+"Not now, my child. Lie down."
+
+"But I must. Dear Sister, I must. There is somebody else."
+
+"You mean the baby," said Mildred, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She has been found, and taken to the country, and is getting better
+rapidly. So lie down, and be quiet," said Mildred, and with a long
+breath of happiness I obeyed.
+
+A moment afterwards I heard her speaking to somebody over the telephone
+(saying I had recovered consciousness and was almost myself again), and
+then some indistinct words came hack in the thick telephone voice like
+that of a dumb man shouting down a tunnel, followed by sepulchral peals
+of merry laughter.
+
+"The doctor will be here presently," said Mildred, returning to me with
+a shining face.
+
+"And . . . he?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps he will be permitted to come, too."
+
+She was telling me how baby had been discovered--by means of Mrs.
+Oliver's letter which had been found in my pocket--when there was the
+whirr of an electric bell in the corridor outside, followed (as soon as
+Mildred could reach the door) by the rich roll of an Irish voice.
+
+It was Dr. O'Sullivan, and in a moment he was standing by my bed, his
+face ablaze with smiles.
+
+"By the Saints of heaven, this is good, though," he said. "It's worth a
+hundred dozen she is already of the woman we brought here first."
+
+"That was last night, wasn't it?" I asked.
+
+"Well, not last night exactly," he answered. And then I gathered that I
+had been ill, seriously ill, being two days unconscious, and that Martin
+had been in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+
+"He's coming, isn't he?" I said. "Will he be here soon? How does he
+look? Is he well? Did he finish his work?"
+
+"Now, now, now," said the doctor, with uplifted hands. "If it's exciting
+yourself like this you're going to be, it isn't myself that will he
+taking the risk of letting him come at all."
+
+But after I had pleaded and prayed and promised to be good he consented
+to allow Martin to see me, and then it was as much as I could do not to
+throw my arms about his neck and kiss him.
+
+I had not noticed what Mildred was doing during this time, and almost
+before I was aware of it somebody else had entered the room.
+
+It was dear old Father Dan.
+
+"Glory be to God!" he cried at sight of me, and then he said:
+
+"Don't worry, my daughter, now don't worry,"--with that nervous emphasis
+which I knew by long experience to be the surest sign of my dear
+Father's own perturbation.
+
+I did not know then, or indeed until long afterwards, that for six
+months past he had been tramping the streets of London in search of me
+(day after day, and in the dark of the night and the cold of the
+morning); but something in his tender old face, which was seamed and
+worn, so touched me with the memory of the last scene in my mother's
+room that my eyes began to overflow, and seeing this he began to laugh
+and let loose his Irish tongue on us.
+
+"My blissing on you, doctor! It's the mighty proud man ye'll be
+entoirely to be saving the life of the swatest woman in the world. And
+whisha, Sister, if ye have a nip of something neat anywhere handy, faith
+it isn't my cloth will prevent me from drinking the health of
+everybody."
+
+If this was intended to cheer me up it failed completely, for the next
+thing I knew was that the doctor was bustling the dear old Father out of
+the room, and that Mildred was going out after him.
+
+She left the door open, though, and as soon as I had calmed down a
+little I listened intently for every sound outside.
+
+It was then that I heard the whirr of the electric bell again, but more
+softly this time, and followed by breathless whispered words in the
+corridor (as of some one who had been running) and once more . . . I
+knew, I knew, I knew!
+
+After a moment Mildred came to ask me in a whisper if I was quite sure
+that I could control myself, and though my heart was thumping against my
+breast, I answered Yes.
+
+Then I called for a hand-glass and made my hair a shade neater, and
+after that I closed my eyes (God knows why) and waited.
+
+There was a moment of silence, dead silence, and then--then I opened my
+eyes and saw him standing in the open doorway.
+
+His big, strong, bronzed face--stronger than ever now, and marked with a
+certain change from the struggles he had gone through--was utterly
+broken up. For some moments he did not speak, but I could see that he
+saw the change that life had made in me also. Then in a low voice, so
+low that it was like the breath of his soul, he said:
+
+"Forgive me! Forgive me!"
+
+And stepping forward he dropped to his knees by the side of my bed, and
+kissed the arms and hands I was stretching out to him.
+
+That was more than I could bear, and the next thing I heard was my
+darling's great voice crying:
+
+"Sister! Sister! Some brandy! Quick! She has fainted."
+
+But my poor little fit of hysterics was soon at an end, and though
+Martin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer, a mighty
+wave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never known before and
+may never know again.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations of the
+Great Surgeon an anæsthetic has not yet been found, but within a week I
+was sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but gloriously alive and
+without the whisper of a cry.
+
+By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me with a
+solemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in
+peace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to give up one of
+her rooms to me as long as I should need it.
+
+Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then ten, and
+finally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought such an
+atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed to
+give me new strength--being so pale and bloodless now that I thought the
+sun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull.
+
+I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting by my
+side, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make sure he was
+there.
+
+How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about his
+expedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a dark
+scene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was all
+a-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes, though
+he laughed and made so light of them.
+
+It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole; and when
+he told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to him which had
+brought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if I had been a
+coward, unworthy of the man who loved me.
+
+Sometimes he talked about baby--he called her "Girlie"--telling a funny
+story of how he had carried her off from Ilford, where the bricklayer
+had suddenly conceived such a surprising affection for my child ("what
+he might go so far as to call a fatherly feeling") that he had been
+unwilling to part with her until soothed down by a few sovereigns--not
+to say frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearly
+broken his wrist.
+
+"She's as right as a trivet now, though," said Martin, "and I'll run
+down to Chevening every other day to see how she's getting on."
+
+My darling was in great demand from the first, but when he could not be
+with me in the flesh he was with me in the spirit, by means of the
+newspapers which Mildred brought up in armfuls.
+
+I liked the illustrated ones best, with their pictures of scenes in the
+Expedition, particularly the portraits of Martin himself in his
+Antarctic outfit, with his broad throat, determined lips, clear eyes,
+and that general resemblance to the people we all know which makes us
+feel that the great men of every age are brothers of one family.
+
+But what literary tributes there were, too! What interviews, what
+articles! A member of the scientific staff had said that "down there,"
+with Nature in her wrath, where science was nothing and even physical
+strength was not all, only one thing really counted, and that was the
+heroic soul, and because Martin had it, he had always been the born
+leader of them all.
+
+And then, summing up the tangible gains of the Expedition, the _Times_
+said its real value was moral and spiritual, because it showed that in
+an age when one half of the world seemed to be thinking of nothing but
+the acquisition of wealth (that made me think of my father) and the
+other half of nothing but the pursuit of pleasure (that reminded me of
+my husband and Alma), there could be found men like Martin Conrad and
+his dauntless comrades who had faced death for the sake of an ideal and
+were ready to do so again.
+
+Oh dear! what showers of tears I shed over those newspapers! But the
+personal honours that were bestowed on Martin touched me most of all.
+
+First, the Royal Geographical Society held a meeting at the Albert Hall,
+where the Gold Medal was presented to him. I was in a fever of anxiety
+on the night of that function, I remember, until Dr. O'Sullivan (heaven
+bless, him!) came flying upstairs, to tell me that it had been a
+"splendid success," and Martin's speech (he hadn't prepared a word of
+it) "a perfect triumph."
+
+Then some of the Universities conferred degrees on my darling, which was
+a source of inexpressible amusement to him, especially when (after
+coming back from Edinburgh) he marched up and down my room in his
+Doctor's cap and gown, and I asked him to spell "promise" and he
+couldn't.
+
+Oh, the joy of it all! It was so great a joy that at length it became a
+pain.
+
+The climax came when the Home Secretary wrote to say that the King had
+been graciously pleased to confer a Knighthood upon Martin, in
+recognition of his splendid courage and the substantial contribution he
+had already made to the material welfare of the world.
+
+That frightened me terribly, though only a woman would know why. It was
+one thing to share the honours of the man I loved (however secretly and
+as it were by stealth), but quite another thing to feel that they were
+carrying him away from me, drawing him off, lifting him up, and leaving
+me far below.
+
+When the sense of this became acute I used to sit at night, when Mildred
+was out at her work, by the lofty window of her room, looking down on
+the precincts of Piccadilly, and wondering how much my darling really
+knew about the impulse that took me there, and how nearly (but for the
+grace of God) its awful vortex had swallowed me up.
+
+It was then that I began to write these notes (having persuaded Mildred
+to buy me this big book with its silver clasp and key), not intending at
+first to tell the whole story of my life, but only to explain to him for
+whom everything has been written (what I could not bring myself to say
+face to face), how it came to pass that I was tempted to that sin which
+is the most awful crime against her sex that a woman can commit.
+
+Three months had gone by this time, the spring was coming and I was
+beginning to feel that Martin (who had not yet been home) was being kept
+in London on my account, when Dr. O'Sullivan announced that I was well
+enough to be moved, and that a little of my native air would do me good.
+
+Oh, the thrill that came with that prospect! I suppose there is a sort
+of call to one's heart from the soil that gave one birth, but in my case
+it was coupled with a chilling thought of the poor welcome I should
+receive there, my father's house being closed to me and my husband's
+abandoned for ever.
+
+The very next morning, however, there came a letter from Father Dan,
+giving me all the news of Ellan: some of it sad enough, God knows (about
+the downfall of my father's financial schemes); some of it deliciously
+wicked, such as it would have required an angel not to rejoice in (about
+the bad odour in which Alma and my husband were now held, making the
+pendulum of popular feeling swing back in my direction); and some of it
+utterly heart-breaking in its assurances of the love still felt for me
+in my native place.
+
+Of course the sweetest part of that came from Christian Ann, who, after
+a stiff fight with her moral principles, had said that whatever I had
+done I was as "pure as the mountain turf," and, who then charged Father
+Dan with the message that "Mary O'Neill's little room" was waiting for
+her still.
+
+This settled everything--everything except one thing, and that was the
+greatest thing of all. But when Martin came later the same day, having
+received the same message, and declared his intention of taking me home,
+there seemed to be nothing left to wish for in earth or heaven.
+
+Nevertheless I shouldn't have been a woman If I had not coquetted with
+my great happiness, so when Martin had finished I said:
+
+"But dare you?"
+
+"Dare I--what?" said Martin.
+
+"Dare you go home . . . with _me_?"
+
+I knew what I wanted him to say, and he said it like a darling.
+
+"Look here, Mary, I'm just spoiling for a sight of the little island,
+and the old people are destroyed at not seeing me; but if I can't go
+back with you, by the Lord God! I'll never go back at all."
+
+I wanted to see baby before going away, but that was forbidden me.
+
+"Wait until you're well enough, and we'll send her after you," said Dr.
+O'Sullivan.
+
+So the end of it all was that inside a week I was on my way to Ellan,
+not only with Martin, but also with Mildred, who, being a little out of
+health herself, had been permitted to take me home.
+
+Shall I ever forget our arrival at Blackwater! The steamer we sailed in
+was streaming with flags from stem to stern, and as she slid up the
+harbour the dense crowds that packed the pier from end to end seemed
+frantic with excitement. Such shouting and cheering! Such waving of hats
+and handkerchiefs!
+
+There was a sensible pause, I thought, a sort of hush, when the gangway
+being run down, Martin was seen to give his arm to me, and I was
+recognised as the lost and dishonoured one.
+
+But even that only lasted for a moment, it was almost as if the people
+felt that this act of Martin's was of a piece with the sacred courage
+that had carried him down near to the Pole, for hardly had he brought me
+ashore, and put me into the automobile waiting to take us away, when the
+cheering broke out into almost delirious tumult.
+
+I knew it was all for Martin, but not even the humility of my position,
+and the sense of my being an added cause of my darling's glory, could
+make me otherwise than proud and happy.
+
+We drove home, with the sunset in our faces, over the mountain road
+which I had crossed with my husband on the day of my marriage; and when
+we came to our own village I could not help seeing that a little--just a
+little--of the welcome waiting for us was meant for me.
+
+Father Dan was there. He got into the car and sat by my side; and then
+some of the village women, who had smartened themselves up in their
+Sunday clothes, reached over and shook hands with me, speaking about
+things I had said and done as a child and had long forgotten.
+
+We had to go at a walking pace the rest of the way, and while Martin
+saluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father Dan talked
+in my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been going on at
+Sunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the little room being
+made ready for me, and the best bedroom (the doctor's and Christian
+Ann's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the dairy for the old people
+themselves--as if their beloved son had been good in not forgetting
+them, and had condescended in coming home.
+
+"Is it true?" they had asked each other. "Is he really, really coming?"
+"What does he like to eat, mother?" "What does he drink?" "What does he
+smoke?"
+
+I had to close my eyes as I came near the gate of my father's house,
+and, except for the rumbling of the river under the bridge and the
+cawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known when we were
+there.
+
+The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and his
+close-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house at the
+toot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for the little
+that was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy by the car, at
+the side on which Martin sat.
+
+I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and there it
+was behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into bloom.
+
+There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and before
+the automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and had her in
+his arms.
+
+I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment my
+spirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps her
+heart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son.
+
+But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically weak and
+slipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred were helping me
+to alight, my Martin's mother rushed at me and gathered me in her arms,
+crying:
+
+"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God
+bless her!"--just as she did in the old, old days when I came as a child
+"singing carvals to her door."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room," with its
+odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun was
+shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle were
+lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across the
+sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of the
+sea.
+
+Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and
+Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old
+love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and white
+blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peat
+from the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed from the shore.
+
+Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went downstairs to
+the sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and fresh, Christian Ann,
+who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on the griddle, cried to me,
+as to a child:
+
+"Come your ways, _villish_; you know the house."
+
+And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the
+"elbow-chair" in the _chiollagh_, under the silver bowls that stood on
+the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe in
+general, for there was nobody else in the room:
+
+"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen great
+wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as nice
+and comfortable as if she had never been away!"
+
+Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had been
+watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's
+bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying:
+
+"The boy's late, mother--what's doing on him, I wonder?"
+
+We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the homely
+beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey and
+cakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like cream!
+
+In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and served,
+and I will not say that for me there was not a startling delight in
+being waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and getting
+it, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!
+
+At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Ann
+sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went on
+talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.
+
+It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautiful
+faith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lost
+at sea.
+
+What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down on
+her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers?
+If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--having
+borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being the
+first to hear his living voice in the world?
+
+So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects," she
+had clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. And
+behold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the
+_chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctor
+upstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourself
+away, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on the
+gravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for her
+to open the door let a great yell out of him through the window that a
+"talegraf" had come to say her boy was safe.
+
+Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded cassock (the
+same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and then
+Martin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout from
+the quarter-deck.
+
+"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"
+
+It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though
+there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love
+than license.
+
+When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and
+said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to
+settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to
+London presently, she cried:
+
+"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's
+witched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there in
+London that's wanting him?"
+
+Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of
+his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:
+
+"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman."
+
+"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own,
+they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"
+
+"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do you
+want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might
+give her away."
+
+"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal!
+He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn't
+come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."
+
+How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing
+most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life
+before.
+
+Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister
+Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her
+knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home--sad news,
+most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for
+"galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure and
+fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and
+certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.
+
+My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be a
+ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's old
+cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--having
+left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so I
+gathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should never
+look on their faces again.
+
+"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said Christian
+Ann, catching a word of Martin's.
+
+Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something of
+my husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan)
+for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely to
+grant it.
+
+Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells were
+in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommy
+again, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put a sight on himself")
+had come round to welcome me as well--a little older, a little feebler,
+"tacking a bit," as he said, with "romps in his fetlock joints," but
+feeling "well tremenjus."
+
+He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs for
+me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth"
+of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately after
+myself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a master
+who had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the
+black curse on her" that would "carry her naked sowl to hell."
+
+"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . . . no,
+not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold."
+
+What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day like it,
+too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once more
+upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a
+resurrection no less marvellous.
+
+After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take
+walks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the
+high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as
+to the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (without
+speaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed.
+
+There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my
+child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own
+position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the
+evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I
+yearned for my little treasure.
+
+The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and
+asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.
+
+"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now, so why
+shouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business soon, and
+I'll bring her home with me."
+
+But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted by
+one cause of anxiety--Christian Ann. I could not even be sure she knew
+of the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetch
+her.
+
+So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together in
+the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Ann
+knitting and I pretending to read, I told her all.
+
+She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only been
+waiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches she said:
+
+"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself will
+say. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy water, and she's
+my own child's child, God bless her!"
+
+After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for the
+little stranger who was to come--cutting up blankets and sheets, and
+smuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room" the wooden
+cradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it with bows and
+ribbons.
+
+We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when he
+wondered "what all the fuss was about," and if "the island expected a
+visit from the Queen," we told him (Christian Ann did) to "ask us no
+questions and we'd tell no lies."
+
+What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one! I
+used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had "somebody's
+eyes," and then the dear simple old thing would say:
+
+"Somebody's eyes, has she? Well, well! Think of that, now!"
+
+But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of one
+child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor,
+answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby's age (eleven
+months now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, how
+many of her little teeth should have come and whether she could remember
+me.
+
+As the time approached for Martin's return our childishness increased,
+and on the last day of all we carried on such a game together as must
+have made the very Saints themselves look down on us and laugh.
+
+Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself, "Now
+they're on their way to Euston," and every time I heard the clock strike
+I was thinking, "Now they're in the train," or "Now they're at
+Liverpool," or "Now they're on the steamer"; but all the while I sang
+"Sally" and other nonsense, and pretended to be as happy as the day was
+long.
+
+Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she was
+always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, I
+saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, and
+the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs.
+
+Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to such a
+state of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to bed; but
+sitting down in the _chiollagh_, and watching the road from the
+imprisonment of the "elbow-chair," I saw at last the two big white eyes
+of the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by the gate of my father's
+house.
+
+A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen with a
+nice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her breast.
+
+She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and then a
+strange thing happened.
+
+I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying up, and we
+two women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch at her, when
+she blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then held out her arms
+to her grandmother!
+
+That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the Lord for
+it), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven of rapture.
+
+"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her bosom--her
+eyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks were slushed as with
+rain.
+
+I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to show the
+nurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with Martin, I did not
+care, in the intoxication of my happiness, how silly I was in my praise
+of her.
+
+"Isn't she a little fairy, a little angel, a little cherub?" I cried.
+"And that nasty, nasty birthmark quite, quite gone."
+
+The ugly word had slipped out unawares, but Martin had caught it, and
+though I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace until I had told
+him what it meant--with all the humiliating story of my last night at
+Castle Raa and the blow my husband had struck me.
+
+"But that's all over now," I said.
+
+"Is it? By the Lord God I swear it isn't, though!" said Martin, and his
+face was so fierce that it made me afraid.
+
+But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the old
+doctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked in on
+his way to the "Plough," and hinting at my going to church again some
+day, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght mulish" under my
+"perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising children) "the Bishop
+himself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at which Martin laughed so much
+that I thought he had forgotten his vow about my husband.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I hadn't, though.
+
+The brute! The bully! When my darling told me that story (I had to drag
+it out of her) I felt that if I had been within a hundred miles at the
+time, and had had to crawl home to the man on my hands and knees, there
+wouldn't have been enough of him left now to throw on the dust-heap.
+
+Nearly two years had passed since the debt was incurred, but I thought a
+Christian world could not go on a day longer until I had paid it
+back--with interest.
+
+So fearing that my tender-hearted little woman, if she got wind of my
+purpose, might make me promise to put away my vow of vengeance, I got up
+early next morning and ordered the motor-car to be made ready for a
+visit to Castle Raa.
+
+Old Tommy happened to be in the yard of the inn while I was speaking to
+the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. I
+agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of the
+car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and his
+knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big as a
+turnip.
+
+We did not talk too much on the way--I had to save up my strength for
+better business--and it was a long spin, but we got to our journey's end
+towards the middle of the morning.
+
+As we went up the drive (sacred to me by one poignant memory) an open
+carriage was coming down. The only occupant was a rather vulgar-looking
+elderly woman (in large feathers and flowing furbelows) whom I took to
+be the mother of Alma.
+
+Three powdered footmen came to the door of the Castle as our car drove
+up. Their master was out riding. They did not know when he would be
+back.
+
+"I'll wait for him," I said, and pushed into the hall, old Tommy
+following me.
+
+I think the footmen had a mind to intercept us, but I suppose there was
+something in my face which told them it would be better not to try, so I
+walked into the first room with the door open.
+
+It turned out to be the dining-room, with portraits of the owner's
+ancestors all round the walls--a solid square of evil-looking rascals,
+every mother's son of them.
+
+Tommy, still resting his knotty hands on his big blackthorn, was sitting
+on the first chair by the door, and I on the end of the table, neither
+saying a word to the other, when there came the sound of horses' hoofs
+on the path outside. A little later there were voices in the hall, both
+low and loud ones--the footmen evidently announcing my arrival and their
+master abusing them for letting me into the house.
+
+At the next moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room. He was
+carrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid. Behind him
+came Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a lithe whip in her
+gloved hands.
+
+I saw that my noble lord was furious, but that mood suited me as well as
+another, so I continued to sit on the end of the table.
+
+"So I hear, sir," he said, striding up to me, "I hear that you have
+taken possession of my place without so much as 'by your leave'?"
+
+"That's so," I answered.
+
+"Haven't you done enough mischief here, without coming to insult me by
+your presence?"
+
+"Not quite. I've a little more to do before I've finished."
+
+"Jim," said the woman (in such a weary voice), "don't put yourself about
+over such a person. Better ring the bell for the servants and have him
+turned out of doors."
+
+I looked round at her. She tried an insolent smile, but it broke down
+badly, and then his lordship strode up to me with quivering lips.
+
+"Look here, sir," he said. "Aren't you ashamed to show your face in my
+house?"
+
+"I'm not," I replied. "But before I leave it, I believe _you'll_ be
+ashamed to show your face anywhere."
+
+"Damn it, sir! Will you do me the honour to tell me why you are here?"
+said his lordship, with fury in his looks.
+
+"Certainly. That's exactly what I've come for," I said, and then I
+stated my business without more ado.
+
+I told him what he had done to the woman who was ten thousand times too
+good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with
+his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and
+finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur.
+
+"Liar!" he cried, fairly gasping in his rage. "You're a liar and your
+informant is a liar, too."
+
+"Tommy," I said, "will you step outside for a moment?"
+
+Tommy went out of the room at once, and the woman, who was now looking
+frightened, tried to follow him.
+
+I stopped her. Rising from the table, I stepped over to the door and
+locked it.
+
+"No, madam," I said. "I want you to see what takes place between his
+lordship and me."
+
+The wretched woman fell back, but the man, grinding his teeth, came
+marching up to me.
+
+"So you've come to fight me in my own house, have you?" he cried.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "A man fights his equal. I've come to _thrash
+you_."
+
+That was enough for him, he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but it
+didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm with
+which he was lunging out at me.
+
+And then, seizing him by the white stock at his throat, I thrashed him.
+I thrashed him as I should have thrashed vicious ape. I thrashed him
+while he fumed and foamed, and cursed and swore. I thrashed him while he
+cried for help, and then yelled with pain and whined for mercy. I
+thrashed him under the eyes of his ancestors, the mad, bad race he came
+from, and, him the biggest blackguard of them all. And then I flung him
+to the ground, bruised in every bone, and his hunting-crop after him.
+
+"I hear you're going to court for an Act of Divorce," I said. "Pity you
+can't take something to back you, so take that, and say I gave it you."
+
+I was turning towards the door when I heard a low, whining cry, like
+that of a captured she-bear. It was from the woman. The wretched
+creature was on her knees at the farthest corner of the room, apparently
+mumbling prayers, as if in terror that her own turn might be coming
+next.
+
+In her sobbing fear I thought she looked more than ever like a poisonous
+snake, and I will not say that the old impulse to put my foot on it did
+not come back for a moment. But I only said as I passed, pointing to the
+writhing worm on the floor:
+
+"Look at him, madame. I wish you joy of your nobleman, and him of you."
+
+Then I opened the door, and notwithstanding the grim business I had been
+going through, I could have laughed at the scene outside.
+
+There was old Tommy with his back to the dining-room door, his Glengarry
+awry on his tousled head, and his bandy legs stretched firmly apart,
+flourishing his big-headed blackthorn before the faces of the three
+powdered footmen, and inviting them to "come on."
+
+"Come on, now, you bleating ould billy-goats, come on, come on!"
+
+I was in no hurry to get away, but lit a cigar in front of the house
+while the chauffeur was starting the motor and Tommy was wiping his
+steaming forehead on the sleeve of his coat.
+
+All the way home the old man talked without ceasing, sometimes to me,
+and sometimes to the world in general.
+
+"You gave him a piece of your mind, didn't you?" he asked, with a wink
+of his "starboard eye."
+
+"I believe I did," I answered.
+
+"I allus said you would. 'Wait till himself is after coming home, and
+it'll be the devil sit up for some of them,' says I."
+
+There was only one limitation to Tommy's satisfaction over our day's
+expedition--that he had not cracked the powdered skulls of "some o' them
+riddiclus dunkeys."
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phase
+of my too changeful story.
+
+Every week Martin had been coming and going between Ellan and London,
+occupied when he was away with the business of his next Expedition (for
+which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home with
+reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he was
+writing about his last one.
+
+As for myself, I had been (or tried to think I had been) entirely happy.
+With fresh air, new milk, a sweet bedroom, and above all, good and
+tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), my
+health had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness
+which goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so.
+
+Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sun
+was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spite
+of the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I was
+never entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about my
+position.
+
+I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not to
+speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, for
+sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to my
+thoughts, and it was just as if we were all silently waiting, waiting,
+waiting for some event that was to justify and rehabilitate me.
+
+It came at last--for me with a startling suddenness.
+
+One morning, nurse being out on an errand and Christian Ann patting her
+butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrug
+when our village newsman came to the threshold of the open door.
+
+"Take a _Times_," he said. "You might as well be out of the world,
+ma'am, as not know what's going on in it."
+
+I took one of his island newspapers, and after he had gone I casually
+glanced at it.
+
+But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my face
+was--
+
+     "INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED."
+
+It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellan
+legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiastical
+members) had granted my husband's petition.
+
+Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps I
+should have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God that
+the miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forced
+upon me was at last at an end.
+
+But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my
+fingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matter
+about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had,
+through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through the
+dust.
+
+I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my
+darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he always
+did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left to
+me was to hide myself and die.
+
+But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heard
+the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what else
+was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush of
+wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and my
+hands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live at
+his mother's home.
+
+"Such news! Such news!" he cried. "We are free, free, free!"
+
+Then, seeing the newspaper at my feet on the floor, he said:
+
+"Ah, I see you know already. I told them to keep everything away from
+you--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Of
+course it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm,
+after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he has
+done. But what matter about that either? He has done just what we
+wanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, your
+conscience forbidding you. The barrier that has divided us is down . . .
+now we can be married at any time."
+
+I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to believe
+fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me
+at last, that for some time I could not speak. And when I did speak,
+though my heart was clamouring loud, I only said:
+
+"But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband and
+wife?"
+
+"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do
+think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor
+girl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and you
+are never to look back again."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but what
+about you?"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"I looked forward to being a help--at least not a trouble to you,
+Martin."
+
+"And so you will be. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+"Martin," I said (I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help doing
+it), "wouldn't it injure you to marry me . . . being what I am now . . .
+in the eyes of the world, I mean?"
+
+He looked at me for a moment as if trying to catch my meaning, and then
+snatched me still closer to his breast.
+
+"Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable
+insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don't
+care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swear
+that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms."
+
+That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying with
+all my soul that my objections would be overcome.
+
+In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissed
+and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years of
+fiery struggle that in the eyes of God and man I had a _right_ to do so.
+
+And oh dear, oh dear! When Martin had gone back to his work, what
+foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!
+
+I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then took
+her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must have
+overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that her
+voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher.
+
+Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, and
+after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of her
+sweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my own
+hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been the
+unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--was
+flowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me and
+I saw myself as a bride, in my bridal veil and blossoms.
+
+How happy I was going to be! But indeed I felt just then as if I had
+always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holy
+water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days in
+London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentioned
+Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of the
+maternity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed.
+
+Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and I
+noticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spoke
+about the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but I
+could not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and on
+the top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over our
+household had suddenly slid away.
+
+After luncheon, nurse being back with baby, I went out for a walk alone,
+feeling wonderfully well and light, and having two hours to wait for
+Martin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough."
+
+How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! How
+joyous the air--so sweet and so full of song-birds!
+
+I remember that I thought life had been so good to me that I ought to be
+good to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemed
+wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever he
+had done to her.
+
+So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage on
+the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I only
+slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of Nessy
+MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps impossible) it might be to reach him.
+
+Even then I faced about for a moment to the Big House with some vain
+idea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping upstairs to my
+mother's room--having such a sense of joyous purity that I wished to
+breathe the sacred air my blessed saint had lived in.
+
+But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of the
+Presbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself, with a
+little access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only right and
+proper that I should bring my happiness where I had so often brought my
+sorrow--to the dear priest who had been my friend since the day of my
+birth and my darling mother's friend before.
+
+Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him!
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+A few minutes afterwards I was tripping upstairs (love and hope work
+wonderful miracles!) behind the Father's Irish housekeeper, Mrs.
+Cassidy, who was telling me how well I was looking ("smart and well
+extraordinary"), asking if it "was on my two feet I had walked all the
+way," and denouncing the "omathauns" who had been "after telling her
+there wasn't the width of a wall itself betune me and the churchyard."
+
+I found Father Dan in his cosy study lined with books; and being so much
+wrapped up in my own impetuous happiness I did not see at first that he
+was confused and nervous, or remember until next day that, though (at
+the sound of my voice from the landing) he cried "Come in, my child,
+come in," he was standing with his back to the door as I
+entered--hiding something (it must have been a newspaper) under the
+loose seat of his easy-chair.
+
+"Father," I said, "have you heard the news?"
+
+"The news. . . ."
+
+"I mean the news in the newspaper."
+
+"Ah, the news in the newspaper."
+
+"Isn't it glorious? That terrible marriage is over at last! Without my
+doing anything, either! Do you remember what you said the last time I
+came here?"
+
+"The last time. . . ."
+
+"You said that I, being a Catholic, could not break my marriage without
+breaking my faith. But my husband, being a Protestant, had no
+compunction. So it has come to the same thing in the end, you see. And
+now I'm free."
+
+"You're free . . . free, are you?"
+
+"It seems they have been keeping it all away from me--making no defence,
+I suppose--and it was only this morning I heard the news."
+
+"Only this morning, was it?"
+
+"I first saw it in a newspaper, but afterwards Martin himself came to
+tell me."
+
+"Martin came, did he?"
+
+"He doesn't care in the least; in fact, he is glad, and says we can be
+married at any time."
+
+"Married at any time--he says that, does he?"
+
+"Of course nothing is arranged yet, dear Father, but I couldn't help
+coming to see you about it. I want everything to be simple and quiet--no
+display of any kind."
+
+"Simple and quiet, do you?"
+
+"Early in the morning--immediately after mass, perhaps."
+
+"Immediately after mass. . . ."
+
+"Only a few wild flowers on the altar, and the dear homely souls who
+love me gathered around."
+
+"The dear, homely souls. . . ."
+
+"It will be a great, great thing for me, but I don't want to force
+myself upon anybody, or to triumph over any one--least of all over my
+poor father, now that he is so sick and down."
+
+"No, no . . . now that he is so sick and down."
+
+"I shall want you to marry us, Daddy Dan--not the Bishop or anybody else
+of that kind, you know."
+
+"You'll want me to marry you--not the Bishop or anybody else of that
+kind."
+
+"But Father Dan," I cried, laughing a little uneasily (for I had begun
+to realise that he was only repeating my own words), "why don't you say
+something for yourself?"
+
+And then the cheery sunshine of the cosy room began to fade away.
+
+Father Dan fumbled the silver cross which hung over his cassock (a sure
+sign of his nervousness), and said with a grave face and in a voice all
+a-tremble with emotion:
+
+"My child. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You believe that I wouldn't pain or distress or shock you if I could
+avoid it?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+"Yet I am going to pain and distress and shock you now. I . . . I cannot
+marry you to Martin Conrad. I daren't. The Church thinks that you are
+married already--that you are still the wife of your husband."
+
+Though my dear priest had dealt me my death-blow, I had not yet begun to
+feel it, so I smiled up into his troubled old face and said:
+
+"But how can the Church think that, dear Father? My husband has no
+rights over me now, and no duties or responsibilities with respect to
+me. He can marry again if he likes. And he will, I am sure he will, and
+nobody can prevent him. How, then, can the Church say that I am still
+his wife?"
+
+"Because marriage, according to the law of the Church, can only be
+dissolved by death," said Father Dan. "Haven't I told you that before,
+my daughter? Didn't we go over it again and again when you were here the
+last time?"
+
+"Yes, yes, but I thought if somebody else sought the divorce--somebody
+who had never believed in the indissolubility of marriage and wasn't
+bound by the law of the Church . . . we've heard of cases of that kind,
+haven't we?"
+
+Father Dan shook his head.
+
+"My poor child, no. The Church thinks marriage is a sacred covenant
+which no difference of belief, no sin on either side, can ever break."
+
+"But, Father," I cried, "don't you see that the law has already broken
+it?"
+
+"Only the civil law, my daughter. Remember the words of our blessed and
+holy Redeemer: '_Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth
+another committeth adultery; and he that marrieth one that is put away
+committeth adultery.'_ . . . My poor child, my heart bleeds for you, but
+isn't that the Divine Commandment?"
+
+"Then you think," I said (the room was becoming dark and I could feel my
+lip trembling), "you think that because I went through that marriage
+ceremony two years ago . . . and though the civil law has dissolved it
+. . . you think I am still bound by it, and will continue to be so . . .
+to the end of my life?"
+
+Father Dan plucked at his cassock, fumbled his print handkerchief, and
+replied:
+
+"I am sorry, my child, very, very sorry."
+
+"Father Dan," I said sharply, for by this time my heart was beginning to
+blaze, "have you thought about Martin? Aren't you afraid that if our
+Church refuses to marry us he may ask some other church to do so?"
+
+"Christ's words must be the final law for all true Christians, my
+daughter. And besides. . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Besides that. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It blisters my tongue to say it, my child, knowing your sufferings and
+great temptations, but. . . ."
+
+"But what, dear Father?"
+
+"You are in the position of the guilty party, and therefore no good
+clergyman of any Christian Church in the world, following the
+Commandment of his Master, would dare to marry you."
+
+What happened after that I cannot exactly say. I remember that, feeling
+the colour flying to my face, I flung up my hands to cover it, and that
+when I came to full possession of my senses again Father Dan (himself in
+a state of great agitation) was smoothing my arms and comforting me.
+
+"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth--the
+bitter truth, my daughter."
+
+He had always seen this dark hour coming to him, and again and again he
+had prayed to be delivered from it--in the long nights of his fruitless
+wanderings when I was lost in London, and again since I had been found
+and had come home and he had looked on, with many a pang, at our silent
+hopes and expectations--Martin's and mine, we two children.
+
+"And when you came into my little den to-day, my daughter, with a face
+as bright as stars and diamonds, God knows I would have given half of
+what is left of my life that mine should not be the hand to dash the cup
+of your happiness away."
+
+As soon as I was sufficiently composed, within and without, Father Dan
+led me downstairs (praying God and His Holy Mother to strengthen me on
+my solitary way), and then stood at the door in his cassock to watch me
+while I walked up the road.
+
+It was hardly more than half an hour since I had passed over the ground
+before, yet in that short time the world seemed to have become pale and
+grey--the sun gone out, the earth grown dark, the still air joyless,
+nothing left but the everlasting heavens and the heavy song of the sea.
+
+As I approached the doctor's house Martin came swinging down the road to
+meet me, with his strong free step and that suggestion of the wind from
+the mountain-tops which seemed to be always about him.
+
+"Hello!" he cried. "Thought you were lost and been hunting all over the
+place for you."
+
+But as he came nearer and saw how white and wan my face was, though I
+was doing my best to smile, he stopped and said:
+
+"My poor little woman, where have you been, and what have they been
+doing to you?"
+
+And then, as well as I could, I told him.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+"It's all my fault," he said.
+
+He had led me to the garden-house, which stood among the bluebells at
+the end of the orchard, and was striding to and fro in front of it.
+
+"I knew perfectly what the attitude of the Church would be, and I ought
+to have warned you."
+
+I had never before seen him so excited. There was a wild look in his
+eyes and his voice was quivering like the string of a bow.
+
+"Poor old Father Dan! He's an old angel, with as good a heart as ever
+beat under a cassock. But what a slave a man may be to the fetish of his
+faith! Only think what he says, my darling! The guilty party! I'll never
+believe you are the guilty party, but consider! The guilty party may
+never marry! No good clergyman of any Christian Church in the world dare
+marry her! What an infamy! Ask yourself what the churches are here for.
+Aren't they here to bring salvation to the worst of sinners? Yet they
+cast out the woman who has sinned against her marriage vow--denying her
+access to the altar and turning her out of doors--though she may have
+repented a thousand times, with bitter, bitter tears!"
+
+He walked two or three paces in front of the garden-house and then came
+back to me with flaming eyes.
+
+"But that's not your case, anyway," he said. "Father Dan knows perfectly
+that your marriage was no marriage at all--only a sordid bit of
+commercial bargaining, in which your husband gave you his bad name for
+your father's unclean money. It was no marriage in any other sense
+either, and might have been annulled if there had been any common
+honesty in annulment. And now that it has tumbled to wreck and ruin, as
+anybody might have seen it would do, you are told that you are bound to
+it to the last day and hour of your life! After all you have gone
+through--all you have suffered--never to know another hour of happiness
+as long as you live! While your husband, notwithstanding his brutalities
+and infidelities, is free to do what he likes, to marry whom he pleases!
+How stupid! How disgusting! how damnable!"
+
+His passionate voice was breaking, he could scarcely control it.
+
+"Oh, I know what they'll say. It will be the old, old song, 'Whom God
+hath joined together.' That's what this old Church of ours has been
+saying for centuries to poor women with broken hearts. Has the Church
+itself got a heart to break? No--nothing but its cast-iron laws which
+have been broken a thousand times and nobody a penny the worse."
+
+"But I wonder," he continued, "I wonder why these churchmen, who would
+talk about the impossibility of putting asunder those whom God has
+joined together, don't begin by asking themselves how and when and where
+God joins them. Is it in church, when they stand before the altar and
+are asked a few questions, and give a few answers? If so, then God is
+responsible for some of the most shocking transactions that ever
+disgraced humanity--all the pride and vanity and deliberate concubinage
+that have covered themselves in every age, and are covering themselves
+still, with the cloak of marriage."
+
+"But no," said Martin, "it's not in churches that God marries people.
+They've got to be married before they go there, or they are never
+married at all--never! They've got to be married in their _hearts_, for
+that's where God joins people together, not in churches and before
+priests and altars."
+
+I sat listening to him with a rising and throbbing heart, and after
+another moment he stepped into the garden-house, and sat beside me.
+
+"Mary," he said, in his passionate voice, "that's our case, isn't it?
+God married us from the very first. There has never been any other woman
+for me, and there never has been any other man for you--isn't that so,
+my darling? . . . Then what are they talking about--these churches and
+churchmen? It's _they_ who are the real divorcers--trying to put those
+asunder whom God Himself has joined together. That's the plain sense of
+the matter, isn't it?"
+
+I was trembling with fear and expectation. Perhaps it was the same with
+me as it had been before; perhaps I wanted (now more than ever) to
+believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to be able
+to answer him; perhaps my overpowering love and the position I stood in
+compelled me to agree. But I could not help it if it seemed to me that
+his clear mind--clear as a mountain river and as swift and strong--was
+sweeping away all the worn-out sophistries.
+
+"Then what . . . what are we to do?" I asked him.
+
+"Do? Our duty to ourselves, my darling, that's what we have to do. If we
+cannot be married according to the law of the Church, we must be married
+according to the law of the land. Isn't that enough? This is our own
+affair, dearest, ours and nobody else's. It's only a witness we want
+anyway--a witness before God and man that we intend to be man and wife
+in future."
+
+"But Father Dan?"
+
+"Leave him to me," said Martin. "I'll tell him everything. But come into
+the house now. You are catching a cold. Unless we take care they'll kill
+you before they've done."
+
+Next day he leaned over the back of my chair as I sat in the _chiollagh_
+with baby in my lap, and said, in a low tone:
+
+"I've seen Father Dan."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The old angel took it badly. 'God forbid that you should do that same,
+my boy,' he said, 'putting both yourself and that sweet child of mine
+out of the Church for ever.' 'It's the Church that's putting us out,' I
+told him. 'But God's holy law condemns it, my son,' he said. 'God's law
+is love; and He has no other law,' I answered."
+
+I was relieved and yet nervous, glad and yet afraid.
+
+A week passed, and then the time came for Martin to go to Windsor for
+his investiture. There had been great excitement in Sunny Lodge in
+preparation for this event, but being a little unwell I had been out of
+the range of it.
+
+At the moment of Martin's departure I was in bed, and he had come
+upstairs to say good-bye to me.
+
+What had been happening in the meantime I hardly knew, but I had
+gathered that he thought pressure would be brought to bear on me.
+
+"Our good old Church is like a limpet on the shore," he said. "Once it
+gets its suckers down it doesn't let go in a hurry. But sit tight,
+little woman. Don't yield an inch while I'm away," he whispered.
+
+When he left me I reached up to see him going down the road to the
+railway station. His old father was walking proudly by his side,
+bare-headed as usual and still as blithe as a boy.
+
+Next day I was startled by an unexpected telegram. It came from a
+convent in Lancashire and was addressed to "Mary O'Neill, care of Doctor
+Conrad." It ran:
+
+"_Am making a round of visits to the houses of our Society and would
+like to see you on my way to Ireland. May I cross to-morrow? Mother
+Magdalene_."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+She arrived the following afternoon--my dear Reverend Mother with the
+pale spiritual face and saint-like eyes.
+
+Except that her habit was now blue and white instead of black, she
+seemed hardly changed in any respect since our days at the Sacred Heart.
+
+Finding that I was in bed, she put up at the "Plough" and came every day
+to nurse me.
+
+I was naturally agitated at seeing her again after so many years and
+such various experiences, being uncertain how much she knew of them.
+
+Remembering Martin's warning, I was also fairly certain that she had
+been sent for, but my uneasiness on both heads soon wore off.
+
+Her noiseless step, her soft voice, and her sweet smile soothed and
+comforted me. I began to feel afresh the influence she had exercised
+over me when I was a child, and to wonder why, during my dark time in
+London, I had never thought of writing to her.
+
+During the first days of her visit she said nothing about painful
+things--never mentioning my marriage, or what had happened since she saw
+me last.
+
+Her talk was generally about our old school and my old schoolfellows,
+many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats," which were under
+the spiritual direction of one of the Pope's domestic prelates.
+
+Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who had
+"become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat Maestro of the
+Pope's choir who had cried when I first sang the hymn to the Virgin,
+("Go on, little angel,"); and sometimes about the two old lay sisters
+(now quite toothless) who still said I might have been a "wonderful
+washerwoman" if I had "put my mind to it."
+
+I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this consciously
+in order to break down my defences, but the effect was the same. Little
+by little, during the few days she was with me, she bridged the space
+back to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I found myself stirred by the
+emotions of the convent, and breathing again the air of my beloved Rome.
+
+On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up by her
+side in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just such a
+peaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was stirring; not a
+breath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard were the lowing of
+the cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur of the sea, and the
+jolting of a springless cart that was coming up from the shore, laden
+with sea wrack.
+
+As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of the
+village in front--especially in the window of my mother's room, which
+was just visible over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard.
+
+The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome she would
+be in church singing the _Ora pro nobis_.
+
+"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said.
+
+At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own
+thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the
+holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity:
+
+     "Mater purissima
+       Ora pro nobis.
+     Mater castissima
+       Ora pro nobis."
+
+When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gently
+she said:
+
+"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't go without telling you why I came"--and then her
+mission was revealed to me.
+
+She had heard about my marriage and the ruin it had fallen to; my
+disappearance from home and the circumstances of my recovery; my
+husband's petition for divorce and the disclosures that had followed it.
+
+But sad and serious and even tragic as all this might be, it was as
+nothing (in the eyes of the Church and of God) compared with the awful
+gravity of the step I now contemplated--a second marriage while my
+husband was still alive.
+
+She had nothing to say against Martin. Except the facts that concerned
+myself she had never heard a word to his discredit. She could even
+understand those facts, though she could not condone them. Perhaps he
+had seen my position (married to a cruel and unfaithful husband) and his
+pity had developed into love--she had heard of such happenings.
+
+"But only think, my child, what an abyss he is driving you to! He asks
+you to break your marriage vows! . . . Oh, yes, yes, I can see what he
+will say--that pressure was put upon you and you were too young to know
+what you were doing. That may be true, but it isn't everything. I
+thought it wrong, cruelly wrong, that your father should choose a
+husband for you without regard to your wish and will. But it was you,
+not your father, who made your marriage vows, and you can never get away
+from that--never!"
+
+Those marriage vows were sacred; our blessed Saviour had said they
+could never be broken, and our holy Church had taken His Commandment for
+law.
+
+"Think, my child, only think what would happen to the world if every
+woman who has made an unhappy marriage were to do as you think of doing.
+What a chaos! What an uprooting of all the sacred ties of home and
+family! And how women would suffer--women and children above all. Don't
+you see that, my daughter?"
+
+The security of society lay in the sanctity of marriage; the sanctity of
+marriage lay in its indissolubility; and its indissolubility centred in
+the fact that God was a party to it.
+
+"Perhaps you are told that your marriage will be your own concern only
+and that God and the Church have nothing to do with it. But if women had
+believed that in all ages, how different the world would be to-day! Oh,
+believe me, your marriage vow is sacred, and you cannot break it without
+sin--mortal sin, my daughter."
+
+The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad, wash my
+heart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of seeing him again,
+and if possible forget him altogether.
+
+"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . ."
+
+"It will be quite impossible," I said as well as I could, for my very
+lips were trembling.
+
+I had been shaken to the depths of my soul by what the Reverend Mother
+said, but remembering Martin's warning I now struggled to resist her.
+
+"Two years ago, while I was living with my husband I tried to do that
+and I couldn't," I said. "And if I couldn't do it then, when the legal
+barrier stood between us, how can I do it now when the barrier is gone?"
+
+After that I told her of all I had passed through since as a result of
+my love for Martin--how I had parted from him when he went down to the
+Antarctic; how I had waited for him in London; how I had sacrificed
+family and friends and home, and taken up poverty and loneliness and
+hard work for him; how I had fallen into fathomless depths of despair
+when I thought I had lost him; and how joy and happiness had returned
+only when God, in His gracious goodness, had given him back.
+
+"No, no, no", I cried. "My love for Martin can never be overcome or
+forgotten--never as long as I live in the world!"
+
+"Then," said the Reverend Mother (she had been listening intently with
+her great eyes fixed on my hot and tingling face), "then," she said, in
+her grave and solemn voice, "If that is the case, my child, there is
+only one thing for you to do--to leave it."
+
+"Leave it?"
+
+"Leave the world, I mean. Return with me to Rome and enter the convent."
+
+It would be impossible to say how this affected me--how it shook me to
+the heart's core--how, in spite of my efforts to act on my darling's
+warning, it seemed to penetrate to the inmost part of my being and to
+waken some slumbering instinct in my soul.
+
+For a long time I sat without speaking again, only listening with a
+fluttering heart to what the Reverend Mother was saying--that it was one
+of the objects of the religious life to offer refuge to the tortured
+soul that could not trust itself to resist temptation; and that taking
+my vows as a nun to God would be the only way (known to and acknowledged
+by the Church) of cancelling my vows as a wife to my husband.
+
+"You will be a bride still, my child, but a bride of Christ. And isn't
+that better--far better? You used to wish to be a nun, you know, and if
+your father had not come for you on that most unhappy errand you might
+have been one of ourselves already. Think of it, my child. The Mothers
+of our convent will be glad to welcome you, if you can come as a willing
+and contented Sister. And how can I leave you here, at the peril of your
+soul, my daughter?"
+
+I was deeply moved, but I made one more effort.
+
+I told the Reverend Mother that, since the days when I had wished to be
+a nun, a great change had come over me. I had become a woman, with all a
+woman's passions--the hunger and thirst for love, human love, the love
+of the good man who loved me with all his soul and strength. Therefore I
+could never be a willing and contented Sister. I should only break the
+peace and harmony of their house. And though she were to put me down in
+the lowest cell of her convent, my love would follow me there; it would
+interrupt my offices, it would clamour through my prayers, and I should
+always be unhappy--miserably unhappy.
+
+"Not so unhappy there as you will be if you remain in the world and
+carry out your intention," said the Reverend Mother. "Oh believe me, my
+child, I know you better than you know yourself. If you marry again, you
+will never be able to forget that you have broken your vow. Other women
+may forget it--frivolous women--women living in society and devoting
+their lives to selfish pleasures. Such women may divorce their husbands,
+or be divorced by them, and then marry again, without remembering that
+they are living in a state of sin, whatever the civil law may say--open
+and wicked and shameless sin. But you will remember it, and it will make
+you more unhappy than you have ever been in your life before."
+
+"Worse than that," she continued, after a moment, "it will make your
+husband unhappy also. He will see your remorse, and share it, because he
+will know he has been the cause. If he is a good man the mere sight of
+your grief will torture him. The better man he is the more will he
+suffer. If you were a runaway nun he would wish to take you back to your
+convent, for though it might tear his heart out to part with you, he
+would want to restore your soul. But being a wife who has broken her
+marriage vows he will never be able to do anything. An immense and awful
+shadow will stand between you and darken every hour of your lives that
+is left."
+
+When the Reverend Mother had done I sat motionless and speechless, with
+an aching and suffocating heart, staring down on the garden over which
+the night was falling.
+
+After a while she patted my cold hand and got up to go, saying she would
+call early in the morning to bid me good-bye. Her visit to Ireland would
+not last longer than three weeks, and after that she might come back for
+me, if I felt on reflection (she was sure I should) that I ought to
+return with her to Rome.
+
+I did not reply. Perhaps it was partly because I was physically weak
+that my darling's warning was so nearly overcome. But the moment the
+door closed on the Reverend Mother a conviction of the truth of what she
+had said rushed upon me like the waves of an overflowing sea.
+
+Yet how cruel! After all our waiting, all our longing, all our gorgeous
+day-dreams of future happiness! When I was going to be a bride, a happy
+bride, with my lost and stolen girlhood coming back to me!
+
+For the second time a dark and frowning mountain had risen between
+Martin and me. Formerly it had been my marriage--now it was my God.
+
+But if God forbade my marriage with Martin what was I to do? What was
+left in life for me? Was there anything left?
+
+I was sitting with both hands over my face, asking myself these
+questions and struggling with a rising tempest of tears, when I heard
+baby crying in the room below, and Christian Ann hushing and comforting
+her.
+
+"What's doing on the _boght_, I wonder?"
+
+A few minutes later they came upstairs, Isabel on her grandmother's arm,
+in her nightdress, ready for bed.
+
+"If it isn't the wind I don't know in the world what's doing on the
+_millish_," said the old lady.
+
+And then baby smiled through the big round beads that stood in her
+sea-blue eyes and held out her arms to me.
+
+Oh God! Oh God! Was not _this_ my answer?
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same conclusion.
+Long before the thought came to me she had conceived the idea that
+Father Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to carry me off, and
+in her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak of higher and nobler
+instincts) she had resented this intensely.
+
+For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to baby in
+half-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We're no women for these
+nun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we, _villish_?"), but
+on the fifth day it burst into the fiercest flame and the gentle old
+thing flung out at everybody.
+
+That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother, who, after
+saying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned to the
+parlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to the railway
+station.
+
+What provoked Christian Ann's outburst I never rightly knew, for though
+the door to the staircase was open, and I could generally catch anything
+that was said in the room below (through the open timbers of the
+unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me,
+and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels only rumbled up like the sound
+of a drum.
+
+But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of a
+breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering with
+emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.
+
+"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're saying to the
+Father about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome is she? To the
+convent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will! Not if I know her,
+ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am. . . . Temptation, you
+say? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call it overcoming
+temptation--going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . . Yes,
+I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, but
+asking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not thinking too much of your convents,
+or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfish
+lives either, ma'am."
+
+Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then--
+
+"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nun
+myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's all
+as one--I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . .
+Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too,
+or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for Mary
+O'Neill, _she_ has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After
+doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the _boght millish_, maybe we all
+are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never
+heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And
+if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as
+well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're
+saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."
+
+Another interruption and then--"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keeps
+the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two years
+for Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn,
+and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat,
+or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's
+sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of
+the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching little
+Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the
+measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of
+your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel
+before the tabernacle."
+
+There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father
+Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clear
+notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.
+
+"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holy
+state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though some
+ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . A
+mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock or
+no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing it
+up well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes the
+Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born
+on. . . .
+
+"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about her
+saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am.
+God gave her the _boght villish_, and is she to run away from it? It's a
+fine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm
+surprised at you--such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as
+you're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that--I really
+did. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no
+mothers at all and never will be--tempting a poor woman in her trouble
+to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . ."
+
+Still another rumble of soft voices and then--
+
+"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's only too
+eager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is on the
+hearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill, it's there
+she'll be for the rest of _my_ life, and it's sorry I am for the
+darling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . . .
+
+"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into any
+convent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she did. I'm
+a mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You might put the
+black hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful powerful thing, and
+she'd never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinking
+of her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be asking herself. 'What's
+happening to my motherless child?' she'd be saying. And as the years
+went on she'd be thinking, 'Is she well, and has she taken her first
+communion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what's the world
+doing on her?' . . .
+
+"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her child is
+here to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill! I'll never
+believe it of her! Never in this world!"
+
+I heard nothing more for a long time after that--nothing but a noise in
+my own head which drowned all other noises. And when I recovered my
+composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for there
+was no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (which
+was going rapidly) and Christian Ann's voice, fierce but broken as if
+baby had cried and she was comforting her.
+
+Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The mighty
+passion of motherhood--which another mighty passion had temporarily
+overlaid--sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple,
+child-like heart of my Martin's mother.
+
+In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all the
+problems of life for me.
+
+If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I had
+already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or under
+what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and baby
+was the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do--to
+remain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child.
+
+That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a convent. To
+live for my child! Alone with her! Here, where my sin had been, to work
+out my atonement!
+
+This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first thought
+of it. And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how hard it would
+be to tear myself away from the love which waited with open arms for me
+(So near, so sweet, so precious), there seemed to be something majestic,
+almost sublime, in the sacrifice I was about to make--the sacrifice of
+everything in the world (except one thing) that was dearer to me than
+life itself.
+
+A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this sacrifice. I saw
+myself as a woman who, having pledged herself to God in her marriage and
+sinned against the law in breaking her marriage vows, was now going to
+accept her fate and to humble herself before the bar of Eternal Justice.
+
+But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was so
+strong and noble!
+
+After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pains of my poor
+torn heart and almost persuading myself that I had won a victory, a
+letter came by the evening post which turned all my great plans to dust
+and ashes.
+
+The letter was from Martin. Only four little pages, written in my
+darling's rugged hand, half serious and half playful, yet they made the
+earth rock and reel beneath me.
+
+     "MY DEAR LITTLE WOMAN,--_Just back from Windsor. Stunning 'do.'
+     Tell you all about it when I get back home. Meantime up to my eyes
+     in work. Arrangements for next Expedition going ahead splendidly.
+     Had a meeting of the committee yesterday and settled to sail by the
+     'Orient' third week in August, so as to get down to Winter Quarters
+     in time to start south in October.
+
+     "Our own little affair has got to come off first, though, so I'll
+     see the High Bailiff as soon as I return.
+
+     "And what do you think, my 'chree'? The boys of the 'Scotia' are
+     all coming over to Ellan for the great event. 'Deed, yes, though,
+     every man-jack of them! Scientific staff included, not to speak of
+     O'Sullivan and old Treacle--who swears you blew a kiss to him. They
+     remember you coming down to Tilbury. Aw, God bless me soul, gel,
+     the way they're talking of you! There's no holding them at all at
+     all!
+
+     "Seriously, darling, you have no time to lose in making your
+     preparations. My plan is to take you to New Zealand and leave you
+     at Wellington (good little town, good people, too) while I make my
+     bit of a trip to the Pole.
+
+     "We'll arrange about Girlie when I reach home, which will be next
+     week, I hope--or rather fear--for every day is like a month when
+     I'm away from you.
+
+     "But never mind, little woman! Once I get this big Expedition over
+     we are not going to be separated any more. Not for a single day as
+     long as we live, dearest! No, by the Lord God--life's too short for
+     it._
+
+     "MART."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+After I had read this letter I saw that my great battle, which I had
+supposed to be over, was hardly begun.
+
+Martin was coming home with his big heart full of love for me, and my
+own heart ran out to meet him.
+
+He intended to sail for New Zealand the second week in August, and he
+expected to take me with him.
+
+In spite of all my religious fears and misgivings, I asked myself why I
+should not go? What was to prevent me? What sin had I really committed?
+What was there for reparation? Was it anything more than the letter of
+the Divine law that I had defied and broken?
+
+My love was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever. He was
+going out on a great errand in the service of humanity. Couldn't I go to
+be his partner and helpmate? And if there _had_ been sin, if the law of
+God _had_ been broken, wouldn't that, too, be a great atonement?
+
+Thus my heart fought with my soul, or with my instincts as a child of
+the Church, or whatever else it was that brought me back and back, again
+and again, in spite of all the struggles of my love, to the firm
+Commandment of our Lord.
+
+Father Dan had been right--I could not get away from that. The Reverend
+Mother had been right, too--other women might forget that they had
+broken the Divine law but I never should. If I married Martin and went
+away with him, I should always be thinking of the falseness of my
+position, and that would make me unhappy. It would also make Martin
+unhappy to witness my unhappiness, and that would be the worst
+bitterness life could bring.
+
+Then what was left to me? If it was impossible that I should bury myself
+in a convent it was equally impossible that I should live alone, and
+Martin in the same world with me.
+
+Not all the spiritual pride I could conjure up in the majesty and
+solemnity of my self-sacrifice could conquer the yearning of my heart as
+a woman. Not all my religious fervour could keep me away from Martin. In
+spite of my conscience, sooner or later I should go to him--I knew quite
+well I should. And my child, instead of being a barrier dividing us,
+would be a natural bond calling on us and compelling us to come
+together.
+
+Then what was left to a woman in my position who believed in the Divine
+Commandment--who could not get away from it? Were all the doors of life
+locked to her? Turn which way she would, was there no way out?
+
+Darker and darker every day became this question, but light came at
+last, a kind of light or the promise of light. It was terrible, and yet
+it brought me, oh, such immense relief!
+
+I am almost afraid to speak of it, so weak and feeble must any words be
+in which I attempt to describe that unforgetable change. Already I had
+met some of the mysteries of a woman's life--now I was to meet the last,
+the greatest, the most tragic, and yet the kindest of them all.
+
+I suppose the strain of emotion I had been going through had been too
+much for my physical strength, for three days after the arrival of
+Martin's letter I seemed to be really ill.
+
+I am ashamed to dwell on my symptoms, but for a moment I am forced to do
+so. My eyes were bright, my cheeks were coloured, and there was no
+outward indication of any serious malady. But towards evening I always
+had a temperature, and in the middle of the night (I was sleeping badly)
+it rose very high, with a rapid pulse and anxious breathing, and in the
+morning there was great exhaustion.
+
+Old Doctor Conrad, who had been coming to me twice a day, began to look
+very grave. At last, after a short examination, he said, rather
+nervously:
+
+"I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me. Will you
+receive him?"
+
+I said "Yes" on one condition--that if the new doctor had anything
+serious to say he should report it first to me.
+
+A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and the
+consulting physician was sent for. He came early the next day--a
+beautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the sea bringing the
+smell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying between.
+
+He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow cross his
+clean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me. They were those
+tender but searching eyes which are so often seen in doctors, who are
+always walking through the Valley of the Shadow and seem to focus their
+gaze accordingly.
+
+Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the hand I
+held out to him, he said:
+
+"I trust we'll not frighten you, my lady."
+
+I liked that (though I cared nothing about my lost title, I thought it
+was nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I should not be too
+restless.
+
+While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such beautiful soft
+hands) he told me that he had had a daughter of my own age once.
+
+"Once? Where is she now?" I asked him.
+
+"In the Kingdom. She died like a Saint," he answered.
+
+Then he made a long examination (returning repeatedly to the same
+place), and when it was over and he raised his face I thought it looked
+still more serious.
+
+"My child," he said (I liked that too), "you've never spared yourself,
+have you?"
+
+I admitted that I had not.
+
+"When you've had anything to do you've done it, whatever it might cost
+you."
+
+I admitted that also. He looked round to see if there was anybody else
+in the room (there was only the old doctor, who was leaning over the end
+of the bed, watching the face of his colleague) and then said, in a low
+voice:
+
+"Has it ever happened that you have suffered from privation and hard
+work and loss of sleep and bad lodgings and . . . and exposure?"
+
+His great searching eyes seemed to be looking straight into my soul, and
+I could not have lied to him if I had wished, so I told him a little
+(just a little) about my life in London--at Bayswater, in the East End
+and Ilford.
+
+"And did you get wet sometimes, very wet, through all your clothes?" he
+asked me.
+
+I told him No, but suddenly remembering that during the cold days after
+baby came (when I could not afford a fire) I had dried her napkins on my
+body, I felt that I could not keep that fact from him.
+
+"You dried baby's napkins on your own body?" he asked.
+
+"Sometimes I did. Just for a while," I answered, feeling a little
+ashamed, and my tears rising.
+
+"Ah!" he said, and then turning to the old doctor, "What a mother will
+do for her child, Conrad!"
+
+The eyes of Doctor Conrad (which seemed to have become swollen) were
+still fixed on the face of his colleague, and, speaking as if he had
+forgotten that I was present with them in the room, he said:
+
+"You think she's very ill, don't you?"
+
+"We'll talk of that in your consulting-room," said the strange doctor.
+
+Then, telling me to lie quiet and they would come back presently, he
+went downstairs and Martin's father followed him.
+
+Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of me
+during the last few days), and I asked her who were in the
+parlour-kitchen.
+
+"Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad--and baby," she told me.
+
+Then the doctors came back--the consultant first, trying to look
+cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his head down,
+as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to receive sentence.
+
+"My lady," said the strange doctor, "you are a brave woman if ever there
+was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about your condition."
+
+And then he told me.
+
+I was not afraid. I will not say that I was not sorry. I could have
+wished to live a little longer--especially now when (but for the
+Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp.
+
+But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, something
+supernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the
+bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led me
+out of it.
+
+Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to anybody except
+a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no need of them.
+
+All fear had vanished from my thoughts. I had no fear for myself, I
+remembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was for Martin--he
+loved me so; there had never been any other woman in the world for him.
+
+After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given them too
+much trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and said
+nothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying there
+would be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probably
+make no outward manifestation.
+
+Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked him
+if it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared, although
+everything was in God's hands and nobody could say certainly.
+
+I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a sound
+of crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her. I knew
+what was happening--the good souls were listening at the bottom of the
+stairs.
+
+My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry. Then I
+had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that what
+I was going through was nothing. But finally I bethought me of Martin,
+and asked that they might both be brought up, for I had something to
+say to them.
+
+After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple pure
+dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking very
+sorrowful, the sweet old children.
+
+Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) I
+told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were to
+tell nobody else--nobody whatever, especially Martin.
+
+"Leave _me_ to tell _him_," I said. "Do you faithfully promise me?"
+
+I could see how difficult it was for them to keep back their tears, but
+they gave me their word and that was all I wanted.
+
+"My boy! My poor boy _veen!_ He's thinking there isn't another woman in
+the world like her," said Christian Ann.
+
+And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting the same
+promise concerning myself, when I was a child at school.
+
+After that the Blackwater doctor stepped up to say good-bye.
+
+"I leave you in good hands, but you must let me come to see you again
+some day," he said, and then with a playful smile he added:
+
+"They've got lots of angels up in heaven--we must try to keep some of
+them on earth, you know."
+
+That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our national
+day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in the
+village.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what reaction of my
+whole being, physical and spiritual, has set in since yesterday, but my
+heart is lighter than for a long time, and sleep, which I had come to
+look upon as a lost blessing, came to me last night for four solid
+hours--beautiful and untroubled as a child's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th. Letter
+full of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home, dearest."
+Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get him back, yet I
+almost dread his coming. When he was away before, Time could not go fast
+enough for me. Now it is going too fast. I know what that means--the
+story I have to tell. How am I to tell it?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I must be
+up when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in bed when he
+comes would be too much a shock for him.
+
+"Servants are such domineering tyrants," says Christian Ann, who never
+had but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in the house
+that the poor mistress was grateful to God when Hollantide came round
+and the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse is a dear, though. How
+glad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann to let her stay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a proud and
+stately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I am terribly weak
+(no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on dressing and going
+downstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a white tea-gown, which Sister
+Mildred gave me in London. Martin likes me best in white.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling across
+the island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was dressed and
+downstairs by four, sitting in the _chiollagh_ and watching the road
+through the window opposite. But he was half an hour late, and Christian
+Ann and I were in such a fever that anybody would have believed it to be
+half a century and that the world had stood still.
+
+We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys" (the
+same that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) had insisted on a
+demonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin had got down and
+shaken hands with everybody--the joiner and the grocer and the
+blacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner shop--so that it had taken
+him a quarter of an hour to get through, amid a general chorus of "The
+boy he is, though!" and "No pride at all at all!"
+
+After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught the
+musical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good gracious, what
+excitement!
+
+"Quick nurse, help me to the gate."
+
+I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a precipitate bound
+out of the car and then . . . what an embrace!
+
+It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I don't
+know how I should have got back to the house, being so weak and
+breathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my waist.
+
+Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird, and after
+I had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such a largesse of
+affection to distribute generally), whereupon he blushed like a boy,
+bless him, and stammered out something about St. Patrick and St. Thomas,
+and how he wouldn't have believed anybody who had said there was
+anything so sweet, etc.
+
+Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he wouldn't
+have believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so much better
+in the time.
+
+My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds during the
+next hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor ordered me back to
+bed, though I refused to go until he had faithfully promised that the
+door to the staircase should be kept open, so that I could hear what was
+said downstairs.
+
+What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come in "to
+put a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old Tommy the
+Mate, who told everybody over and over again that he had "known the lad
+since he was a lump" and "him and me are same as brothers."
+
+The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see. It was
+"Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have cried to
+hear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I cannot
+remember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me "your
+ladyship," now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what we women
+are, you see!
+
+At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and then the
+talk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann wanted to know if he
+wasn't "freckened" to be there, "not being used of Kings," whereupon he
+cried:
+
+"What! Frightened of another man--and a stunning good one, too!"
+
+And then came a story of how the King had asked if he hadn't been in
+fear of icebergs, and how he had answered No, you could strike more of
+them in a day in London (meaning icy-hearted people) than in a life-time
+in the Antarctic.
+
+I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard was:
+
+"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"
+
+"Aw, yes, the poor _veg veen_," said a sad voice. It was Christian
+Ann's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the child who "sang
+carvals to her door."
+
+What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though.
+To-morrow I must tell him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really couldn't.
+
+I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the bannisters at one
+side and using nurse's shoulder as my other crutch, when I saw the
+brightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby and Martin were on hands and
+knees on the rag-work hearthrug, face to face--Martin calling her to
+come, Isabel lifting up her little head to him, like a fledgling in a
+nest, and both laughing with that gurgling sound as of water bubbling
+out of a bottle.
+
+This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first moment. And
+when Martin, after putting me into my place in the _chiollagh_, plunged
+immediately into a rapturous account of his preparations for our
+departure--how we were to be married by special license at the High
+Bailiff's on the tenth (if that date would do), how I was to rest a day
+and then travel up to London on the twelfth, and then rest other four
+days (during which warm clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the
+_Orient_ on the sixteenth--I could not find it in my heart to tell him
+then of the inexorable fate that confronted us.
+
+It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to pay for
+it. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to his mother
+to say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was gone, and Christian
+Ann (in such a different tone) said Yes, she would look after Girlie
+when I was gone, I decided that I dared not tell him at all--I would die
+rather than do so.
+
+The end of it all is that I have arranged with Christian Ann, the old
+doctor, and Father Dan that Time and Martin's own observation are to
+tell him what is going to happen, and none of us are to say anything
+about it.
+
+What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish love for
+Martin. It would be such a blow to him--disturbing his plans, upsetting
+everything, perhaps causing him to postpone his Expedition, or even to
+abandon it altogether. "Let the truth fall soft on him. He'll see it
+soon enough. Don't let us be cruel."
+
+The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all in--all my
+vain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the part of pretending to
+fall in with Martin's plans, and they are to stand by and say nothing.
+
+Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing to see
+how I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and disguises.
+
+Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving me at
+Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, having
+met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady
+(I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of the
+Antarctic would act on me like magic.
+
+Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating air! New
+life with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too, so cosy and
+comfortable! And then the men whom he would leave behind while he
+slipped down South--they would worship me!
+
+"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be mistress
+over a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in out of the
+snow and want to eat up everything!"
+
+Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and then I
+see the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father Dan)
+dropping their heads or stealing out of the room.
+
+I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only this
+temperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in the
+mornings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for a long
+hour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the heavens blue,
+and gleams of sunshine coming through the trellis-work.
+
+Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to feel a
+flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forget
+that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff of
+wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to the
+highest reaches of the soul.
+
+I always say there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the poet wasn't
+dumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or anticyclone, or
+whatever it is which covers the region of the South Pole like a cap, and
+determines the weather of a great part of the habitable globe.
+
+"We are going to take from God his word and pass it on to the world," he
+said.
+
+After that he made reference (for the first time since his return) to
+the difficulties of our position, saying what a glorious thing it would
+be to escape to that great free region from the world of civilisation,
+with its effete laws and worn-out creeds which enslave humanity.
+
+"Only a month to-day until we start, and you'll be well enough to travel
+then, dearest."
+
+"Yes, yes, only a month to-day, and I shall be well enough then,
+dearest."
+
+Oh, Mary O'Neill! How much longer will you be able to keep it up, dear?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 17. Martin brought the proofs of his new book from London, and
+to-day in the summer-house (bluebells paling out and hanging their
+heads, but the air full of the odour of fruit trees) he and Dr.
+O'Sullivan and I have been correcting "galleys"--the doctor reading
+aloud, Martin smoking his briar-root pipe, and I (in a crater of
+cushions) supposed to be sitting as judge and jury.
+
+Such simple, straight, natural writing! There may have been a thousand
+errors but my ears heard none of them. The breathless bits about the
+moments when death was near; the humorous bits about patching the tent
+with the tails of their shirts when an overturned lamp burnt a hole in
+the canvas--this was all I was conscious of until I was startled by the
+sound of a sepulchral voice, groaning out "Oh Lord a-massy me!" and by
+the sight of a Glengarry cap over the top of the fuchsia hedge. Old
+Tommy was listening from the road.
+
+We sat late over our proofs and then, the dew having begun to fall,
+Martin said he must carry me indoors lest my feet should get wet--which
+he did, with the result that, remembering what had happened on our first
+evening at Castle Raa, I had a pretty fit of hysterics as soon as we
+reached the house.
+
+"Let's skip, Commanther," was the next thing I heard, and then I was
+helped upstairs to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 18. What a flirt I am becoming! Having conceived the idea that Dr.
+O'Sullivan is a little wee bit in love with me too, I have been playing
+him off against Martin.
+
+It was so delicious (after all I have gone through) to have two
+magnificent men, out of the heroic youth of the world, waiting hand and
+foot on one little woman, that the feminine soul in me to-day couldn't
+resist the temptation to an innocent effort at coquetry.
+
+So before we began business on the proofs I told Martin that, if he was
+determined to leave me behind at winter quarters while he went away to
+the Pole, he must allow Dr. O'Sullivan to remain behind to take care of
+me.
+
+Of course the doctor rose to my bait like a dear, crying:
+
+"He will too--by St. Patrick and St. Thomas he will, and a mighty proud
+man he'll be entirely. . . ."
+
+But good gracious! A momentary shadow passed over Martin's face, then
+came one of his big broad smiles, then out shot his clinched fist, and
+. . . the poor doctor and his garden seat were rolling over each other on
+the grass.
+
+However, we got through without bloodshed, and did good day's work on
+the book.
+
+I must not write any more. I have always written in my own book at
+night, when I haven't been able to get any kind of Christian sleep; but
+I'm weaker now, so must stop, lest I shouldn't have strength enough for
+Martin's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 20. Oh dear! I am dragging all these other poor dears into my
+deceptions. Christian Ann does not mind what lies, or half-lies, she has
+to tell in order to save pain to her beloved son. But the old doctor!
+And Father Dan!
+
+To-day itself, as Martin's mother would say, I had to make my poor old
+priest into a shocking story-teller.
+
+I developed a cough a few weeks ago, and though it is not really of much
+account I have been struggling to smother it while Martin has been
+about, knowing he is a doctor himself, and fearing his ear might detect
+the note.
+
+But this afternoon (whether a little damp, with a soft patter of sweet
+rain on the trees and the bushes) I had a rather bad bout, at which
+Martin's face looked grave, until I laughed and said:
+
+"It's nothing! I've had this sort of cough every summer since I was
+born--haven't I, Father Dan?"
+
+"Ye-es."
+
+I shall have to remember that in my next confession, but what Father Dan
+is to do I really don't know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 21. I have been rather down to-day about a newspaper that came to
+me anonymously from Paris, with a report marked for my special
+delectation.
+
+"FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE OF AN ENGLISH PEER AND AN AMERICAN HEIRESS."
+
+My husband's and Alma's! It took place at the American Embassy, and was
+attended by great numbers of smart people. There was a long account of
+the grandeur of the bride's dress and of the splendour of the
+bridegroom's presents. They have taken an apartment on the Champs
+Elysées and will spend most of the year in Paris.
+
+Ah well, why should I trouble about a matter that so little concerns me?
+Alma is still beautiful; she will be surrounded by admirers; her salon
+will be frequented by the fashionable parasites of Europe and America.
+
+As for my husband, the straw-fire of his wife's passion for him will
+soon burn out, especially now that she has gained what she wanted--his
+name, his title.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Martin carried me upstairs to bed to-night. I was really feeling weaker
+than usual, but we made a great game of it. Nurse went first, behind a
+mountain of pillows; Martin and I came next, with his arms about my body
+and mine around his neck; and Dr. O'Sullivan last, carrying two tall
+brass candlesticks.
+
+How we laughed! We all laughed together, as if trying to see which of us
+could laugh the loudest. Only Christian Ann looked serious, standing at
+the bottom of the stairs, nursing baby in her nightdress.
+
+It is three o'clock in the morning as I write, and I can hear our
+laughter still--only it sounds like sobbing now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 22. Have heard something to-day that has taken all the warmth of
+life out of me. It is about my father, whom the old doctor still
+attends. Having been told of my husband's marriage he has announced his
+intention of claiming my child if anything happens to me!
+
+What his object may be I do not know. He cannot be thinking of
+establishing a claim to my husband's title--Isabel being a girl.
+Remembering something his lawyer said about the marriage settlement when
+I consulted him on the subject of divorce, I can only assume that (now
+he is poor) he is trying to recover the inheritance he settled on my
+husband.
+
+It frightens me--raising my old nightmare of a lawsuit about the
+legitimacy of my child. I want to speak to Martin about it. Yet how can
+I do so without telling him the truth which I have been struggling so
+hard to conceal?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 23. Oh, Mary O'Neill, what are you coming to?
+
+I told Martin about father's threat, only I gave it another colour. He
+had heard of the Reverend Mother's visit, so I said the rumour had
+reached my father that I intended to enter a convent, and he had
+declared that, if I did so, he would claim my child from Christian Ann,
+being its nearest blood relation.
+
+"Can he do so--when I am . . . when we are gone?" I asked.
+
+I thought Martin's strong face looked sterner than I had ever seen it.
+He made a vague reply and left me soon afterwards on some sort of
+excuse.
+
+About an hour later he came back to carry me upstairs, and just as he
+was setting me down, and Christian Ann was coming in with the candles,
+he whispered:
+
+"Don't worry about Girlie. I've settled that matter, I'm thinking."
+
+What has he done, I wonder?
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+What I had done is easily told. I had gone straight to Daniel O'Neill
+himself, intending to know the truth of the story and to act
+accordingly.
+
+Already I knew enough to scent mischief. I could not be so stupefied
+into blindness of what was going on under my eyes as not to see that the
+dirty question of money, and perhaps the dirtier question of the aims
+and expectations of the woman MacLeod, were at the root of the matter
+that was distressing my darling.
+
+Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his mother's
+old cottage for two reasons--first, to delude the law into the idea that
+he was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy to which he had brought
+the whole island; and next, to gratify the greed of his mistress, who
+wanted to get him to herself at the end, so that he might be persuaded
+to marry her (if it were only on his death-bed) and so establish,
+against any claim of his daughter's, her widow's rights in what a
+husband leaves behind him--which is half of everything in Ellan.
+
+What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of the child
+I had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without another hour's
+delay, so I set off for the cottage on the curragh.
+
+It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the
+ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guide
+me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling had
+communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at first he looked
+afraid.
+
+"Well . . . yes, yes . . . why shouldn't I?" he said, and then, "Yes, I
+will, I will"--with the air of a man who had made up his mind to a
+daring enterprise.
+
+Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the sea,
+undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and sallow
+bushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a mist over it
+that night, and hence it was not easy even for Father Dan (accustomed to
+midnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the house which had once
+been the home of "Neale the Lord."
+
+We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who was
+standing at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of a
+gorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses smoking in
+the thick night air.
+
+When, over the shingle of what we call "the street," we reached the low
+straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed to
+keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, and
+it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a candle in her hand.
+
+This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her red hair
+combed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots over two
+stalks of rhubarb.
+
+Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr. O'Neill, and
+to step into the house while saying so, a hoarse, husky, querulous man's
+voice cried from within:
+
+"Who is it, Nessy?"
+
+It's Father Dan, and Martin . . . I mean Sir. . . ."
+
+"That'll do," I said, and the next moment we were in the living-room--a
+bare, bleak, comfortless Curraghman's kitchen.
+
+A more incongruous sight than we saw there human eyes never beheld.
+
+Daniel O'Neill, a shadow of the big brute creature he once was, a
+shrivelled old man, with his bony hands scored and contracted like an
+autumn leaf, his shrunken legs scarcely showing through his baggy
+trousers, his square face whiter than the wall behind it, and a piece of
+red flannel hanging over his head like a cowl, sat in the elbow-chair at
+the side of the hearth-fire, while at a deal table, which was covered
+with papers that looked like law deeds and share certificates (being
+stamped and sealed), sat the Bishop of the island, and its leading
+lawyer, Mr. Curphy.
+
+On hearing my name and seeing me enter the house, Daniel O'Neill lost
+all control of himself. He struggled to his feet by help of a stick, and
+as I walked up to him he laid hold of me.
+
+"You devil!" he cried. "You infernal villain! You. . . ."
+
+But it is of no use to repeat what else he said in the fuming of his
+rage, laying hold of me by the collar of my coat, and tugging at it as
+if he would drag me to his feet.
+
+I was half sorry for the man, badly as I thought of him, so I only
+opened his hand (easy enough to do, for the grip was gone from it) and
+said:
+
+"You're an old man, sir, and you're a sick man--don't tempt me to forget
+that you are the father of Mary O'Neill. Sit down."
+
+He sat down, breathless and broken, without another word. But the
+Bishop, with a large air of outraged dignity, faced about to poor Father
+Dan (who was standing near the door, turning his round hat in his
+trembling hands) and said:
+
+"Father Donovan, did you know that Mr. O'Neill was very ill?"
+
+"I did, Monsignor," said Father Dan.
+
+"And that a surgeon is coming from London to perform an operation upon
+him--did you know that?"
+
+"I did, Monsignor."
+
+"Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr. Curphy to
+important affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred duties?"
+
+"I knew that too, Monsignor."
+
+"Then," said the Bishop, pointing at me, "how dare you bring this man
+here--this man of all others, who has been the chief instrument in
+bringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend and his deeply
+injured family?"
+
+"So that's how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?"
+
+"Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest of my
+Church who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with notorious
+sinners as to see things in any other light."
+
+"Sinners, Bishop?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me, Father Donovan? Or do you desire me to use a harder
+name for them--for one of them in particular, on whom you have wasted so
+much weak sentimentality, to the injury of your spiritual influence and
+the demoralisation of your parish. I have warned you already. Do you
+wish me to go further, to remove you from your Presbytery, or perhaps
+report your conduct to those who have power to take the frock off your
+back? What standard of sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony do
+you expect to maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with a
+woman who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . . I
+grieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the poor
+wreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . . ."
+
+I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant. But there
+was somebody before me. It was Father Dan. The timid old priest seemed
+to break in one moment the bonds of a life-long tyranny.
+
+"What's that you say, Monsignor?" he cried in a shrill voice. "_I_
+degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Never in this world! But if
+there's anybody in the island of Ellan who has done that same every day
+of his life, it's yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully than
+in the case we're talking of at this present speaking."
+
+"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan,"
+began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him up
+by crying:
+
+"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and that's
+now. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own purposes
+wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in the
+matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't believe in the
+sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way for
+him?"
+
+"You actually mean that _I_. . . ."
+
+"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never have
+been married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance, either. When
+somebody told you--somebody who is here now--that the man to whom you
+were going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a
+profligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned
+scoundrel. . . ."
+
+"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him," I said, when the old
+priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that had
+burst from his lips.
+
+"Let's have an end of this," said the Bishop mightily.
+
+"Wait a bit, sir," I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he had
+been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbidden
+to inquire into it.
+
+"That's how you made _me_ a party to this wicked marriage, God and his
+Holy Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the end you might
+have expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold like
+a slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, to
+turn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out of
+communion, to make her a thing to point the finger at--me, her spiritual
+father who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who
+bore her and giving her to Christ--or if I won't you'll deprive me of my
+living, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . ."
+
+"Do it, Monsignor," cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishop
+and lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if our holy Church
+will permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go round
+the houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and a
+basin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay my head
+on my pillow and know that that poor victim of your wicked scheming is
+in the road."
+
+The throbbing and breaking of the old priest's voice had compelled me to
+drop my head, and it was not until I heard the sneck of the lock of the
+outer door that I realised that, overcome by his emotion, he had fled
+from the house.
+
+"And now I guess you can follow your friend," said Daniel O'Neill.
+
+"Not yet, sir," I answered; "I have something to say first."
+
+"Well, well, what is it, please?" said the lawyer sharply and
+insolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one side
+of the hearth-place.
+
+"You'll hear soon enough, Master Curphy," I answered.
+
+Then, turning back to Daniel O'Neill, I told him what rumour had reached
+my dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and asked him to
+say whether there was any truth in it.
+
+"Answer the man, Curphy," said Daniel O'Neill, and thereupon the lawyer,
+with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said:
+
+"What is it you wish to know, sir?"
+
+"Whether, if Mary O'Neill is unable from any cause to keep control of
+her child (which God forbid!), her father intends to take possession of
+it."
+
+"Why shouldn't he? If the mother dies, for instance, her father will be
+the child's legal guardian."
+
+"But if by that time the father is dead too--what then?"
+
+"Then the control of the child will--with the consent of the
+court--devolve upon his heir and representative."
+
+"Meaning this lady?" I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who was now
+standing at the back of Daniel O'Neill's chair.
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"And what will she do with it?"
+
+"Do with it?"
+
+The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and trying to
+look perplexed.
+
+"Mr. Curphy, I'll ask you not to pretend to be unable to understand me.
+If and when this lady gets possession of Mary O'Neill's child, what is
+she going to do with it?"
+
+"Very well," said the advocate, seeing I meant business, "since my
+client permits me to speak, I'll tell you plainly. Whatever the child's
+actual parentage . . . perhaps you know best. . . ."
+
+"Go on, sir."
+
+"Whatever the child's parentage, it was born in wedlock. Even the
+recent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that. Therefore we hold
+that the child has a right to the inheritance which in due time should
+come to Mary O'Neill's offspring by the terms of the settlement upon her
+husband."
+
+It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at the
+thought of my darling's child in the hands of that frozen-hearted woman.
+
+"So that is the law, is it?"
+
+"That is the law in Ellan."
+
+"In the event of Mary O'Neill's death, and her father's death, her child
+and all its interests will come into the hands of. . . ."
+
+"Of her father's heir and representative."
+
+"Meaning, again, this lady?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless.
+
+"I don't know, sir," she said, "if your repeated references to me are
+intended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to bring up the
+child well and look after its interests properly."
+
+"They are, madam--they most certainly and assuredly are," I answered.
+
+"Daniel!" she cried.
+
+"Be quiet, gel," said Daniel O'Neill. "Let the man speak. We'll see what
+he has come for presently. Go on, sir."
+
+I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I understood
+things it was intended to appeal to the courts in order to recover
+(nominally for the child) succession to the money which had been settled
+on Mary O'Neill's husband at the time of their marriage, when the old
+man cried, struggling again to his feet:
+
+"There you are! The money! It's the money the man's after! He took my
+daughter, and now he's for taking my fortune--what's left of it, anyway.
+He shan't, though! No, by God he shan't! . . . Go back to your woman,
+sir. Do you hear me?--your woman, and tell her that neither you nor she
+shall touch one farthing of my fortune. I'm seeing to that now. It's
+what we're here for to-night--before that damnable operation to-morrow,
+for nobody knows what will come of it. She has defied me and ruined me,
+and made me the byword of the island, God's curse on her. . . ."
+
+"Daniel! Daniel!" cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify the
+infuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat.
+
+I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O'Neill could have
+been a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp of a thing with
+one foot in the grave. But I controlled myself as well as I could and
+said:
+
+"Mr. O'Neill, your daughter doesn't want your fortune, and as for
+myself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen sitting on
+a nest of addled eggs. Give it to the lady at the back of your
+chair--she has earned it, apparently."
+
+"Really," said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from Father Dan's
+onslaught. "Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this is too
+outrageous--that you should come to this lonely house at this time of
+night, interrupting most urgent business, not to speak of serious
+offices, and make injurious insinuations against the character of a
+respectable person--you, sir, who had the audacity to return openly to
+the island with the partner of your sin, and to lodge her in the house
+of your own mother--your own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kind
+of mother it can be who harbours her son's sin-laden mistress, his
+woman, as our sick friend says. . . ."
+
+Lord! how my hands itched! But controlling myself again, with a mighty
+effort I said:
+
+"Monsignor, I don't think I should advise you to say that again."
+
+"Why not, sir?"
+
+"Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be sorry to see
+it soiled."
+
+"Violence!" cried the Bishop, rising to his feet. "You threaten me with
+violence? . . . Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr. Curphy?"
+
+"There's one at the corner of the road, Bishop," I said. "I brought him
+along with me. I should have brought the High Bailiff too, if there had
+been time. You would perhaps be no worse for a few witnesses to the
+business that seems to be going on here."
+
+Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit harder
+than I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had also risen)
+dropped back into their seats and looked at each other with expressions
+of surprise.
+
+Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them, I said,
+as calmly and deliberately as I could:
+
+"Now listen to me. I am leaving this island in about three weeks time,
+and expect to be two years--perhaps three years--away. Mary O'Neill is
+going with me--as my wife. She intends to leave her child in the care of
+my mother, and I intend to promise her that she may set her mind at ease
+that it shall never under any circumstances be taken away. You seem to
+have made up your minds that she is going to die. Please God she may
+disappoint your expectations and come back strong and well. But if she
+does not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her child has
+been removed from the protection in which she left it, do you know what
+I shall do?"
+
+"Go to the courts, I presume," said the lawyer.
+
+"Oh dear, no! I'll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy. I'll go to the people
+who have set the courts in motion--which means that I'll go to _you_ and
+_you_ and _you_ and _you_. Heaven knows how many of us may be living
+when that day comes; but as surely as I am, if I find that the promise I
+made to Mary O'Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is under
+this woman's control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man's
+money, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us there
+isn't one soul of you here present who will be alive the following
+morning."
+
+That seemed to be enough for all of them. Even old Daniel O'Neill (the
+only man in the house who had an ounce of fight in him) dropped his head
+back in his chair, with his mouth wide open and his broken teeth showing
+behind his discoloured lips.
+
+I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the trammon on
+"the street," but he had gone back to the Presbytery and sent Tommy the
+Mate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to the main road.
+
+The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business which had
+brought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour, and on parting
+from me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:
+
+"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming to him?"
+
+And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had one he
+answered:
+
+"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle some o'
+them big fellas."
+
+Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of the
+scene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not without
+precedent in the history of the world, though the priesthood as a whole
+is so pure and noble)--the midnight marriage of a man dying in unnatural
+hatred of his own daughter (and she the sweetest woman in the world)
+while the priest and the prostitute divided the spoils.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+JULY 25. The old doctor brought me such sad and startling news to-day.
+My poor father is dead--died yesterday, after an operation which he had
+deferred too long, refusing to believe it necessary.
+
+The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me but
+from everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from the
+failure of banks, &c., which has brought the whole island to the verge
+of bankruptcy.
+
+He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's--very early, almost before
+daybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who wished to catch the
+first steamer _en route_ for Rome.
+
+As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy that has
+surrounded my father's life of late, people are saying that he is not
+dead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he has escaped from the
+island (going off with the Bishop in a sort of disguise), and that the
+coffin put into the grave this morning did not contain a human body.
+
+"But that's all wrong," said the old doctor. "Your father is really dead
+and buried, and the strange man who went away with the Bishop was the
+London surgeon who performed the operation."
+
+I can hardly realise it--that the strong, stalwart being, the stern old
+lion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor mother's room, used to
+make the very house shake, is gone.
+
+He died as he had lived, it seems. To the last self-centred, inflexible,
+domineering--a peasant yet a great man (if greatness is to be measured
+by power), ranking, I think, in his own little scene of life with the
+tragic figures of history.
+
+I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child there has
+been a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like a beetling
+mountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether he wished to see
+me at the end. Perhaps he did, and was over-persuaded by the cold and
+savourless nature of Nessy MacLeod, who is giving it out, I hear, that
+grief and shame for me killed him.
+
+People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a snob--heaven
+knows what. All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has to
+go back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman of
+the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore that
+when he was a man she should have a carriage of her own, and then
+"nobody should never lash her."
+
+He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more willing than
+Tell to bend the knee to it.
+
+My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, for
+either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with
+him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I
+send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, my
+forgiveness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when I
+told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if I
+failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything depended
+upon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to the
+Expedition if he thought I could not sail with him on the sixteenth.
+
+Martin is not one of the men who weep for their wives as if the sun had
+suffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves are green.
+So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I am getting
+better every day, and shall be "ready to go, never fear," I have to keep
+it up.
+
+I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful actress after
+all. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him looking at me
+uneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort. At such moments I
+have to avoid his eyes lest anything should happen, for my great love
+seems to be always lying in wait to break down my make-believe.
+
+To-day (though I had resolved not to give way to tears) when he was
+talking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and how the
+invigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman of me," I
+cried:
+
+"How splendid! How glorious!"
+
+"Then why are you crying?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, good gracious, that's nothing--for _me_," I answered.
+
+But if I am throwing dust in Martin's eyes I am deceiving nobody else,
+it seems. To-night after he and Dr. O'Sullivan had gone back to the
+"Plough," Father Dan came in to ask Christian Ann how she found me, and
+being answered rather sadly, I heard him say:
+
+"_Ugh cha nee!_ [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a vapour which
+appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth away."
+
+And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some lobsters
+(he still declares they are the only food for invalids) and to ask
+"how's the lil woman now?" I heard him moaning, as he was going out:
+
+"There'll be no shelter for her this voyage, the _vogh!_ She'll carry
+the sea in with her to the Head, I'm thinking."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 27. I _must_ keep it up--I must, I must! To allow Martin's hopes
+and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough to kill me outright.
+
+I don't want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the impression that
+their highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they have
+done something all they've got to do next is to stay at home and talk
+about it. Martin is not like that. Exploration is a passion with him.
+The "lure of the little voices" and the "call of the Unknown" have been
+with him from the beginning, and they will be with him to the end.
+
+I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid to rest
+in the green peace of English earth--dear and sweet as that is to tamer
+natures, mine for instance. I can only think of that wild heroic soul
+going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and
+leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a
+requiem over his grave.
+
+Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart
+make it impossible? Never, never, never!
+
+Moral--I'm going to get up every day--whatever my nurse may say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 28. I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when Christian Ann,
+who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel between Aunt Bridget
+and Nessy MacLeod.
+
+It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediately
+before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, and
+as the estate includes the Big House she is "putting the law on" Aunt
+Bridget to obtain possession.
+
+Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for Betsy
+Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all her
+treatment of me--to be turned out of doors by her own step-daughter!
+
+When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said:
+
+"Chut! Sarves her right, I say! It's the black life the Big Woman lived
+before, and it's the black life she'll be living now, and her growing
+old, and the Death looking in on her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan has gone
+back with them. I thought he looked rather _wae_ when he came to say
+good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice was
+husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about "returning
+for the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle."
+
+Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But I'm
+sure he loves me all the same--many, many people love me. I don't know
+what I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a great deal of love
+in my life now that I come to think of it.
+
+We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was tired at
+the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there was
+less laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set me
+down by the bed.
+
+I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), but
+towards midnight the truth flashed upon me--I am becoming thinner and
+therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to notice it.
+
+Moral--I must try to walk upstairs in future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 30. Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race between me
+and the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I am
+afraid I am going to be the loser!
+
+Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I am
+expected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, what
+a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look straight before you,
+dear, and don't be afraid.
+
+I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is crossing
+from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose
+Father Dan must have sent for her.
+
+I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A struggle
+between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after
+daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should
+come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!
+
+He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had
+taken me at my word.
+
+I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was
+utterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and said
+he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a
+broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one.
+
+I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the
+room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_"
+
+He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which
+no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which
+made me happy, or at least content.
+
+Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far more
+sorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is
+amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after
+its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought my
+darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said, and then
+covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and she
+said she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we mothers
+come to--so many of us--but heaven is over all," she whispered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a matter for
+much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what the
+strange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day, not only in
+my tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace which nurse lent me
+to wrap about my throat.
+
+I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs leaning
+on nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and though he did
+not speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into his blue eyes was
+the same as on that last night at Castle Raa when he said something
+about a silvery fir-tree with its dark head against the sky.
+
+Oh, my own darling, I could wish to live for you, such as I am, if I
+could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help,
+if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already
+answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great;
+unalterable, irrevocable No!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last night, has
+been with me all day. I think she _knows_, for she has said nothing more
+about the convent--only (with her eyes so soft and tender) that she
+intends to remain with me a little while, having need of rest herself.
+
+To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously. This
+evening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she meant by
+that), she is willing to believe that he is a true man, and,
+notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a Christian
+gentleman.
+
+Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in the
+garden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn chattering in the
+field opposite), when I felt a tugging at my skirts, and who should it
+be but Isabel, who had been crawling along the dry grass plucking
+daisies, and now, dragging herself up to my side, emptied them into my
+lap.
+
+No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet it
+rather "touches me up," as Martin says, to see how one's vainest dreams
+seem to come to pass.
+
+I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he rattled
+away about Girlie having two other mothers now--Grandma, who would keep
+her while we were down South, and the Reverend Mother, who would take
+her to school when she was old enough.
+
+So there's nothing more to fear about baby.
+
+But what about Martin himself? Am I dealing fairly in allowing him to go
+on with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not to tell him the
+truth?
+
+This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some real sleep
+perhaps I could solve it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but
+exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than
+ever like my mother--that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own."
+I know what he means--like her as she was at the last.
+
+My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child--a
+woman can see through and through him.
+
+Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby
+when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed.
+What children we all are at the end--just children!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It
+seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of
+censure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, I
+suppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure,
+having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and
+forbidden to return to his diocese.
+
+And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan,
+to be distributed by Father Dan!
+
+I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear
+Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general
+thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's
+and then Rosary and Benediction.
+
+It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day
+in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.
+
+How God governs everything!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on. This
+morning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage,
+and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, first
+cabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew
+that I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me out
+first on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, the
+Everlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity!
+
+I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ be
+brave.
+
+I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can I
+look into his face and say. . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say things
+so much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affects
+me--swelling and falling when I am moved, like a billow on the ocean.
+
+I find my writing cannot any longer be done in a sitting position in
+bed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write lying down.
+
+
+
+
+MARY O'NEILL'S LETTER TO MARTIN CONRAD
+
+_August 9th_, 6 A.M.
+
+MY OWN DARLING,--Strengthen yourself for what I am going to say. It will
+be very hard for you--I know that, dear.
+
+To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week we
+were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to have
+reached Winter Quarters.
+
+But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you to
+Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywhere
+from here. It is impossible, quite impossible.
+
+I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out for me.
+My great love--love for my mother, for my darling baby, and above all
+for you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer.
+
+Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by saying
+that I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. I
+used to think it was cowardice which kept me from telling you the truth,
+but I see now that it was love, too.
+
+I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this house
+of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You will
+try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keeping
+you in the dark down to the very last moment.
+
+This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart to save
+you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think you
+would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time to
+come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is no
+other woman in the world for him." I should not be a woman if I did not
+feel like that--should I?
+
+But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong and
+had years and years still to live, what a life would have been before
+me--before both of us.
+
+We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I should
+never have been able to shake off the thought that the world, which
+would always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would be
+so, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgives
+a woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had too
+many wounds, darling, to stand by your side and be any help to you.
+
+Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love
+of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and
+ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the
+world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should
+always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of
+the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing
+behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing
+I could not bear.
+
+Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this
+world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man
+and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there?
+
+Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin
+to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is
+must know that I am doing no wrong.
+
+And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer
+to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know
+that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control
+my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be
+mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul.
+
+_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any
+way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that
+from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us
+with the wings of His loving mercy.
+
+Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened
+afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a
+punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from
+the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was
+not for my sin but my salvation.
+
+Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if
+I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would
+have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so
+many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading
+husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying,
+whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet
+and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.
+
+All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my
+vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under
+whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven.
+
+It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that stern
+Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--you
+say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you, even if I wished to,
+which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw all such mistakes, and all
+the hardships that would come to many poor women (perhaps some men,
+too), as well as the wreck the world might fall to for want of this
+unyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law that
+never under any circumstances should marriage be broken.
+
+Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchable
+wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn.
+
+Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon us!
+Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the Church
+which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. The
+instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. If
+I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be cold
+comfort, but I am not.
+
+Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and I
+cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite us!
+Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of death is
+passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! So
+Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter! Don't you see that,
+dearest? One moment of parting--hardly a moment, perhaps--and then we
+shall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How
+triumphant!
+
+Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in
+the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven.
+More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall
+live with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willing
+to go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shall
+be standing by your side.
+
+So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here for
+tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember--love is immortal.
+
+I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little longer--if
+things had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to see
+your book published and your work finished (I know it will be some day),
+and baby grow up to be a good girl and a beautiful one too (for that's
+something, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer for
+another reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be told
+that I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it
+said and is never tired of hearing it.
+
+But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful to
+regret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness.
+
+And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, I
+mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory of
+her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and love--only the cold,
+blank, unfilled by a face, which must be all that remains to most of
+those whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am not
+afraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our little
+girl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw and
+remember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I ever
+was, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees me
+through her father's eyes.
+
+Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thought
+that Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and that
+in the time to come she may startle you with undescribable resemblances,
+in her voice or smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some
+day, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may
+touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it will
+seem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. Oh
+Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?
+
+Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any cold
+feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say to
+yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot
+quench it."
+
+Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last few
+days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his last
+volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his last
+poem I thought of you, dear:
+
+     "_No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
+         Greet the unseen with a cheer!
+       Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
+       'Strive and thrive!' Cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever
+           There as here!'_"
+
+I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that is
+just a little important--to give you this manuscript book, in which I
+have been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me in
+London.)
+
+You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on
+that subject.
+
+I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself;
+but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one
+does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls
+there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well.
+
+I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and
+foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what
+a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the
+right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children.
+
+There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the
+slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly,
+and perhaps not even in Girlie's.
+
+And yet, why not?
+
+Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled
+me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the
+Antarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and
+therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all
+the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current
+underneath.
+
+Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So
+perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for
+me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of
+everything, it has been glorious to be a woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little
+while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you
+to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me.
+
+I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have never loved
+anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving you
+to the last.
+
+I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me in
+return--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, my
+dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have brought
+into my life--every single day of it, joyful days and sorrowful ones,
+bright days and dark, but all shining with the glory of your love.
+
+Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy one.
+Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had happiness. And
+when I have not had happiness I have had something far higher and
+better--blessedness.
+
+I have had _such_ joy in my life, dear--joy in the beauty of the world,
+in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the flowers and the songs
+of the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy to
+speak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of my
+dear mother and my sweet child, and above all--above all in _you_.
+
+I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to me, and
+if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in the
+next.
+
+So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one,
+Good-bye!
+
+MARY O'NEILL.
+
+
+
+
+MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL
+
+AUGUST 9-10.
+
+
+It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He knows
+now. I almost think he has known all along.
+
+I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish lace
+about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in my
+mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kind
+crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody said
+how much better I was looking.
+
+Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little late
+in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air and
+quiet sunshine--one of those evenings when Nature is like a nun
+"breathless with adoration."
+
+Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time together we
+talked on the usual subjects--the High Bailiff, the special license,
+"the boys" of the _Scotia_ who were coming over for my wedding, and how
+some of them would have to start out early in the morning.
+
+But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we felt, and
+I felt entirely happy--sitting there in my cushions, with my white hand
+in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up to
+the broad blue of the sky.
+
+The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary's
+Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop their
+heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the dew.
+
+Then we went back to the house--I walking firmly, by Martin's side,
+though I held his arm so close.
+
+The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room, and we
+could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling white
+cot--she sleeps with grandma now.
+
+The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which I
+had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pages
+first.
+
+Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know all
+about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought I
+had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing a
+game of make-believe with me, and had known everything from the first.
+There was a certain relief in that, yet there was a certain sting in it,
+too. What strange creatures we are, we women!
+
+For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs, holding
+each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break down
+as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swelling
+feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes into a woman's life,
+perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to strengthen the strong.
+
+It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms
+about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, _silently_ but oh, so
+eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!"
+
+Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top he
+was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, then
+walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then . . . down, all
+my strength gone in a moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like a
+dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make too
+much of it--to say that it was a vision or any supernatural
+manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps it
+was only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts and
+desires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, and
+God, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behind
+the veil.
+
+I thought it was to-morrow--my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan's
+thanksgiving celebration--and I was sitting by my French window (which
+was wide open) to look at the procession.
+
+I seemed to see everything--Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in
+their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the
+Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured
+badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers
+with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.
+
+I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to the
+church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel on
+the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which lean
+towards each other, their foundations having given way.
+
+Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sang
+also. I heard myself singing:
+
+     "_Mater purissima,
+       Ora pro nobis_."
+
+Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend
+Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice
+under mine:
+
+     "_Mater castissima
+       Ora pro nobis_."
+
+Then I thought the _Ora_ ended, and in the silence that followed it I
+heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I had
+closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were under
+some strange sweet anæsthetic which had taken away all pain but not all
+consciousness.
+
+Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up
+to me, and say something about her.
+
+I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was
+darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and
+Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died:
+
+"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after
+all her suffering."
+
+After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away,
+and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous,
+celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the
+aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin
+was walking by my side.
+
+How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding.
+Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for
+his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about
+him he will control himself and be strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary's
+Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face of
+the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like the
+humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallows
+are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over the
+meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and the
+sky.
+
+How beautiful the world is!
+
+Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun will
+come again and . . . there will be no more night.
+
+[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hoping
+against hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of the
+Antarctic cure her.
+
+Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me with
+her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot all
+my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expected
+it.
+
+With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to my
+room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the next
+day--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in her
+small delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure.
+
+No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had never
+known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could never
+repay her for now!
+
+How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dear
+one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweet
+resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly
+(before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, true
+marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not then
+that I thought anything about that.
+
+I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of
+civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been
+crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merely
+because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of her
+soul."
+
+What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divine
+truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that was
+to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, or
+the sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the whole
+girlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poor
+martyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not give
+her up--not now, after all she had gone through.
+
+Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny
+Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My
+mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear
+one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel.
+Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she had
+ever been seen to sleep before!
+
+After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where we
+had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored on the beach.
+The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of the Rock, which
+stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy.
+
+Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into the quiet
+smoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull torpor by the
+hearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old man did not say a
+word to me. He put some turf on the fire and then sat on a three-legged
+stool at the other side of the hearth-place.
+
+Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peats
+and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the rising
+sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to the
+door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said:
+
+"She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye
+this--_she's fetching the harbour all right at last_."
+
+Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and saw a
+procession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's celebration of
+thanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel O'Neill's ill-gotten
+wealth sent back from Rome for the poor.
+
+Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod hedge and
+crossed a field until I came to a back gate to our garden, near to
+"William Rufus's" burial place--stone overgrown with moss, inscription
+almost obliterated.
+
+On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by her
+side.
+
+"How is she now?" I asked.
+
+She was awake--had been awake these two hours, but in a strange kind of
+wakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining like stars as if
+smiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and her lips moving as if
+speaking some words which nobody else could hear.
+
+"What art thou saying, _boght millish_?" my mother had asked, and after
+a moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture, my darling had
+answered:
+
+"Hush! I am speaking to mamma--telling her I am leaving Isabel with
+Christian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad."
+
+We walked round to the front of the house until we came close under the
+window of "Mary O'Neill's little room," which was wide open.
+
+The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation singing in
+the church and on the path in front of it.
+
+Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was my
+darling--in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never heard the
+like of in this world and never shall again.
+
+After a moment another voice joined hers--a deep voice, the Reverend
+Mother's.
+
+All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush had
+fallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my precious
+darling's last breath. The sun was going down, very red in its setting,
+and the sky was full of glory.
+
+When the singing came to an end baby was babbling in my mother's
+arms--"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma." I took her and held her up to the open
+window, crying:
+
+"Look, darling! Here's Girlie!"
+
+There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend Mother came
+to the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual, and her lips
+trembled. She did not speak, but she made the sign of the Cross.
+
+And by that . . . I knew.
+
+"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my cry."
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
+
+
+I saw him off at Tilbury when he left England on his last Expedition.
+Already he was his own man once more. After the blinding, stunning
+effect of the great event there had been a quick recuperation. His
+spirit had risen to a wonderful strength and even a certain
+cheerfulness.
+
+I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was not
+merely that Time, the great assuager, had begun to do its work with him,
+but that he had brought himself to accept without qualm or question Mary
+O'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief) in the immortality of
+personal love, and was firmly convinced that, freed from the
+imprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every day and hour, and that
+as long as he lived she always would be.
+
+There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish, nothing
+unmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a steady soul
+and a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it braced a strong
+man for life to face Death in that way.
+
+As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I thought
+he was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic, in
+expectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening region.
+
+As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear down the
+Thames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the South Pole, and
+finish his task there, than that the sun would rise the following
+morning.
+
+Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward."
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR
+
+WIRELESS--ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (_via_ MACQUARIE ISLAND AND RADIO HOBART
+16).
+
+Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a breath
+of wind. Sun never going down. Constellations revolving without dipping.
+Feel as if we can see the movement of the world. Start south to-morrow.
+Calmer than I have ever been since She was taken from me. But She was
+right. She is here. "Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot
+quench it."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Thou Gavest Me
+       Being the Story of Mary O'Neill
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: January 4, 2005 [EBook #14597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div>
+<h1>The Woman<br />
+Thou Gavest Me</h1>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Being the Story of Mary O'Neill</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>By HALL CAINE</h2>
+<h4>Author of "The Prodigal Son," Etc.</h4>
+<div class="figcenter"><br />
+<img src="images/001.png" width="10%" alt="" title="" /></div>
+<h5>Published August, 1913</h5>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE AUTHOR TO THE READER</h2>
+<p><i>How much of the story of Mary O'Neill is a work of my own
+imagination, and how much comes from an authentic source I do not
+consider it necessary to say. But as I have in this instance drawn
+more largely and directly from fact than is usually the practice of
+the novelist, I have thought it my duty to defeat all possible
+attempts at personal identification by altering and disguising the
+more important scenes and characters. Therefore this novel is not
+to be understood as referring to any living person or persons, and
+the convent school described in it is not to be identified with any
+similar educational institution in Rome</i>.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR</h2>
+<p><i>Here are the Memoranda we have talked about. Do as you like
+with them. Alter, amend, add to or take away from them, exactly as
+you think best. They were written in the first instance for my own
+eye alone, and hence they take much for granted which may need
+explanation before they can be put to the more general uses you
+have designed for them. Make such explanation in any way you
+consider suitable. It is my wish that in this matter your judgment
+should be accepted as mine. The deep feeling you could not conceal
+when I told you the story of my dear one's life gives me confidence
+in your discretion.</i></p>
+<p><i>Whatever the immediate effect may be, I feel that in the end
+I shall be justified&mdash;fully justified&mdash;in allowing the
+public to look for a little while into the sacred confessional of
+my darling's stainless heart.</i></p>
+<p><i>I heard her voice again to-day. She was right&mdash;love is
+immortal. God bless her! My ever lovely and beloved one!</i></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<div class="center">
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td>PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FIRST_PART">FIRST PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#FIRST_PART">MY GIRLHOOD</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FIRST_PART">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#FIRST_CHAPTER">1</a>] [<a href=
+"#SECOND_CHAPTER">2</a>] [<a href="#THIRD_CHAPTER">3</a>] [<a href=
+"#FOURTH_CHAPTER">4</a>] [<a href="#FIFTH_CHAPTER">5</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTH_CHAPTER">6</a>] [<a href="#SEVENTH_CHAPTER">7</a>]
+[<a href="#EIGHTH_CHAPTER">8</a>] [<a href="#NINTH_CHAPTER">9</a>]
+[<a href="#TENTH_CHAPTER">10</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#ELEVENTH_CHAPTER">11</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWELFTH_CHAPTER">12</a>] [<a href="#THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER">13</a>]
+[<a href="#FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER">14</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER">15</a>] [<a href="#SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER">16</a>]
+[<a href="#SEVENTEENTH_CHAPTER">17</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTEENTH_CHAPTER">18</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETEENTH_CHAPTER">19</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTIETH_CHAPTER">20</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#TWENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">21</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">22</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">23</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SECOND_PART">SECOND PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#SECOND_PART">MY MARRIAGE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SECOND_PART">97</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#TWENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">24</a>]
+[<a href="#TWENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">25</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">26</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">27</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">28</a>] [<a href=
+"#TWENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">29</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTIETH_CHAPTER">30</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">31</a>]<br /></td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THIRD_PART">THIRD PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#THIRD_PART">MY HONEYMOON</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#THIRD_PART">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#THIRTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">32</a>]
+[<a href="#THIRTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">33</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">34</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">35</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">36</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">37</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">38</a>] [<a href=
+"#THIRTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">39</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTIETH_CHAPTER">40</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#FORTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">41</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">42</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">43</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">44</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">45</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">46</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">47</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">48</a>] [<a href=
+"#FORTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">49</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTIETH_CHAPTER">50</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FOURTH_PART">FOURTH PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#FOURTH_PART">I FALL IN LOVE</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FOURTH_PART">210</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#FIFTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">51</a>]
+[<a href="#FIFTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">52</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">53</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">54</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">55</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">56</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">57</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">58</a>] [<a href=
+"#FIFTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">59</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTIETH_CHAPTER">60</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#SIXTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">61</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">62</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">63</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">64</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">65</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">66</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">67</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">68</a>] [<a href=
+"#SIXTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">69</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FIFTH_PART">FIFTH PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#FIFTH_PART">I BECOME A MOTHER</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#FIFTH_PART">308</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#SEVENTIETH_CHAPTER">70</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">71</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">72</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">73</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">74</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">75</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">76</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">77</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">78</a>] [<a href=
+"#SEVENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">79</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTIETH_CHAPTER">80</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#EIGHTY_FIRST_CHAPTER">81</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_SECOND_CHAPTER">82</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_THIRD_CHAPTER">83</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">84</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">85</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">86</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">87</a>] [<a href=
+"#EIGHTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">88</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SIXTH_PART">SIXTH PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#SIXTH_PART">I AM LOST</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SIXTH_PART">401</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href="#EIGHTY_NINTH_CHAPTER">89</a>]
+[<a href="#NINETIETH_CHAPTER">90</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_FIRST_CHAPTER">91</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_SECOND_CHAPTER">92</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_THIRD_CHAPTER">93</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_FOURTH_CHAPTER">94</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_FIFTH_CHAPTER">95</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_SIXTH_CHAPTER">96</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">97</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">98</a>] [<a href=
+"#NINETY_NINTH_CHAPTER">99</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDREDTH_CHAPTER">100</a>]<br />
+[<a href="#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIRST_CHAPTER">101</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SECOND_CHAPTER">102</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRD_CHAPTER">103</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTH_CHAPTER">104</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTH_CHAPTER">105</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SEVENTH_PART">SEVENTH PART:</a></td>
+<td><a href="#SEVENTH_PART">I AM FOUND</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#SEVENTH_PART">505</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="center">[<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTH_CHAPTER">106</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SEVENTH_CHAPTER">107</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_EIGHTH_CHAPTER">108</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_NINTH_CHAPTER">109</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TENTH_CHAPTER">110</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_ELEVENTH_CHAPTER">111</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TWELFTH_CHAPTER">112</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER">113</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER">114</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER">115</a>] [<a href=
+"#ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER">116</a>]</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="center">AUTHOR'S NOTE: <i>The name Raa (of<br />
+Celtic origin with many variations among<br />
+Celtic races) is pronounced Rah in Ellan.</i></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div>
+<h1>THE NARRATIVE OF<br />
+MARY O'NEILL</h1>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="FIRST_PART" id="FIRST_PART"></a>FIRST PART</h2>
+<h3>MY GIRLHOOD</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIRST_CHAPTER" id="FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>FIRST
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>"Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths," begins the most
+beautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the
+depths of my life that I must bring the incidents of this
+story.</p>
+<p>I was an unwanted child&mdash;unwanted as a girl at all events.
+Father Dan Donovan, our parish priest, told me all about it. I was
+born in October. It had been raining heavily all day long. The rain
+was beating hard against the front of our house and running in
+rivers down the window-panes. Towards four in the afternoon the
+wind rose and then the yellow leaves of the chestnuts in the long
+drive rustled noisily, and the sea, which is a mile away, moaned
+like a dog in pain.</p>
+<p>In my father's room, on the ground floor, Father Dan sat by the
+fire, fingering his beads and listening to every sound that came
+from my mother's room, which was immediately overhead. My father
+himself, with his heavy step that made the house tremble, was
+tramping to and fro, from the window to the ingle, from the ingle
+to the opposite wall. Sometimes Aunt Bridget came down to say that
+everything was going on well, and at intervals of half an hour
+Doctor Conrad entered in his noiseless way and sat in silence by
+the fire, took a few puffs from a long clay pipe and then returned
+to his charge upstairs.</p>
+<p>My father's impatience was consuming him.</p>
+<p>"It's long," he said, searching the doctor's face.</p>
+<p>"Don't worry&mdash;above all don't worry," said Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"There's no need," said Doctor Conrad.</p>
+<p>"Then hustle back and get it over," said my father. "It will be
+five hundred dollars to you if this comes off all right."</p>
+<p>I think my father was a great man at that time. I think he is
+still a great man. Hard and cruel as he may have been to me, I feel
+bound to say that for him. If he had been born a king, he would
+have made his nation feared and perhaps respected throughout the
+world. He was born a peasant, the poorest of peasants, a crofter.
+The little homestead of his family, with its whitewashed walls and
+straw-thatched roof, still stands on the bleak ayre-lands of Ellan,
+like a herd of mottled cattle crouching together in a storm.</p>
+<p>His own father had been a wild creature, full of daring dreams,
+and the chief of them had centred in himself. Although brought up
+in a mud cabin, and known as Daniel Neale, he believed that he
+belonged by lineal descent to the highest aristocracy of his
+island, the O'Neills of the Mansion House (commonly called the Big
+House) and the Barons of Castle Raa. To prove his claim he spent
+his days in searching the registers of the parish churches, and his
+nights in talking loudly in the village inn. Half in jest and half
+in earnest, people called him "Neale the Lord." One day he was
+brought home dead, killed in a drunken quarrel with Captain
+O'Neill, a dissolute braggart, who had struck him over the temple
+with a stick. His wife, my grandmother, hung a herring net across
+the only room of her house to hide his body from the children who
+slept in the other bed.</p>
+<p>There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she
+had to fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make
+a sufficient living she used to weed for her more prosperous
+neighbours. It was ill-paid labour&mdash;ninepence a day fine days
+and sixpence all weathers, with a can of milk twice a week and a
+lump of butter thrown in now and then. The ways were hard and the
+children were the first to feel them. Five of them died. "They
+weren't willing to stay with me," she used to say. My father alone
+was left to her, and he was another Daniel. As he grew up he was a
+great help to his mother. I feel sure he loved her. Difficult as it
+may be to believe it now, I really and truly think that his natural
+disposition was lovable and generous to begin with.</p>
+<p>There is a story of his boyhood which it would be wrong of me
+not to tell. His mother and he had been up in the mountains cutting
+gorse and ling, which with turf from the Curragh used to be the
+crofter's only fuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it
+by a straw rope when, dipping into the high road by a bridge, they
+crossed the path of a splendid carriage which swirled suddenly out
+of the drive of the Big House behind two high-spirited bays driven
+by an English coachman in gorgeous livery. The horses reared and
+shied at the bundle of kindling, whereupon a gentleman inside the
+carriage leaned out and swore, and then the brutal coachman,
+lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip, struck the boy
+on his naked legs.</p>
+<p>At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the
+head of the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest
+kinsman, Captain O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor
+grandmother said nothing. But her little son, as soon as his
+smarting legs would allow, wiped his eyes with his ragged sleeve
+and said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I
+am a man, and then nobody shall never lash you."</p>
+<p>His mother died. He was twenty years of age at that time, a
+large-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education
+but with a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his
+chest and emigrated to America. What work he found at first I never
+rightly knew. I can only remember to have heard that it was
+something dangerous to human life and that the hands above him
+dropped off rapidly. Within two years he was a foreman. Within five
+years he was a partner. In ten years he was a rich man. At the end
+of five-and-twenty years he was a millionaire, controlling trusts
+and corporations and carrying out great combines.</p>
+<p>I once heard him say that the money tumbled into his chest like
+crushed oats out of a crown shaft, but what happened at last was
+never fully explained to me. Something I heard of a collision with
+the law and of a forced assignment of his interests. All that is
+material to my story is that at forty-five years of age he returned
+to Ellan. He was then a changed man, with a hard tongue, a stern
+mouth, and a masterful lift of the eyebrows. His passion for wealth
+had left its mark upon him, but the whole island went down before
+his face like a flood, and the people who had made game of his
+father came crawling to his feet like cockroaches.</p>
+<p>The first thing he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's
+croft, re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take
+care of it.</p>
+<p>"Guess it may come handy some day," he said.</p>
+<p>His next act was worthy of the son of "Neale the Lord." Finding
+that Captain O'Neill had fallen deeply into debt, he bought up the
+braggart's mortgages, turned him out of the Big House, and took up
+his own abode in it.</p>
+<p>Twelve months later he made amends, after his own manner, by
+marrying one of the Captain's daughters. There were two of them.
+Isabel, the elder, was a gentle and beautiful girl, very delicate,
+very timid, and most sweet when most submissive, like the woodland
+herbs which give out their sweetest fragrance when they are trodden
+on and crushed. Bridget, the younger, was rather homely, rather
+common, proud of her strength of mind and will.</p>
+<p>To the deep chagrin of the younger sister, my father selected
+the elder one. I have never heard that my mother's wishes were
+consulted. Her father and my father dealt with the marriage as a
+question of business, and that was an end of the matter. On the
+wedding day my father did two things that were highly significant.
+He signed the parish register in the name of Daniel O'Neill by
+right of Letters Patent; and on taking his bride back to her early
+home, he hoisted over the tower of his chill grey house the stars
+and stripes of his once adopted country stitched to the flag of his
+native island. He had talked less than "Neale the Lord," but he had
+thought and acted more.</p>
+<p>Two years passed without offspring, and my father made no
+disguise of his disappointment, which almost amounted to disgust.
+Hitherto he had occupied himself with improvements in his house and
+estate, but now his restless energies required a wider field, and
+he began to look about him. Ellan was then a primitive place, and
+its inhabitants, half landsmen, half seamen, were a simple pious
+race living in a sweet poverty which rarely descended into want.
+But my father had magnificent schemes for it. By push, energy and
+enterprise he would galvanise the island into new life, build
+hotels, theatres, casinos, drinking halls and dancing palaces, lay
+out race-courses, construct electric railways to the tops of the
+mountains, and otherwise transform the place into a holiday resort
+for the people of the United Kingdom.</p>
+<p>"We'll just sail in and make this old island hum," he said, and
+a number of his neighbours, nothing loth to be made rich by
+magic&mdash;advocates, bankers and insular councillors&mdash;joined
+hands with him in his adventurous schemes.</p>
+<p>But hardly had he begun when a startling incident happened. The
+old Lord Raa of Castle Raa, head of the O'Neills, the same that had
+sworn at my grandmother, after many years in which he had lived a
+bad life abroad where he had contracted fatal maladies, returned to
+Ellan to die. Being a bachelor, his heir would have been Captain
+O'Neill, but my mother's father had died during the previous
+winter, and in the absence of direct male issue it seemed likely
+that both title and inheritance (which, by the conditions of an old
+Patent, might have descended to the nearest living male through the
+female line) would go to a distant relative, a boy, fourteen years
+of age, a Protestant, who was then at school at Eton.</p>
+<p>More than ever now my father chewed the cud of his great
+disappointment. But it is the unexpected that oftenest happens, and
+one day in the spring, Doctor Conrad, being called to see my
+mother, who was indisposed, announced that she was about to bear a
+child.</p>
+<p>My father's delight was almost delirious, though at first his
+happiness was tempered by the fear that the child that was to be
+born to him might not prove a boy. Even this danger disappeared
+from his mind after a time, and before long his vanity and his
+unconquerable will had so triumphed over his common sense that he
+began to speak of his unborn child as a son, just as if the birth
+of a male child had been prearranged. With my mother, with Doctor
+Conrad, and above all with Father Dan, he sometimes went the length
+of discussing his son's name. It was to be Hugh, because that had
+been the name of the heads of the O'Neills through all the ages, as
+far back as the legendary days in which, as it was believed, they
+had been the Kings of Ellan.</p>
+<p>My mother was no less overjoyed. She had justified herself at
+last, and if she was happy enough at the beginning in the tingling
+delight of the woman who is about to know the sweetest of human
+joys, the joy of bearing a child, she acquiesced at length in the
+accepted idea that her child would be a boy. Perhaps she was moved
+to this merely by a desire to submit to her husband's will, and to
+realise his hopes and expectations. Or perhaps she had another
+reason, a secret reason, a reason that came of her own weakness and
+timidity as a woman, namely, that the man child to be born of her
+would be strong and brave and free.</p>
+<p>All went well down to the end of autumn, and then alarming news
+came from Castle Raa. The old lord had developed some further
+malady and was believed to be sinking rapidly. Doctor Conrad was
+consulted and he gave it as his opinion that the patient could not
+live beyond the year. This threw my father into a fever of anxiety.
+Sending for his advocate, he took counsel both with him and with
+Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"Come now, let us get the hang of this business," he said; and
+when he realised that (according to the terms of the ancient
+Patent) if the old lord died before his child was born, his
+high-built hopes would be in the dust, his eagerness became a
+consuming fire.</p>
+<p>For the first time in his life his excitement took forms of
+religion and benevolence. He promised that if everything went well
+he would give a new altar to Our Lady's Chapel in the parish church
+of St. Mary, a ton of coals to every poor person within a radius of
+five miles, and a supper to every inhabitant of the neighbouring
+village who was more than sixty years of age. It was even rumoured
+that he went so far in secret as to provide funds for the fireworks
+with which some of his flatterers were to celebrate the forthcoming
+event, and that one form of illumination was a gigantic frame
+which, set upon the Sky Hill, immediately in front of our house,
+was intended to display in brilliant lights the glowing words "God
+Bless the Happy Heir." Certainly the birth was to be announced by
+the ringing of the big bell of the tower as signal to the country
+round about that the appointed festivities might begin.</p>
+<p>Day by day through September into October, news came from Castle
+Raa by secret channels. Morning by morning, Doctor Conrad was sent
+for to see my mother. Never had the sun looked down on a more
+gruesome spectacle. It was a race between the angel of death and
+the angel of life, with my father's masterful soul between,
+struggling to keep back the one and to hasten on the other.</p>
+<p>My father's impatience affected everybody about him. Especially
+it communicated itself to the person chiefly concerned. The result
+was just what might have been expected. My mother was brought to
+bed prematurely, a full month before her time.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SECOND_CHAPTER" id="SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>SECOND
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>By six o'clock the wind had risen to the force of a hurricane.
+The last of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had
+fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of
+rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's
+Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under
+the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain
+against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the
+port-holes of a ship at sea.</p>
+<p>"Pity for the poor folk with their fireworks," said Father
+Dan.</p>
+<p>"They'll eat their suppers for all that," said my father.</p>
+<p>It was now dark, but my father would not allow the lamps to be
+lighted. There was therefore no light in his gaunt room except a
+sullen glow from the fire of peat and logs. Sometimes, in a
+momentary lull of the storm, an intermittent moan would come from
+the room above, followed by a dull hum of voices.</p>
+<p>"Guess it can't be long now," my father would say.</p>
+<p>"Praise the Lord," Father Dan would answer.</p>
+<p>By seven the storm was at its height. The roaring of the wind in
+the wide chimney was as loud as thunder. Save for this the
+thunderous noise of the sea served to drown all sounds on the land.
+Nevertheless, in the midst of the clamour a loud rapping was heard
+at the front door. One of the maid-servants would have answered it,
+but my father called her back and, taking up a lantern, went to the
+door himself. As quietly as he could for the rush of wind without,
+he opened it, and pulling it after him, he stepped into the
+porch.</p>
+<p>A man in livery was there on horseback, with another saddled
+horse beside him. He was drenched through, but steaming with sweat
+as if he had ridden long and hard. Shouting above the roar of the
+storm, he said:</p>
+<p>"Doctor Conrad is here, is he?"</p>
+<p>"He is&mdash;what of it?" said my father.</p>
+<p>"Tell him he's wanted and must come away with me at once."</p>
+<p>"Who says he must?"</p>
+<p>"Lord Raa. His lordship is dangerously ill. He wishes to see the
+doctor immediately."</p>
+<p>I think my father must then have gone through a moment of fierce
+conflict between his desire to keep the old lord alive and his hope
+of the immediate birth of his offspring. But his choice was quickly
+made.</p>
+<p>"Tell the lord," he cried, "that a woman is here in child-birth,
+and until she's delivered the doctor cannot come to him."</p>
+<p>"But I've brought a horse, and the doctor is to go back with
+me."</p>
+<p>"Give the lord my message and say it is Daniel O'Neill who sends
+it."</p>
+<p>"But his lordship is dying and unless the doctor is there to tap
+him, he may not live till morning."</p>
+<p>"Unless the doctor is here to deliver my wife, my child may be
+dead before midnight."</p>
+<p>"What is the birth of your child to the death of his lordship?"
+cried the man; but, before the words were well out of his mouth, my
+father, in his great strength, had laid hold of the reins and swung
+both horse and rider round about.</p>
+<p>"Get yourself to the other side of my gate, or I'll fling you
+into the road," he cried; and then, returning to the porch, he
+re-entered the house and clashed the door behind him.</p>
+<p>Father Dan used to say that for some moments more the groom from
+Castle Raa could be heard shouting the name of the doctor to the
+lighted windows of my mother's room. But his voice was swirled away
+in the whistling of the wind, and after a while the hoofs of his
+horses went champing over the gravel in the direction of the
+gate.</p>
+<p>When my father returned to his room, shaking the rain from his
+hair and beard, he was fuming with indignation. Perhaps a memory of
+forty years ago was seething in his excited brain.</p>
+<p>"The old scoundrel," he said. "He'd like it, wouldn't he? They'd
+all like it! Which of them wants a son of mine amongst them?"</p>
+<p>The roaring night outside became yet more terrible. So loud was
+the noise from the shore that it was almost as if a wild beast were
+trying to liberate itself from the womb of the sea. At one moment
+Aunt Bridget came downstairs to say that the storm was frightening
+my mother. All the servants of the house were gathered in the hall,
+full of fear, and telling each other superstitious stories.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there came a lull. Rain and wind seemed to cease in an
+instant. The clamour of the sea became less and the tolling of the
+bell on St. Mary's Rock died away in the distance. It was almost as
+if the world, which had been whirling through space, suddenly stood
+still.</p>
+<p>In that moment of silence a deeper moan than usual came from the
+room overhead. My father dropped into a chair, clasped his hands
+and closed his eyes. Father Dan rattled his pearl beads and moved
+his lips, but uttered no sound.</p>
+<p>Then a faint sound came from the room overhead. My father opened
+his eyes and listened. Father Dan held his breath. The sound was
+repeated, but louder, clearer, shriller than before. There could be
+no mistaking it now. It was Nature's eternal signal that out of the
+womb of silence a living soul had been born into the world.</p>
+<p>"It's over," said my father.</p>
+<p>"Glory be to God and all the Saints!" said Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"That'll beat 'em," cried my father, and he leapt to his feet
+and laughed.</p>
+<p>Going to the door of the room, he flung it open. The servants in
+the hall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the
+gardener, Tom Dug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and
+asked if he ought to ring the big bell.</p>
+<p>"Certainly," said my father. "Isn't that what you've been
+standing by for?"</p>
+<p>A few minutes later the bell of the tower began to ring, and it
+was followed almost immediately by the bell of our parish church,
+which rang out a merry peal.</p>
+<p>"That'll beat 'em, I say," cried my father, and laughing in his
+triumph he tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than
+ever.</p>
+<p>All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a
+confused rumble of voices overhead. My father stopped, his face
+straightened, and his voice, which had rung out like a horn,
+wheezed back like a whistle.</p>
+<p>"What's going doing? Where's Conrad? Why doesn't Conrad come to
+me?"</p>
+<p>"Don't worry. He'll be down presently," said Father Dan.</p>
+<p>A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing
+heard, and then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father
+went to the foot of the staircase and shouted the doctor's
+name.</p>
+<p>A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone
+stairs. They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the
+doctor entered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the
+peat fire his face was white, ashen white. He did not speak at
+first, and there was an instant of silence, dead silence. Then my
+father said:</p>
+<p>"Well, what is it?"</p>
+<p>"It is . . ."</p>
+<p>"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . <i>dead?</i>"</p>
+<p>"No! Oh no! Not that."</p>
+<p>"What then?"</p>
+<p>"It is a girl."</p>
+<p>"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"</p>
+<p>"Yes.</p>
+<p>"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair.
+His lips were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy,
+became fixed on the dying fire in a stupid stare.</p>
+<p>Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in
+everybody's crop, and after all it was a good thing to have
+begotten a girl. Girls were the flowers of life, the joy and
+comfort of man in his earthly pilgrimage, and many a father who
+bemoaned his fate when a daughter had been born to him, had lived
+to thank the Lord for her.</p>
+<p>All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room
+began to be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from
+the firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it
+could for the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its
+mocking legend, "God Bless the Happy Heir."</p>
+<p>In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over
+smooth stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.</p>
+<p>"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when
+I think of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the
+generations may not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my
+knees and kiss the feet of the first woman I meet in the street.
+What would the world be without women? Think of St. Theresa! Think
+of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Think of the Holy Virgin herself. . .
+."</p>
+<p>"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet,
+he began to curse and swear.</p>
+<p>"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever?
+Put out those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of
+hell trying to laugh at me?"</p>
+<p>With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father
+strode out of the room.</p>
+<p>My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the
+floor between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was
+ashamed. She felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry
+of pain she turned to the wall and fainted.</p>
+<p>The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead
+reaches of the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a
+month afterwards the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came
+over to take possession of his inheritance.</p>
+<p>But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment
+like an account that was closed, had got to work with his
+advocates, bankers and insular councillors on his great schemes for
+galvanising the old island into new life.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRD_CHAPTER" id="THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>THIRD
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from
+Father Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room
+containing a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big
+praying-stool with an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and
+an open window to which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and
+chirp.</p>
+<p>When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this
+was my mother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch
+me up in her arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery
+round the vast place was my mother herself, and that she would
+comfort me when I fell, and stroke my head with her thin white
+hand, while she sang softly and rocked me to and fro.</p>
+<p>As I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother in any
+other part of our house, or indeed in any other place except our
+carriage when we drove out in the sunshine, I conclude that from
+the time of my birth she had been an invalid.</p>
+<p>Certainly the faces which first emerge from the islands of my
+memory are the cheerful and sunny ones of Doctor Conrad and Father
+Dan. I recall the soft voice of the one as he used to enter our
+room after breakfast saying, "How are we this morning ma'am?" And I
+remember the still softer voice of the other as he said "And how is
+my daughter to-day?"</p>
+<p>I loved both of them, but especially Father Dan, who used to
+call me his Nanny and say I was the plague and pet of his life,
+being as full of mischief as a goat. He must have been an old child
+himself, for I have clear recollection of how, immediately after
+confessing my mother, he would go down on all fours with me on the
+floor and play at hide-and-seek around the legs of the big bed,
+amid squeals and squeaks of laughter. I remember, too, that he wore
+a long sack coat which buttoned close at the neck and hung loose at
+the skirts, where there were two large vertical pockets, and that
+these pockets were my cupboards and drawers, for I put my toys and
+my doll and even the remnants of my cakes into them to be kept in
+safe custody until wanted again.</p>
+<p>My mother called me Mally veen (Mary dear) and out of love of
+her only child she must have weaned me late, for I have vague
+memories of her soft white breasts filled with milk. I slept in a
+little wickerwork cot placed near her bed, so that she could reach
+me if I uncovered myself in the night. She used to say I was like a
+bird, having something birdlike in my small dark head and the way I
+held it up. Certainly I remember myself as a swift little thing,
+always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and chirping about our chill
+and rather cheerless house.</p>
+<p>If I was like a bird my mother was like a flower. Her head,
+which was small and fair, and her face, which was nearly always
+tinged with colour, drooped forward from her delicate body like a
+rose from its stalk. She was generally dressed in black, I
+remember, but she wore a white lace collar as well as a coif such
+as we see in old pictures, and when I call her back to my mind,
+with her large liquid eyes and her sweet soft mouth, I think it
+cannot be my affection alone, or the magic of my childish memory,
+which makes me think, after all these years and all the countries I
+have travelled in, and all the women I have seen, that my darling
+mother, though so little known and so little loved, was the most
+beautiful woman in the world.</p>
+<p>Even yet I cannot but wonder that other people, my father
+especially, did not see her with my eyes. I think he was fond of
+her after his own fashion, but there was a kind of involuntary
+contempt in his affection, which could not conceal itself from my
+quick little eyes. She was visibly afraid of him, and was always
+nervous and timid when he came into our room with his customary
+salutation,</p>
+<p>"How now, Isabel? And how's this child of yours?"</p>
+<p>From my earliest childhood I noticed that he always spoke of me
+as if I had been my mother's child, not his, and perhaps this
+affected my feeling for him from the first.</p>
+<p>I was in terror of his loud voice and rough manner, the big
+bearded man with the iron grey head and the smell of the fresh air
+about his thick serge clothes. It was almost as if I had conceived
+this fear before my birth, and had brought it out of the tremulous
+silence of my mother's womb.</p>
+<p>My earliest recollections are of his muffled shout from the room
+below, "Keep your child quiet, will you?" when I was disturbing him
+over his papers by leaping and skipping about the floor. If he came
+upstairs when I was in bed I would dive under the bedclothes, as a
+duck dives under water, and only come to the surface when he was
+gone. I am sure I never kissed my father or climbed on to his knee,
+and that during his short visits to our room I used to hold my
+breath and hide my head behind my mother's gown.</p>
+<p>I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my
+father and from my father's indifference to me, for she made many
+efforts to reconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent
+schemes, as I recall them now, seem very sweet but very pitiful.
+She took pride, for instance, in my hair, which was jet black even
+when I was a child, and she used to part it in the middle and brush
+it smooth over my forehead in the manner of the Madonna, and one
+day, when my father was with us, she drew me forward and said:</p>
+<p>"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little
+like the pictures of Our Lady, perhaps&mdash;don't you think so,
+Daniel?"</p>
+<p>Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:</p>
+<p>"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"</p>
+<p>I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to
+sing to a little upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her
+room, and on another day she said:</p>
+<p>"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet
+and pure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an
+angel singing."</p>
+<p>Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:</p>
+<p>"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>My mother made most of my clothes. There was no need for her to
+do so, but in the absence of household duties I suppose it
+stimulated the tenderness which all mothers feel in covering the
+little limbs they love; and one day, having made a velvet frock for
+me, from a design in an old pattern book of coloured prints, which
+left the legs and neck and arms very bare, she said:</p>
+<p>"Isn't our Mary a little lady? But she will always look like a
+lady, whatever she is dressed in."</p>
+<p>And then my father laughed still more contemptuously and
+replied,</p>
+<p>"Her grandmother weeded turnips in the fields
+though&mdash;ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all
+weathers."</p>
+<p>My mother was deeply religious, never allowing a day to pass
+without kneeling on her prayer-stool before the image of the
+Virgin, and one day I heard her tell my father that when I was a
+little mite, scarcely able to speak, she found me kneeling in my
+cot with my doll perched up before me, moving my lips as if saying
+my prayers and looking up at the ceiling with a rapt
+expression.</p>
+<p>"But she has always had such big, beautiful, religious eyes, and
+I shouldn't wonder if she becomes a Nun some day!"</p>
+<p>"A nun, eh? Maybe so. But I take no stock in the nun business
+anyway," said my father.</p>
+<p>Whereupon my mother's lips moved as if she were saying "No,
+dearest," but her dear, sweet pride was crushed and she could go no
+farther.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOURTH_CHAPTER" id="FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>FOURTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who,
+like my father, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and
+the head of them was Aunt Bridget.</p>
+<p>She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to
+one Colonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower,
+a Belfast Irishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal
+grandfather. But the Colonel had died within a year, leaving Aunt
+Bridget with one child of her own, a girl, as well as a daughter of
+his wife by the former marriage. As this happened about the time of
+my birth, when it became obvious that my mother was to be an
+invalid, my father invited Aunt Bridget to come to his house as
+housekeeper, and she came, and brought her children with her.</p>
+<p>Her rule from the outset had been as hard as might have been
+expected from one who prided herself on her self-command&mdash;a
+quality that covered everybody, including my mother and me, and was
+only subject to softening in favour of her own offspring.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget's own daughter, a year older than myself, was a
+fair child with light grey eyes, round cheeks of the colour of ripe
+apples, and long yellow hair that was carefully combed and curled.
+Her name was Betsy, which was extended by her mother to Betsy
+Beauty. She was usually dressed in a muslin frock with a sash of
+light blue ribbon, and being understood to be delicate was
+constantly indulged and nearly always eating, and giving herself
+generally the airs of the daughter of the house.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget's step-daughter, ten years older, was a gaunt,
+ungainly girl with red hair and irregular features. Her name was
+Nessy, and, having an instinctive sense of her dependent position,
+she was very humble and subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to
+say, "as smooth as an old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers,
+which always meant my Aunt, but spiteful, insolent, and acrid to
+anybody who was outside my Aunt's favour, which usually meant
+me.</p>
+<p>Between my cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which
+Nessy MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while
+my poor mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who
+said I was a wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder,
+seeing how disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was
+being brought up.</p>
+<p>These skirmishes went on for a considerable time without
+consequences, but they came at last to a foolish climax which led
+to serious results.</p>
+<p>Even my mother's life had its gleams of sunshine, and flowers
+were a constant joy to her. Old Tommy, the gardener, was aware of
+this, and every morning sent up a bunch of them, freshly cut and
+wet with the dew. But one day in the spring he could not do so,
+being out in the dubs of the Curragh, cutting peat for the fires.
+Therefore I undertook to supply the deficiency, having already,
+with the large solemnity of six, begun to consider it my duty to
+take charge of my mother.</p>
+<p>"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you," I said
+(every <i>f</i> being an <i>s</i> in those days), and armed with a
+pair of scissors I skipped down to the garden.</p>
+<p>I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and
+fragrant, and was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy
+MacLeod, who had been watching from a window, came bouncing down
+me.</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked,
+underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you
+know this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch
+it?"</p>
+<p>I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy
+the Mate, but Nessy would hear no such explanation.</p>
+<p>"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that
+your Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can
+be done without her."</p>
+<p>Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little
+heart there had long been a secret pang of mortified
+pride&mdash;how born I do not know&mdash;at seeing Aunt Bridget
+take the place of my mother, and now, choking with vexation but
+without saying a word, I swept off the heads of all the flowers in
+the bed, and with my arms full of them&mdash;ten times more than I
+wanted&mdash;I sailed back to my mother's room.</p>
+<p>Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was
+doomed to punishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt
+Bridget kept suspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs,
+but it was my poor mother who paid the penalty.</p>
+<p>"Isabel," cried Aunt Bridget, "I hope you are satisfied with
+your child at last."</p>
+<p>"What has Mary been doing now, dear?" said my mother.</p>
+<p>"Don't ask me what she has been doing. You know quite well, or
+if you don't you ought to."</p>
+<p>My mother glanced at the flowers and she seemed to understand
+what had happened, for her face fell and she said submissively,</p>
+<p>"Mary has done wrong, but I am sure she is sorry and will never
+do it again."</p>
+<p>"Sorry, indeed!" cried my Aunt. "Not she sorry. And she'll do it
+again at the very next opportunity. The vixen! The little wilful,
+underhand vixen! But what wonder if children go wrong when their
+own mothers neglect to correct them."</p>
+<p>"I daresay you are quite right, dear Bridget&mdash;you are
+always right," said my mother in a low, grave voice. "But then I'm
+not very well, and Mary is all I have, you know."</p>
+<p>My mother was in tears by this time, but Aunt Bridget was not
+content with her triumph. Sweeping downstairs she carried her
+complaint to my father, who ordered that I was to be taken out of
+my mother's charge on the ground that she was incapable of
+attending to my upbringing&mdash;a task which, being assigned to my
+Aunt Bridget, provided that I should henceforward live on the
+ground floor and eat oaten cake and barley bonnag and sleep alone
+in the cold room over the hall while Betsy Beauty ate wheaten bread
+and apple tart and slept with her mother in the room over the
+kitchen in which they always kept a fire.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTH_CHAPTER" id="FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The altered arrangements were a cause of grief to my mother, but
+I am bound to confess that for me they had certain compensations.
+One of them was the greater ease with which I could slip out to
+Tommy the Mate, who had been a sailor before he was a gardener, and
+was still a fine old salt, with grizzled beard and shaggy eyebrows,
+and a merry twinkle in what he called his "starboard" eye.</p>
+<p>I think Tommy was one of the few about my father's house who
+were really fond of me, but perhaps that was mainly because he
+loathed aunt Bridget. He used to call her the Big Woman, meaning
+that she was the master and mistress of everything and everybody
+about the place. When he was told of any special piece of her
+tyranny to servant or farmhand he used to say: "Aw, well, she'll
+die for all"; and when he heard how she had separated me from my
+mother, who had nothing else to love or live for, he spat sideways
+out of his mouth and said:</p>
+<p>"Our Big Woman is a wicked devil, I'm thinking, and I wouldn't
+trust [shouldn't wonder] but she'll burn in hell."</p>
+<p>What definite idea I attached to this denunciation I do not now
+recall, but I remember that it impressed me deeply, and that many a
+night afterwards, during the miserable half-hours before I fell
+asleep with my head under the clothes in the cold bedroom over the
+hall to which (as Nessy MacLeod had told me) the bad fairies came
+for bad children, I repeated the strange words again and again.</p>
+<p>Another compensation was the greater opportunity I had for
+cultivating an acquaintance which I had recently made with the
+doctor's son, when he came with his father on visits to my mother.
+As soon as the hoofs of the horse were heard on the gravel, and
+before the bell could be rung, I used to dart away on tiptoe, fly
+through the porch, climb into the gig and help the boy to hold the
+reins while his father was upstairs.</p>
+<p>This led to what I thought a great discovery. It was about my
+mother. I had always known my mother was sick, but now I got a
+"skute" (as old Tommy used to say) into the cause of her illness.
+It was a matter of milk. The doctor's boy had heard his father
+saying so. If my mother could only have milk morning, noon and
+night, every day and all day, "there wouldn't be nothing the matter
+with her."</p>
+<p>This, too, impressed me deeply, and the form it took in my mind
+was that "mammy wasn't sed enough," a conclusion that gained colour
+from the fact that I saw Betsy Beauty perched up in a high chair in
+the dining-room twice or thrice a day, drinking nice warm milk
+fresh from the cow. We had three cows, I remember, and to correct
+the mischief of my mother's illness, I determined that henceforth
+she should not have merely more of our milk&mdash;she should have
+all of it.</p>
+<p>Losing no time in carrying my intentions into effect, I crept
+into the dairy as soon as the dairymaid had brought in the
+afternoon's milking. There it was, still frothing and bubbling in
+three great bowls, and taking up the first of them in my little
+thin arms&mdash;goodness knows how&mdash;I made straight for my
+mother's room.</p>
+<p>But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and
+panting under my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and
+she fell on me with her usual reproaches.</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, you wilful, underhand little vixen, whatever are
+you doing with the milk?"</p>
+<p>Being in no mood for explanations I tried to push past, but
+Nessy prevented me.</p>
+<p>"No, indeed, you shan't go a step further. What will your Aunt
+Bridget say? Take the milk back, miss, this very minute."</p>
+<p>Nessy's loud protest brought Betsy Beauty out of the
+dining-room, and in a moment my cousin, looking more than ever like
+a painted doll in her white muslin dress with a large blue bow in
+her yellow hair, had run upstairs to assist her step-sister.</p>
+<p>I was now between the two, the one above and the other below,
+and they laid hold of my bowl to take it from me. They tugged and I
+resisted and there was a struggle in which the milk was in danger
+of being spilled.</p>
+<p>"She's a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped,"
+cried Nessy.</p>
+<p>"She's stealing my milk, and I'll tell mamma," said Betsy.</p>
+<p>"Tell her then," I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding
+myself unable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and
+flung its contents over my cousin's head, thereby drenching her
+with the frothing milk and making the staircase to run like a river
+of whitewash.</p>
+<p>Of course there was a fearful clamour. Betsy Beauty shrieked and
+Nessy bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her
+parlour, while my mother, white and trembling, halted to the door
+of her room.</p>
+<p>"Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt
+Bridget found no need of questions. After running upstairs to her
+dripping daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her
+"my poor darling," and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing
+more to do with that little vixen?" she fell on my mother with
+bitter upbraidings.</p>
+<p>"Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child
+is&mdash;the little spiteful fury!"</p>
+<p>By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken
+refuge behind my mother's gown, but I heard her timid voice trying
+to excuse me, and saying something about my cousin and a childish
+quarrel.</p>
+<p>"Childish quarrel, indeed!" cried my Aunt; "there's nothing
+childish about that little imp, nothing. And what's more, I shall
+be obliged to you, Isabel, if you will never again have the
+assurance to speak of my Betsy Beauty in the same breath with a
+child of yours."</p>
+<p>That was more than I could hear. My little heart was afire at
+the humiliation put upon my mother. So stepping out to the head of
+the stairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble:</p>
+<p>"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but
+she'll burn in hell!"</p>
+<p>Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of
+that pronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the
+middle of the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her.
+Then, ghastly white and without a word, she came flying up at me,
+and, before I could recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped
+me on the cheek and boxed both my ears.</p>
+<p>I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that
+in the midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room
+and demanded in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole
+house, to be told what was going on.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my
+mother did not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the
+wrong, she began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to
+say she could not live any longer where a child was encouraged to
+insult her.</p>
+<p>"I have to leave this house&mdash;I have to leave it to-morrow,"
+she said.</p>
+<p>"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm
+just crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These
+children must go to school. They must all go&mdash;the darned lot
+of 'em."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTH_CHAPTER" id="SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and
+when I first became known to the doctor's boy.</p>
+<p>It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I
+awoke in the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another
+world. The church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside
+our house, under the window of my mother's room. After listening
+for a little while I made my voice as soft as I could and said:</p>
+<p>"Mamma, what is it'?"</p>
+<p>"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my
+mother.</p>
+<p>I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping
+over to the window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns,
+and the frosty air smoking about their red faces. After a while
+they stopped singing, and then the chain of our front door rattled,
+and I heard my father's loud voice asking the singers into the
+house.</p>
+<p>They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking
+and then laughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than
+all the rest, and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me
+she was serving out bunloaf and sherry-wine.</p>
+<p>I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I
+awoke in the morning I conceived the idea of singing the Waits
+myself. Being an artful little thing I knew that my plan would be
+opposed, so I said nothing about it, but I got my mother to play
+and sing the carol I had heard overnight, until my quick ear had
+mastered both tune and words, and when darkness fell on Christmas
+night I proceeded to carry out my intention.</p>
+<p>In the heat of my impatience I forgot to put on cloak or hat,
+and stealing out of the house I found myself in the carriage drive
+with nothing on but a pair of thin slippers and the velvet frock
+that left my neck and arms so bare. It was snowing, and the
+snow-flakes were whirling round me and making me dizzy, for in the
+light from my mother's window they seemed to come up from the
+ground as well as down from the sky.</p>
+<p>When I got out of the light of the window, it was very dark, and
+I could only see that the chestnuts in the drive seemed to have
+white blankets on them which looked as if they had been hung out to
+dry. It was a long time before I got to the gate, and then I had
+begun to be nervous and to have half a mind to turn back. But the
+thought of the bunloaf and the sherry-wine buoyed me up, and
+presently I found myself on the high road, crossing a bridge and
+turning down a lane that led to the sea, whose moaning a mile away
+was the only sound I could hear.</p>
+<p>I knew quite well where I was going to. I was going to the
+doctor's house. It was called Sunny Lodge, and it was on the edge
+of Yellow Gorse Farm. I had seen it more than once when I had
+driven out in the carriage with my mother, and had thought how
+sweet it looked with its whitewashed walls and brown thatched roof
+and the red and white roses which grew over the porch.</p>
+<p>I was fearfully cold before I got there. The snow was in my
+slippers and down my neck and among the thickening masses of my
+hair. At one moment I came upon some sheep and lambs that were
+sheltering under a hedge, and they bleated in the silence of the
+night.</p>
+<p>But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor's cottage,
+and coming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was
+clogged with snow, and stepped up to the porch. My teeth were now
+chattering with cold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and
+in my thin and creachy voice I had got as far as&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ch'ist was born in
+Bef-lem,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Ch'ist was born in
+Bef-lem,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">An' in a manger laid. . .
+."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house.</p>
+<p>Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman
+whom I knew to be the doctor's wife looked down into my face with
+an expression of bewilderment, and then cried:</p>
+<p>"Goodness gracious me, doctor&mdash;if it isn't little Mary
+O'Neill, God bless her!"</p>
+<p>"Bring her in at once, then," said the voice of Doctor Conrad
+from within, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort of
+kitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had a
+kettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork
+hearth-rug, a dresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle
+covered with red cloth.</p>
+<p>I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me
+to faint, for I have no recollection of what happened next, except
+that I was sitting on somebody's lap and that she was calling me
+<i>boght millish</i> (little sweet) and <i>veg-veen</i> (little
+dear) while she rubbed my half-frozen limbs and did other things
+that were, I am sure, all womanly and good.</p>
+<p>When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to
+sleep there that night, and he must go over to the Big House and
+tell my mother what had happened. He went, and by the time he came
+back, I had been bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire,
+and was being carried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too
+large for me) to a little dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet
+smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch of the roof came down
+almost to my face.</p>
+<p>I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I
+was feeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the
+doctor's wife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that
+seemed far away. But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget
+came in her satin mantle and big black hat, and said something,
+while standing at the end of my bed, about people paying the
+penalty when they did things that were sly and underhand.</p>
+<p>Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in
+to see me at night he said:</p>
+<p>"How are we this evening? Ah, better, I see. Distinctly
+better!"</p>
+<p>And then turning to his wife he said:</p>
+<p>"No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann."</p>
+<p>"But won't the <i>boght millish</i> be afraid to be left alone?"
+she asked.</p>
+<p>I said I shouldn't, and she kissed me and told me to knock at
+the wall if I wanted anything. And then, with her husband's arm
+about her waist, the good soul left me to myself.</p>
+<p>I don't know how I knew, but I did know that that house was a
+home of love. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that that
+sweet woman, who had been the daughter of a well-to-do man, had
+chosen the doctor out of all the men in the world when he was only
+a medical student fresh from Germany or Switzerland. I don't know
+how I knew, but I did know, that leaving father and mother and a
+sheltered home she had followed her young husband when he first
+came to Ellan without friends or connections, and though poor then
+and poor still, she had never regretted it. I don't know how I
+knew, but I did know, that all this was the opposite of what had
+happened to my own dear mother, who having everything yet had
+nothing, while this good creature having nothing yet had all.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id="SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When I awoke next morning the sun was shining, and, after my
+hair had been brushed smooth over my forehead, I was sitting up in
+bed, eating for breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the
+smallest of silver spoons, when the door opened with a bang and a
+small figure tumbled into my room.</p>
+<p>It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey
+Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress
+was a white felt hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and
+turned down in the brim, and having a hole in the crown with a crop
+of his brown hair sticking through it, gave him the appearance of a
+damaged mushroom.</p>
+<p>Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his
+face, which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue
+eyes&mdash;as blue as the bluest sea&mdash;he took no notice of my
+presence, but tossed a somersault in the middle of the floor,
+screwed his legs over the back of a chair, vaulted over a table and
+finally stood on his hands with his legs against the wall opposite
+to my bed, and his inverted countenance close to the carpet.</p>
+<p>In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of
+remaining as long as possible, while his face grew very red, we
+held our first conversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet
+as a mouse, but now I said:</p>
+<p>"Little boy, what's your name?"</p>
+<p>"Mart," was the answer.</p>
+<p>"Where do you come from?"</p>
+<p>"Spitzbergen."</p>
+<p>I cannot remember that this intelligence astonished me, for when
+the inverted face had become scarlet, and the legs went down and
+the head came up, and my visitor tossed several somersaults over
+the end of my bed, to the danger of my breakfast tray, and then,
+without a word more, tumbled out of the room, I was still watching
+in astonishment.</p>
+<p>I did not know at that time that these were the ways which since
+the beginning of the world have always been employed by savages and
+boys when they desire to commend themselves to the female of their
+kind, so that when the doctor's wife came smiling upstairs I asked
+her if the little boy who had been to see me was not quite
+well.</p>
+<p>"Bless you, yes, dear, but that's his way," she said, and then
+she told me all about him.</p>
+<p>His name was Martin Conrad and he was her only child. His hat,
+which had awakened my interest, was an old one of his father's, and
+it was the last thing he took off when he undressed for bed at
+night and the first thing he put on in the morning. When the hole
+came into its crown his mother had tried to hide it away but he had
+always found it, and when she threw it into the river he had fished
+it out again.</p>
+<p>He was the strangest boy, full of the funniest fancies. He used
+to say that before he was born he lived in a tree and was the
+fellow who turned on the rain. It was with difficulty that he could
+be educated, and every morning on being awakened, he said he was
+"sorry he ever started this going to school." As a consequence he
+could not read or write as well as other boys of his age, and his
+grammar was still that of the peasant people with whom he loved to
+associate.</p>
+<p>Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who
+lived in a mud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on
+his way to work. Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous
+story. It was about Arctic exploration and an expedition he had
+joined in search of Franklin. This had made an overpowering
+impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwards would stand waiting
+at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:</p>
+<p>"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"</p>
+<p>Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would
+answer:</p>
+<p>"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a
+day now."</p>
+<p>"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen
+every morning.</p>
+<p>But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was
+the locality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every
+day he would set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the
+road and the shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of
+mysterious things and undiscovered places. By some
+means&mdash;nobody knew how&mdash;the boy who could not learn his
+lessons studied his father's German atlas, and there was not a name
+in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got by heart. He
+transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill became
+Greenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the
+Nun's Well became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New
+Siberia, and St. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became
+the pivot of the earth itself.</p>
+<p>He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he
+kept a log-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits,
+which he called his "diarrhea." And now if you lost him you had
+only to look up to the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the
+chimney stack, which he called his crow's nest, and there you found
+him, spying through his father's telescope and crying out:</p>
+<p>"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen
+point north, five knots to the starboard bow."</p>
+<p>His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this,
+but there is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a
+marvellous story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's
+boy, and saw myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his
+side. I suppose my poor lonely heart was hungering after
+comradeship, for being a sentimental little ninny I decided to
+offer myself to the doctor's boy as his sister.</p>
+<p>The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come
+until the next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a
+yet louder bang than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on
+wheels, supposed to be a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish
+terrier, which being red had been called William Rufus. His hat was
+tied over his ears with a tape from his mother's apron, and he wore
+a long pair of his father's knitted stockings which covered his
+boots and came up to his thighs.</p>
+<p>He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the
+previous day, but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to
+his dog that the chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the
+sheep-skin rug was floating ice.</p>
+<p>After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had
+come, I tried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little
+woman I went artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my
+mother, my cousin, Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the
+intention of showing how rich I was in relations, so that he might
+see how poor he was himself.</p>
+<p>I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's
+boy did not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in
+review he only said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"</p>
+<p>At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I
+took it.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you got a sister?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Not <i>me</i>!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis
+on the last word which cut me to the quick.</p>
+<p>"Wouldn't you like to have one?"</p>
+<p>"Sisters isn't no good," said the doctor's boy, and he instanced
+"chaps" at school&mdash;Jimmy Christopher and others&mdash;whose
+sisters were afraid of everything&mdash;lobsters and crabs and even
+the sea.</p>
+<p>I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little
+heart was beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat
+which was choking me, I said:</p>
+<p>"I'm not afraid of the sea&mdash;not crabs neither."</p>
+<p>In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the
+sea-blue eyes looked aslant at me.</p>
+<p>"Isn't you, though?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I
+invited the doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all,
+and sat by my right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an
+instant attachment for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my
+lap.</p>
+<p>Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might
+call downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling
+his mother what I was. I was a "stunner."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id="EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I
+belonged to him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin
+and her stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his
+property.</p>
+<p>It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled
+by a Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only
+teacher was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was
+of the colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top
+of her head. But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual
+severity, and when she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her
+words with great rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which
+were being chopped in a charity school.</p>
+<p>Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget,
+who had exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of
+his account with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to
+display her gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me
+that my character had gone to school before me, for in order that I
+might be directly under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in
+the lowest class, although my mother's daily teaching would have
+entitled me to go higher.</p>
+<p>I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief
+as a goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I
+deserved the fate that followed.</p>
+<p>One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school.
+I held my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to
+the girl beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter.</p>
+<p>"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her
+desk, but I went on whispering and the girls began to choke with
+laughter.</p>
+<p>I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying
+something about herself&mdash;making game, perhaps, of her personal
+appearance&mdash;for after a moment she said, in her rapid
+accents:</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been
+saying."</p>
+<p>I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer.</p>
+<p>"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head,
+haven't you?"</p>
+<p>But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress
+said:</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, come forward."</p>
+<p>She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to
+obey when I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming
+with satisfaction, seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see."</p>
+<p>I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her
+desk, came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:</p>
+<p>"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me?
+Come out, miss, this very moment."</p>
+<p>I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.</p>
+<p>"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered
+and spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy
+<i>me</i>?"</p>
+<p>That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid
+as a rock.</p>
+<p>Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly
+compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my
+seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in
+front of me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the
+other fixed itself afresh.</p>
+<p>"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you
+big girls come and help me?"</p>
+<p>With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came
+rushing to the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod,
+and together, after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk,
+like an ivy branch from a tree, and dragged me into the open space
+in front of the classes. By this time the schoolmistress' hands,
+and I think her neck were scratched, and from that cause also she
+was quivering with passion.</p>
+<p>"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your
+peril."</p>
+<p>My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had
+fallen on the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of
+my ignominious position.</p>
+<p>"Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of
+the scholars, "put down your slates and listen."</p>
+<p>Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing
+by my side and pointing down to me:</p>
+<p>"This child came to school with the character of a wilful,
+wicked little vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross
+disobedience she has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare
+the rod, spoil the child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish
+parents who ruin their children by overindulgence deserve all that
+comes to them. But there is no reason why other people should
+suffer, and, small as this child is she has made the life of her
+excellent aunt intolerable by her unlovable, unsociable, and
+unchildlike disposition. Children, she was sent to school to be
+corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop your lessons while
+she is publicly punished. . . ."</p>
+<p>With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress
+stepped back and left me. I knew what she was doing&mdash;she was
+taking her cane out of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard
+the desk opened with an impatient clash and then closed with an
+angry bang. I was as sure as if I had had eyes in the back of my
+head, that the schoolmistress was holding the cane in both hands
+and bending it to see if it was lithe and limber.</p>
+<p>I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me
+I was conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's
+experience&mdash;the pain of knowing that other children are
+looking upon her degradation. I thought of Aunt Bridget and my
+little heart choked with anger. Then I thought of my mother and my
+throat throbbed with shame. I remembered what my mother had said,
+of her little Mary being always a little lady, and I felt crushed
+at the thought that I was about to be whipped before all the
+village children.</p>
+<p>At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but
+here I was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But
+just as my lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my
+mother would suffer if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I
+was about to cry out to the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh!
+please don't beat me!" a strange thing happened, which turned my
+shame into surprise and triumph.</p>
+<p>Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy
+coming out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was
+Martin Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old
+Tommy the gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said
+in her sharp voice:</p>
+<p>"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without
+permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."</p>
+<p>Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he
+dragged his big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and
+with both hands pulled it down hard on his head.</p>
+<p>"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step
+towards him with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if
+about to strike.</p>
+<p>The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he
+dropped his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached
+him, struck her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and
+gasping against the wall.</p>
+<p>Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that
+belonged to him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her
+breath, or the scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched
+me, as if his little stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in
+stately silence out of the school.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINTH_CHAPTER" id="NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by
+order of the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of
+distress to our mothers, who thought the future of our lives had
+been permanently darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood
+between us and our sunshine. On the contrary it occurred
+that&mdash;Aunt Bridget having washed her hands of me, and Martin's
+father being unable to make up his mind what to do with
+him&mdash;we found ourselves for some time at large and were
+nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came
+which brought a great disaster.</p>
+<p>One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his
+potting-shed, deep in the discussion of their usual
+subject&mdash;the perils and pains of Arctic exploration, when you
+have little food in your wallet and not too much in your
+stomach.</p>
+<p>"But you has lots of things when you gets there&mdash;hams and
+flitches and oranges and things&mdash;hasn't you?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Never a ha'p'orth," said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just
+takes your Alping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o'
+biscuit and away you go over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet
+and mountains higher nor Mount Blank and never think o' nothing but
+doing something that nobody's never done before. My goodness, yes,
+boy, that's the way of it when you're out asploring. 'Glory's
+waiting for me' says you, and on you go."</p>
+<p>At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea
+when the sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first
+time, he turned back to old Tommy and said:</p>
+<p>"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out
+asploring&mdash;women and girls?"</p>
+<p>"Never a woman," said Tommy.</p>
+<p>"Not never&mdash;not if they're stunners?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Well," says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eye
+twinkled, "I won't say never&mdash;not if they're stunners."</p>
+<p>Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house
+with a big corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his
+hand, a lemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit
+and a small Union Jack which came from the confectioner's on the
+occasion of his last birthday.</p>
+<p>"Glory's waiting for me&mdash;come along, shipmate," he said in
+a mysterious whisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed.</p>
+<p>He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock,
+and the bottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we
+went, with the dog bounding before us.</p>
+<p>I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth,
+for of all the things I was afraid of I feared the sea most&mdash;a
+terror born with me, perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But
+I had to live up to the character I had given myself when Martin
+became my brother, and the one dread of my life was that, finding
+me as timid as other girls, he might want me no more.</p>
+<p>We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which
+had a mud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that
+was moored to a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate,
+who was a "widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none
+to see us when we launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It
+was then two o'clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the
+tide, which was at the turn, was beginning to flow.</p>
+<p>I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything
+about that, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken
+the stroke himself, I spluttered and plunged and made many
+blunders. I had never been on the sea either, and almost as soon as
+we shot clear of the shore and were lifted on to the big waves, I
+began to feel dizzy, and dropped my oar, with the result that it
+slipped through the rollocks and was washed away. Martin saw what
+had happened as we swung round to his rowing, but when I expected
+him to scold me, he only said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better
+with one," and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he
+began to scull.</p>
+<p>My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from
+fear, I now sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as
+little as possible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his
+stout little body rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and
+sang and shouted messages to me over his shoulder.</p>
+<p>"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and
+though my teeth were chattering, I answered that it was.</p>
+<p>"Some girls&mdash;Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod
+and Betsy Beauty&mdash;would be frightened to come asploring,
+wouldn't they?"</p>
+<p>"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling
+down to the soles of my shoes.</p>
+<p>We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far
+away that Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of
+the Big House looked like something I had seen through the wrong
+end of a telescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in
+his eyes, and said:</p>
+<p>"See the North Pole out yonder?"</p>
+<p>"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little
+person, and had not an ounce of "dream" in me.</p>
+<p>I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St.
+Mary's Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place
+I was most afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black
+mass, standing twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like
+a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save
+at high water, by a multitude of hungry sea-fowl.</p>
+<p>A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we
+approached, and wheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their
+wings over our heads. I wanted to scream too, but Martin said:</p>
+<p>"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"</p>
+<p>"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I
+began to sing.</p>
+<p>I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally,"
+because its jolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Oh Sally's the gel for me,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Our Sally's the gel for
+me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I'll marry the gel that I love
+best</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When I come back from
+sea."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment
+I made another mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock,
+and laying hold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held
+out his hand to me to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held
+back when I ought to have jumped, and he was drenched from head to
+foot. I was ashamed, and thought he would have scolded me, but he
+only shook himself and said:</p>
+<p>"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out
+asploring."</p>
+<p>My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but
+without waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right
+arm, and told me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat,
+while he climbed the rock and took possession of it in the name of
+the king.</p>
+<p>"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring," he
+said, and with his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his
+hand and his little Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the
+crown of his hat, he clambered up the crag and disappeared over the
+top of it.</p>
+<p>Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness
+increased tenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was
+about to submerge the ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright
+to climb the cliff. But hardly had I taken three steps when my foot
+slipped and I clutched the seaweed to save myself from falling,
+with the result that the boat's rope slid from my arm, and went
+rip-rip-ripping down the rock until it fell with a splash into the
+sea.</p>
+<p>I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head
+appeared after a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late
+for him to do anything, for the boat had already drifted six yards
+away, and just when I thought he would have shrieked at me for
+cutting off our only connection with the shore, he said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two
+when we're out asploring."</p>
+<p>I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the
+rock by help of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing had
+happened&mdash;pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a
+bell suspended inside of it and his little flag floating on
+top.</p>
+<p>"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered.</p>
+<p>"Don't you worrit about that," he said. "We'll just signal back
+to the next base&mdash;we call them bases when we're out
+asploring."</p>
+<p>I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which,
+being heard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But
+the bell was big, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights
+by the shock and surging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied
+a string to its tongue it was a feeble sound he struck from it.</p>
+<p>Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing
+on the water but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the
+shore.</p>
+<p>"Will they ever come?" I faltered.</p>
+<p>"Ra&mdash;ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And
+when they take us ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles
+and bands and things to take us home. My goodness, yes," he said,
+with the same wild look, "hundreds and tons of them!"</p>
+<p>But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew
+dim, the moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the
+screaming sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of
+relief. My heart was quivering through my clothes by this time, but
+Martin, who had whistled and sung, began to talk about being
+hungry.</p>
+<p>"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat
+a dog&mdash;we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring."</p>
+<p>This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the
+pocket of my frock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having
+fallen out, perhaps, when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and
+I looked up at him with eyes of fear, but he only said:</p>
+<p>"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out
+asploring."</p>
+<p>I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who
+could not learn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a
+born gentleman, but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming
+and to hide my emotion I pretended to be ill.</p>
+<p>"I know," said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus has
+dizzingtory when we're out asploring."</p>
+<p>There was one infallible cure for that, though&mdash;milk!</p>
+<p>"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory
+in a jiffy."</p>
+<p>This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my
+belt, hoping to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my
+confusion that it had suffered from the same misadventure, being
+cracked in the bottom, and every drop of the contents gone.</p>
+<p>That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but
+Martin went on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if
+nothing had happened.</p>
+<p>The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over
+the sea, the boom of the billows on the rock became still more
+terrible, and I began to shiver.</p>
+<p>"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're
+out asploring."</p>
+<p>I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed
+me up in the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle,
+telling me I was as right as ninepence, I began to think of
+something I had read in a storybook, and half choking with sobs I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Martin!"</p>
+<p>"What now, shipmate?"</p>
+<p>"It's all my fault . . . and I'm just as frightened as Jimmy
+Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and
+I'm not a stunner . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and
+leave me here and save yourself and . . ."</p>
+<p>But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.</p>
+<p>"Not <i>me</i>! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out
+asploring. Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"</p>
+<p>That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus,
+who was sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my
+howling.</p>
+<p>What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware,
+though my back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string,
+had leapt up to the bell and was swinging his little body from the
+tongue to make a louder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then
+came a crash and a crack, and then silence.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer.</p>
+<p>"Have you hurt yourself?"</p>
+<p>And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the
+rock, came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right
+arm) mingled with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable
+little soul was struggling to suppress&mdash;</p>
+<p>"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds
+<i>nothing</i> when we're out asploring!"</p>
+<p>Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was
+railing at Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was
+crying for Father Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who
+was putting his horse into his gig and scouring the parish in
+search of the two lost children.</p>
+<p>But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the
+potting-shed and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea,
+hurried off to the shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the
+beach, and thereby came to his own conclusions.</p>
+<p>By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and
+there, guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great
+little explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water,
+lying together in the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and
+fast asleep.</p>
+<p>There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when
+Tommy brought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken
+limb in his mother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me
+over to the Presbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home
+and so stand between me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's
+birch.</p>
+<p>Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House,
+when we reached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a
+blood vessel.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TENTH_CHAPTER" id="TENTH_CHAPTER"></a>TENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>During the fortnight in which my mother was confined to bed I
+was her constant companion and attendant. With the mighty eagerness
+of a child who knew nothing of what the solemn time foreboded I
+flew about the house on tiptoe, fetching my mother's medicine and
+her milk and the ice to cool it, and always praising myself for my
+industry and thinking I was quite indispensable.</p>
+<p>"You couldn't do without your little Mally, could you, mammy?" I
+would say, and my mother would smooth my hair lovingly with her
+thin white hand and answer:</p>
+<p>"No, indeed, I couldn't do without my little Mally." And then my
+little bird-like beak would rise proudly in the air.</p>
+<p>All this time I saw nothing of Martin, and only heard through
+Doctor Conrad in his conversations with my mother, that the boy's
+broken arm had been set, and that as soon as it was better, he was
+to be sent to King George's College, which was at the other end of
+Ellan. What was to be done with myself I never inquired, being so
+satisfied that my mother could not get on without me.</p>
+<p>I was partly aware that big letters, bearing foreign
+postage-stamps and seals and coats of arms, with pictures of
+crosses and hearts, were coming to our house. I was also aware that
+at intervals, while my mother was in bed, there was the sound of
+voices, as if in eager and sometimes heated conference, in the room
+below, and that my mother would raise her pale face from her pillow
+and stop my chattering with "Hush!" when my father's voice was
+louder and sterner than usual. But it never occurred to me to
+connect these incidents with myself, until the afternoon of the day
+on which my mother got up for the first time.</p>
+<p>She was sitting before the fire, for autumn was stealing on, and
+I was bustling about her, fixing the rug about her knees and
+telling her if she wanted anything she was to be sure and call her
+little Mally, when a timid knock came to the door and Father Dan
+entered the room. I can see his fair head and short figure still,
+and hear his soft Irish voice, as he stepped forward and said:</p>
+<p>"Now don't worry, my daughter. Above all, don't worry."</p>
+<p>By long experience my mother knew this for a sign of the dear
+Father's own perturbation, and I saw her lower lip tremble as she
+asked:</p>
+<p>"Hadn't Mary better run down to the garden?"</p>
+<p>"No! Oh no!" said Father Dan. "It is about Mary I come to speak,
+so our little pet may as well remain."</p>
+<p>Then at a signal from my mother I went over to her and stood by
+her side, and she embraced my waist with a trembling arm, while the
+Father took a seat by her side, and, fumbling the little silver
+cross on his chain, delivered his message.</p>
+<p>After long and anxious thought&mdash;and he might say
+prayer&mdash;it had been decided that I should be sent away to a
+Convent. It was to be a Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rome. He was
+to take me to Rome himself and see me safely settled there. And
+they (meaning my father and Aunt Bridget) had promised
+him&mdash;faithfully promised him&mdash;that when the holidays came
+round he should be sent to bring me home again. So there was
+nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, nothing to . . . to . .
+.</p>
+<p>My mother listened as long as she could, and then&mdash;her
+beautiful white face distorted by pain&mdash;she broke in on the
+Father's message with a cry of protest.</p>
+<p>"But she is so young! Such a child! Only seven years old! How
+can any one think of sending such a little one away from home?"</p>
+<p>Father Dan tried to pacify her. It was true I was very young,
+but then the Reverend Mother was such a good woman. She would love
+me and care for me as if I were her own child. And then the good
+nuns, God bless their holy souls. . . .</p>
+<p>"But Mary is all I have," cried my mother, "and if they take her
+away from me I shall be broken-hearted. At such a time too! How
+cruel they are! They know quite well what the doctor says. Can't
+they wait a little longer?"</p>
+<p>I could see that Father Dan was arguing against himself, for his
+eyes filled as he said:</p>
+<p>"It's hard, I know it's hard for you, my daughter. But perhaps
+it's best for the child that she should go away from
+home&mdash;perhaps it's all God's blessed and holy will. Remember
+there's a certain person here who isn't kind to our little
+innocent, and is making her a cause of trouble. Not that I think
+she is actuated by evil intentions. . . ."</p>
+<p>"But she is, she is," cried my mother, who was growing more and
+more excited.</p>
+<p>"Then all the more reason why Mary should go to the
+convent&mdash;for a time at all events."</p>
+<p>My mother began to waver, and she said:</p>
+<p>"Let her be sent to a Convent in the island then."</p>
+<p>"I thought of that, but there isn't one," said Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"Then . . . then . . . then take her to the Presbytery," said my
+mother. "Dear, dear Father," she pleaded, "let her live with you,
+and have somebody to teach her, and then she can come to see me
+every day, or twice a week, or even once a week&mdash;I am not
+unreasonable."</p>
+<p>"It would be beautiful," said Father Dan, reaching over to touch
+my arm. "To have our little Mary in my dull old house would be like
+having the sun there always. But there are reasons why a young girl
+should not be brought up in the home of a priest, so it is better
+that our little precious should go to Rome."</p>
+<p>My mother was breaking down and Father Dan followed up his
+advantage.</p>
+<p>"Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for
+the child. She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus
+first, then a child of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself.
+And then remember, Rome! The holy city! The city of the Holy
+Father! Why, who knows, she may even see himself some day!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know," said my mother, and then turning with her
+melting eyes to me she said:</p>
+<p>"Would my Mary like to go&mdash;leaving her mamma but coming
+home in the holidays&mdash;would she?"</p>
+<p>I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly
+get on without me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her
+bunch of keys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and
+catching my mother's last words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched
+voice.</p>
+<p>"Isabel! You astonish me! To defer to the will of a child! Such
+a child too! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If <i>we</i>
+say it is good for her to go she <i>must</i> go!"</p>
+<p>I could feel through my mother's arm, which was still about my
+waist, that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she
+did not speak and Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on:</p>
+<p>"We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten
+your death by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more
+blood vessels. So we are consulting your welfare as well as the
+girl's in sending her away."</p>
+<p>My mother's timid soul could bear no more. I think it must have
+been the only moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but,
+gathering all her strength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in
+ungovernable excitement.</p>
+<p>"Bridget," she said, "you are doing nothing of the kind. You
+know you are not. You are only trying to separate me from my child
+and my child from me. When you came to my house I thought you would
+be kinder to my child than a anybody else, but you have not been,
+you have been cruel to her, and shut your heart against her, and
+while I have been helpless here, and in bed, you have never shown
+her one moment of love and kindness. No, you have no feeling except
+for your own, and it never occurs to you that having brought your
+own child into my house you are trying to turn my child out of
+it."</p>
+<p>"So that's how you look at it, is it?" said Aunt Bridget, with a
+flash of her cold grey eyes. "I thought I came to this
+house&mdash;your house as you call it&mdash;only out of the best
+intentions, just to spare you trouble when you were ill and unable,
+to attend to your duties as a wife. But because I correct your
+child when she is wilful and sly and wicked. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Correct your own child, Bridget O'Neill!" cried my mother, "and
+leave mine to me. She's all I have and it isn't long I shall have
+her. You know quite well how much she has cost me, and that I
+haven't had a very happy married life, but instead of helping me
+with her father. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Say no more," said Aunt Bridget, "we don't want you to hurt
+yourself again, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the
+cause of another hemorrhage."</p>
+<p>"Bridget O'Neill," cried my mother, rising up from her chair,
+"you are a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition. You know as
+well as I do that it wasn't Mary who made me ill, but
+you&mdash;you, who reproached me and taunted me about my child
+until my heart itself had to bleed. For seven years you have been
+doing that, and now you are disposing of my darling over my head
+without consulting me. Has a mother no rights in her own
+child&mdash;the child she has suffered for, and loved and lived
+for&mdash;that other people who care nothing for it should take it
+away from her and send it into a foreign country where she may
+never see it again? But you shall not do that! No, you shall not'!
+As long as there's breath in my body you shall not do it, and if
+you attempt. . . ."</p>
+<p>In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling
+hands into Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped
+about me, when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she
+stopped speaking. She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was
+my father. He entered the room with his knotty forehead more
+compressed than usual and said:</p>
+<p>"What's this she shall not do?"</p>
+<p>My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt
+Bridget, wiping' her eyes on her black apron&mdash;she only wept
+when my father was present&mdash;proceeded to explain.</p>
+<p>It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and
+though, I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for
+seven years I'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of
+it. It seems too, that we have no business&mdash;none of us
+have&mdash;to say what ought to be done for this girl&mdash;her
+mother being the only person who has any rights in the child, and
+if we attempt . . ."</p>
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+<p>In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and
+in his loud voice he said:</p>
+<p>"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He
+has to provide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to
+him she has to look for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh?
+Always has been, all the world over. Then what's all this hustling
+about?"</p>
+<p>My mother made a feeble effort to answer him.</p>
+<p>"I was only saying, Daniel . . ."</p>
+<p>"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man
+can do what he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my
+child and I say she is to go somewhere, she is to go." And saying
+this my father brought down his thick hand with a thump on to a
+table.</p>
+<p>It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that
+acted on my mother, as she said, submissively:</p>
+<p>"Very well, dear. <i>You</i> know best what is best for Mary,
+and if you say&mdash;you and Bridget and . . . and Father Dan. . .
+."</p>
+<p>"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this
+Convent scheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for
+the future if a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles
+for his important business."</p>
+<p>My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said
+nothing aloud, and my father turned on his heel, and left the room,
+shaking the floor at every step under the weight of his sixteen
+stone. At the next moment, Aunt Bridget, jingling her keys, went
+tripping after him.</p>
+<p>Hardly had they gone when my mother broke into a long fit of
+coughing, and when it was over she lay back exhausted, with her
+white face and her tired eyes turned upwards. Then I clasped her
+about the neck, and Father Dan, whose cheeks were wet with tears
+patted her drooping hand.</p>
+<p>My darling mother! Never once have I thought of her without the
+greatest affection, but now that I know for myself what she must
+have suffered I love best to think of her as she was that
+day&mdash;my sweet, beautiful, timid angel&mdash;standing up for
+one brief moment, not only against Aunt Bridget, but against the
+cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right of her outraged
+motherhood.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ELEVENTH_CHAPTER" id="ELEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ELEVENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My mother's submission was complete. Within twenty-four hours
+she was busy preparing clothes for my journey to Rome. The old
+coloured pattern book was brought out again, material was sent for,
+a sewing-maid was engaged from the village, and above all, in my
+view, an order was dispatched to Blackwater for a small
+squirrel-skin scarf, a large squirrel-skin muff, and a
+close-fitting squirrel-skin hat with a feather on the side of
+it.</p>
+<p>A child's heart is a running brook, and it would wrong the truth
+to say that I grieved much in the midst of these busy preparations.
+On the contrary I felt a sort of pride in them, poor innocent that
+I was, as in something that gave me a certain high superiority over
+Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, and entitled me to treat them with
+condescension.</p>
+<p>Father Dan, who came more frequently than ever, fostered this
+feeling without intending to do so, by telling me, whenever we were
+alone, that I must be a good girl to everybody now, and especially
+to my mother.</p>
+<p>"My little woman would be sorry to worry mamma, wouldn't she?"
+he would whisper, and when I answered that I would be sorrier than
+sorry, he would say:</p>
+<p>"Wisha then, she must be brave. She must keep up. She must not
+grieve about going away or cry when the time comes for
+parting."</p>
+<p>I said "yes" and "yes" to all this, feeling very confidential
+and courageous, but I dare say the good Father gave the same
+counsel to my mother also, for she and I had many games of
+make-believe, I remember, in which we laughed and chattered and
+sang, though I do not think I ever suspected that the part we
+played was easier to me than to her.</p>
+<p>It dawned on me at last, though, when in the middle of the
+night, near to the time of my going away, I was awakened by a bad
+fit of my mother's coughing, and heard her say to herself in the
+deep breathing that followed:</p>
+<p>"My poor child! What is to become of her?"</p>
+<p>Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure. It
+had been arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of
+the two daily steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of
+bed at the first sign of daylight. So great was my delight that I
+began to dance in my nightdress to an invisible skipping rope,
+forgetting my father, who always rose at dawn and was at breakfast
+in the room below.</p>
+<p>My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great
+commotion. It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new
+clothes, including my furs, and then turning round and round on
+tiptoe and smiling at myself in a mirror. I was doing this while my
+mother was telling me to write to her as often as I was allowed,
+and while she knelt at her prayer stool, which she used as a desk,
+to make a copy of the address for my letters.</p>
+<p>Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs.
+Daniel O'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from
+her eyes, and my throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I
+remembered what Father Dan had told me to do, so I said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry&mdash;I'll be home for the
+holidays."</p>
+<p>Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the
+window, and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and
+with a funny bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and
+said, through a little cloud of white breath, that everything was
+ready.</p>
+<p>I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her
+pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a
+sign from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed
+back the water in my eyes and cried:</p>
+<p>"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas," and then darted
+across to the door.</p>
+<p>I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary"
+in a strange low voice, and I turned and saw her&mdash;I can see
+her still&mdash;with her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her
+arms held out to me.</p>
+<p>Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast
+crying, "Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart
+beating through her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat,
+and then all our poor little game of make-believe broke down
+utterly.</p>
+<p>At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should
+be late for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then
+mine, and let me go.</p>
+<p>Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but
+seeing Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon
+recovered my composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them
+in stately silence with my little bird-like head in the air.</p>
+<p>I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing
+with a shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched
+me and said:</p>
+<p>"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"</p>
+<p>"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost
+height.</p>
+<p>"And why not?"</p>
+<p>"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and
+because you think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell
+them at the Convent that you are making mamma ill, and you're as
+bad as . . . as bad as the bad women in the Bible!"</p>
+<p>"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I
+could see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This
+did not trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when
+Father Dan, who was sitting inside, said:</p>
+<p>"My little Mary won't leave home like that&mdash;without kissing
+her aunt and saying good-bye to her cousins."</p>
+<p>So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy
+Beauty, and lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.</p>
+<p>"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I
+had passed her my quick little ear caught the words:</p>
+<p>"Good thing she's going, though."</p>
+<p>During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like
+hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel
+and saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he
+bundled me into the carriage and banged the door on me.</p>
+<p>But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his
+little eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print
+handkerchief, said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.</p>
+<p>There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through
+her open window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round
+some trees and I lost the sight of her.</p>
+<p>What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I
+do not know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of
+the carriage. I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going
+away, and that it did not help me to remember when half way down
+the drive a boy with a dog darted from under the chestnuts and
+raced alongside of us.</p>
+<p>It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt
+up to the step and held on to the open window by his left hand
+while he pushed his head into the carriage and made signs to me to
+take out of his mouth a big red apple which he held in his teeth by
+the stalk. I took it, and then he dropped to the ground, without
+uttering a word, and I could laugh now to think of the gruesome
+expression of his face with its lagging lower lip and bloodshot
+eyes. I had no temptation to do so then, however, and least of all
+when I looked back and saw his little one-armed figure in the big
+mushroom hat, standing on the top of the high wall of the bridge,
+with William Rufus beside him.</p>
+<p>We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the
+funnels had ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we
+were sitting in one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and
+then Father Dan told me that the other was occupied by the young
+Lord Raa, and his guardian, and that they were going up together
+for the first time to Oxford.</p>
+<p>I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment,
+so false is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are
+about to occur. And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth
+was beginning to dawn on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much
+excited, went off to pay his respects to the great people, I
+crudled up in the corner of the cabin that was nearest to the door
+and told myself that after all I had been turned out of my father's
+house, and would never see my mother and Martin any more.</p>
+<p>I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to
+the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of
+my home faded away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the
+hilltops with a feathery crest, when my cabin was darkened by
+somebody who stood in the doorway.</p>
+<p>It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he
+was. He was the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome
+and well dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a
+moment he stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"</p>
+<p>I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome
+after all, having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.</p>
+<p>"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out,
+eh?"</p>
+<p>Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy
+MacLeod's&mdash;shrill and harsh and grating.</p>
+<p>"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't
+she?"</p>
+<p>Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt
+Bridget's&mdash;cold and grey and piercing.</p>
+<p>"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A
+deuced pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."</p>
+<p>I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.</p>
+<p>"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from
+some picture of the Madonna, I'll swear."</p>
+<p>By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to,
+so I turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard
+him say:</p>
+<p>"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little
+woman, aren't you?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Oh, but you must&mdash;we are relations, you know."</p>
+<p>"I won't."</p>
+<p>He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to
+kiss me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and
+doubling my little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.</p>
+<p>Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged
+by servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised
+and angry.</p>
+<p>"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face
+of a nun and the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends
+for this, my lady."</p>
+<p>With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the
+steamer was drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then,
+while the passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back
+with Father Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and
+said:</p>
+<p>"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me
+a grudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"</p>
+<p>"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody," said Father
+Dan. "She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain."</p>
+<p>And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt
+Bridget&mdash;I held up my face and he kissed me.</p>
+<p>It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other
+things to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of
+it I sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the
+flowers of the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no
+handwriting with which to warn His children that their footsteps
+may not fail.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWELFTH_CHAPTER" id="TWELFTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWELFTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Of our journey to Rome nothing remains to me but the memory of
+sleeping in different beds in different towns, of trains screaming
+through tunnels and slowing down in glass-roofed railway stations,
+of endless crowds of people moving here and there in a sort of
+maze, nothing but this, and the sense of being very little and very
+helpless and of having to be careful not to lose sight of Father
+Dan, for fear of being lost&mdash;until the afternoon of the fourth
+day after we left home.</p>
+<p>We were then crossing a wide rolling plain that was almost
+destitute of trees, and looked, from the moving train, like green
+billows of the sea with grass growing over them. Father Dan was
+reading his breviary for the following day, not knowing what he
+would have to do in it, when the sun set in a great blaze of red
+beyond the horizon, and then suddenly a big round black ball, like
+a captive balloon, seemed to rise in the midst of the glory.</p>
+<p>I called Father Dan's attention to this, and in a moment he was
+fearfully excited.</p>
+<p>"Don't worry, my child," he cried, while tears of joy sprang to
+his eyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St.
+Peter's! Rome, my child, Rome!"</p>
+<p>It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in
+the midst of a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and
+held on to his vertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a
+basket of mine, down the crowded platform to an open cab outside
+the station.</p>
+<p>Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief
+and I sat close up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and
+shouted at the pedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony
+streets, which seemed to be full of statues and fountains that were
+lit up by a great white light that was not moonlight and yet looked
+like it.</p>
+<p>But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which
+seemed to stand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf
+overlooking the city, for I could see many domes like that of St.
+Peter lying below us.</p>
+<p>A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a
+black habit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands
+down each side of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to
+step in, and when we had done so, she took us down a long passage
+into a warm room, where another lady, dressed in the same way, only
+a little grander, sat in a big red arm-chair.</p>
+<p>Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed
+very low to this lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene,
+and she answered him in English but with a funny sound which I
+afterwards knew to be a foreign accent.</p>
+<p>I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as
+beautiful as my mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her
+hand I did so, and then she put me to sit in a chair and looked at
+me.</p>
+<p>"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he
+thought I would be eight that month, which was right, being
+October.</p>
+<p>"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said
+something about poor mamma which I cannot remember.</p>
+<p>After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the
+pictures on the walls&mdash;pictures of Saints and Popes and, above
+all, a picture of Jesus with His heart open in His bosom.</p>
+<p>"The child will be hungry," said the lady. "She must have
+something to eat before she goes to bed&mdash;the other children
+have gone already."</p>
+<p>Then she rang a hand-bell, and when the first lady came back she
+said:</p>
+<p>"Ask Sister Angela to come to me immediately."</p>
+<p>A few minutes later Sister Angela came into the room, and she
+was quite young, almost a girl, with such a sweet sad face that I
+loved her instantly.</p>
+<p>"This is little Mary O'Neill. Take her to the Refectory and give
+her whatever she wants, and don't leave her until she is quiet and
+comfortable."</p>
+<p>"Very well, Mother," said Sister Angela, and taking my hand she
+whispered: "Come, Mary, you look tired."</p>
+<p>I rose to go with her, but at the same moment Father Dan rose
+too, and I heard him say he must lose no time in finding an hotel,
+for his Bishop had given him only one day to remain in Rome, and he
+had to catch an early train home the following morning.</p>
+<p>This fell on me like a thunderbolt. I hardly know what I had led
+myself to expect, but certainly the idea of being left alone in
+Rome had never once occurred to me.</p>
+<p>My little heart was fluttering, and dropping the Sister's hand I
+stepped back and took Father Dan's and said:</p>
+<p>"You are not going to leave your little Mary are you,
+Father?"</p>
+<p>It was harder for the dear Father than for me, for I remember
+that, fearfully flurried, he stammered in a thick voice something
+about the Reverend Mother taking good care of me, and how he was
+sure to come back at Christmas, according to my father's faithful
+promise, to take me home for the holidays.</p>
+<p>After that Sister Angela led me, sniffing a little still, to the
+Refectory, which was a large, echoing room, with rows of plain deal
+tables and forms, ranged in front of a reading desk that had
+another and much larger picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall
+above it. Only one gasjet was burning, and I sat under it to eat my
+supper, and after I had taken a basin of soup I felt more
+comforted.</p>
+<p>Then Sister Angela lit a lamp and taking my hand she led me up a
+stone staircase to the Dormitory, which was a similar room, but not
+so silent, because it was full of beds, and the breathing of the
+girls, who were all asleep, made it sound like the watchmaker's
+shop in our village, only more church-like and solemn.</p>
+<p>My bed was near to the door, and after Sister Angela had helped
+me to undress, and tucked me in, she made her voice very low, and
+said I would be quite comfortable now, and she was sure I was going
+to be a good little girl and a dear child of the Infant Jesus; and
+then I could not help taking my arms out again and clasping her
+round the neck and drawing her head down and kissing her.</p>
+<p>After that she took the lamp and went away to a cubicle which
+was partitioned off the end of the Dormitory and there I could see
+her prepare to go to bed herself&mdash;taking the white bands off
+her cheeks and the black band off her forehead, and letting her
+long light hair fall in beautiful wavy masses about her face, which
+made her look so sweet and home like.</p>
+<p>But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since&mdash;no, not
+even when I was in my lowest depths&mdash;have I felt so little and
+helpless and alone. After the Sister had gone to bed and everything
+was quiet in the Dormitory save for the breathing of the
+girls&mdash;all strangers to me and I to them&mdash;from mere
+loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as I used to do
+when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother's
+room.</p>
+<p>I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a
+loss to know how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it
+merely that he wanted peace for his business and saw no chance of
+securing it in his own home except by removing the chief cause of
+Aunt Bridget's jealousy? Or was it that his old grudge against Fate
+for making me a girl made him wish to rid himself of the sight of
+me?</p>
+<p>I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to
+see how he could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for
+me, to tear me from the mother who loved me and had paid for me so
+dear; or how he could have believed that because he was my father,
+charged with the care of my poor little body, he had control over
+the little bleeding heart which was not his to make to suffer.</p>
+<p>He is my father&mdash;God help me to think the best of him.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At half past six in the morning I was awakened by the loud
+ringing of the getting-up bell, and as soon as I could rouse myself
+from the deep sleep of childhood I saw that a middle-aged nun with
+a severe face was saying a prayer, and that all the girls in the
+dormitory were kneeling in their beds while they made the
+responses.</p>
+<p>A few minutes later, when the girls were chattering and laughing
+as they dressed, making the room tingle with twittering sounds like
+a tree full of linnets in the spring, a big girl came up to me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"I am Mildred Bankes and Sister Angela says I am to look after
+you to-day."</p>
+<p>She was about fifteen years of age, and had a long
+plain-featured face which reminded me of one of my father's horses
+that was badly used by the farm boys; but there was something sweet
+in her smile that made me like her instantly.</p>
+<p>She helped me to dress in my brown velvet frock, but said that
+one of her first duties would be to take me to the lay sisters who
+made the black habits which all the girls in the convent wore.</p>
+<p>It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just
+broken by pale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see
+that the children of my own age were only seven or eight
+altogether, while the majority of the girls were several years
+older, and Mildred explained this by telling me that the children
+of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were so few that they had been
+put into the dormitory of the children of the Sacred Heart.</p>
+<p>In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and
+then, at a word from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and
+laughing downstairs to the Meeting Room, which was a large hail,
+with a platform at the farther end of it and another picture of the
+Sacred Heart, pierced with sharp thorns, on the wall.</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the
+Convent, all pale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and
+she said a long prayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy
+or eighty altogether) made responses, and then there was silence
+for five minutes, which were supposed to be devoted to meditation,
+although I could not help seeing that some of the big girls were
+whispering to each other while their heads were down.</p>
+<p>After that, and Mass in the Church, we went scurrying away to
+the Refectory, which was now warm with the steam from our breakfast
+and bubbling with cheerful voices, making a noise that was like
+water boiling in a saucepan.</p>
+<p>I was so absorbed by all I saw that I forgot to eat until
+Mildred nudged me to do so, and even when my spoon was half way to
+my mouth something happened which brought it down again.</p>
+<p>At the tinkle of a hand-bell one of the big girls had stepped up
+to the reading-desk and begun to read from a book which I
+afterwards knew to be "The Imitation of Christ." She was about
+sixteen years of age, and her face was so vivid that I could not
+take my eyes off it.</p>
+<p>Her complexion was fair and her hair was auburn, but her eyes
+were so dark and searching that when she raised her head, as she
+often did, they seemed to look through and through you.</p>
+<p>"Who is she?" I whispered.</p>
+<p>"Alma Lier," Mildred whispered back, and when breakfast was
+over, and we were trooping off to lessons, she told me something
+about her.</p>
+<p>Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was
+in New York. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying
+at an hotel in Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a
+carriage to take her daughter for a drive.</p>
+<p>Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at
+the end of terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and
+one of the Cardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books
+to take away that she could hardly carry them down from the
+platform.</p>
+<p>I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most
+wonderful and worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it
+now, after all these years, and the bitter experiences which have
+come with them, I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the
+thought that such was the impression she first made on me.</p>
+<p>My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister
+Angela was my teacher. She was so sweet to me that her
+encouragement was like a kiss and her reproof like a caress; but I
+could think of nothing but Alma, and at noon, when the bell rang
+for lunch and Mildred took me back to the Refectory, I wondered if
+the same girl would read again.</p>
+<p>She did, but this time in a foreign language, French as Mildred
+whispered&mdash;from the letters of the Blessed Margaret Mary
+Alacoque&mdash;and my admiration for Alma went up tenfold. I
+wondered if it could possibly occur that I should ever come to know
+her.</p>
+<p>There is no worship like that of a child, and life for me, which
+had seemed so cold and dark the day before, became warm and bright
+with a new splendour.</p>
+<p>I was impatient of everything that took me away from the
+opportunity of meeting with Alma&mdash;the visit to the lay-sisters
+to be measured for my new black clothes, the three o'clock
+"rosary," when the nuns walked with their classes in the sunshine
+and, above all, the voluntary visit to the Blessed Sacrament in the
+Church of the Convent, which seemed to me large and gorgeous,
+though divided across the middle by an open bronze screen, called a
+Cancello&mdash;the inner half, as Mildred whispered, being for the
+inmates of the school, while the outer half was for the
+congregation which came on Sunday to Benediction.</p>
+<p>But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read
+again&mdash;this time in Italian&mdash;from the writings of Saint
+Francis of Sales&mdash;and then, to my infinite delight, came a
+long recreation, when all the girls scampered out into the Convent
+garden, which was still bright with afternoon sunshine and as merry
+with laughter and shouts as the seashore on a windy summer
+morning.</p>
+<p>The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by
+the convent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an
+avenue made by a line of stone pines with heads like open
+umbrellas, but it had no other foliage except an old tree which
+reminded me of Tommy the Mate, having gnarled and sprawling limbs,
+and standing like a weather-beaten old sailor, four-square in the
+middle.</p>
+<p>A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree,
+and I felt so happy just then that I should have loved to join
+them, but I was consumed by a desire to come to close quarters with
+the object of my devotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked
+Mildred if Alma was likely to be there.</p>
+<p>"Sure to be," said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her
+mouth when Alma herself came straight down in our direction,
+surrounded by a group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her
+and laughing at everything she said.</p>
+<p>My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I
+stopped dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of
+me.</p>
+<p>Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great
+searching eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried
+to smile, but Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone
+of one who had accidentally turned up something with her toe that
+was little and ridiculous, she said:</p>
+<p>"Goodness, girls, what's this?"</p>
+<p>Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls
+joined, and looking me up and down they all laughed together.</p>
+<p>I knew what they were laughing at&mdash;the clothes my mother
+had made for me and I had felt so proud of. That burnt me like
+iron, and I think my lip must have dropped, but Alma showed no
+mercy.</p>
+<p>"Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though," she
+said. And then she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they
+went off they looked back over their shoulders and laughed
+again.</p>
+<p>Never since has any human creature&mdash;not even Alma
+herself&mdash;made me suffer more than I suffered at that moment.
+My throat felt tight, tears leapt to my eyes, disappointment,
+humiliation, and shame swept over me like a flood, and I stood
+squeezing my little handkerchief in my hand and feeling as if I
+could have died.</p>
+<p>At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her
+arm about my waist she said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind, Mary. She's a heartless thing. Don't have anything
+to do with her."</p>
+<p>But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I
+cried for hours. I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when,
+at eight o'clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma,
+who was in the opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who
+sat next to her and then looking straight across at me.</p>
+<p>And at nine o'clock when we went to bed I was crying more than
+ever, so that after the good-night-bell had been rung and the
+lights had been put down, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of
+my sorrow, stepped up to my bed before going down stairs for her
+own studies, and whispered:</p>
+<p>"You mustn't fret for home, Mary. You will soon get used to
+it."</p>
+<p>But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could
+find no ease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and,
+looking up, I saw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me. It
+was Alma and she said:</p>
+<p>"Say, little girl, is your name O'Neill?"</p>
+<p>Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was.</p>
+<p>"Do you belong to the O'Neills of Ellan?"</p>
+<p>Still trembling I told her that I did.</p>
+<p>"My!" she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by
+some means I had begun to look different in her eyes.</p>
+<p>After a moment she sat on the side of my bed and asked questions
+about my home&mdash;if it was not large and very old, with big
+stone staircases, and great open fireplaces, and broad terraces,
+and beautiful walks going down to the sea.</p>
+<p>I was so filled with the joy of finding myself looking grand in
+Alma's eyes that I answered "yes" and "yes" without thinking too
+closely about her questions, and my tears were all brushed away
+when she said:</p>
+<p>"I knew somebody who lived in your house once, and I'll tell her
+all about you."</p>
+<p>She stayed a few moments longer, and when going off she
+whispered:</p>
+<p>"Hope you don't feel badly about my laughing in the garden
+to-day. I didn't mean a thing. But if any of the girls laugh again
+just say you're Alma Lier's friend and she's going to take care of
+you."</p>
+<p>I could hardly believe my ears. Some great new splendour had
+suddenly dawned upon me and I was very happy.</p>
+<p>I did not know then that the house which Alma had been talking
+of was not my father's house, but Castle Raa. I did not know then
+that the person who had lived there was her mother, and that in her
+comely and reckless youth she had been something to the bad Lord
+Raa who had lashed my father and sworn at my grandmother.</p>
+<p>I did not know anything that was dead and buried in the past, or
+shrouded and veiled in the future. I only knew that Alma had called
+herself my friend and promised to take care of me. So with a glad
+heart I went to sleep.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>FOURTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Alma kept her word, though perhaps her method of protection was
+such as would have commended itself only to the heart of a
+child.</p>
+<p>It consisted in calling me Margaret Mary after our patron saint
+of the Sacred Heart, in taking me round the garden during
+recreation as if I had been a pet poodle, and, above all, in making
+my bed the scene of the conversaziones which some of the girls held
+at night when they were supposed to be asleep.</p>
+<p>The secrecy of these gatherings flattered me, and when the
+unclouded moon, in the depths of the deep blue Italian sky, looked
+in on my group of girls in their nightdresses, bunched together on
+my bed, with my own little body between, I had a feeling of dignity
+as well as solemnity and awe.</p>
+<p>Of course Alma was the chief spokeswoman at these whispered
+conferences. Sometimes she told us of her drives into the Borghese
+Gardens, where she saw the King and Queen, or to the Hunt on the
+Campagna, where she met the flower of the aristocracy, or to the
+Pincio, where the Municipal band played in the pavilion, while
+ladies sat in their carriages in the sunshine, and officers in blue
+cloaks saluted them and smiled.</p>
+<p>Sometimes she indicated her intentions for the future, which was
+certainly not to be devoted to retreats and novenas, or to witness
+another black dress as long as she lived, and if she married (which
+was uncertain) it was not to be to an American, but to a Frenchman,
+because Frenchmen had "family" and "blood," or perhaps to an
+Englishman, if he was a member of the House of Lords, in which case
+she would attend all the race-meetings and Coronations, and take
+tea at the Carlton, where she would eat <i>m&eacute;ringues
+glac&eacute;s</i> every day and have as many <i>&eacute;clairs</i>
+as she liked.</p>
+<p>And sometimes she would tell us the stories of the novels which
+she bribed one of the washing-women to smuggle into the
+convent&mdash;stories of ladies and their lovers, and of
+intoxicating dreams of kissing and fondling, at which the bigger
+girls, with far-off suggestions of sexual mysteries still
+unexplored, would laugh and shudder, and then Alma would say:</p>
+<p>"But hush, girls! Margaret Mary will be shocked."</p>
+<p>Occasionally these conferences would be interrupted by Mildred's
+voice from the other end of the dormitory, where she would raise
+her head from her pillow and say:</p>
+<p>"Alma Lier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself&mdash;keeping
+that child up when she ought to be asleep, instead of listening to
+your wicked stories."</p>
+<p>"Helloa, Mother Mildred, is that you?" Alma would answer, and
+then the girls would laugh, and Mildred was supposed to be covered
+with confusion.</p>
+<p>One night Sister Angela's footsteps were heard on the stairs,
+and then the girls flew back to their beds, where, with the furtive
+instinct of their age and sex, they pretended to be sleeping
+soundly when the Sister entered the room. But the Sister was not
+deceived, and walking up the aisle between the beds she said in an
+angry tone:</p>
+<p>"Alma Lier, if this ever occurs again I'll step down to the
+Reverend Mother and tell her all about you."</p>
+<p>Little as I was, I saw that between Alma and Sister Angela there
+was a secret feud, which must soon break into open rupture, but for
+my own part I was entirely happy, being still proud of Alma's
+protection and only feeling any misgivings when Mildred's
+melancholy eyes were looking at me.</p>
+<p>Thus week followed week until we were close upon Christmas, and
+the girls, who were to be permitted to go home before the Feast,
+began to count the days to the holidays. I counted them too, and
+when anybody talked of her brother I thought of Martin Conrad,
+though his faithful little figure was fading away from me, and when
+anybody spoke of her parents I remembered my mother, for whom my
+affection never failed.</p>
+<p>But, within a week from the time for breaking up, the Reverend
+Mother sent for me, and with a sinking heart I went to her room,
+knowing well what she was going to say.</p>
+<p>"You are not to go home for the holidays this time, my child.
+You are to remain here, and Sister Angela is to stay to take care
+of you."</p>
+<p>She had a letter from Father Dan, telling her that my mother was
+still unwell, and for this and other reasons it was considered best
+that I should not return at Christmas.</p>
+<p>Father Dan had written a letter to me also, beginning, "My dear
+daughter in Jesus" and ending "Yours in Xt," saying it was not his
+fault that he could not fulfil his promise, but my father was much
+from home now-a-days and Aunt Bridget was more difficult than ever,
+so perhaps I should be happier at the Convent.</p>
+<p>It was a bitter blow, though the bitterest part of it lay in the
+fear that the girls would think I was of so little importance to my
+people that they did not care to see me.</p>
+<p>But the girls were too eager about their own concerns to care
+much about me, and even on the very last day and at the very last
+moment, when everything was bustle and joy, and boxes were being
+carried downstairs, and everybody was kissing everybody else and
+wishing each other a Happy Christmas, and then flying away like mad
+things, and I alone was being left, Alma herself, before she
+stepped into a carriage in which a stout lady wearing furs was
+waiting to receive her, only said:</p>
+<p>"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela."</p>
+<p>Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi,
+and the other nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and
+then Sister Angela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing
+convent&mdash;save for two elderly lay Sisters, who cooked and
+cleaned for us, and the Chaplain, who lived by himself in a little
+white hut like a cell which stood at the farthest corner of the
+garden.</p>
+<p>We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as
+to look out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full
+of traffic, and after a while we had many cheerful hours
+together.</p>
+<p>During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in
+visiting the churches and basilicas where there were little
+illuminated models of the Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant
+Jesus in the stable among the straw. The afternoons we spent at
+home in the garden, where the Chaplain, in his black soutane and
+biretta, was always sitting under the old tree, reading his
+breviary.</p>
+<p>His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a
+long, thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to
+him she said:</p>
+<p>"This is our Margaret Mary."</p>
+<p>Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my
+head, and sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and
+Sister Angela sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to
+and fro in the avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until
+they came to his cell in the corner, where she craned her neck at
+the open door as if she would have liked to go in and make things
+more tidy and comfortable.</p>
+<p>On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast, and
+Sister Angela asked Father Giovanni to come to tea, and he came,
+and was quite cheerful, so that when the Sister, who was also very
+happy, signalled to me to take some mistletoe from the bottom of a
+picture I held it over his head and kissed him from behind. Then he
+snatched me up in his arms and kissed me back, and we had a great
+romp round the chairs and tables.</p>
+<p>But the Ave Maria began to ring from the churches, and Father
+Giovanni (according to the rule of our Convent) having to go, he
+kissed me again, and then I said:</p>
+<p>"Why don't you kiss Sister Angela too?"</p>
+<p>At that they only looked at each other and laughed, but after a
+moment he kissed her hand, and then she went downstairs to see him
+out into the garden.</p>
+<p>When she came back her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were
+flushed, and, that night, when she took away her black and white
+whimple and gorget on going to bed, she stood before a
+looking-glass and wound her beautiful light hair round her finger
+and curled it over her forehead in the way it was worn by the
+ladies we saw in the streets.</p>
+<p>I think it was two nights later that she told me I was to go to
+bed early because Father Giovanni was not well and she would have
+to go over to see him.</p>
+<p>She went, and I got into bed, but I could not sleep, and while I
+lay waiting for Sister Angela I listened to some men who as they
+crossed the piazza were singing, in tremulous voices, to their
+mandolines and guitars, what I believed to be love songs, for I had
+begun to learn Italian.</p>
+<p>"<i>Oh bella Napoli. Oh suol beato<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Onde soiridere volta il
+creato."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>It was late when Sister Angela came back and then she was
+breathing hard as if she had been running. I asked if Father
+Giovanni's sickness was worse, and she said no, it was better, and
+I was to say nothing about it. But she could not rest and at last
+she said:</p>
+<p>"Didn't we forget to say our prayers, Mary?"</p>
+<p>So I got up again and Sister Angela said one of the beautiful
+prayers out of our prayer-book. But her voice was very low and when
+she came to the words:</p>
+<p>"O Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners who repent of
+their sins," she broke down altogether.</p>
+<p>I thought she was ill, but she said it was only a cold she had
+caught in crossing the garden and I was to go to sleep like a good
+girl and think no more about her.</p>
+<p>But in the middle of the night I awoke, and Sister Angela was
+crying.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Most of the girls were depressed when they returned to school,
+but Alma was in high spirits, and on the first night of the term
+she crept over to my bed and asked what we had been doing during
+the holidays.</p>
+<p>"Not a thing, eh?"</p>
+<p>I answered that we had done lots of things and been very
+happy.</p>
+<p>"Happy? In this gloomy old convent? You and Sister Angela
+alone?"</p>
+<p>I told her we had two lay sisters-and then there was Father
+Giovanni.</p>
+<p>"Father Giovanni? That serious old cross-bones?"</p>
+<p>I said he was not always serious, and that on Christmas Day he
+had come to tea and kissed me under the mistletoe.</p>
+<p>"Kissed you under the mistletoe!" said Alma, and then she
+whispered eagerly,</p>
+<p>"He didn't kiss Sister Angela, did he?"</p>
+<p>I suppose I was flattered by her interest, and this loosened my
+tongue, for I answered:</p>
+<p>"He kissed her hand, though."</p>
+<p>"Kissed her hand? My! . . . Of course she was very angry . . .
+wasn't she angry?"</p>
+<p>I answered no, and in my simplicity I proceeded to prove this by
+explaining that Sister Angela had taken Father Giovanni down to the
+door, and when he was ill she had nursed him.</p>
+<p>"Nursed him? In his own house, you mean?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, at night, too, and she stayed until he was better, and
+caught a cold coming back."</p>
+<p>"Well, I never!" said Alma, and I remember that I was very
+pleased with myself during this interview, for by the moonlight
+which was then shining into the room, I could see that Alma's eyes
+were sparkling.</p>
+<p>The next night we recommenced our conferences in bed, when Alma
+told us all about her holiday, which she had spent "way up in St.
+Moritz," among deep snow and thick ice, skating, bobbing, lugging,
+and above all riding astride, and dragging a man on skis behind
+her.</p>
+<p>"Such lots of fun," she said. And the best of it was at night
+when there were dances and fancy-dress balls with company which
+included all the smart people in Europe, and men who gave a girl
+such a good time if she happened to be pretty and was likely to
+have a dot.</p>
+<p>Alma had talked so eagerly and the girls had listened so
+intently, that nobody was aware that Sister Angela had returned to
+the room until she stepped forward and said:</p>
+<p>"Alma Lier, I'm ashamed of you. Go back to your bed, miss, this
+very minute."</p>
+<p>The other girls crept away and I half covered my face with my
+bed-clothes, but Alma stood up to Sister Angela and answered her
+back.</p>
+<p>"Go to bed yourself, and don't speak to me like that, or you'll
+pay for your presumption."</p>
+<p>"Pay? Presumption? You insolent thing, you are corrupting the
+whole school and are an utter disgrace to it. I warned you that I
+would tell the Reverend Mother what you are and now I've a great
+mind to do it."</p>
+<p>"Do it. I dare you to do it. Do it to-night, and to-morrow
+morning <i>I</i> will do something."</p>
+<p>"What will you do, you brazen hussy?" said Sister Angela, but I
+could see that her lip was trembling.</p>
+<p>"Never mind what. If I'm a hussy I'm not a hypocrite, and as for
+corrupting the school, and being a disgrace to it, I'll leave the
+Reverend Mother to say who is doing that."</p>
+<p>Low as the light was I could see that Sister Angela was deadly
+pale. There was a moment of silence in which I thought she glanced
+in my direction, and then stammering something which I did not
+hear, she left the dormitory.</p>
+<p>It was long before she returned and when she did so I saw her
+creep into her cubicle and sit there for quite a great time before
+going to bed. My heart was thumping hard, for I had a vague feeling
+that I had been partly to blame for what had occurred, but after a
+while I fell asleep and remembered no more until I was awakened in
+the middle of the night by somebody kissing me in my sleep.</p>
+<p>It was Sister Angela, and she was turning away, but I called her
+back, and she knelt by my bed and whispered:</p>
+<p>"Hush! I know what has happened, but I don't blame you for
+it."</p>
+<p>I noticed that she was wearing her out-door cloak, and that she
+was breathing rapidly, just as she did on the night she came from
+the chaplain's quarters, and when I asked if she was going anywhere
+she said yes, and if I ever heard anything against Sister Angela I
+was to think the best of her.</p>
+<p>"But you are so good. . . ."</p>
+<p>"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have
+thought of being a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and
+have never taken the vows."</p>
+<p>After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me
+again, and I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly
+and left the room.</p>
+<p>Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had
+roused myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns
+were standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about
+something that had happened during the night&mdash;Sister Angela
+had gone!</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the
+girls went bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in
+great agitation over an incident of still deeper
+gravity&mdash;Father Giovanni also had disappeared!</p>
+<p>A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always
+rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by
+noon the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought
+they knew everything that had happened&mdash;how at four in the
+morning Father Giovanni and Sister Angela had been seen to come out
+of the little door which connected the garden with the street; how
+at seven they had entered a clothing emporium in the Corso, where
+going in at one door as priest and nun they had come out at another
+as ordinary civilians; how at eight they had taken the first train
+to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to catch a steamer sailing at
+ten, and how they were now on their way to England.</p>
+<p>By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered
+with glistening eyes in front of the chaplain's deserted quarters,
+where Alma leaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and
+while the others talked she smiled, as much as to say, "I told you
+so."</p>
+<p>As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain
+that I was the sole cause of Sister Angela's misfortune, I was
+sitting under the tree in the middle of the garden, when Alma,
+surrounded by her usual group of girls, came down on me.</p>
+<p>"What's this?" she said. "Margaret Mary crying? Feeling badly
+for Sister Angela, is she? Why, you little silly, you needn't cry
+for her. She's having the time of her life, she is!"</p>
+<p>At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when
+Alma told them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the
+stern face (she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said,
+solemnly:</p>
+<p>"Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you."</p>
+<p>"To me?" said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next
+moment she went off jauntily.</p>
+<p>Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred until
+afternoon "rosary," when the Mother of the Novices came again and
+taking me by the hand said:</p>
+<p>"Come with me, my child."</p>
+<p>I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was
+trembling when we entered the Reverend Mother's room, for Alma was
+there, sitting by the stove, and close beside her, with an angry
+look, was the stout lady in furs whom I had seen in the carriage at
+the beginning of the holidays.</p>
+<p>"Don't be afraid," said the Reverend Mother, and drawing me to
+her side she asked me to tell her what I had told Alma about Sister
+Angela.</p>
+<p>I repeated our conversation as nearly as I could remember it,
+and more than once Alma nodded her head as if in assent, but the
+Reverend Mother's face grew darker at every word and, seeing this,
+I said:</p>
+<p>"But if Sister Angela did anything wrong I'm sure she was very
+sorry, for when she came back she said her prayers, and when she
+got to 'Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners . . .'"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, that will do," said the Reverend Mother, and then she
+handed me back to the Mother of the Novices, telling her to warn me
+to say nothing to the other children.</p>
+<p>Alma did not return to us at dinner, or at recreation, or at
+chapel (when another chaplain said vespers), or even at nine
+o'clock, when we went to bed. But next morning, almost as soon as
+the Mother of the Novices had left the dormitory, she burst into
+the room saying:</p>
+<p>"I'm leaving this silly old convent, girls. Mother has brought
+the carriage, and I've only come to gather up my belongings."</p>
+<p>Nobody spoke, and while she wrapped up her brushes and combs in
+her nightdress, she joked about Sister Angela and Father Giovanni
+and then about Mildred Bankes, whom she called "Reverend Mother
+Mildred," saying it would be her turn next.</p>
+<p>Then she tipped up her mattress, and taking a novel from under
+it she threw the book on to my bed, saying:</p>
+<p>"Margaret Mary will have to be your story-teller now. By-by,
+girls!"</p>
+<p>Nobody laughed. For the first time Alma's humour had failed her,
+and when we went downstairs to the Meeting Room it was with sedate
+and quiet steps.</p>
+<p>The nuns were all there, with their rosaries and crosses,
+looking as calm as if nothing had occurred, but the girls were
+thinking of Alma, and when, after prayers, during the five minutes
+of silence for meditation, we heard the wheels of a carriage going
+off outside, we knew what had happened&mdash;Alma had gone.</p>
+<p>We were rising to go to Mass when the Reverend Mother said,</p>
+<p>"Children, I have a word to say to you. You all know that one of
+our novices has left us. You also know that one of our scholars has
+just gone. It is my wish that you should forget both of them, and I
+shall look upon it as an act of disobedience if any girl in the
+Convent ever mentions their names again."</p>
+<p>All that day I was in deep distress, and when, night coming, I
+took my troubles to bed, telling myself I had now lost Alma also,
+and it was all my fault, somebody put her arms about me in the
+darkness and whispered:</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, are you awake?"</p>
+<p>It was Mildred, and I suppose my snuffling answered her, for she
+said:</p>
+<p>"You mustn't cry for Alma Lier. She was no friend of yours, and
+it was the best thing that ever happened to you when she was turned
+out of the convent."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>A child lives from hour to hour, and almost at the same moment
+that my heart was made desolate by the loss of my two friends it
+was quickened to a new interest.</p>
+<p>Immediately after the departure of Sister Angela and Alma we
+were all gathered in the Meeting Room for our weekly rehearsal of
+the music of the Benediction&mdash;the girls, the novices, the
+nuns, the Reverend Mother, and a Maestro from the Pope's choir, a
+short fat man, who wore a black soutane and a short lace
+tippet.</p>
+<p>Benediction was the only service of our church which I knew,
+being the one my mother loved best and could do most of for herself
+in the solitude of her invalid room, but the form used in the
+Convent differed from that to which I had been accustomed, and even
+the <i>Tantum ergo</i> and the <i>O Salutaris Hostia</i> I could
+not sing.</p>
+<p>On this occasion a litany was added which I had heard before,
+and then came a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well.
+My mother sang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when
+the Maestro, swinging his little ivory baton, began in his alto
+voice&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Ave maris stella,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dei Mater
+alma&mdash;"</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>I joined in with the rest, but sang in English instead of Latin
+Of all appeals to the memory that of music is the strongest, and
+after a moment I forgot that I was at school in Rome, being back in
+my mother's room in Ellan, standing by her piano and singing while
+she played. I think I must have let my little voice go, just as I
+used to do at home, when it rang up to the wooden rafters, for
+utterly lost to my surroundings I had got as far as&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Virgin of all virgins,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To thy shelter take
+us&mdash;"</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the
+children about me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton
+slowing down. Then I saw that all eyes were turned in my direction,
+and overwhelmed with confusion I stopped, for my voice broke and
+slittered into silence.</p>
+<p>"Go on, little angel," said the Maestro, but I was trembling all
+over by this time and could not utter a sound.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing
+the hymn in church in future."</p>
+<p>As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the
+presence of the girls, I did so, singing the first line of each
+verse alone, and I remember to have heard that the congregations on
+Sunday afternoons grew larger and larger, until, within a few
+weeks, the church was densely crowded.</p>
+<p>Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for
+I remember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the
+bronze screen that separated us from the public and whisper among
+themselves, "Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with
+the big eyes!" "God bless her!"</p>
+<p>But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to
+have a certain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in
+the life of the Convent, and particularly in the services of the
+church, so that home itself began to fade away, and when the
+holidays came round and excuses were received for not sending for
+me, the pain of my disappointment became less and less until at
+last it disappeared altogether.</p>
+<p>If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments
+when I reproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day.
+These were the moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling
+me she was less well than before and her spark of life had to be
+coaxed and trimmed or it would splutter out altogether.</p>
+<p>But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother
+wrote herself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because
+she knew that though so long separated we should soon be together,
+and the time would not seem long.</p>
+<p>Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like
+these, I was nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until
+little by little it faded away from me in the distance, just as the
+island itself had done on the day when I sailed out with Martin
+Conrad on our great voyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock.</p>
+<p>Thus two years and a half passed since I arrived in Rome before
+the great fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of
+my remembrance.</p>
+<p>It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the
+Sacred Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its
+spiritual duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of
+the souls in Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the
+chanting of the Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day,
+with the singing of the Gloria and the return of the Alleluia.</p>
+<p>But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my first
+confession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve
+other girls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn
+and knelt by the grating, and heard the whispering voice within,
+like something from the unseen, something supernatural, something
+divine, that I forgot all I had come to say and the priest had to
+prompt me.</p>
+<p>And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first
+communion, which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to
+walk in procession with the other girls, dressed all in white,
+behind a gilded figure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella,"
+through the piazza into the church, where one of the Cardinals, in
+the presence of the fathers and mothers of the other children, was
+to put the Holy Wafer on our tongues and we were to know for the
+first time the joy of communion with our Lord.</p>
+<p>But that was not to be for me.</p>
+<p>On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous
+grey of the Italian dawn was filtering through the windows of the
+dormitory, like the light in a tomb, and a multitude of little
+birds on the old tree in the garden were making a noise like water
+falling on small stones in a fountain, when the Mother of the
+Novices came to my bedside and said:</p>
+<p>"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my
+child."</p>
+<p>Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something had
+happened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the
+Reverend Mother had spoken, what she was going to say.</p>
+<p>"Mary," she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is
+ill."</p>
+<p>I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow.</p>
+<p>"She is very ill&mdash;very seriously ill, and she wishes to see
+you. Therefore you are to go home immediately."</p>
+<p>The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to
+her side and laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my
+dear mother had lived the life of a good Christian and could safely
+trust in the redeeming blood of our Blessed Saviour. But I thought
+she must have some knowledge of the conditions of my life at home,
+for she told me that whatever happened I was to come back to
+her.</p>
+<p>"Tell your father you <i>wish</i> to come back to me," she said,
+and then she explained the arrangements that were being made for my
+journey.</p>
+<p>I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at
+six o'clock that evening. The Mother of the Novices was to put me
+in a sleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of
+me until I arrived at Calais, where Father Donovan was to meet the
+train and take me home.</p>
+<p>I cried a great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent
+was kind, and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at
+recreation, the sinister sense of dignity which by some strange
+irony of fate comes to all children when the Angel of Death is
+hovering over them, came to me also&mdash;poor, helpless
+innocent&mdash;and I felt a certain distinction in my sorrow.</p>
+<p>At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought
+round to the door, and I was seated in one corner of it, with the
+Mother of the Novices in front of me, when Mildred Bankes came
+running breathlessly downstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had
+given her permission to see me off.</p>
+<p>Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment
+of the Wagon-Lit, while the Mother was talking to the conductor on
+the platform.</p>
+<p>Mildred, whose eyes were wet, was saying something about herself
+which seems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened
+since.</p>
+<p>She was to leave the Convent soon, and before I returned to it
+she would be gone. She was poor and an orphan, both her parents
+being dead, and if she had her own way she would become a nun. In
+any case our circumstances would be so different, our ways of life
+so far apart, that we might never meet again; but if . . .</p>
+<p>Before she had finished a bell rang on the platform, and a
+moment or two afterwards the train slid out of the station.</p>
+<p>Then for the first time I began to realise the weight of the
+blow that had fallen on me. I was sitting alone in my big
+compartment, we were running into the Campagna, the heavens were
+ablaze with the glory of the sunset, which was like fields of
+glistening fire, but darkness seemed to have fallen on all the
+world.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Early on Good Friday I arrived at Calais. It was a misty, rimy,
+clammy morning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel.</p>
+<p>Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat
+collar turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that
+he was greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to
+maintain his composure.</p>
+<p>"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be
+all ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown!
+And how glad your poor mother will be to see you!"</p>
+<p>I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's
+hope."</p>
+<p>We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at
+Blackwater at seven the same evening. There we took train, for
+railways were running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that
+used to be green with grass, and through the little crofts that
+used to be red with fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned
+earth.</p>
+<p>At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting
+for us and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to
+some whispered question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered
+that my mother's condition was unchanged.</p>
+<p>We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of
+new electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the
+way for the carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to
+build and caw.</p>
+<p>I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first
+seen, and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my
+mother at her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another
+reason&mdash;to see if the blinds were down.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown
+more and more excited as we approached the end of our journey,
+asked how my mother was now, poor thing, she answered:</p>
+<p>"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this
+trouble and expense has been wasted."</p>
+<p>As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and
+quiet step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my
+way to my mother's bedroom.</p>
+<p>I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the
+door. I remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller
+than I thought. I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the
+rosary hanging on a brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my
+little cot which still stood in the same place and contained some
+of the clothes I had worn as a child, and even some of the toys I
+had played with.</p>
+<p>A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me
+as I entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at
+length I did see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and
+small as to be almost hidden in the big white bed.</p>
+<p>Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt
+Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and
+had a pen in his ear, I remember.</p>
+<p>Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the
+hand and led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and
+making his voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into
+a long tunnel, he said:</p>
+<p>"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come
+home to see you."</p>
+<p>Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long
+lashes parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if
+still in a sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like
+torches in dark hollows, and then (though they had thought her
+strength was gone and her voice would never be heard again) she
+raised herself in her bed, stretched out her arms to me, and cried
+in loud strong tones:</p>
+<p>"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"</p>
+<p>How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's
+arms about me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard
+Father Dan saying, as if speaking to a child:</p>
+<p>"You are happy now, are you not?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered.</p>
+<p>"You have everything you want?"</p>
+<p>"Everything&mdash;everything!"</p>
+<p>Then came my father's voice, saying:</p>
+<p>"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent
+for her, and here she is."</p>
+<p>"You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was
+kissing my forehead and crying in her joy.</p>
+<p>When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad.</p>
+<p>"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see
+it."</p>
+<p>"I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied.</p>
+<p>"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our
+reckoning. We can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of
+all miracles is a mother's love for her child."</p>
+<p>"Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like
+herself again, but still . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and
+having swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went
+away ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on
+holy ground.</p>
+<p>Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it
+to her lips, said:</p>
+<p>"Tell me everything that has happened."</p>
+<p>As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my
+life at the Convent&mdash;about the Reverend Mother and the nuns
+and the novices and the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma)
+and the singing of the hymn to the Virgin&mdash;talking on and on
+and on, without observing that, after a while, my mother's eyes had
+closed again, and that her hand had become cold and moist.</p>
+<p>At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?"</p>
+<p>I told her it was night and the lamp was burning.</p>
+<p>"Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it
+was not she did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for
+some time there was silence in which I heard nothing but the
+ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog
+a long way off, and the husky breathing in my mother's throat.</p>
+<p>I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was
+going to speak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother
+she went out quickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad
+and Father Dan.</p>
+<p>I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon
+Father Dan hurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion.
+The nurse spoke of taking me to another room but the doctor
+said:</p>
+<p>"No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside
+he whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet
+and not cry.</p>
+<p>Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the
+next half hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse
+and the nurse spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or
+five lighted candles on it.</p>
+<p>I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my
+mother" meant that she was to be put into a box and buried under
+the ground it was terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to
+our Lady He would not find it in His heart to do so. I was trying
+to do this, beginning under my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so
+lovely, thou art so gracious . . ." when the nurse said:</p>
+<p>"Here they are back again."</p>
+<p>Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a
+sight not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the
+Waits.</p>
+<p>A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in
+the middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms
+like a cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the
+men were carrying torches to light him on his way.</p>
+<p>I knew what it was&mdash;it was the Blessed Sacrament, which
+they were bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into
+the room, saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white
+box on the table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his
+priest's vestments underneath.</p>
+<p>Then the whole of my father's household&mdash;all except my
+father himself&mdash;came into my mother's room, including Aunt
+Bridget, who sat with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and
+the servants, who knelt in a group by the door.</p>
+<p>Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after
+she had opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice
+seemed to be choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were
+suffering, and sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the
+priest were inspiring him.</p>
+<p>After Communion he gave my mother Extreme
+Unction&mdash;anointing the sweet eyes which had seen no evil, the
+dear lips which had uttered no wrong, and the feet which had walked
+in the ways of God.</p>
+<p>All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of
+a church&mdash;no sound within except my father's measured tread in
+the room below, and none without except the muffled murmur which
+the sea makes when it is far away and going out.</p>
+<p>When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after
+asking for me and being told I was in the cot, she said:</p>
+<p>"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right
+now."</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more,
+and then she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me
+and I lay with my face hidden in her neck.</p>
+<p>What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of,
+almost too sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of
+yesterday, while other events of my life have floated away to the
+ocean of things that are forgotten and lost.</p>
+<p>"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she
+told me she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and
+wondered if I would not like to live there always, becoming one of
+the good and holy nuns.</p>
+<p>I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say
+how hard the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found
+it.</p>
+<p>"Not that your father has been to blame&mdash;you must never
+think that, Mary, yet still . . ."</p>
+<p>But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and
+she had to stop.</p>
+<p>Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded,
+for I said something about staying with my mother; and then in her
+sweet voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently,
+that she was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but
+she would think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she
+would watch over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our
+Lady to do so.</p>
+<p>"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall
+always be together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and
+whatever you are doing, I shall know all about it."</p>
+<p>This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also,
+though God knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes,
+she could have seen what was waiting for her child.</p>
+<p>It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next.</p>
+<p>She told me to say a <i>De Profundis</i> for her sometimes, and
+to think of her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed
+me and told me to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too,
+and if it should prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only
+like going to sleep at night and awaking in the morning, and then
+we should be together again, and "the time between would not seem
+long."</p>
+<p>"So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said.</p>
+<p>And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon
+of the next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting
+me out of bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window,
+was saying in a tremulous voice:</p>
+<p>"Your dear mother has gone to God."</p>
+<p>I began to cry, but he checked me and said:</p>
+<p>"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful
+Paradise after all her suffering. Let her go!"</p>
+<p>So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel.</p>
+<p>It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the
+Gloria.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my
+father's house.</p>
+<p>Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself
+more than ever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied
+half her days with the governess who had been engaged to teach her,
+and the other half in driving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the
+houses of the gentry round about.</p>
+<p>Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father's
+secretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a
+privilege which enlarged her pride without improving her
+manners.</p>
+<p>Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at
+school the doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in
+London in order to look at Nansen's ship, the <i>Fram</i>, which
+had just then arrived in the Thames.</p>
+<p>Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me,
+with its familiar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned
+with timid steps towards my father's busy room, intending to say,
+"Please, father, don't send me back to school," I made no demur
+when, six or seven days after the funeral, Aunt Bridget began to
+prepare for my departure.</p>
+<p>"There's odds of women," said Tommy the Mate, when I went into
+the garden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is
+women. If there's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if
+there isn't you might as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman
+is hot water&mdash;but she'll die for all."</p>
+<p>Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the
+Reverend Mother atoned to me for every neglect.</p>
+<p>"I knew you would come back to me," she said, and from that hour
+onward she seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I
+had lost.</p>
+<p>I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit
+became my spirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the
+life of the Convent took complete possession of me.</p>
+<p>At first I loved the church and its services because the
+Reverend Mother loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the
+music, the incense, the flowers and the lights on the altar; but
+after I had taken my communion, the mysteries of our religion took
+hold of me&mdash;the Confessional with its sense of cleansing and
+the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.</p>
+<p>For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side
+of my mind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the
+holidays came round the Reverend Mother took me with her to her
+country home at Nemi.</p>
+<p>That was a beautiful place&mdash;a sweet white cottage, some
+twenty kilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the
+middle of the remains of a medi&aelig;val village which contained a
+castle and a monastery, and had a little blue lake lying like an
+emerald among the green and red of the grass and poppies in the
+valley below.</p>
+<p>In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me,
+with its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards
+running on the rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its
+brown-faced boys in velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red
+petticoats and gorgeous outside stays; its shrines and its blazing
+sunsets, which seemed to girdle the heavens with quivering bands of
+purple and gold.</p>
+<p>Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a
+while I became entirely happy.</p>
+<p>I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy
+Beauty, who had not much to say beyond stories of balls at
+Government House, where she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and
+of hunts at which she had ridden with him. More rarely it was from
+Aunt Bridget, who usually began by complaining of the
+ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and ended with accounts
+of her daughter's last new costume and how well she looked in
+it.</p>
+<p>From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but
+Father Dan was my constant correspondent and he told me
+everything.</p>
+<p>First of my father himself&mdash;that he had carried out many of
+his great enterprises, his marine works, electric railways,
+drinking and dancing palaces, which had brought tens of thousands
+of visitors and hundreds of thousands of pounds to Ellan, though
+the good Father doubted the advantage of such innovations and
+lamented the decline of piety which had followed on the lust for
+wealth.</p>
+<p>Next of Aunt Bridget&mdash;that she was bringing up her daughter
+in the ways of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom
+(meaning Nessy MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.</p>
+<p>Next, of Tommy the Mate&mdash;that he sent his "best respec's"
+to the "lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the
+Big Woman who "was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't
+say Tom to a cat before her but she was agate of you to make it
+Thomas."</p>
+<p>Then of Martin Conrad&mdash;that he was at college "studying for
+a doctor," but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was
+"like a sea-gull in the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to
+be out on the wild waves.</p>
+<p>Finally of the young Lord Raa&mdash;that the devil's dues must
+be in the man, for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had
+wasted his substance in riotous living in London and his guardian
+had been heard to say he must marry a rich wife soon or his estates
+would go to the hammer.</p>
+<p>Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period
+of six years. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life
+they described seemed less and less important to me as time went
+on, for the outer world was slipping away from me altogether and I
+was becoming more and more immersed in my spiritual exercises.</p>
+<p>I spent much of my time reading religious books&mdash;the life
+of Saint Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and,
+above all, the letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary
+Alacoque, whose love of the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch
+to my excited spirit.</p>
+<p>The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul&mdash;not
+the new Rome, for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the
+holy city, that could speak to me in the silence of the night
+within the walls of my convent-school, with its bells of the
+Dominican and Franciscan monasteries on either side, its stories of
+miracles performed on the sick and dying by the various shrines of
+the Madonna, its accounts of the vast multitudes of the faithful
+who came from all ends of the earth to the ceremonials at St.
+Peter's, and, above all, its sense of the immediate presence of the
+Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar and mouthpiece of God
+Himself.</p>
+<p>The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said
+nothing of my desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother,
+but day by day my resolution grew.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl
+should plunge with all this passion into the aurora of a new
+spiritual life; but when I think how my nature was made for love,
+human love, the love of husband and children, I cannot but wonder
+with a thrill of the heart whether my mother in heaven, who, while
+she was on earth, had fought so hard with my father for the body of
+her child, was now fighting with him for her soul.</p>
+<p>I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun
+reached its highest point, and then received its final
+overthrow.</p>
+<p>Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a
+novice with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her
+vows, and the Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.</p>
+<p>Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning,
+tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the
+garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its
+lighted tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as
+for a festival, the bishop in his bright vestments, and then,
+Mildred herself, dressed as a bride in a beautiful white gown with
+a long white veil and attended by other novices as bridesmaids.</p>
+<p>It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence
+of a visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the
+taking of the vows was like a marriage service too&mdash;only more
+solemn and sacred and touching&mdash;the bride receiving the ring
+on her finger, and promising to serve and worship her celestial
+lover from that day forward, for better for worse, for richer for
+poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as life should last and
+through the eternity that was to follow it.</p>
+<p>I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its
+loveliness; and when it was over and we went into the refectory,
+and Mildred told me she was returning to England to work among the
+fallen girls of London, I vowed in my heart, though I hardly
+understood what she was going to do, that I would follow her
+example.</p>
+<p>It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full
+of noise and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother
+I was forming the resolution of telling her that very night that I
+meant to be a nun, for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I
+had seen and remembering what my poor mother had wished for me, I
+determined that no other life would I live under any
+circumstances.</p>
+<p>Then came the shock.</p>
+<p>As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One
+of them was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it
+was in my father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in
+silence she handed it to me. It ran:</p>
+<p>"<i>Madam</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her
+education will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived
+to prepare her for the change in life that is before her</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose
+to pay our respects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow
+morning</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Yours, Madam</i>,</p>
+<p>"DANIEL O'NEILL."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETEENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole
+soul rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the
+years during which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when
+my plans were formed, and change the whole current of my life, was
+an outrage&mdash;an iniquity. It might be his right&mdash;his
+natural right&mdash;but if so his natural right was a spiritual
+wrong&mdash;and I would resist it&mdash;to my last breath and my
+last hour I would resist it.</p>
+<p>Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but
+at ten o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father
+himself, it was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that
+I went down to the Reverend Mother's room.</p>
+<p>Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not
+much changed. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself,"
+and when I went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and
+looked into my face.</p>
+<p>"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though,"
+he said, and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on
+the other side of the room, he added:</p>
+<p>"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Perfectly," said the Bishop.</p>
+<p>I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a
+feeling of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the
+Reverend Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the
+look of pain on her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.</p>
+<p>She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and
+taking my right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there
+during the whole of the interview.</p>
+<p>The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to
+speak. He was a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave,
+smiling, faultlessly dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled
+shoes, and wearing a heavy gold chain with a jewelled cross.</p>
+<p>"Reverend Mother," he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's
+letter that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately&mdash;I
+presume there will be no difficulty in his doing so?"</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have
+bent her head.</p>
+<p>"Naturally," said the Bishop, "there will be a certain delay
+while suitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt
+you will give Mr. O'Neill your help in these preparations."</p>
+<p>My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed
+again. But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her
+silence, began to talk of the best date for my removal, and just
+when I was quivering with fear that without a word of protest I was
+to be taken away, the Reverend Mother said:</p>
+<p>"Monsignor!"</p>
+<p>"Reverend Mother!"</p>
+<p>"You are aware that this child"&mdash;here she patted my
+trembling hand&mdash;"has been with me for ten years?"</p>
+<p>"I am given to understand so."</p>
+<p>"And that during that time she has only once been home?"</p>
+<p>"I was not aware&mdash;but no doubt it is as you say."</p>
+<p>"In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been
+left to my undivided care?"</p>
+<p>"You have been very good to her, very, and I'm sure her family
+are extremely grateful."</p>
+<p>"In that case, Monsignor, doesn't it seem to you that I am
+entitled to know why she is being so suddenly taken away from me,
+and what is the change in life which Mr. O'Neill referred to in his
+letter?"</p>
+<p>The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop's face was
+smitten away from it by that question, and he looked anxiously
+across at my father.</p>
+<p>"Tell her," said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in
+my bosom and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the
+Bishop gave a brief explanation.</p>
+<p>The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more
+definite, but he might say that Mr. O'Neill was trying to arrange a
+happy and enviable future for his daughter, and therefore he wished
+her to return home to prepare for it.</p>
+<p>"Does that mean marriage?" said the Reverend Mother.</p>
+<p>"It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . ."</p>
+<p>"And that a husband has already been found for her?"</p>
+<p>"That too perhaps. I will not say . . ."</p>
+<p>"Monsignor," said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity
+"is that fair?"</p>
+<p>"Fair?"</p>
+<p>"Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done
+nothing for her, he should determine what her life is to be,
+without regard to her wish and will?"</p>
+<p>I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast.</p>
+<p>"Reverend Mother, you surprise me," he said. "Since when has a
+father ceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not
+been so since the beginning of the world? Doesn't the Church itself
+build its laws on that foundation?"</p>
+<p>"Does it?" said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could
+feel her hand trembling as she spoke): "Some of its servants do, I
+know. But when did the Church say that anybody&mdash;no matter
+who&mdash;a father or anybody else&mdash;should take the soul of
+another, and control it and govern it, and put it in prison? . .
+."</p>
+<p>"My good lady," said the Bishop, "would you call it putting the
+girl in prison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her
+an historic name, to surround her with the dignity and distinction
+. . ."</p>
+<p>"Bishop," said my father, raising his hand, "I guess it's my
+right to butt in here, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>I saw that my father's face had been darkening while the
+Reverend Mother spoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair
+so as to face her, he said:</p>
+<p>"Excuse me, ma'am, but when you say I've done nothing for my gel
+here I suppose you'll allow I've kept her and educated her?"</p>
+<p>"You've kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare
+say, but do you claim the same rights over a human being?"</p>
+<p>"I do, ma'am&mdash;I think I do. And when the human being
+happens to be my own daughter I don't allow that anybody else has
+anything to say."</p>
+<p>"If her mother were alive would <i>she</i> have nothing to
+say?"</p>
+<p>I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:</p>
+<p>"Her mother would agree to anything I thought best."</p>
+<p>"Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most
+submissive, most unhappy woman," said the Reverend Mother.</p>
+<p>My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, much obliged. But as I'm not a man
+to throw words away I'll ask you to tell me what all this means.
+Does it mean that you've made plans of your own for my daughter
+without consulting me?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . ."</p>
+<p>"That may be so or not&mdash;I cannot say. But when you sent
+your daughter to a convent-school . . ."</p>
+<p>"Wrong, ma'am, wrong for once. It was my wife's sister&mdash;who
+thinks the gel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . ."</p>
+<p>"Then your wife's sister is either a very stupid or a very
+bad-hearted woman."</p>
+<p>"Ma'am?"</p>
+<p>"I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn't
+a word of truth in what she says."</p>
+<p>It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend
+Mother's neck, but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp.</p>
+<p>"May be so, ma'am, may be no," said my father. "But when you
+talk about my sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have
+you know that I've been so busy with my business . . ."</p>
+<p>"That you haven't had time to take care of the most precious
+thing God gave you."</p>
+<p>"Ma'am," said my father, rising to his feet, "may I ask what
+right you have to speak to me as if . . ."</p>
+<p>"The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your
+motherless child, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten
+her."</p>
+<p>At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted,
+turned to the Bishop.</p>
+<p>"Bishop," he said, "is this what I've been paying my money for?
+Ten years' fees, and middling high ones too, I'm thinking?"</p>
+<p>And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said
+suavely:</p>
+<p>"But aren't we crossing the river before we reach the bridge?
+The girl herself may have no such objections. Have you?" he asked,
+turning to me.</p>
+<p>I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not
+reply.</p>
+<p>"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir," I answered.</p>
+<p>"And why not, please?"</p>
+<p>"Because my father's home is no home to me&mdash;because my aunt
+has always been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared
+for me or protected me, and because . . ."</p>
+<p>"Well, what else?"</p>
+<p>"Because . . . because I wish to become a nun."</p>
+<p>There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into
+bitter laughter.</p>
+<p>"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into
+partnership with the Mother in the nun business, eh?"</p>
+<p>"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself,
+sir."</p>
+<p>"Your mother was a baby&mdash;that's what she was."</p>
+<p>"My mother was an angel, sir," I said, bridling up, "and when
+she was dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never
+become anything else under any circumstance."</p>
+<p>"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and
+then turning to the Reverend Mother he said:</p>
+<p>"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in most
+everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take
+the hard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who
+pull against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't
+feel called upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what
+I'm going to do with her when I get her there. I believe I've got
+the rights of a father to do what I mean to do, and that it will be
+an ugly business for anybody who aids and abets my daughter in
+resisting her father's will. So I'll leave her here a week longer,
+and when I come back, I'll expect her to be ready and waiting and
+willing&mdash;ready and waiting and willing, mind you&mdash;to go
+along with me."</p>
+<p>After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat
+step went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the
+Reverend Mother and followed him.</p>
+<p>My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion&mdash;all that the
+pacifying life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years
+being suddenly swept away&mdash;and I cried:</p>
+<p>"I won't do it! I won't do it!"</p>
+<p>But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly
+become very white while my father spoke to her at the end and now
+she said, in a timid, almost frightened tone:</p>
+<p>"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to
+you."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTIETH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTIETH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together
+for the last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's
+villa.</p>
+<p>It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was
+stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a
+young boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the
+rocky ledges of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the
+monastic church behind us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off
+bell of the convent church at Gonzano was answering from the other
+side of the lake&mdash;like angels calling to each other from long
+distances in the sky.</p>
+<p>"Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story.
+It is the story of my own life&mdash;mine and my sister's and my
+father's."</p>
+<p>I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her
+lap, and patting it, as she had done during the interview of the
+morning.</p>
+<p>"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is
+too attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has
+suffered shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It
+was not so with me.</p>
+<p>"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune
+did not content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a
+son this might have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no
+way but that of marrying one of us into the Italian nobility.</p>
+<p>"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love
+with a young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for
+my sister he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was
+insulted; the third time he was flung out of the house. His nature
+was headstrong and passionate, and so was my father's. If either
+had been different the result might not have been the same. Yet who
+knows? Who can say?"</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the
+vineyard was going on.</p>
+<p>"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took
+her from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young
+musician followed her. Since my father would not permit him to
+marry her he was determined that she should fly with him, and when
+she hesitated to do so he threatened her. If she did not meet him
+at a certain hour on a certain night my father would be dead in the
+morning."</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased;
+the daylight was dying out.</p>
+<p>"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her
+father or her lover. Hence she saw only one way left&mdash;to
+sacrifice herself."</p>
+<p>"Herself?"</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in
+tragic circumstances are always doing?" she said.</p>
+<p>"By some excuse&mdash;I don't know what&mdash;she persuaded our
+father to change rooms with her that night&mdash;he going upstairs
+to her bedroom in the tower, and she to his on the ground floor at
+the back, opening on to the garden and the pine forest that goes up
+the hill.</p>
+<p>"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the
+middle of the night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next
+morning my sister was found dead&mdash;shot to the heart through an
+open window as she lay in my father's bed.</p>
+<p>"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one
+person had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his
+fierce anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to
+punish the man who had killed his daughter.</p>
+<p>"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral
+the young musician walked into my father's room. His face was white
+and wasted, and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask
+if he might be allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My
+father consented. 'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is
+punished enough.'</p>
+<p>"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not
+a dry eye as the cort&egrave;ge passed from our chapel to the
+grave. Everybody knew the story of my sister's hopeless love, but
+only two in the world knew the secret of her tragic death&mdash;her
+young lover, who was sobbing aloud as he staggered along with her
+body on his shoulder, and her old father, who was walking
+bareheaded and in silence, behind him."</p>
+<p>My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my
+hand to compose me&mdash;perhaps to compose herself also. It was
+now quite dark, the stars were coming out, and the bells of the two
+monasteries on opposite sides of the lake were ringing the first
+hour of night.</p>
+<p>"That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after
+a while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents
+are different.</p>
+<p>"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes
+centred in me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before
+the time came when I should form an attachment for myself. His
+choice fell on a middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but
+impoverished family.</p>
+<p>"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune&mdash;what
+more do you want?' said my father.</p>
+<p>"We were back in Rome by this time, and there&mdash;at school or
+elsewhere&mdash;I had formed the conviction that a girl must
+passionately love the man she marries, and I did not love the Roman
+noble. I had also been led to believe that a girl should be the
+first and only passion of the man who marries her, and, young as I
+was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had had other domestic
+relations.</p>
+<p>"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed,
+and then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I
+was formally engaged.</p>
+<p>"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out
+schemes by which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me
+then, and cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and
+watched and made preparations for carrying out my purpose.</p>
+<p>"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked
+ball was given by my fianc&eacute;'s friends in one of the old
+Roman palaces. I can see it still&mdash;the great hall, ablaze with
+glowing frescoes, beautiful Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture,
+red and yellow damask and velvet, and then the throng of handsome
+men in many uniforms and beautiful women with rows of pearls
+falling from their naked throats.</p>
+<p>"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic
+embroidered in gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin
+band over my forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.</p>
+<p>"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my
+middle-aged lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and
+heedless. At three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my
+father's carriage. At six I had entered a convent.</p>
+<p>"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and
+neither did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule
+of the convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers,
+the Superior would say, 'The mother of one of you is
+dead&mdash;pray for her soul,' and that was all we ever heard of
+the world outside.</p>
+<p>"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I
+became restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my
+vocation, but the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was
+going on in my heart. 'You are thinking about your father,' she
+said, 'that he is growing old, and needing a daughter to take care
+of him. Go out, and nurse him, and then come back to your cell and
+pray.'</p>
+<p>"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock
+awaited me. A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our
+beautiful palace was let out in apartments. My father was
+dead&mdash;three years dead and buried. After my disappearance he
+had shut himself up in his shame and grief, for, little as I had
+suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought him, he had really
+and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had failed him
+and he had given away all his fortune&mdash;scattered it, no one
+knew how, as something that was quite useless&mdash;and then he
+died, alone and broken-hearted."</p>
+<p>That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not
+try to explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's
+conduct, neither did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to
+my own circumstances. She left me to do that for myself.</p>
+<p>I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and
+closer to her until my head was on her breast.</p>
+<p>For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night,
+while the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of
+the garden and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of
+light.</p>
+<p>When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to
+my room, and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had
+I lain down, shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and
+telling myself that the obedience of a daughter to her father,
+whatever he might demand of her, was an everlasting and
+irreversible duty, imposed by no human law-giver, and that marriage
+was a necessity, which was forced upon most women by a mysterious
+and unyielding law of God, when the door opened and the Reverend
+Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again.</p>
+<p>"Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the
+Sacred Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go
+back as Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going
+shortly, so that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is
+the Convent of. . . ."</p>
+<p>Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered
+nuns in the heart of Rome.</p>
+<p>"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to
+see me whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . .
+. but no, I will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too,
+and under proper conditions God blesses and hallows it."</p>
+<p>With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was
+ringing, the monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for
+their midnight offices.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on
+the edge of the Piazza di Spagna.</p>
+<p>He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not
+tell me what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and
+I was left to discover them for myself.</p>
+<p>Our apartment was constantly visited by
+ecclesiastics&mdash;Monsignori, Archbishops, even one of the
+Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought there by Bishop Walsh (the
+Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not help but hear portions
+of their conversation.</p>
+<p>"It will be difficult, extremely difficult," the Cardinal would
+say. "Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds
+that they are usually attended by the worst consequences to both
+wife and husband. Still&mdash;under the exceptional
+circumstances&mdash;that the bridegroom's family was Catholic
+before it was Protestant&mdash;it is possible, just possible. . .
+."</p>
+<p>"Cardinal," my father would answer, while his strong face was
+darkening, "excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang
+of this business. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can,
+we'll just sail in and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go
+home quick and spend my money another way."</p>
+<p>Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would
+be right, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to have
+patience and wait.</p>
+<p>My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself
+in seeing the sights of the old city.</p>
+<p>But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of
+the past&mdash;the Forum with the broken columns of its dead
+centuries; the Coliseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate
+crater of a moon; the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and
+shattered aqueducts,&mdash;only vexed and irritated him.</p>
+<p>"Guess if I had my way," he said, "I would just clean out this
+old stone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for
+living ones."</p>
+<p>At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had
+been completed, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the
+Pope had signified his willingness to receive in private audience
+both my father and myself.</p>
+<p>This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I
+had begun to realise that my father's business concerned myself, so
+that when, early the following morning (clad according to
+instructions, my father in evening dress and I in a long black
+mantilla), we set out for the Vatican, I was in a condition of
+intense excitement.</p>
+<p>What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze
+gate near St. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish
+memory. I remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in
+many-coloured coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other
+soldiers in other costumes. I remember going on and on, through
+salon after salon, each larger and more luxurious than the last,
+and occupied by guards still more gorgeously dressed than the
+guards we had left behind. I remember coming at length to a door at
+which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword, knelt and knocked softly, and
+upon its being opened announced our names. And then I remember that
+after all this grandeur as of a medi&aelig;val court I found myself
+in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure before
+me, and . . . I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself.</p>
+<p>Can I ever forget that moment?</p>
+<p>I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope
+with a reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints,
+so at first I thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy
+Father's feet I do not know. I only know that he was very sweet and
+kind to me, holding out the delicate white hand on which he wore
+the fisherman's emerald ring, and smoothing my head after I had
+kissed it.</p>
+<p>When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he
+was an old man, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he
+spoke it was in such a soft and fatherly voice that I loved and
+worshipped him.</p>
+<p>"So this is the little lady," he said, "who is to be the
+instrument in the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring
+family into the folds of Mother Church."</p>
+<p>Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage,
+saying it was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a
+natural law and sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity
+of a Sacrament, so that those who entered it might live together in
+peace and love.</p>
+<p>"It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type
+of the holy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church."</p>
+<p>Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for
+marriage in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to
+approach the altar only after penance and communion.</p>
+<p>"And when you leave the church, my daughter," he said, "do not
+profane the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but
+remember to bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you,
+as He was at the marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee."</p>
+<p>Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract
+of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it
+could not be broken but by death.</p>
+<p>"Whom God has joined together let no man put
+asunder&mdash;remember that, too, my daughter."</p>
+<p>Finally he said something about children&mdash;that a Catholic
+marrying a person of another religion must not enter into any
+agreement whereby any of her children should be brought up in any
+other than the Catholic faith.</p>
+<p>After that, and something said to my father which I cannot
+recall, he gave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice
+so sweet that it fell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of
+the rising sun on a summer morning.</p>
+<p>"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob
+be with you, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and
+peace, and may you see your children's children to the third and
+fourth generation."</p>
+<p>Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the
+Chamberlain, I backed out of the room.</p>
+<p>When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as
+if I had come out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the
+Piazza of St. Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of
+common things&mdash;the cabs and electric cars&mdash;it was the
+same as if I had suddenly descended from heaven to earth.</p>
+<p>After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend
+Mother's story, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I
+wished to tell my father so, but an opportunity did not arise until
+late the same night and then it was he who was the first to
+speak.</p>
+<p>Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he
+said, as soon as his guests had gone&mdash;speaking in the tone of
+one who believed he was doing a great thing for me&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well
+know right here what we're trying to fix up for you."</p>
+<p>Then he told me.</p>
+<p>I was to marry the young Lord Raa!</p>
+<p>I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been
+smitten out of me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>That night, and during the greater part of the following day, I
+felt, without quite knowing why, as if I were living under the dark
+cloud of a gathering thunderstorm. All my fear of the world, and my
+desire to escape from it, had fallen upon me afresh. Hence it was
+not altogether by the blind leading of fate that half an hour
+before Ave Maria I entered the church of the Convent which the
+Reverend Mother had given me the name of.</p>
+<p>The church was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that
+covered the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for
+Benediction, so I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that
+divides the public part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and
+knelt on the nearest step.</p>
+<p>After a while the church-bell rang overhead, and then (the
+congregation having gathered in the meantime) the nuns came in by
+way of a corridor which seemed to issue out of the darkness from
+under a figure of the Virgin and Child.</p>
+<p>They were all in white, snow-white from head to foot, with a
+glimmer of blue scapular beneath their outer garment, and they wore
+long thick veils which entirely concealed their features when they
+entered but were raised when they reached their seats and faced the
+altar.</p>
+<p>Familiar as I was with similar scenes this one moved me as I had
+never before been moved&mdash;the silent white figures, with hands
+clasped on their breasts, coming in one by one with noiseless and
+unhurried footsteps, like a line of wraiths from another world.</p>
+<p>But a still deeper emotion was to come to me.</p>
+<p>As the last of the nuns entered, the Superior as I knew she
+would be, I recognised her instantly. It was my own Reverend Mother
+herself; and when, after kneeling to the altar, she came down to
+her seat nearest to the screen, immediately in front of the place
+where I knelt, I knew by the tremor of the clasped hands which held
+the rosary, that she had seen and recognised me.</p>
+<p>I trembled and my heart thumped against my breast.</p>
+<p>Then the priest entered and the Litany began. It was sung
+throughout. Almost the whole of the service was sung. Never had
+Benediction seemed so beautiful, so pathetic, so appealing, so
+irresistible.</p>
+<p>By the time the <i>Tantum ergo</i> had been reached and the
+sweet female voices, over the soft swell of the organ, were rising
+to the vaulted roof in sorrowful reparation for the sins of all
+sinners in the world who did not pray for themselves, the religious
+life was calling to me as it had never called before.</p>
+<p>"Come away from the world," it seemed to say. "Obedience to your
+heavenly Father cancels all duty to your earthly one. Leave
+everything you fear behind you, and find peace and light and
+love."</p>
+<p>The service was over, the nuns had dropped their veils and gone
+out as slowly and noiselessly as they had come in (the last of them
+with her head down): the sacristan with his long rod was
+extinguishing the candles on the altar; the church was growing dark
+and a lay-sister in black was rattling a bunch of keys at the door
+behind me before I moved from my place beside the rails.</p>
+<p>Then I awoke as from a dream, and looking longingly back at the
+dark corridor down which the nuns had disappeared, I was turning to
+go when I became aware that a young man was standing beside me and
+smiling into my face.</p>
+<p>"Mally," he said very softly, and he held out his hand.</p>
+<p>Something in the voice made me giddy, something in the blue eyes
+made me tremble. I looked at him but did not speak.</p>
+<p>"Don't you know me, Mally?" he said.</p>
+<p>I felt as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck. A
+flood of joy was sweeping through me. At last I knew who it
+was.</p>
+<p>It was Martin Conrad, grown to be a man, a tall, powerful, manly
+man, but with the same face still&mdash;an elusive ghost of the
+boy's face I used to look up to and love.</p>
+<p>A few minutes later we were out on the piazza in front of the
+church, and with a nervous rush of joyous words he was telling me
+what had brought him to Rome.</p>
+<p>Having just "scraped through" his examinations, and taken his
+degree&mdash;couldn't have done so if the examiners had not been
+"jolly good" to him&mdash;he had heard that Lieut. . . .&mdash;was
+going down to the great ice barrier that bounds the South Pole, to
+investigate the sources of winds and tides, so he had offered
+himself as doctor to the expedition and been accepted.</p>
+<p>Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples
+that morning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he
+had run up to Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but
+never expecting to see me, and coming upon me by the merest
+accident in the world&mdash;something having said to him, "Let's go
+in here and look at this queer old church."</p>
+<p>He had to leave to-morrow at two, though, having to sail the
+same night, but of course it would be luck to go farther south than
+Charcot and make another attack on the Antarctic night.</p>
+<p>I could see that life was full of faith and hope and all good
+things for him, and remembering some episodes of the past I
+said:</p>
+<p>"So you are going 'asploring' in earnest at last?"</p>
+<p>"At last," he answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and
+laughed as we stood together on the church steps, with little
+tender waves of feeling from our childhood sweeping to our
+feet.</p>
+<p>"And you?" he said. "You look just the same. I knew you
+instantly. Yet you are changed too. So grown and so . . . so
+wonderfully. . . ."</p>
+<p>I knew what he meant to say, and being too much of a child to
+pretend not to know, and too much of a woman (notwithstanding my
+nun-like impulses) not to find joy in it, I said I was glad.</p>
+<p>"You've left the Convent, I see. When did that happen?"</p>
+<p>I told him three weeks ago&mdash;that my father had come for me
+and we were going back to Ellan.</p>
+<p>"And then? What are you going to do then?" he asked.</p>
+<p>For a moment I felt ashamed to answer, but at last I told him
+that I was going home to be married.</p>
+<p>"Married? When? To whom?"</p>
+<p>I said I did not know when, but it was to be to the young Lord
+Raa.</p>
+<p>"Raa? Did you say Raa? That . . . Good G&mdash;&mdash; But
+surely you know. . . ."</p>
+<p>He did not finish what he was going to say, so I told him I did
+not know anything, not having seen Lord Raa since I came to school,
+and everything having been arranged for me by my father.</p>
+<p>"Not seen him since . . . everything arranged by your
+father?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>Then he asked me abruptly where I was staying, and when I told
+him he said he would walk back with me to the hotel.</p>
+<p>His manner had suddenly changed, and several times as we walked
+together up the Tritoni and along the Du Marcelli he began to say
+something and then stopped.</p>
+<p>"Surely your father knows. . . ."</p>
+<p>"If he does, I cannot possibly understand. . . ."</p>
+<p>I did not pay as much attention to his broken exclamations as I
+should have done but for the surprise and confusion of coming so
+suddenly upon him again; and when, as we reached the hotel, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"I wonder if your father will allow me to speak. . . ."</p>
+<p>"I'm sure he'll be delighted," I said, and then, in my great
+impatience, I ran upstairs ahead of him and burst into my father's
+room, crying:</p>
+<p>"Father, whom do you think I have brought to see
+you&mdash;look!"</p>
+<p>To my concern and discomfiture my father's reception of Martin
+was very cool, and at first he did not even seem to know him.</p>
+<p>"You don't remember me, sir?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid I can't just place you," said my father.</p>
+<p>After I had made them known to each other they sat talking about
+the South Pole expedition, but it was a chill and cheerless
+interview, and after a few minutes Martin rose to go.</p>
+<p>"I find it kind of hard to figure you fellows out," said my
+father. "No money that I know of has ever been made in the Unknown,
+as you call it, and if you discover both Poles I don't just see how
+they're to be worth a two-cent stamp to you. But you know best, so
+good-bye and good luck to you!"</p>
+<p>I went out to the lift with Martin, who asked if he could take
+me for a walk in the morning. I answered yes, and inquired what
+hour he would call for me.</p>
+<p>"Twelve o'clock," he replied, and I said that would suit me
+exactly.</p>
+<p>The Bishop came to dine with us that night, and after dinner,
+when I had gone to the window to look out over the city for the
+three lights on the Loggia of the Vatican, he and my father talked
+together for a long time in a low tone. They were still talking
+when I left them to go to bed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At breakfast next morning my father told me that something
+unexpected had occurred to require that we should return home
+immediately, and therefore he had sent over to Cook's for seats by
+the noon express.</p>
+<p>I was deeply disappointed, but I knew my father too well to
+demur, so I slipped away to my room and sent a letter to Martin,
+explaining the change in our plans and saying good-bye to him.</p>
+<p>When we reached the station, however, I found Martin waiting on
+the platform in front of the compartment that was labelled with our
+name.</p>
+<p>I thought my father was even more brusque with him than before,
+and the Bishop, who was to travel with us, was curt almost to
+rudeness. But Martin did not seem to mind that this morning, for
+his lower lip had the stiff setting which I had seen in it when he
+was a boy, and after I stepped into the carriage he stepped in
+after me, leaving the two men on the platform.</p>
+<p>"Shall you be long away?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Too long unfortunately. Six months, nine&mdash;perhaps twelve,
+worse luck! Wish I hadn't to go at all," he answered.</p>
+<p>I was surprised and asked why, whereupon he stammered some
+excuse, and then said abruptly:</p>
+<p>"I suppose you'll not be married for some time at all
+events?"</p>
+<p>I told him I did not know, everything depending on my
+father.</p>
+<p>"Anyhow, you'll see and hear for yourself when you reach home,
+and then perhaps you'll. . . ."</p>
+<p>I answered that I should have to do what my father desired,
+being a girl, and therefore. . . .</p>
+<p>"But surely a girl has some rights of her own," he said, and
+then I was silent and a little ashamed, having a sense of female
+helplessness which I had never felt before and could find no words
+for.</p>
+<p>"I'll write to your father," he said, and just at that moment
+the bell rang, and my father came into the compartment, saying:</p>
+<p>"Now then, young man, if you don't want to be taken up to the
+North Pole instead of going down to the South one. . . ."</p>
+<p>"That's all right, sir. Don't you trouble about <i>me</i>. I can
+take care of myself," said Martin.</p>
+<p>Something in his tone must have said more than his words to my
+father and the Bishop, for I saw that they looked at each other
+with surprise.</p>
+<p>Then the bell rang again, the engine throbbed, and Martin said,
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>While the train moved out of the station he stood bareheaded on
+the platform with such a woebegone face that looking back at him my
+throat began to hurt me as it used to do when I was a child.</p>
+<p>I was very sad that day as we travelled north. My adopted
+country had become dear to me during my ten years' exile from home,
+and I thought I was seeing the last of my beautiful Italy, crowned
+with sunshine and decked with flowers.</p>
+<p>But there was another cause of my sadness, and that was the
+thought of Martin's uneasiness about my marriage the feeling that
+if he had anything to say to my father he ought to have said it
+then.</p>
+<p>And there was yet another cause of which I was quite
+unconscious&mdash;that like every other girl before love dawns on
+her, half of my nature was still asleep, the half that makes life
+lovely and the world dear.</p>
+<p>To think that Martin Conrad was the one person who could have
+wakened my sleeping heart! That a word, a look, a smile from him
+that day could have changed the whole current of my life, and that.
+. . .</p>
+<p>But no, I will not reproach him. Have I not known since the day
+on St. Mary's Rock that above all else he is a born gentleman?</p>
+<p>And yet. . . . And yet. . . .</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</h2>
+<p>And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have
+spoken to Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to
+him:</p>
+<p>"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your
+daughter is a profligate and a reprobate? If you <i>do</i> know
+this, are you deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify
+your lust of rank and power and all the rest of your rotten
+aspirations?"</p>
+<p>That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid
+of being thought to have personal motives&mdash;of interfering
+where I wasn't wanted, of butting in when I had no right.</p>
+<p>Yet I felt I <i>had</i> a right, and I had half a mind to throw
+up everything and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big
+chance I had been looking forward to and I could not give it
+up.</p>
+<p>So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it
+took me a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By
+that time we were at Port Said, and from there I posted three
+letters,&mdash;the first to Daniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop
+Walsh, the third to Father Dan.</p>
+<p>Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and
+considered or resented and destroyed?</p>
+<p>I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down
+into the deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world
+could reach me.</p>
+<p>What would happen before I could get back? Only God could
+say.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SECOND_PART" id="SECOND_PART"></a>SECOND PART</h2>
+<h3>MY MARRIAGE</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled
+slowly and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my
+depression had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled
+curiosity and fear at the thought of meeting the man who was to be
+my husband.</p>
+<p>My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as
+we sailed into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the
+developments which had been made under his direction&mdash;the
+hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and boarding houses that lined
+the sea-front, and the electric railways that ran up to the tops of
+the mountains.</p>
+<p>"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island
+hum."</p>
+<p>On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of
+people were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.</p>
+<p>"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at
+the height of the season."</p>
+<p>As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the
+passengers had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart
+thumped with the thought that my intended husband would be one of
+them; but he was not, and the first words spoken to my father
+were&mdash;</p>
+<p>"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but
+hopes to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."</p>
+<p>I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even
+less prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he
+was going up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man
+with searching eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor
+from London, a Mr. Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate,
+and my dear old Father Dan.</p>
+<p>I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had
+thought him, very plain and provincial, a little country parish
+priest, but he had the tender smile I always remembered, and the
+sweet Irish roll of the vowels that I could never forget.</p>
+<p>"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like
+your mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would
+take care of you, and she has, she has."</p>
+<p>Three conveyances were waiting for us&mdash;a grand brougham for
+the Bishop, a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer,
+and a still bigger one for ourselves.</p>
+<p>"Well, s'long until to-morrow then," cried my father, getting up
+into the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and
+Father Dan and myself behind.</p>
+<p>On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had
+brought me back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he
+might have said of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had
+spoken from hearsay, and the world was so censorious&mdash;and then
+there was no measuring the miraculous influence that might be
+exercised by a good woman.</p>
+<p>He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease
+when he spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at
+her marriage&mdash;her first love, her first love-letter, her
+wedding-day and her first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things
+of a new existence which a man could never know.</p>
+<p>"Even an old priest may see that," he said, with a laugh and a
+pat of my hand.</p>
+<p>We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my
+father sat with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy
+of what he had done, of what he was going to do, and of all the
+splendours that were before me.</p>
+<p>"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be
+a mother's son that dare say boo to you."</p>
+<p>I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the
+suggestion of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of
+his native soil; and I had a sense of being with him before I was
+born, when he returned home from America with millions of dollars
+at his back, and the people who had made game of his father went
+down before his face like a flood.</p>
+<p>Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy"
+of the island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were
+to do so now, for in the second generation, and by means of his
+daughter's marriage, he was going to triumph over them all.</p>
+<p>"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried,
+with a flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his
+eyebrows.</p>
+<p>As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he
+pointed them out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the
+families in a tone of contempt.</p>
+<p>"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed
+me six months ago. He'll know better six months to come. . . .
+That's Eyreton. His missus was too big to call on your
+mother&mdash;she'll call on you, though, you go bail. See yonder
+big tower in the trees? That's Folksdale, where the Farragans live.
+The daughters have been walking over the world like peacocks, but
+they'll crawl on it like cockroaches. . . . Hulloh, here's ould
+Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage with his English
+coachman. . . . See that, though? See him doff his hat to you, the
+ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling. Things
+travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round us
+like bees about a honeypot."</p>
+<p>It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's
+triumphant spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling
+with delight as I recognised the scenes associated with my
+childhood&mdash;the village, the bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge
+and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees that bordered our drive.</p>
+<p>Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I had
+thought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so
+snugly under the hill and with the sea in front of them.</p>
+<p>Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I had
+expected, but my father explained this by saying:</p>
+<p>"Improvements, gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow
+morning."</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a
+white cap), Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of
+country comeliness) and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old
+maid who was doing her best to be a girl) were waiting at the open
+porch when our car drew up, and they received me with surprising
+cordiality.</p>
+<p>"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget.</p>
+<p>"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty.</p>
+<p>There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt
+Bridget declaring she could not have believed it, she really could
+not), and then Nessy undertook to take me to my room.</p>
+<p>"It's the same room still, Mary," said my Aunt, calling to me as
+I went upstairs. "When they were changing everything else I
+remembered your poor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their
+changing that. It isn't a bit altered."</p>
+<p>It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just
+as I was beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful
+to Aunt Bridget, Nessy said:</p>
+<p>"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have
+wiped out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage
+for her own daughter instead."</p>
+<p>More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression
+that my father was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return
+was not too welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was
+gone, and I was left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and
+entrancing whispers.</p>
+<p>How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!</p>
+<p>From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and
+everything had something to say to me. What sweet and tender and
+touching memories!</p>
+<p>Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at
+its head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our
+Lady on the wall above it.</p>
+<p>I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea
+in the crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the
+afternoon sunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment
+of sea-weed, and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling
+about it.</p>
+<p>Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the
+house&mdash;going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less
+carts were still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the
+cow-house, where the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools
+with their heads against the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and
+the milk rattling in their noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen,
+where the air was full of the odour of burning turf and the still
+sweeter smell of cakes baking on a griddle; and finally into the
+potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy the Mate (more than ever
+like a weather-beaten old salt) was still working as before.</p>
+<p>The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and
+recognised me instantly.</p>
+<p>"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy!
+Well, well! Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too!
+My gracious; yes," he said, after a second and longer look, "and
+there hasn't been the match of her on this island since they laid
+her mother under the sod!"</p>
+<p>I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who
+had been watching from a window, called from the house to say she
+was "mashing" a cup of tea for me, so I returned to the
+drawing-room where (my father being busy with his letters in the
+library) Betsy Beauty talked for half an hour about Lord Raa, his
+good looks, distinguished manners and general accomplishments.</p>
+<p>"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.</p>
+<p>I saw him the following morning.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to
+tell her of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and
+raising my eyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained
+three gentlemen, one of them wore goggles and carried a
+silver-haired terrier on his knees.</p>
+<p>A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and
+his party had arrived and I was wanted immediately.</p>
+<p>I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming
+trouble. Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended
+husband for the first time&mdash;there being nothing in his
+appearance to awaken in me the memory of ever having seen him
+before.</p>
+<p>He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy
+Beauty, who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him,
+and at the same time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to
+speak to the three gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's
+trustee or guardian) who were standing with my father in the middle
+of the floor.</p>
+<p>He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of
+breeding, but even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first
+sight the character of a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a
+dissipated life.</p>
+<p>His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and
+heavy, his moustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his
+forehead, and he had a general appearance of being much older than
+his years, which I knew to be thirty-three.</p>
+<p>His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle,
+almost playful and indulgent, but through all their softness there
+pierced a certain hardness, not to say brutality, which I
+afterwards learned (when life had had its tug at me) to associate
+with a man who has spent much of his time among women of loose
+character.</p>
+<p>Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a
+drawling voice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it
+was quite unnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made
+each other's acquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was
+the prettiest little woman in the world, he remembered, though
+perhaps my manners were not quite cordial.</p>
+<p>"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you
+remember it?"</p>
+<p>Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to
+say that he wished to show his lordship the improvements he had
+been making, and the rest of us were at liberty to follow them.</p>
+<p>The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old
+house, containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been
+modelled, as I found later, on the corresponding room in Castle
+Raa.</p>
+<p>With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the
+beauties of his new possession, while my intended husband, with his
+monocle to his eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and
+answered with a languid humour that narrowly bordered on
+contempt.</p>
+<p>"Oak, sir, solid oak," said my father, rapping with his knuckles
+on the tall, dark, heavy wainscoting.</p>
+<p>"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose," said
+Lord Raa.</p>
+<p>"Harder than some, sir," said my father.</p>
+<p>"Exactly," said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was
+general laughter.</p>
+<p>The bell rang for luncheon, and we went into the plain old
+dining room, where Aunt Bridget placed her principal guest on her
+right and told him all about her late husband, the Colonel, his
+honours and military achievements.</p>
+<p>I could see that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more
+than once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather
+supercilious responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious
+manners, Aunt Bridget seemed quite oblivious.</p>
+<p>I was so nervous and embarrassed that I spoke very little during
+luncheon, and even Aunt Bridget observed this at last.</p>
+<p>"Mary, dear, why don't you speak?" she said.</p>
+<p>But without waiting for my reply she proceeded to explain to his
+lordship that the strangest change had come over me since I was a
+child, when I had been the sauciest little chatterbox in the world,
+whereas now I was so shy that it was nearly impossible to get a
+word out of me.</p>
+<p>"Hope I shall be able to get one word out of her, at least,"
+said his lordship, whereupon Aunt Bridget smiled significantly and
+Betsy Beauty burst into fits of laughter.</p>
+<p>Almost before the meal was over, my father rose from his seat at
+the head of the table, and indicating the lawyers who sat near to
+him, he said:</p>
+<p>"These gentlemen and I have business to fix up&mdash;money
+matters and all that&mdash;so I guess we'll step into the library
+and leave you young people to look after yourselves."</p>
+<p>Everybody rose to leave the room.</p>
+<p>"All back for tea-time," said Aunt Bridget.</p>
+<p>"Of course you don't want <i>me</i>," said Betsy Beauty with a
+giggle, and at the next moment I was alone with his lordship, who
+drew a long breath that was almost like a yawn, and said:</p>
+<p>"Is there no quiet place we can slip away to?"</p>
+<p>There was the glen at the back of the house (the Cape Flora of
+Martin Conrad), so I took him into that, not without an increasing
+sense of embarrassment. It was a clear October day, the glen was
+dry, and the air under the shadow of the thinning trees was full of
+the soft light of the late autumn.</p>
+<p>"Ah, this is better," said his lordship.</p>
+<p>He lit a cigar and walked for some time by my side without
+speaking, merely flicking the seeding heads off the dying thistles
+with his walking stick, and then ruckling it through the withered
+leaves with which the path was strewn.</p>
+<p>But half way up the glen he began to look aslant at me through
+his monocle, and then to talk about my life in Rome, wondering how
+I could have been content to stay so long at the Convent, and
+hinting at a rumour which had reached him that I had actually
+wished to stay there altogether.</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary! 'Pon my word, extraordinary! It's well enough
+for women who have suffered shipwreck in their lives to live in
+such places, but for a young gal with any fortune, any looks . . .
+why I wonder she doesn't die of <i>ennui</i>."</p>
+<p>I was still too nervous and embarrassed to make much protest, so
+he went on to tell me with what difficulty he supported the boredom
+of his own life even in London, with its clubs, its race-meetings,
+its dances, its theatres and music halls, and the amusement to be
+got out of some of the ladies of society, not to speak of certain
+well-known professional beauties.</p>
+<p>One of his great friends&mdash;his name was Eastcliff&mdash;was
+going to marry the most famous of the latter class (a foreign
+dancer at the "Empire"), and since he was rich and could afford to
+please himself, why shouldn't he?</p>
+<p>When we reached the waterfall at the top of the glen (it had
+been the North Cape of Martin Conrad), we sat on a rustic seat
+which stands there, and then, to my still deeper embarrassment, his
+lordship's conversation came to close quarters.</p>
+<p>Throwing away his cigar and taking his silver-haired terrier on
+his lap he said:</p>
+<p>"Of course you know what the business is which the gentlemen are
+discussing in the library?"</p>
+<p>As well as I could for the nervousness that was stifling me, I
+answered that I knew.</p>
+<p>He stroked the dog with one hand, prodded his stick into the
+gravel with the other, and said:</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't know what your views about marriage are. Mine, I
+may say, are liberal."</p>
+<p>I listened without attempting to reply.</p>
+<p>"I think nine-tenths of the trouble that attends married
+life&mdash;the breakdowns and what not&mdash;come of an irrational
+effort to tighten the marriage knot."</p>
+<p>Still I said nothing.</p>
+<p>"To imagine that two independent human beings can be tied
+together like a couple of Siamese twins, neither to move without
+the other, living precisely the same life, year in, year out . . .
+why, it's silly, positively silly."</p>
+<p>In my ignorance I could find nothing to say, and after another
+moment my intended husband swished the loosened gravel with his
+stick and said:</p>
+<p>"I believe in married people leaving each other free&mdash;each
+going his and her own way&mdash;what do you think?"</p>
+<p>I must have stammered some kind of answer&mdash;I don't know
+what&mdash;for I remember that he said next:</p>
+<p>"Quite so, that's my view of matrimony, and I'm glad to see you
+appear to share it. . . . Tell the truth, I was afraid you
+wouldn't," he added, with something more about the nuns and the
+convent.</p>
+<p>I wanted to say that I didn't, but my nervousness was increasing
+every moment, and before I could find words in which to protest he
+was speaking to me again.</p>
+<p>"Our friends in the library seem to think that you and I could
+get along together, and I'm disposed to think they're
+right&mdash;aren't you?"</p>
+<p>In my ignorance and helplessness, and with the consciousness of
+what I was expected to do, I merely looked at him without
+speaking.</p>
+<p>Then he fixed his monocle afresh, and, looking back at me in a
+curious way, he said:</p>
+<p>"I don't think I should bore you, my dear. In fact, I should be
+rather proud of having a good-looking woman for my wife, and I
+fancy I could give you a good time. In any case"&mdash;this with a
+certain condescension&mdash;"my <i>name</i> might be of some use to
+you."</p>
+<p>A sort of shame was creeping over me. The dog was yawning in my
+face. My intended husband threw it off his knee.</p>
+<p>"Shall we consider it a settled thing, then?" he asked, and when
+in my confusion I still made no reply (having nothing which I felt
+myself entitled to say), he said something about Aunt Bridget and
+what she had told him at luncheon about my silence and shyness, and
+then rising to his feet he put my arm through his own, and turned
+our faces towards home.</p>
+<p>That was all. As I am a truthful woman, that was everything. Not
+a word from me, nay, not half a word, merely a passive act of
+silent acquiescence, and in my youthful and almost criminal
+innocence I was committed to the most momentous incident of my
+life.</p>
+<p>But if there was no love-making, no fondling, no kissing, no
+courtship of any kind, and none of the delirious rapture which used
+to be described in Alma's novels, I was really grateful for that,
+and immensely relieved to find that matters could he completed
+without them.</p>
+<p>When we reached the house, the bell was ringing for tea and my
+father was coming out of the library, followed by the lawyers.</p>
+<p>"So that's all right, gentlemen?" he was saying.</p>
+<p>"Yes, that's all right, sir," they were answering; and then,
+seeing us as we entered, my father said to Lord Raa:</p>
+<p>"And what about you two?"</p>
+<p>"We're all right also," said his lordship in his drawling
+voice.</p>
+<p>"Good!" said my father, and he slapped his lordship sharply on
+the back, to his surprise, and I think, discomfiture.</p>
+<p>Then with a cackle of light laughter among the men, we all
+trooped into the drawing room.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget in her gold-rimmed spectacles and new white cap,
+poured out the tea from our best silver tea-pot, while Nessy
+MacLeod with a geranium in her red hair, and Betsy Beauty, with
+large red roses in her bosom, handed round the cups. After a
+moment, my father, with a radiant face, standing back to the fire,
+said in a loud voice:</p>
+<p>"Friends all, I have something to tell you."</p>
+<p>Everybody except myself looked up and listened, though everybody
+knew what was coming.</p>
+<p>"We've had a stiff tussle in the library this afternoon, but
+everything is settled satisfactory&mdash;and the marriage is as
+good as made."</p>
+<p>There was a chorus of congratulations for me, and a few for his
+lordship, and then my father said again:</p>
+<p>"Of course there'll be deeds to draw up, and I want things done
+correct, even if it costs me a bit of money. But we've only one
+thing more to fix up to-day, and then we're through&mdash;the
+wedding. When is it to come off?"</p>
+<p>An appeal was made to me, but I felt it was only formal, so I
+glanced across to Lord Raa without speaking.</p>
+<p>"Come now," said my father, looking from one to the other. "The
+clean cut is the short cut, you know, and when I'm sot on doing a
+thing, I can't take rest till it's done. What do you say to this
+day next month?"</p>
+<p>I bowed and my intended husband, in his languid way, said:</p>
+<p>"Agreed!"</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards the motor was ordered round, and the
+gentlemen prepared to go. Then the silver-haired terrier was
+missed, and for the first time that day his lordship betrayed a
+vivid interest, telling us its price and pedigree and how much he
+would give rather than lose it. But at the last moment Tommy
+appeared with the dog in his arms and dropped it into the car,
+whereupon my intended husband thanked him effusively.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Tommy, "I thought you set store by <i>that</i>,
+sir."</p>
+<p>At the next moment the car was gone.</p>
+<p>"Well, you <i>are</i> a lucky girl," said Betsy Beauty; and Aunt
+Bridget began to take credit to herself for all that had come to
+pass, and to indicate the methods by which she meant to manage
+Castle Raa as soon as ever I became mistress of it.</p>
+<p>Thus in my youth, my helplessness, my ignorance, and my
+inexperience I became engaged to the man who had been found and
+courted for me. If I acquiesced, I had certainly not been
+consulted. My father had not consulted me. My intended husband had
+not consulted me. Nobody consulted me. I am not even sure that I
+thought anybody was under any obligation to consult me. Love had
+not spoken to me, sex was still asleep in me, and my marriage was
+arranged before my deeper nature knew what was being done.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The next weeks were full of hurry, hubbub and perturbation. Our
+house was turned upside down. Milliners, sewing-maids and
+dressmakers were working day and night. Flowers, feathers and silk
+remnants were flowing like sea-wrack into every room. Orders were
+given, orders were retracted and given again, and then again
+retracted.</p>
+<p>Such flying up and down stairs! Everybody so breathless!
+Everybody so happy! Every face wearing a smile! Every tongue
+rippling with laughter! The big grey mansion which used to seem so
+chill and cold felt for the first time like a house of joy.</p>
+<p>In the midst of these busy preparations I had no time to think.
+My senses were excited. I was dazed, stunned, wrapped round by a
+kind of warm air of hot-house happiness, and this condition of
+moral intoxication increased as the passing of the days brought
+fresh developments.</p>
+<p>Our neighbours began to visit us. My father had been right about
+the great people of the island. Though they had stood off so long,
+they found their account in my good fortune, and as soon as my
+marriage was announced they came in troops to offer their
+congratulations.</p>
+<p>Never, according to Tommy the Mate, had the gravel of our
+carriage drive been so rucked up by the pawing feet of high-bred
+horses. But their owners were no less restless. It was almost
+pitiful to see their shamefacedness as they entered our house for
+the first time, and to watch the shifts they were put to in order
+to account for the fact that they had never been there before.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget's vanity was too much uplifted by their presence to
+be particular about their excuses, but my father's contempt of
+their subterfuges was naked and undisguised, and I hardly know
+whether to feel amused or ashamed when I think of how he scored off
+them, how he lashed them to the bone, with what irony and sarcasm
+he scorched their time-serving little souls.</p>
+<p>When they were very great folks, the "aristocracy" of Ellan, he
+pretended not to know who they were, and asked their names, their
+father's names, and what parishes they came from.</p>
+<p>"Some of the Christians of Balla-Christian, are you? Think of
+that now. And me a born Ellanman, and not knowing you from
+Adam!"</p>
+<p>When they were very near neighbours, with lands that made
+boundary with our own, he pretended to think they had been twenty
+years abroad, or perhaps sick, or even dead and buried.</p>
+<p>"Too bad, ma'am, too bad," he would say. "And me thinking you
+were under the sod through all the lonely years my poor wife was
+ill and dying."</p>
+<p>But when they were insular officials, who "walked on the stars,"
+and sometimes snubbed him in public, the rapier of ridicule was too
+light for his heavy hand, and he took up the sledge-hammer, telling
+them he was the same man to-day as yesterday, and only his
+circumstances were different&mdash;his daughter being about to
+become the lady of the first house in the island, and none of them
+being big enough to be left out of it.</p>
+<p>After such scenes Aunt Bridget, for all her despotism within her
+own doors, used to tremble with dread of our neighbours taking
+lasting offence, but my father would say:</p>
+<p>"Chut, woman, they'll come again, and make no more faces about
+it."</p>
+<p>They did, and if they were shy of my father they were gracious
+enough to me, saying it was such a good thing for society in the
+island that Castle Raa was to have a lady, a real lady, at the head
+of it at last.</p>
+<p>Then came their wedding presents&mdash;pictures, books, silver
+ornaments, gold ornaments, clocks, watches, chains, jewellery,
+until my bedroom was blocked up with them. As each fresh parcel
+arrived there would be a rush of all the female members of our
+household to open it, after which Betsy Beauty would say:</p>
+<p>"What a lucky girl you are!"</p>
+<p>I began to think I was. I found it impossible to remain
+unaffected by the whirlwind of joyous turmoil in which I lived. The
+refulgence of the present hour wiped out the past, which seemed to
+fade away altogether. After the first few days I was flying about
+from place to place, and wherever I went I was a subject for
+congratulation and envy.</p>
+<p>If there were moments of misgiving, when, like the cold wind out
+of a tunnel, there came the memory of the Reverend Mother and the
+story she had told me at Nemi, there were other moments when I felt
+quite sure that, in marrying Lord Raa, I should be doing a
+self-sacrificing thing and a kind of solemn duty.</p>
+<p>One such moment was when Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, who
+with his clammy hands always made me think of an over-fatted fish,
+came to tell him that, after serious legal difficulties, the civil
+documents had been agreed to, for, after he had finished with my
+father, he drew me aside and said, as he smoothed his long brown
+beard:</p>
+<p>"You ought to be a happy girl, Mary. I suppose you know what you
+are doing for your father? You are wiping out the greatest
+disappointment of his life, and rectifying the cruelty&mdash;the
+inevitable cruelty&mdash;of the law, when you were born a daughter
+after he had expected a son."</p>
+<p>Another such moment was when the Bishop came, in his grand
+carriage, to say that after much discussion he had persuaded his
+lordship to sign the necessary declaration that all the children of
+our union, irrespective of sex, should be brought up as Catholics,
+for taking me aside, as the advocate had done the day before, he
+said, in his suave voice, fingering his jewelled cross:</p>
+<p>"I congratulate you, my child. Yours is a great and precious
+privilege&mdash;the privilege of bringing back to the Church a
+family which has been estranged from it for nineteen years."</p>
+<p>At the end of a fortnight we signed the marriage settlement. The
+little ceremony took place in the drawing-room of my father's
+house. My intended husband, who had not been to see me in the
+meantime, brought with him (as well as his trustee and lawyer) a
+lady and a gentleman.</p>
+<p>The lady was his maiden aunt, Lady Margaret Anslem, a fair woman
+of about forty, fashionably dressed, redolent of perfume, and
+(except to me, to whom she talked quite amicably) rather reserved
+and haughty, as if the marriage of her nephew into our family were
+a bitter pill which she had compelled herself to swallow.</p>
+<p>The gentleman was a tall young man wearing a very high collar
+and cravat, and using a handkerchief with embroidered initials in
+the corner of it. He turned out to be the Hon. Edward
+Eastcliff&mdash;the great friend who, being rich enough to please
+himself, was about to marry the professional beauty.</p>
+<p>I noticed that Aunt Bridget, with something of the instinct of
+the fly about the flame, immediately fixed herself upon the one,
+and that Betsy Beauty attached herself to the other.</p>
+<p>Lord Raa himself looked as tired as before, and for the first
+half-hour he behaved as if he did not quite know what to do with
+himself for wretchedness and <i>ennui</i>.</p>
+<p>Then the deeds were opened and spread out on a table, and though
+the gentlemen seemed to be trying not to discuss the contents aloud
+I could not help hearing some of the arrangements that had been
+made for the payment of my intended husband's debts, and certain
+details of his annual allowance.</p>
+<p>Looking back upon that ugly hour, I wonder why, under the
+circumstances, I should have been so wounded, but I remember that a
+sense of discomfort amounting to shame came upon me at sight of the
+sorry bargaining. It seemed to have so little to do with the
+spiritual union of souls, which I had been taught to think marriage
+should be. But I had no time to think more about that before my
+father, who had signed the documents himself in his large, heavy
+hand, was saying.</p>
+<p>"Now, gel, come along, we're waiting for your signature."</p>
+<p>I cannot remember that I read anything. I cannot remember that
+anything was read to me. I was told where to sign, and I signed,
+thinking what must be must be, and that was all I had to do with
+the matter.</p>
+<p>I was feeling a little sick, nevertheless, and standing by the
+tire with one foot on the fender, when Lord Raa came up to me at
+the end, and said in his drawling voice:</p>
+<p>"So it's done."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it's done," I answered.</p>
+<p>After a moment he talked of where we were to live, saying we
+must of course pass most of our time in London.</p>
+<p>"But have you any choice about the honeymoon," he said, "where
+we should spend it, I mean?"</p>
+<p>I answered that he would know best, but when he insisted on my
+choosing, saying it was my right to do so, I remembered that during
+my time in the Convent the one country in the world I had most
+desired to see was the Holy Land.</p>
+<p>Never as long as I live shall I forget the look in his
+lordship's grey eyes when I gave this as my selection.</p>
+<p>"You mean Jerusalem&mdash;Nazareth&mdash;the Dead Sea and all
+that?" he asked.</p>
+<p>I felt my face growing red as at a frightful <i>faux pas</i>,
+but his lordship only laughed, called me his "little nun," and said
+that since I had been willing to leave the choice to him he would
+suggest Egypt and Italy, and Berlin and Paris on the way back, with
+the condition that we left Ellan for London on the day of our
+marriage.</p>
+<p>After the party from Castle Raa had gone, leaving some of their
+family lace and pearls behind for the bride to wear at her wedding,
+and after Aunt Bridget had hoped that "that woman" (meaning Lady
+Margaret) didn't intend to live at the Castle after my marriage,
+because such a thing would not fit in with her plans "at all, at
+all," I mentioned the arrangements for the honeymoon, whereupon
+Betsy Beauty, to whom Italy was paradise, and London glimmered in
+an atmosphere of vermillion and gold, cried out as usual:</p>
+<p>"What a lucky, lucky girl you are!"</p>
+<p>But the excitement which had hitherto buoyed me up was partly
+dispelled by this time, and I was beginning to feel some doubt of
+it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>As my wedding-day approached and time ran short, the air of joy
+which had pervaded our house was driven out by an atmosphere of
+irritation. We were all living on our nerves. The smiles that used
+to be at everybody's service gave place to frowns, and, in Aunt
+Bridget's case, to angry words which were distributed on all sides
+and on all occasions.</p>
+<p>As a consequence I took refuge in my room, and sat long hours
+there in my dressing-gown and slippers, hearing the hubbub that was
+going on in the rest of the house, but taking as little part in it
+as possible. In this semi-conventual silence and solitude, the
+excitement which had swept me along for three weeks subsided
+rapidly.</p>
+<p>I began to think, and above all to feel, and the one thing I
+felt beyond everything else was a sense of something wanting.</p>
+<p>I remembered the beautiful words of the Pope about marriage as a
+mystic relation, a sacred union of souls, a bond of love such as
+Christ's love for His Church, and I asked myself if I felt any such
+love for the man who was to become my husband.</p>
+<p>I knew I did not. I reminded myself that I had had nearly no
+conversation with him, that our intercourse had been of the
+briefest, that I had seen him only three times altogether, and that
+I scarcely knew him at all.</p>
+<p>And yet I was going to marry him! In a few days more I should be
+his wife, and we should be bound together as long as life should
+last!</p>
+<p>Then I remembered what Father Dan had said about a girl's first
+love, her first love-letter, and all the sweet, good things that
+should come to her at the time of her marriage.</p>
+<p>None of them had come to me. I do not think my thoughts of love
+were ever disturbed by any expectation of the delights of the
+heart&mdash;languors of tenderness, long embraces, sighs and
+kisses, and the joys and fevers of the flesh&mdash;for I knew
+nothing about them. But, nevertheless, I asked myself if I had
+mistaken the matter altogether. Was love really necessary? In all
+their busy preparations neither my father, nor my husband, nor the
+lawyers, nor the Bishop himself, had said anything about that.</p>
+<p>I began to sleep badly and to dream. It was always the same
+dream. I was in a frozen region of the far north or south, living
+in a ship which was stuck fast in the ice, and had a great frowning
+barrier before it that was full of dangerous crevasses. Then for
+some reason I wanted to write a letter, but was unable to do so,
+because somebody had trodden on my pen and broken it.</p>
+<p>It seems strange to me now as I look back upon that time, that I
+did not know what angel was troubling the waters of my
+soul&mdash;that Nature was whispering to me, as it whispers to
+every girl at the first great crisis of her life. But neither did I
+know what angel was leading my footsteps when, three mornings
+before my wedding-day, I got up early and went out to walk in the
+crisp salt air.</p>
+<p>Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the
+shore, and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found
+myself near Sunny Lodge. The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and
+there was a smell of burning turf coming from the house, which was
+so pretty and unchanged, with the last of the year's roses creeping
+over the porch and round the windows of the room in which I had
+slept when a child.</p>
+<p>Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his
+shirt sleeves.</p>
+<p>"Good morning, doctor," I called, speaking over the fence.</p>
+<p>He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>"Don't you know who I am?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . ."</p>
+<p>Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and
+cried:</p>
+<p>"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"</p>
+<p>Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I
+thought, but with the same dear womanly face over her light print
+frock, which was as sweet as may-blossom.</p>
+<p>She held up both hands at sight of me and cried:</p>
+<p>"There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they
+might marry her to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old
+friends!"</p>
+<p>I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the
+sweetest part of it was that she did not know what we were laughing
+at.</p>
+<p>Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, and
+involuntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal
+from the porridge she was making) before taking mine.</p>
+<p>"Goodness me, it's Mary O'Neill."</p>
+<p>"Yes, it's I."</p>
+<p>"But let me have a right look at you," she said, taking me now
+by both hands. "They were saying such wonderful things about the
+young misthress that I wasn't willing to believe them. But, no,
+no," she said, after a moment, "they didn't tell me the half."</p>
+<p>I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to
+cry, so I said:</p>
+<p>"May I come in?"</p>
+<p>"My goodness yes, and welcome," she said, and calling to the
+doctor to wash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the
+kitchen-parlour, where the kettle was singing from the "slowery"
+and a porridge-pot was bubbling over the fire.</p>
+<p>"Sit down. Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth
+place]. There! That's nice. Aw, yes, you know the house."</p>
+<p>Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that
+was hurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so
+closely linked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin's
+mother (herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in
+her face) went on talking while she stirred the porridge with a
+porridge-stick.</p>
+<p>"Well, well! To think of all the years since you came singing
+carols to my door! You remember it, don't you? . . . Of course you
+do. 'Doctor,' I said, 'don't talk foolish. <i>She'll</i> not
+forget. <i>I</i> know Mary O'Neill. She may be going to be a great
+lady, but haven't I nursed her on my knee?'"</p>
+<p>"Then you've heard what's to happen?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Aw yes, woman, yes," she answered in a sadder tone, I thought.
+"Everybody's bound to hear it&mdash;what with the bands practising
+for the procession, and the bullocks roasting for the poor, and the
+fireworks and the illuminations, and I don't know what."</p>
+<p>She was silent for a moment after that, and then in her simple
+way she said:</p>
+<p>"But it's all as one if you love the man, even if he <i>is</i> a
+lord."</p>
+<p>"You think that's necessary, don't you?"</p>
+<p>"What, <i>millish?</i>"</p>
+<p>"Love. You think it's necessary to love one's husband?"</p>
+<p>"Goodness sakes, girl, yes. If you don't have love, what have
+you? What's to keep the pot boiling when the fire's getting low and
+the winter's coming on, maybe? The doctor's telling me some of the
+fine ladies in London are marrying without it&mdash;just for money
+and titles and all to that. But I can't believe it, I really can't!
+They've got their troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and
+what's the use of their fine clothes and grand carriages when the
+dark days come and the night's falling on them?"</p>
+<p>It was harder than ever to speak now, so I got up to look at
+some silver cups that stood on the mantelpiece.</p>
+<p>"Martin's," said his mother, to whom they were precious as
+rubies. "He won them at swimming and running and leaping and
+climbing and all to that. Aw, yes, yes! He was always grand at
+games, if he couldn't learn his lessons, poor boy. And now he's
+gone away from us&mdash;looking for South Poles somewheres."</p>
+<p>"I know&mdash;I saw him in Rome," said I.</p>
+<p>She dropped her porridge-stick and looked at me with big
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"Saw him? In Rome, you say? After he sailed, you mean?"</p>
+<p>I nodded, and then she cried excitedly to the doctor who was
+just then coming into the house, after washing his hands under the
+pump.</p>
+<p>"Father, she saw himself in Rome after he sailed."</p>
+<p>There was only one <i>himself</i> in that house, therefore it
+was not difficult for the doctor to know who was meant. And so
+great was the eagerness of the old people to hear the last news of
+the son who was the apple of their eye that I had to stay to
+breakfast and tell them all about our meeting.</p>
+<p>While Martin's mother laid the tables with oat-cake and honey
+and bowls of milk and deep plates for the porridge, I told the
+little there was to tell, and then listened to their simple
+comments.</p>
+<p>"There now, doctor! Think of that! Those two meeting in foreign
+parts that used to be such friends when they were children! Like
+brother and sister, you might say. And whiles and whiles we were
+thinking that some day . . . but we'll say no more about that now,
+doctor."</p>
+<p>"No, we'll say no more about that now, Christian Ann," said the
+doctor.</p>
+<p>Then there was a moment of silence, and it was just as if they
+had been rummaging among half-forgotten things in a dark corner of
+their house, and had come upon a cradle, and the child that had
+lived in it was dead.</p>
+<p>It was sweet, but it was also painful to stay long in that house
+of love, and as soon as I had eaten my oat-cake and honey I got up
+to go. The two good souls saw me to the door saying I was not to
+expect either of them at the Big House on my wedding-day, because
+she was no woman for smart clothes, and the doctor, who was growing
+rheumatic, had given up his night-calls, and therefore his gig, so
+as to keep down expenses.</p>
+<p>"We'll be at the church, though," said Martin's mother. "And if
+we don't see you to speak to, you'll know we're there and wishing
+you happiness in our hearts."</p>
+<p>I could not utter a word when I left them; but after I had
+walked a little way I looked back, intending to wave my farewell,
+and there they were together at the gate still, and one of her
+hands was on the doctor's shoulder&mdash;the sweet woman who had
+chosen love against the world, and did not regret it, even now when
+the night was falling on her.</p>
+<p>I had to pass the Presbytery on my way home, and as I did so, I
+saw Father Dan in his study. He threw up the window sash and called
+in a soft voice, asking me to wait until he came down to me.</p>
+<p>He came down hurriedly, just as he was, in his worn and
+discoloured cassock and biretta, and walked up the road by my side,
+breathing rapidly and obviously much agitated.</p>
+<p>"The Bishop is staying with me over the wedding, and he is in
+such a fury that . . . Don't worry. It will be all right. But . .
+."</p>
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+<p>"Did you see young Martin Conrad while you were in Rome?"</p>
+<p>I answered that I did.</p>
+<p>"And did anything pass between you . . . about your marriage, I
+mean?"</p>
+<p>I told him all that I had said to Martin, and all that Martin
+had said to me.</p>
+<p>"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing
+it, and calling on him to stop it."</p>
+<p>"To stop it?"</p>
+<p>"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if
+the Church is willing to give its blessing to such rank
+commercialism, let it bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the
+slave market."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young
+man,' he says, 'who dares to . . .' But if I thought there was
+nothing more to your marriage than . . . If I imagined that what
+occurred in the case of your dear mother . . . But that's not
+all."</p>
+<p>"Not all?"</p>
+<p>"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse&mdash;far
+worse."</p>
+<p>"What does he say, Father Dan?"</p>
+<p>"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet
+if it's true . . . if there's anything in it . . ."</p>
+<p>I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had
+said. He told me. It was about my intended husband&mdash;that he
+was a man of irregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a
+connection with somebody in London, a kind of actress who was
+practically his wife already, and therefore his marriage with me
+would be&mdash;so Martin had said&mdash;nothing but "legalised and
+sanctified concubinage."</p>
+<p>With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this
+story, as if it were something so infamous that his simple and
+innocent heart could scarcely credit it.</p>
+<p>"If I really thought it was true," he said, "that a man living
+such a life could come here to marry my little . . . But no, God
+could not suffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make
+sure. We live so far away in this little island that . . . But I
+must go back now. The Bishop will be calling for me."</p>
+<p>Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at
+the gate of our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering,
+with flowers from the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the
+joiner had hammered up the day before.</p>
+<p>The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this
+prompted me to look up and speak to him.</p>
+<p>"Tommy," I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't
+said a good word to me about my marriage?"</p>
+<p>"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe
+that's because I've had so many bad ones to say to other
+people."</p>
+<p>I asked which other people.</p>
+<p>"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the
+'Horse and Saddle.' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling
+me,' says Johnny. 'I won't say no,' I says. 'It'll be a proud day
+for the grand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of
+Castle Raa,' says Johnny. 'Maybe so,' I says, 'but it'll be a
+prouder day for Castle Raa when she sets her clane little foot in
+it.'"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened
+since, to convey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and
+personal dishonour which was produced in me by Father Dan's account
+of the contents of Martin's letter. It was like opening a door out
+of a beautiful garden into a stagnant ditch.</p>
+<p>That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt,
+first because Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all
+points with the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real
+conversation I had yet had with him.</p>
+<p>Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friend
+Eastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would have
+married her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an
+allowance, he was marrying me in return for my father's money.</p>
+<p>It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my
+father, the lawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it.</p>
+<p>I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a
+young girl out of a convent, I did not know.</p>
+<p>Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she
+had been alive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about
+her neck and my face in her breast, I should have told her all my
+trouble.</p>
+<p>There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever
+expected to go to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings
+and after much hesitation I went.</p>
+<p>It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my
+aunt as she passed through the house like a biting March wind,
+scolding everybody, until I found her in her own room.</p>
+<p>She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking
+pale, I suppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and
+cried:</p>
+<p>"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your
+morning walks, eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We
+must send for the doctor straight. We can't have <i>you</i> laid up
+now, after all this trouble and expense."</p>
+<p>"It isn't that, Auntie."</p>
+<p>"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"</p>
+<p>I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept
+looking at me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my
+aunt listened with amazement, and then she laughed outright.</p>
+<p>"So <i>you've</i> heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill," she
+said, with a thump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you."</p>
+<p>I asked if she thought it wasn't true.</p>
+<p>"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or
+isn't? Young men will be young men, I suppose."</p>
+<p>She went on with her ironing as she added:</p>
+<p>"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked
+for that there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world,
+wouldn't there?"</p>
+<p>I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to
+say:</p>
+<p>"But if he is practically married to the other woman. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like
+that? You might as well talk about marriage in the hen coop."</p>
+<p>"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off
+and get rid of her before he marries you."</p>
+<p>"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her
+iron and looked at me as if I had said something shameful.</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. He
+shouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a
+barn-door rooster?"</p>
+<p>My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my
+intended husband could not care for <i>me</i>, or he would have
+seen more of me.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about
+that."</p>
+<p>I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him.</p>
+<p>"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work
+miracles."</p>
+<p>Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had
+been taught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the
+Almighty so that those who entered it might live together in union,
+peace and love, whereas . . .</p>
+<p>But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me
+with her hard lip curled, said:</p>
+<p>"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on
+weekdays marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical
+matter. Just an arrangement for making a home, and getting a
+family, and bringing up children&mdash;that's what marriage is, if
+you ask me."</p>
+<p>"But don't you think love is necessary?"</p>
+<p>"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about
+in poetry and songs&mdash;bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and
+all that nonsense&mdash;no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her
+ironing.</p>
+<p>"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love,
+and it generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women
+have nothing to do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the
+bottom of her iron, "do you think I married for love when I married
+the colonel? No indeed! 'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice
+income,' I said, 'and if I put my little bit to his little bit
+we'll get along comfortably if he <i>is</i> a taste in years,' I
+said. Look at your mother, though. She was one of the
+marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where
+would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an
+invalid? And where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt
+Bridget, bringing down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a
+common-sense marriage, founded on suitability of position and
+property, and all that, is the only proper sort of match. And
+that's what's before you now, girl, so for goodness' sake don't go
+about like the parish pan, letting every busybody make mischief
+with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your chance&mdash;I can tell
+you that much, my lady."</p>
+<p>I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron,
+and then,</p>
+<p>"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in
+time. If you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him
+you'll love him later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her
+husband. I know I had to, and if. . . ."</p>
+<p>"But if she can't, Auntie?"</p>
+<p>"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about
+it."</p>
+<p>It was useless to say more, so I rose to go.</p>
+<p>"Yes, go," said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other
+people's business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary
+O'Neill," she said, looking after me as I passed through the door,
+"for mercy's sake do brighten up a hit, and don't look as if
+marrying a husband was like taking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad
+as that, anyway."</p>
+<p>It served me right. I should have known better. My aunt and I
+spoke different languages; we stood on different ground.</p>
+<p>Returning to my room I found a letter from Father Dan. It
+ran&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Dear Daughter in Jesus</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>I have been afraid to go far into the story we spoke about
+from fear of offending my Bishop, but I have inquired of your
+father and he assures me that there is not a word of truth in
+it</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>So I am compelled to believe that our good Martin must have
+been misinformed, and am dismissing the matter from my mind.
+Trusting you will dismiss it from your mind also</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>Yours in Xt.</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>D.D.</i>"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="TWENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"TWENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I could not do as Father Dan advised, being now enmeshed in the
+threads of innumerable impulses unknown to myself, and therefore
+firmly convinced that Martin's story was not only true, but a part
+of the whole sordid business whereby a husband was being bought for
+me.</p>
+<p>With this thought I went about all day, asking myself what I
+could do even yet, but finding no answer until nine o'clock at
+night, when, immediately after supper (we lived country fashion),
+Aunt Bridget said:</p>
+<p>"Now then, off to bed, girls. Everybody must be stirring early
+in the morning."</p>
+<p>And then I slipped upstairs to my room, and replied to Father
+Dan.</p>
+<p>Never had I written such a letter before. I poured my whole
+heart on to the paper, saying what marriage meant to me, as the
+Pope himself had explained it, a sacrament implying and requiring
+love as the very soul of it, and since I did not feel this love for
+the man I was about to marry, and had no grounds for thinking he
+felt it for me, and being sure that other reasons had operated to
+bring us together, I begged Father Dan, by his memory of my mother,
+and his affection for me, and his desire to see me good and happy,
+to intervene with my father and the Bishop, even at this late hour,
+and at the church door itself to stop the ceremony.</p>
+<p>It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was
+asleep, but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving
+in the room below, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a
+new thought I went downstairs and knocked at his door.</p>
+<p>"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in."</p>
+<p>He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a
+looking-glass which was propped up against two ledgers. The lather
+on his upper lip gave his face a fierce if rather grotesque
+expression.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sit down. Got to do this
+to-night&mdash;goodness knows if I'll have time for it in the
+morning."</p>
+<p>I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the
+night of my birth. The fire had nearly burnt out.</p>
+<p>"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been
+in bed myself but for this business. Look there"&mdash;he pointed
+with the handle of his razor to the table littered with
+papers&mdash;"that's a bit of what I've had to do for you. I kind
+o' think you ought to be grateful to your father, my gel."</p>
+<p>I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:</p>
+<p>"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"</p>
+<p>Not catching my meaning he laughed.</p>
+<p>"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between
+the tips of his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as
+right as law and wax can make it."</p>
+<p>"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . ."</p>
+<p>"What?" he said, facing round.</p>
+<p>Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord
+Raa. Lord Raa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake,
+for his sake, for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's
+sake also) to postpone our marriage.</p>
+<p>At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears.</p>
+<p>"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything
+signed and sealed and witnessed!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . ."</p>
+<p>I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in
+a towering rage.</p>
+<p>"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? The
+greatest match this island has ever seen, and you say
+postpone&mdash;put it off, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you
+want to make a fool of a man? At the last moment, too. Just when
+there's nothing left but to go to the High Bailiff and the Church!
+. . . But I see&mdash;I see what it is. It's that young
+Conrad&mdash;he's been writing to you."</p>
+<p>I tried to say no, but my father bore me down.</p>
+<p>"Don't go to deny it, ma'am. He has been writing to every
+one&mdash;the Bishop, Father Dan, myself even. Denouncing the
+marriage if you plaze."</p>
+<p>My father, in his great excitement, was breaking with withering
+scorn into his native speech.</p>
+<p>"Aw yes, though, denouncing and damning it, they're telling me!
+Mighty neighbourly of him, I'm sure! Just a neighbour lad without a
+penny at his back to take all that throuble! If I had known he felt
+like that about it I might have axed his consent! The imperence,
+though! The imperence of sin! A father has no rights, it seems! A
+daughter is a separate being, and all to that! Well, well! Amazing
+thick, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>He was walking up and down the room with his heavy tread, making
+the floor shake.</p>
+<p>"Then that woman in Rome&mdash;I wouldn't trust but she has been
+putting notions into your head, too. All the new-fangled fooleries,
+I'll go bail. Women and men equal, not a ha'p'orth of difference
+between them! The blatherskites!"</p>
+<p>I was silenced, and I must have covered my face and cried, for
+after a while my father softened, and touching my shoulder he asked
+me if a man of sixty-five was not likely to know better than a girl
+of nineteen what was good for her, and whether I supposed he had
+not satisfied himself that this marriage was a good thing for me
+and for him and for everybody.</p>
+<p>"Do you think I'm not doing my best for you, gel&mdash;my very
+best?"</p>
+<p>I must have made some kind of assent, for he said:</p>
+<p>"Then don't moither me any more, and don't let your Aunt Bridget
+moither me&mdash;telling me and telling me what I might have done
+for her own daughter instead."</p>
+<p>At last, with a kind of rough tenderness, he took me by the arm
+and raised me to my feet.</p>
+<p>"There, there, go to bed and get some sleep. We'll have to start
+off for the high Bailiff's early in the morning."</p>
+<p>My will was broken down. I could resist no longer. Without a
+word more I left him.</p>
+<p>Returning to my room I took the letter I had been writing to
+Father Dan and tore it up piece by piece. As I did so I felt as if
+I were tearing up a living thing&mdash;something of myself, my
+heart and all that was contained in it.</p>
+<p>Then I threw open the window and leant out. I could hear the
+murmur of the sea. I felt as if it were calling to me, though I
+could not interpret its voice. The salt air was damp and it
+refreshed my eyelids.</p>
+<p>At length I got into bed, shivering with cold. When I had put
+out the light I noticed that the moon, which was near the full, had
+a big yellow ring of luminous vapour around it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTIETH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTIETH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My sleep that night was much troubled by dreams. It was the same
+dream as before, again and again repeated&mdash;the dream of frozen
+regions and of the great ice barrier, and then of the broken
+pen.</p>
+<p>When I awoke in the hazy light of the dawn I thought of what the
+Pope had said about beginning my wedding-day with penance and
+communion, so I rose at once to go to church.</p>
+<p>The dawn was broadening, but the household was still asleep,
+only the servants in the kitchen stirring when I stepped through a
+side door, and set out across the fields.</p>
+<p>The dew was thick on the grass, and under the gloom of a heavy
+sky the day looked cold and cheerless. A wind from the south-east
+had risen during the night, the sea was white with breakers, and
+from St. Mary's Rock there came the far-off moaning of surging
+waves.</p>
+<p>The church, too, when I reached it, looked empty and chill. The
+sacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites
+about the high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red
+and black shawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the
+side chapel where Father Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little
+boy in clogs to serve him.</p>
+<p>The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she
+was already a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the
+herrings" somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a
+gale, leaving her with one child, a year old, and another soon to
+come.</p>
+<p>All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing
+seemed to think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at
+school with me in the village.</p>
+<p>"I'm Bella Quark that was," she whispered. "I married Willie
+Shimmin of the Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning
+since he was lost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't
+nothing in the world like it."</p>
+<p>She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though
+the world was "so dark and lonely for some." Then she said
+something about her "lil Willie." She had left him asleep in her
+cottage on the Curragh, and he might awake and cry before she got
+back, so she hoped Father Dan wouldn't keep her long.</p>
+<p>I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost
+forgot my own, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through
+hers as we knelt together, and that was how the Father found us
+when he turned to put the holy wafer on our tongues.</p>
+<p>The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for
+when I was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my
+legs so that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a
+sort of monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the
+vague line of the heavy sky.</p>
+<p>I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak
+to me in her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a
+flock of yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge,
+followed me bleating to the last fence, and that the moaning of the
+sea about St. Mary's Rock was the last sound I heard as I
+re-entered the house.</p>
+<p>Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The
+servants were flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs
+in accents of alarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of
+vexation, and my father was opening doors with a heavy push and
+closing them with a clash.</p>
+<p>They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it
+flashed upon me at the moment that they must have thought I had run
+away.</p>
+<p>"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt
+Bridget.</p>
+<p>I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not
+ordering round the carriage, instead of making my boots and
+stockings damp by traipsing across the grass, when my father
+said:</p>
+<p>"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of
+something. I guess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour."</p>
+<p>I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by
+eight o'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High
+Bailiff, who had to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage
+according to the conditions required by law.</p>
+<p>The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office,
+holding a newspaper in front of it to make it burn.</p>
+<p>"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father.</p>
+<p>"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered.</p>
+<p>He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights
+at the "Crown and Mitre," and was apparently out of humour at
+having been brought out of bed so early.</p>
+<p>His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk,
+a stool and a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls,
+one over another, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay
+on a table. The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room,
+and half like a small police court.</p>
+<p>Presently Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, came in, rather
+irritatingly cheerful in that chill atmosphere, and, half an hour
+late, my intended husband arrived, with his London lawyer and his
+friend Eastcliff.</p>
+<p>My mind was far from clear and I had a sense of seeing things by
+flashes only, but I remember that I thought Lord Raa was very
+nervous, and it even occurred to me that early as it was he had
+been drinking.</p>
+<p>"Beastly nuisance, isn't it?" he said to me aside, and then
+there was something about "this legal fuss and fuddlement."</p>
+<p>With the air of a man with a grievance the High Bailiff took a
+big book out of the desk, and a smaller one off a shelf, and then
+we sat in a half circle, and the ceremony began.</p>
+<p>It was very brief and cold like a matter of business. As far as
+I can remember it consisted of two declarations which Lord Raa and
+I made first to the witnesses present and afterwards to each other.
+One of them stated that we knew of no lawful impediment why we
+should not be joined together in matrimony, and the other declared
+that we were there and then so joined.</p>
+<p>I remember that I repeated the words automatically, as the High
+Bailiff in his thick alcoholic voice read them out of the smaller
+of his books, and that Lord Raa, in tones of obvious impatience,
+did the same.</p>
+<p>Then the High Bailiff opened the bigger of his books, and after
+writing something in it himself he asked Lord Raa to sign his name,
+and this being done he asked me also.</p>
+<p>"Am I to sign, too?" I asked, vacantly.</p>
+<p>"Well, who else do you think?" said Mr. Curphy with a laugh.
+"Betsy Beauty perhaps, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Come, gel, come," said my father, sharply, and then I
+signed.</p>
+<p>I had no longer any will of my own. In this as in everything I
+did whatever was asked of me.</p>
+<p>It was all as dreary and lifeless as an empty house. I can
+remember that it made no sensible impression upon my heart. My
+father gave some money (a few shillings I think) to the High
+Bailiff, who then tore a piece of perforated blue paper out of the
+bigger of his books and offered it to me, saying:</p>
+<p>"This belongs to you."</p>
+<p>"To me?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Who else?" said Mr. Curphy, who was laughing again, and then
+something was said by somebody about marriage lines and no one
+knowing when a wise woman might not want to use them.</p>
+<p>The civil ceremony of my marriage was now over, and Lord Raa,
+who had been very restless, rose to his feet, saying:</p>
+<p>"Beastly early drive. Anything in the house to steady one's
+nerves, High Bailiff?"</p>
+<p>The High Bailiff made some reply, at which the men laughed, all
+except my father. Then they left me and went into another room, the
+dining-room, and I heard the jingling of glasses and the drinking
+of healths while I sat before the fire with my foot on the fender
+and my marriage lines in my hand.</p>
+<p>My brain was still numbed. I felt as one might feel if drowned
+in the sea and descending, without quite losing consciousness, to
+the depths of its abyss.</p>
+<p>I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed
+in no respect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except
+that in the one case I had given my husband rights over my money,
+my father's money, whereas in this case I seemed to have given him
+rights over myself.</p>
+<p>Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so
+unaffecting.</p>
+<p>The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn
+hearthrug when my helpless meditations were interrupted by the
+thrumming and throbbing of the motor-car outside, and by my father,
+who was at the office door, saying in his loud, commanding
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back."</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given
+over to the dressmakers. I was still being moved
+automatically&mdash;a creature without strength or will.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the
+sights and sounds of the next two hours&mdash;of everybody except
+myself being wildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from
+unseen regions of the house: of Aunt Bridget scolding
+indiscriminately; of the dressmakers chattering without ceasing as
+they fitted on my wedding dress; of their standing off from me at
+intervals with cries of delight at the success of their efforts; of
+the wind roaring in the chimney; of the church-bells ringing in the
+distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of the sea about St.
+Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber wheels of
+several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel of
+the drive.</p>
+<p>When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory
+satin dress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and
+orange blossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as
+well as a string of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I
+was marrying into. I remember they said my black hair shone with a
+blue lustre against the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay
+on the outside anyway.</p>
+<p>At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a
+running stream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the
+banging of carriage doors, and then my father's deep voice,
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess."</p>
+<p>He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was
+still wearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There
+was not even a flower in his button-hole.</p>
+<p>We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a
+certain comfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the
+carriage with the windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning
+to frighten me.</p>
+<p>"It will be nothing," said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a
+slant of rain maybe."</p>
+<p>The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries
+were full of the children from the village school. There was a
+twittering overhead like that of young birds in a tree, and as I
+walked up the nave on my father's arm I could not help but hear
+over the sound of the organ the whispered words of the people in
+the pews on either side of us.</p>
+<p>"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless
+her!"</p>
+<p>"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life
+again."</p>
+<p>"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though."</p>
+<p>Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet
+more nervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear
+himself with his usual composure, there was (or I thought there
+was) a certain expression of fear in his face which I had never
+seen before.</p>
+<p>His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation
+button-hole, was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying
+a sheaf of beautiful white flowers, was standing near.</p>
+<p>My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy
+MacLeod, in large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind
+me. I could hear the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the
+indistinct buzz of their whispered conversation, as well as the
+more audible reproofs of Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk
+dress and a bonnet like a half moon, was telling them to be silent
+and to look placid.</p>
+<p>At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in
+the chancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and
+hemming in the church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand
+here, my lord"; that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking
+"Here?" and taking a place by my side; that the lighted altar,
+laden with flowers, was in front of me; and that the Bishop in his
+vestments, Father Dan in his surplice and white stole, and a clerk
+carrying a book and a vessel of holy water were beginning the
+service.</p>
+<p>Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl
+under similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the
+pains and penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted
+marriage. And yet there came to me in the course of the service
+such a startling change of thought as wiped out for a while all my
+sadness, made me forget the compulsion that had been put upon me,
+and lifted me into a realm of spiritual ecstasy.</p>
+<p>The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing
+on the ceremony which was to join together two of His children in
+the bonds of holy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious
+of nothing except the howling of the wind about the church windows
+and the far-off tolling of the bell on St. Mary's
+Rock&mdash;nothing but this and a voice within me which seemed to
+say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't love him!"</p>
+<p>But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be
+overawed by the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by
+the sense of God leaning over my littleness and guiding me
+according to His will.</p>
+<p>What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had
+led up to this marriage if God was making it? God makes all
+marriages that are blessed by His Church, and therefore He
+overrules to His own good ends all human impulses, however sordid
+or selfish they may be.</p>
+<p>After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, and
+nothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower the
+exaltation of my spirit.</p>
+<p>But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have
+an exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased
+visibly, though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of
+manner that sometimes looked like derision.</p>
+<p>Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:</p>
+<p>"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy
+lawful wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church,"
+my husband halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his
+breath, "I thought I was a heretic."</p>
+<p>But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father
+Dan thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered,
+"Don't worry, child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear,
+unfaltering voice:</p>
+<p>"I will."</p>
+<p>And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and
+silver on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and
+fumbled and dropped them a second time when he had to take them up
+after they had been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own
+awkwardness), and then repeat after the Bishop:</p>
+<p>"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give;
+with my body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee
+endow," he tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.</p>
+<p>But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in
+spite of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and
+sacred sacrament made him mine and no one else's.</p>
+<p>It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know
+it was so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the
+strangest fact of all my life.</p>
+<p>I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan
+spoke to me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no
+need of his comforting, for my strength was from a higher
+source.</p>
+<p>I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through the
+ceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to
+shun each other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because
+my marriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its
+sense of purity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome
+where Mildred Bankes had taken her vows.</p>
+<p>After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and
+Benediction (special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a
+still higher pitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me.</p>
+<p>Father Dan read the Epistle beginning "Let wives be subject to
+their husbands," and then the Bishop read the Gospel, concluding,
+"Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh: what therefore God
+hath joined together, let not man put asunder."</p>
+<p>I had trembled when I thought of these solemn and sonorous words
+in the solitude of my own room, but now that they were spoken
+before the congregation I had no fear, no misgiving, nothing but a
+sense of rapture and consecration.</p>
+<p>The last words being spoken and Lord Raa and I being man and
+wife, we stepped into the sacristy to sign the register, and not
+even there did my spirit fail me. I took up the pen and signed my
+name without a tremor. But hardly had I done so when I heard a
+rumbling murmur of voices about me&mdash;first the Bishop's voice
+(in such a worldly tone) and then my father's and then my
+husband's, and then the voices of many others, in light
+conversation mingled with trills of laughter. And then, in a
+moment, in a twinkling, as fast as a snowflake melts upon a stream,
+the spell of the marriage service seemed to break.</p>
+<p>I have heard since that my eyes were wet at that moment and I
+seemed to have been crying all through the ceremony. I know nothing
+about that, but I do know that I felt a kind of internal shudder
+and that it was just as if my soul had suddenly awakened from an
+intoxicating drug.</p>
+<p>The organ began to play the Wedding March, and my husband,
+putting my arm through his, said, "Come."</p>
+<p>There was much audible whispering among the people waiting for
+us in the church, and as we walked towards the door I saw ghostly
+faces smiling at me on every side, and heard ghostly voices
+speaking in whispers that were like the backward plash of wavelets
+on the shore.</p>
+<p>"Sakes alive, how white's she's looking, though," said somebody,
+and then somebody else said&mdash;I could not help but hear
+it&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Dear heart knows if her father has done right for all
+that."</p>
+<p>I did not look at anybody, but I saw Martin's mother at the
+back, and she was wiping her eyes and saying to some one by her
+side&mdash;it must have been the doctor&mdash;</p>
+<p>"God bless her for the sweet child veen she always was,
+anyway."</p>
+<p>The storm had increased during the service; and the sacristan,
+who was opening the door for us, had as much as he could do to hold
+it against the wind, which came with such a rush upon us when we
+stepped into the porch that my veil and the coronal of myrtle and
+orange blossoms were torn off my head and blown back into the
+church.</p>
+<p>"God bless my sowl," said somebody&mdash;it was Tommy's friend,
+Johnny Christopher&mdash;"there's some ones would he calling that
+bad luck, though."</p>
+<p>A band of village musicians, who were ranged up in the road,
+struck up "The Black and Grey" as we stepped out of the churchyard,
+and the next thing I knew was that my husband and I were in the
+carriage going home.</p>
+<p>He had so far recovered from the frightening effects of the
+marriage service that he was making light of it, and saying:</p>
+<p>"When will this mummery come to an end, I wonder?"</p>
+<p>The windows of the carriage were rattling with the wind, and my
+husband had begun to talk of the storm when we came upon the trunk
+of a young tree which had been torn up by the roots and was lying
+across the road, so that our coachman had to get down and remove
+it.</p>
+<p>"Beastly bad crossing, I'm afraid. Hope you're a good sailor.
+Must be in London to-morrow morning, you know."</p>
+<p>The band was playing behind us. The leafless trees were beating
+their bare boughs in front. The wedding bells were pealing. The
+storm was thundering through the running sky. The sea was very
+loud.</p>
+<p>At my father's gate Tommy the Mate, with a serious face, was
+standing, cap in hand, under his triumphal arch, which (as well as
+it could for the wind that was tearing its flowers and scattering
+them on the ground) spelled out the words "God bless the Happy
+Bride."</p>
+<p>When we reached the open door of the house a group of maids were
+waiting for us. They were holding on to their white caps and trying
+to control their aprons, which were swirling about their black
+frocks. As I stepped out of the carriage they addressed me as "My
+lady" and "Your ladyship." The seagulls, driven up from the sea,
+were screaming about the house.</p>
+<p>My husband and I went into the drawing-room, and as we stood
+together on the hearthrug I caught a glimpse of my face in the
+glass over the mantelpiece. It was deadly white, and had big
+staring eyes and a look of faded sunshine. I fixed afresh the
+pearls about my neck and the diamond in my hair, which was much
+disordered.</p>
+<p>Almost immediately the other carriages returned, and relatives
+and guests began to pour into the room and offer us their
+congratulations. First came my cousins, who were too much troubled
+about their own bedraggled appearance to pay much attention to
+mine. Then Aunt Bridget, holding on to her half-moon bonnet and
+crying:</p>
+<p>"You happy, happy child! But what a wind! There's been nothing
+like it since the day you were born."</p>
+<p>My father came next, like a gale of wind himself, saying:</p>
+<p>"I'm proud of you, gel. Right proud I am. You done well."</p>
+<p>Then came Lady Margaret, who kissed me without saying many
+words, and finally a large and varied company of gaily-dressed
+friends and neighbours, chiefly the "aristocracy" of our island,
+who lavished many unnecessary "ladyships" upon me, as if the great
+name reflected a certain glory upon themselves.</p>
+<p>I remember that as I stood on the hearthrug with my husband,
+receiving their rather crude compliments, a vague gaiety came over
+me, and I smiled and laughed, although my heart was growing sick,
+for the effect of the wedding-service was ebbing away into a cold
+darkness like that of a night tide when the moonlight has left
+it.</p>
+<p>It did not comfort me that my husband, without failing in good
+manners, was taking the whole scene and company with a certain
+scarcely-veiled contempt which I could not help but see.</p>
+<p>And neither did it allay my uneasiness to glance at my father,
+where he stood at the end of the room, watching, with a look of
+triumph in his glistening black eyes, his proud guests coming up to
+me one by one, and seeming to say to himself, "They're here at
+last! I've bet them! Yes, by gough, I've bet them!"</p>
+<p>Many a time since I have wondered if his conscience did not stir
+within him as he looked across at his daughter in the jewels of the
+noble house he had married her into&mdash;the pale bride with the
+bridegroom he had bought for her&mdash;and thought of the mockery
+of a sacred union which he had brought about to gratify his pride,
+his vanity, perhaps his revenge.</p>
+<p>But it was all over now. I was married to Lord Raa. In the eyes
+equally of the law, the world and the Church, the knot between us
+was irrevocably tied.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>I am no mystic and no spiritualist, and I only mention it as one
+of the mysteries of human sympathy between far-distant friends,
+that during a part of the time when my dear one was going through
+the fierce struggle she describes, and was dreaming of frozen
+regions and a broken pen, the ship I sailed on had got itself stuck
+fast in a field of pack ice in latitude 76, under the ice barrier
+by Charcot Bay, and that while we were lying like helpless logs,
+cut off from communication with the world, unable to do anything
+but groan and swear and kick our heels in our bunks at every fresh
+grinding of our crunching sides, my own mind, sleeping and waking,
+was for ever swinging back, with a sort of yearning prayer to my
+darling not to yield to the pressure which I felt so damnably sure
+was being brought to bear on her.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRD_PART" id="THIRD_PART"></a>THIRD PART</h2>
+<h3>MY HONEYMOON</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When the Bishop and Father Dan arrived, the bell was rung and we
+went in to breakfast.</p>
+<p>We breakfasted in the new dining-room, which was now finished
+and being used for the first time.</p>
+<p>It was a gorgeous chamber beblazoned with large candelabra, huge
+mirrors, and pictures in gold frames&mdash;resembling the room it
+was intended to imitate, yet not resembling it, as a woman
+over-dressed resembles a well-dressed woman.</p>
+<p>My father sat at the head of his table with the Bishop, Lady
+Margaret and Aunt Bridget on his right, and myself, my husband,
+Betsy Beauty and Mr. Eastcliff on his left. The lawyers and the
+trustee were midway down, Father Dan with Nessy MacLeod was at the
+end, and a large company of our friends and neighbours, wearing
+highly-coloured flowers on their breasts and in their buttonholes,
+sat between.</p>
+<p>The meal was very long, and much of the food was very
+large&mdash;large fish, large roasts of venison, veal, beef and
+mutton, large puddings and large cheeses, all cut on the table and
+served by waiters from Blackwater. There were two long black lines
+of them&mdash;a waiter behind the chair of nearly every other
+guest.</p>
+<p>All through the breakfast the storm raged outside. More than
+once it drowned the voices of the people at the table, roaring like
+a wild beast in the great throat of the wide chimney, swirling
+about the lantern light, licking and lashing and leaping at the
+outsides of the walls like lofty waves breaking against a
+breakwater, and sending up a thunderous noise from the sea itself,
+where the big bell of St. Mary's Rock was still tolling like a
+knell.</p>
+<p>Somebody&mdash;it must have been Aunt Bridget again&mdash;said
+there had been nothing like it since the day of my birth, and it
+must be "fate."</p>
+<p>"Chut, woman!" said my father. "We're living in the twentieth
+century. Who's houlding with such ould wife's wonders now?"</p>
+<p>He was intensely excited, and, his excitement betrayed itself,
+as usual, in reversion to his native speech. Sometimes he surveyed
+in silence, with the old masterful lift of his eyebrows, his
+magnificent room and the great guests who were gathered within it;
+sometimes he whispered to the waiters to be smarter with the
+serving of the dishes; and sometimes he pitched his voice above the
+noises within and without and shouted, in country-fashion, to his
+friends at various points of the table to know how they were
+faring.</p>
+<p>"How are you doing, Mr. Curphy, sir?"</p>
+<p>"Doing well, sir. Are you doing well yourself, Mr. O'Neill,
+sir?"</p>
+<p>"Lord-a-massy yes, sir. I'm always doing well, sir."</p>
+<p>Never had anybody in Ellan seen so strange a mixture of grandeur
+and country style. My husband seemed to be divided between amused
+contempt for it, and a sense of being compromised by its pretence.
+More than once I saw him, with his monocle in his eye, look round
+at his friend Eastcliff, but he helped himself frequently from a
+large decanter of brandy and drank healths with everybody.</p>
+<p>There were the usual marriage pleasantries, facetious
+compliments and chaff, in which to my surprise (the solemnity of
+the service being still upon me) the Bishop permitted himself to
+join.</p>
+<p>I was now very nervous, and yet I kept up a forced gaiety,
+though my heart was cold and sick. I remember that I had a
+preternatural power of hearing at the same time nearly every
+conversation that was going on at the table, and that I joined in
+nearly all the laughter.</p>
+<p>At a more than usually loud burst of wind somebody said it would
+be a mercy if the storm did not lift the roof off.</p>
+<p>"Chut, man!" cried my father. "Solid oak and wrought iron here.
+None of your mouldy old monuments that have enough to do to keep
+their tiles on."</p>
+<p>"Then nobody," said my husband with a glance at his friend,
+"need be afraid of losing his head in your house, sir?"</p>
+<p>"Not if he's got one to come in with, sir."</p>
+<p>Betsy Beauty, sitting next to Mr. Eastcliff, was wondering if he
+would do us the honour to visit the island oftener now that his
+friend had married into it.</p>
+<p>"But, my dear Betsy," said my husband, "who would live in this
+God-forsaken place if he could help it?"</p>
+<p>"God-forsaken, is it?" said my father. "Maybe so, sir&mdash;but
+that's what the cuckoo said after he had eaten the eggs out of the
+thrush's nest and left a mess in it."</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget was talking in doleful tones to Lady Margaret about
+my mother, saying she had promised her on her death-bed to take
+care of her child and had been as good as her word, always putting
+me before her own daughter, although her ladyship would admit that
+Betsy was a handsome girl, and, now that his lordship was married,
+there were few in the island that were fit for her.</p>
+<p>"Why no, Mrs. MacLeod," said my husband, after another
+significant glance at his friend, "I dare say you've not got many
+who can make enough to keep a carriage?"</p>
+<p>"Truth enough, sir," said my father. "We've got hundreds and
+tons that can make debts though."</p>
+<p>The breakfast came to an end at length, and almost before the
+last of the waiters had left the room my father rose to speak.</p>
+<p>"Friends all," he said, "the young married couple have to leave
+us for the afternoon steamer."</p>
+<p>"In this weather?" said somebody, pointing up to the lantern
+light through which the sky was now darkening.</p>
+<p>"Chut! A puff of wind and a slant of rain, as I've been saying
+to my gel here. But my son-in-law, Lord Raa," (loud cheers followed
+this description, with some laughter and much hammering on the
+table), "my son-in-law says he has to be in London to-morrow, and
+this morning my daughter has sworn obedience. . . . What's that,
+Monsignor? Not obedience exactly? Something like it then, so she's
+bound to go along with him. So fill up your glasses to the brim and
+drink to the bride and bridegroom."</p>
+<p>As soon as the noise made by the passing of decanters had died
+down my father spoke again.</p>
+<p>"This is the proudest day of my life. It's the day I've worked
+for and slaved for and saved for, and it's come to pass at
+last."</p>
+<p>There was another chorus of applause.</p>
+<p>"What's that you were saying in church, Mr. Curphy, sir? Time
+brings in its revenges? It does too. Look at me."</p>
+<p>My father put his thumbs in the arm-pits of his waistcoat.</p>
+<p>"You all know what I am, and where I come from."</p>
+<p>My husband put his monocle to his eye and looked up.</p>
+<p>"I come from a mud cabin on the Curragh, not a hundred miles
+from here. My father was kill . . . but never mind about that now.
+When he left us it was middling hard collar work, I can tell
+you&mdash;what with me working the bit of a croft and the mother
+weeding for some of you&mdash;some of your fathers I
+mane&mdash;ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all weathers.
+When I was a lump of a lad I was sworn at in the high road by a
+gentleman driving in his grand carriage, and the mother was lashed
+by his . . . but never mind about that neither. I guess I've
+hustled round considerable since then, and this morning I've
+married my daughter into the first family in the island."</p>
+<p>There was another burst of cheering at this, but it was almost
+drowned by the loud rattling of the rain which was now falling on
+the lantern light.</p>
+<p>"Monsignor," cried my father, pitching his voice still higher,
+"what's that you were saying in Rome about the mills of God?"</p>
+<p>Fumbling his jewelled cross and smiling blandly the Bishop gave
+my father the familiar quotation.</p>
+<p>"Truth enough, too. The mills of God grind slowly but they're
+grinding exceeding small. Nineteen years ago I thought I was as
+sure of what I wanted as when I got out of bed this morning. If my
+gel here had been born a boy, my son would have sat where his
+lordship is now sitting. But all's well that ends well! If I
+haven't got a son I've got a son-in-law, and when I get a grandson
+he'll be the richest man that ever stepped into Castle Raa, and the
+uncrowned king of Ellan."</p>
+<p>At that there was a tempest of cheers, which, mingling with the
+clamour of the storm, made a deafening tumult.</p>
+<p>"They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and
+children&mdash;daughters being separate beings, and all to that.
+But show me the daughter that could do better for herself than my
+gel's father has done for her. She has a big fortune, and her
+husband has a big name, and what more do they want in this world
+anyway?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing at all," came from various parts of the room.</p>
+<p>"Neighbours," said my father, looking round him with a satisfied
+smile, "I'm laying you dry as herrings in a hould, but before I
+call on you to drink this toast I'll ask the Bishop to spake to
+you. He's a grand man is the Bishop, and in fixing up this marriage
+I don't in the world know what I could have done without him."</p>
+<p>The Bishop, still fingering his jewelled cross and smiling,
+spoke in his usual suave voice. He firmly believed that the Church
+had that morning blessed a most propitious and happy union.
+Something might be said against mixed marriages, but under proper
+circumstances the Church had never forbidden them and his lordship
+(this with a deep bow to my husband) had behaved with great
+liberality of mind.</p>
+<p>As for what their genial and rugged host had said of certain
+foolish and dangerous notions about the relations of father and
+child, he was reminded that there were still more foolish and
+dangerous ones about the relations of husband and wife.</p>
+<p>From the earliest ages of the Church, however, those relations
+had been exactly defined. "Let wives be subject to their husbands,"
+said the Epistle we had read this morning, and no less conclusive
+had been our closing prayer, asking that the wife keep true faith
+with her husband, being lovely in his eyes even as was Rachel, wise
+as was Rebecca, and dutiful as was Sara.</p>
+<p>"Beautiful!" whispered Aunt Bridget to Lady Margaret. "It's what
+I always was myself in the days of the dear Colonel."</p>
+<p>"And now," said the Bishop, "before you drink this toast and
+call upon the noble bridegroom to respond to it," (another deep bow
+to my husband), "I will ask for a few words from the two legal
+gentlemen who have carried out the admirably judicious financial
+arrangements without which this happy marriage would have been
+difficult if not impossible."</p>
+<p>Then my husband's lawyer, with a supercilious smile on his
+clean-shaven face, said it had been an honour to him to assist in
+preparing the way for the "uncrowned king of Ellan." ("It
+<i>has</i>, sir," cried my father in a loud voice which
+straightened the gentleman's face instantly); and finally Mr.
+Curphy, speaking through his long beard, congratulated my father
+and my husband equally on the marriage, and gave it as his opinion
+that there could be no better use for wealth than to come to the
+rescue of an historic family which had fallen on evil times and
+only required a little money to set it on its feet again.</p>
+<p>"The bride and bridegroom!" cried my father; and then everybody
+rose and there was much cheering, with cries of "His lordship,"
+"His lordship."</p>
+<p>All through the speech-making my husband had rolled uneasily in
+his chair. He had also helped himself frequently from the decanter,
+so that when he got up to reply he was scarcely sober.</p>
+<p>In his drawling voice he thanked the Bishop, and said that
+having made up his mind to the marriage he had never dreamt of
+raising difficulties about religion. As to the modern notions about
+the relations of husband and wife, he did not think a girl brought
+up in a convent would give him much trouble on that subject.</p>
+<p>"Not likely," cried my father. "I'll clear her of that
+anyway."</p>
+<p>"So I thank you for myself and for my family," continued my
+husband, "and . . . Oh, yes, of course," (this to Lady Margaret).
+"I thank you for my wife also, and . . . and that's all."</p>
+<p>I felt sick and cold and ashamed. A rush of blood came under the
+skin of my face that must have made me red to the roots of my
+hair.</p>
+<p>In all this speaking about my marriage there had not been one
+word about myself&mdash;myself really, a living soul with all her
+future happiness at stake. I cannot say what vague impulse took
+possession of me, but I remember that when my husband sat down I
+made a forced laugh, though I knew well that I wanted to cry.</p>
+<p>In an agony of shame I was beginning to feel a wild desire to
+escape from the room and even from the house, that I might breathe
+in some of the free wind outside, when all at once I became aware
+that somebody else was speaking.</p>
+<p>It was Father Dan. He had risen unannounced from his seat at the
+end of the table. I saw his sack coat which was much worn at the
+seams; I saw his round face which was flushed; I heard the
+vibrating note in his soft Irish voice which told me he was deeply
+moved; and then I dropped my head, for I knew what was coming.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>"Mr. O'Neill," said Father Dan, "may your parish priest take the
+liberty of speaking without being spoken to?"</p>
+<p>My father made some response, and then a hush fell over the
+dining-room. Either the storm ceased for a time, or in my great
+agitation it seemed to do so, for I did not hear it.</p>
+<p>"We have heard a great deal about the marriage we have
+celebrated to-day, but have we not forgotten something? What
+<i>is</i> marriage? Is it the execution of a contract? Is it the
+signing of a register? Is it even the taking of an oath before an
+altar? No. Marriage is the sacred covenant which two souls make
+with each other, the woman with the man, the man with the woman,
+when she chooses him from all other men, when he chooses her from
+all other women, to belong to each other for ever, so that no
+misfortune, no storm of life, no sin on either side shall ever put
+them apart. That's what marriage is, and all we have been doing
+to-day is to call on God and man to bear witness to that holy
+bond."</p>
+<p>My heart was beating high. I raised my head, and I think my eyes
+must have been shining. I looked across at the Bishop. His face was
+showing signs of vexation.</p>
+<p>"Mr. O'Neill, sir," cried Father Dan, raising his trembling
+voice, "you say your daughter has a big fortune and her husband has
+a big name, and what more do they want in this world? I'll tell you
+what they want, sir. They want love, love on both sides, if they
+are to be good and happy, and if they've got that they've got
+something which neither wealth nor rank can buy."</p>
+<p>I had dropped my head again, but under my eyelashes I could see
+that the company were sitting spell-bound. Only my husband was
+shuffling in his seat, and the Bishop was plucking at his gold
+chain.</p>
+<p>"My Bishop," said Father Dan, "has told us of the submission a
+wife owes to her husband, and of her duty to be lovely and wise and
+faithful in his eyes. But isn't it the answering thought that the
+husband on his part owes something to the wife? Aren't we told that
+he shall put away everything and everybody for her sake, and cleave
+to her and cling to her and they shall be one flesh? Isn't that,
+too, a divine commandment?"</p>
+<p>My heart was throbbing so loud by this time that the next words
+were lost to me. When I came to myself again Father Dan was
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Think what marriage means to a woman&mdash;a young girl
+especially. It means the breaking of old ties, the beginning of a
+new life, the setting out into an unknown world on a voyage from
+which there can be no return. In her weakness and her helplessness
+she leaves one dependency for another, the shelter of a father for
+the shelter of a husband. What does she bring to the man she
+marries? Herself, everything she is, everything she can be, to be
+made or marred by him, and never, never, never to be the same to
+any other man whatsoever as long as life shall last."</p>
+<p>More than ever now, but for other reasons, I wanted to fly from
+the room.</p>
+<p>"Friends," cried Father Dan, "we don't know much of the
+bridegroom in this parish, but we know the bride. We've known her
+all her life. We know what she is. I do, anyway. If you are her
+father, Mr. O'Neill, sir, I am her father also. I was in this house
+when she was born. I baptized her. I took her out of the arms of
+the angel who bore her. So she's my child too, God bless her. . .
+."</p>
+<p>His voice was breaking&mdash;I was sobbing&mdash;though he was
+speaking so loudly I could scarcely hear him&mdash;I could scarcely
+see him&mdash;I only knew that he was facing about in our direction
+and raising his trembling hand to my husband.</p>
+<p>"She is my child, too, I say, and now that she is leaving us,
+now that you are taking her away from us, I charge you, my lord, to
+be good and faithful to her, as you will have to answer for her
+soul some day."</p>
+<p>What else he said I do not know. From that moment I was blind
+and deaf to everything. Nevertheless I was conscious that after
+Father Dan had ceased to speak there was a painful silence. I
+thought the company seemed to be startled and even a little annoyed
+by the emotion so suddenly shot into their midst. The Bishop looked
+vexed, my father looked uncomfortable, and my husband, who had been
+drinking glass after glass of brandy, was muttering something about
+"a sermon."</p>
+<p>It had been intended that Mr. Eastcliff should speak for the
+bridesmaids, and I was afterwards told by Betsy Beauty that he had
+prepared himself with many clever epigrams, but everybody felt
+there could be no more speaking of any kind now. After a few
+awkward moments my father looked at his watch and said it was about
+time for us to start if we were to catch the steamer, so I was
+hurried upstairs to change for our journey.</p>
+<p>When I came down again, in my tailor-made travelling dress with
+sables, the whole company was in the hall and everybody seemed to
+be talking at the same time, making a noise like water in a
+weir.</p>
+<p>I was taken possession of by each in turn. Nessy MacLeod told me
+in an aside what an excellent father I had. Betsy Beauty whispered
+that Mr. Eastcliff was so handsome and their tastes were so similar
+that she hoped I would invite him to Castle Raa as soon as I came
+back. Aunt Bridget, surrounded by a group of sympathising ladies
+(including Lady Margaret, who was making an obvious effort to be
+gracious) was wiping her eyes and saying I had always been her
+favourite and she had faithfully done her duty by me.</p>
+<p>"Mary, my love," she said, catching my eye, "I'm just telling
+her ladyship I don't know in the world what I'll do when you are
+gone."</p>
+<p>My husband was there too, wearing a heavy overcoat with the
+collar up, and receiving from a group of insular gentlemen their
+cheerful prognostics of a bad passage.</p>
+<p>"'Deed, but I'm fearing it will be a dirty passage, my
+lord."</p>
+<p>"Chut!" said my father. "The wind's from the south-west. They'll
+soon get shelter."</p>
+<p>The first of our two cars came round and my husband's valet went
+off in advance with our luggage. Then the second car arrived, and
+the time came for our departure. I think I kissed everybody.
+Everybody seemed to be crying&mdash;everybody except myself, for my
+tears were all gone by this time.</p>
+<p>Just as we were about to start, the storm, which must certainly
+have fallen for a while, sprang up suddenly, and when Tommy the
+Mate (barely recognisable in borrowed black garments) opened the
+door the wind came rushing into the house with a long-drawn
+whirr.</p>
+<p>I had said good-bye to the old man, and was stepping into the
+porch when I remembered Father Dan. He was standing in his shabby
+sack coat with a sorrowful face in a dark corner by the door, as if
+he had placed himself there to see the last of me. I wanted to put
+my arms around his neck, but I knew that would be wrong, so I
+dropped to my knees and kissed his hand and he gave me his
+blessing.</p>
+<p>My husband, who was waiting by the side of the throbbing
+automobile, said impatiently:</p>
+<p>"Come, come, dear, don't keep me in the rain."</p>
+<p>I got into the landaulette, my husband got in after me, the car
+began to move, there were cries from within the house ("Good-bye!"
+"Good luck") which sounded like stifled shrieks as they were
+carried off by the wind without, and then we were under weigh.</p>
+<p>As we turned the corner of the drive something prompted me to
+look back at my mother's window&mdash;with its memories of my first
+going to school.</p>
+<p>At the next moment we were crossing the bridge&mdash;with its
+memories of Martin Conrad and William Rufus.</p>
+<p>At the next we were on the road.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>"Thank God, that's over," said my husband. Then, half
+apologetically, he added: "You didn't seem to enjoy it any more
+than myself, my dear."</p>
+<p>At the entrance to our village a number of men stood firing
+guns; in the middle a group of girls were stretching a rope across
+the road; a number of small flags, torn by the wind and wet with
+the rain, were rattling on flagstaffs hung out from some of the
+window sills; a few women, with shawls over their heads, were
+sheltering on the weather side of their porches to see us pass.</p>
+<p>My husband was impatient of our simple island customs. Once or
+twice he lowered the window of the car, threw out a handful of
+silver and at the same time urged the chauffeur to drive quicker.
+As soon as we were clear of the village he fell back in his seat,
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Heavens, how sleepy I am! No wonder either! Late going to bed
+last night and up so early this morning."</p>
+<p>After a moment he began to yawn, and almost before he could have
+been aware of it he had closed his eyes. At the next moment he was
+asleep.</p>
+<p>It was a painful, almost a hideous sleep. His cheeks swelled and
+sank; his lips parted, he was breathing heavily, and sometimes
+gaping like a carp out of water.</p>
+<p>I could not detach my eyes from his face, which, without eyes to
+relieve it, seemed to be almost repulsive now. It would be
+difficult to describe my sensations. I felt dreadfully humiliated.
+Even my personal pride was wounded. I remembered what Father Dan
+had said about husband and wife being one flesh, and told myself
+that <i>this</i> was what I belonged to, what belonged to
+me&mdash;<i>this!</i> Then I tried to reproach and reprove myself,
+but in order to do so I had to turn my eyes away.</p>
+<p>Our road to Blackwater lay over the ridge of a hill much exposed
+to the wind from the south-west. When we reached this point the
+clouds seemed to roll up from the sea like tempestuous battalions.
+Torrential rain fell on the car and came dripping in from the
+juncture of the landaulette roof. Some of it fell on the sleeper
+and he awoke with a start.</p>
+<p>"Damn&mdash;"</p>
+<p>He stopped, as if, caught in guilt, and began to apologise
+again.</p>
+<p>"Was I asleep? I really think I must have been. Stupid, isn't
+it? Excuse me."</p>
+<p>He blinked his eyes as if to empty them of sleep, looked me over
+for a moment or two in silence, and then said with a smile which
+made me shudder:</p>
+<p>"So you and I are man and wife, my dear!"</p>
+<p>I made no answer, and, still looking fixedly at me, he said:</p>
+<p>"Well, worse things might have happened after all&mdash;what do
+<i>you</i> think?"</p>
+<p>Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say
+disgust. Then he began to pay me some compliments on my
+appearance.</p>
+<p>"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"</p>
+<p>That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it
+was because the words gave me the sense of having been used before
+to other women. I turned my eyes away again.</p>
+<p>"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of
+yours. I adore black eyes. They always pierce me like a
+gimlet."</p>
+<p>He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt
+frightened and pushed him off.</p>
+<p>"What's this?" he said, as if surprised.</p>
+<p>But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man
+who had had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal
+with them, he said:</p>
+<p>"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"</p>
+<p>Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my
+waist, but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.</p>
+<p>His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I see," he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for
+having paid so little court to her? Well, she's right there too,
+bless her! But never mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little
+woman, my dear, and if I have neglected you thus far, I intend to
+make up for it during the honeymoon. So come, little gal, let's be
+friends."</p>
+<p>Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the
+same time his hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face
+aside and prevented him.</p>
+<p>"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man
+who was quite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun
+will get over that by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"</p>
+<p>By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that was
+entirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it,
+but it was there, and I could not escape from it.</p>
+<p>Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had
+been troubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant
+to myself by love&mdash;the love of husband and wife&mdash;was the
+kind of feeling I had for the Reverend Mother, heightened and
+deepened and spiritualised, as I believed, by the fact (with all
+its mysterious significance) that the one was a man and the other a
+woman.</p>
+<p>But this was something quite different. Not having found in
+marriage what I had expected, I was finding something else, for
+there could be no mistaking my husband's meaning when he looked at
+me with his passionate eyes and said, "Wait awhile!"</p>
+<p>I saw what was before me, and in fear of it I found myself
+wishing that something might happen to save me. I was so frightened
+that if I could have escaped from the car I should have done so.
+The only thing I could hope for was that we should arrive at
+Blackwater too late for the steamer, or that the storm would
+prevent it from sailing. What relief from my situation I should
+find in that, beyond the delay of one day, one night (in which I
+imagined I might be allowed to return home), I did not know. But
+none the less on that account I began to watch the clouds with a
+feverish interest.</p>
+<p>They were wilder than ever now&mdash;rolling up from the
+south-west in huge black whorls which enveloped the mountains and
+engulfed the valleys. The wind, too, was howling at intervals like
+a beast being slaughtered. It was terrible, but not so terrible as
+the thing I was thinking of. I was afraid of the storm, and yet I
+was fearfully, frightfully glad of it.</p>
+<p>My husband, who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own
+corner of the car, was very angry. He talked again of our
+"God-forsaken island," and the folly of living in it, said our
+passage would be a long one in any case, and we might lose our
+connection to London.</p>
+<p>"Damnably inconvenient if we do. I've special reasons for being
+there in the morning," he said.</p>
+<p>At a sharp turn of the road the wind smote the car as with an
+invisible wing. One of the windows was blown in, and to prevent the
+rain from driving on to us my husband had to hold up a cushion in
+the gap.</p>
+<p>This occupied him until we ran into Blackwater, and then he
+dropped the cushion and put his head out, although the rain was
+falling heavily, to catch the first glimpse of the water in the
+bay.</p>
+<p>It was in terrific turmoil. My heart leapt up at the sight of
+it. My husband swore.</p>
+<p>We drew up on the drenched and naked pier. My husband's valet,
+in waterproofs, came to the sheltered side of the car, and,
+shouting above the noises of the wind in the rigging of the
+steamer, he said:</p>
+<p>"Captain will not sail to-day, my lord. Inshore wind. Says he
+couldn't get safely out of the harbour."</p>
+<p>My husband swore violently. I was unused to oaths at that time
+and they cut me like whipcord, but all the same my pulse was
+bounding joyfully.</p>
+<p>"Bad luck, my lord, but only one thing to do now," shouted the
+valet.</p>
+<p>"What's that?" said my husband, growling.</p>
+<p>"Sleep in Blackwater to-night, in hopes of weather mending in
+the morning."</p>
+<p>Anticipating this course, he had already engaged rooms for us at
+the "Fort George."</p>
+<p>My heart fell, and I waited for my husband's answer. I was
+stifling.</p>
+<p>"All right, Hobson. If it must be, it must," he answered.</p>
+<p>I wanted to speak, but I did not know what to say. There seemed
+to be nothing that I could say.</p>
+<p>A quarter of an hour afterwards we arrived at the hotel, where
+the proprietor, attended by the manageress and the waiters,
+received us with rather familiar smiles.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When I began to write I determined to tell the truth and the
+whole truth. But now I find that the whole truth will require that
+I should invade some of the most sacred intimacies of human
+experience. At this moment I feel as if I were on the threshold of
+one of the sanctuaries of a woman's life, and I ask myself if it is
+necessary and inevitable that I should enter it.</p>
+<p>I have concluded that it <i>is</i> necessary and
+inevitable&mdash;necessary to the sequence of my narrative,
+inevitable for the motive with which I am writing it.</p>
+<p>Four times already I have written what is to follow. In the
+first case I found that I had said too much. In the second I had
+said too little. In the third I was startled and shocked by the
+portrait I had presented of myself and could not believe it to be
+true. In the fourth I saw with a thrill of the heart that the
+portrait was not only true, but too true. Let me try again.</p>
+<p>I entered our rooms at the hotel, my husband's room and mine,
+with a sense of fear, almost of shame. My sensations at that moment
+had nothing in common with the warm flood of feeling which comes to
+a woman when she finds herself alone for the first time with the
+man she loves, in a little room which holds everything that is of
+any account to her in the world. They were rather those of a young
+girl who, walking with a candle through the dark corridors of an
+empty house at night, is suddenly confronted by a strange face. I
+was the young girl with the candle; the strange face was my
+husband's.</p>
+<p>We had three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the
+middle with bedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was
+large and it contained a huge bed with a covered top and
+tail-boards. That on the left was small, and it had a plain brass
+and iron bedstead, which had evidently been meant for a lady's
+maid. I had no maid yet. It was intended that I should engage a
+French one in London.</p>
+<p>Almost immediately on entering the sitting-room my husband, who
+had not yet recovered from his disappointment, left me to go
+downstairs, saying with something like a growl that he had
+telegrams to send to London and instructions to give to his man
+Hobson.</p>
+<p>Without taking off my outer things I stepped up to the windows,
+which were encrusted with salt from the flying spray. The hotel
+stood on a rocky ledge above the harbour, and the sound of the sea,
+beating on the outer side of the pier, came up with a deafening
+roar. The red-funnelled steamer we should have sailed by lay on the
+pier's sheltered side, letting down steam, swaying to her creaking
+hawsers, and heaving to the foam that was surging against her
+bow.</p>
+<p>I was so nervous, so flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears
+that I hardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our
+trunks and asked me where they were to place them, but I scarcely
+know how I answered them, although I was aware that
+everything&mdash;both my husband's luggage and mine&mdash;was being
+taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she ought to put a
+light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes," and
+presently I heard the fire crackling.</p>
+<p>After awhile my husband came back in a better temper and
+said:</p>
+<p>"Confounded nuisance, but I suppose we must make the best of
+it."</p>
+<p>He laughed as he said this, and coming closer and looking me
+over with a smile which was at the same time passionate and proud,
+he whispered:</p>
+<p>"Dare say we'll not find the time long until to-morrow morning.
+What do <i>you</i> think, my little beauty?"</p>
+<p>Something in his voice rather than in his question made my heart
+beat, and I could feel my face growing hot.</p>
+<p>"Not taken off your things yet?" he said. "Come, let me help
+you."</p>
+<p>I drew out my hat-pins and removed my hat. At the same moment my
+husband removed my sables and cloak, and as he did so he put his
+arms about me, and held me close to him.</p>
+<p>I shuddered. I tried not to, but I could not help it. My husband
+laughed again, and said:</p>
+<p>"Not got over it yet, little woman? Perhaps that's only because
+you are not quite used to me."</p>
+<p>Still laughing he pulled me still closer to him, and putting one
+of his hands under my chin he kissed me on the mouth.</p>
+<p>It will be difficult and perhaps it will be ridiculous to say
+how my husband's first kiss shocked me. My mouth felt parched, I
+had a sense of intense disgust, and before I was quite aware of
+what I was doing I had put up both hands to push him off.</p>
+<p>"Come, come, this is going too far," he said, in a tone that was
+half playful, half serious. "It was all very well in the
+automobile; but here, in your own rooms, you know. . . ."</p>
+<p>He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only
+meant that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more
+charming for him.</p>
+<p>I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment,
+and crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair
+before the fire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart
+tremble, and then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my
+shoulders and kissed my neck.</p>
+<p>A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of
+indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me
+with the look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the
+proud and insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never
+so much as contemplated resistance.</p>
+<p>"Well, this is funny," he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll
+see!"</p>
+<p>A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband
+asked for dinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering
+excitedly by this time and I was glad of the relief which the
+presence of other people gave me.</p>
+<p>While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings
+of the day. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given
+us "the sermon" at the wedding breakfast&mdash;he had evidently
+forgotten that he had seen the Father before.</p>
+<p>I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a
+saint if ever there was one.</p>
+<p>"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not
+synonymous with simpleton, though."</p>
+<p>Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony."
+By holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused
+more misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely
+natural adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to
+repair by marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a
+seducer and a scoundrel.</p>
+<p>I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness
+of all this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his
+wife. I am sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to
+me in every word he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun
+to feel for him deepen into horror.</p>
+<p>My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them
+with my handkerchief. I was feeling more frightened and more
+ashamed than I had ever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat
+down to dinner I tried to compose myself. Partly for the sake of
+appearance before the servants, and partly because I was taking
+myself to task for the repugnance I felt towards my husband, I
+found something to say, though my voice shook.</p>
+<p>My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal. Once or twice,
+when he insisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses
+with him. Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and
+disgust, I sometimes allowed myself to laugh.</p>
+<p>Encouraged by this he renewed his endearments even before the
+waiters had left the room, and when they had gone, with orders not
+to return until he rang, and the door was closed behind them, he
+switched off the lights, pushed a sofa in front of the fire, put me
+to sit on it, sat down beside me and redoubled his tenderness.</p>
+<p>"How's my demure little nun now?" he said. "Frightened, wasn't
+she? They're all frightened at first, bless them!"</p>
+<p>I could smell the liquor he had been drinking. I could see by
+the firelight the prominent front tooth (partly hidden by his
+moustache) which I had noticed when I saw him first, and the down
+of soft hair which grew as low on his hands as his knuckles. Above
+all I thought I could feel the atmosphere of other women about
+him&mdash;loose women, bad women as it seemed to me&mdash;and my
+fear and disgust began to be mixed with a kind of physical
+horror.</p>
+<p>For a little while I tried to fight against this feeling, but
+when he began to put his arms about me, calling me by endearing
+names, complaining of my coldness, telling me not to be afraid of
+him, reminding me that I belonged to him now, and must do as he
+wished, a faintness came over me, I trembled from head to foot and
+made some effort to rise.</p>
+<p>"Let me go," I said.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," he said, laughing and holding me to my seat. "You
+bewitching little woman! You're only teasing me. How they love to
+tease, these charming little women!"</p>
+<p>The pupils of his eyes were glistening. I closed my own eyes in
+order to avoid his look. At the next moment I felt his hand stray
+down my body and in a fury of indignation I broke out of his arms
+and leapt to my feet.</p>
+<p>When I recovered my self-possession I was again looking out of
+the window, and my husband, who was behind me, was saying in a tone
+of anger and annoyance:</p>
+<p>"What's the matter with you? I can't understand. What have I
+done? Good heavens, we are man and wife, aren't we?"</p>
+<p>I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was
+becoming cold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an
+outrage on my natural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence
+against my dignity as a woman.</p>
+<p>It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing.
+The rain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the
+rocks. I wanted to fly, but I felt caged&mdash;morally and
+physically caged.</p>
+<p>My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down the
+sitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile
+he approached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:</p>
+<p>"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long
+and exhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up
+early."</p>
+<p>Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the
+large bedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to
+undress and get into bed, and after that he said something about
+waiting. Then he closed the door softly and I was alone.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>There was a fire in the bedroom and I sat down in front of it.
+Many forces were warring within me. I was trying to fix my thoughts
+and found it difficult to do so.</p>
+<p>Some time passed. My husband's man came in with the noiseless
+step of all such persons, opened one of the portmanteaux and laid
+out his master's combs and brushes on the dressing table and his
+sleeping suit on the bed. A maid of the hotel followed him, and
+taking my own sleeping things out of the top tray of my trunk she
+laid them out beside my husband's.</p>
+<p>"Good-night, my lady," they said in their low voices as they
+went out on tiptoe.</p>
+<p>I hardly heard them. My mind, at first numb, was now going at
+lightning speed. Brought face to face for the first time with one
+of the greatest facts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I
+had not reckoned with it before.</p>
+<p>I had not even thought of it. My whole soul had been so much
+occupied with one great spiritual issue&mdash;that I did not love
+my husband (as I understood love), that my husband did not love
+me&mdash;that I had never once plainly confronted, even in my own
+mind, the physical fact that is the first condition of matrimony,
+and nobody had mentioned it to me or even hinted at it.</p>
+<p>I could not plead that I did not know of this condition. I was
+young but I was not a child. I had been brought up in a convent,
+but a convent is not a nursery. Then why had I not thought of
+it?</p>
+<p>While sitting before the fire, gathering together these dark
+thoughts, I was in such fear that I was always conscious of my
+husband's movements in the adjoining room. At one moment there was
+the jingling of his glass against the decanter, at another moment
+the smell of his cigarette smoke. From time to time he came to the
+door and called to me in a sort of husky whisper, asking if I was
+in bed.</p>
+<p>"Don't keep me long, little girl."</p>
+<p>I shuddered but made no reply.</p>
+<p>At last he knocked softly and said he was coming in. I was still
+crouching over the fire as he came up behind me.</p>
+<p>"Not in bed yet?" he said. "Then I must put you to bed."</p>
+<p>Before I could prevent him he had lifted me in his arms,
+dragged me on to his knee and was pulling down my hair, laughing as
+he did so, calling me by coarse endearing names and telling me not
+to fight and struggle.</p>
+<p>But the next thing I knew I was back in the sitting-room, where
+I had switched up the lights, and my husband, whose face was
+distorted by passion, was blazing out at me.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband, am I not? You
+are my wife, aren't you? What did you marry for? Good heavens, can
+it be possible that you don't know what the conditions of matrimony
+are? Is that what comes of being brought up in a convent? But has
+your father allowed you to marry without. . . . And your
+Aunt&mdash;what in God's name has the woman been doing?"</p>
+<p>I crossed towards the smaller bedroom intending to enter it, but
+my husband intercepted me.</p>
+<p>"Don't be a fool," he said, catching at my wrist. "Think of the
+servants. Think what they'd say. Think what the whole island would
+say. Do you want to make a laughing stock of both of us?"</p>
+<p>I returned and sat by the table. My husband lit another
+cigarette. Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of
+his left hand, and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his
+lips, he told me I was mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a
+scene like this. He thought he could spend his time better. I was
+equally mistaken if I imagined that he had desired our marriage at
+all. Something quite different might have happened if he could have
+afforded to please himself.</p>
+<p>He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not
+thought of that, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a
+person like my father for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and
+my cousins&mdash;ugh!</p>
+<p>The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to
+make all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up
+Catholics! Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind
+himself to all the muss and mummery of the Church!</p>
+<p>It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my
+confessor. Did any rational man want another man to come between
+him and his wife&mdash;knowing all he did and said, and everything
+about him?</p>
+<p>I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral
+of it was that if I had been allowed to marry without being
+instructed in the first conditions of married life my husband had
+suffered a gross and shocking injustice.</p>
+<p>The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating
+and degrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view,
+and when I remembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked
+to me like this, and that he could claim rights in me, to-night,
+to-morrow, as long as I lived, until death parted us, a wild
+impulse of impotent anger at everybody and everything made me drop
+my head on to the table and burst into tears.</p>
+<p>My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything.
+Taking my crying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his
+arms round my shoulders again and renewed his fondling.</p>
+<p>"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes," he said.
+"The people of the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be
+all sorts of ridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common
+people you are a different pair of shoes altogether."</p>
+<p>He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my
+shuddering) and saying:</p>
+<p>"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've
+kept you in ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little
+woman, we'll soon repair that."</p>
+<p>I could bear no more. I <i>must</i> speak and I did. Leaping up
+and facing round on him I told him my side of the story&mdash;how I
+had been married against my will, and had not wanted him any more
+than he had wanted me; how all my objections had been overruled,
+all my compunctions borne down; how everybody had been in a
+conspiracy to compel me, and I had been bought and sold like a
+slave.</p>
+<p>"But you can't go any farther than that," I said. "Between you,
+you have forced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey
+you, because I won't."</p>
+<p>I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had
+finished it was ashen-white.</p>
+<p>"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more
+he tramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying
+to account to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me
+again and said, in the tone of one who thought he was making
+peace:</p>
+<p>"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have
+some other attachment&mdash;that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think
+I'm blaming you. I may be in the same case myself for all you know
+to the contrary. But circumstances have been too strong for us and
+here we are. Well, we're in it, and we've got to make the best of
+it and why shouldn't we? Lots of people in my class are in the same
+position, and yet they get along all right. Why can't we do the
+same? I'll not be too particular. Neither will you. For the rest of
+our lives let each of us go his and her own way. But that's no
+reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our wedding-day
+at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . . Well,
+I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look here,
+we won't expect too much affection from each other&mdash;but let's
+stop this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway.
+Come, now."</p>
+<p>Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my
+hands as he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my
+resistance and the immoral position he was putting me into were
+stifling me, and I cried:</p>
+<p>"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"</p>
+<p>There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen
+on my husband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride
+had expected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a
+moment, recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot
+blood run cold, he said:</p>
+<p>"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as
+such you belong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I
+will."</p>
+<p>The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming
+towards me with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils
+fixed. In the drunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally.</p>
+<p>But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse.
+I wanted to strike him on the face.</p>
+<p>"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the
+window," I said.</p>
+<p>"No fear of that," he said, catching me quickly in his arms.</p>
+<p>"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house
+down," I cried.</p>
+<p>That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the
+next moment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without
+resistance on my husband's part I entered the little bedroom to the
+left and locked the door behind me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Some further time passed. I sat by the fireless grate with my
+chin in my hand. If the storm outside was still raging I did not
+hear it. I was listening to the confused sounds that came from the
+sitting-room.</p>
+<p>My husband was pacing to and fro, muttering oaths, knocking
+against the furniture, breaking things. At one moment there was a
+crash of glass, as if he had helped himself to brandy and then in
+his ungovernable passion flung the decanter into the fire
+grate.</p>
+<p>Somebody knocked at the sitting-room. It must have been a
+waiter, for through the wall I heard the muffled sound of a voice
+asking if there had been an accident. My husband swore at the man
+and sent him off. Hadn't he told him not to come until he was rung
+for?</p>
+<p>At length, after half an hour perhaps, my husband knocked at the
+door of my little room.</p>
+<p>"Are you there?" he asked.</p>
+<p>I made no answer.</p>
+<p>"Open the door."</p>
+<p>I sat motionless.</p>
+<p>"You needn't be afraid. I'm not going to do anything. I've
+something to say."</p>
+<p>Still I made no reply. My husband went away for a moment and
+then came back.</p>
+<p>"If you are determined not to open the door I must say what I've
+got to say from here. Are you listening?"</p>
+<p>Sitting painfully rigid I answered that I was.</p>
+<p>Then he told me that what I was doing would entitle him to annul
+our marriage&mdash;in the eyes of the Church at all events.</p>
+<p>If he thought that threat would intimidate me he was
+mistaken&mdash;a wave of secret joy coursed through me.</p>
+<p>"It won't matter much to me&mdash;I'll take care it
+won't&mdash;but it will be a degrading business for
+you&mdash;invalidity and all that. Are you prepared for it?"</p>
+<p>I continued to sit silent and motionless.</p>
+<p>"I daresay we shall both be laughed at, but I cannot help that.
+We can't possibly live together on terms like these."</p>
+<p>Another wave of joy coursed through me.</p>
+<p>"Anyhow I intend to know before I leave the island how things
+are to be. I'm not going to take you away until I get some
+satisfaction. You understand?"</p>
+<p>I listened, almost without breathing, but I did not reply.</p>
+<p>"I'm think of writing a letter to your father, and sending
+Hobson with it in the car immediately. Do you hear me?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Well, you know what your father is. Unless I'm much mistaken
+he's not a man to have much patience with your semi-romantic,
+semi-religious sentiments. Are you quite satisfied?"</p>
+<p>"Quite."</p>
+<p>"Very well! That's what I'll do, then."</p>
+<p>After this there was a period of quiet in which I assumed that
+my husband was writing his letter. Then I heard a bell ring
+somewhere in the corridor, and shortly afterwards there was a
+second voice in the sitting-room, but I could not hear the words
+that were spoken. I suppose it was Hobson's low voice, for after
+another short interval of silence there came the thrum and throb of
+a motor-car and the rumble of india-rubber wheels on the wet gravel
+of the courtyard in front of the hotel.</p>
+<p>Then my husband knocked at my door again.</p>
+<p>"I've written that letter and Hobson is waiting to take it. Your
+father will probably get it before he goes to bed. It will be a bad
+break on the festivities he was preparing for the village people.
+But you are still of the same mind, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>I did not speak, but I rose and went over to the window. For
+some reason difficult to explain, that reference to the festivities
+had cut me to the quick.</p>
+<p>My husband must have been fuming at my apparent indifference,
+and I felt as if I could see him looking at me, passionate and
+proud.</p>
+<p>"Between the lot of you I think you've done me a great
+injustice. Have you nothing to say?"</p>
+<p>Even then I did not answer.</p>
+<p>"All right! As you please."</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards I heard the motor-car turning and
+driving away.</p>
+<p>The wind had fallen, the waves were rolling into the harbour
+with that monotonous moan which is the sea's memory of a storm, and
+a full moon, like a white-robed queen, was riding through a
+troubled sky.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying
+as quiet as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky
+was crimsoning before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls
+were swirling and jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below
+the house before I lay down to sleep.</p>
+<p>I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an
+impatient voice crying:</p>
+<p>"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"</p>
+<p>It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile.
+When I opened the door to her she came sailing into the room with
+her new half-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on
+hurriedly in the dim light of early morning, and, looking at me
+with her cold grey eyes behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she
+began to bombard me with mingled ridicule and indignant
+protest.</p>
+<p>"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little
+simpleton, tell me what has happened!"</p>
+<p>She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh
+before. But her vexation soon got the better of her merriment.</p>
+<p>"His lordship's letter arrived in the middle of the night and
+nearly frightened us out of our senses. Your father was for coming
+away straight, and it would have been worse for you if he had. But
+I said: 'No, this is work for a woman, I'll go,' and here I am. And
+now tell me, what in the name of goodness does this ridiculous
+trouble mean?"</p>
+<p>It was hard to say anything on such a subject under such
+circumstances, especially when so challenged, but Aunt Bridget,
+without waiting for my reply, proceeded to indicate the substance
+of my husband's letter.</p>
+<p>From this I gathered that he had chosen (probably to save his
+pride) to set down my resistance to ignorance of the first
+conditions of matrimony, and had charged my father first and Aunt
+Bridget afterwards with doing him a shocking injustice in
+permitting me to be married to him without telling me what every
+girl who becomes a wife ought to know.</p>
+<p>"But, good gracious," said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have
+imagined you <i>didn't</i> know. I thought every girl in the world
+knew before she put up her hair and came out of short frocks. My
+Betsy did, I'm sure of that. And to think that you&mdash;you whom
+we thought so cute, so cunning. . . . Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of
+you. I really, really am! Why, you goose" (Aunt Bridget was again
+trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the world went on?"</p>
+<p>The coarse ridicule of what was supposed to be my maidenly
+modesty cut me like a knife, but I could not permit myself to
+explain, so my Aunt Bridget ran on talking.</p>
+<p>"I see how it has been. It's the fault of that Reverend Mother
+at the convent. What sort of a woman is she? Is she a woman at all,
+I wonder, or only a piece of stucco that ought to be put up in a
+church corner! To think she could have you nine years and never say
+one word about. . . . Well, well! What has she been doing with you?
+Talking about the mysteries, I suppose&mdash;prayers and retreats
+and novenas, and the spiritual bridegroom and the rest of it, while
+all the while. . . . But you must put the convent out of your head,
+my girl. You are a married woman now. You've got to think of your
+husband, and a husband isn't a spiritual bridegroom I can tell you.
+He's flesh and blood, that's what a husband is, and you can't
+expect <i>him</i> to spend his time talking about eternity and the
+rosary. Not on his wedding-day, anyway."</p>
+<p>I was hot in my absurd embarrassment, and I dare say my face was
+scarlet, but Aunt Bridget showed me no mercy.</p>
+<p>"The way you have behaved is too silly for anything. . . . It
+really is. A husband's a husband, and a wife's a wife. The wife has
+to obey her husband. Of course she has. Every wife has to. Some
+don't like it. I can't say that I liked it very much myself. But to
+think of anybody objecting. Why, it's shocking! Nobody ever heard
+of such a thing."</p>
+<p>I must have flushed up to my forehead, for I became conscious
+that in my Aunt Bridget's eyes there had been a kind of indecency
+in my conduct.</p>
+<p>"But, come," she said, "we must be sensible. It's timidity,
+that's what it is. I was a little timid myself when I was first
+married, but I soon got over it. Once get over your timidity and
+you will be all right. Sakes alive, yes, you'll be as happy as the
+day is long, and before this time to-morrow you'll wonder what on
+earth you made all this fuss about."</p>
+<p>I tried to say that what she predicted could never be, because I
+did not love my husband, and therefore . . . but my Aunt Bridget
+broke in on me, saying:</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, don't be a fool. Your maiden days are over now,
+and you ought to know what your husband will do if you
+persist."</p>
+<p>I jumped at the thought that she meant he would annul our
+marriage, but that was not what she was thinking of.</p>
+<p>"He'll find somebody else&mdash;that's what he'll do. Serve you
+right, too. You'll only have yourself to blame for it. Perhaps you
+think you'll be able to do the same, but you won't. Women can't.
+He'll be happy enough, and you'll be the only one to suffer, so
+don't make a fool of yourself. Accept the situation. You may not
+like your husband too much. I can't say I liked the Colonel
+particularly. He took snuff, and no woman in the world could keep
+him in clean pocket handkerchiefs. But when a sensible person has
+got something at stake, she puts up with things. And that's what
+you must do. He who wants fresh eggs must raise his own chickens,
+you know."</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget ran on for some time longer, telling me of my
+father's anger, which was not a matter for much surprise, seeing
+how he had built himself upon my marriage, and how he had expected
+that I should have a child, a son, to carry on the family.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean to disappoint him after all he has done for you? It
+would be too silly, too stupid. You'd be the laughing-stock of the
+whole island. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to
+go with his lordship when he sails by this afternoon's
+steamer."</p>
+<p>"I can't," I said.</p>
+<p>"You can't? You mean you won't?"</p>
+<p>"Very well, Auntie, I won't."</p>
+<p>At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling
+me that if my stubborn determination not to leave the island with
+my husband meant that I intended to return home she might inform me
+at once that I was not wanted there and I need not come.</p>
+<p>"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsy
+unmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty
+Nessy MacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are
+ruining everything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter!
+If you <i>will</i> make your bed I shall take care that you lie on
+it."</p>
+<p>With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing
+over her angry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room.</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I
+found my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked
+down at me with an indulgent and significant smile, which brought
+the colour rushing back to my face, put me to sit by his side,
+touched my arm with one of his large white clammy hands, stroked
+his long brown beard with the other, and then in the half-reproving
+tone which a Sunday-school teacher might have used to a wayward
+child, he began to tell me what the consequences would be if I
+persisted in my present conduct.</p>
+<p>They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights.
+If a wife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of
+cruelty or something equally plausible, he could apply to the court
+and compel her to do so; and if she declined, if she removed
+herself from his abode, or having removed, refused to return, the
+Court might punish her&mdash;it might even imprison her.</p>
+<p>"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my
+dear, and he can compel the woman to obey him."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean," I said, "that he can use force to compel
+her?"</p>
+<p>"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too,
+when you come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious
+contract, and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills
+the conditions of it."</p>
+<p>I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the
+contract I had entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed
+to say anything about that.</p>
+<p>"Aw yes, that's so," said the advocate, "force, reasonable
+force! You may say it puts a woman in a worse position as a wife
+than she would be if she were a mistress. That's true, but it's the
+law, and once a woman has married a man, the only escape from this
+condition of submission is imprisonment."</p>
+<p>"Then I would rather that&mdash;a thousand times rather," I
+said, for I was hot with anger and indignation.</p>
+<p>Again the advocate smiled indulgently, patted my arm, and
+answered me as if I were a child.</p>
+<p>"Tut, tut, my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is
+founded on suitability of position, property and education, and
+everything will come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique
+or spleen, and so destroy your happiness, and that of everybody
+about you. Think of your father. Remember what he has done to make
+this marriage. I may tell you that he has paid forty thousand
+pounds to discharge your husband's debts and undertaken
+responsibility for an allowance of six thousand a year beside. Do
+you want him to lose all that money?"</p>
+<p>I was so sick with disgust at hearing this that I could not
+speak, and the advocate, who, in his different way, was as dead to
+my real feelings as my husband had been, went on to say:</p>
+<p>"Come, be reasonable. You may have suffered some slight, some
+indignity. No doubt you have. Your husband is proud and he has
+peculiarities of temper which we have all to make allowances for.
+But even if you could establish a charge of cruelty against him and
+so secure a separation&mdash;which you can't&mdash;what good would
+that do you? None at all&mdash;worse than none! The financial
+arrangements would remain the same. Your father would be a
+frightful loser. And what would you be? A married widow! The worst
+condition in the world for a woman&mdash;especially if she is young
+and attractive, and subject to temptations. Ask anybody who
+knows&mdash;anybody."</p>
+<p>I felt as if I would suffocate with shame.</p>
+<p>"Come now," said the advocate in his superior way, taking my
+hand as if he were going to lead me like a child to my husband,
+"let us put an end to this little trouble. His lordship is
+downstairs and he has consented&mdash;kindly and generously
+consented&mdash;to wait an hour for your answer. But he must leave
+the island by the afternoon steamer, and if. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Then tell him he must leave it without me," I said, as well as
+I could for the anger that was choking me.</p>
+<p>The advocate looked steadily into my face. I think he understood
+the situation at last.</p>
+<p>"You mean that&mdash;really and truly mean it?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"I do," I answered, and unable to say or hear any more without
+breaking out on him altogether I left the room.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THIRTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"THIRTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Down to this moment I had put on a brave front though my very
+heart had been trembling; but now I felt that all the weight of
+law, custom, parental authority and even religion was bearing me
+down, down, down, and unless help came I must submit in the long
+run.</p>
+<p>I was back in the small bedroom, with my hot forehead against
+the cold glass of the window, looking out yet seeing nothing, when
+somebody knocked at the door, softly almost timidly. It was Father
+Dan, and the sight of his dear face, broken up with emotion, was
+the same to me as the last plank of a foundering ship to a sailor
+drowning at sea.</p>
+<p>My heart was so full that, though I knew I ought not, I threw my
+arms about his neck and burst into a flood of tears. The good old
+priest did not put me away. He smoothed my drooping head and patted
+my shoulders and in his sweet and simple way he tried to comfort
+me.</p>
+<p>"Don't cry! Don't worry! It will be all right in the end, my
+child."</p>
+<p>There was something almost grotesque in his appearance. Under
+his soft clerical outdoor hat he was wearing his faded old cassock,
+as if he had come away hurriedly at a sudden call. I could see what
+had happened&mdash;my family had sent him to reprove me and
+remonstrate with me.</p>
+<p>He sat on a chair by my bed and I knelt on the floor at his
+feet, just as my mother used to do when I was a child and she was
+making her confession. Perhaps he thought of that at the same
+moment as myself, for the golden light of my mother's memory lay
+always about him. For some moments we did not speak. I think we
+were both weeping.</p>
+<p>At length I tried to tell him what had happened&mdash;hiding
+nothing, softening nothing, speaking the simple and naked truth. I
+found it impossible to do so. My odd-sounding voice was not like my
+own, and even my words seemed to be somebody else's. But Father Dan
+understood everything.</p>
+<p>"I know! I know!" he said, and then, to my great relief,
+interrupting my halting explanations, he gave his own
+interpretation of my husband's letter.</p>
+<p>There was a higher love and there was a lower love and both were
+necessary to God's plans and purposes. But the higher love must
+come first, or else the lower one would seem to be cruel and gross
+and against nature.</p>
+<p>Nature was kind to a young girl. Left to itself it awakened her
+sex very gently. First with love, which came to her like a whisper
+in a dream, like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so
+that when she awoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did
+not startle or appal her.</p>
+<p>But sex in me had been awakened rudely and ruthlessly. Married
+without love I had been suddenly confronted by the lower passion.
+What wonder that I had found it brutal and barbarous?</p>
+<p>"That's it, my child! That's it! I know! I know!"</p>
+<p>Then he began to blame himself for everything, saying it was all
+his fault and that he should have held out longer. When he saw how
+things stood between me and my husband he should have said to my
+father, to the Bishop, and to the lawyers, notwithstanding all
+their bargainings: "This marriage must not go on. It will lead to
+disaster. It begins to end badly."</p>
+<p>"But now it is all over, my child, and there's no help for
+it."</p>
+<p>I think the real strength of my resistance to Aunt Bridget's
+coarse ridicule and the advocate's callous remonstrance must have
+been the memory of my husband's threat when he talked about the
+possible annulment of our marriage. The thought of that came back
+to me now, and half afraid, half ashamed, with a fluttering of the
+heart, I tried to mention it.</p>
+<p>"Is there no way out?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"What way can there be?" said Father Dan. "God knows I know what
+pressure was put upon you; but you are married, you have made your
+vows, you have given your promises. That's all the world sees or
+cares about, and in the eyes of the law and the Church you are
+responsible for all that has happened."</p>
+<p>With my head still buried in Father Dan's cassock I got it out
+at last.</p>
+<p>"But annulment! Isn't that possible&mdash;under the
+circumstances?" I asked.</p>
+<p>The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a
+moment. Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of
+the question.</p>
+<p>"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have
+not been annulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case
+the civil law would require proof&mdash;something to justify
+nullity. Failing that there would have to be collusion either on
+one side or both, and that is not possible&mdash;not to you, my
+child, not to the daughter of your mother, that dear saint who
+suffered so long and was silent."</p>
+<p>More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last
+plank sinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband
+was creeping back, and the future of my life with him stood before
+me with startling vividness. In spite of all my struggling and
+fighting of the night before I saw myself that very night, the next
+night, and the next, and every night and day of my life thereafter,
+a victim of the same sickening terror.</p>
+<p>"Must I submit, then?" I said.</p>
+<p>Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice that
+submission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in the
+history of the world, and perhaps it always would be.</p>
+<p>"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning:
+'Wives submit yourselves to your husbands.'"</p>
+<p>With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I
+ought to go away with my husband when he left the island by the
+afternoon steamer.</p>
+<p>"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove
+you. I can't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It
+would be wrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into
+further trouble."</p>
+<p>My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say:</p>
+<p>"Then you can hold out no hope for me?"</p>
+<p>"God knows I can't."</p>
+<p>"Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his
+wife?"</p>
+<p>"It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for
+it."</p>
+<p>I rose to my feet, and went back to the window. A wild impulse
+of rebellion was coming over me.</p>
+<p>"I shall feel like a bad woman," I said.</p>
+<p>"Don't say that," said Father Dan. "You are married to the man
+anyway."</p>
+<p>"All the same I shall feel like my husband's mistress&mdash;his
+married mistress, his harlot."</p>
+<p>Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my
+mouth I was more frightened than I had ever been before, for
+something within seemed to have forced them out of me.</p>
+<p>When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously
+fumbling with the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was
+talking of the supernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage. It
+was God Who joined people together, and whom God joined together no
+man might put asunder. No circumstances either, no trial or
+tribulation. Could it be thought that a bond so sacred, so
+indissoluble, was ever made without good effect? No, the Almighty
+had His own ways with His children, and this great mystery of holy
+wedlock was one of them.</p>
+<p>"So don't lose heart, my child. Who knows what may happen yet?
+God works miracles now just as He did in the old days. You may come
+. . . yes, you may come to love your husband, and then&mdash;then
+all will be well."</p>
+<p>Suddenly out of my despair and my defiance a new thought came to
+me. It came with the memory of the emotion I had experienced during
+the marriage service, and it thrilled me through and through.</p>
+<p>"Father Dan?" I said, with a nervous cry, for my heart was
+fluttering again.</p>
+<p>"What is it, my child?"</p>
+<p>It was hard to say what I was thinking about, but with a great
+effort I stammered it out at last. I should be willing to leave the
+island with my husband, and live under the same roof with him, and
+bear his name, so that there might be no trouble, or scandal, and
+nobody except ourselves might ever know that there was anything
+dividing us, any difference of any kind between us, if he, on his
+part, would promise&mdash;firmly and faithfully promise&mdash;that
+unless and until I came to love him he would never claim my
+submission as a wife.</p>
+<p>While I spoke I hardly dared to look at Father Dan, fearing he
+would shake his head again, perhaps reprove me, perhaps laugh at
+me. But his eyes which had been moist began to sparkle and
+smile.</p>
+<p>"You mean that?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"And you will go away with him on that condition?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes."</p>
+<p>"Then he must agree to it."</p>
+<p>The pure-minded old priest saw no difficulties, no dangers, no
+risks of breakdown in my girlish scheme. Already my husband had got
+all he had bargained for. He had got my father's money in exchange
+for his noble name, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of
+his wife, let him earn it, let him win it.</p>
+<p>"That's only right, only fair. It will be worth winning,
+too&mdash;better worth winning than all your father's gold and
+silver ten times over. I can tell him that much anyway."</p>
+<p>He had risen to his feet in his excitement, the simple old
+priest with his pure heart and his beautiful faith in me.</p>
+<p>"And you, my child, you'll try to love him in
+return&mdash;promise you will."</p>
+<p>A shiver ran through me when Father Dan said that&mdash;a sense
+of the repugnance I felt for my husband almost stifled me.</p>
+<p>"Promise me," said Father Dan, and though my face must have been
+scarlet, I promised him.</p>
+<p>"That's right. That alone will make him a better man. He may be
+all that people say, but who can measure the miraculous influence
+of a good woman?"</p>
+<p>He was making for the door.</p>
+<p>"I must go downstairs now and speak to your husband. But he'll
+agree. Why shouldn't he? I know he's afraid of a public scandal,
+and if he attempts to refuse I'll tell him that. . . . But no, that
+will be quite unnecessary. Good-bye, my child! If I don't come back
+you'll know that everything has been settled satisfactorily. You'll
+be happy yet. I'm sure you will. Ah, what did I say about the
+mysterious power of that solemn and sacred sacrament?
+Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God
+knows I did. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven
+alone the judge of it?</p>
+<p>At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for
+England. I went with him.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTIETH_CHAPTER" id="FORTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTIETH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of
+it. I had faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I
+prepared to do so.</p>
+<p>Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect
+and even reverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do
+that by shutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing
+only his better qualities.</p>
+<p>What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and
+humiliating disillusionments!</p>
+<p>On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable
+hotel in a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is
+inhabited chiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons.
+Here, to my surprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of
+visitors waited upon my husband the following morning.</p>
+<p>I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt
+of pride came to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my
+husband must be a man of some importance in the metropolis.</p>
+<p>But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and
+bookmakers, to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been
+unable or unwilling to disclose to my father and his advocate.</p>
+<p>One of my husband's visitors was a pertinacious little man who
+came early and stayed late. He was a solicitor, and my husband was
+obviously in some fear of him. The interviews between them, while
+they were closeted together morning after morning in one of our two
+sitting-rooms, were long and apparently unpleasant, for more than
+once I caught the sound of angry words on both sides, with oaths
+and heavy blows upon the table.</p>
+<p>But towards the end of the week, my husband's lawyer arrived in
+London, and after that the conversations became more pacific.</p>
+<p>One morning, as I sat writing a letter in the adjoining room, I
+heard laughter, the popping of corks, the jingling of glasses, and
+the drinking of healths, and I judged that the, difficult and
+disagreeable business had been concluded.</p>
+<p>At the close of the interview I heard the door opened and my
+husband going into the outer corridor to see his visitors to the
+lift, and then something prompted me&mdash;God alone knows
+what&mdash;to step into the room they had just vacated.</p>
+<p>It was thick with tobacco smoke. An empty bottle of champagne
+(with three empty wine glasses) was on the table, and on a desk by
+the window were various papers, including a sheet of foolscap which
+bore a seal and several signatures, and a thick packet of old
+letters bound together with a piece of purple ribbon.</p>
+<p>Hardly had I had time to recognise these documents when my
+husband returned to the room, and by the dark expression of his
+face I saw instantly that he thought I had looked at them.</p>
+<p>"No matter!" he said, without any preamble. "I might as well
+tell you at once and have done with it."</p>
+<p>He told me. The letters were his. They had been written to a
+woman whom he had promised to marry, and he had had to buy them
+back from her. Although for three years he had spent a fortune on
+the creature she had shown him no mercy. Through her solicitor, who
+was a scoundrel, she had threatened him, saying in plain words that
+if he married anybody else she would take proceedings against him
+immediately. That was why, in spite of the storm, we had to come up
+to London on the day after our wedding.</p>
+<p>"Now you know," said my husband. "Look here" (holding out the
+sheet of foolscap), "five thousand pounds&mdash;that's the price
+I've had to pay for marrying."</p>
+<p>I can give no idea of the proud imperiousness and the impression
+of injury with which my husband told his brutal story. But neither
+can I convey a sense of the crushing shame with which I listened to
+it. There was not a hint of any consciousness on his part of my
+side of the case. Not a suggestion of the clear fact that the woman
+he had promised to marry had been paid off by money which had come
+through me. Not a thought of the humiliation he had imposed upon
+his wife in dragging her up to London at the demand of his cast-off
+mistress.</p>
+<p>When my husband had finished speaking I could not utter a word.
+I was afraid that my voice would betray the anger that was boiling
+in me. But I was also degraded to the very dust in my own eyes, and
+to prevent an outburst of hysterical tears I ran back to my room
+and hid my face in my pillow.</p>
+<p>What was the good of trying to make myself in love with a man
+who was separated from me by a moral chasm that could never be
+passed? What was the good? What was the good?</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>But next morning, having had time to think things out in my
+simple and ignorant way, I tried to reconcile myself to my
+position. Remembering what Aunt Bridget had said, both before my
+marriage and after it, about the different moralities of men and
+women, I told myself I had placed my standard too high.</p>
+<p>Perhaps a husband was not a superior being, to be regarded with
+respect and reverence, but a sort of grown-up child whom it was the
+duty of a wife to comfort, coax, submit to and serve.</p>
+<p>I determined to do this. Still clinging to the hope of falling
+in love with my husband, I set myself to please him by every means
+within my power, even to the length of simulating sentiments which
+I did not feel.</p>
+<p>But what a task I was setting myself! What a steep and stony
+Calvary I was attempting to climb!</p>
+<p>After the degrading business with the other woman had been
+concluded I thought we should have left England immediately on the
+honeymoon tour which my husband had mapped out for us, but he told
+me that would not be convenient and we must remain in London a
+little longer. We stayed six weeks altogether, and never did a
+young wife pass a more cheerless and weary time.</p>
+<p>I had no friends of my own within reach, and to my deep if
+secret mortification no woman of my husband's circle called upon
+me. But a few of his male friends were constantly with us,
+including Mr. Eastcliff, who had speedily followed us from Ellan,
+and a Mr. Vivian, who, though the brother of a Cabinet Minister,
+seemed to me a very vain and vapid person, with the eyes of a mole,
+a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an abrupt way of speaking
+through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave the impression of
+screeching against the wind.</p>
+<p>With these two men, and others of a similar kind, we passed many
+hours of nearly every day, lunching with them, dining with them,
+walking with them, driving with them, and above all playing bridge
+with them in one of our sitting rooms in the hotel.</p>
+<p>I knew nothing of the game to begin with, never having touched a
+card in my life, but in accordance with the theories which I
+believed to be right and the duties I had imposed upon myself, I
+took a hand with my husband when he could find nobody better to be
+his partner.</p>
+<p>The results were very disheartening. In spite of my desire to
+please I was slow to learn, and my husband's impatience with my
+mistakes, which confused and intimidated me, led to some painful
+humiliations. First he laughed, next he sneered, then he snapped me
+up in the midst of my explanations and apologies, and finally, at a
+moment of loss, he broke out on me with brutal derision, saying he
+had never had much opinion of my intellect, but was now quite sure
+that I had no more brains than a rabbit and could not say Boo to a
+goose.</p>
+<p>One day when we were alone, and he was lying on the couch with
+his vicious little terrier by his side, I offered to sing to him.
+Remembering how my voice had been praised, I thought it would be
+pleasant to my husband to see that there was something I really
+could do. But nine years in a convent had left me with next to no
+music but memories of the long-breathed harmonies of some of the
+beautiful masses of our Church, and hardly had I begun on these
+when my husband cried:</p>
+<p>"Oh, stop, stop, for heaven's sake stop, or I shall think we're
+attending a funeral."</p>
+<p>Another day I offered to read to him. The Reverend Mother used
+to say I was the best reader she had ever heard, but perhaps it was
+not altogether my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion.
+And indeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would
+have laughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and
+intonation which I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis
+of Assisi, the mystic allusions to "certs," and "bookies," and
+"punters," and "evens," and "scratchings," which formed the
+substance of the sporting journals that were my husband's only
+literature.</p>
+<p>"Oh, stop it, stop it," he cried again. "You read the 'Winning
+Post' as if it were the Book of Revelation."</p>
+<p>As time passed the gulf that separated me from my husband became
+still greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of
+gossip we might have got on better. But I had no conversation that
+interested him, and he had little or none that I could pretend to
+understand. He loved the town; I loved the country; he loved the
+night and the blaze of electric lights; I loved the morning and the
+sweetness of the sun.</p>
+<p>At the bottom of my heart I knew that his mind was common, low
+and narrow, and that his tastes were gross and vulgar, but I was
+determined to conquer the repulsion I felt for him.</p>
+<p>It was impossible. If I could have struck one spark from the
+flint of his heart the relations between us might have been
+different. If his look could have met my look in a single glance of
+understanding I could have borne with his impatience and struggled
+on.</p>
+<p>But nothing of this kind ever happened, and when one dreary
+night after grumbling at the servants, cursing his fate and abusing
+everybody and everything, he put on his hat and went out saying he
+had "better have married Lena [the other woman] after all," for in
+that case he would have had "some sort of society anyway," the
+revulsion I had felt on the night of my marriage came sweeping over
+me like a wave of the sea, and I asked myself again, "What's the
+good? What's the good?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Nevertheless next day I found myself taking my husband's side
+against myself.</p>
+<p>If he had sacrificed anything in order to marry me it was my
+duty to make it up to him.</p>
+<p>I resolved that I <i>should</i> make it up to him. I would study
+my husband's likes and dislikes in every little thing. I would
+share in his pleasures and enter into his life. I would show him
+that a wife was something other and better than any hired woman in
+the world, and that when she cast in her lot with her husband it
+was for his own sake only and not for any fortune he could spend on
+her.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, that's what I'll do," I thought, and I became more
+solicitous of my husband's happiness than if I had really and truly
+loved him.</p>
+<p>A woman would smile at the efforts which I made in my
+inexperience to make my husband forget his cast-off mistress, and
+indeed some of them were very childish.</p>
+<p>The first was a ridiculous failure.</p>
+<p>My husband's birthday was approaching and I wished to make him a
+present. It was difficult to know what to select, for I knew little
+or nothing of his tastes or wants; but walking one day in a street
+off Oxford Street I saw, in the window of a shop for the sale of
+objects of ecclesiastical <i>vertu</i>, among crosses and
+crucifixes and rosaries, a little ivory ink-stand and paper-holder,
+which was surmounted by a figure of the Virgin.</p>
+<p>I cannot for the life of me conceive why I thought this would be
+a suitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady
+was so young, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine
+that it seemed impossible that any man in the world should not love
+her. But however that might be I bought her, and carrying her home
+in a cab, I set her on my husband's desk without a word, and then
+stood by, like the mother of Moses, to watch the result.</p>
+<p>There was no result&mdash;at first at all events. My husband was
+several hours in the room with my treasure without appearing to be
+aware of its presence. But towards evening his two principal
+friends came to play bridge with him, and then, from the ambush of
+my own apartments, I heard the screechy voice of Mr. Vivian
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a
+Pape?"</p>
+<p>"Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's
+my wife's little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise
+her priest to make me a 'vert.'"</p>
+<p>My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly
+more successful.</p>
+<p>Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely
+without a rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling
+his room with them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got
+up very early, before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and
+hurried off to Covent Garden, through the empty and echoing
+streets, while the air of London was fresh with the breath of
+morning and the big city within its high-built walls seemed to
+dream of the green fields beyond.</p>
+<p>I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were
+rolling in from the country with huge crates of red and white
+roses, bright with the sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then
+buying the largest and loveliest and costliest bunch of them (a
+great armful, as much as I could hold), I hurried back to the hotel
+and set them in vases and glasses in every part of my husband's
+room&mdash;his desk, his sideboard, his mantelpiece, and above all
+his table, which a waiter was laying for breakfast&mdash;until the
+whole place was like a bridal bower.</p>
+<p>"Ah, this is something like," I heard my husband say as he came
+out of his bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious
+terrier at his heels.</p>
+<p>I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while
+drawing on his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter,
+who was clearing the table,</p>
+<p>"Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming
+flowers with which she has decorated my room this morning."</p>
+<p>"But it wasn't the manageress, my lord," said the waiter.</p>
+<p>"Then who was it?"</p>
+<p>"It was her . . . her ladyship," said the waiter.</p>
+<p>"O-oh!" said my husband in a softer, if more insinuating tone,
+and a few minutes afterwards he went out whistling.</p>
+<p>God knows that was small reward for the trouble I had taken, but
+I was so uplifted by the success of my experiment that I determined
+to go farther, and when towards evening of the same day a group of
+my husband's friends came to tell him that they had booked a box at
+a well-known musical comedy theatre, I begged to be permitted to
+join them.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense, my dear! Brompton Oratory would suit you better,"
+said my husband, chucking me under the chin.</p>
+<p>But I persisted in my importunities, and at length Mr. Eastcliff
+said:</p>
+<p>"Let her come. Why shouldn't she?"</p>
+<p>"Very well," said my husband, pinching my cheek. "As you please.
+But if you don't like it don't blame <i>me</i>."</p>
+<p>It did not escape me that as a result of my change of front my
+husband had risen in his own esteem, and that he was behaving
+towards me as one who thought he had conquered my first repugnance,
+or perhaps triumphantly ridden over it. But in my simplicity I was
+so fixed in my determination to make my husband forget the loss of
+his mistress that I had no fear of his familiarities and no
+misgivings about his mistakes.</p>
+<p>All that was to come later, with a fresh access of revulsion and
+disgust.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I had seen enough of London by this time to know that the
+dresses which had been made for me at home were by no means the
+<i>mode</i>; but after I had put on the best-fitting of my simple
+quaker-like costumes with a string of the family pearls about my
+neck and another about my head, not all the teaching of the good
+women of the convent could prevent me from thinking that my husband
+and his friends would have no reason to be ashamed of me.</p>
+<p>We were a party of six in all, whereof I was the only woman, and
+we occupied a large box on the first tier near the stage, a
+position of prominence which caused me a certain embarrassment,
+when, as happened at one moment of indefinable misery, the opera
+glasses of the people in the dress-circle and stalls were turned in
+our direction.</p>
+<p>I cannot say that the theatre impressed me. Certainly the
+building itself did not do so, although it was beautifully
+decorated in white and gold, for I had seen the churches of Rome,
+and in my eyes they were much more gorgeous.</p>
+<p>Neither did the audience impress me, for though I had never
+before seen so many well-dressed people in one place, I thought too
+many of the men, when past middle life, seemed fat and overfed, and
+too many of the women, with their plump arms and bare shoulders,
+looked as if they thought of nothing but what to eat and what to
+put on.</p>
+<p>Nor did the performers impress me, for though when the curtain
+rose, disclosing the stage full of people, chiefly girls, in
+delicate and beautiful toilettes, I thought I had never before seen
+so many lovely and happy faces, after a while, when the faces fell
+into repose, I thought they were not really lovely and not really
+happy, but hard and strained and painful, as if life had been very
+cruel.</p>
+<p>And, above all, I was not impressed by the play, for I thought,
+in my ignorance of such productions, that I had never heard
+anything so frivolous and foolish, and more than once I found
+myself wondering whether my good nuns, if they could have been
+present, would not have concluded that the whole company had taken
+leave of their senses.</p>
+<p>There was, however, one thing which did impress me, and that was
+the leading actor. It was a woman, and when she first came on to
+the stage I thought I had never in my life seen anybody so
+beautiful, with her lovely soft round figure, her black eyes, her
+red lips, her pearly white teeth, and a smile so sunny that it had
+the effect of making everybody in the audience smile with her.</p>
+<p>But the strange thing was&mdash;I could not account for
+it&mdash;that after a few minutes I thought her extremely ugly and
+repellent, for her face seemed to be distorted by malice and envy
+and hatred and nearly every other bad passion.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless she was a general favourite, for not only was she
+applauded before she did anything, but everything she said, though
+it was sometimes very silly, was accompanied by a great deal of
+laughter, and everything she sang, though her voice was no great
+matter, was followed by a chorus of applause.</p>
+<p>Seeing this, and feeling that her appearance had caused a
+flutter of interest in the box behind me, I laughed and applauded
+also, in accordance with the plan I had prepared for myself, of
+sharing my husband's pleasures and entering into his life, although
+at the bottom of my heart I really thought the joy was not very
+joyful or the mirth very merry.</p>
+<p>This went on for nearly an hour, and then a strange thing
+happened. I was leaning forward on the velvet barrier of the box in
+front of me, laughing and clapping my hands with the rest, when all
+at once I became aware that the lady had wheeled about, and,
+walking down the stage in the direction of our box, was looking
+boldly back at me.</p>
+<p>I could not at first believe it to be so, and even now I cannot
+say whether it was something in her face, or something whispered at
+my back which flashed it upon my mind that this was the woman my
+husband ought to have married, the woman whose place I had taken,
+the woman of the foolscap document and the letters in the purple
+ribbon.</p>
+<p>After that I could play my poor little part no longer, and
+though I continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in
+front of me I dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the
+stage, and hoped and prayed for the end of the performance.</p>
+<p>It came at length with a crash of instruments and voices, and a
+few minutes afterwards my husband and I were in the cab on our way
+back to the hotel.</p>
+<p>I was choking with mingled anger and shame&mdash;anger at my
+husband for permitting me to come to a place in which I could be
+exposed to a public affront from his cast-off mistress, shame at
+the memory of the pitiful scheme for entering into his life which
+had fallen to such a welter of wreck and ruin.</p>
+<p>But my husband himself was only choking with laughter.</p>
+<p>"It was as good as a play," he said. "Upon my soul it was! I
+never saw anything funnier in the whole course of my life."</p>
+<p>That served him, repeated again and again, until we reached the
+hotel, when he ordered a bottle of wine to be sent upstairs, and
+then shook with suppressed laughter as we went up in the lift.</p>
+<p>Coming to our floor I turned towards my bedroom, wishing to be
+alone with my outraged feelings, but my husband drew me into one of
+our sitting-rooms, telling me he had something to say.</p>
+<p>He put me to sit in an arm-chair, threw off his overcoat, lit a
+cigarette, as well as he could for the spurts and gusts of his
+laughter, and then, standing back to the fire-place, with one hand
+in his pocket and his coat-tail over his arm, he told me the cause
+of his merriment.</p>
+<p>"I don't mind telling you that was Lena," he said. "The
+good-looking girl in the scarlet dress and the big diamonds. She
+spotted me the moment she stepped on to the stage. Must have
+guessed who you were, too. Did you see how she looked at you?
+Thought I had brought you there to walk over her. I'm sure she
+did!"</p>
+<p>There was another gust of laughter and then&mdash;</p>
+<p>"She'd been going about saying I had married an old frump for
+the sake of her fortune, and when she saw that you could wipe her
+off the face of the earth without a gown that was worth wearing,
+she was ready to die with fury."</p>
+<p>There was another gust of laughter through the smoke that was
+spurting from his mouth and then&mdash;</p>
+<p>"And you, too, my dear! Laughing and applauding! She thought you
+were trying to crow over her! On her own particular barn-door, too!
+Upon my soul, it was too amusing. I wonder she didn't throw
+something at you. She's like that when she's in her tantrums."</p>
+<p>The waiter came in with the wine and my husband poured out a
+glass for me.</p>
+<p>"Have a drink. No? Well, here's to your health, my dear. I can't
+get over it. I really can't. Lena's too funny for anything. Why,
+what else do you think she's been saying? She's been saying I'll
+come back to her yet. Yes, 'I'll give him six months to come
+crawling back to me,' she said to Eastcliff and Vivian and some of
+the other fellows at the Club. Wonder if she thinks so now? . . . I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>He threw away his cigarette, drank another glass of the wine,
+came close up to me and said in a lower tone, which made my skin
+creep as with cold.</p>
+<p>"Whether she's right or wrong depends on you, though."</p>
+<p>"On me?"</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, of course. That's only natural. One may have all the
+goodwill in the world, but a man's a man, you know."</p>
+<p>I felt my lips quivering with anger, and in an effort to control
+myself I rose to go, but my husband drew me back into my chair and
+sat on the arm of it.</p>
+<p>"Don't go yet. By the way, dear, I've never thanked you for the
+beautiful flowers with which you decorated my room this morning.
+Charming! But I always knew you would soon come round to it."</p>
+<p>"Come round to what?" I said, but it was just as if somebody
+else were speaking.</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> know. Of course you know. When that simple old
+priest proposed that ridiculous compact I agreed, but I knew quite
+well that it would soon break down. Not on my side, though. Why
+should it? A man can afford to wait. But I felt sure you would soon
+tire of your resistance. And you have, haven't you? Oh, I'm not
+blind. I've seen what's been going on, though I've said nothing
+about it."</p>
+<p>Again I tried to rise, and again my husband held me to my seat,
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Don't be ashamed. There's no reason for that. You were rather
+hard on me, you know, but I'm going to forget all about it. Why
+shouldn't I? I've got the loveliest little woman in the world, so I
+mean to meet her half way, and she's going to get over her
+convent-bred ideas and be my dear little darling wife. Now isn't
+she?"</p>
+<p>I could have died of confusion and the utter degradation of
+shame. To think that my poor efforts to please him, my vain
+attempts to look up to him and reverence him, my bankrupt appeals
+to the spiritual woman in me that I might bring myself to love him,
+as I thought it was my duty to do, should have been perverted by
+his gross and vulgar mind into overtures to the animal man in
+him&mdash;this was more than I could bear. I felt the tears gushing
+to my eyes, but I kept them back, for my self-pity was not so
+strong as my wrath.</p>
+<p>I rose this time without being aware of his resistance.</p>
+<p>"Let me go to bed," I said.</p>
+<p>"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Let me go to bed," I said again, and at the next moment I
+stepped into my room.</p>
+<p>He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what
+was taking place behind me.</p>
+<p>My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first
+of amazement and then of rage.</p>
+<p>"I can't understand you," he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There
+isn't a man in the world who could." After that he strode into his
+own bedroom and clashed the door after him.</p>
+<p>"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again.</p>
+<p>It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was
+no use trying.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to
+read the deep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came
+to pass that the only result of this incident was to make me sure
+that if we remained in London much longer my husband would go back
+to the other woman, and to say why (seeing that I did not love him)
+I should have become feverishly anxious to remove him from the
+range of this temptation.</p>
+<p>Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father
+saying I had been unwell and begging him to use his influence with
+my husband to set out on the Egyptian trip without further
+delay.</p>
+<p>My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the
+lines of my letter I do not know; what he said was this&mdash;</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"Daughter&mdash;Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling
+him to quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there
+already. And while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as
+much as you please, for where it is a matter of money you must
+never let nobody walk over you.</p>
+</div>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 21em;">Yours&mdash;&amp;c."</span></p>
+<p>The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Within
+twenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about
+trains and berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way
+to Marseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port
+Said.</p>
+<p>Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with a
+passage-way between them. This admitted of entirely separate
+existences, which was well, for knowing or guessing my share in our
+altered arrangements, my husband had become even more morose than
+before, and no conversation could be sustained between us.</p>
+<p>He spent the greater part of his time in his state-room,
+grumbling at the steward, abusing his valet, beating his
+bad-tempered terrier and cursing the luck that had brought him on
+this senseless voyage.</p>
+<p>More than ever now I felt the gulf that divided us. I could not
+pass one single hour with him in comfort. My life was becoming as
+cold as an empty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness
+with which I had removed my husband from a scene in which he had at
+least lived the life of a rational creature, when an unexpected
+event brought me a thrill of passing pleasure.</p>
+<p>Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table,
+and the doctor himself was a young Irishman of three or
+four-and-twenty, as bright and breezy as a March morning and as
+racy of the soil as new-cut peat.</p>
+<p>Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by
+chance I knew Martin Conrad.</p>
+<p>"Martin Conrad?" I repeated, feeling (I hardly knew why) as if a
+rosy veil were falling over my face and neck.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Mart Conrad, as we call him. The young man who has gone
+out as doctor with Lieutenant &mdash;&mdash;'s expedition to the
+South Pole?"</p>
+<p>A wave of tender feeling from my childhood came surging up to my
+throat and I said:</p>
+<p>"He was the first of my boy friends&mdash;in fact the only
+one."</p>
+<p>The young doctor's eyes sparkled and he looked as if he wanted
+to throw down his soup-spoon, jump up, and grasp me by both
+hands.</p>
+<p>"God bless me, is that so?" he said.</p>
+<p>It turned out that Martin and he had been friends at Dublin
+University. They had worked together, "roomed" together, and taken
+their degrees at the same time.</p>
+<p>"So you know Mart? Lord alive, the way things come out!"</p>
+<p>It was easy to see that Martin was not only his friend but his
+hero. He talked of him with a passionate love and admiration with
+which men, whatever they feel, rarely speak of each other.</p>
+<p>Martin was the salt of the earth. He was the finest fellow and
+the staunchest friend and the bravest-hearted chap that walked
+under the stars of God.</p>
+<p>"The greatest chum I have in the world, too, and by the holy
+Immaculate Mother I'm destroyed at being away from him."</p>
+<p>It was like music to hear him speak. A flood of joy went
+sweeping through me at every word of praise he gave to Martin. And
+yet&mdash;I cannot explain why, unless it was the woman in me, the
+Irish-woman, or something like it&mdash;but I began to depreciate
+Martin, in order to "hoosh" him on, so that he might say more on
+the same subject.</p>
+<p>"Then he <i>did</i> take his degree," I said. "He was never very
+clever at his lessons, I remember, and I heard that he was only
+just able to scrape through his examinations."</p>
+<p>The young doctor fell to my bait like a darling. With a flaming
+face and a nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I
+closed my eyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome
+talking to Martin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought
+his friend was a numskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in
+College Green," and the way he could learn things when he wanted to
+was wonderful.</p>
+<p>He might be a bit shaky in his spelling, and perhaps he couldn't
+lick the world in Latin, but his heart was always in exploring, and
+the way he knew geography, especially the part of it they call the
+"Unknown," the Arctic, and the Antarctic, and what Charcot had done
+there, and Biscoe and Bellamy and D'Urville and Greely and Nansen
+and Shackleton and Peary, was enough to make the provost and
+professors look like fools of the earth by the side of him.</p>
+<p>"Why, what do you think?" said the doctor. "When he went to
+London to apply for his billet, the Lieutenant said to him: 'You
+must have been down there before, young man.' 'No such luck,' said
+Martin. 'But you know as much about the Antarctic already as the
+whole boiling of us put together,' said the Lieutenant. Yes, by St.
+Patrick and St. Thomas, he's a geographer any way."</p>
+<p>I admitted that much, and to encourage the doctor to go on I
+told him where I had seen Martin last, and what he had said of his
+expedition.</p>
+<p>"In Rome you say?" said the doctor, with a note of jealousy.
+"You beat me there then. I saw him off from London, though. A few
+of us Dublin boys, being in town at the time, went down to Tilbury
+to see him sail, and when they were lifting anchor and the tug was
+hitching on, we stood on the pier&mdash;sixteen strong&mdash;and
+set up some of our college songs. 'Stop your noising, boys,' said
+he, 'the Lieutenant will be hearing you.' But not a bit of it. We
+sang away as long as we could see him going out with the tide, and
+then we went back in the train, smoking our pipes like so many
+Vauxhall chimneys, and narra a word out of the one of us. . . .
+Yes, yes, there are some men like that. They come like the stars of
+night and go like the light of heaven. Same as there are some women
+who walk the world like the sun, and leave the grass growing green
+wherever their feet have trod."</p>
+<p>It was very ridiculous, I did not then understand why it should
+be so, but the tears came gushing into my eyes while the doctor
+spoke, and it was as much as I could do to preserve my
+composure.</p>
+<p>What interpretation my husband put upon my emotion I do not
+know, but I saw that his face darkened, and when the doctor turned
+to him to ask if he also knew Martin he answered curtly and
+brusquely,</p>
+<p>"Not I. No loss either, I should say."</p>
+<p>"No loss?" said the doctor. "Show me the man under the stars of
+God that's fit to hold a candle to Martin Conrad, and by the angel
+Gabriel I'll go fifty miles out of my way to put a sight on
+him."</p>
+<p>More than ever after this talk about Martin Conrad I was feeling
+defenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims,
+when something happened which seemed to change his character
+altogether.</p>
+<p>The third day out, on a bright and quiet morning, we called at
+Malta, and while my husband went ashore to visit some friends in
+the garrison, I sat on deck watching the life of the little port
+and looking at the big warships anchored in the bay.</p>
+<p>A Maltese woman came on board to sell souvenirs of the island,
+and picking out of her tray a tiny twisted thing in coral, I asked
+what it was.</p>
+<p>"That's a charm, my lady," said the woman.</p>
+<p>"A charm for what?"</p>
+<p>"To make my lady's husband love her."</p>
+<p>I felt my face becoming crimson, but my heart was sore, so in my
+simplicity I bought the charm and was smuggling it into my bag when
+I became aware that one of my fellow-passengers, a lady, was
+looking down at me.</p>
+<p>She was a tall, singularly handsome woman, fashionably and
+(although on shipboard) almost sumptuously dressed. A look in her
+face was haunting me with a memory I could not fix when she stooped
+and said:</p>
+<p>"Aren't you Mary O'Neill?"</p>
+<p>The voice completed the identification, and I knew who it was.
+It was Alma Lier.</p>
+<p>She was now about seven-and-twenty and in the prime of her young
+womanhood. Her beautiful auburn hair lay low over her broad
+forehead, almost descending to her long sable-coloured eyebrows.
+Her cheeks were very white, (rather beyond the whiteness of nature,
+I thought), and her lips were more than commonly red, with the
+upper one a little thin and the lower slightly set forward. But her
+eyes were still her distinguishing feature, being larger and
+blacker than before and having that vivid gaze that looked through
+and through you and made you feel that few women and no man in the
+world would have the power to resist her.</p>
+<p>Her movements were almost noiseless, and as she sank into the
+chair by my side there was a certain over-sweetness in the soft
+succulent tones of the voice with which she began to tell me what
+had happened to her since I had seen her last.</p>
+<p>It was a rather painful story. After two or three years in a
+girls' college in her own country she had set out with her mother
+for a long tour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was
+falsely called a Charity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count
+who was understood to be rich and related to one of the Grand Ducal
+families. Against the protests of her father (a shrewd American
+banker), she had married the Count, and they had returned to New
+York, where her mother had social ambitions.</p>
+<p>There they had suffered a serious shock. It turned out that her
+husband had deceived them, and that he was really a poor and quite
+nameless person, only remotely related to the family he claimed to
+belong to.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless Alma had "won out" at last. By digging deep into
+her father's treasury she got rid of her treacherous husband, and
+going "way out west," she had been able, in due time, to divorce
+him.</p>
+<p>Since then she had resumed her family name, being known as
+Madame Lier, and now she was on her way to Egypt to spend the
+season at Cairo.</p>
+<p>"And you?" she said. "You stayed long at the
+convent&mdash;yes?"</p>
+<p>I answered that I had, and then in my fluttering voice (for some
+of the old spell of her presence had come sweeping back upon me) I
+replied one by one to the questions she asked about the Reverend
+Mother, the "Reverend Mother Mildred," Sister Angela and Father
+Giovanni, not to speak of myself, whom she had always thought of as
+"Margaret Mary" because I had looked so innocent and nun-like.</p>
+<p>"And now you are married!" she said. "Married so splendidly,
+too! We heard all about it. Mother was so interested. What a lucky
+girl you are! Everybody says your husband is so handsome and
+charming. He is, isn't he?"</p>
+<p>I was doing my utmost to put the best face upon my condition
+without betraying the facts or simulating sentiments which I could
+not feel, when a boat from the shore pulled up at the ship's side,
+and my husband stepped on to the deck.</p>
+<p>In his usual morose manner he was about to pass without speaking
+on his way to his state-room, when his eyes fell on Alma sitting
+beside me. Then he stopped and looked at us, and, stepping up, he
+said, in a tone I had never heard from him before:</p>
+<p>"Mary, my dear, will you not present me to your friend?"</p>
+<p>I hesitated, and then with a quivering of the lips I did so. But
+something told me as I introduced my husband to Alma, and Alma to
+my husband, and they stood looking into each other's eyes and
+holding each other's hands (for Alma had risen and I was sitting
+between them), that this was the most momentous incident of my life
+thus far&mdash;that for good or ill my hour had struck and I could
+almost hear the bell.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>From that hour forward my husband was a changed man. His manner
+to me, so brusque before, became courteous, kind, almost
+affectionate. Every morning he would knock at the door of my
+state-room to ask if I had slept well, or if the movement of the
+steamer had disturbed me.</p>
+<p>His manner to Alma was charming. He was up before breakfast
+every day, promenading the deck with her in the fresh salt air. I
+would slide back my window and hear their laughter as they passed,
+above the throb of the engines and the wash of the sea. Sometimes
+they would look in upon me and joke, and Alma would say:</p>
+<p>"And how's Margaret Mary this morning?"</p>
+<p>Our seats in the saloon had been changed. Now we sat with Alma
+at the Captain's table, and though I sorely missed the doctor's
+racy talk about Martin Conrad I was charmed by Alma's bright wit
+and the fund of her personal anecdotes. She seemed to know nearly
+everybody. My husband knew everybody also, and their conversation
+never flagged.</p>
+<p>Something of the wonderful and worshipful feeling I had had for
+Alma at the Sacred Heart came back to me, and as for my husband it
+seemed to me that I was seeing him for the first time.</p>
+<p>He persuaded the Captain to give a dance on our last night at
+sea, so the awnings were spread, the electric lights were turned
+on, and the deck of the ship became a scene of enchantment.</p>
+<p>My husband and Alma led off. He danced beautifully and she was
+dressed to perfection. Not being a dancer myself I stood with the
+Captain in the darkness outside, looking in on them in the bright
+and dazzling circle, while the moon-rays were sweeping the waters
+like a silver fan and the little waves were beating the ship's side
+with friendly pats.</p>
+<p>I was almost happy. In my simplicity I was feeling grateful to
+Alma for having wrought this extraordinary change, so that when, on
+our arrival at Port Said, my husband said,</p>
+<p>"Your friend Madame Lier has made no arrangements for her rooms
+at Cairo&mdash;hadn't I better telegraph to our hotel, dear?" I
+answered, "Yes," and wondered why he had asked me.</p>
+<p>Our hotel was an oriental building, situated on an island at the
+further side of the Nile. Formerly the palace of a dead Khedive,
+who had built it in honour of the visit of an Empress, it had a
+vast reception hall with a great staircase.</p>
+<p>There, with separated rooms, as in London, we remained for three
+months. I was enthralled. Too young and inexperienced to be
+conscious of the darker side of the picture before me, I found
+everything beautiful. I was seeing fashionable life for the first
+time, and it was entrancing.</p>
+<p>Lovely and richly-dressed ladies in silk, velvet, lace, and no
+limit of jewellery&mdash;the dark French women, the blonde German
+women, the stately English women, and the American women with their
+flexuous grace. And then the British soldiers in their various
+uniforms, the semi-Turks in their red tarbooshes, and the diplomats
+of all nationalities, Italian, Austrian, French, German&mdash;what
+a cosmopolitan world it was, what a meeting-place of all
+nations!</p>
+<p>Every hour had its interest, but I liked best the hour of tea on
+the terrace, for that was the glorious hour of woman, when every
+condition invested her dress with added beauty and her smile with
+greater charm.</p>
+<p>Such a blaze of colour in the sunshine! Such a sea of muslin,
+flowers, and feathers! Such lovely female figures in diaphanous
+clouds of toilettes, delicate as gossamer and varied as the colours
+in the rainbow! They were like a living bouquet, as they sat under
+the shade of the verandah, with the green lawns and the palm trees
+in front, the red-coated orchestra behind, and the noiseless forms
+of swarthy Bednouins and Nubians moving to and fro.</p>
+<p>Although I had been brought up in such a different world
+altogether I could not help being carried away by all this beauty.
+My senses burgeoned out and my heart seemed to expand.</p>
+<p>As for Alma and my husband, they seemed to belong to the scene
+of themselves. She would sit at one of the tea-tables, swishing
+away the buzzing flies with a little whip of cord and cowries, and
+making comments on the crowd in soft undertones which he alone
+seemed to catch. Her vivid and searching eyes, with their constant
+suggestion of laughter, seemed to be picking out absurdities on
+every side and finding nearly everybody funny.</p>
+<p>She found me funny also. My innocence and my convent-bred ideas
+were a constant subject of jest with her.</p>
+<p>"What does our dear little Margaret Mary think of that?" she
+would say with a significant smile, at sights that seemed to me
+quite harmless.</p>
+<p>After a while I began to have a feeling of indefinable
+uneasiness about Alma. She was daily redoubling her cordiality,
+always calling me her "dearest sweetest girl," and "the oldest
+friend she had in the world." But little by little I became
+conscious of a certain commerce between her and my husband in which
+I had no part. Sometimes I saw her eyes seeking his, and
+occasionally I heard them exchange a few words about me in French,
+which (because I did not speak it, being uncertain of my accent)
+they thought I did not understand.</p>
+<p>Perhaps this helped to sharpen my wits, for I began to see that
+I had gone the wrong way to work with my husband. Instead of trying
+to make myself fall in love with my husband, I should have tried to
+make my husband fall in love with me.</p>
+<p>When I asked myself how this was to be done I found one obvious
+answer&mdash;I must become the sort of woman my husband admired and
+liked; in short I must imitate Alma.</p>
+<p>I resolved to do this, and after all that has happened since I
+feel a little ashamed to tell of the efforts I made to play a part
+for which I was so ill-fitted by nature and education.</p>
+<p>Some of them were silly enough perhaps, but some were almost
+pathetic, and I am not afraid that any good woman will laugh at the
+futile shifts I was put to, in my girlish ignorance, to make my
+husband love me.</p>
+<p>"I must do it," I thought. "I must, I must!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Hitherto I had attended to myself, but now I determined to have
+a maid. I found one without much difficulty. Her name was Price.
+She was a very plain woman of thirty, with piercing black eyes; and
+when I engaged her she seemed anxious above all else to make me
+understand that she "never saw anything."</p>
+<p>I soon discovered that she saw everything, especially the
+relations between myself and my husband, and that she put her own
+interpretation (not a very flattering one) on our separated
+apartments. She also saw the position of Alma, and putting her own
+interpretation upon that also, she tortured me with many
+pin-pricks.</p>
+<p>Under the guidance of my maid I began to haunt the shops of the
+dressmakers, the milliners and the jewellers. It did not require
+the memory of my father's letter to make me spend his money&mdash;I
+spent it like water. Feeling ashamed of my quaker-cut costumes
+(Alma had a costume for every day of the week, and wore a large
+gold snake on her arm), I bought the most costly toilettes, and
+loaded myself with bracelets, rings and necklaces.</p>
+<p>I was dressing for my husband, and for him I did many things I
+had never dreamt of doing before. For him I filed my nails, put
+cream on my skin, perfume on my handkerchief, and even rouge on my
+lips. Although I did not allow myself to think of it so, I was
+running a race with Alma.</p>
+<p>My maid knew that before I did, and the first night she put me
+into one of my uncomfortable new gowns she stood off from me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"His lordship must be a strange gentleman if he can resist you
+<i>now</i>."</p>
+<p>I felt ashamed, yet pleased too, and went downstairs with a
+certain confidence.</p>
+<p>The result was disappointing. My husband smiled rather
+condescendingly, and though Alma praised me beyond measure I saw
+that she was secretly laughing as she said:</p>
+<p>"Our Margaret Mary is coming out, isn't she?"</p>
+<p>Nevertheless I persevered. Without too much preparation for so
+perilous an enterprise, I threw myself into the gaieties of Cairo,
+attending polo matches, race-meetings, picnics at the Pyramids,
+dances at the different hotels, and on the island of Roda, where
+according to tradition, Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the
+bulrushes.</p>
+<p>I think I may say that I drew the eyes of other men upon me,
+particularly those of the colonel commanding on the Citadel, a fine
+type of Scotsman, who paid me the most worshipful attention. But I
+thought of nobody but my husband, being determined to make him
+forget Alma and fall in love with me.</p>
+<p>It was a hopeless task, and I had some heart-breaking hours. One
+day, calling at a jeweller's to see a diamond necklace which I
+greatly coveted, I was told in confidence that my husband had been
+pricing it, but had had to give it up because it was a thousand
+francs too dear for him. I was foolish enough to pay the thousand
+francs myself, under a pledge of secrecy, and to tell the jeweller
+to send the necklace to my husband, feeling sure in my simplicity
+that it had been meant for me.</p>
+<p>Next night I saw it on Alma's neck, and could have died of
+mortification and shame.</p>
+<p>I daresay it was all very weak and very childish, but I really
+think my last attempt, if rather ridiculous, was also very
+pitiful.</p>
+<p>Towards the end of our stay the proprietors of the hotel gave a
+Cotillon. As this was the event of the season, and nearly every
+woman was giving a dinner in honour of it, I resolved that I too
+would give one, inviting the gayest of the gay acquaintances I had
+made in Cairo.</p>
+<p>Feeling that it would be my last battle, and that so much
+depended upon it, I dressed myself with feverish care, in a soft
+white satin gown, which was cut lower than I had ever worn before,
+with slippers to match, a tight band of pearls about my throat and
+another about my head.</p>
+<p>When Price had finished dressing me she said:</p>
+<p>"Well, if his lordship prefers anybody else in the world
+to-night I shan't know where he puts his eyes."</p>
+<p>The compliment was a crude one, but I had no time to think of
+that, for my heart was fluttering with hopes and fears, and I think
+any woman would forgive me under the circumstances if I told
+myself, as I passed the tall mirrors on the stairs, that I too was
+beautiful.</p>
+<p>The dining-room was crowded when I entered it with my guests,
+and seeing that we were much observed it flashed upon me that my
+husband and I had become a subject of gossip. Partly for that
+reason I strangled the ugly thing that was writhing in my bosom,
+and put Alma (who had flown to me with affectionate rapture) next
+to my husband, and the colonel commanding on the Citadel in the
+seat beside me.</p>
+<p>Throughout the dinner, which was very long, I was very nervous,
+and though I did my best to keep up conversation with the colonel,
+I knew quite well that I was listening to what was being said at
+the other side of my big round table, and as often as any mention
+was made of "Margaret Mary" I heard it.</p>
+<p>More than once Alma lifted her glass with a gracious nod and
+smile, crying, "Mary dearest!" and then in another moment gave my
+husband one of her knowing glances which seemed to me to say, "Look
+at that foolish little wife of yours!"</p>
+<p>By the time we returned to the hall for coffee we were rather a
+noisy party, and even the eyes of the ladies betrayed the fact that
+they had dined. The talk, which had grown louder, was also a little
+more free, and God forgive me, I joined in it, being feverishly
+anxious to outdo Alma, and be looked upon as a woman of the
+world.</p>
+<p>Towards eleven o'clock, the red-coated orchestra began to play a
+waltz, and then the whole variegated company of ladies, soldiers,
+and diplomats stood up to dance, and the colonel asked me to join
+him.</p>
+<p>I was ashamed to tell him that I had never danced except with a
+schoolgirl, so I took his hand and started. But hardly had we
+begun, when I made mistakes, which I thought everybody saw (I am
+sure Alma saw them), and before we had taken many turns my partner
+had to stop, whereupon I retired to my seat with a forced laugh and
+a sense of confusion.</p>
+<p>It was nearly twelve when they began the Cotillon, which Alma
+and my husband led with supreme self-possession. As one of the
+hostesses I sat in the front row of the square, and when I was
+taken out I made further mistakes, which also Alma saw and
+communicated by smiles to my husband.</p>
+<p>Before the Cotillon came to an end the night was far spent and
+then the company, which had become very boisterous, began to look
+for some new excitement, no matter how foolish. One or other
+started "turkey trot" and "grizzly bear" and finally Alma, with
+memories of the winter sports at St. Moritz, proposed that they
+should toboggan down the great staircase.</p>
+<p>The suggestion was welcomed with a shout, and a broad board was
+immediately laid on the first long flight of stairs for people to
+slide on.</p>
+<p>Soldiers went first, and then there were calls for the ladies,
+when Alma took her turn, tucking her dress under her at the top and
+alighting safely on her feet at the bottom. Other ladies followed
+her example, with similar good fortune, and then Alma, who had been
+saying "Such fun! Such lots of fun!" set up a cry of "Margaret
+Mary."</p>
+<p>I refused at first, feeling ashamed of even looking at such
+unwomanly folly, but something Alma said to my husband and
+something that was conveyed by my husband's glance at me set my
+heart afire and, poor feverish and entangled fool that I was, I
+determined to defy them.</p>
+<p>So running up to the top and seating myself on the toboggan I
+set it in motion. But hardly had I done so when it swayed, reeled,
+twisted and threw me off, with the result that I rolled downstairs
+to the bottom.</p>
+<p>Of course there were shrieks of laughter, and if I had been in
+the spirit of the time and place I suppose I should have laughed
+too, and there would have been an end of the matter. But I had been
+playing a part, a tragic part, and feeling that I had failed and
+covered myself with ridicule, I was overwhelmed with confusion.</p>
+<p>I thought my husband would be angry with me, and feel
+compromised by my foolishness, but he was not; he was amused, and
+when at last I saw his face it was running in rivulets from the
+laughter he could not restrain.</p>
+<p>That was the end of all things, and when Alma came up to me,
+saying everything that was affectionate and insincere, about her
+"poor dear unfortunate Margaret Mary" (only women know how to wound
+each other so), I brushed her aside, went off to my bedroom, and
+lay face down on the sofa, feeling that I was utterly beaten and
+could fight no more.</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though I did not
+look up I heard him say, in a tone of indulgent sympathy that cut
+me to the quick:</p>
+<p>"You've been playing the wrong part, my child. A Madonna, yes,
+but a Venus, no! It's not your <i>m&eacute;tier</i>."</p>
+<p>"What's the good? What's the good? What's the good?" I asked
+myself.</p>
+<p>I thought my heart was broken.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>With inexpressible relief I heard the following day that we were
+to leave for Rome immediately.</p>
+<p>Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to me in the
+least. Outside the atmosphere of this place, so artificial, so
+unrelated to nature, her power over my husband would be gone. Once
+in the Holy City everything would be different. Alma would be
+different, I should be different, above all my husband would be
+different. I should take him to the churches and basilicas; I
+should show him the shrines and papal processions, and he would see
+me in my true "part" at last!</p>
+<p>But what a deep disappointment awaited me!</p>
+<p>On reaching Rome we put up at a fashionable hotel in the new
+quarter of the Ludovisi, and although that was only a few hundred
+yards from the spot on which I had spent nine happy years it seemed
+to belong to another world altogether. Instead of the church domes
+and the monastery bells, there were the harsh clang of electric
+trams, the thrum and throb of automobiles, the rattle of cars and
+the tramp of soldiers.</p>
+<p>Then I realised that there were two Romes&mdash;an old Rome and
+a new one, and that the Rome we had come to hardly differed from
+the Cairo we had left behind.</p>
+<p>There was the same varied company of people of all nations,
+English, Americans, French, German; the same nomad tribes of the
+rich and dissolute, pitching their tents season by season in the
+sunny resorts of Europe; the same aimless society, the same debauch
+of fashion, the same callous and wicked luxury, the same thirst for
+selfish pleasures, the same busy idleness, the same corruption of
+character and sex.</p>
+<p>This made me very unhappy, but from first to last Alma was in
+the highest spirits. Everybody seemed to be in Rome that spring,
+and everybody seemed to be known either to her or to my husband.
+For Alma's sake we were invited everywhere, and thus we saw not
+only the life of the foreign people of the hotels but that of a
+part (not the better part) of the Roman aristocracy.</p>
+<p>Alma was a great success. She had the homage of all the men, and
+being understood to be rich, and having the gift of making every
+man believe he was her special favourite, she was rarely without a
+group of Italian noblemen about her chair.</p>
+<p>With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning
+lay with my husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for
+that. They seemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing
+against him that, having married me (as everybody appeared to know)
+for the settlement of his financial difficulties, he had
+transferred his attentions, even on his honeymoon, to this
+brilliant and alluring creature.</p>
+<p>As for me, I was made to realise that I was a person of a
+different class altogether. When people wished to be kind they
+called me <i>spirituelle</i>, and when they were tempted to be the
+reverse they voted me insipid.</p>
+<p>As a result I became very miserable in this company, and I can
+well believe that I may have seemed awkward and shy and stupid when
+I was in some of their grey old palaces full of tapestry and
+bronze, for I sometimes found the talk there so free (especially
+among the women) that the poisoned jokes went quivering through
+me.</p>
+<p>Things I had been taught to think sacred were so often derided
+that I had to ask myself if it could be Rome, my holy and beloved
+Rome&mdash;this city of license and unbelief.</p>
+<p>But Alma was entirely happy, especially when the talk turned on
+conjugal fidelity, and the faithful husband was held up to
+ridicule. This happened very often in one house we used to go
+to&mdash;that of a Countess of ancient family who was said to have
+her husband and her lover at either side of her when she sat down
+to dinner.</p>
+<p>She was a large and handsome person of middle age, with a great
+mass of fair hair, and she gave me the feeling that in her case the
+body of a woman was inhabited by the soul of a man.</p>
+<p>She christened me her little Irish <i>bambino</i>, meaning her
+child; and one night in her drawing-room, after dinner, before the
+men had joined us, she called me to her side on the couch, lit a
+cigarette, crossed her legs, and gave us with startling candour her
+views of the marriage bond.</p>
+<p>"What can you expect, you women?" she said. "You run after the
+men for their titles&mdash;they've very little else, except debts,
+poor things&mdash;and what is the result? The first result is that
+though you have bought them you belong to them. Yes, your husband
+owns his beautiful woman, just as he owns his beautiful horse or
+his beautiful dog."</p>
+<p>This was so pointed that I felt my face growing crimson, but
+Alma and the other women only laughed, so the Countess went on:</p>
+<p>"What then? Once in a blue moon each goes his and her own way
+without sin. You agree to a sort of partnership for mutual
+advantage in which you live together in chastity under the same
+roof. What a life! What an ice-house!"</p>
+<p>Again the other women laughed, but I felt myself blushing
+deeply.</p>
+<p>"But in the majority of cases it is quite otherwise. The
+business purpose served, each is open to other emotions. The man
+becomes unfaithful, and the woman, if she has any spirit, pays him
+out tit for tat&mdash;and why shouldn't she?"</p>
+<p>After that I could bear no more, and before I knew what I was
+saying I blurted out:</p>
+<p>"But I find that wrong and wicked. Infidelity on the part of the
+man does not justify infidelity in the woman. The prayer-book says
+so."</p>
+<p>Alma burst out laughing, and the Countess smiled and
+continued:</p>
+<p>"Once in a hundred years there comes a great passion&mdash;Dante
+and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura. The woman meets the right man too
+late. What a tragedy! What a daily and hourly crucifixion! Unless,"
+said the Countess with emphasis, "she is prepared to renounce the
+law and reject society and live a life of complete emancipation.
+But in a Catholic country, where there is no divorce, what woman
+can afford to do that? Nobody in the higher classes
+can&mdash;especially if she has to sacrifice her title. So the wise
+woman avoids scandal, keeps her little affair with her lover to
+herself, and . . . and that's marriage, my dears."</p>
+<p>A twitter of approval, led by Alma, came from the other women,
+but I was quivering with anger and I said:</p>
+<p>"Then marriage is an hypocrisy and an imposture. If I found I
+loved somebody better than my husband, I should go to him in spite
+of the law, and society, and title and . . . and everything."</p>
+<p>"Of course you would, my dear," said the Countess, smiling at me
+as at a child, "but that's because you are such a sweet, simple,
+innocent little Irish <i>bambino</i>."</p>
+<p>It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited
+to the Roman Hunt. I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to
+use me in order to "save her face" in relation to my husband,
+induced me to drive them out in a motor-car to the place on the
+Campagna where they were to mount their horses.</p>
+<p>"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "How could we possibly go without
+you?"</p>
+<p>It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my
+husband in his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San
+Giovanni, and past the <i>osterie</i> where the pleasure-loving
+Italian people were playing under the pergolas with their children,
+until we came to the meeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist
+monastery of Tre Fontane.</p>
+<p>A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there
+with their horses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband
+with great cordiality. What they thought of me I do not know,
+except that I was a childish and complacent wife; and when at the
+sound of the horn the hunt began, and my husband and Alma went
+prancing off with the rest, without once looking back, I asked
+myself in my shame and distress if I could bear my humiliation much
+longer.</p>
+<p>But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice
+on the other side of the car said:</p>
+<p>"Good morning, Lady Raa."</p>
+<p>It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put
+into Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my
+marriage, he had run up to look at Rome.</p>
+<p>"But have you heard the news?" he cried.</p>
+<p>"What news?"</p>
+<p>"About the South Pole Expedition&mdash;they're on their way
+home."</p>
+<p>"So soon?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week."</p>
+<p>"And . . . and . . . and Martin Conrad?"</p>
+<p>"He's well, and what's better, he has distinguished
+himself."</p>
+<p>"I . . . I . . . I knew he would."</p>
+<p>"So did I! The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart
+half a chance he would come out top! Do or die&mdash;that was his
+watch-word."</p>
+<p>"I know! I know!"</p>
+<p>His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a
+joyous rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with "Yes," "Yes,"
+"Yes") he told of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by
+one of the London papers, in which Martin had been specially
+mentioned&mdash;how he had been put in command of some difficult
+and perilous expedition, and had worked wonders.</p>
+<p>"How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!" I
+said.</p>
+<p>"Isn't it?" said the doctor, and for a few moments more we
+bandied quick questions and replies like children playing at
+battledore and shuttlecock. Then he said:</p>
+<p>"But I'm after thinking it's mortal strange I never heard him
+mention you. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about
+and that was a man&mdash;a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling
+him&mdash;that's short for Maloney, I suppose."</p>
+<p>"For Mary," I said.</p>
+<p>"Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of
+St. Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of
+that before? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye've a
+right to be proud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds
+of you. I was mortal jealous of Mally, I remember. 'Mally's a
+stunner,' he used to say. 'Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it,
+in spite of the devil and hell.'"</p>
+<p>The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman
+in me made me say&mdash;I couldn't help it&mdash;</p>
+<p>"I dare say he's had many girl friends since my time,
+though?"</p>
+<p>"Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him in
+Dublin&mdash;they're the queens of the world too, those Dublin
+girls&mdash;but never a skute of the eye was he giving to the one
+of them. I used to think it was work, but maybe it wasn't . . .
+maybe it was. . . ."</p>
+<p>I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say&mdash;I
+didn't know what would happen to me if he did&mdash;so I jumped in
+by telling him that, if he would step into the car, I would drive
+him back to Rome.</p>
+<p>He did so, and all the way he talked of Martin, his courage and
+resource and the hardships he had gone through, until (with
+backward thoughts of Alma and my husband riding away over the
+Campagna) my heart, which had been leaping like a lamb, began to
+ache and ache.</p>
+<p>We returned by the Old Appian Way, where the birds were building
+their nests among the crumbling tombs, through the Porta San Paolo,
+and past the grave of the "young English poet" of whom I have
+always thought it was not so sad that he died of consumption as in
+the bitterness of a broken heart.</p>
+<p>All this time I was so much at home with the young Irish doctor,
+who was Martin's friend, that it was not until I was putting him
+down at his hotel that I remembered I did not even know his
+name.</p>
+<p>It was O'Sullivan.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Every day during our visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the
+Reverend Mother's invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral
+taint had prevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by
+going to Benediction at her Convent church the very next day.</p>
+<p>It happened, however, that this was the time when the Artists'
+Club of Rome were giving a Veglione (a kind of fancy-dress ball),
+and as Alma and my husband desired to go to it, and were still in
+the way of using me to keep themselves in countenance, I consented
+to accompany them on condition that I did not dress or dance, and
+that they would go with me to Benediction the following day.</p>
+<p>"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "We'll do whatever you like. Of
+course we will."</p>
+<p>I wore my soft satin without any ornaments, and my husband
+merely put scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but
+Alma was clad in a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts
+which showed her limbs in front but had a long train behind, and
+made her look like a great vampire bat.</p>
+<p>It was eleven o'clock before we reached the theatre, but already
+the auditorium was full, and so well had the artists done their
+work of decoration, making the air alive with floating specks of
+many-coloured lights, like the fire-flies at Nemi, that the scene
+was one of enchantment.</p>
+<p>It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls
+was the street, with the clanging electric bells and people
+hurrying by with their collars up, for the night was cold, and it
+had begun to rain as we came in, and one poor woman, with a child
+under her shawl, was standing by the entrance trying to sell
+evening papers.</p>
+<p>I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my
+husband and their friends were below on the level of the
+<i>poltroni</i> (the stalls) that had been arranged for the
+dancing, which began immediately after we arrived and went on
+without a break until long after midnight.</p>
+<p>Then there was supper on the stage, and those who did not eat
+drank a good deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the
+influence of alcohol. As a consequence many of the people,
+especially some of the women (not good women I fear), seemed to
+lose all control of themselves, singing snatches of noisy songs,
+sipping out of the men's glasses, taking the smoke of cigarettes
+out of the men's mouths, sitting on the men's knees, and even
+riding astride on the men's arms and shoulders.</p>
+<p>I bore these sights as long as I could, making many fruitless
+appeals to my husband to take me home; and I was just about to
+leave of myself, being sick of the degradation of my sex, when a
+kind of rostrum, with an empty chair on top of it, was carried in
+on the shoulders of a number of men.</p>
+<p>This was for the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty, and as it
+passed round the arena, with the mock judges in paper coronets,
+walking ahead to make their choice, some of the women, lost to all
+sense of modesty, were shouting "Take <i>me</i>! Take
+<i>me</i>!"</p>
+<p>I felt sure they would take Alma, so I reached forward to get a
+better view of her, where she stood below my box; but as they
+approached her, with the chair still empty, I saw her make a
+movement in my direction and say something to the judges about "the
+little nun," which made my husband nod his head and then laugh
+uproariously.</p>
+<p>At the next moment, before I knew what they were doing, six or
+seven men jumped into my box, lifted me on to the rostrum and
+placed me in the chair, whereupon the whole noisy company in the
+theatre broke into wild shouts of salutation and pelted me with
+flowers and confetti.</p>
+<p>If there was any pride there was more mortification in the
+position to which Alma and my husband had exposed me, for as I was
+being carried round the arena, with the sea of foaming faces below
+me, all screaming out of their hot and open mouths, I heard the men
+cry:</p>
+<p>"Smile, Signorina!"</p>
+<p>"Not so serious, Mademoiselle!"</p>
+<p>It would do no good to say what memories of other scenes flashed
+back on my mind as I was being borne along in the mad procession. I
+felt as if it would last for ever. But it came to an end at length,
+and as soon as I was released, I begged my husband again to take me
+home, and when he said, "Not yet; we'll all be going by-and-by," I
+stole away by myself, found a cab, and drove back to the hotel.</p>
+<p>The day was dawning as I passed through the stony streets, and
+when I reached my room, and pulled down my dark green blinds, the
+bell of the Capuchin monastery in the Via Veneto was ringing and
+the monks were saying the first of their offices.</p>
+<p>I must have been some time in bed, hiding my hot face in the
+bed-clothes, when Price, my maid, came in to apologise for not
+having seen me come back alone. The pain of the woman's scrutiny
+was more than I could bear at that moment, so I tried to dismiss
+her, but I could not get her to go, and at last she said:</p>
+<p>"If you please, my lady, I want to say something."</p>
+<p>I gave her no encouragement, yet she continued.</p>
+<p>"I daresay it's as much as my place is worth, but I'm bound to
+say it."</p>
+<p>Still I said nothing, yet she went on:</p>
+<p>"His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back
+half an hour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . .
+coming out of Madame's room."</p>
+<p>"Go away, woman, go away," I cried in the fierce agony of my
+shame, and she went out at last, closing the door noisily behind
+her.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's
+church. But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept
+out of my room into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my
+footsteps were leading me, until I found myself in the piazza of
+the Convent of the Sacred Heart.</p>
+<p>It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on
+the paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican
+monastery was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see
+the light on the Pope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of
+St. Peter's striking nine.</p>
+<p>There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories
+also, and by that I knew that the younger children, the children of
+the Infant Jesus, were going to bed. There was a light too, in the
+large window of the church, and that told me that the bigger girls
+were saying their night prayers.</p>
+<p>Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices
+rising and falling, and then through the closed door of the church
+came the muffled sound of their evening hymn&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Ave maris stella<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Dei Mater
+Alma&mdash;"</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter
+pain&mdash;the pain of remembering the happy years in which I
+myself was a girl singing so, and then telling myself that other
+girls were there now who knew nothing of me.</p>
+<p>I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my
+saint, my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that
+hymn; and then I remembered where I was and what had happened to
+me.</p>
+<p>"<i>Virgin of all virgins,<br />
+To thy shelter take me</i>."</p>
+<p>I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat
+and I dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was
+broken-hearted.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FORTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FORTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Not long after that we left Italy on our return to England. We
+were to reach home by easy stages so as to see some of the great
+capitals of Europe, but I had no interest in the journey.</p>
+<p>Our first stay was at Monte Carlo, that sweet garden of the
+Mediterranean which God seems to smile upon and man to curse.</p>
+<p>If I had been allowed to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of
+nature I think I could have been content, but Alma, with her
+honeyed and insincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual
+plea of keeping her in countenance.</p>
+<p>I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink
+of louis d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about
+the tables, and its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears
+and needless misery and despair.</p>
+<p>As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower
+f&ecirc;tes in the streets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and
+think I was on my native rocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit
+in my room and watch the poor wounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps
+as they tumbled and ducked into the sea after the shots fired, by
+cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen, from the rifle-range
+below.</p>
+<p>In Monte Carlo my husband's vices seemed to me to grow rank and
+fast. The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first
+he won and then he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then
+his nature became still more ugly and repulsive.</p>
+<p>One evening towards eight o'clock, I was in my room, trying to
+comfort a broken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through
+the open window, when my husband entered with wild eyes.</p>
+<p>"The red's coming up at all the tables," he cried breathlessly.
+"Give me some money, quick!"</p>
+<p>I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my
+purse.</p>
+<p>"You've a cheque book&mdash;give me a cheque, then."</p>
+<p>I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it
+that night, the banks being closed.</p>
+<p>"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't
+you? Stop fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them
+to pawn."</p>
+<p>The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the
+drawer in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what
+he wanted and went out hurriedly without more words.</p>
+<p>After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black
+rings about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed
+place" immediately or we should all be ruined.</p>
+<p>Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the
+great French capital which has done so much for the world, I
+thought it must be the sink of every kind of corruption.</p>
+<p>We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elys&eacute;es,
+and there (as well as in the caf&eacute;s in the Bois and at the
+races at Longchamps on Sundays) we met the same people again, most
+of them English and Americans on their way home after the winter.
+It seemed to me strange that there should be so many men and women
+in the world with nothing to do, merely loafing round it like
+tramps&mdash;the richest being the idlest, and the idlest the most
+immoral.</p>
+<p>My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think
+he spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at
+Alma's instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by
+night.</p>
+<p>"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us
+in places like those?"</p>
+<p>I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be
+dragged around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling
+myself that if I continued to share my husband's habits of life,
+for any reason or under any pretext, I should become like him, and
+my soul would rot inch by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own
+eyes and to resist the contaminations of his company.</p>
+<p>As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma
+made no efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last
+that they went together to a scandalous entertainment which was for
+a while the talk of the society papers throughout Europe.</p>
+<p>I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned
+from those sources&mdash;that it was given by a notorious woman,
+who was not shut out of society because she was "the good friend"
+of a King; that she did the honours with clever imitative elegance;
+that her salon that night was crowded with such male guests as one
+might see at the court of a queen&mdash;princes, dukes, marquises,
+counts, English noblemen and members of parliament, as well as some
+reputable women of my own and other countries; that the tables were
+laid for supper at four o'clock with every delicacy of the season
+and wines of the rarest vintage; that after supper dancing was
+resumed with increased animation; and that the dazzling and
+improper spectacle terminated with a <i>Cha&icirc;ne diabolique</i>
+at seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the
+windows and the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for
+early mass.</p>
+<p>I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the
+Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing
+produced upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment
+when&mdash;the priest standing at the foot of the altar&mdash;the
+choir sang the <i>Kyrie eleison</i>, down to the solemn silence of
+the elevation, I had a sense of being washed from all the taint of
+the contaminating days since my marriage.</p>
+<p>The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the
+<i>Gloria in excelsis</i>, which I used to sing myself, seemed to
+carry up the cry of my sorrowful heart to the very feet of the
+Virgin whose gracious figure hung above me.</p>
+<p>"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."</p>
+<p>It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of
+the church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling
+of purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the
+Sacred Heart.</p>
+<p>It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of
+early morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem
+to blush in the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs
+Elys&eacute;es on my way back to the hotel, I met under the
+chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a little company of young
+girls returning to school after their first communion.</p>
+<p>How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes
+and stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white
+flowers, they were twittering away as merrily as the little birds
+that were singing unseen in the leaves above them.</p>
+<p>It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet
+faces; but turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I
+thought the great and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and
+love, had given me such strength that I could meet any further
+wrong I might have to endure in my walk through the world with
+charity and forgiveness.</p>
+<p>But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in
+the fires of passion!</p>
+<p>As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's
+bedroom from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently
+at my husband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I
+was beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip
+and coming over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:</p>
+<p>"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I
+can't help that. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you
+are a woman and have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen
+at that door and see if you can stand any more."</p>
+<p>With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own
+room, but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which
+I stood, and I found myself listening to the voices which I could
+distinctly hear in my husband's bedroom.</p>
+<p>There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other
+a woman's soft and cautious.</p>
+<p>There was no need to tell myself whose voices they were, and
+neither did I ask myself any questions. I did not put to my mind
+the pros and cons of the case for myself or the case for my
+husband. I only thought and felt and behaved as any other wife
+would think and feel and behave at such a moment. An ugly and
+depraved thing, which my pride or my self-respect had never
+hitherto permitted me to believe in, suddenly leapt into life.</p>
+<p>I was outraged. I was a victim of the treachery, the duplicity,
+the disloyalty, and the smothered secrecy of husband and
+friend.</p>
+<p>My heart and soul were aflame with a sense of wrong. All the
+sweetening and softening and purifying effects of the sacrament
+were gone in an instant, and, moving stealthily across the carpet
+towards my husband's door, I swiftly turned the handle.</p>
+<p>The door was locked.</p>
+<p>I heard a movement inside the room and in a moment I hurried
+from the salon into the corridor, intending to enter by another
+door. As I was about to do so I heard the lock turned back by a
+cautious hand within. Then I swung the door open and boldly entered
+the room.</p>
+<p>Nobody was there except my husband.</p>
+<p>But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in
+the adjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind
+them.</p>
+<p>I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were
+down and the air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as
+might have been brought back in people's clothes from that
+shameless woman's salon.</p>
+<p>My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me
+with a half-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered.
+His prominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was
+trying to carry things off with an air.</p>
+<p>"This <i>is</i> an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the
+first time . . . the very first time that. . . ."</p>
+<p>I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe,
+but I said:</p>
+<p>"Is that all you've got to say to me?"</p>
+<p>"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . ."</p>
+<p>"You understand quite well," I answered, and then looking
+towards the door of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you
+understand."</p>
+<p>My husband began to laugh&mdash;a drunken, idiotic laugh.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you mean that . . . perhaps you imagine that. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Listen," I said. "This is the end of everything between you and
+me."</p>
+<p>"The end? Why, I thought that was long ago. In fact I thought
+everything ended before it began."</p>
+<p>"I mean. . . ." I knew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can
+no longer keep up the farce of being your wife."</p>
+<p>"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce
+is exactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever
+since the day we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you
+have only yourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife
+is no company for anybody but the saints and angels?"</p>
+<p>His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the
+thought that after all in his own gross way my husband had
+something to say for himself.</p>
+<p>Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without
+another word. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face
+must have been more powerful than my speech, for after a few
+seconds in which he went on saying in his drawling way that I had
+been no wife to him, and if anything had happened I had brought it
+on myself, he stopped, and neither of us spoke for a moment.</p>
+<p>Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should
+faint, I turned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low,
+perhaps in mockery, as I passed out.</p>
+<p>When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost
+dropped, and so cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot
+bottles to my feet.</p>
+<p>And then the tears came and I cried like a child.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTIETH_CHAPTER" id="FIFTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTIETH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I was far from well next morning and Price wished to keep me in
+bed, but I got up immediately when I heard that my husband was
+talking of returning to London.</p>
+<p>Our journey was quite uneventful. We three sat together in the
+railway carriage and in the private cabin on the steamer, with no
+other company than Bimbo, my husband's terrier, and Prue, Alma's
+Pekinese spaniel.</p>
+<p>Although he made no apology for his conduct of the day before my
+husband was quiet and conciliatory, and being sober he looked
+almost afraid, as if telling himself that he might have to meet my
+father soon&mdash;the one man in the world of whom he seemed to
+stand in fear.</p>
+<p>Alma looked equally frightened, but she carried off her
+nervousness with a great show of affection, saying she was sorry I
+was feeling "badly," that France and the South did not agree with
+me, and that I should be ever so much better when I was "way up
+north."</p>
+<p>We put up at a well-known hotel near Trafalgar Square, the same
+that in our girlhood had been the subject of Alma's dreams of
+future bliss, and I could not help observing that while my husband
+was selecting our rooms she made a rather ostentatious point of
+asking for an apartment on another floor.</p>
+<p>It was late when we arrived, so I went to bed immediately, being
+also anxious to be alone that I might think out my course of
+action.</p>
+<p>I was then firmly resolved that one way or other my life with my
+husband should come to an end; that I would no longer be befouled
+by the mire he had been dragging me through; that I should live a
+clean life and drink a pure draught, and oh, how my very soul
+seemed to thirst for it!</p>
+<p>This was the mood in which I went to sleep, but when I awoke in
+the morning, almost before the dawn, the strength of my resolution
+ebbed away. I listened to the rumble of the rubber-bound wheels of
+the carriages and motor-cars that passed under my window and,
+remembering that I had not a friend in London, I felt small and
+helpless. What could I do alone? Where could I turn for
+assistance?</p>
+<p>Instinctively I knew it would be of no use to appeal to my
+father, for though it was possible that he might knock my husband
+down, it was not conceivable that he would encourage me to separate
+from him.</p>
+<p>In my loneliness and helplessness I felt like a shipwrecked
+sailor, who, having broken away from the foundering vessel that
+would have sucked him under, is yet tossing on a raft with the
+threatening ocean on every side, and looking vainly for a sail.</p>
+<p>At last I thought of Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, and
+decided to send a telegram to him asking for the name of some
+solicitor in London to whom I could apply for advice.</p>
+<p>To carry out this intention I went down to the hall about nine
+o'clock, when people were passing into the breakfast-room, and
+visitors were calling at the bureau, and livened page-boys were
+shouting names in the corridors.</p>
+<p>There was a little writing-room at one side of the hall and I
+sat there to write my telegram. It ran&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Please send name and address reliable solicitor London whom I
+can consult on important business."</p>
+<p>I was holding the telegraph-form in my hand and reading my
+message again and again to make sure that it would lead to no
+mischief, when I began to think of Martin Conrad.</p>
+<p>It seemed to me that some one had mentioned his name, but I told
+myself that must have been a mistake,&mdash;that, being so helpless
+and so much in need of a friend at that moment, my heart and not my
+ears had heard it.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless as I sat holding my telegraph-form I became
+conscious of somebody who was moving about me. It was a man, for I
+could smell the sweet peaty odour of his Harris tweeds.</p>
+<p>At length with that thrill which only the human voice can bring
+to us when it is the voice of one from whom we have been long
+parted, I heard somebody say, from the other side of the desk:</p>
+<p>"Mary, is it you?"</p>
+<p>I looked up, the blood rushed to my face and a dazzling mist
+floated before my eyes, so that for a moment I could hardly see who
+was there. But I <i>knew</i> who it was&mdash;it was Martin
+himself.</p>
+<p>He came down on me like a breeze from the mountain, took me by
+both hands, telegram and all, and said:</p>
+<p>"My goodness, this is stunning!"</p>
+<p>I answered, as well as I could for the confusion that
+overwhelmed me.</p>
+<p>"I'm so glad, so glad!"</p>
+<p>"How well you are looking! A little thin, perhaps, but such a
+colour!"</p>
+<p>"I'm so glad, so glad!" I repeated, though I knew I was only
+blushing.</p>
+<p>"When did you arrive?"</p>
+<p>I told him, and he said:</p>
+<p>"<i>We</i> came into port only yesterday. And to think that you
+and I should come to the same hotel and meet on the very first
+morning! It's like a fate, as our people in the island say. But
+it's stunning, perfectly stunning!"</p>
+<p>A warm tide of joy was coursing through me and taking away my
+breath, but I managed to say:</p>
+<p>"I've heard about your expedition. You had great hardships."</p>
+<p>"That was nothing! Just a little pleasure-trip down to the
+eighty-sixth latitude."</p>
+<p>"And great successes?"</p>
+<p>"That was nothing either. The chief was jolly good, and the boys
+were bricks."</p>
+<p>"I'm so glad, so glad!" I said again, for a kind of dumb joy had
+taken possession of me, and I went on saying the same thing over
+and over again, as people do when they are very happy.</p>
+<p>For two full minutes I felt happier than I had ever been in my
+life before; and then an icy chill came over me, for I remembered
+that I had been married since I saw Martin Conrad last and I did
+not know how I was to break the news to him.</p>
+<p>Just then my husband and Alma came down the lift, and seeing me
+with a stranger, as they crossed the hall to go into the
+breakfast-room, they came up and spoke.</p>
+<p>I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was
+necessary to reveal everything in a word. I looked at Martin Conrad
+when I presented him to my husband and he did not move a muscle.
+Then I looked at my husband and under a very small bow his face
+grew dark.</p>
+<p>I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as
+they stood together&mdash;Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his
+look of splendid health, and my husband with his sallow cheeks and
+his appearance of wasted strength&mdash;and somehow from some
+unsearchable depths of my soul the contrast humbled me.</p>
+<p>When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while
+she gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she
+always did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in
+this instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object
+than a lighted vesta on a running stream.</p>
+<p>After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was
+staying in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some
+day.</p>
+<p>"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world," said
+Martin.</p>
+<p>"Then," said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will
+see more of your friend Mary."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more
+of your friend Mary."</p>
+<p>"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You <i>bet</i> I will," said
+Martin, looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed
+as she passed into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see
+that for the first time in her life a man's face had frightened
+her.</p>
+<p>"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone.</p>
+<p>"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us
+into port and he . . ."</p>
+<p>"Dr. O'Sullivan?"</p>
+<p>"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he
+speaks of you! But now . . . now you must go to breakfast yourself,
+and I must be off about my business."</p>
+<p>"Don't go yet," I said.</p>
+<p>"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the
+Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . ."</p>
+<p>"Then you must go."</p>
+<p>"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by
+the way, now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you . .
+. Italy, Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale . .
+. a little pale, aren't you?"</p>
+<p>I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and
+after a moment he asked:</p>
+<p>"How long are you staying in London?"</p>
+<p>I told him I did not know, whereupon he said:</p>
+<p>"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and
+reports for the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for
+anything . . . do you want me now?"</p>
+<p>"No-o, no, not now," I answered.</p>
+<p>"Well, if you <i>do</i> want me for anything&mdash;anything at
+all, mind, just pass the word and the charts and the tables and the
+reports and the Royal Geographical Society may go to the . . .
+Well, somewhere."</p>
+<p>I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the
+bottom of my heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how
+little and lonely I was, while here was a big brave man who could
+protect me from every danger.</p>
+<p>We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and
+held it, feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be
+lost in the human ocean outside and I should see no more of
+him.</p>
+<p>At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my
+throat, I said:</p>
+<p>"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so
+happy to see anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Won't I? Bet your life I will," he said, and then, as if seeing
+that my lip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he
+broke into a cheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to
+give me a "heise" as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the
+last moment.</p>
+<p>"Look here&mdash;keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones"
+(my husband and Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just
+tell them there's an ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to
+go 'asploring.' See? So-long!"</p>
+<p>It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I
+came to myself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau
+and the page-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my
+telegraph-form, crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my
+left hand.</p>
+<p>I tore it up and went in to breakfast.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOURTH_PART" id="FOURTH_PART"></a>FOURTH PART</h2>
+<h3>I FALL IN LOVE</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>During our first day in London my husband had many visitors,
+including Mr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and
+arrange about.</p>
+<p>I dare say a great many events had happened during our six
+months' absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was
+that Mr. Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had
+retired from the stage, and that her public appearances were now
+confined to the box-seat of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove
+from London to Brighton.</p>
+<p>This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the
+following day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to
+be made up for the races.</p>
+<p>In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual,
+attracted universal admiration, was of course included, but I did
+not observe that any provision was made for me, though that
+circumstance did not distress me in the least, because I was
+waiting for Martin's message.</p>
+<p>It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who,
+running into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea,
+said his fellow officers were separating that day, each going to
+his own home, and their commander had invited me to lunch with them
+on their ship, which was lying off Tilbury.</p>
+<p>It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this
+news, and that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most
+succulent tones:</p>
+<p>"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will
+do you a world of good, dear."</p>
+<p>I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go
+off in their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while
+with a fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with
+Martin, having, as I thought, so much and such serious things to
+say to him.</p>
+<p>A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the
+Westminster Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like
+another woman. It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our
+much-maligned London is the brightest and best, and the biggest
+city in the world is also the most beautiful.</p>
+<p>How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the
+soft air of early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old
+and new&mdash;what a joy it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping
+my hand over the gunwale into the cool water, while Martin, with a
+rush of racy words, was pointing out and naming everything.</p>
+<p>St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden
+cross on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its
+Traitors' Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the
+region of the barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers
+and coasting traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating
+on the surface of the stream.</p>
+<p>After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and
+then the great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking
+noise of the lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the
+big steamers and sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the
+river where the great liners, looking so high as we steamed under
+them, lay at anchor to their rusty cable-chains, with their
+port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows of eyes, as Martin said,
+in the bodies of gigantic fish.</p>
+<p>At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on
+either side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little
+to the flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen
+mast, lay Martin's ship.</p>
+<p>She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the
+<i>Mary</i> but now re-christened the <i>Scotia</i>, and it would
+be silly to say how my eyes filled at sight of her, just because
+she had taken Martin down into the deep Antarctic and brought him
+safely back again.</p>
+<p>"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt
+entirely happy.</p>
+<p>We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an
+hour late for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the
+saloon, but it was worth being a little after time to see the way
+they all leapt up and received me like a queen&mdash;making me
+feel, as I never felt before, the difference between the politeness
+of the fashionable idlers and the manners of the men who do
+things.</p>
+<p>"Holloa!" they cried.</p>
+<p>"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and
+perhaps you were not coming," said the commander, and then he put
+me to sit between himself and Martin.</p>
+<p>The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a
+moment, and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed
+because I was the only member of my sex among so many men he does
+not know the heart of a woman.</p>
+<p>They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of
+health and the sense of space about them&mdash;large space&mdash;as
+if they had come out of the heroic youth of the world, that they
+set my blood a-tingling to look at them.</p>
+<p>They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood
+for the womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back
+to, but none the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking
+the first fruits of their love for them.</p>
+<p>So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been
+called insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was
+chattering away softly and happily, making remarks about the things
+around me and asking all sorts of questions.</p>
+<p>Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh
+very much; but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the
+world, because everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who
+served the dishes, and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney
+from Wapping, who for some unexplained reason was called
+Treacle.</p>
+<p>It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying:
+"Isn't that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though
+it was strange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen")
+called "Doctor," it was also very charming.</p>
+<p>After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the
+commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands
+which had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus;
+and when it came I was called upon to identify one by one, the
+shaggy, tousled, unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture
+with the smart, clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the
+table.</p>
+<p>Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was
+when I associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter
+rock in his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he
+spilled the coffee.</p>
+<p>"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?"
+asked the commander.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded," I
+answered.</p>
+<p>"By what?"</p>
+<p>"By his eyes," I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine
+answer the men shrieked with laughter.</p>
+<p>"She's got you there, doc," cried somebody.</p>
+<p>"She has sure," said Martin, who had said very little down to
+that moment, but was looking supremely happy.</p>
+<p>At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck
+to see them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship
+except Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of
+the crew, including Treacle.</p>
+<p>I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too
+greedy of every moment of happiness to break in on it with the
+story of my troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the
+ship, away I went with him to look at the theodolites and
+chronometers and sextants, and sledges and skis, and the aeronautic
+outfit and the captive balloon, and the double-barrelled guns, and
+the place where they kept the petroleum and the gun cotton for
+blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the men's provisions in
+hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the dried fish and
+biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the empty
+cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the
+Zoo to be taken care of.</p>
+<p>Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more
+than anything else, being such a snug little place (though I
+thought I should like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical
+outfit, his books, his bed like a shelf, and one pretty photograph
+of his mother's cottage with the roses growing over it, that I
+almost felt as if I would not mind going to the Antarctic myself if
+I could live in such comfortable quarters.</p>
+<p>Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five
+minutes, when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the
+saloon, and then I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to
+me. And no sooner had I screwed myself into the commander's chair,
+which was fixed to the floor at the head of the narrow table, and
+found the tea-tray almost on my lap, than a wave of memory from our
+childhood came sweeping back on me, and I could not help giving way
+to the coquetry which lies hidden in every girl's heart so as to
+find out how much Martin had been thinking of me.</p>
+<p>"I'll bet you anything," I said, (I had caught Martin's style)
+"you can't remember where you and I first saw each other."</p>
+<p>He could&mdash;it was in the little dimity-white room in his
+mother's house with its sweet-smelling "scraas" under the sloping
+thatch.</p>
+<p>"Well, you don't remember what you were doing when we held our
+first conversation?"</p>
+<p>He did&mdash;he was standing on his hands with his feet against
+the wall and his inverted head close to the carpet.</p>
+<p>"But you've forgotten what happened next?"</p>
+<p>He hadn't&mdash;I had invited William Rufus and himself into
+bed, and they had sat up on either side of me.</p>
+<p>Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He
+had died of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master
+had buried him in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as
+sorry as he was for the loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone
+with an inscription in our joint names&mdash;all of his own
+inditing. It ran&mdash;he spelled it out to me&mdash;</p>
+<p>"HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN
+CONRAD</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">AND MARY O'NEILL."</span></p>
+<p>Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they
+were soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into
+the vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well
+of my native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and
+we talked of Tommy the Mate and his "starboard eye," called each
+other "bogh mulish," said things were "middling," spoke of the
+"threes" (trees) and the "tunder" (thunder), and remembered that
+"our Big Woman was a wicked devil and we wouldn't trust but she'd
+burn in hell."</p>
+<p>How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing;
+we laughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this
+was partly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always
+hovering on the edge of tragic things.</p>
+<p>Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his
+letters to my father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned
+out so terribly true; but we had our serious moments for all that,
+and one of them was when we were bending over a large chart which
+he had spread out on the table to show me the course of the ship
+through the Great Unknown, leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close
+that our heads almost touched, and I could see myself in his eyes
+as he turned to speak to me.</p>
+<p>"You were a little under the weather yesterday,
+shipmate&mdash;what was the cause of it?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Oh, we . . . we can talk of that another time, can't we?" I
+answered, and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why,
+unless it was because we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the
+doors of each other's souls.</p>
+<p>Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever
+passed so quickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going
+back, or I should be late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards
+we were in the launch, which had returned to fetch us.</p>
+<p>I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming
+off I kissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at
+the top of the companion, taking the compliment to himself,
+returned the salute with affectionate interest, which sent Martin
+and me into our last wild shriek of laughter.</p>
+<p>The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had
+been, everything looking different the other way round, for the
+sunset was like a great celestial fire which had been lighted in
+the western sky, and the big darkening city seemed to have turned
+its face to it.</p>
+<p>Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for
+going down to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some
+machinery that was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and
+while I sat close up to him, looking into his flashing
+eyes&mdash;they were still as blue as the bluest sea&mdash;I said,
+again and again: "How splendid! How glorious! What a great, great
+thing it will be for the world."</p>
+<p>"Won't it?" he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy's.</p>
+<p>Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going,
+and we were back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of
+the sad and serious subject I had intended to speak about I had
+said nothing at all.</p>
+<p>But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for
+as we drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full
+of happy people were returning from the Derby, including costers'
+donkey carts in which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May
+blossom, and the boys were wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at
+the top of their lusty lungs they were waking the echoes of the
+stately avenue with the "Honeysuckle and the Bee."</p>
+<p>"<i>Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,<br />
+Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see</i>."</p>
+<p>As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand
+coach, called the "Phoebus," drawing up at the covered way in front
+of it, and a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to
+us.</p>
+<p>It was Alma, with my husband's and Mr. Eastcliff's party back
+from the races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to
+pay me high compliments on my improved appearance.</p>
+<p>"Didn't I say the river air would do you good, dearest?" she
+said, and then she added something else, which would have been very
+sweet if it had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way
+to make a girl beautiful than to make her happy.</p>
+<p>There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I
+excused myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a
+gentle pressure, I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being
+anxious to get to my own room that I might be alone and go over
+everything in my mind.</p>
+<p>I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said
+and done by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle,
+but above all by Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived
+my day over again in a world of dream.</p>
+<p>My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous
+Derby dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter
+to me in the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I
+went to bed early&mdash;partly in order to get rid of Price that I
+might go over everything again and yet again.</p>
+<p>I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings
+of my memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off
+at last, I thought I heard Martin calling "shipmate," and I said
+"Yes," quite loud, as if he had been with me still in that vague
+and beautiful shadow-land which lies on the frontier of sleep.</p>
+<p>How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!</p>
+<p>Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to
+that moment I did not really know what was happening to me, being
+only conscious of a great flood of joy. I cannot but think it
+strange that, though Nature had been whispering to me for months, I
+did not know what it had been saying. I cannot but think it strange
+that, though I had been looking for love so long without finding
+it, I did not recognise it immediately when it had come to me of
+itself.</p>
+<p>But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the
+sunrise was filling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought
+of Martin was the first that was springing from the mists of sleep
+to my conscious mind, and I was asking myself how it happened that
+I was feeling so glad, while I had so many causes for grief, then
+suddenly&mdash;suddenly as the sun streams through the cloud-scud
+over the sea&mdash;I knew that what had long been predestined had
+happened, that the wondrous new birth, the great revelation, the
+joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in the world had
+come at last to me.</p>
+<p>I was in love.</p>
+<p>I was in love with Martin Conrad.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My joy was short-lived. No sooner had I become aware that I
+loved Martin Conrad, than my conscience told me I had no right to
+do so. I was married, and to love another than my husband was
+sin.</p>
+<p>It would be impossible to say with what terror this thought
+possessed me. It took all the sunlight out of my sky, which a
+moment before had seemed so bright. It came on me like a storm of
+thunder and lightning, sweeping my happiness into the abyss.</p>
+<p>All my religion, everything I had been taught about the sanctity
+of the sacrament of marriage seemed to rise up and accuse me. It
+was not that I was conscious of any sin against my husband. I was
+thinking only of my sin against God.</p>
+<p>The first effect was to make me realise that it was no longer
+possible for me to speak to Martin about my husband and Alma. To do
+this now that I knew I loved him would be deceitful, mean, almost
+treacherous.</p>
+<p>The next effect was to make me see that all thought of a
+separation must now be given up. How could I accuse my husband when
+I was myself in the same position? If he loved another woman, I
+loved another man.</p>
+<p>In my distress and fright I saw only one means of escape either
+from the filthy burden to which I was bound or the consciousness of
+a sinful heart, and that was to cure myself of my passion. I
+determined to do so. I determined to fight against my love for
+Martin Conrad, to conquer it and to crush it.</p>
+<p>My first attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort
+to keep myself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see
+Martin alone.</p>
+<p>For three or four days I did my best to carry out this purpose,
+making one poor excuse after another, when (as happened several
+times a day) he came down to see me&mdash;that I was just going out
+or had just come in, or was tired or unwell.</p>
+<p>It was tearing my heart out to deny myself so, but I think I
+could have borne the pain if I had not realised that I was causing
+pain to him also.</p>
+<p>My maid, whose head was always running on Martin, would come
+hack to my room, after delivering one of my lying excuses, and
+say:</p>
+<p>"You should have seen his face, when I told him you were ill. It
+was just as if I'd driven a knife into him."</p>
+<p>Everybody seemed to be in a conspiracy to push me into Martin's
+arms&mdash;Alma above all others. Being a woman she read my secret,
+and I could see from the first that she wished to justify her own
+conduct in relation to my husband by putting me into the same
+position with Martin.</p>
+<p>"Seen Mr. Conrad to-day?" she would ask.</p>
+<p>"Not to-day," I would answer.</p>
+<p>"Really? And you such old friends! And staying in the same
+hotel, too!"</p>
+<p>When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband
+of his intention of asking Martin to dinner, and thereupon a night
+was fixed and a party invited.</p>
+<p>Martin came, and I was only too happy to meet him in company,
+though the pain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my
+husband and his friends, and the difference of the atmosphere in
+which he lived from that to which I thought I was doomed for ever,
+was almost more than I could bear.</p>
+<p>I think they must have felt it themselves, for though their
+usual conversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings, I
+noticed they were silent while Martin in his rugged, racy poetic
+way (for all explorers are poets) talked of the beauty of the great
+Polar night, the cloudless Polar day, the midnight calm and the
+moonlight on the glaciers, which was the loveliest, weirdest, most
+desolate, yet most entrancing light the world could show.</p>
+<p>"I wonder you don't think of going back to the Antarctic, if
+it's so fascinating," said Alma.</p>
+<p>"I do. Bet your life I do," said Martin, and then he told them
+what he had told me on the launch, but more fully and even more
+rapturously&mdash;the story of his great scheme for saving life and
+otherwise benefiting humanity.</p>
+<p>For hundreds of years man, prompted merely by the love of
+adventure, the praise of achievement, and the desire to know the
+globe he lived on, had been shouldering his way to the hitherto
+inviolable regions of the Poles; but now the time had come to turn
+his knowledge to account.</p>
+<p>"How?" said my husband.</p>
+<p>"By putting himself into such a position," said Martin, "that he
+will be able to predict, six, eight, ten days ahead, the weather of
+a vast part of the navigable and habitable world&mdash;by
+establishing installations of wireless telegraphy as near as
+possible to the long ice-barrier about the Pole from which
+ice-floes and icebergs and blizzards come, so that we can say in
+ten minutes from the side of Mount Erebus to half the southern
+hemisphere, 'Look out. It's coming down,' and thus save millions of
+lives from shipwreck, and hundreds of millions of money."</p>
+<p>"Splendid, by Jove!" said Mr. Eastcliff.</p>
+<p>"Yes, ripping, by jingo!" said Mr. Vivian.</p>
+<p>"A ridiculous dream!" muttered my husband, but not until Martin
+had gone, and then Alma, seeing that I was all aglow, said:</p>
+<p>"What a lovely man! I wonder you don't see more of him, Mary, my
+love. He'll be going to the ends of the earth soon, and then you'll
+be sorry you missed the chance."</p>
+<p>Her words hurt me like the sting of a wasp, but I could not
+resist them, and when some days later Martin called to take me to
+the Geographical Society, where his commander, Lieutenant
+&mdash;&mdash; was to give an account of their expedition, I could
+not find it in my heart to refuse to go.</p>
+<p>Oh, the difference of this world from that in which I had been
+living for the past six months! All that was best in England seemed
+to be there, the men who were doing the work of the world, and the
+women who were their wives and partners.</p>
+<p>The theatre was like the inside of a dish, and I sat by Martin's
+side on the bottom row of seats, just in front of the platform and
+face to face with the commander.</p>
+<p>His lecture, which was illustrated by many photographic lantern
+slides of the exploring party, (including the one that had been
+shown to me on the ship) was very interesting, but terribly
+pathetic; and when he described the hardships they had gone through
+in a prolonged blizzard on a high plateau, with food and fuel
+running low, and no certainty that they would ever see home again,
+I found myself feeling for Martin's hand to make sure that he was
+there.</p>
+<p>Towards the end the commander spoke very modestly of himself,
+saying he could never have reached the 87th parallel if he had not
+had a crew of the finest comrades that ever sailed on a ship.</p>
+<p>"And though they're all splendid fellows," he said, "there's one
+I can specially mention without doing any wrong to the rest, and
+that's the young doctor of our expedition&mdash;Martin Conrad.
+Martin has a scheme of his own for going down to the Antarctic
+again to make a great experiment in the interests of humanity, and
+if and when he goes I say, 'Good luck to him and God bless
+him!'"</p>
+<p>At these generous words there was much applause, during which
+Martin sat blushing like a big boy when he is introduced to the
+girl friends of his sister.</p>
+<p>As for me I did not think any speech could have been so
+beautiful, and I felt as if I could have cried for joy.</p>
+<p>When I got back to the hotel I <i>did</i> cry, but it was for
+another reason. I was thinking of my father and wondering why he
+did not wait.</p>
+<p>"Why, why, why?" I asked myself.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Next day, Martin came rushing down to my sitting-room with a
+sheaf of letters in his hand, saying:</p>
+<p>"That was jolly good of the boss, but look what he has let me in
+for?"</p>
+<p>They were requests from various newspapers for portraits and
+interviews, and particularly from one great London journal for a
+special article to contain an account of the nature and object of
+the proposed experiment.</p>
+<p>"What am I to do?" he said. "I'm all right for stringing gabble,
+but I couldn't <i>write</i> anything to save my soul. Now, you
+could. I'm sure you could. You could write like Robinson Crusoe.
+Why shouldn't you write the article and I'll tell you what to put
+into it?"</p>
+<p>There was no resisting that. And down at the bottom of my secret
+heart I was glad of the excuse to my conscience that I could not
+any longer run away from Martin because I was necessary to help
+him.</p>
+<p>So we sat together all day long, and though it was like shooting
+the rapids to follow Martin's impetuous and imaginative speech, I
+did my best to translate his disconnected outbursts into more
+connected words, and when the article was written and read aloud to
+him he was delighted.</p>
+<p>"Stunning! Didn't I say you could write like Robinson
+Crusoe?"</p>
+<p>In due course it was published and made a deep impression, for
+wherever I went people were talking of it, and though some said
+"Fudge!" and others, like my husband, said "Dreams!" the practical
+result was that the great newspaper started a public subscription
+with the object of providing funds for the realisation of Martin's
+scheme.</p>
+<p>This brought him an immense correspondence, so that every
+morning he came down with an armful of letters and piteous appeals
+to me to help him to reply to them.</p>
+<p>I knew it would be dangerous to put myself in the way of so much
+temptation, but the end of it was that day after day we sat
+together in my sitting-room, answering the inquiries of the
+sceptical, the congratulations of the convinced, and the offers of
+assistance that came from people who wished to join in the
+expedition.</p>
+<p>What a joy it was! It was like the dawn of a new life to me. But
+the highest happiness of all was to protect Martin against himself,
+to save him from his over-generous impulses&mdash;in a word, to
+mother him.</p>
+<p>Many of the letters he received were mere mendicancy. He was not
+rich, yet he could not resist a pitiful appeal, especially if it
+came from a woman, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him
+from ruining himself.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I would see him smuggle a letter into his side pocket,
+with&mdash;</p>
+<p>"H'm! That will do later."</p>
+<p>"What is it?" I would ask.</p>
+<p>"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he would answer.</p>
+<p>"Hand it out, sir," I would say, and then I would find a fierce
+delight in sending six freezing words of refusal to some impudent
+woman who was trying to play upon the tender side of my big-hearted
+boy.</p>
+<p>Oh, it was delightful! My whole being seemed to be renewed. If
+only the dear sweet hours could go on and on for ever!</p>
+<p>Sometimes my husband and Alma would look in upon us at our work,
+and then, while the colour mounted to my eyes, Martin would
+say:</p>
+<p>"I'm fishing with another man's floats, you see."</p>
+<p>"I see," my husband would reply, fixing his monocle and showing
+his front teeth in a painful grin.</p>
+<p>"Just what dear Mary loves, though," Alma would say. "I do
+believe she would rather he sitting in this sunless room, writing
+letters for Mr. Conrad, than wearing her coronet at a King's
+coronation."</p>
+<p>"Just so, ma'am; there <i>are</i> women like that," Martin would
+answer, looking hard at her; and when she had gone, (laughing
+lightly but with the frightened look I had seen before) he would
+say, as if speaking to himself:</p>
+<p>"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to
+put my foot on it."</p>
+<p>At length the climax came. One day Martin rushed downstairs
+almost beside himself in his boyish joy, to say that all the money
+he needed had been subscribed, and that in honour of the maturing
+of the scheme the proprietor of the newspaper was to give a public
+luncheon at one of the hotels, and though no women were to be
+present at the "feed" a few ladies were to occupy seats in a
+gallery, and I was to be one of them.</p>
+<p>I had played with my temptation too long by this time to shrink
+from the dangerous exaltation which I knew the occasion would
+cause, so when the day came I went to the hotel in a fever of
+pleasure and pride.</p>
+<p>The luncheon was nearly over, the speeches were about to begin,
+and the ladies' gallery was buzzing like a hive of bees, when I
+took my seat in it. Two bright young American women sitting next to
+me were almost as excited as myself, and looking down at the men
+through a pair of opera-glasses they were asking each other which
+was Martin, whereupon my vanity, not to speak of my sense of
+possession, was so lifted up that I pointed him out to them, and
+then borrowed their glasses to look at the chairman.</p>
+<p>He seemed to me to have that light of imagination in his eyes
+which was always blazing in Martin's, and when he began to speak I
+thought I caught the note of the same wild passion.</p>
+<p>He said they were that day opening a new chapter in the
+wonderful book of man's story, and though the dangers of the great
+deep might never be entirely overcome, and the wind would continue
+to blow as it listed, yet the perils of the one and the movements
+of the other were going to be known to, and therefore checked by,
+the human family.</p>
+<p>After that, and a beautiful tribute to Martin as a man, (that
+everybody who had met him had come to love him, and that there must
+be something in the great solitudes of the silent white world to
+make men simple and strong and great, as the sea made them staunch
+and true) he drank to the success of the expedition, and called on
+Martin to respond to the toast.</p>
+<p>There was a great deal of cheering when Martin rose, but I was
+so nervous that I hardly heard it. He was nervous too, as I could
+plainly see, for after a few words of thanks, he began to fumble
+the sheets of a speech which he and I had prepared together, trying
+to read it, but losing his place and even dropping his papers.</p>
+<p>Beads of perspiration were starting from my forehead and I knew
+I was making noises in my throat, when all at once Martin threw his
+papers on the table and said, in quite another voice:</p>
+<p>"Ship-mates, I mean gentlemen, I never could write a speech in
+my life, and you see I can't read one, but I know what I want to
+say and if you'll take it as it comes here goes."</p>
+<p>Then in the simple style of a sailor, not always even
+grammatical yet splendidly clear and bold and natural, blundering
+along as he used to do when he was a boy at school and could not
+learn his lessons, but with his blue eyes ablaze, he told of his
+aims and his expectations.</p>
+<p>And when he came to the end he said:</p>
+<p>"His lordship, the chairman, has said something about the good
+effects of the solitudes of Nature on a man's character. I can
+testify to that. And I tell you this&mdash;whatever you are when
+you're up here and have everything you want, it's wonderful strange
+the way you're asking the Lord to stretch out His hand and help you
+when you're down there, all alone and with an empty hungry
+stomach.</p>
+<p>"I don't know where you were last Christmas Day, shipmates . . .
+I mean gentlemen, but I know where I was. I was in the 85th
+latitude, longitude 163, four miles south and thirty west of Mount
+Darwin. It was my own bit of an expedition that my commander has
+made too much of, and I believe in my heart my mates had had enough
+of it. When we got out of our sleeping bags that morning there was
+nothing in sight but miles and miles of rolling waves of snow,
+seven thousand feet up on a windy plateau, with glaciers full of
+crevasses shutting us off from the sea, and not a living thing in
+sight as far as the eye could reach.</p>
+<p>"We were six in company and none of us were too good for
+Paradise, and one&mdash;he was an old Wapping sailor, we called him
+Treacle&mdash;had the name of being a shocking old rip ashore. But
+we remembered what day it was, and we wanted to feel that we
+weren't cut off entirely from the world of Christian men&mdash;our
+brothers and sisters who would be going to church at home. So I dug
+out my little prayer-book that my mother put in my kit going away,
+and we all stood round bare-headed in the snow&mdash;a shaggy old
+lot I can tell you, with chins that hadn't seen a razor for a
+month&mdash;and I read the prayers for the day, the first and
+second Vespers, and Laudate Dominum and then the De Profundis.</p>
+<p>"I think we felt better doing that, but they say the comical and
+the tragical are always chasing each other, which can get in first,
+and it was so with us, for just as I had got to an end with the
+solemn words, 'Out of the depths we cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord
+hear our cry,' in jumps old Treacle in his thickest cockney, 'And
+Gawd bless our pore ole wives and sweethearts fur a-wye.'"</p>
+<p>If Martin said any more nobody heard it. The men below were
+blowing their noses, and the women in the gallery were crying
+openly.</p>
+<p>"Well, the man who can talk like that may open all my letters
+and telegrams," said one of the young American women, who was
+wiping her eyes without shame.</p>
+<p>What I was doing, and what I was looking like, I did not know
+until the lady, who had lent me the opera-glasses leaned over to me
+and said:</p>
+<p>"Excuse me, but are you his wife, may I ask?"</p>
+<p>"Oh no, no," I said nervously and eagerly, but only God knows
+how the word went through and through me.</p>
+<p>I had taken the wrong course, and I knew it. My pride, my joy,
+my happiness were all accusing me, and when I went to bed that
+night I felt as if I had been a guilty woman.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I tried to take refuge in religion. Every day and all day I
+humbly besought the pardon of heaven for the sin of loving Martin
+Conrad.</p>
+<p>The little religious duties which I had neglected since my
+marriage (such as crossing myself at rising from the table) I began
+to observe afresh, and being reminded by Martin's story that I had
+promised my mother to say a De Profundis for her occasionally I now
+said one every day. I thought these exercises would bring me a
+certain relief, but they did not.</p>
+<p>I searched my Missal for words that applied to my sinful state,
+and every night on going to bed I prayed to God to take from me all
+unholy thoughts, all earthly affections. But what was the use of my
+prayers when in the first dream of the first sleep I was rushing
+into Martin's arms?</p>
+<p>It was true that my love for Martin was what the world would
+call a pure love; it had no alloy of any kind; but all the same I
+thought I was living in a condition of adultery&mdash;adultery of
+the heart.</p>
+<p>Early every morning I went to mass, but the sense I used to have
+of returning from the divine sacrifice to the ordinary occupations
+of life with a new spirit and a clean heart I could feel no
+longer.</p>
+<p>I went oftener to confession than I had done before&mdash;twice
+a week to begin with, then every other day, then every day. But the
+old joy, the sense of purity and cleansing, did not come. I thought
+at first the fault might be with my Confessor, for though I knew I
+was in the presence of God, the whispering voice behind the
+grating, which used to thrill me with a feeling of the
+supernatural, was that of a young man, and I asked myself what a
+young priest could know by experience of the deep temptations of
+human love.</p>
+<p>This was at the new Cathedral at Westminster, so I changed to a
+little Catholic church in a kind of mews in Mayfair, and there my
+Confessor was an older man whose quivering voice seemed to search
+the very depths of my being. He was deeply alarmed at my condition
+and counselled me to pray to God night and day to strengthen me
+against temptation.</p>
+<p>"The Evil One is besieging your soul, my child," he said. "Fight
+with him, my daughter."</p>
+<p>I tried to follow my ghostly father's direction, but how hard it
+was to do so! Martin had only to take my hand and look into my eyes
+and all my good resolutions were gone in a moment.</p>
+<p>As a result of the fierce struggle between my heart and my soul
+my health began to fail me. From necessity now, and not from
+design, I had to keep my room, but even there my love for Martin
+was always hanging like a threatening sword over my head.</p>
+<p>My maid Price was for ever singing his praises. He was so
+bright, so cheerful, so strong, so manly; in fact, he was perfect,
+and any woman in the world might be forgiven if she fell in love
+with him.</p>
+<p>Her words were like music in my ears, and sometimes I felt as if
+I wanted to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. But at other
+moments I reproved her, telling her it was very wicked of her to
+think so much of the creature instead of fixing her mind on the
+Creator&mdash;a piece of counsel which made Price, who was all
+woman, open her sparkling black eyes in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>Nearly every morning she brought me a bunch of flowers, which
+Martin had bought at Covent Garden, all glittering from the
+sunshine and damp with the dew. I loved to have them near me, but,
+finding they tempted me to think more tenderly of him who sent
+them, I always contrived by one excuse or another to send them into
+the sitting-room that they might be out of my sight at all
+events.</p>
+<p>After a while Price, remembering my former artifice, began to
+believe that I was only pretending to be ill, in order to draw
+Martin on, and then taking a certain liberty with me, as with a
+child, she reproved me.</p>
+<p>"If I were a lady I couldn't have the heart," she said, "I
+really couldn't. It's all very well for us women, but men don't
+understand such ways. They're only children, men are, when you come
+to know them."</p>
+<p>I began to look upon poor Price as a honeyed fiend sent by Satan
+to seduce me, and to say the truth she sometimes acted up to the
+character. One day she said:</p>
+<p>"If I was tied to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love me,
+and somebody else, worth ten of him was ready and waiting, I would
+take the sweet with the bitter, I would. We women must follow our
+hearts, and why shouldn't we?"</p>
+<p>Then I scolded her dreadfully, asking if she had forgotten that
+she was speaking to her mistress, and a married woman; but all the
+while I knew that it was myself, not my maid, I was angry with, for
+she had only been giving voice to the thoughts that were secretly
+tormenting me.</p>
+<p>I had been in bed about a week when Price came with a letter in
+her hand and a look of triumph in her black eyes and said:</p>
+<p>"There, my lady! What did I tell you? You've had it all your own
+way and now you've driven him off. He has left the hotel and gone
+to live on his ship."</p>
+<p>This frightened me terribly, and partly for that reason I
+ordered her out of the room, telling her she must leave me
+altogether if she ever took such liberties again. But I'm sure she
+saw me, as she was going through the door, take up Martin's letter,
+which I had thrown on to the table, and press it to my lips.</p>
+<p>The letter was of no consequence, it was merely to tell me that
+he was going down to Tilbury for a few days, to take possession of
+his old ship in the name of his company, but it said in a
+postscript:</p>
+<p>"If there's anything I can do for you, pass me the word and I'll
+come up like quick-sticks."</p>
+<p>"What can I do? What can I do?" I thought. Everything my heart
+desired my soul condemned as sinful, and religion had done nothing
+to liberate me from the pains of my guilty passion.</p>
+<p>All this time my husband and Alma were busy with the gaieties of
+the London season, which was then in full swing, with the houses in
+Mayfair being ablaze every night, the blinds up and the windows
+open to cool the overheated rooms in which men and women could be
+seen dancing in closely-packed crowds.</p>
+<p>One night, after Alma and my husband had gone to a reception in
+Grosvenor Square, I had a sudden attack of heart-strain and had to
+be put to bed, whereupon Price, who had realised that I was really
+ill, told Hobson, my husband's valet, to go after his master and
+bring him back immediately.</p>
+<p>"It'll be all as one, but I'll go if you like," said Hobson.</p>
+<p>In half an hour he came back with my husband's answer. "Send for
+a doctor."</p>
+<p>This put Price into a fever of mingled anger and perplexity, and
+not knowing what else to do she telegraphed to Martin on his ship,
+telling him that I was ill and asking what doctor she ought to call
+in to see me.</p>
+<p>Inside an hour a reply came not from Tilbury but from Portsmouth
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Call Doctor &mdash;&mdash; of Brook Street. Am coming up at
+once."</p>
+<p>All this I heard for the first time when Price, with another
+triumphant look, came into my bedroom flourishing Martin's telegram
+as something she had reason to be proud of.</p>
+<p>"You don't mean to say that you telegraphed to Mr. Conrad?" I
+said.</p>
+<p>"Why <i>not?</i>" said Price. "When a lady is ill and her
+husband pays no attention to her, and there's somebody else not far
+off who would give his two eyes to save her a pain in her little
+finger, what is a woman to do?"</p>
+<p>I told her what she was <i>not</i> to do. She was not to call
+the doctor under any circumstances, and when Martin came she was to
+make it plain to him that she had acted on her own
+responsibility.</p>
+<p>Towards midnight he arrived, and Price brought him into my room
+in a long ulster covered with dust. I blushed and trembled at sight
+of him, for his face betrayed the strain and anxiety he had gone
+through on my account, and when he smiled at seeing that I was not
+as ill as he had thought, I was ashamed to the bottom of my
+heart.</p>
+<p>"You'll be sorry you've made such a long journey now that you
+see there's so little amiss with me," I said.</p>
+<p>"Sorry?" he said. "By the holy saints, I would take a longer one
+every night of my life to see you looking so well at the end of
+it."</p>
+<p>His blue eyes were shining like the sun from behind a cloud, and
+the cruellest looks could not have hurt me more.</p>
+<p>I tried to keep my face from expressing the emotion I desired to
+conceal, and asked if he had caught a train easily from Portsmouth,
+seeing he had arrived so early.</p>
+<p>"No. Oh no, there was no train up until eleven o'clock," he
+said.</p>
+<p>"Then how did you get here so soon?" I asked, and though he
+would not tell me at first I got it out of him at last&mdash;he had
+hired a motor-car and travelled the ninety miles to London in two
+hours and a half.</p>
+<p>That crushed me. I could not speak. I thought I should have
+choked. Lying there with Martin at arm's length of me, I was afraid
+of myself, and did not know what I might do next. But at last, with
+a great effort to control myself, I took his hand and kissed it,
+and then turned my face to the wall.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards
+noon, my husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious
+apology, saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I
+said:</p>
+<p>"James, I want you to take me home."</p>
+<p>"Home? You mean . . . Castle Raa?"</p>
+<p>"Y-es."</p>
+<p>He hesitated, and I began to plead with him, earnestly and
+eagerly, not to deny me what I asked.</p>
+<p>"Take me home, I beg, I pray."</p>
+<p>At length, seeming to think I must be homesick, he said:</p>
+<p>"Well, you know my views about that God-forsaken place, but the
+season's nearly at an end, and I don't mind going back on one
+condition&mdash;that you raise no objection to my inviting a few
+friends to liven it up a bit?"</p>
+<p>"It is your house," I said. "You must do as you please in
+it."</p>
+<p>"Very good; that's settled," he said, getting up to go. "And I
+dare say it will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this
+church-going and confessing to priests, who are always depressing
+people even when they're not making mischief."</p>
+<p>Hardly had my husband left me when Alma came into my
+sitting-room in the most affectionate and insincere of her
+moods.</p>
+<p>"My poor, dear sweet child," she said. "If I'd had the least
+idea you were feeling so badly I shouldn't have allowed Jimmy to
+stay another minute at that tiresome reception. But how good it was
+of Mr. Conrad to come all that way to see you! That's what I call
+being a friend now!"</p>
+<p>Then came the real object of her visit&mdash;I saw it
+coming.</p>
+<p>"I hear you're to have a house-party at Castle Raa. Jimmy's in
+his room writing piles of invitations. He has asked me and I should
+love to go, but of course I cannot do so without <i>you</i> wish
+it. Do you?"</p>
+<p>What could I say? What I <i>did</i> say I scarcely know. I only
+know that at the next minute Alma's arms were round my neck, and
+she was saying:</p>
+<p>"You dear, sweet, unselfish little soul! Come let me kiss
+you."</p>
+<p>It was done. I had committed myself. After all what right had I
+to raise myself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter,
+anyway? I was flying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to
+save my husband from his.</p>
+<p>Price had been in the room during this interview and when it was
+over I was ashamed to look at her.</p>
+<p>"I can't understand you, my lady; I really can't," she said.</p>
+<p>Next day I wrote a little letter to Martin on the <i>Scotia</i>
+telling him of our change of plans, but forbidding him to trouble
+to come up to say good-bye, yet half hoping he would disregard my
+injunction.</p>
+<p>He did. Before I left my bedroom next morning I heard his voice
+in the sitting-room talking to Price, who with considerable
+emphasis was giving her views of Alma.</p>
+<p>When I joined him I thought his face (which had grown to be very
+powerful) looked hard and strained; but his voice was as soft as
+ever while he said I was doing right in going home and that my
+native air must be good for me.</p>
+<p>"But what's this Price tells me&mdash;that Madame is going with
+you?"</p>
+<p>I tried to make light of that, but I broke down badly, for his
+eyes were on me, and I could see that he thought I was concealing
+the truth.</p>
+<p>For some minutes he looked perplexed, as if trying to understand
+how it came to pass that sickening, as he believed I was, at the
+sight of my husband's infidelities I was yet carrying the
+provocative cause of them away with me, and then he said again:</p>
+<p>"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to
+put my foot on it. I will, too, one of these days&mdash;bet your
+life I will."</p>
+<p>It hurt me to hide anything from him, but how could I tell him
+that it was not from Alma I was flying but from himself?</p>
+<p>When the day came for our departure I hoped I might get away
+without seeing Martin again. We did get out of the hotel and into
+the railway station, yet no sooner was I seated in the carriage
+than (in the cruel war that was going on within me) I felt
+dreadfully down that he was not there to see me off.</p>
+<p>But at the very last moment, just as Alma with her spaniel under
+her arm, and my husband with his terrier on a strap, were about to
+step into the train, up came Martin like a gust of mountain
+wind.</p>
+<p>"Helloa!" he cried. "I shall be seeing you soon. Everything's
+settled about the expedition. We're to sail the first week in
+September, so as to get the summer months in the Antarctic. But
+before that I must go over to the island to say good-bye to the old
+folks, and I'll see you at your father's I suppose."</p>
+<p>Then Alma gave my husband a significant glance and said:</p>
+<p>"But, Mary, my love, wouldn't it be better for Mr. Conrad to
+come to Castle Raa? You won't be able to go about very much.
+Remember your delicate condition, you know."</p>
+<p>"Of course, why of course," said my husband. "That's quite true,
+and if Mr. Conrad will do me the honour to accept my hospitality
+for a few days. . . ."</p>
+<p>It was what I wanted above everything on earth, and yet I
+said:</p>
+<p>"No, no! It wouldn't be fair. Martin will be too busy at the
+last moment."</p>
+<p>But Martin himself jumped in eagerly with:</p>
+<p>"Certainly! Delighted! Greatest pleasure in the world."</p>
+<p>And then, while Alma gave my husband a look of arch triumph to
+which he replied with a painful smile, Martin leaned over to me and
+whispered"</p>
+<p>"Hush! I want to! I must!" though what he meant by that I never
+knew.</p>
+<p>He continued to look at me with a tender expression until we
+said good-bye; but after the carriage door had been closed and the
+engine had throbbed, and the guard had whistled, I thought I had
+never seen his strong face so stern as when the train moved from
+the platform.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>We reached Ellan towards the close of the following day. It was
+the height of the holiday season, and the island seemed to be
+ablaze with lights.</p>
+<p>Two motor-cars were waiting for us at the pier, and in a little
+while we were driving out of Blackwater through congested masses of
+people who were rambling aimlessly through the principal
+streets.</p>
+<p>Our way was across a stone bridge that crossed the harbour at
+its inner end, and then up a hill that led to a headland
+overlooking the sea. Within half an hour we drew up at a pair of
+large gate posts which were much decayed and leaning heavily out of
+the perpendicular.</p>
+<p>The chauffeur of the first of our ears got down to open the
+gate, and after it had clashed to behind us, we began to ascend a
+very steep drive that was bordered by tall elm trees. It was now
+almost dark, and the rooks, which had not yet gone off to the
+mountains, were making their evening clamour.</p>
+<p>"Well, my dear, you're at home at last, and much good may it do
+you," said my husband.</p>
+<p>I made no answer to this ungracious speech, but Alma was all
+excitement.</p>
+<p>"So this is Castle Raa! What a fascinating old place!" she said,
+and as we drove through the park she reached out of the car to
+catch a first glimpse of the broad terraces and winding ways to the
+sea which had been reflected in her memory since she was a
+child.</p>
+<p>I felt no such anxiety. Never did a young bride approach the
+home of her husband with less curiosity, but as our motor-car
+toiled up the drive I could not help seeing the neglected condition
+of the land, with boughs of trees lying where they had fallen in
+the storms, as well as broken gates half off their hinges and
+swinging to the wind.</p>
+<p>The house itself, when we came in sight of it, was a large
+castellated building with many lesser turrets and one lofty
+octagonal tower, covered entirely with ivy, which, being apparently
+unshorn for years, hung in long trailers down the walls, and gave
+the whole pile the appearance of a huge moss-covered rock of the
+sea planted on a promontory of the land.</p>
+<p>As our car went thundering up to the great hall door nearly the
+whole of the servants and some of the tenant farmers (under the
+direction of the tall, sallow man who had been my husband's
+guardian in former days, and was now his steward) were waiting to
+welcome us, as well as Lady Margaret Anselm, who was still reserved
+and haughty in her manner, though pleasant enough with me.</p>
+<p>My husband nodded to all, shook hands with some, presented Alma
+to his aunt as "one of Mary's old school friends," (a designation
+which, as I could see, had gone ahead of her) and then we passed
+into the house.</p>
+<p>I found the inside corresponded with the outside in its
+appearance of neglect and decay, the big square hall having rusty
+and disjointed armour on its wainscotted walls and the mark of
+water on the floor, which had come from a glass dome over the well
+of the stairs, for it had rained while we were on the sea.</p>
+<p>The drawing-room had faded curtains over the windows, faded
+velvet on the square sofa and stiff chairs, faded carpets, faded
+samplers, and faded embroidery on faded screens.</p>
+<p>The dining-room (the sedate original of my father's rather
+garish copy) was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund
+portraits of the male O'Neills from the early ones of the family
+who had been Lords of Ellan down to the "bad Lord Raa," who had
+sworn at my grandmother on the high road.</p>
+<p>I felt as if no woman could have made her home here for at least
+a hundred years, and I thought the general atmosphere of the house
+was that of the days when spendthrift noblemen, making the island a
+refuge from debt, spent their days in gambling and their nights in
+drinking bumpers from bowls of whiskey punch to the nameless
+beauties they had left "in town."</p>
+<p>They were all gone, all dead as the wood of the worm-eaten
+wainscotting, but the sound of their noisy merry-making seemed to
+cling to the rafters still, and as I went up to my rooms the broad
+oaken staircase seemed to be creaking under their drunken
+footsteps.</p>
+<p>My own apartments, to which Lady Margaret conducted me, were on
+the southern side of the house&mdash;a rather stuffy bedroom with
+walls covered by a kind of pleated chintz, and a boudoir with a
+stone balcony that had a flight of steps going down to a terrace of
+the garden, which overlooked a glen and had a far view of the
+sea.</p>
+<p>On the opposite side of the landing outside (which was not
+immediately off the great staircase though open to the view of it)
+there was a similar suite of rooms which I thought might be my
+husband's, but I was told they were kept for a guest.</p>
+<p>Being left alone I had taken off my outer things and was
+standing on my balcony, listening to the dull hum of the water in
+the glen, the rustle of the trees above it, the surge of the sea on
+the rocks below, the creaking of a rusty weathercock and the
+striking of a court-yard clock, when I also heard the toot and
+throb of another motor-car, and as soon as it came up I saw that it
+contained Aunt Bridget in the half-moon bonnet and Betsy Beauty,
+who was looking more than ever like a country belle.</p>
+<p>When I went down to the drawing-room Lady Margaret was pouring
+out tea for them, and at sight of me Aunt Bridget cried,</p>
+<p>"Sakes alive, here she is herself!"</p>
+<p>"But how pale and pinched and thin!" said Betsy Beauty.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense, girl, that's only natural," said my Aunt Bridget,
+with something like a wink; and then she went on to say that she
+had just been telling her ladyship that if I felt lonely and a
+little helpless on first coming home Betsy would be pleased to
+visit me.</p>
+<p>Before I could reply my husband came in, followed shortly by
+Alma, who was presented as before, as "Mary's old school-fellow";
+and then, while Betsy talked to Alma and my husband to his
+kinswoman, Aunt Bridget, in an undertone, addressed herself to
+me.</p>
+<p>"You're that way, aren't you? . . . No? Goodness me, girl, your
+father <i>will</i> be disappointed!"</p>
+<p>Just then a third motor-car came throbbing up to the house, and
+Betsy who was standing by the window cried:</p>
+<p>"It's Uncle Daniel with Mr. Curphy and Nessy."</p>
+<p>"Nessy, of course," said Aunt Bridget grumpily, and then she
+told me in a confidential whisper that she was a much-injured woman
+in regard to "that ungrateful step-daughter," who was making her
+understand the words of Scripture about the pang that was sharper
+than a serpent's tooth.</p>
+<p>As the new-comers entered I saw that Nessy had developed an old
+maid's idea of smartness, and that my father's lawyer was more than
+ever like an over-fatted fish; but my father himself (except that
+his hair was whiter) was the same man still, with the same heavy
+step, the same loud voice and the same tempestuous gaiety.</p>
+<p>"All here? Good! Glad to be home, I guess! Strong and well and
+hearty, I suppose? . . . Yes, sir, yes! I'm middling myself, sir.
+Middling, sir, middling!"</p>
+<p>During these rugged salutations I saw that Alma, with the bad
+manners of a certain type of society woman, looked on with a
+slightly impertinent air of amused superiority, until she
+encountered my father's masterful eyes, which nobody in the world
+could withstand.</p>
+<p>After a moment my father addressed himself to me.</p>
+<p>"Well, gel," he said, taking me by the shoulders, as he did in
+Rome, "you must have cut a dash in Egypt, I guess. Made the money
+fly, didn't you? No matter! My gold was as good as anybody else's,
+and I didn't grudge it. You'll clear me of that, anyway."</p>
+<p>Then there was some general talk about our travels, about
+affairs on the island (Mr. Curphy saying, with a laugh and a glance
+in my direction, that things were going so well with my father that
+if all his schemes matured he would have no need to wait for a
+descendant to become the "uncrowned King of Ellan"), and finally
+about Martin Conrad, whose great exploits had become known even in
+his native country.</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" said my father. "I wouldn't have
+believed it of him. I wouldn't really. Just a neighbour lad without
+a penny at him. And now the world's trusting him with fifty
+thousand pounds, they're telling me!"</p>
+<p>"Well, many are called but few are chosen," said Mr. Curphy with
+another laugh.</p>
+<p>After that, and some broken conversation, Aunt Bridget expressed
+a desire to see the house, as the evening was closing in and they
+must soon be going back.</p>
+<p>Lady Margaret thereupon took her, followed by the rest of us,
+over the principal rooms of the Castle; and it was interesting to
+see the awe with which she looked upon everything&mdash;her voice
+dropping to a whisper in the dining-room. I remember, as if the
+scene of carousing of the old roysterers had been a sort of
+sanctuary.</p>
+<p>My father, less impressed, saw nothing but a house in bad
+repair, and turning to my husband, who had been obviously ill at
+ease, he said:</p>
+<p>"Go on like this much longer, son-in-law, and you'll be charging
+two-pence a head to look at your ruins. Guess I must send my
+architect over to see what he can do for you."</p>
+<p>Then taking me aside he made his loud voice as low as he could
+and said:</p>
+<p>"What's this your Aunt Bridget tells me? Nine months married and
+no sign yet? Tut, tut! That won't do, gel, that won't do."</p>
+<p>I tried to tell him not to spend money on the Castle if he
+intended to do so in expectation of an heir, but my heart was in my
+mouth and what I really said I do not know. I only know that my
+father looked at me for a moment as if perplexed, and then burst
+into laughter.</p>
+<p>"I see! I see!" he said. "It's a doctor you want. I must send
+Conrad to put a sight on you. It'll be all right, gel, it'll be all
+right! Your mother was like that when you were coming."</p>
+<p>As we returned to the hall Betsy Beauty whispered that she was
+surprised Mr. Eastcliff had married, but she heard from Madame that
+we were to have a house-party soon, and she hoped I would not
+forget her.</p>
+<p>Then Aunt Bridget, who had been eyeing Alma darkly, asked me who
+and what she was and where she came from, whereupon I (trying to
+put the best face on things) explained that she was the daughter of
+a rich New York banker. After that Aunt Bridget's countenance
+cleared perceptibly and she said:</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, of course! I thought she had a quality toss with
+her."</p>
+<p>The two motor-cars had been drawn up to the door, and the two
+parties had taken their seats in them when my father, looking about
+him, said to my husband:</p>
+<p>"Your garden is as rough as a thornbush, son-in-law. I must send
+Tommy the Mate to smarten it up a bit. So long! So long!"</p>
+<p>At the next moment they were gone, and I was looking longingly
+after them. God knows my father's house had never been more than a
+stepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to
+it and felt like a child who was being left behind at school.</p>
+<p>What had I gained, by running away from London? Nothing at all.
+Already I knew I had brought my hopeless passion with me.</p>
+<p>And now I was alone.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Next day Lady Margaret came to my room to say good-bye, telling
+me she had only stayed at Castle Raa to keep house and make ready
+for me, and must now return to her own home, which was in
+London.</p>
+<p>I was sorry, for my heart had warmed to her, and when I stood at
+the door and saw her drive off with my husband to catch the
+afternoon steamer, I felt I had lost both sympathy and
+protection.</p>
+<p>Alma's feelings were less troubled, and as we turned back into
+the house I could see that she was saying to herself:</p>
+<p>"Thank goodness, <i>she's</i> gone away."</p>
+<p>A day or two later Doctor Conrad came, according to my father's
+instructions, and I was glad to see his close-cropped iron-grey
+head coming up the stairs towards my room.</p>
+<p>Naturally our first conversation was about Martin, who had
+written to tell his parents of our meeting in London and to
+announce his intended visit. It was all very exciting, and now his
+mother was working morning and night at the old cottage, to prepare
+for the arrival of her son. Such scrubbing and scouring! Such
+taking up of carpets and laying them down again, as if the darling
+old thing were expecting a prince!</p>
+<p>"It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she's done with it,"
+said the Doctor.</p>
+<p>"I'm sure it will," I said. "It always was, and it always will
+be."</p>
+<p>"And how are we ourselves," said the doctor. "A little below
+par, eh? Any sickness? No? Nausea? No? Headache and a feeling of
+lassitude, then? No?"</p>
+<p>After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking
+puzzled, when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark
+any longer, I told him there was nothing amiss with my health, but
+I was unhappy and had been so since the time of my marriage.</p>
+<p>"I see," he said. "It's your mind and not your body that is
+sick?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"I'll speak to Father Dan," he said. "Good-bye! God bless
+you!"</p>
+<p>Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her
+softest mode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from
+extreme nervous exhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and
+anxieties of every kind.</p>
+<p>"So if there's anything I can do while I'm here, dearest, . . .
+such as looking after the house and the servants. . . . No, no,
+don't deny me; it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . . So we'll
+say that's settled, shall we? . . . You dear, sweet darling
+creature!"</p>
+<p>I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside
+two days I realised that Alma had taken possession of the house,
+and was ordering and controlling everything.</p>
+<p>Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to
+gain by it&mdash;the housekeeper in particular&mdash;for Alma was
+no skinflint and she was making my husband's money flow like water,
+but it was less agreeable to my maid, who said:</p>
+<p>"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no
+interest in anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll
+walk over the mistress herself before long&mdash;mark my word but
+she will."</p>
+<p>It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that
+Price came to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and
+he was such a strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if
+his face was that of a child, a woman or a dear old man.</p>
+<p>I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying
+downstairs and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat
+(or so it seemed) as when I was a child and made cupboards of its
+vertical pockets, carrying the same funny little bag which he had
+taken to Rome and used for his surplice at funerals, and mopping
+his forehead and flicking his boots with a red print handkerchief,
+for the day was hot and the roads were dusty.</p>
+<p>He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he
+would have tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from the
+Presbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he
+would not stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, "if it would not
+be troublesome and inconvenient."</p>
+<p>So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it
+to the guest's room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir
+immediately.</p>
+<p>But hardly had I taken him upstairs and we had got seated in my
+private room, when the maid knocked at the door to say that the
+housekeeper wished to speak with me, and on going out, and closing
+the door behind me, I found her on the landing, a prim little
+flinty person with quick eyes, thin lips and an upward lift of her
+head.</p>
+<p>"Sorry, my lady, but it won't be convenient for his reverence to
+stay in the house to-night," she said.</p>
+<p>"Why so?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Because Madame has ordered all the rooms to be got ready for
+the house-party, and this one," (pointing to the guest's room
+opposite) "is prepared for Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff, and we don't
+know how soon they may arrive."</p>
+<p>I felt myself flushing up to the eyes at the woman's impudence,
+and it added to my anger that Alma herself was standing at the head
+of the stairs, looking on and listening. So with a little spurt of
+injured pride I turned severely on the one while really speaking to
+the other, and said:</p>
+<p>"Be good enough to make this room ready for his reverence
+without one moment's delay, and please remember for the future,
+that I am mistress in this house, and your duty is to obey me and
+nobody else whatever."</p>
+<p>As I said this and turned back to my boudoir, I saw that Alma's
+deep eyes had a sullen look, and I felt that she meant to square
+accounts with me some day; but what she did was done at once, for
+going downstairs (as I afterwards heard from Price) she met my
+husband in the hall, where, woman-like, she opened her battery upon
+him at his weakest spot, saying:</p>
+<p>"Oh, I didn't know your wife was priest-ridden."</p>
+<p>"Priest-ridden?"</p>
+<p>"Precisely," and then followed an explanation of what had
+happened, with astonishing embellishments which made my husband
+pale with fury.</p>
+<p>Meantime I was alone with Father Dan in my room, and while I
+poured out his tea and served him with bread and butter, he talked
+first about Martin (as everybody seemed to do when speaking to me),
+saying:</p>
+<p>"He was always my golden-headed boy, and it's a mighty proud man
+I am entirely to hear the good news of him."</p>
+<p>More of the same kind there was, all music to my ears, and then
+Father Dan came to closer quarters, saying Doctor Conrad had
+dropped a hint that I was not very happy.</p>
+<p>"Tell your old priest everything, my child, and if there is
+anything he can do. . . ."</p>
+<p>Without waiting for more words I sank to my knees at his feet,
+and poured out all my troubles&mdash;telling him my marriage had
+been a failure; that the sanctifying grace which he had foretold as
+the result of the sacrament of holy wedlock had not come to pass;
+that not only did I not love my husband, but my husband loved
+another woman, who was living here with us in this very house.</p>
+<p>Father Dan was dreadfully distressed. More than once while I was
+speaking he crossed himself and said, "Lord and His Holy Mother
+love us;" and when I came to an end he began to reproach himself
+for everything, saying that he ought to have known that our lad
+(meaning Martin) did not write those terrible letters without being
+certain they were true, and that from the first day my husband came
+to our parish the sun had been darkened by his shadow.</p>
+<p>"But take care," he said. "I've told nobody about the compact we
+made with your husband&mdash;nobody but our Blessed Lady
+herself&mdash;and you mustn't think of that as a way out of your
+marriage. No, nor of any other way, no matter what, which the
+world, and the children of the world, may talk about."</p>
+<p>"But I can't bear it, I can't bear it," I cried.</p>
+<p>"Hush! Hush! Don't say that, my daughter. Think of it as one of
+the misfortunes of life which we all have to suffer. How many poor
+women have to bear the sickness and poverty, not to speak of the
+drunkenness and death, of their husbands! Do they think they have a
+right to run away from all that&mdash;to break the sacred vows of
+their marriage on account of it? No, my child, no, and neither must
+you. Some day it will all come right. You'll see it will. And
+meantime by the memory of your mother&mdash;that blessed saint whom
+the Lord has made one of his own. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Then what can I do?"</p>
+<p>"Pray, my child, pray for strength to bear your trials and to
+resist all temptation. Say a rosary for the Blessed Virgin every
+morning before breaking your fast. I'll say a rosary, too. You'll
+see yet this is only God's love for you, and you'll welcome His
+holy will."</p>
+<p>While my dear father and friend was counselling me so I heard my
+husband speaking in his loud, grating tones on the landing outside,
+and before I could rise from my knees he had burst open the door
+and entered the room.</p>
+<p>His face was deadly white and he was like a man out of his right
+mind.</p>
+<p>"Mary," he said, looking down at me where I knelt with my hands
+crossed on my bosom, "when did I give you permission to introduce a
+priest into my house? Isn't it enough for a man to have a wife who
+is a Catholic without having the church and its ministers shunted
+into his home without his permission?"</p>
+<p>I was so taken aback by this furious assault that at first I
+could not speak, but Father Dan interposed to defend me, saying
+with beautiful patience, that his visit had been quite unexpected
+on my part, and that I had asked him to stay overnight only because
+he was an old man, and had had a long walk from his parish.</p>
+<p>"I'm much obliged to your reverence," said my husband, who was
+quivering with fury, "but my wife is perfectly capable of answering
+for herself without your assistance, and as for your parish you
+would have done better to stay there instead of coming to meddle in
+this one."</p>
+<p>"Aren't you measuring me by your own yard, sir?" said Father
+Dan, and at that straight thrust my husband broke into ungovernable
+rage.</p>
+<p>"Everybody knows what a Popish priest is," he said. "A
+meddlesome busybody who pokes his nose into other men's secrets.
+But priest or no priest, I'll have no man coming to my house to
+make mischief between husband and wife."</p>
+<p>"Are you sure," said Father Dan, "that some woman isn't in your
+house already, making mischief between wife and husband?"</p>
+<p>That thrust too went home. My husband looked at me with flashing
+eyes and then said:</p>
+<p>"As I thought! You've been sent for to help my wife to make a
+great to-do of her imaginary grievances. You're to stay in the
+house too, and before long we'll have you setting up as master here
+and giving orders to my servants! But not if I know it! . . . Your
+reverence, if you have any respect for your penitent, you'll please
+be good enough to leave my wife to <i>my</i> protection."</p>
+<p>I saw that Father Dan had to gulp down his gathering anger, but
+he only said:</p>
+<p>"Say no more, my lord. No true priest ever comes between a man
+and the wife whom God has given him. It's his business to unite
+people, not to put them apart. As for this dear child, I have loved
+her since she was an infant in arms, and never so much as at the
+present speaking, so I don't need to learn my duty from one who
+appears to care no more for her than for the rind of a lemon. I'll
+go, sir," said the old man, drawing himself up like a wounded lion,
+"but it's not to your protection I leave her&mdash;it's to that of
+God's blessed and holy love and will."</p>
+<p>My husband had gone before the last words were spoken, but I
+think they must have followed him as he went lunging down the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>During this humiliating scene a hot flush of shame had come to
+my cheeks and I wanted to tell Father Dan not to let it grieve him,
+but I could do nothing but stoop and kiss his hand.</p>
+<p>Meantime two or three of the servants had gathered on the
+landing at the sound of my husband's voice, and among them was the
+flinty housekeeper holding the Father's little bag, and she gave it
+back to him as he passed her.</p>
+<p>Then, all being over, the woman came into my room, with an
+expression of victorious mischief in her eyes and said:</p>
+<p>"Your ladyship had better have listened to them as knows, you
+see."</p>
+<p>I was too benumbed by that cruel stroke to reply, but Price said
+enough for both of us.</p>
+<p>"If them as knows," she said, "don't get out of this room inside
+two seconds they'll get their ugly faces slapped."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>I thought I had reached the end of my power of endurance, and
+that night, before going to bed, while my maid was taking down my
+hair, and I was thinking of Martin and asking myself if I should
+put up with my husband's brutalities any longer, I heard her
+say:</p>
+<p>"If I were a lady married to the wrong man, I'd have the right
+one if I had to go through the divorce court for him."</p>
+<p>Now that was so exactly the thought that was running riot in my
+own tormented mind, that I flew at her like a wild cat, asking her
+how she dared to say anything so abominably wicked, and telling her
+to take her notice there and then.</p>
+<p>But hardly had she left the room, when my heart was in my mouth
+again, and I was trembling with fear lest she should take me at my
+word and then the last of my friends would be gone.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Within the next few days the house-party arrived. There would be
+twenty of them at least, not counting valets and ladies' maids, so
+that large as Castle Raa was the house was full.</p>
+<p>They were about equally divided as to sex and belonged chiefly
+to my husband's class, but they included Mr. Eastcliff's beautiful
+wife, Camilla, and Alma's mother, who, much to Alma's chagrin, had
+insisted upon being invited.</p>
+<p>My husband required me to receive them, and I did so, though I
+was only their nominal hostess, and they knew it and treated me
+accordingly.</p>
+<p>I should be ashamed to speak of the petty slights they put upon
+me, how they consulted Alma in my presence and otherwise wounded my
+pride as a woman by showing me that I had lost my own place in my
+husband's house.</p>
+<p>I know there are people of the same class who are kind and
+considerate, guileless and pure, the true nobility of their
+country&mdash;women who are devoted to their homes and children,
+and men who spend their wealth and strength for the public
+good&mdash;but my husband's friends were not of that kind.</p>
+<p>They were vain and proud, selfish, self-indulgent, thoroughly
+insincere, utterly ill-mannered, shockingly ill-informed,
+astonishingly ill-educated (capable of speaking several languages
+but incapable of saying a sensible word in any of them), living and
+flourishing in the world without religion, without morality, and
+(if it is not a cant phrase to use) without God.</p>
+<p>What their conduct was when out shooting, picnicking, driving,
+riding, motoring, and yachting (for Mr. Eastcliff had arrived in
+his yacht, which was lying at anchor in the port below the glen), I
+do not know, for "doctor's orders" were Alma's excuse for not
+asking me to accompany them.</p>
+<p>But at night they played bridge (their most innocent amusement),
+gambled and drank, banged the piano, danced "Grizzly Bears," sang
+duets from the latest musical comedies, and then ransacked the
+empty houses of their idle heads for other means of killing the one
+enemy of their existence&mdash;Time.</p>
+<p>Sometimes they would give entertainments in honour of their
+dogs, when all the animals of all the guests (there seemed to be a
+whole kennel of them) would be dressed up in coats of silk and
+satin with pockets and pocket-handkerchiefs, and then led
+downstairs to the drawing-room, where Alma's wheezy spaniel and my
+husband's peevish terrier were supposed to receive them.</p>
+<p>Sometimes they would give "freak dinners," when the guests
+themselves would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the
+women in men's, the male imitating the piping treble of the female
+voices, and the female the over-vowelled slang of the male, until,
+tiring of this foolishness, they would end up by flinging the food
+at the pictures on the walls, the usual pellet being softened bread
+and the favourite target the noses in the family portraits, which,
+hit and covered with a sprawling mess, looked so ridiculous as to
+provoke screams of laughter.</p>
+<p>The talk at table was generally of horses and dogs, but
+sometimes it was of love, courtship and marriage, including
+conjugal fidelity, which was a favourite subject of ridicule, with
+both the women and the men.</p>
+<p>Thus my husband would begin by saying (he often said it in my
+hearing) that once upon a time men took their wives as they took
+their horses, on trial for a year and a day, and "really with some
+women there was something to say for the old custom."</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Vivian would remark that it was "a jolly good idea, by
+Jove," and if he "ever married, by the Lord that's just what he
+would do."</p>
+<p>Then Mr. Eastcliff would say that it was a ridiculous
+superstition that a woman should have her husband all to herself,
+"as if he were a kind of toothbrush which she could not share with
+anybody else," and somebody would add that she might as reasonably
+want her dentist or her hairdresser to be kept for her own use
+only.</p>
+<p>After that the ladies, not to be left behind, would join in the
+off-hand rattle, and one of them would give it as her opinion that
+a wife might have an incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be
+well off.</p>
+<p>"Ugh!" said Alma one night, shrugging her shoulders. "Think of a
+poor woman being tied for life to an entirely faithful
+husband!"</p>
+<p>"I adore the kind of man who goes to the deuce for a
+woman&mdash;Parnell, and Gambetta and Boulanger and that sort,"
+said a "smart" girl of three or four-and-twenty, whereupon Camilla
+Eastcliff (she was a Russian) cried:</p>
+<p>"That's vhy the co-respondents in your divorce courts are so
+sharming. They're like the villayns in the plays&mdash;always so
+dee-lightfully vicked."</p>
+<p>Oh, the sickening horror of it all! Whether it was really moral
+corruption or only affectation and pose, it seemed equally
+shocking, and though I bore as much of it as I could with a
+cheerful face, I escaped as often as possible to the clean
+atmosphere of my own room.</p>
+<p>But even there I was not always allowed to be alone, for Alma's
+mother frequently followed me. She was a plump little person in a
+profuse ornamentation of diamond rings and brooches, with little or
+no education, and a reputation for saying risky things in
+blundering French whereof the principal humour lay in the
+uncertainty as to whether she knew their meaning or not.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless she was the only good-hearted woman in the house,
+and I really believe she thought she was doing a kind act in
+keeping me company. But oh, how I suffered from her long accounts
+of her former "visits" to my house, whereby I learned, without
+wishing to, what her origin had been (the daughter of a London
+postman); what position she had held in Castle Raa in her winsome
+and reckless youth (one that need not be defined); how she had met
+her husband in New York and he had married her to save the
+reputation of his child; and finally how the American ladies of
+society had refused to receive her, and she had vowed to be
+revenged on them by marrying Alma to the highest title in Europe
+that could be bought with money.</p>
+<p>"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of
+harm to those people. They used to think I thought myself better
+blood nor they were, but I never thought no such thing, I assure
+you. Only when they turned nasty after my marriage I made up my
+mind&mdash;just as your father did&mdash;as Alma should marry a
+bigger husband nor any of them, even if he wasn't worth a dime and
+'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead."</p>
+<p>But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating
+than her sympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to
+be mistress of a noble house&mdash;how could it be expected of
+me?&mdash;whereas Alma was just as if she had been born to it, and
+therefore it was lucky for me that I had her there to show me how
+to do things.</p>
+<p>"Alma's gotten such <i>ton!</i> Such distangy manners!" she
+would say.</p>
+<p>The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt
+before, the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When
+I looked into the future and saw nothing before me but years of
+this ignoble bondage, I told myself that nothing&mdash;no sacrament
+or contract, no law of church or state&mdash;could make me endure
+it.</p>
+<p>From day to day my maid came to me with insidious hints about
+Alma and my husband. I found myself listening to them. I also found
+myself refreshing my memory of the hideous scene in Paris, and
+wondering why I had condoned the offence by staying an hour longer
+under my husband's protection.</p>
+<p>And then there was always another force at work within
+me&mdash;my own secret passion. Though sometimes I felt myself to
+be a wretched sinner and thought the burden I had to bear was
+heaven's punishment for my guilty love, at other times my whole
+soul rose in revolt, and I cried out not merely for separation from
+my husband but for absolute sundering.</p>
+<p>Twice during the painful period of the house-party I heard from
+Martin. His first letter was full of accounts of the far-reaching
+work of his expedition&mdash;the engaging of engineers,
+electricians, geologists and masons, and the shipping of great
+stores of wireless apparatus&mdash;for his spirits seemed to be
+high, and life was full of good things for him.</p>
+<p>His second letter told me that everything was finished, and he
+was to visit the island the next week, going first to "the old
+folks" and coming to me for a few days immediately before setting
+sail.</p>
+<p>That brought matters to a head, and compelled me to take
+action.</p>
+<p>It may have been weak of me, but not wanting a repetition of the
+scene with Father Dan, (knowing well that Martin would not bear it
+with the same patience) I sent the second letter to Alma, asking if
+the arrangement would be agreeable. She returned it with the
+endorsement (scribbled in pencil across the face), "Certainly;
+anything to please <i>you</i>, dear."</p>
+<p>I submitted even to that. Perhaps I was a poor-spirited thing,
+wanting in proper pride, but I had a feeling that it was not worth
+while to waste myself in little squibs of temper, because an
+eruption was coming (I was sure of that) in which Martin would be
+concerned on my side, and then everybody and everything would be
+swept out of the path of my life for ever.</p>
+<p>Martin came. In due course I read in the insular newspapers of
+his arrival on the island&mdash;how the people had turned out in
+crowds to cheer him at the pier, and how, on reaching our own
+village the neighbours (I knew the names of all of them) had met
+him at the railway station and taken him to his mother's house, and
+then lighted fires on the mountains for his welcome home.</p>
+<p>It cut me to the heart's core to think of Martin amid thrilling
+scenes like those while I was here among degrading scenes like
+these. My love for Martin was now like a wound and I resolved that,
+come what might, before he reached Castle Raa I should liberate
+myself from the thraldom of my false position.</p>
+<p>Father Dan's counsels had faded away by this time. Though I had
+prayed for strength to bear my burden there had been no result, and
+one morning, standing before the figure of the Virgin in my
+bedroom, I felt an impulse to blow out her lamp and never to light
+it again.</p>
+<p>The end of it all was that I determined to see the Bishop and my
+father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, and perhaps my father himself, that
+I might know one way or the other where I was, and what was to
+become of me. But how to do this I could not see, having a houseful
+of people who were nominally my guests.</p>
+<p>Fortune&mdash;ill-fortune&mdash;favoured me. News came that my
+father had suddenly fallen ill of some ailment that puzzled the
+doctors, and making this my reason and excuse I spoke to my
+husband, asking if I might go home for two or three days.</p>
+<p>"Why not?" he said, in the tone of one who meant, "Who's keeping
+you?"</p>
+<p>Then in my weakness I spoke to Alma, who answered:</p>
+<p>"Certainly, my sweet girl. We shall miss you <i>dreadfully</i>,
+but it's your duty. And then you'll see that <i>dear</i> Mr. . . .
+What d'ye callum?"</p>
+<p>Finally, feeling myself a poor, pitiful hypocrite, I apologised
+for my going away to the guests also, and they looked as if they
+might say: "We'll survive it, perhaps."</p>
+<p>The night before my departure my maid said:</p>
+<p>"Perhaps your ladyship has forgotten that my time's up, but I'll
+stay until you return if you want me to."</p>
+<p>I asked her if she would like to stay with me altogether and she
+said:</p>
+<p>"Indeed I should, my lady. Any woman would like to stay with a
+good mistress, if she <i>is</i> a little quick sometimes. And if
+you don't want me to go to your father's I may be of some use to
+you here before you come back again."</p>
+<p>I saw that her mind was still running on divorce, but I did not
+reprove her now, for mine was turning in the same direction.</p>
+<p>Next morning most of the guests came to the hail door to see me
+off, and they gave me a shower of indulgent smiles as the motor-car
+moved away.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"FIFTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>FIFTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Before going to my father's house I went to the Bishop's.
+Bishop's Court is at the other side of the island, and it was noon
+before I drove under its tall elm trees, in which a vast concourse
+of crows seemed to be holding a sort of general congress.</p>
+<p>The Bishop was then at his luncheon, and after luncheon (so his
+liveried servant told me) he usually took a siesta. I have always
+thought it was unfortunate for my interview that it came between
+his food and his sleep.</p>
+<p>The little reception-room into which I was shown was
+luxuriously, not to say gorgeously, appointed, with easy chairs and
+sofas, a large portrait of the Pope, signed by the Holy Father
+himself, and a number of pictures of great people of all
+kinds&mdash;dukes, marquises, lords, counts&mdash;as well as
+photographs of fashionable ladies in low dress inscribed in several
+languages to "My dear Father in God the Lord Bishop of Ellan."</p>
+<p>The Bishop came to me after a few minutes, smiling and
+apparently at peace with all the world. Except that he wore a
+biretta he was dressed&mdash;as in Rome&mdash;in his long black
+soutane with its innumerable buttons, his silver-buckled shoes, his
+heavy gold chain and jewelled cross.</p>
+<p>He welcomed me in his smooth and suave manner, asking if he
+could offer me a little refreshment; but, too full of my mission to
+think of eating and drinking, I plunged immediately into the object
+of my visit.</p>
+<p>"Monsignor," I said, "I am in great trouble. It is about my
+marriage."</p>
+<p>The smile was smitten away from the Bishop's face by this
+announcement.</p>
+<p>"I am sorry," he said. "Nothing serious, I trust?"</p>
+<p>I told him it was very serious, and straightway I began on the
+spiritual part of my grievance&mdash;that my husband did not love
+me, that he loved another woman, that the sacred sacrament of my
+marriage. . . .</p>
+<p>"Wait," said the Bishop, and he rose to close the window, for
+the clamour of the crows was deafening&mdash;a trial must have been
+going on in the trees. Returning to his seat he said:</p>
+<p>"Dear lady, you must understand that there is one offence, and
+only one, which in all Christian countries and civilised
+communities is considered sufficient to constitute a real and
+tangible grievance. Have you any evidence of that?"</p>
+<p>I knew what he meant and I felt myself colouring to the roots of
+my hair. But gulping down my shame I recounted the story of the
+scene in Paris and gave a report of my maid's charges and
+surmises.</p>
+<p>"Humph!" said the Bishop, and I saw in a moment that he was
+going to belittle my proofs.</p>
+<p>"Little or no evidence of your own, apparently. Chiefly that of
+your maid. And ladies' maids are notorious mischief-makers."</p>
+<p>"But it's true," I said. "My husband will not deny it. He
+cannot."</p>
+<p>"So far as I am able to observe what passes in the world," said
+the Bishop, "men in such circumstances always can and do deny
+it."</p>
+<p>I felt my hands growing moist under my gloves. I thought the
+Bishop was trying to be blind to what he did not wish to see.</p>
+<p>"But I'm right, I'm sure I'm right," I said.</p>
+<p>"Well, assuming you <i>are</i> right, what is it, dear lady,
+that you wish me to do?"</p>
+<p>For some minutes I felt like a fool, but I stammered out at
+length that I had come for his direction and to learn what relief
+the Church could give me.</p>
+<p>"H'm!" said the Bishop, and then crossing one leg over the
+other, and fumbling the silver buckle of his shoe, he said:</p>
+<p>"The Church, dear lady, does indeed provide alleviation in cases
+of dire necessity. It provides the relief of
+separation&mdash;always deploring the necessity and hoping for
+ultimate reconciliation. But to sanction the separation of a wife
+from her husband because&mdash;pardon me, I do not say this is your
+case&mdash;she finds that he does not please her, or
+because&mdash;again I do not say this is your case&mdash;she
+fancies that somebody else pleases her better. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Monsignor," I said, feeling hot and dizzy, "we need not discuss
+separation. I am thinking of something much more serious."</p>
+<p>Never shall I forget the expression of the Bishop's face. He
+looked aghast.</p>
+<p>"My good lady, surely you are not thinking of divorce?"</p>
+<p>I think my head must have dropped as in silent assent, for in a
+peremptory and condemnatory manner the Bishop took me to task,
+asking if I did not know that the Catholic Church did not recognise
+divorce under any circumstances, and if I had forgotten what the
+Holy Father himself (pointing up to the portrait) had said to
+me&mdash;that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy
+matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could
+not be broken but by death.</p>
+<p>"The love in which husband and wife contract to hold each other
+in holy wedlock is typified by the love of Christ for His Church,
+and as the one can never be broken, neither can the other."</p>
+<p>"But my husband does not love me," I said. "Neither do I love
+him, and therefore the contract between us is broken already."</p>
+<p>The Bishop was very severe with me for this, telling me that as
+a good child of the Church, I must never, never say that again, for
+though marriage was a contract it differed from all other contracts
+whatsoever.</p>
+<p>"When you married your husband, dear lady, you were bound to him
+not by your own act alone, but by a mysterious power from which
+neither of you can ever free yourself. The power that united you
+was God, and whom God has joined together no man may put
+asunder."</p>
+<p>I felt my head drooping. The Bishop was saying what I had always
+been taught, though in the torment of my trouble and the fierce
+fire of my temptation I had forgotten it.</p>
+<p>"The civil law <i>might</i> divorce you," continued the Bishop.
+"I don't know&mdash;I can say nothing about that. But it would have
+<i>no right</i> to do so because the law can have no right to undo
+what God Himself has done."</p>
+<p>Oh, it was cruel! I felt as if the future of my life were
+darkening before me&mdash;as if the iron bars of a prison were
+closing upon me, and fetters were being fixed on every limb.</p>
+<p>"But even if the civil law <i>could</i> and <i>would</i> divorce
+you," said the Bishop, "think of the injury you would be inflicting
+on the Church. Yours was what is called a mixed marriage, and the
+Church does not favour such marriages, but it consented in this
+case, and why? Because it hoped to bring back an erring family in a
+second generation to the fold of the faith. Yet what would you be
+doing? Without waiting for a second generation you would he
+defeating its purpose."</p>
+<p>A cold chill seemed to creep to my heart at these words. Was it
+the lost opportunity the Bishop was thinking of, instead of the
+suffering woman with her bruised and bleeding soul?</p>
+<p>I rose to go. The Bishop rose with me, and began to counsel
+forgiveness.</p>
+<p>"Even if you <i>have</i> suffered injury, dear lady," he
+said&mdash;"I don't say you haven't&mdash;isn't it possible to
+forgive? Remember, forgiveness is a divine virtue, enjoined on us
+all, and especially on a woman towards the man she has married.
+Only think! How many women have to practise it&mdash;every day, all
+the world over!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, well!" I said, and walked to the door.</p>
+<p>The Bishop walked with me, urging me, as a good daughter of the
+Church, to live at peace with my husband, whatever his faults, and
+when my children came (as please God they would) to "instil into
+them the true faith with all a mother's art, a mother's
+tenderness," so that the object of my marriage might be fulfilled,
+and a good Catholic become the heir to Castle Raa.</p>
+<p>"So the Church can do nothing for me?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Nothing but pray, dear lady," said the Bishop.</p>
+<p>When I left him my heart was in fierce rebellion; and, since the
+Church could do nothing, I determined to see if the law could do
+anything, so I ordered my chauffeur to drive to the house of my
+father's advocate at Holmtown.</p>
+<p>The trial in the trees was over by this time, and a dead crow
+tumbled from one of the tall elms as we passed out of the
+grounds.</p>
+<p>Holmtown is a little city on the face of our bleak west coast,
+dominated by a broad stretch of sea, and having the sound of the
+waves always rumbling over it. Mr. Curphy's house faced the shore
+and his office was an upper room plainly furnished with a writing
+desk, a deal table, laden with law books and foolscap papers, a
+stiff arm-chair, covered with American leather, three or four
+coloured engravings of judges in red and ermine, a photograph of
+the lawyer himself in wig and gown, an illuminated certificate of
+his membership of a legal society, and a number of lacquered tin
+boxes, each inscribed with the name of a client&mdash;the largest
+box bearing the name of "Daniel O'Neill."</p>
+<p>My father's advocate received me with his usual bland smile,
+gave me his clammy fat hand, put me to sit in the arm-chair, hoped
+my unexpected visit did not presage worse news from the Big house,
+and finally asked me what he could do.</p>
+<p>I told my story over again, omitting my sentimental grievances
+and coming quickly, and with less delicacy, to the grosser facts of
+my husband's infidelity.</p>
+<p>The lawyer listened with his head aside, his eyes looking out on
+the sea and his white fingers combing his long brown beard, and
+before I had finished I could see that he too, like the Bishop, had
+determined to see nothing.</p>
+<p>"You may be right," he began. . . .</p>
+<p>"I <i>am</i> right!" I answered.</p>
+<p>"But even if you <i>are</i>, I am bound to tell you that
+adultery is not enough of itself as a ground for divorce."</p>
+<p>"Not enough?"</p>
+<p>"If you were a man it would be, but being a woman you must
+establish cruelty as well."</p>
+<p>"Cruelty? Isn't it all cruelty?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"In the human sense, yes; in the legal sense, no," answered the
+lawyer.</p>
+<p>And then he proceeded to explain to me that in this country,
+unlike some others, before a woman could obtain a divorce from her
+husband she had to prove that he had not only been unfaithful to
+her, but that he had used violence to her, struck her in the face
+perhaps, threatened her or endangered her life or health.</p>
+<p>"Your husband hasn't done that, has he? No? I thought not. After
+all he's a gentleman. Therefore there is only one other ground on
+which you could establish a right to divorce, namely desertion, and
+your husband is not likely to run away. In fact, he couldn't. It
+isn't to his interest. We've seen to all that&mdash;<i>here</i>,"
+and smiling again, the lawyer patted the top of the lacquered box
+that bore my father's name.</p>
+<p>I was dumbfounded. Even more degrading than the fetters whereby
+the Church bound me to my marriage were the terms on which the law
+would release me.</p>
+<p>"But assuming that you <i>could</i> obtain a divorce," said the
+lawyer, "what good would it do you? You would have to relinquish
+your title."</p>
+<p>"I care nothing about my title," I replied.</p>
+<p>"And your position."</p>
+<p>"I care nothing about that either."</p>
+<p>"Come, come," said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been
+an angry child on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or
+spleen break up a marriage that is so suitable from the points of
+property and position. And then think of your good father. Why did
+he spend all that money in setting a ruined house on its legs
+again? That he might carry on his name in a noble family, and
+through your children, and your children's children. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and
+sore.</p>
+<p>"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I
+can yet see, nothing," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>"Good-day, sir," I said, and before he could have known what I
+was doing I had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying
+downstairs.</p>
+<p>My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I
+would appeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he
+was at least a man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the
+law, without bowels of compassion or sense of human suffering.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTIETH_CHAPTER" id="SIXTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTIETH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no
+one to welcome me when I arrived.</p>
+<p>Aunt Bridget was out shopping, and Betsy Beauty (in the sulks
+with me, as I afterwards heard, for not asking her to the
+house-party) had run upstairs on hearing our horn, so I went direct
+to my father's room.</p>
+<p>Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door
+to let me in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her.
+Never had her ungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red
+head seemed to me so repugnant. I saw at once that she was giving
+herself the airs of housekeeper, and I noticed that she was wearing
+the bunch of keys which used to dangle from Aunt Bridget's waist
+when I was a child.</p>
+<p>"Your father is ill," she said.</p>
+<p>I told her I knew that, and it was one of the reasons I was
+there.</p>
+<p>"Seriously ill," she said, standing with her back to the door.
+"The doctor says he is to be kept perfectly quiet."</p>
+<p>Indignant at the effrontery of the woman who was trying to keep
+me out of my father's room, I said:</p>
+<p>"Let me pass, please."</p>
+<p>"S'sh! He has a temperature, and I don't choose that anybody
+shall disturb him to-day."</p>
+<p>"Let me pass," I repeated, and I must have pitched my voice so
+high that my father heard it.</p>
+<p>"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon
+Nessy beat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's
+room.</p>
+<p>His massive and powerful head was propped up with pillows in the
+camp-bed which was all he ever slept on, and he was looking so ill
+and changed in so short a time that I was shocked, as well as
+ashamed at the selfishness of having thought only of myself all the
+morning.</p>
+<p>But he would listen to no sympathy, protesting there was little
+or nothing the matter with him, that "Conrad was croaking about
+cancer," but the doctor was a fool.</p>
+<p>"What about yourself, though?" he said. "Great doings at the
+Castle, they're telling me."</p>
+<p>I thought this a favourable opportunity to speak about my own
+affairs, so I began on my story again, and though I found it harder
+to tell now that my listener was my father, I struggled on and on,
+as well as I could for the emotion that was choking me.</p>
+<p>I thought he would pity me. I expected him to be angry. Although
+he was showing me some of the contemptuous tenderness which he had
+always assumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I
+felt sure that he would want to leap out of bed that he might take
+my husband by the throat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat.
+But what happened was something quite different.</p>
+<p>Hardly had I begun when he burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"God bless my soul," he cried, "you're never going to lose your
+stomach over a thing like that?"</p>
+<p>I thought he had not understood me, so I tried to speak
+plainer.</p>
+<p>"I see," he said. "Sweethearting some other woman, is he? Well,
+what of it? He isn't the first husband who has done the like, and I
+guess he won't be the last."</p>
+<p>Still I thought I had not made myself clear, so I said my
+husband had been untrue to me, that his infidelities under my own
+roof had degraded me in my own eyes and everybody else's, that I
+could not bear to live such a life any longer and consequently. . .
+.</p>
+<p>"Consequently," said my father, "you come to me to fight your
+battles for you. No, no, fight them yourself, gel. No father-in-law
+ought to interfere."</p>
+<p>It was a man's point of view I suppose, but I was ready to cry
+with vexation and disappointment, and though I conquered the
+impulse to do that I could go no farther.</p>
+<p>"Who's the woman?" he asked.</p>
+<p>I told him it was one of our house-party.</p>
+<p>"Then cut her out. I guess you're clever enough to do it,
+whoever she is. You've got the looks too, and I don't grudge you
+the money. Cut her out&mdash;that's the best advice I can give you.
+Make your husband see you're the better woman of the two. Cut her
+out, I'm saying, and don't come whining here like a cry-baby, who
+runs to her grandmother's apron-strings at the first scratch she
+gets outside."</p>
+<p>He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his
+pillows, saying:</p>
+<p>"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always
+vapouring about their husbands, as if married life ought to be a
+garden of Eden. One woman, one man, and all the rest of the
+balderdash. I sot your Aunt Bridget on you before, gel, and I'll
+have to do it again I'm thinking. But go away now. If I'm to get
+better I must have rest. Nessy!" (calling) "I've a mort o' things
+to do and most everything is on my shoulders. Nessy! My medicine!
+Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has that girl gone to?"</p>
+<p>"I'm here, Daniel," said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room;
+and as I went out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and
+broken spirit and the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her
+coaxing him in her submissive and insincere tones, while he blamed
+and scolded her.</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's
+room. Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She,
+at least, would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was
+doomed to another disappointment.</p>
+<p>"Goodness me, girl," she cried, "what's this your father tells
+me? One of your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll
+go bail. Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like
+that into the house with your husband&mdash;so smart and such a
+quality toss with her. If you were lonely coming home why didn't
+you ask your aunt or your first cousin? There would have been no
+trouble with your husband then&mdash;not about me at all events.
+But what are you thinking of doing?"</p>
+<p>"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now
+aflame.</p>
+<p>If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not
+have looked more shocked.</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No
+woman of our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will
+your father say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people
+going to think about me?"</p>
+<p>I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had
+made it must take the consequences.</p>
+<p>"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have
+married the wrong man of their own free will, but if every woman
+who has made a rue-bargain were to try to get out of it your way
+where would the world be, I wonder? Perhaps you think you could
+marry somebody else, but you couldn't. What decent man wants to
+marry a divorced woman even if she <i>is</i> the injured
+party?"</p>
+<p>"Then you think I ought to submit&mdash;tamely submit to such
+infidelities?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Sakes alive," said Aunt Bridget, "what else can you do? Men are
+polygamous animals, and we women have to make up our minds to it.
+Goodness knows I had to when the old colonel used to go hanging
+around those English barmaids at the 'Cock and Hen.' Be a little
+blind, girl&mdash;that's what nine wives out of ten have to be
+every day and every night and all the world over."</p>
+<p>"Will that make my husband any better?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"I don't say it will," said Aunt Bridget. "It will make
+<i>you</i> better, though. What the eye doesn't see the heart
+doesn't grieve for. That's something, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>When I went to bed that night my whole soul was in revolt. The
+Church, the law, society, parental power, all the conventions and
+respectabilities seemed to be in a conspiracy to condone my
+husband's offence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of
+hypocrisy and therefore immorality and shame. I would die rather
+than endure it. Yes, I would die that very day rather than return
+to my husband's house and go through the same ordeal again.</p>
+<p>But next morning when I thought of Martin, as I always did on
+first awakening, I told myself that I would live and be a clean
+woman in my own eyes <i>whatever the World might think of
+me</i>.</p>
+<p>Martin was now my only refuge, so I would tell him everything.
+It would be hard to do that, but no matter, I would crush down my
+modesty and tell him everything. And then, whatever he told me to
+do I should do it.</p>
+<p>I knew quite well what my resolution meant, what it implied and
+involved, but still I thought, "<i>Whatever he tells me to do I
+will do it</i>."</p>
+<p>I remembered what the Countess in Rome had said about a life of
+"complete emancipation" as an escape from unhappy marriage, and
+even yet I thought "<i>Whatever he tells me to do I will do
+it</i>."</p>
+<p>After coming to that conclusion I felt more at ease and got up
+to dress.</p>
+<p>It was a beautiful morning, and I looked down into the orchard,
+where the apples were reddening under the sunshine and the
+gooseberries were ripening under their hanging boughs, when in the
+quiet summer air I heard a footstep approaching.</p>
+<p>An elderly woman in an old-fashioned quakerish bonnet was coming
+up the drive. She carried a little bunch of red and white roses,
+and her face, which was very sweet and simple, wore the pathetic
+expression of a child in trouble.</p>
+<p>It was Martin's mother. She was coming to see me, and at the
+first sight of her something told me that my brave resolution was
+about to be broken, and I was going to be shaken to the depths of
+my being.</p>
+<p>I heard the bell of the front door ringing. After a moment a
+maid came up and said:</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Doctor Conrad has called to see your ladyship."</p>
+<p>"Bring her here," I answered.</p>
+<p>My heart was in my mouth already.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When Martin's mother came into the room she looked nervous and
+almost frightened, as if she had charged herself with a mission
+which she was afraid to fulfil. But I put her to sit in my mother's
+easy chair and sat on the arm of it myself, and then she seemed
+calmer and more comfortable.</p>
+<p>In spite of the silver threads in the smooth hair under her poke
+bonnet her dear face was still the face of a child, and never
+before had it seemed to me so helpless and child-like.</p>
+<p>After a moment we began to talk of Martin. I said it must be a
+great happiness to her to have him back after his long and perilous
+voyage; and she answered that it was, but his visit was so short,
+only four days altogether, although the doctor and she had looked
+forward to it so long.</p>
+<p>"That's not Martin's fault, though," she said. "He's such a good
+son. I really, really think no mother ever had such a good son. But
+when children grow up they can't always be thinking of the old
+people, can they? That's why I say to the doctor, 'Doctor,' I say,
+'perhaps we were the same ourselves when we were young and first
+loved each other.'"</p>
+<p>Already I thought I saw vaguely what the dear soul had come to
+tell me, but I only said I supposed Martin was still with them.</p>
+<p>She told me no, he had gone to King George's. That was his old
+school, and being prize-giving day the masters had asked him to the
+sports and to the dinner that was to be given that night before the
+breaking-up for the holidays.</p>
+<p>"The boys will give him a cheer, I know they will," she
+said.</p>
+<p>I said of course he would be back to-morrow, but again she said
+no; he had gone for good, and they had said good-bye to him. When
+he left King George's he was to go on to Castle Raa. Didn't I know
+that? He had said he would telegraph to me. But being from home
+perhaps I had not yet received his message. Oh yes, he was going on
+to the Castle to-morrow night and would stay there until it was
+time to leave the island.</p>
+<p>"I'm so glad," I said, hardly knowing with what fervour I had
+said it, until I saw the same expression of fear come back to the
+sweet old face.</p>
+<p>"Martin will be glad, too," she said, "and that's why
+I've come to see you."</p>
+<p>"That?"</p>
+<p>"You won't be cross with me, will you? But Martin is so fond of
+you. . . . He always has been fond of you, ever since he was a boy
+. . . but this time. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+<p>"This time I thought . . . I really, really thought he was too
+fond of you."</p>
+<p>I had to hold my breast to keep down the cry of joy that was
+rising to my throat, but the dear soul saw nothing.</p>
+<p>"Not that he said so&mdash;not to say said so, but it's a mother
+to see things, isn't it? And he was talking and talking so much
+about Mary O'Neill that I was frightened&mdash;really
+frightened."</p>
+<p>"Frightened?"</p>
+<p>"He's so tender-hearted, you see. And then you . . . you're such
+a wonderful woman grown. Tommy the Mate says there hasn't been the
+like of you on this island since they laid your mother under the
+sod. It's truth enough, too&mdash;gospel truth. And
+Martin&mdash;Martin says there isn't your equal, no, not in London
+itself neither. So . . . so," she said, trembling and stammering,
+"I was thinking . . . I was thinking he was only flesh and blood
+like the rest of us, poor boy, and if he got to be <i>too</i> fond
+of you . . . now that you're married and have a husband, you know.
+. . ."</p>
+<p>The trembling and stammering stopped her for a moment.</p>
+<p>"They're saying you are not very happy in your marriage neither.
+Times and times I've heard people saying he isn't kind to you, and
+they married you against your will. . . . So I was telling myself
+if that's so, and Martin and you came together now, and you
+encouraged him, and let him go on and anything came of it . . . any
+trouble or disgrace or the like of that . . . it would be such a
+terrible cruel shocking thing for the boy . . . just when
+everybody's talking about him and speaking so well too."</p>
+<p>It was out at last. Her poor broken-hearted story was told.
+Being a married woman, unhappily married, too, I was a danger to
+her beloved son, and she had come to me in her sweet, unmindful,
+motherly selfishness to ask me to protect him <i>against
+myself</i>.</p>
+<p>"Whiles and whiles I've been thinking of it," she said. "'What
+will I do?' I've been asking myself, and sometimes I've been
+thinking I would speak to Martin. I didn't dare do it, though. But
+when I heard last night that you had come home to see your father,
+I said: 'Doctor, I'll go over and speak to herself.' 'You'll never
+do that, Christian Ann,' said the doctor. 'Yes, I will,' I said.
+'I'll speak to the young mistress herself. She may be a great lady
+now, but haven't I nursed her on my knee? She'll never do anything
+to harm my boy, if I ask her not to. No indeed she won't. Not Mary
+O'Neill. I'll never believe it of her. Never in this world.'"</p>
+<p>The sweet old face was beaming but it was wet with tears, too,
+and while trying to get out her pocket-handkerchief, she was
+fumbling with the flowers which she was still holding and passing
+from hand to hand.</p>
+<p>"Let me take the roses," I said as well as I could, for I could
+scarcely say anything.</p>
+<p>"I brought them for you," she said, and then she laughed, a
+little confusedly, at her own forgetfulness.</p>
+<p>"To be sure they're nothing to the green-house ones you'll have
+at the Castle, but I thought you'd like them for all that. They're
+from the tree outside the window of your own little room. We call
+it your room still&mdash;the one you slept in when you came in your
+little velvet frock and pinnie, singing carols to my door. 'Mary
+O'Neill's room,' Martin called it then, and it's been the same to
+us ever since."</p>
+<p>This touched me so deeply that, before I knew what I was doing,
+I was putting my arm about her waist and asking her to tell me what
+she wished me to do and I would do it.</p>
+<p>"Will you, though?" she said, and then one by one she propounded
+the artless little schemes she had concocted to cure Martin of what
+she conceived to be his love for me.</p>
+<p>Her first thought was that I might make excuse of my father's
+illness to remain where I was until the time came for Martin to
+leave the island; but she repented of this almost immediately,
+remembering that Martin was set on seeing me, ('I <i>must</i> see
+her,' he had said) and if he did not see me he would be so
+downhearted.</p>
+<p>Then she thought I might praise up my husband to Martin, saying
+what a fine man he was to be sure, and how good he had been to me,
+and what a proud woman I was to be married to him; but she was
+ashamed of that almost as soon as she had said it, for it might not
+be true, and Martin might see I was pretending.</p>
+<p>Finally, she suggested that in order to create a coolness
+between Martin and myself I might try not to be so nice to him,
+speaking short to him sometimes, and even harsh and angry; but no,
+that would be too cruel, especially from me, after all these years,
+just when he was going so far away, too, and only the Lord and the
+blessed saints knew what was to become of him.</p>
+<p>It was Martin, Martin, always Martin. Still in her sweet
+motherly selfishness she could think of nobody else. Fondly as she
+loved me, it never occurred to her for a moment that if I did what
+she wished and sent Martin away from me, I too would suffer. But a
+harder heart than mine would have melted at the sight of her
+perplexity and distress, and when with a helpless look she
+said:</p>
+<p>"I don't know what you are to do&mdash;I really, really don't,"
+I comforted her (needing comfort so much myself), and told her I
+would find a way of my own to do what she desired.</p>
+<p>"Will you, though?" she said.</p>
+<p>"Indeed I will."</p>
+<p>"And you won't send him away sore-hearted, either?"</p>
+<p>"Indeed I won't."</p>
+<p>"I knew you would say that. May the Lord and His holy Mother
+bless you!"</p>
+<p>She was weeping tender, copious, blessed tears by this time, but
+there were smiles behind them.</p>
+<p>"Not that there's another woman in the world I would rather give
+him to if things were as they used to be. But they're different
+now, are they not?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes, they're different now," I answered.</p>
+<p>"But are you sure you're not cross with me for coming?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, no," I said, and it was all I <i>could</i> say for my
+voice was failing me.</p>
+<p>She gave a sigh of inexpressible relief and then rose to go.</p>
+<p>"I must be going now. The doctor is digging in the garden and he
+hasn't had his breakfast. But I put the pot on the <i>slouree</i>
+to boil and it will be ready for the porridge."</p>
+<p>She got as far as the door and then turned and said:</p>
+<p>"I wish I had a photo of you&mdash;a right one, just as you are
+at this very minute. I'd hang it in your own room, and times and
+times in the day I'd be running upstairs to look at it. But it's
+all as one. I've got a photo of you here," (touching her breast)
+"and sometimes I can see it as plain as plain."</p>
+<p>I could not speak after that, but I kissed her as she was going
+out, and she said:</p>
+<p>"That's nice, now! Good-bye, <i>my chree!</i> You'll not be
+going home until to-morrow, it's like, so perhaps I'll be putting
+another sight on you. Good-bye!"</p>
+<p>I went to the window to watch her as she walked down the drive.
+She was wiping her eyes, but her head was up and I thought her step
+was light, and I was sure her face was shining.</p>
+<p>God bless her! The dear sweet woman! Such women as she is, and
+my mother was&mdash;so humble and loving, so guileless and pure,
+never saying an unkind word or thinking an unkind thought&mdash;are
+the flowers of the world that make the earth smell sweet.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>When she was gone and I remembered the promise I had made to her
+I asked myself what was to become of me. If I could neither divorce
+my husband under any circumstances without breaking a sacrament of
+the Church, nor love Martin and be loved by him without breaking
+the heart of his mother, where was I?</p>
+<p>I intended to go home the following morning; I was to meet
+Martin the following night. What was I to say? What was I to
+do?</p>
+<p>All day long these questions haunted me and I could find no
+answers. But towards evening I took my troubles where I had often
+taken them&mdash;to Father Dan.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The door of the Presbytery was opened by Father Dan's Irish
+housekeeper, a good old soul whose attitude to her master was that
+of a "moithered" mother to a wilful child.</p>
+<p>All the way up the narrow staircase to his room, she grumbled
+about his reverence. Unless he was sickening for the scarlet fever
+she didn't know in her seven sinses what was a-matter with him
+these days. He was as white as a ghost, and as thin as a shadder,
+and no wonder neither, for he didn't eat enough to keep body and
+soul together.</p>
+<p>Yesterday itself she had cooked him a chicken as good as I could
+get at the Big House; "done to a turn, too, with a nice bit of
+Irish bacon on top, and a bowl of praties biled in their jackets
+and a basin of beautiful new buttermilk;" but no, never a taste nor
+a sup did he take of it.</p>
+<p>"It's just timpting Providence his reverence is, and it'll be
+glory to God if you'll tell him so."</p>
+<p>"What's that you're saying about his reverence, Mrs. Cassidy?"
+cried Father Dan from the upper landing.</p>
+<p>"I'm saying you're destroying yourself with your fasting and
+praying and your midnight calls at mountain cabins, and never a
+ha'porth of anything in your stomach to do it on."</p>
+<p>"Whisht then, Mrs. Cassidy, it's tay-time, isn't it? So just
+step back to your kitchen and put on your kittle, and bring up two
+of your best china cups and saucers, and a nice piece of buttered
+toast, not forgetting a thimbleful of something neat, and then it's
+the mighty proud woman ye'll be entoirely to be waiting for once on
+the first lady in the island. . . . Come in, my daughter, come
+in."</p>
+<p>He was laughing as he let loose his Irish tongue, but I could
+see that his housekeeper had not been wrong and that he looked worn
+and troubled.</p>
+<p>As soon as he had taken me into his cosy study and put me to sit
+in the big chair before the peat and wood fire, I would have begun
+on my errand, but not a word would he hear until the tea had come
+up and I had taken a cup of it.</p>
+<p>Then stirring the peats for light as well as warmth, (for the
+room was dark with its lining of books, and the evening was closing
+in) he said:</p>
+<p>"Now what is it? Something serious&mdash;I can see that
+much."</p>
+<p>"It <i>is</i> serious, Father Dan."</p>
+<p>"Tell me then," he said, and as well as I could I told him my
+story.</p>
+<p>I told him that since I had seen him last, during that violent
+scene at Castle Raa, my relations with my husband had become still
+more painful; I told him that, seeing I could not endure any longer
+the degradation of the life I was living, I had thought about
+divorce; I told him that going first to the Bishop and afterwards
+to my father's advocate I had learned that neither the Church nor
+the law, for their different reasons, could grant me the relief I
+required; and finally, in a faint voice (almost afraid to hear
+myself speak it), I told him my solemn and sacred secret&mdash;that
+whatever happened I could not continue to live where I was now
+living because I loved somebody else than my husband.</p>
+<p>While I was speaking Father Dan was shuffling his feet and
+plucking at his shabby cassock, and as soon as I had finished he
+flashed out on me with an anger I had never seen in his face or
+heard in his voice before.</p>
+<p>"I know who it is," he said. "It's Martin Conrad."</p>
+<p>I was so startled by this that I was beginning to ask how he
+knew, when he cried:</p>
+<p>"Never mind how I know. Perhaps you think an old priest has no
+eyes for anything but his breviary, eh? It's young Martin, isn't
+it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"The wretch, the rascal, the scoundrel! If he ever dares to come
+to this house again, I'll slam the door in his face."</p>
+<p>I knew he loved Martin almost as much as I did, so I paid no
+heed to the names he was calling him, but I tried to say that I
+alone had been to blame, and that Martin had done nothing.</p>
+<p>"Don't tell me he has done nothing," cried Father Dan. "I know
+what he has done He has told you he loves you, hasn't he?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"He has been colloguing with you, then, and getting you to say
+things?"</p>
+<p>"Never."</p>
+<p>"Pitying and sympathising with you, anyway, in your relations
+with your husband?"</p>
+<p>"Not for one moment."</p>
+<p>"He had better not! Big man as he is in England now, I'll warm
+his jacket for him if he comes here making mischief with a child of
+mine. But thank the Lord and the holy saints he's going away soon,
+so you'll see no more of him."</p>
+<p>"But he is coming to Castle Raa," I said, "and I am to see him
+to-morrow night."</p>
+<p>"That too! The young scoundrel!"</p>
+<p>I explained that my husband had invited him, being prompted to
+do so by the other woman.</p>
+<p>"Worse and worse!" cried Father Dan. "Don't you see that they're
+laying a trap for you, and like two young fools you're walking
+directly into it. But no matter! You mustn't go."</p>
+<p>I told him that I should be compelled to do so, for Martin was
+coming on my account only, and I could neither tell him the truth
+nor make an excuse that would not be a falsehood.</p>
+<p>"Well, well, perhaps you're right there. It's not the best way
+to meet temptation to be always running away from it. That's Irish,
+but it's true enough, though. You must conquer this temptation, my
+child; you must fight it and overcome it."</p>
+<p>"But I've tried and tried and I cannot," I said.</p>
+<p>And then I told him the story of my struggle&mdash;how love had
+been no happiness to me but only a cruel warfare, how I had
+suffered and prayed and gone to mass and confession, yet all to no
+purpose, for my affection for Martin was like a blazing fire which
+nothing could put out.</p>
+<p>Father Dan's hands and lips were trembling while I spoke and I
+could see that he was shuddering with pity for me, so I went on to
+say that if God had put this pure and holy love into my heart could
+it be wrong&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Stop a minute," cried Father Dan. "Who says God put it there?
+And who informed you it was pure and holy? Let us see where we are.
+Come, now. You say the Bishop told you that you could never be
+divorced under any circumstances?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Yet you wish to leave your husband?"</p>
+<p>"How can I help it? The life I have been living is too
+horrible."</p>
+<p>"Never mind that now. You wish to leave your husband, don't
+you?"</p>
+<p>"I . . . I must."</p>
+<p>"And you want to go to this . . . this young . . . in short, you
+want to go to Martin Conrad? That's the plain truth, isn't it?
+Don't deny it. Very well, let us call things by their proper names.
+What is the fact? You are asking me&mdash;me, your spiritual
+Father&mdash;to allow you to live a life of open adultery. That's
+what it comes to. You know it is, and God and His holy Mother have
+mercy on your soul!"</p>
+<p>I was so startled and shocked by his fierce assault, and by the
+cruel climax it had come to, that I flung up my hands to my face
+and kept them there, for I felt as if my brain had been stunned and
+my heart was bursting.</p>
+<p>How long I sat like this, with my hidden face to the fire, I do
+not know; but after a long silence in which I heard nothing but my
+own heaving breath, I became aware that Father Dan had drawn one of
+my hands down to his knee and was smoothing it with his own.</p>
+<p>"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth,"
+he said. "It's hard to bear; I know it's hard; but it's as hard for
+him as for you, my child. Think&mdash;only think what he is trying
+to save you from. If you do what you wish to do, you will put
+yourself out of communion. If you put yourself out of communion,
+you will cease to be a Catholic. What will become of you then, my
+daughter? What will be left to replace the consolations of the
+Church&mdash;in sorrow, in suffering, in the hour of death? Have
+you never thought of that?"</p>
+<p>I never had. It was thrilling through and through me.</p>
+<p>"You say you cannot live any longer with your husband because he
+has broken the vow he made to you at your marriage. But think how
+many many thousands of poor women all the world over are doing it
+every day&mdash;living with adulterous husbands for the sake of
+their homes and children. And not for the sake of their homes and
+children only, but for the sake of their souls and their religion.
+Blessed, blessed martyrs, though we know nothing about them,
+holding society and the Church and the human family together."</p>
+<p>I was trembling all over. I felt as if Father Dan were trying to
+take away from me the only sweet and precious thing in my life that
+was left.</p>
+<p>"Then you think you cannot live without the one you love,
+because all your heart is full of him. But think of the holy women,
+the holy saints, who have gone through the same
+temptation&mdash;fighting against it with all the strength of their
+souls until the very wounds of our blessed Lord have been marked on
+their bodies."</p>
+<p>He was creeping closer to my side. His voice was quivering at my
+ear. I was struggling hard, and still trembling all over.</p>
+<p>"Hold fast by the Church, my child. It is your only refuge.
+Remember that God made your marriage and you cannot break it
+without forsaking your faith. Can anything be good that is bought
+at such a price? Nothing in this world! When you meet to-morrow
+night&mdash;you two children&mdash;tell him that. Tell him I told
+you to say so. . . . I love you both. Don't break your old priest's
+heart. He's in trouble enough for you already. Don't let him think
+that he must lose you altogether. And then remember your mother,
+too&mdash;that saint in heaven who suffered so long and was
+patient. . . . Everything will depend upon you, my child. In
+matters of this kind the woman is the stronger vessel. Be strong
+for him also. Renounce your guilty love, my daughter&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"But I cannot, I cannot," I said. "I love him, and I cannot give
+him up!"</p>
+<p>"Let us ask God to help you," said Father Dan, and still holding
+my hand he drew me down to my knees and knelt beside me. The room
+was dark by this time, and only the sullen glow from the peat fire
+was on our faces.</p>
+<p>Then in a low voice, so low that it was like his throbbing
+whisper before the altar, when he raised the Sacred host, Father
+Dan prayed for me (calling me his dear child whom God had committed
+to his care) that I might keep my marriage vow and be saved from
+the temptation to break it.</p>
+<p>His beautiful prayer or his throbbing voice, or both together,
+had a great effect upon me, and when I rose to my feet, I felt
+stronger. Although Martin was as dear to me as ever, I thought I
+saw my way at last. If he loved me as I loved him, I had to be
+brave for both of us. I had to oppose to the carnal instinct of
+love the spiritual impulse of renunciation. Yes, yes, that was what
+I had to do.</p>
+<p>Father Dan saw me to the door.</p>
+<p>"Give my love to my boy," he said, "and don't forget what I told
+you to tell him."</p>
+<p>"I'll tell him," I replied, for though I knew my heart was
+bleeding I felt calm and more courageous.</p>
+<p>It was milking time and the cows were lowing in the byre when I
+crossed the fields and the farm-yard on my way back to my father's
+house.</p>
+<p>Early next morning I left it for Castle Raa.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Although it was mid-day before I reached the Castle, the gate to
+the park had not been opened, the drive was deserted and even the
+great door to the house itself was closed.</p>
+<p>And when, in answer to my ringing, one of the maids came after a
+certain delay, wearing neither apron nor cap, I found the hall
+empty and no sign of life in the house, except a shrill chorus of
+laughter which came from the servants' quarters.</p>
+<p>"What's the meaning of this?" I asked, but before the girl could
+reply, Price who had come down to take my wraps said:</p>
+<p>"I'll tell your ladyship presently."</p>
+<p>As we were going upstairs she told me that the entire
+house-party had that morning gone off on a cruise in Mr.
+Eastcliff's yacht, that they would be away several days, and that
+Madame had left a letter for me which was supposed to explain
+everything.</p>
+<p>I found it on the mantelpiece in my boudoir under an open
+telegram which had been stuck into the edge of the bevelled glass.
+The telegram, which was addressed to me, was from Martin.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>"Expect to arrive to-morrow evening. Staying until Wednesday
+afternoon. If not convenient wire Principal's House, King George's
+College."</i></p>
+</div>
+<p>"To-morrow'?"</p>
+<p>"That means to-day," said Price. "The telegram came yesterday.
+Madame opened it and she told me to say&mdash;"</p>
+<p>"Let me read her letter first," I said.</p>
+<p>The letter ran as follows:</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>"My Dearest Mary</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>You will be astonished to find the house empty and all your
+racketty guests gone. Let me explain, and if you are angry about
+what has happened you must lay all the blame on me</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Well, you see, my dear, it was arranged nearly a month ago
+that before we left your delightful house we should make a little
+cruise round your charming island. But we had not expected that
+this would come off so soon, when suddenly and unexpectedly that
+silly Mr. Eastcliff, who has no more brains than a spring chicken,
+remembered that he had promised to visit a friend who has taken a
+shoot in Skye. Result&mdash;we had to make the cruise immediately
+or not at all, and yet behold! our hostess was away on an urgent
+call of sickness, and what in the world were we to do without
+her</i>?</p>
+<p>"<i>Everybody was in a quandary&mdash;that wise Mr. Vivian
+saying it would be 'jolly bad form by Jove' to go without you,
+while Mr. Eastcliffs 'deelightfully vicked' little Camilla declared
+it would be 'vilaynous,' and your husband vowed that his Margaret
+Mary could not possibly be left behind</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>It was then that a certain friend of yours took the liberty
+of remembering that you did not like the sea, and that even if you
+had been here and had consented to go with us it would have been
+only out of the sweetness of your heart, which I've always known to
+be the tenderest and most unselfish in the world</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>This seemed to satisfy the whole house and everybody was at
+ease, when lo! down on us like a thunderbolt came the telegram from
+Mr. Conrad. Thinking it might require to be repeated, I took the
+liberty of opening it, and then we were in a plight, I assure
+you</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>What on earth was he to think of our leaving the house when
+he was on the point of arriving? And, above all, how were we to
+support the disappointment of missing him&mdash;some of us, the
+women especially, and myself in particular, being just crazy to see
+him again</i>?</p>
+<p>"<i>This nearly broke down our plans altogether, but once more I
+came to the rescue by remembering that Mr. Conrad was not coming to
+see us but you, and that the very kindest thing we could do for a
+serious person of his kind would be to take our racketty presence
+out of the way</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>That contented everybody except my mother, who&mdash;would
+you believe it?&mdash;had gotten some prudish notions into her head
+about the impropriety of leaving you alone, and declared her
+intention of staying behind to keep you in countenance! We soon
+laughed her out of that, though, and now, to relieve you of her
+company, we are carrying her away with us&mdash;which will be lots
+of fun, for she's as fond of water as a cat and will fancy she is
+seasick all the time</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Good-bye, dearest! We're just off. I envy you. You happy,
+happy girl! I am sure you will have such a good time. What a man!
+As natural as nature! I see, by the insular paper that your
+islanders adore him</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Hope you found your father better. Another wonderful man!
+Such an original type, too! Good-bye, my dearest dear</i>,
+ALMA.</p>
+<p>"<i>P.S. Have missed you so much, darling! Castle Raa wasn't the
+same place without you&mdash;I assure you it wasn't</i>."</p>
+</div>
+<p>While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what
+the beautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by,
+was visibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me
+the benefit of her own interpretation.</p>
+<p>I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into
+little screams of indignation.</p>
+<p>"Well, the huzzy! The wicked huzzy! That's all she is, my lady,
+begging your pardon, and there's no other name for her. Arranged a
+month ago, indeed! It was never thought of until last night after
+Mr. Conrad's telegram came."</p>
+<p>"Then what does it mean?"</p>
+<p>"I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you'll promise not
+to fly out at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your
+shoes, and wouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so.
+And seeing that you can't be tempted to divorce your husband
+because you are a Catholic, she thinks your husband, who isn't,
+might be tempted to divorce you. So she's setting a trap for you,
+and she expects you to fall into it while she's away, and if you
+do. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Impossible!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, trust <i>me</i>, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my
+ears closed while your ladyship has been away, and if that
+chatterbox of a maid of hers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she
+would have been left behind to watch. But there's somebody else in
+the house who thinks she has a grievance against you, and if
+listening at keyholes will do anything . . . Hush!"</p>
+<p>Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then
+going on tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the
+little housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position
+while pretending that she had slipped.</p>
+<p>"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said.</p>
+<p>I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her
+no further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to
+take her orders from Price&mdash;an announcement which caused my
+maid to stand several inches taller in her shoes, and sent the
+housekeeper hopping downstairs with her beak in the air like an
+injured cockatoo.</p>
+<p>All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation,
+sometimes wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of
+my husband, who after inviting him had gone away just as he was
+about to arrive; sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame,
+if he would imagine that this was a scheme of my own contriving;
+but oftenest remembering my resolution of renunciation and thinking
+of the much fiercer fight that was before me now that I had to
+receive and part with him alone.</p>
+<p>More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting
+him off, and though I told myself that to do so would not be
+renunciation but merely flight from temptation, I always knew at
+the bottom of my heart that I really wanted him to come.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be
+strong&mdash;strong in every word and look&mdash;and if Alma was
+daring me I should defy her, and she would see that I should
+neither yield nor run away.</p>
+<p>Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong
+faith in my power to resist temptation. But I must leave it to
+those who know better than I the way to read a woman's heart to say
+how it came to pass that towards five o'clock, when I heard the
+sound of wheels and going on to my balcony saw a jaunting-car at
+the front entrance, and then opening my door heard Martin's great
+voice in the hall, I flew downstairs&mdash;literally flew&mdash;in
+my eagerness to welcome him.</p>
+<p>There he was in his brown Harris tweeds and soft slouch hat with
+such an atmosphere of health and sweep of winds about him as almost
+took away my breath.</p>
+<p>"Helloa!" he cried, and I am sure his eyes brightened at the
+sight of me for they were like the sea when the sun shines on
+it.</p>
+<p>"You're better, aren't you?" he said. "No need to ask that,
+though&mdash;the colour in your face is wonderful."</p>
+<p>In spite of my resolution, and the attempt I made to show him
+only a kind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed.
+Also I could not help it if, while going upstairs and telling him
+what had happened to the house-party, I said he was doomed to the
+disappointment of having nobody except myself for company, and
+then, woman-like, waited eagerly for what he would say.</p>
+<p>"So they're all gone except yourself, are they?" he said.</p>
+<p>"I'm afraid they are," I answered.</p>
+<p>"Well, if it had been the other way about, and you had gone and
+they had stayed, by the stars of God, I <i>should</i> have been
+disappointed. But things being as they are, we'll muddle through,
+shan't we?"</p>
+<p>Not all the vows in the world could prevent me from finding that
+answer delightful, and when, on entering my boudoir, he said:</p>
+<p>"Sorry to miss Madame though. I wanted a word with that lady
+before I went down to the Antarctic," I could not resist the
+mischievous impulse to show him Alma's letter.</p>
+<p>While he read it his bright face darkened (for all the world
+like a jeweller's window when the shutter comes down on it), and
+when he had finished it he said once more:</p>
+<p>"I hate that woman! She's like a snake. I'd like to put my foot
+on it."</p>
+<p>And then&mdash;</p>
+<p>"She may run away as much as she likes, but I <i>will</i> yet,
+you go bail, I will."</p>
+<p>He was covered with dust and wanted to wash, so I rang for a
+maid, who told me that Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff's rooms had been
+prepared for Mr. Conrad. This announcement (though I tried to seem
+unmoved) overwhelmed me with confusion, seeing that the rooms in
+question almost communicated with my own. But Martin only laughed
+and said:</p>
+<p>"Stunning! We'll live in this wing of the house and leave the
+rest of the old barracks to the cats, should we?"</p>
+<p>I was tingling with joy, but all the same I knew that a grim
+battle was before me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>By the time he returned from his room I had tea served in my
+boudoir, and while we sat facing the open door to the balcony he
+told me about his visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the
+previous night the Principal had proposed his health, and after the
+lads had sung "Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his
+late expedition until they made the long hiss of indrawn breath
+which is peculiar to boys when they are excited; how they had
+followed him to his bedroom as if he had been the Pied Piper of
+Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him until driven off
+by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was out of bed
+this morning the smallest scholar in the junior house, a tiny
+little cherub with the face of his mother, had come knocking at his
+door to ask if he wanted a cabin boy.</p>
+<p>Martin laughed as if he had been a boy himself (which he always
+was and always will be) while telling me these stories, and I
+laughed too, though with a certain tremor, for I was constantly
+remembering my resolution and feeling afraid to be too happy.</p>
+<p>After tea we went out on to the balcony, and leaned side by side
+over the crumbling stone balustrade to look at the lovely
+landscape&mdash;loveliest when the sun is setting on it&mdash;with
+the flower-garden below and the headland beyond, covered with
+heather and gorse and with a winding white path lying over it like
+the lash of a whip until it dipped down to the sea.</p>
+<p>"It's a beautiful old world, though, isn't it?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Isn't it?" I answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and
+smiled.</p>
+<p>Then we heard the light <i>shsh</i> of a garden hose, and
+looking down saw an old man watering the geraniums.</p>
+<p>"Sakes alive! It's Tommy the Mate," cried Martin, and leaving me
+on the balcony he went leaping down the stone stairway to greet his
+old comrade.</p>
+<p>"God bless me!" said Tommy. "Let me have a right look at ye.
+Yes, yes, it's himself, for sure."</p>
+<p>A little gale of tender memories floated up to me from my
+childhood at seeing those two together again, with Martin now
+standing head and shoulders above the old man's Glengarry cap.</p>
+<p>"You've been over the highways of the sea, farther than Franklin
+himself, they're telling me," said Tommy, and when Martin, laughing
+merrily, admitted that he had been farther south at all events, the
+old sailor said:</p>
+<p>"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling the
+omadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"</p>
+<p>Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he
+said:</p>
+<p>"You haven't got a woman yet though? . . . No, I thought not.
+You're like myself, boy&mdash;there's not many of them sorts
+<i>in</i> for you."</p>
+<p>After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man
+talked about me, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying
+they were putting a power of gold on my fingers, but he would be
+burning candles to the miracles of God to see the colour of it in
+my cheeks too.</p>
+<p>"She's a plant that doesn't take kindly to a hot-house same as
+this," (indicating the house) "and she'll not be thriving until
+somebody's bedding her out, I'm thinking."</p>
+<p>It was Saturday, and after dinner Martin proposed that we should
+walk to the head of the cliff to see Blackwater by night, which was
+a wonderful spectacle, people said, at the height of the season, so
+I put a silk wrap over my head and we set out together.</p>
+<p>There was no moon and few stars were visible, but it was one of
+those luminous nights in summer which never forget the day.
+Therefore we walked without difficulty along the white winding path
+with its nutty odour of the heather and gorse until we came near
+the edge of the cliff, and then suddenly the town burst upon our
+view, with its promenades, theatres, and dancing palaces ablaze
+with electric light, which was reflected with almost equal
+brilliance in the smooth water of the bay.</p>
+<p>We were five miles from Blackwater, but listening hard we
+thought we could hear, through the boom of the sea on the dark
+cliffs below us, the thin sounds of the bands that were playing in
+the open-air pavilions, and looking steadfastly we thought we could
+see, in the black patches under the white light, the movement of
+the thousands of persons who were promenading along "the
+front."</p>
+<p>This led Martin to talk of my father, saying as we walked back,
+with the dark outlines of the sleeping mountains confronting us,
+what a marvellous man he had been to transform in twenty years the
+little fishing and trading port into a great resort for hundreds of
+thousands of pleasure-seekers.</p>
+<p>"But is he any better or happier for the wealth it has brought
+him, and for the connections he has bought with it? Is anybody any
+better?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"I know one who isn't," I answered.</p>
+<p>I had not meant to say that. It had slipped out unawares, and in
+my confusion at the self-revelation which it seemed to make, I
+tripped in the darkness and would have fallen if Martin had not
+caught me up.</p>
+<p>In doing this he had to put his arms about me and to hold me
+until I was steady on my feet, and having done so he took my hand
+and drew it through his arm and in this way we walked the rest of
+the way back.</p>
+<p>It would be impossible and perhaps foolish to say what that
+incident meant to me. I felt a thrill of joy, a quivering flood of
+delight which, with all the raptures of my spiritual love, had
+never come to me before.</p>
+<p>Every woman who loves her husband must know what it is, but to
+me it was a great revelation. It was just as if some new passion
+had sprung into life in me at a single moment. And it had&mdash;the
+mighty passion that lies at the root of our being, the overwhelming
+instinct of sex which, taking no account of religion and
+resolutions, sweeps everything before it like a flood.</p>
+<p>I think Martin must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased
+to speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of
+tenderness that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we
+walked on but the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and
+the measured boom of the sea which we were leaving behind
+us&mdash;nothing but that and the quick beating in my own
+breast.</p>
+<p>When we came to the garden the frowning face of the old house
+was in front of us, and it was all in darkness, save for the light
+in my room which came out on to the balcony. Everything was quiet.
+The air was breathless. There was not a rustle in the trees.</p>
+<p>We took two or three turns on the lawn in front of my windows,
+saying nothing but feeling terribly, fearfully happy. After a few
+moments (or they seemed few) a cuckoo clock on my desk struck
+eleven, and we went up the stone stairway into my boudoir and
+parted for the night.</p>
+<p>Even then we did not speak, but Martin took my hand and lifted
+my fingers to his lips, and the quivering delight I had been
+feeling ever since I slipped on the headland rushed through me
+again.</p>
+<p>At the next moment I was in my room. I did not turn on the
+light. I undressed in the darkness and when my maid came I was in
+bed. She wanted to tell me about a scene with the housekeeper in
+the kitchen, but I said:</p>
+<p>"I don't want to talk to-night, Price."</p>
+<p>I did not know what was happening to me. I only knew, for the
+first time that night, that above everything else I was a woman,
+and that my renunciation, if it was ever to come to pass, would be
+a still more tragic thing than I had expected.</p>
+<p>My grim battle had begun.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When I awoke in the morning I took myself severely to task. Was
+this how I was fulfilling the promise I had made to Martin's
+mother, or preparing to carry out the counsel of Father Dan?</p>
+<p>"I must be more careful," I told myself. "I must keep a stronger
+hold of myself."</p>
+<p>The church bells began to ring, and I determined to go to mass.
+I wanted to go alone and much as I grudged every minute of Martin's
+company which I lost, I was almost glad when, on going into the
+boudoir with my missal in my hand, I found him at a table covered
+with papers and heard him say:</p>
+<p>"Helloa! See these letters and telegrams? Sunday as it is I've
+got to answer them."</p>
+<p>Our church was a little chapel-of-ease on the edge of my
+husband's estate, opened, after centuries of neglect, by the bad
+Lord Raa, in his regenerate days, for the benefit of the people of
+his own village. It was very sweet to see their homely faces as
+they reverently bowed and rose, and even to hear their creachy
+voices when they joined in the singing of the Gloria.</p>
+<p>Following the gospel there was a sermon on the words "Lead us
+not into temptation but deliver us from evil." The preacher was a
+young curate, the brother of my husband's coachman; and it occurred
+to me that he could know very little of temptation for himself, but
+the instruction he gave us was according to the doctrine of our
+Church, as I had received it from the Reverend Mother and the
+Cardinals who used to hold retreats at the convent.</p>
+<p>"Beware of the temptations of the flesh, my children," said the
+priest. "The Evil One is very subtle, and not only in our moments
+of pride and prosperity, but also in our hours of sorrow and
+affliction, he is for ever waiting and watching to betray us to our
+downfall and damnation."</p>
+<p>In the rustling that followed the sermon a poor woman who sat
+next to me, with a print handkerchief over her head, whispered in
+my ear that she was sorry she had not brought her husband, for he
+had given way to drink, poor fellow, since the island had had such
+good times and wages had been so high.</p>
+<p>But the message came closer home to me. Remembering the emotions
+of the night before, I prayed fervently to be strengthened against
+all temptation and preserved from all sin. And when the mass was
+resumed I recalled some of the good words with which I had been
+taught to assist at the Holy Sacrifice&mdash;praying at the
+<i>Credo</i> that as I had become a child in the bosom of the
+Church I might live and die in it.</p>
+<p>When the service was over I felt more at ease and I emptied my
+purse, I remember, partly into the plate and partly to the poor
+people at the church door.</p>
+<p>It was in this spirit that I returned home in the broad sunshine
+of noonday. But half way up the drive I met Martin walking briskly
+down to meet me. He was bareheaded and in flannels; and I could not
+help it if he looked to me so good, so strong, and so well able to
+protect a woman against every danger, that the instructions I had
+received in church, and the resolutions I had formed there, seemed
+to run out of my heart as rapidly as the dry sand of the sea-shore
+runs through one's fingers.</p>
+<p>"Helloa!" he cried, as usual. "The way I've been wasting this
+wonderful morning over letters and telegrams! But not another
+minute will I give to anything under the stars of God but you."</p>
+<p>If there was any woman in the world who could have resisted that
+greeting I was not she, and though I was a little confused I was
+very happy.</p>
+<p>As we walked back to the house we talked of my father and his
+sudden illness, then of his mother and my glimpse of her, and
+finally of indifferent things, such as the weather, which had been
+a long drought and might end in a deluge.</p>
+<p>By a sort of mutual consent we never once spoke of the central
+subject of our thoughts&mdash;my marriage and its fatal
+consequences&mdash;but I noticed that Martin's voice was soft and
+caressing, that he was walking close to my side, and that as often
+as I looked up at him he was looking down at me and smiling.</p>
+<p>It was the same after luncheon when we went out into the garden
+and sat on a seat in the shrubbery almost immediately facing my
+windows, and he spread a chart on a rustic table and pointing to a
+red line on it said:</p>
+<p>"Look, this is the course of our new cruise, please God."</p>
+<p>He talked for a long time, about his captain and crew; the
+scientific experts who had volunteered to accompany him, his
+aeronautic outfit, his sledges and his skis; but whatever he talked
+about&mdash;if it was only his dogs and the food he had found for
+them&mdash;it was always in that soft, caressing voice which made
+me feel as if (though he never said one word of love) he were
+making love to me, and saying the sweetest things a man could say
+to a woman.</p>
+<p>After a time I found myself answering in the same tones, and
+even when speaking on the most matter-of-fact subjects I felt as if
+I were saying the sweetest things a woman could say to a man.</p>
+<p>We sat a long time so, and every moment we were together seemed
+to make our relation more perilous, until at length the sweet
+seductive twilight of the shortening autumn day began to frighten
+me, and making excuse of a headache I said I must go indoors.</p>
+<p>He walked with me up the stone-stairway and into my boudoir,
+until we got to the very door of my room, and then suddenly he took
+up both my hands and kissed them passionately.</p>
+<p>I felt the colour rushing to my cheeks and I had an almost
+irresistible impulse to do something in return. But conquering it
+with a great effort, I turned quickly into my bedroom, shut the
+door, pulled down the blinds and then sat and covered my face and
+asked myself, with many bitter pangs, if it could possibly be true
+(as I had been taught to believe) that our nature was evil and our
+senses were always tempting us to our destruction.</p>
+<p>Several hours passed while I sat in the darkness with this
+warfare going on between my love and my religion, and then Price
+came to dress me for dinner, and she was full of cheerful
+gossip.</p>
+<p>"Men are <i>such</i> children," she said; "they can't help
+giving themselves away, can they?"</p>
+<p>It turned out that after I had left the lawn she had had some
+conversation with Martin, and I could see that she was eager to
+tell me what he had said about myself.</p>
+<p>"The talk began about your health and altered looks, my lady.
+'Don't you think your mistress is looking ill?' said he. 'A
+little,' I said. 'But her body is not so ill as her heart, if you
+ask me,' said I."</p>
+<p>"You never said that, Price?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I could not help saying it if I thought so, could I?"</p>
+<p>"And what did he say?"</p>
+<p>"He didn't say anything then, my lady, but when I said, 'You
+see, sir, my lady is tied to a husband she doesn't love,' he said,
+'How can she, poor thing? 'Worse than that,' I said, 'her husband
+loves another woman.' 'The fool! Where does he keep his eyes?' said
+he. 'Worse still,' said I, 'he flaunts his infidelities in her very
+face.' 'The brute!' he said, and his face looked so fierce that you
+would have thought he wanted to take his lordship by the throat and
+choke him. 'Why doesn't she leave the man?' said he. 'That's what I
+say, sir, but I think it's her religion,' I said. 'Then God help
+her, for there's no remedy for that,' said he. And then seeing him
+so down I said, 'But we women are always ruled by our hearts in the
+long run.' 'Do you think so?' said he. 'I'm sure of it,' said I,
+'only we must have somebody to help us,' I said. 'There's her
+father,' said he. 'A father is of no use in a case like this,' I
+said, 'especially such a one as my lady's is, according to all
+reports. No,' said I, 'it must be somebody else&mdash;somebody who
+cares enough for a woman to risk everything for her, and just take
+her and make her do what's best for herself whether she likes it or
+not. Now if somebody like that were to come to my lady, and get her
+out of her trouble,' I said. . . . 'Somebody will,' said he. 'Make
+your mind easy about that. Somebody will,' he said, and then he
+went on walking to and fro."</p>
+<p>Price told this story as if she thought she was bringing me the
+gladdest of glad tidings; but the idea that Martin had come back
+into my life to master me, to take possession of me, to claim me as
+his own (just as he did when I was a child) and thereby compel me
+to do what I had promised his mother and Father Dan not to
+do&mdash;this was terrifying.</p>
+<p>But there was a secret joy in it too, and every woman will know
+what I mean if I say that my heart was beating high with the fierce
+delight of belonging to somebody when I returned to the boudoir
+where Martin was waiting to sit down to dinner.</p>
+<p>Then came a great surprise.</p>
+<p>Martin was standing with his back to the fire-place, and I saw
+in a moment that the few hours which had intervened had changed him
+as much as they had changed me.</p>
+<p>"Helloa! Better, aren't we?" he cried, but he was now cold,
+almost distant, and even his hearty voice seemed to have sunk to a
+kind of nervous treble.</p>
+<p>I could not at first understand this, but after a while I began
+to see that we two had reached the point beyond which it was
+impossible to go without encountering the most tremendous fact of
+our lives&mdash;my marriage and all that was involved by it.</p>
+<p>During dinner we spoke very little. He seemed intentionally not
+to look at me. The warm glances of his sea-blue eyes, which all the
+afternoon had been making the colour mount to my cheeks, had gone,
+and it sent a cold chill to my heart to look across the table at
+his clouded face. But sometimes when he thought my own face was
+down I was conscious that his eyes were fixed on me with a
+questioning, almost an imploring gaze. His nervousness communicated
+itself to me. It was almost as if we had begun to be afraid of each
+other and were hovering on the brink of fatal revelations.</p>
+<p>When dinner was over, the table cleared and the servants gone, I
+could bear the strain no longer, so making excuse of a letter I had
+to write to the Reverend Mother I sat down at my desk, whereupon
+Martin lit a cigar and said he would stroll over the headland.</p>
+<p>I heard his footsteps going down the stone stairway from the
+balcony; I heard their soft thud on the grass of the lawn; I heard
+their sharper crackle on the gravel of the white path, and then
+they mingled with the surge and wash of the flowing tide and died
+away in the distance.</p>
+<p>I rose from the desk, and going over to the balcony door looked
+out into the darkness. It was a beautiful, pathetic, heart-breaking
+night. No moon, but a perfect canopy of stars in a deep blue sky.
+The fragrance of unseen flowers&mdash;sweetbriar and rose as well
+as ripening fruit&mdash;came up from the garden. There was no wind
+either, not even the rustle of a leaf, and the last bird of evening
+was silent. All the great orchestra of nature was still, save for
+the light churning of the water running in the glen and the deep
+organ song of the everlasting sea.</p>
+<p>"What can I do?" I asked myself.</p>
+<p>Now that Martin was gone I had begun to understand him. His
+silence had betrayed his heart to me even more than his speech
+could have done. Towering above him like a frowning mountain was
+the fact that I was a married woman and he was trying to stand
+erect in his honour as a man.</p>
+<p>"He must be suffering too," I told myself.</p>
+<p>That was a new thought to me and it cut me to the quick.</p>
+<p>When it came to me first I wanted to run after him and throw
+myself into his arms, and then I wanted to run away from him
+altogether.</p>
+<p>I felt as if I were on the brink of two madnesses&mdash;the
+madness of breaking my marriage vows and the madness of breaking
+the heart of the man who loved me.</p>
+<p>"Oh, what can I do?" I asked myself again.</p>
+<p>I wanted him to go; I wanted him to stay; I did not know what I
+wanted. At length I remembered that in ordinary course he would be
+going in two days more, and I said to myself:</p>
+<p>"Surely I can hold out that long."</p>
+<p>But when I put this thought to my breast, thinking it would
+comfort me, I found that it burnt like hot iron.</p>
+<p>Only two days, and then he would be gone, lost to me perhaps for
+ever. Did my renunciation require that? It was terrible!</p>
+<p>There was a piano in the room, and to strengthen and console
+myself in my trouble I sat down to it and played and sang. I sang
+"Ave Maria Stella."</p>
+<p>I was singing to myself, so I know I began softly&mdash;so
+softly that my voice must have been a whisper scarcely audible
+outside the room&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Hail thou star of ocean,<br />
+Portal of the sky</i>."</p>
+<p>But my heart was full and when I came to the verses which always
+moved me most&mdash;</p>
+<p>"<i>Virgin of all virgins,<br />
+To thy shelter take us</i>"&mdash;</p>
+<p>my voice, without my knowing it, may have swelled out into the
+breathless night until it reached Martin, where he walked on the
+dark headland, and sounded to him like a cry that called him
+back.</p>
+<p>I cannot say. I only know that when with a thickening throat I
+had come to an end, and my forehead had fallen on to the key-board,
+and there was no other sound in the air but the far-off surging of
+the sea. I heard somebody calling me in a soft and tremulous
+whisper,</p>
+<p>"Mary!"</p>
+<p>It was he. I went out to the balcony and there he was on the
+lawn below. The light of the room was on him and never before had I
+seen his strong face so full of agitation.</p>
+<p>"Come down," he said. "I have something to say to you."</p>
+<p>I could not resist him. He was my master. I had to obey.</p>
+<p>When I reached the bottom of the stairway he took my hand, and I
+did not know whether it was his hand or mine that was trembling. He
+led me across the lawn to the seat in the shrubbery that almost
+faced my windows. In the soft and soundless night I could hear his
+footsteps on the turf and the rustle of my dress over the
+grass.</p>
+<p>We sat, and for a moment he did not speak. Then with a
+passionate rush of words he said:</p>
+<p>"Mary, I hadn't meant to say what I'm going to say now, but I
+can't do anything else. You are in trouble, and I can't stand by
+and see you so ill-used. I can't and I won't!"</p>
+<p>I tried to answer him, but my throat was fluttering and I could
+not speak.</p>
+<p>"It's only a few days before I ought to sail, but they may be
+enough in which to do something, and if they're not I'll postpone
+the expedition or put it off, or send somebody in my place, for go
+away I cannot and leave you like this."</p>
+<p>I tried to say that he should not do that whatever happened to
+me, but still I could not speak.</p>
+<p>"Mary. I want to help you. But I can only do so if you give me
+the <i>right</i> to do it. Nobody must tell me I'm a meddler,
+butting in where I have no business. There are people enough about
+you who would be only too ready to do that&mdash;people related to
+you by blood and by law."</p>
+<p>I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my
+ears like the string of a bow.</p>
+<p>"There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right
+of blood, and you know what that is."</p>
+<p>My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face
+which was so close to mine.</p>
+<p>"Mary," he said, "I have always cared for you. Surely you know
+that. By the saints of God I swear there has never been any other
+girl for me, and now there never will he. Perhaps I ought to have
+told you this before, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome.
+But it didn't seem fair, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."</p>
+<p>His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was
+breaking also.</p>
+<p>"All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are
+here and you are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help
+you, to rescue you, to drag you out of this horrible situation
+before I go away. Let me do it. Give me the right of one you care
+enough for to allow him to speak on your behalf."</p>
+<p>I knew what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very
+edge of a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father
+Dan, of Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not
+speak I struggled to pray.</p>
+<p>"Don't say you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man.
+I shall go at once too&mdash;to-night or to-morrow morning at
+latest, for my heart bleeds to look at you and I can't stay here
+any longer to see you suffer. It is not torture to me&mdash;it's
+hell!"</p>
+<p>And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment
+came. Martin laid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Mary . . . Mary . . . I . . . I love you!"</p>
+<p>I could hear no more. I could not think or pray or resist any
+longer. The bitter struggle was at an end. Before I knew what I was
+doing I was dropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of
+joy was gathering me in his arms.</p>
+<p>I was his. He had taken his own. Nothing counted in the presence
+of our love. To be only we two together&mdash;that was everything.
+The world and the world's laws, the Church and the Canons of the
+Church were blotted out, forgotten, lost.</p>
+<p>For some moments I hardly breathed. I was only conscious that
+over my head Martin was saying something that seemed to come to me
+with all the deep and wonderful whispers of his heart.</p>
+<p>"Then it's true! It's true that you love me! Yes, it's true!
+It's true! No one shall hurt you again. Never again! No, by the
+Lord God!"</p>
+<p>And then suddenly&mdash;as suddenly as the moment of
+intoxication had come to me&mdash;I awoke from my delirium. Some
+little thing awakened me. I hardly know what it was. Perhaps it was
+only the striking of the cuckoo clock in my room.</p>
+<p>"What are we doing?" I said.</p>
+<p>Everything had rolled back on me&mdash;my marriage, Father Dan's
+warning, my promise to Martin's mother.</p>
+<p>"Where are we?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Hush! Don't speak," said Martin. "Let us think of nothing
+to-night&mdash;nothing except our love."</p>
+<p>"Don't say that," I answered. "We are not free to love each
+other," and then, trying to liberate myself from his encircling
+arms I cried:</p>
+<p>"God help me! God forgive me!"</p>
+<p>"Wait!" said Martin, holding me a moment longer. "I know what
+you feel, and I'm not the man to want a girl to wrong her
+conscience. But there's one question I must ask you. If you
+<i>were</i> free, could you love me then?"</p>
+<p>"Don't ask me that. I must not answer it."</p>
+<p>"You must and shall," said Martin. "Could you?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"That's enough for me&mdash;enough for to-night anyway. Have no
+fear. All shall be well. Go to your room now."</p>
+<p>He raised me to my feet and led me back to the foot of the
+balcony, and there he kissed my hand and let me go.</p>
+<p>"Good night!" he said softly.</p>
+<p>"Good night!" I answered.</p>
+<p>"God bless you, my pure sweet girl!"</p>
+<p>At the next moment I was in my room, lying face down on my
+bed&mdash;seeing no hope on any side, and sobbing my heart out for
+what might have been but for the hard law of my religion and the
+cruel tangle of my fate.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Next morning, Monday morning, while I was breakfasting in my
+bedroom, Price came with a message from Martin to say that he was
+going into the glen and wished to know if I would go with him.</p>
+<p>I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what
+steps he intended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled
+with the thought of the answer I had to give him&mdash;that divorce
+for me, under any circumstances, was quite impossible.</p>
+<p>Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I
+felt like a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon
+him&mdash;dooming his dearest hopes to painful and instant
+death.</p>
+<p>I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like
+a boy let loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted
+me with a cry of joy that was almost heart-breaking.</p>
+<p>Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew
+was thick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits
+wished to carry me across, and it was only with an effort that I
+prevented him from doing so.</p>
+<p>The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was
+almost cruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do
+in it I thought I should never be able to get it out of my
+sight&mdash;with its slumberous gloom like that of a vast
+cathedral, its thick arch of overhanging boughs through which the
+morning sunlight was streaming slantwards like the light through
+the windows of a clerestory, its running water below, its rustling
+leaves above, and the chirping of its birds on every side, making a
+sound that was like the chanting of a choir in some far-off apse
+and the rumbling of their voices in the roof.</p>
+<p>Two or three times, as we walked down the glen towards a port
+(Port Raa) which lay at the seaward end of it. Martin rallied me on
+the settled gravity of my face and then I had to smile, though how
+I did so I do not know, for every other minute my heart was in my
+mouth, and never more so than when, to make me laugh, he rattled
+away in the language of his boyhood, saying:</p>
+<p>"Isn't this stunning? Splendiferous, eh?"</p>
+<p>When we came out at the mouth of the port, where a line of
+little stunted oaks leaned landward as with the memory of many a
+winter's storm, Martin said:</p>
+<p>"Let us sit down here."</p>
+<p>We sat on the sloping bank, with the insects ticking in the
+grass, the bees humming in the air, the sea fowl screaming in the
+sky, the broad sea in front, and the little bay below, where the
+tide, which was going out, had left behind it a sharp reef of black
+rocks covered with sea-weed.</p>
+<p>A pleasure-steamer passed at that moment with its flags flying,
+its awnings spread, its decks crowded with excursionists, and a
+brass hand playing one of Sousa's marches, and as soon as it had
+gone, Martin said:</p>
+<p>"I've been thinking about our affair, Mary, how to go to work
+and all that, and of course the first thing we've got to do is to
+get a divorce."</p>
+<p>I made no answer, and I tried not to look at him by fixing my
+eyes upon the sea.</p>
+<p>"You have evidence enough, you know, and if you haven't there's
+Price&mdash;she has plenty. So, since you've given me the right to
+speak for you, dear, I'm going to speak to your father first"</p>
+<p>I must have made some half-articulate response, for not
+understanding me he said:</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear
+what I've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all
+you're his daughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion . .
+."</p>
+<p>Again I must have made some effort to speak, for he said:</p>
+<p>"Yes, he's ill, but he has only to set Curphy to work and the
+lawyer will do the rest."</p>
+<p>I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out
+somehow that I had seen my father already.</p>
+<p>"On this subject?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"And what did he say?"</p>
+<p>I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being
+ashamed to repeat it.</p>
+<p>"That was only bluff, though," said Martin. "The real truth is
+that you would cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his
+pride. Then there would no longer be any possibility of
+establishing a family and that would disturb his plans. No matter!
+We can set Curphy to work ourselves."</p>
+<p>"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also," I said.</p>
+<p>"And what did <i>he</i> say?"</p>
+<p>I told him what the lawyer had said and he was aghast.</p>
+<p>"Good heavens! What an iniquity! In England too! But never mind!
+There are other countries where this relic of the barbaric ages
+doesn't exist. We'll go there. We must get you a divorce
+somehow."</p>
+<p>My time had come. I could keep back the truth no longer.</p>
+<p>"But Martin," I said, "divorce is impossible for me&mdash;quite
+impossible."</p>
+<p>And then I told him that I had been to see the Bishop also, and
+he had said what I had known before, though in the pain of my
+temptation I had forgotten it, that the Catholic Church did not
+countenance divorce under any circumstances, because God made
+marriages and therefore no man could dissolve them.</p>
+<p>Martin listened intently, and in his eagerness to catch every
+word he raised himself to a kneeling position by my side, so that
+he was looking into my face.</p>
+<p>"But Mary, my dear Mary," he said, "you don't mean to say you
+will allow such considerations to influence you?"</p>
+<p>"I am a Catholic&mdash;what else can I do?" I said.</p>
+<p>"But think&mdash;my dear, dear girl, think how unreasonable, how
+untrue, how preposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made
+your marriage? Yours? God married you to that notorious profligate?
+Can you believe it?"</p>
+<p>His eyes were flaming. I dared not look at them.</p>
+<p>"Then think again. They say there's no divorce in the Catholic
+Church, do they? But what are they talking about? Morally speaking
+you are a divorced woman already. Anybody with an ounce of brains
+can see that. When you were married to this man he made a contract
+with you, and he has broken the terms of it, hasn't he? Then
+where's the contract now? It doesn't any longer exist. Your husband
+has destroyed it."</p>
+<p>"But isn't marriage different?" I asked.</p>
+<p>And then I tried to tell him what the Bishop had said of the
+contract of marriage being unlike any other contract because God
+Himself had become a party to it.</p>
+<p>"What?" he cried. "God become a party to a marriage like yours?
+My dear girl, only think! Think of what your marriage has
+been&mdash;the pride and vanity and self-seeking that conceived it,
+the compulsion that was put upon you to carry it through, and then
+the shame and the suffering and the wickedness and the sin of it!
+Was God a party to the making of a marriage like that?"</p>
+<p>In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and
+came back to me.</p>
+<p>"Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved.
+It means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so
+degrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must
+let him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions
+and his example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the
+filth he lives in himself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is
+that what the Church asks of you?"</p>
+<p>I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me
+about separation, but he interrupted me with a shout.</p>
+<p>"Separation? Did he say that? If the Church has no right to
+divorce you what right has it to separate you? Oh, I see what it
+will say&mdash;hope of reconciliation. But if you were separated
+from your husband would you ever go back to him? Never in this
+world. Then what would your separation be? Only divorce under
+another name."</p>
+<p>I was utterly shaken. Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin
+was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I
+could not help it if I thought Martin's clear mind was making dust
+and ashes of everything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to
+me.</p>
+<p>"Then what can I do?" I asked.</p>
+<p>I thought his face quivered at that question. He got up again,
+and stood before me for a moment without speaking. Then he said,
+with an obvious effort&mdash;</p>
+<p>"If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and
+if you and I cannot marry without that, then . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+<p>"I didn't mean to propose it . . . God knows I didn't, but when
+a woman . . . when a woman has been forced into a loveless
+marriage, and it is crushing the very soul out of her, and the iron
+law of her Church will not permit her to escape from it, what crime
+does she commit if she . . ."</p>
+<p>"Well?" I asked, though I saw what he was going to say.</p>
+<p>"Mary," he said, breathing, hard and fast, "you must come to
+me."</p>
+<p>I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know," he said. "It's not what we could wish. But we'll
+be open about it. We'll face it out. Why shouldn't we? I shall
+anyway. And if your father and the Bishop say anything to me I'll
+tell them what I think of the abominable marriage they forced you
+into. As for you, dear, I know you'll have to bear something. All
+the conventional canting hypocrisies! Every man who has bought his
+wife, and every woman who has sold herself into
+concubinage&mdash;there are thousands and thousands of them all the
+world over, and they'll try . . . perhaps they'll try . . . but let
+them try. If they want to trample the life out of you they'll have
+to walk over me first&mdash;yes, by God they will!"</p>
+<p>"But Martin . . ."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"Do you mean that I . . . I am . . . to . . . to live with you
+without marriage?"</p>
+<p>"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he
+tried to show me that love was everything, and if people loved each
+other nothing else mattered&mdash;religious ceremonies were
+nothing, the morality of society was nothing, the world and its
+back-biting was nothing.</p>
+<p>The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn
+between love and pity I had to face it.</p>
+<p>"Martin, I . . . I can't do it," I said.</p>
+<p>He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not
+look back, for I knew he was suffering.</p>
+<p>"You think it would be wrong?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"A sin?"</p>
+<p>I tried to say "Yes" again, but my reply died in my throat.</p>
+<p>There was another moment of silence and then, in a faltering
+voice that nearly broke me down, he said:</p>
+<p>"In that case there is nothing more to say. . . . There isn't,
+is there?"</p>
+<p>I made an effort to speak, but my voice would not come.</p>
+<p>"I thought . . . as there was no other way of escape from this
+terrible marriage . . . but if you think . . ."</p>
+<p>He stopped, and then coming closer he said:</p>
+<p>"I suppose you know what this means for you, Mary&mdash;that
+after all the degradation you have gone through you are shutting
+the door to a worthier, purer life, and that . . ."</p>
+<p>I could bear no more. My heart was yearning for him, yet I was
+compelled to speak.</p>
+<p>"But would it be a purer life, Martin, if it began in sin? No,
+no, it wouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to
+deny myself the happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the
+miseries my husband has inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be
+happiness, because our sin would stand between us. That would
+always be there, Martin&mdash;every day, every night, as long as
+ever we lived. . . . We should never know one really happy hour.
+I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myself and I should
+make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, I
+beg&mdash;I beseech you."</p>
+<p>I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence
+between us. Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness
+that nearly broke my heart:</p>
+<p>"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours,
+dear. If <i>you</i> can bear the present condition of things, I
+ought to be able to. Let us go back to the house."</p>
+<p>He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All
+the brightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The
+tide was now far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The
+shore was a stretch of jagged black rocks covered with
+sea-weed.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he
+had only pretended to submit to my will, and before the day was
+over I had proof of it.</p>
+<p>During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we
+went out to the balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood
+there.</p>
+<p>It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very
+dark, and with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that
+thunder was not far off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated
+from the glen, and the distant roar of the tide, now rising, was
+like the rumble of drums at a soldier's funeral.</p>
+<p>Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the
+morning re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to
+Blackwater; and lit up on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked
+like a floating <i>caf&eacute; chantant</i> full of happy people,
+for they were singing in chorus a rugged song which Martin and I
+had known all our lives&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,<br />
+Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be</i>.</p>
+<p>When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:</p>
+<p>"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's
+something I want to know. . . . If you cannot divorce your husband,
+and if . . . if you cannot come to me what . . . what is left to
+us?"</p>
+<p>I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as
+much for myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual
+heights and beauties of renunciation.</p>
+<p>"Does that mean that we are to . . . to part?" he said. "You
+going your way and I going mine . . . never to meet again?"</p>
+<p>That cut me to the quick, so I said&mdash;it was all I could
+trust myself to say&mdash;that the utmost that was expected of us
+was that we should govern our affections&mdash;control and conquer
+them.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?" he
+said.</p>
+<p>That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that
+is struggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love
+was guilty love it was our duty to destroy it.</p>
+<p>"Is that possible?" he said.</p>
+<p>"We must ask God to help us," I answered, and then, while his
+head was down and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to
+say that though he was suffering now he would soon get over this
+disappointment.</p>
+<p>"Do you <i>wish</i> me to get over it?" he asked.</p>
+<p>This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I
+knew at the bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did
+not and could not wish it.</p>
+<p>"We have known and cared for each other all our lives,
+Mary&mdash;isn't that so? It seems as if there never was a time
+when we didn't know and care for each other. Are we to pray to God,
+as you say, that a time may come when we shall feel as if we had
+never known and cared for each other at all?"</p>
+<p>My throat was fluttering&mdash;I could not answer him.</p>
+<p>"<i>I</i> can't," he said. "I never shall&mdash;never as long as
+I live. No prayers will ever help me to forget you."</p>
+<p>I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he
+said in a thicker voice:</p>
+<p>"And you . . . will you be able to forget <i>me</i>? By praying
+to God will you be able to wipe me out of your mind?"</p>
+<p>I felt as if something were strangling me.</p>
+<p>"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is
+everything to her . . . everything except her religion. Will it be
+possible&mdash;this renunciation . . . will it be possible for you
+either?"</p>
+<p>I felt as if all the blood in my body were running away from
+me.</p>
+<p>"It will not. You know it will not. You will never be able to
+renounce your love. Neither of us will he able to renounce it. It
+isn't possible. It isn't human. . . . Well, what then? If we
+continue to love each other&mdash;you here and I down
+there&mdash;we shall be just as guilty in the eyes of the Church,
+shan't we?"</p>
+<p>I did not answer him, and after a moment he came closer to me on
+the seat and said almost in a whisper:</p>
+<p>"Then think again, Mary. Only give one glance to the horrible
+life that is before you when I am gone. You have been married a
+year . . . only a year . . . and you have suffered terribly. But
+there is worse to come. Your husband's coarse infidelity has been
+shocking, but there will be something more shocking than his
+infidelity&mdash;his affection. Have you never thought of
+<i>that</i>?"</p>
+<p>I started and shuddered, feeling as if somebody must have told
+him the most intimate secret of my life. Coming still closer he
+said:</p>
+<p>"Forgive me, dear. I'm bound to speak plainly now. If I didn't I
+should never forgive myself in the future . . . Listen! Your
+husband will get over his fancy for this . . . this woman. He'll
+throw her off, as he has thrown off women of the same kind before.
+What will happen then? He'll remember that you belong to him . . .
+that he has rights in you . . . that you are his wife and he is
+your husband . . . that the infernal law which denies you the
+position of an equal human being gives him a right&mdash;a legal
+right&mdash;to compel your obedience. Have you never thought of
+<i>that</i>?"</p>
+<p>For one moment we looked into each other's eyes; then he took
+hold of my hand and, speaking very rapidly, said:</p>
+<p>"That's the life that is before you when I am gone&mdash;to live
+with this man whom you loathe . . . year after year, as long as
+life lasts . . . occupying the same house, the same room, the same
+. . ."</p>
+<p>I uttered an involuntary cry and he stopped.</p>
+<p>"Martin," I said, "there is something you don't know."</p>
+<p>And then, I told him&mdash;it was forced out of me&mdash;my
+modesty went down in the fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do
+not know whether it was my pride or my shame or my love that
+compelled me to tell him, but I <i>did</i> tell him&mdash;God knows
+how&mdash;that I could not run the risk he referred to because I
+was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been.</p>
+<p>The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but
+still I covered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of
+my marriage day and the day after, and of the compact I had entered
+into with my husband that only when and if I came to love him
+should he claim my submission as a wife.</p>
+<p>While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me,
+for I could feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I
+had finished he leapt up and cried excitedly:</p>
+<p>"And that compact has been kept?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come
+in and let me tell you how! Come in, come in!"</p>
+<p>He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him.
+His face was as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made
+me sit down and then sat on the table in front of me.</p>
+<p>"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we
+signed a deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he
+would give me his ship and I would give him some money. But if
+after all he hadn't given me his ship what would our deed have
+been? Only so much waste paper."</p>
+<p>It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest
+contract, the marriage service would have been a witness before God
+that we meant to live together as man and wife. But I never had,
+therefore what was the marriage service? Only an empty
+ceremony!</p>
+<p>"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I
+defy any priest in the world to prove the contrary."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are
+free&mdash;morally free at all events. You can come to me. You
+must, too. I daren't leave you in this house any longer. I shall
+take you to London and fix you up there, and then, when I tome back
+from the Antarctic . . ."</p>
+<p>He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for
+I had remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan
+had described them.</p>
+<p>"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"</p>
+<p>"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would
+be clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this
+morning would not apply."</p>
+<p>"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps not."</p>
+<p>"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a
+sinful life, wouldn't it?"</p>
+<p>"But you wouldn't be."</p>
+<p>"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be
+cut out of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should
+be cast out of the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . .
+. what would become of me then?"</p>
+<p>"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this
+is not the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And
+why should a mere ceremony&mdash;even if we cannot do away with
+it&mdash;darken a woman's life for ever?"</p>
+<p>My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for
+salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him
+what Father Dan had said I was to say.</p>
+<p>"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can
+he know&mdash;what can any priest know of a situation like this?
+The law of man has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has
+given you to me. Why should a marriage service stand between
+us?"</p>
+<p>"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare
+not break the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I
+cannot give up my religion."</p>
+<p>After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:</p>
+<p>"You mean that, Mary?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of
+resisting him that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight
+lock while I told him&mdash;what I had never meant to
+tell&mdash;how long and how deeply I had loved him, but
+nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying
+without the consolations of the Church.</p>
+<p>"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted
+woman if I did, and you don't want that, do you?"</p>
+<p>He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face
+showed the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a
+wild look came into his eyes and he said:</p>
+<p>"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and
+fearless, and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable
+entanglement you would take it in spite of everything."</p>
+<p>His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to
+listen to it.</p>
+<p>"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to
+you? Not I. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that
+I was willing to make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if
+only I could rescue you from the misery of your abominable
+marriage."</p>
+<p>Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:</p>
+<p>"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my
+love is sinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So
+I'm only making mischief here and the sooner I get away the better
+for everybody."</p>
+<p>He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and
+looking out into the darkness said, between choking laughter and
+sobs:</p>
+<p>"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you
+any longer. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth,
+because you were the home of her who would follow me to the ends of
+the earth if I wanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than
+a wretched ceremony, and would sacrifice my happiness to a
+miserable bit of parchment."</p>
+<p>My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as
+now. I had to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his
+arms.</p>
+<p>"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay
+where I'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the
+better, too. I thought I should be counting the days down there
+until I could come home again. But why should I? And why should I
+care what happens to me? It's all as one now."</p>
+<p>He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on
+his gloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half
+fearing it) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must
+do what he wished because I belonged to him.</p>
+<p>But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst
+into a flood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house.</p>
+<p>Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the
+bitter cry of a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say,
+"Take me. Do what you like with me. I am yours."</p>
+<p>I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then
+I went into my room and locked the door.</p>
+<p>I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I
+began to have a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not
+have insulted me like that if he had not loved me to the very verge
+of madness itself.</p>
+<p>Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should
+lock up the house&mdash;meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to
+bed."</p>
+<p>I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn
+passing to and fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then
+I had a feeling, amounting to certainty, that he was listening to
+hear if I was sobbing, and that if I had been he would have broken
+down my bedroom door to get to me.</p>
+<p>At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt
+the balcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own
+room.</p>
+<p>The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical
+fever. Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in
+the cruel battle between her religion and her love seemed to flood
+body and soul&mdash;joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture&mdash;so
+that I determined (not without cause) to make excuse of a headache
+to stay in bed.</p>
+<p>Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged
+myself with the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly
+of losing the few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could
+not without danger meet him again.</p>
+<p>I was afraid of him, but I was still more afraid of myself.</p>
+<p>Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house,
+and knowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent
+another day in his company it would be impossible to say what might
+happen.</p>
+<p>As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all
+day in my room, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding
+him good-bye and good-luck. It would be a cold end to a long
+friendship and my heart was almost frozen at the thought of it, but
+it was all I dared do and I saw no help for it.</p>
+<p>But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate
+for me!</p>
+<p>First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she
+bombarded me with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard
+that I was ill he had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood
+had been taken out of him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but
+Price, who was artful, only laughed and said:</p>
+<p>"Men <i>are</i> such funny things, bless them! To think of that
+fine young man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to
+face a lion, being scared to death because a little lady has a
+headache."</p>
+<p>All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories,
+and towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew,
+saying that Tommy the Mate had sent them.</p>
+<p>"Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly
+thing, who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended
+that I was forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were
+from Martin, and that he had told her not to say so.</p>
+<p>"What's he doing now?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Writing a letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has
+torn it up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a
+tough job, I can tell you."</p>
+<p>I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before
+luncheon it came up to me.</p>
+<p>It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it
+melted me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though
+Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as
+it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am
+sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it
+would not be Martin&mdash;my boy who could never learn his
+lessons.</p>
+<p>"<i>Dear Mary,&mdash;I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and
+when I think it's all my fault I am ready to kick myself</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to
+think what might happen to you while I should be down there, but
+I've been thinking it over since and I've come to the conclusion
+that if their is anything to God He can be trusted to look after
+you without any help from me, so when we meet again before I go
+away we'll never say another word on the subject&mdash;that's a
+promice</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the
+jaunting car into town with a telegram to London telling them to
+postpone the expedision on account of illness, and if they think
+it's mine it won't matter because it's something worse</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you
+might come to the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be
+as happy as a sand-boy</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Yours</i>,</p>
+<p>"<i>Mart</i>."</p>
+<p>To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an
+immediate verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and
+hoped to be up to dinner, so he must not send that telegram to
+London on any account, seeing that nobody knew what was going to
+happen and everything was in the hands of God.</p>
+<p>Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her
+mouth, and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with
+Tommy the Mate at the other end of the lawn.</p>
+<p>I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night.
+I did not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from
+me. Yet never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put
+on the soft white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a
+string of pearls over my hair, and another (a tight one) about my
+neck.</p>
+<p>Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he
+had dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did
+not know what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not,
+because it was Martin and that was all that mattered to me.</p>
+<p>I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was
+shod in white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his
+eyes fluttering as he looked at me, and said something sweet about
+a silvery fir tree with its little dark head against the sky.</p>
+<p>"It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes, a truce," I answered, which meant that as this was to be
+our last evening together all painful subjects were to be put
+aside.</p>
+<p>Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to
+look at the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet
+lightning with low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for
+a moment with visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by
+the grim and greedy darkness.</p>
+<p>During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid
+the one subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at
+being children, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St.
+Mary's Rock.</p>
+<p>Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had
+thought so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular,
+and I called him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at
+every racy word that came up from the forgotten cells of our brains
+we shrieked with laughter.</p>
+<p>When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When
+he mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any
+good?" And after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of
+some island in the name of the English crown, and raise the Union
+Jack on it, I said: "Do or die, we allus does that when we're out
+asploring."</p>
+<p>How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed
+because he was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity
+too (such as no woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that
+in all this make-believe we were making love to each other again.
+That frightened me for a time, but I told myself that everything
+was safe as long as we could carry on the game.</p>
+<p>It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our
+laughter had tears behind it, and some of our memories had an
+unexpected sting, because things had a meaning for us now which
+they never had before, and we were compelled to realise what life
+had done for us.</p>
+<p>Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our
+boat, leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising
+tide threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I
+repeated my last despairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . and
+you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me here, and save
+yourself."</p>
+<p>It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth
+ready to break up under our feet.</p>
+<p>To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I
+dared not sing the music I loved best&mdash;the solemn music of the
+convent&mdash;so I sang some of the nonsense songs I had heard in
+the streets. At one moment I twisted round on the piano stool and
+said:</p>
+<p>"I'll bet you anything"&mdash;(I always caught Martin's tone in
+Martin's company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in
+the boat with William Rufus on my lap."</p>
+<p>"I'll bet you anything I can," said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, you can't," I said.</p>
+<p>"Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all," said Martin,
+and then I sang&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>"Oh, Sally's the gel for me,<br />
+Our Sally's the gel for me,<br />
+I'll marry the gel that I love best,<br />
+When I come back from sea."</i></p>
+<p>But that arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone
+and it seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we
+should try the rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung
+on the pleasure-steamer the night before.</p>
+<p>He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a
+corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he
+banged away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we
+sang together in a wild delightful discord&mdash;</p>
+<p><i>"Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,<br />
+Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be."</i></p>
+<p>We laughed again when that was over, but I knew I could not keep
+it up much longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my
+boudoir and seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand
+feet above the icy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling
+through blizzards over rolling waves of snow.</p>
+<p>Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the
+lightning for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and
+rolling along them like cannon-balls, and Martin said:</p>
+<p>"It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there."</p>
+<p>When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off
+early in the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to
+do in Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some
+sort."</p>
+<p>In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking
+himself down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim
+moment came at last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you
+are waiting for the whirring of the clock that is to tell the end
+of the old year and the beginning of the new.</p>
+<p>My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at
+him. Our eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own
+was hot and trembling.</p>
+<p>"So this is . . . the end," he said.</p>
+<p>"Yes . . . the end," I answered.</p>
+<p>"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he
+said. "I shall always remember it."</p>
+<p>I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about
+that would make him forget this one.</p>
+<p>"Never in this world!" he answered.</p>
+<p>I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy
+return to fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid
+eyes and said:</p>
+<p>"Aw, well, that's all as one now."</p>
+<p>I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember
+that he and I had been such great, great friends.</p>
+<p>He looked at me again, and answered:</p>
+<p>"That's all as one also."</p>
+<p>I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep
+myself in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of
+renunciation&mdash;each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful
+thoughts and desires.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you
+anything."</p>
+<p>That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted
+otherwise I should always have had behind me the memory of the vows
+I had broken, the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had
+abandoned.</p>
+<p>"All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then
+my throat became so thick that I could not say any more.</p>
+<p>After a few moments he said:</p>
+<p>"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I
+don't know what is going to happen."</p>
+<p>"All that is in God's hands," I said.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now."</p>
+<p>It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so,
+struggling hard with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not
+despair.</p>
+<p>"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much
+happiness for you."</p>
+<p>And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman
+taking the love I was turning away would have made the world a
+blank for me, I actually said something about the purest joys of
+love falling to his lot some day.</p>
+<p>"No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman
+for me. If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the
+same as if you were dead."</p>
+<p>There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of
+secret joy in it too.</p>
+<p>He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long
+time. In spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand
+go. I felt as if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only
+safety. Nevertheless I said:</p>
+<p>"We must say good-night and good-bye now."</p>
+<p>"And if it is for ever?"</p>
+<p>"Don't say that."</p>
+<p>"But if it is?"</p>
+<p>"Well, then . . . for ever."</p>
+<p>"At least give me something to take away with me," he said.</p>
+<p>"Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the
+handkerchief which I had been holding in my other hand and he
+picked it up.</p>
+<p>I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back,
+were trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken
+up as it had been the night before.</p>
+<p>There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of
+nothing but the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my
+hand to his lips, dropped it gently and walked over to the
+door.</p>
+<p>But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked
+at him, longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at
+which my heart could warm itself.</p>
+<p>Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he
+lost all control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him
+like a mighty surging river.</p>
+<p>Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and
+snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet,
+clasped me tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and
+cried in a quivering, husky voice:</p>
+<p>"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you
+because you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your
+soul. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No
+matter where you are, or what they do with you, you are mine and
+always will be."</p>
+<p>My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was
+a roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a
+woman, and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken
+possession of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I
+rejoiced in it. I wanted to give myself up to it.</p>
+<p>But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the
+room, clashing the door behind him.</p>
+<p>I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and
+had gone out with him.</p>
+<p>The room seemed to become dark.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SIXTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through
+and through like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone,
+that I should never see him again, and that I had driven him away
+from me.</p>
+<p>Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of
+consecutive thought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt
+above everything else was that the remedy I had proposed to myself
+for my unhappy situation&mdash;renunciation&mdash;was impossible,
+because Martin was a part of my own being and without him I could
+not live.</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin! My love! My love!" cried the voice of my
+heart.</p>
+<p>In fear lest I had spoken the words aloud, and in terror of what
+I might do under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and
+locked and bolted the door.</p>
+<p>But the heart knows nothing of locks and bolts, and a moment
+afterwards my spirit was following Martin to his room. I was seeing
+him as I had seen him last, with his face full of despair, and I
+was accusing myself of the pain I had caused him.</p>
+<p>I had conquered Martin, but I had conquered myself also. I had
+compelled him to submit, but his submission had vanquished me.</p>
+<p>Even if I had a right to impose renunciation on myself, what
+right had I to impose it upon him, who did not desire it, did not
+think it necessary, was not reconciled to it, and only accepted it
+out of obedience to my will?</p>
+<p>He loved me. No man ever loved a woman more dearly. He deserved
+to be loved in return. He had done nothing to forfeit love. He was
+bound by no ties. And yet I was driving him away from me. What
+right had I to do so?</p>
+<p>I began to see that I had acted throughout with the most
+abominable selfishness. In his great love he had said little or
+nothing about himself. But why had <i>I</i> not thought of him? In
+the struggles of my religious conscience I had been thinking of
+myself alone, but Martin had been suffering too, and I had never
+once really thought of that? What <i>right</i> had I to make him
+suffer?</p>
+<p>After a while I began to prepare for bed, but it took me long to
+undress, for I stopped every moment to think.</p>
+<p>I thought of the long years Martin had been waiting for me and
+while I was telling myself that he had kept pure for my sake, my
+heart was beating so fast that I could hardly bear the strain of
+it.</p>
+<p>It cut me still deeper to think that even as there had been no
+other woman for him in the past so there would be no other in the
+future. Never as long as he lived! I was as sure of that as of the
+breath I breathed, and when I remembered what he had said about
+wearing the willow for me as if I were dead I was almost
+distracted.</p>
+<p>His despairing words kept ringing mercilessly in my
+ears&mdash;"It's all as one now"; "How happy we might have been." I
+wanted to go to him and tell him that though I was sending him away
+still I loved him, and it was <i>because</i> I loved him that I was
+sending him away.</p>
+<p>I had made one step towards the door before I remembered that it
+was too late to carry out my purpose. The opportunity had passed.
+Martin had gone to his room. He might even be in bed by this
+time.</p>
+<p>But there are spiritual influences which control our bodies
+independently of our will. I put on my dressing-gown (being partly
+undressed) and went back to the boudoir. I hardly knew what impulse
+impelled me to do so, and neither do I know why I went from the
+boudoir to the balcony unless it was in hope of the melancholy joy
+of standing once more where Martin and I had stood together a
+little while ago.</p>
+<p>I was alone now. The low thunder was still rolling along the
+cliffs, but I hardly heard it. The white sheet lightning was still
+pulsing in the sky and rising, as it seemed, out of the sea, but I
+hardly saw it.</p>
+<p>At one moment I caught a glimpse of a solitary fishing boat,
+under its brown lugger sails, heading towards Blackwater; at the
+next moment my eyes were dazzled as by a flashlight from some
+unseen battleship.</p>
+<p>Leaning over the balcony and gazing into the intermittent
+darkness I pictured to myself the barren desolation of Martin's
+life after he had left me. Loving me so much he might fall into
+some excess, perhaps some vice, and if that happened what would be
+the measure of my responsibility?</p>
+<p>Losing me he might lose his faith in God. I had read of men
+becoming spiritual castaways after they had lost their anchorage in
+some great love, and I asked myself what should I do if Martin
+became an infidel.</p>
+<p>And when I told myself that I could only save Martin's soul by
+sacrificing my own I was overwhelmed by a love so great that I
+thought I could do even that.</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin! Forgive me, forgive me," I cried.</p>
+<p>I felt so hot that I opened my dressing-gown to cool my bare
+breast. After a while I began to shiver and then fearing I might
+take cold I went back to the boudoir, and sat down.</p>
+<p>I looked at my cuckoo clock. It was half-past twelve. Only half
+an hour since Martin had left me! It seemed like hours and hours.
+What of the years and years of my life that I had still to spend
+without him?</p>
+<p>The room was so terribly silent, yet it seemed to be full of our
+dead laughter. The ghost of our happiness seemed to haunt it. I was
+sure I could never live in it again.</p>
+<p>I wondered what Martin would be doing now. Would he be in bed
+and asleep, or sitting up like this, and thinking of me as I was
+thinking of him?</p>
+<p>At one moment I thought I heard his footsteps. I listened, but
+the sound stopped. At another moment, covering my face with my
+hands, I thought I saw him in his room, as plainly as if there were
+no walls dividing us. He was holding out his hands to me, and his
+face had the yearning, loving, despairing expression which it had
+worn when he looked back at me from the door.</p>
+<p>At yet another moment I thought I heard him calling me.</p>
+<p>"Mary!"</p>
+<p>I listened again, but again all was still, and when I told
+myself that if in actual fact he had spoken my name it was perhaps
+only to himself (as I was speaking his) my heart throbbed up to my
+throat.</p>
+<p>Once more I heard his voice.</p>
+<p>"Mary!"</p>
+<p>I could bear no more. Martin wanted me. I must go to him. Though
+body and soul were torn asunder I must go.</p>
+<p>Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was
+walking across the corridor in the direction of Martin's room.</p>
+<p>The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my
+footsteps were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the
+floors of the grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody
+walked on them, but none the less I felt afraid.</p>
+<p>Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be
+laid on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my
+ear:</p>
+<p>"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what
+will happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own
+sex will turn against you. You will be a bad woman."</p>
+<p>I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the
+voice of my Church&mdash;my Church, the mighty, irresistible power
+that was separating me from Martin. I was its child, born in its
+bosom, but if I broke its laws it would roll over me like a
+relentless Juggernaut.</p>
+<p>It was not at first that I could understand why the Church
+should set itself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying
+out for life and love and liberty. But the Church, in its
+inexorable, relentless voice, was saying, "Thou Shalt Not!"</p>
+<p>After a moment of impenetrable darkness, within and without, I
+thought I saw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the
+world. It stood for purity, which alone could hold the human family
+together. If all women who had made unhappy marriages were to do as
+I was thinking of doing (no matter under what temptation) the world
+would fall to wreck and ruin.</p>
+<p>Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I
+groped my way back to the boudoir and closed the door.</p>
+<p>Then a strange thing happened&mdash;one of those little
+accidents of life which seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of
+Fate. A shaft of light from my bedroom, crossing the end of my
+writing-desk, showed me a copy of a little insular newspaper.</p>
+<p>The paper, which must have come by the evening post, had
+probably been opened by Martin, and for that reason only I took it
+up and glanced at it.</p>
+<p>The first thing that caught my eye was a short report headed
+"Charity Performance."</p>
+<p>It ran:</p>
+<p>"<i>The English ladies and gentlemen from Castle Raa who are
+cruising round the island in the handsome steam yacht, the</i>
+Cleopatra, <i>gave a variety entertainment last night in aid of the
+Catholic Mission at the Palace, Ravenstown</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>At the end of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was
+present in person and watched every item of the programme with
+obvious enjoyment, proposed a vote of thanks in his usual
+felicitous terms, thanking Lord Raa for this further proof of his
+great liberality of mind in helping a Catholic charity, and
+particularly mentioning the beautiful and accomplished Madame Lier,
+who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by her serpentine
+dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always be indebted
+for the handsome sum which had been the result of her disinterested
+efforts in promoting the entertainment</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>It is understood that the</i> Cleopatra <i>will leave
+Ravenstown Harbour to-morrow morning on her way back to Port
+Raa</i>."</p>
+<p>That was the end of everything. It came upon me like a torrent
+and swept all my scruples away.</p>
+<p>Such was the purity of the Church&mdash;threatening <i>me</i>
+with its censures for wishing to follow the purest dictates of my
+heart, yet taking money from a woman like Alma, who was bribing it
+to be blind to her misconduct and to cover her with its
+good-will!</p>
+<p>My husband too&mdash;his infidelities were flagrant and
+notorious, yet the Church, through its minister, was flattering his
+vanity and condoning his offences!</p>
+<p>He was coming back to me, too&mdash;this adulterous husband, and
+when he came the Church would require that I should keep "true
+faith" with him, whatever his conduct, and deny myself the pure
+love that was now awake within me.</p>
+<p>But no, no, no! Never again! It would be a living death.
+Accursed be the power that could doom a woman to a living
+death!</p>
+<p>Perhaps I was no longer sane&mdash;morally sane&mdash;and if so
+God and the Church will forgive me. But seeing that neither the
+Church nor the Law could liberate me from this bond which I did not
+make, that both were shielding the evil man and tolerating the bad
+woman, my whole soul rose in revolt.</p>
+<p>I told myself now that to leave my husband and go to Martin
+would be to escape from shame to honour.</p>
+<p>I saw Martin's despairing face again as I had seen it at the
+moment of our parting, and my brain rang with his passionate words.
+"You are my wife. I am your real husband. We love each other. We
+shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, or what
+they do with you, you are mine and always will be."</p>
+<p>Something was crying out within me: "Love him! Tell him you love
+him. Now, now! He is going away. To-morrow will be too late. Go to
+him. This will be your true marriage. The other was only legalised
+and sanctified prostitution."</p>
+<p>I leapt up, and tearing the door open, I walked with strong
+steps across the corridor towards Martin's room.</p>
+<p>My hair was down, my arms were bare in the ample sleeves of my
+dressing-gown, and my breast was as open as it had been on the
+balcony, but I thought nothing of all that.</p>
+<p>I did not knock at Martin's door. I took hold of the handle as
+one who had a right. It turned of itself and the door opened.</p>
+<p>My mind was in a whirl, black rings were circling round my eyes,
+but I heard my trembling, quivering, throbbing voice, as if it had
+been the voice of somebody else, saying:</p>
+<p>"Martin, I am coming in."</p>
+<p>Then my heart which had been beating violently seemed to stop.
+My limbs gave way. I was about to fall.</p>
+<p>At the next moment strong arms were around me. I had no fear.
+But there was a roaring in my brain such as the ice makes when it
+is breaking up.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>Oh, you good women, who are happy in the love that guards you,
+shields you, shelters you, wraps you round and keeps you pure and
+true, tread lightly over the prostrate soul of your sister in her
+hour of trial and fierce temptation.</p>
+<p>And you blessed and holy saints who kneel before the Mother of
+all Mothers, take the transgression of her guilty child to Him
+who&mdash;long ago in the house of the self-righteous
+Pharisee&mdash;said to the woman who was a sinner and yet loved
+much&mdash;the woman who had washed His feet with her tears and
+dried them with the hair of her head&mdash;"Thy sins are forgiven
+thee."</p>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FIFTH_PART" id="FIFTH_PART"></a>FIFTH PART</h2>
+<h3>I BECOME A MOTHER</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTIETH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTIETH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Next morning, at half-past eight, my Martin left me.</p>
+<p>We were standing together in the boudoir between the table and
+the fire, which was burning briskly, for the sultry weather had
+gone in the night, and the autumn air was keen, though the early
+sun was shining.</p>
+<p>At the last moment he was unwilling to go, and it was as much as
+I could do to persuade him. Perhaps it is one of the mysteries
+which God alone can read that our positions seemed to have been
+reversed since the day before.</p>
+<p>He was confused, agitated, and full of self reproaches, while I
+felt no fear and no remorse, but only an indescribable joy, as if a
+new and gracious life had suddenly dawned on me.</p>
+<p>"I don't feel that I can leave England now," he said.</p>
+<p>"You can and you must," I answered, and then I spoke of his
+expedition as a great work which it was impossible to put off.</p>
+<p>"Somebody else must do it, then," he said.</p>
+<p>"Nobody else can, or shall," I replied.</p>
+<p>"But our lives are for ever joined together now, and everything
+else must go by the board."</p>
+<p>"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake, Martin. I refuse and
+forbid it."</p>
+<p>Everything had been arranged, everything settled, great sums of
+money had been subscribed out of faith in him, and him only, and a
+large company was ready and waiting to sail under his command. He
+was the Man of Destiny, therefore nothing&mdash;nothing
+whatever&mdash;must keep him back.</p>
+<p>"Then if I must go, you must go too," he said. "I mean you must
+go with me to London and wait there until I return."</p>
+<p>"That is impossible," I answered.</p>
+<p>The eyes of the world were on him now, and the heart of the
+world was with him. If I did what he desired it would reflect
+dishonour on his name, and he should not suffer for my sake under
+any circumstances.</p>
+<p>"But think what may happen to you while I am away," he said.</p>
+<p>"Nothing will happen while you are away, Martin."</p>
+<p>"But how can you be so sure of the future when God alone knows
+what it is to be?"</p>
+<p>"Then God will provide for it," I said, and with that last
+answer he had to be satisfied.</p>
+<p>"You must take a letter from me at all events," said Martin, and
+sitting at my desk he began to write one.</p>
+<p>It is amazing to me now when I come to think of it that I could
+have been so confident of myself and so indifferent to
+consequences. But I was thinking of one thing only&mdash;that
+Martin must go on his great errand, finish his great work and win
+his great reward, without making any sacrifice for me.</p>
+<p>After a few minutes he rose from the desk and handed me his
+letter.</p>
+<p>"Here it is," he said. "If the worst comes to the worst you may
+find it of some use some day."</p>
+<p>I took it and doubled it and continued to hold it in my
+hand.</p>
+<p>"Aren't you going to look at it!" he said.</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Not even to see whom it is written to?"</p>
+<p>"That is unnecessary."</p>
+<p>I thought I knew it was written to my husband or my father, and
+it did not matter to me which, for I had determined not to use
+it.</p>
+<p>"It is open&mdash;won't you see what it says?"</p>
+<p>"That is unnecessary also."</p>
+<p>I thought I knew that Martin had tried to take everything upon
+himself, and I was resolved that he should not do so.</p>
+<p>He looked at me with that worshipful expression which seen in
+the eyes of the man who loves her, makes a woman proud to be
+alive.</p>
+<p>"I feel as if I want to kiss the hem of your dress, Mary," he
+said, and after that there was a moment of heavenly silence.</p>
+<p>It was now half-past eight&mdash;the hour when the motor-car had
+been ordered round to take him to the town&mdash;and though I felt
+as if I could shed drops of my blood to keep back the finger of my
+cuckoo clock I pointed it out and said it was time for him to
+go.</p>
+<p>I think our parting was the most beautiful moment of all my
+life.</p>
+<p>We were standing a little apart, for though I wanted to throw my
+arms about his neck at that last instant I would not allow myself
+to do so, because I knew that that would make it the harder for him
+to go.</p>
+<p>I could see, too, that he was trying not to make it harder for
+me, so we stood in silence for a moment while my bosom heaved and
+his breath came quick.</p>
+<p>Then he took my right hand in both of his hands and said: "There
+is a bond between us now which can never be broken."</p>
+<p>"Never," I answered.</p>
+<p>"Whatever happens to either of us we belong to each other for
+ever."</p>
+<p>"For ever and ever," I replied.</p>
+<p>I felt his hands tighten at that, and after another moment of
+silence, he said:</p>
+<p>"I may be a long time away, Mary."</p>
+<p>"I can wait."</p>
+<p>"Down there a man has to meet many dangers."</p>
+<p>"You will come back. Providence will take care of you."</p>
+<p>"I think it will. I feel I shall. But if I don't. . . ."</p>
+<p>I knew what he was trying to say. A shadow seemed to pass
+between us. My throat grew thick, and for a moment I could not
+speak. But then I heard myself say:</p>
+<p>"Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot quench it."</p>
+<p>His hands quivered, his whole body trembled, and I thought he
+was going to clasp me to his breast as before, but he only drew
+down my forehead with his hot hand and kissed it.</p>
+<p>That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to pass before my eyes,
+and when it cleared the door of the room was open and my Martin was
+gone.</p>
+<p>I stood where he had left me and listened.</p>
+<p>I heard his strong step on the stone flags of the hall&mdash;he
+was going out at the porch.</p>
+<p>I heard the metallic clashing of the door of the
+automobile&mdash;he was already in the car.</p>
+<p>I heard the throb of the motor and ruckling of the gravel of the
+path&mdash;he was moving away.</p>
+<p>I heard the dying down of the engine and the soft roll of the
+rubber wheels&mdash;I was alone.</p>
+<p>For some moments after that the world seemed empty and void. But
+the feeling passed, and when I recovered my strength I found
+Martin's letter in my moist left hand.</p>
+<p>Then I knelt before the fire, and putting the letter into the
+flames I burnt it.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Within, two hours of Martin's departure I had regained complete
+possession of myself and was feeling more happy than I had ever
+felt before.</p>
+<p>The tormenting compunctions of the past months were gone. It was
+just as if I had obeyed some higher law of my being and had become
+a freer and purer woman.</p>
+<p>My heart leapt within me and to give free rein to the riot of my
+joy I put on my hat and cloak to go into the glen.</p>
+<p>Crossing the garden I came upon Tommy the Mate, who told me
+there had been a terrific thunderstorm during the night, with
+torrential rain, which had torn up all the foreign plants in his
+flower-beds.</p>
+<p>"It will do good, though," said the old man. "Clane out some of
+their dirty ould drains, I'm thinkin'."</p>
+<p>Then he spoke of Martin, whom he had seen off, saying he would
+surely come back.</p>
+<p>"'Deed he will though. A boy like yander wasn't born to lave his
+bark in the ice and snow . . . Not if his anchor's at home,
+anyway"&mdash;with a "glime" in my direction.</p>
+<p>How the glen sang to me that morning! The great cathedral of
+nature seemed to ring with music&mdash;the rustling of the leaves
+overhead, the ticking of the insects underfoot, the bleating of the
+sheep, the lowing of the cattle, the light chanting of the stream,
+the deep organ-song of the sea, and then the swelling and soaring
+Gloria in my own bosom, which shot up out of my heart like a lark
+out of the grass in the morning.</p>
+<p>I wanted to run, I wanted to shout, and when I came to the paths
+where Martin and I had walked together I wanted&mdash;silly as it
+sounds to say so&mdash;to go down on my knees and kiss the very
+turf which his feet had trod.</p>
+<p>I took lunch in the boudoir as before, but I did not feel as if
+I were alone, for I had only to close my eyes and Martin, from the
+other side of the table, seemed to be looking across at me. And
+neither did I feel that the room was full of dead laughter, for our
+living voices seemed to be ringing in it still.</p>
+<p>After tea I read again my only love-letter, revelling in the
+dear delightful errors in spelling which made it Martin's and
+nobody else's, and then I observed for the first time what was said
+about "the boys of Blackwater," and their intention of "getting up
+a spree."</p>
+<p>This suggested that perhaps Martin had not yet left the island
+but was remaining for the evening steamer, in order to be present
+at some sort of celebrations to be given in his honour.</p>
+<p>So at seven o'clock&mdash;it was dark by that time&mdash;I was
+down at the Quay, sitting in our covered automobile, which had been
+drawn up in a sheltered and hidden part of the pier, almost
+opposite the outgoing steamer.</p>
+<p>Shall I ever forget the scene that followed?</p>
+<p>First, came a band of music playing one of our native songs,
+which was about a lamb that had been lost in the snow, and how the
+Big Man of the Farm went out in search of it, and found it and
+brought it home in his arms.</p>
+<p>Then came a double row of young men carrying flags and
+banners&mdash;fine, clean-limbed lads such as make a woman's heart
+leap to look at them.</p>
+<p>Then came Martin in a jaunting car with a cheering crowd
+alongside of him, trying to look cheerful but finding it fearfully
+hard to do so.</p>
+<p>And then&mdash;and this touched me most of all&mdash;a double
+line of girls in knitted woollen caps (such as men wear in frozen
+regions) over their heads and down the sides of their comely
+faces.</p>
+<p>I was crying like a child at the sight of it all, but none the
+less I was supremely happy.</p>
+<p>When the procession reached the gangway Martin disappeared into
+the steamer, and then the bandsmen ranged themselves in front of
+it, and struck up another song:</p>
+<p>"<i>Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,<br />
+Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth</i>."</p>
+<p>In another moment every voice in the crowd seemed to take up the
+refrain.</p>
+<p>That brought Martin on to the captain's bridge, where he stood
+bareheaded, struggling to smile.</p>
+<p>By this time the last of the ship's bells had rung, the funnels
+were belching, and the captain's voice was calling on the piermen
+to clear away.</p>
+<p>At last the hawsers were thrown off and the steamer started,
+but, with Martin still standing bareheaded on the bridge, the
+people rushed to the end of the pier to see the last of him.</p>
+<p>There they sang again, louder than ever, the girls' clear voices
+above all the rest, as the ship sailed out into the dark sea.</p>
+<p><i>"Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,<br />
+Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth."</i></p>
+<p>As well as I could, for the mist in my eyes was blinding me, I
+watched the steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay,
+round, the revolving light that stands on the point of
+it&mdash;stretching my neck through the window of the car, while
+the fresh wind from the sea smote my hot face and the salt air
+licked my parched lips. And then I fell back in my seat and cried
+for sheer joy of the love that was shown to Martin.</p>
+<p>The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black
+river running in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and
+I heard their voices as they passed the car.</p>
+<p>One voice&mdash;a female voice&mdash;said:</p>
+<p>"Well, what do you think of <i>our</i> Martin Conrad?"</p>
+<p>And then another voice&mdash;a male voice&mdash;answered:</p>
+<p>"By God he's a Man!"</p>
+<p>Within a few minutes the pier was deserted, and the chauffeur
+was saying:</p>
+<p>"Home, my lady?"</p>
+<p>"Home," I answered.</p>
+<p>Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat
+on a dark and stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous
+wave and for some breathless moments you fear they will never
+rise.</p>
+<p>But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer
+again now far out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my
+Martin was there he was thinking of me and looking back towards the
+house in which he had left me behind him.</p>
+<p>When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every
+window was ablaze.</p>
+<p>The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She
+told me that the yachting party had come back, and were now in
+their bedrooms dressing for dinner.</p>
+<p>As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of
+laughter from behind several of the closed doors, mingled with the
+muffled humming of various music-hall ditties.</p>
+<p>And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me,
+and I knew that I had become another woman.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I
+continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the
+lighted windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the
+question which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day
+and night&mdash;Why had I left her behind me?</p>
+<p>In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish
+thought of my own aims and interests, all her confidence in
+herself, all her brave determination to share responsibility for
+whatever the future might have in store for us&mdash;Why had I left
+her behind me?</p>
+<p>The woman God gave me was mine&mdash;why had I left her in the
+house of a man who, notwithstanding his infidelities and
+brutalities, had a right in the eyes of the law, the church, and
+the world to call her his wife and to treat her accordingly?</p>
+<p>Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for
+one moment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for
+the shadow of a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to
+me of her queenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in
+the world must give herself to the man she loves if their union is
+to be pure and true.</p>
+<p>But why did I not see then, as I see now, that it is the law of
+Nature&mdash;the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of
+Nature&mdash;that the woman shall bear the burden, the woman shall
+pay the price?</p>
+<p>It is over now, and though many a time since my sweet girl has
+said out of her stainless heart that everything has worked out for
+the best, and suffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive,
+when I think of what she went through for me, while I was out of
+all reach and sight, I know I shall never forgive myself for
+leaving her behind&mdash;never, never never.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>As this will be the last time I shall have to speak of my
+husband's guests, I wish to repeat that I am trying to describe
+them without malice exactly as they were&mdash;selfish, cruel,
+ill-mannered, and insincere.</p>
+<p>The dinner-bell rang while I was dressing, and on going
+downstairs a few minutes afterwards I found that there had been no
+attempt to wait for me.</p>
+<p>Already the whole party were assembled at the table, my husband
+being at the foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in
+the place of the hostess at the head.</p>
+<p>This in my altered mood, was more than I could bear, so, while
+the company made some attempt to welcome me with rather crude
+salutations, and old Mrs. Lier cried, "Come along here, my pore
+dear, and tell me how you've gotten on while we've been away"
+(indicating an empty seat by her side), I walked boldly up to Alma,
+put my hand on the back of her chair and said, "If you please."</p>
+<p>Alma looked surprised. But after a moment she carried off the
+difficult situation by taking the seat which had been reserved for
+me beside her mother, by congratulating me on my improved
+appearance and herself on relief from the necessity of filling my
+place and discharging my responsible duties.</p>
+<p>My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the
+awkward incident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that
+he supposed my father (of whom he was always in fear) had told me
+to assert myself. But Alma, with surer instinct, was clearly
+thinking of Martin, and almost immediately she began to speak of
+him.</p>
+<p>"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are
+crazy about him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope
+you gave him our regrets and excuses&mdash;did you?"</p>
+<p>The evil one must have taken hold of me by this time, for I
+said:</p>
+<p>"I certainly did not, Alma."</p>
+<p>"Why not, my love?"</p>
+<p>"Because we have a saying in our island that it's only the ass
+that eats the cushag"&mdash;a bitter weed that grows in barren
+places.</p>
+<p>Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this rather
+intemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the
+incidents of the cruise.</p>
+<p>I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the
+Bishop by her entertainment, she had set herself to capture the
+"aristocracy" of our island by inviting them to a dance on the
+yacht, while it lay at anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the
+moment was to play battledore and shuttlecock with the grotesque
+efforts of our great people (the same that had figured at my
+wedding) to grovel before my husband and his guests.</p>
+<p>"I say, Jimmy," cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you
+remember the old gal in the gauze who&mdash;etc . . . ?"</p>
+<p>"But do you remember," cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or
+Bum Bailiff with the bottle-nose who&mdash;etc . . . ?"</p>
+<p>"Killing, wasn't it, Vivian?" said one of the ladies.</p>
+<p>"Perfectly killing," said everybody.</p>
+<p>This shocking exhibition of bad manners had not gone on very
+long before I became aware that it was being improvised for my
+benefit.</p>
+<p>After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of
+hers, and Mr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him
+her "crush," she turned to me and said, with her smiling face
+slightly drawn down on one side:</p>
+<p>"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who
+do not eat cushags, poor dears, are the funniest people alive as
+guests."</p>
+<p>"Not funnier," I answered, "than the people who laugh at them as
+hosts."</p>
+<p>It was not easy to laugh at that, so to cover Alma's confusion
+the men turned the talk to their usual topic, horses and dogs, and
+I heard a great deal about "laying on the hounds," which culminated
+in a rather vulgar story of how a beater who "wasn't nippy on his
+pins" had been "peppered from behind," whereupon he had "bellowed
+like a bull" until "soothed down by a sov."</p>
+<p>I cannot say how long the talk would have continued in this
+manner if old Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a
+serious subject.</p>
+<p>It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy,
+spaniel had died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause
+of its death was nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its
+mistress during the period of quarantine which the absurd
+regulations of government had required on our return from
+abroad.</p>
+<p>The dog having died at sea, I presumed it had been buried there,
+but no, that seemed to shock the company as an unfeeling
+supposition. The ship's carpenter had made a coffin for it&mdash;a
+beautiful one of mahogany with a plate-glass inset at the head, and
+a gilt-lettered inscription below, giving the dog's name, Prue, and
+its age, three.</p>
+<p>In this condition it had been brought ashore, and was now lying
+in a kind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to
+be buried in the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the
+company, all dressed in black, were to follow in procession as at a
+human funeral.</p>
+<p>I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these
+incredible arrangements, and at the close of it I said in a clear,
+emphatic voice:</p>
+<p>"I must ask you to be good enough not to do that, please."</p>
+<p>"Why not, my dear?" said Alma.</p>
+<p>"Because I do not wish and cannot permit it," I answered.</p>
+<p>There was an awkward pause after this unexpected pronouncement,
+and when the conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not
+always added to my happiness) caught the half-smothered words:</p>
+<p>"Getting a bit sidey, isn't she?"</p>
+<p>Nevertheless, when I rose to leave the dining-room, Alma wound
+her arm round my waist, called me her "dear little nun," and
+carried me off to the hall.</p>
+<p>There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk
+became as free, as it often is among fashionable ladies of a
+certain class.</p>
+<p>Mr. Eastcliff's Camilla told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a
+"dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman
+(the same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman")
+repeated the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church
+newspaper: "A parlour-maid wants a situation in a family where a
+footman is kept."</p>
+<p>The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it
+was redoubled when Alma's mother, from the depths of an arm-chair,
+said, with her usual solemnity, that she "didn't see nothing to
+laugh at" in that, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as
+they had."</p>
+<p>Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert
+myself once for all I said:</p>
+<p>"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of
+conversation. I don't like it."</p>
+<p>At last the climax came.</p>
+<p>About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which
+had been put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless
+you!" and next day there came a newspaper containing an account of
+his last night at Tilbury.</p>
+<p>He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his
+old commander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to
+be in London, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal
+which had promoted his expedition.</p>
+<p>They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I
+remembered it!), finishing up the evening with a dance on deck in
+the moonlight; and when the time came to break up, Martin had made
+one of his sentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much
+grammar), in which he said that in starting out for another siege
+of the South Pole he "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain
+under the third button of his double-breasted waistcoat, of the
+dear ones they were leaving behind, and of the unknown regions
+whither they were tending where dancing would be forgotten."</p>
+<p>I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that
+uncongenial company; but by some mischance I left the paper which
+contained it on the table in the drawing-room, and on going
+downstairs after breakfast next morning I found Alma stretched out
+in a rocking-chair before the fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette
+and reading the report aloud in a mock heroic tone to a number of
+the men, including my husband, whose fat body (he was growing
+corpulent) was shaking with laughter.</p>
+<p>It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down
+and flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing
+quietly in their midst before they were aware of my presence.</p>
+<p>"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her
+smiles, "we were just enjoying the beautiful account of your
+friend's last night in England."</p>
+<p>"So I see," I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I
+quietly took the paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb
+and first finger (as if the contamination of her touch had made it
+unclean) and carried it to the fire and burnt it.</p>
+<p>This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff
+went over to the open door and said:</p>
+<p>"Deuced fine day for a motor drive, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>That gentleman had hitherto shown no alacrity in establishing
+the truth of Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his
+visit to "his friend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he
+found himself too deeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to
+remain longer, while the rest of the party became so absorbed in
+the Perth and Ayr races, salmon-fishing on the Tay, and
+stag-shooting in the deer-forests of Invercauld, that within a week
+thereafter I had said good-bye to all of them.</p>
+<p>All save Alma.</p>
+<p>I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of
+my guests when Alma followed me to my room and said:</p>
+<p>"My dear, sweet girl, I want you to do me the greatest
+kindness."</p>
+<p>She had to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that
+dear old dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be
+necessary to wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as
+the largest steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near
+to that port, perhaps I would not mind . . . just for a week or two
+longer. . . .</p>
+<p>What <i>could</i> I say? What I did say was what I had said
+before, with equal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal
+danger. A word, half a word, and almost before it was spoken,
+Alma's arms were about my neck and she was calling me her "dearest,
+sweetest, kindest friend in the world."</p>
+<p>My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma
+left the boudoir when she was twitching at my arm and whispering in
+my ear:</p>
+<p>"My lady, my lady, don't you see what the woman wants? She's
+watching you."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My husband was the next to go.</p>
+<p>He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or
+four weeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any
+case I was not the sort of person to feel lonely.</p>
+<p>Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer,
+I asked if that was all that was taking him to London.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps not all," he answered, and then, with a twang of voice
+and a twitch of feature, he said:</p>
+<p>"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . to
+tell you the truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me."</p>
+<p>With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come
+to a close. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute
+as before and began to brood upon Price's warning.</p>
+<p>My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert
+myself as mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her
+former advantage) she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in
+allowing Alma to remain in it.</p>
+<p>"She's deceiving you, my lady," said Price. "<i>Her</i> waiting
+for a steamer indeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not
+fly out at me again and pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you
+what's she's waiting for."</p>
+<p>"What?"</p>
+<p>"She's waiting for . . . she thinks . . . she fancies . . .
+well, to tell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing
+suspects that something is going to happen to your ladyship, and
+she's just waiting for the chance of telling his lordship."</p>
+<p>I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming
+trouble took frequent possession of my mind.</p>
+<p>I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly
+monster created by the nervous strain I had been going through, and
+for a time I succeeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing
+would happen during his absence, and I compelled myself to believe
+that nothing would or could.</p>
+<p>Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave
+place to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly
+clouds; the land became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed
+their bare black boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the
+roads before blustering winds that came up from the sea; the
+evenings grew long and the mornings dreary; but still Alma, with
+her mother, remained at Castle Raa.</p>
+<p>I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic
+spell which she had exercised over me when I was a child asserted
+itself again, but now it seemed to me to be always evil and
+sometimes almost demoniacal.</p>
+<p>I had a feeling that she was watching me day and night.
+Occasionally, when she thought I was looking down, I caught the
+vivid gaze of her coal-black eyes looking across at me through her
+long sable-coloured eyelashes.</p>
+<p>Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found
+myself creeping away from her and even shrinking from her
+touch.</p>
+<p>More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had
+said of her: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put
+my foot on it."</p>
+<p>The feeling that I was alone in this great gaunt house with a
+woman who was waiting and watching to do me a mischief, that she
+might step into my shoes, was preying upon my health and
+spirits.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and exhaustion for which
+I could not account. Looking into my glass in the morning, I saw
+that my nose was becoming pinched, my cheeks thin, and my whole
+face not merely pale, but grey.</p>
+<p>Alma saw these changes in my appearance, and in the over-sweet
+tones of her succulent voice she constantly offered me her
+sympathy. I always declined it, protesting that I was perfectly
+well, but none the less I shrank within myself and became more and
+more unhappy.</p>
+<p>So fierce a strain could not last very long, and the climax came
+about three weeks after my husband had left for London.</p>
+<p>I was rising from breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was
+suddenly seized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment,
+I fainted right away.</p>
+<p>On recovering consciousness I found myself stretched out on the
+floor with Alma and her mother leaning over me.</p>
+<p>Never to the last hour of my life shall I forget the look in
+Alma's eyes as I opened my own. With her upper lip sucked in and
+her lower one slightly set forward she was giving her mother a
+quick side-glance of evil triumph.</p>
+<p>I was overwhelmed with confusion. I thought I might have been
+speaking as I was coming to, mentioning a name perhaps, out of that
+dim and sacred chamber of the unconscious soul into which God alone
+should see. I noticed, too, that my bodice had been unhooked at the
+back so as to leave it loose over my bosom.</p>
+<p>As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were open, she put her arm
+under my head and began to pour out a flood of honeyed words into
+my ears.</p>
+<p>"My dear, sweet darling," she said, "you scared us to death. We
+must send for a doctor immediately&mdash;your own doctor, you
+know."</p>
+<p>I tried to say there was no necessity, but she would not
+listen.</p>
+<p>"Such a seizure may be of no consequence, my love. I trust it
+isn't. But on the other hand, it may be a serious matter, and it is
+my duty, dearest, my duty to your husband, to discover the cause of
+it."</p>
+<p>I knew quite well what Alma was thinking of, yet I could not say
+more without strengthening her suspicions, so I asked for Price,
+who helped me up to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed
+while she gave me brandy and other restoratives.</p>
+<p>That was the beginning of the end. I needed no doctor to say
+what had befallen me. It was something more stupendous for me than
+the removal of mountains or the stopping of the everlasting coming
+and going of the sea.</p>
+<p>The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood, the most sacred, the
+most divine, the mighty mystery of a new life had come to me as it
+comes to other women. Yet how had it come? Like a lowering
+thunderstorm.</p>
+<p>That golden hour of her sex, which ought to be the sweetest and
+most joyful in a woman's life&mdash;the hour when she goes with a
+proud and swelling heart to the one she loves, the one who loves
+her, and with her arms about his neck and her face hidden in his
+breast whispers her great new secret, and he clasps her more fondly
+than ever to his heart, because another and closer union has bound
+them together&mdash;that golden hour had come to me, and there was
+none to share it.</p>
+<p>O God! O God! How proudly I had been holding up my head! How I
+had been trampling on the conventions of morality, the canons of
+law, and even the sacraments of religion, thinking Nature, which
+had made our hearts what they are, did not mean a woman to be
+ashamed of her purest instincts!</p>
+<p>And now Nature herself had risen up to condemn me, and before
+long the whole world would be joining in her cry.</p>
+<p>If Martin had been there at that moment I do not think I should
+have cared what people might think or say of a woman in my
+condition. But he was separated from me by this time by thousands
+of miles of sea, and was going deeper and deeper every day into the
+dark Antarctic night.</p>
+<p>How weak I felt, how little, how helpless! Never for a moment
+did I blame Martin. But I was alone with my responsibility, I was
+still living in my husband's house, and&mdash;worst of
+all&mdash;another woman knew my secret.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Early next day Doctor Conrad came to see me. I thought it
+significant that he came in my father's big motor-car&mdash;a car
+of great speed and power.</p>
+<p>I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at
+the first glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I
+knew what Alma had said in the letter which had summoned him.</p>
+<p>In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I
+could have wished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that
+his face brightened at each of my replies, and at the end of them
+he said:</p>
+<p>"There is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall be better than ever
+by-and-by."</p>
+<p>Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying
+something that would be very grateful) he told me what I knew
+already, and I listened with my head down and my face towards the
+fire.</p>
+<p>He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his
+news, for he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the
+great thing in such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a
+good heart, and to look hopefully to the future.</p>
+<p>"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of
+agreeable people&mdash;old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and
+happy faces."</p>
+<p>I said "Yes" and "Yes," knowing only too well how impossible it
+all was; and then his talk turned on general topics&mdash;my
+father, whose condition made his face very grave, and then his
+wife, Christian Ann, whose name caused his gentle old eyes to gleam
+with sunshine.</p>
+<p>She had charged him with a message to me.</p>
+<p>"Tell her," she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for
+me in the autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for
+her."</p>
+<p>That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by
+what came next.</p>
+<p>"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing
+for you. 'She's a great lady now,' said she, 'but maybe great
+ladies have their troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if
+she ever wants to rest her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary
+O'Neill's little room is always waiting for her.'"</p>
+<p>"God bless her!" I said&mdash;it was all I <i>could</i>
+say&mdash;and then, to my great relief, he talked on other
+subjects.</p>
+<p>The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin.
+Heaven alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart
+in her hour of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he
+might do so, but sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that
+moment I should have screamed.</p>
+<p>When he rose to go he repeated his warnings.</p>
+<p>"You'll remember what I said about being bright and
+cheerful?"</p>
+<p>"I'll try."</p>
+<p>"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"</p>
+<p>"Ye-s."</p>
+<p>Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it,
+full of I her warmest and insincerest congratulations.</p>
+<p>"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue.
+"Wasn't I right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh,
+happy, happy you! But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be
+just crazy to write to your husband and tell him all about it."</p>
+<p>Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old
+soul, redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began by
+congratulating herself on her perspicacity.</p>
+<p>"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I
+said to Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said
+Alma, but it's us married women to know, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>After that, and some homely counsel out of her own
+experience&mdash;to take my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding
+tea, &amp;c.,&mdash;she told me how fortunate I was to have Alma in
+the house at such a moment.</p>
+<p>"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and
+she's such a happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You
+wouldn't believe it, but she's actually talking of staying with you
+until the December sailing, at all events."</p>
+<p>The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my
+secret soul as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me,
+but my martyrdom had only begun.</p>
+<p>Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the
+usually cold grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at
+a glance that her visit was not an unselfish one.</p>
+<p>"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't
+I give you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's
+the only way with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I
+said, 'Betsy, I must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be
+sure I had enough on my hands already, but I couldn't leave you to
+strangers, could I?"</p>
+<p>Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to
+say that what was coming would be a bond between me and my
+husband.</p>
+<p>"It always is. It was in my case, anyway. The old colonel didn't
+behave very well after our marriage, and times and times I was
+telling myself I had made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I
+thought, 'I might have done better, but I might have done worse,
+and he's the father of my offspring, anyway.'"</p>
+<p>Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk
+of Alma and her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my
+husband&mdash;the young one with the big eyes and "the quality toss
+with her?" Then why did I have a person like that about the
+house?</p>
+<p>"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your
+aunt and your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank
+the saints I don't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for
+you what I did for your poor mother, and <i>I</i> can't say more
+than that, can I?"</p>
+<p>I must have made some kind of response, for Aunt Bridget went on
+to say it might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to
+leave the Big House either.</p>
+<p>"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own
+stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way
+that Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I
+do believe she'll marry the man some day."</p>
+<p>To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's
+health.</p>
+<p>"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the
+man. He would have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't
+hear of it. He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and
+talking about a great entertainment."</p>
+<p>"Entertainment?"</p>
+<p>"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is
+to know that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in
+honour of your coming home after your marriage&mdash;that's all
+it's to be on the outside, anyway."</p>
+<p>I made some cry of pain, and Aunt Bridget said:</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know what you're going to say&mdash;why doesn't he wait?
+I'll tell you why if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any
+one. Your father is a sick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes
+when Conrad talks about cancer, he knows Death's hand is over him.
+And thinking it may fall before your time has come, he wants to
+take time by the forelock and see a sort of fulfilment of the hope
+of his life&mdash;and you know what that is."</p>
+<p>It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father
+was now so tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my
+heart that I might never look upon his face again.</p>
+<p>I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit
+my father came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the
+lawn when his big car came rolling up the drive.</p>
+<p>I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly
+white, his lips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to
+have sunk into his shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his
+clothes seemed to hang on them; but the stern mouth was there
+still, and so was the masterful lift of the eyebrows.</p>
+<p>Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said:</p>
+<p>"Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn't take rest
+without putting a sight on you."</p>
+<p>After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he
+always was and will be (about it's being good for a woman to have
+children because it saved her from "losing her stomach" over
+imaginary grievances), he led me, with the same half-contemptuous
+tenderness which he used to show to my mother, back to the house
+and into the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the
+other knitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but
+he waved them back to their places.</p>
+<p>"Set down, ma'am. Take your seat, mother. I'm only here for a
+minute to talk to my gel about her great reception."</p>
+<p>"Reception?" said Alma.</p>
+<p>"Hasn't she told you about it?" he said, and being answered that
+I had not, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma,
+whose former attitude towards my father had changed to one of
+flattery and subservience, lifted her hands and cried:</p>
+<p>"How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you
+were to be kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for
+that purpose?"</p>
+<p>In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after
+another&mdash;it would be expensive, we could not afford it.</p>
+<p>"Who asks you to afford it? It's my affair, isn't it?" said my
+father.</p>
+<p>I was unwell, and therefore unable to undertake the hard work of
+such an entertainment&mdash;but that was the worst of excuses, for
+Alma jumped in with an offer of assistance.</p>
+<p>"My dearest child," she said, "you know how happy I shall be to
+help you. In fact, I'll do all the work and you shall have all the
+glory."</p>
+<p>"There you are, then," cried my father, slapping me on the
+shoulder, and then, turning to Alma, he told her to set to work
+without a day's delay.</p>
+<p>"Let everything be done correct even if it costs me a bit of
+money."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>"A rael big thing, ma'am, such as nobody has ever seen
+before."</p>
+<p>"Yes indeed, sir."</p>
+<p>"Ask all the big people on the island&mdash;Nessy MacLeod shall
+send you a list of them."</p>
+<p>"I will, sir."</p>
+<p>"That'll do for the present&mdash;I guess I must be going now,
+or old Conrad will be agate of me. So long, gel, so long."</p>
+<p>I was silenced, I was helpless, I was ashamed.</p>
+<p>I did not know then, what now I know, that, besides the desire
+of celebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had
+another and still more secret object&mdash;that of throwing dust in
+the eyes of his advocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who
+(having expected him to make money for them by magic) were
+beginning to whisper that all was not well with his financial
+schemes.</p>
+<p>I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that
+moment the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that,
+shattered in health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this
+wild extravagance equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his
+lifelong passion under the very wing of Death.</p>
+<p>But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if
+Satan himself were torturing me.</p>
+<p>The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might
+return home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the
+whole world of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting
+up around me would tumble about my head like a pack of cards.</p>
+<p>He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political
+duties would keep him in London a little longer, he said:</p>
+<p>"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great
+reception in honour of our home-coming. But why <i>now</i>, instead
+of three months ago? <i>Do you know the reason?</i>"</p>
+<p>As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up
+from my feet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The
+conviction was being forced upon me that I had no right in my
+husband's house.</p>
+<p>It made no difference that my husband's house was mine also, in
+the sense that it could not exist without me&mdash;I had no right
+to be there.</p>
+<p>It made no difference that my marriage had been no
+marriage&mdash;I had no right to be there.</p>
+<p>It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly
+bad husband&mdash;I had no right to be there.</p>
+<p>It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous
+wife&mdash;I had no right to be there.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa,
+with the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my
+torture. Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her
+opinion of my attitude towards Alma, and one night she said:</p>
+<p>"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The
+nasty-minded thing is making mischief with his lordship. She's
+writing to him every day. . . . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my
+eyes and my ears open downstairs for nothing. You'll have no peace
+of your life, my lady, until you turn that woman out of the
+house."</p>
+<p>Then in a fit of despair, hardly knowing what I was doing, I
+covered my face with my hands and said:</p>
+<p>"I had better turn myself out instead, perhaps."</p>
+<p>The combing of my hair suddenly stopped, and at the next moment
+I heard Price saying in a voice which seemed to come from a long
+way off:</p>
+<p>"Goodness gracious me! Is it like that, my lady?"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Alma was as good as her word.</p>
+<p>She did everything without consulting me&mdash;fixed the date of
+the reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and
+sent out invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the
+lists which came from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal
+handwriting.</p>
+<p>These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations
+issued reached the grand total of five hundred.</p>
+<p>As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate
+so many guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My
+father agreed, and within a week hundreds of workmen from
+Blackwater were setting up a vast wooden structure, in the form of
+the Colosseum, on the headlands beyond the garden where Martin and
+I had walked together.</p>
+<p>While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to
+increase. I heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to
+be spared. The reception was to surpass in grandeur any f&ecirc;te
+ever held in Ellan. Not knowing what high stakes my father was
+playing for, I was frightened by this extravagance, and from that
+cause alone I wished to escape from the sight of it.</p>
+<p>I could not escape.</p>
+<p>I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and
+that she was trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the
+easiest means to gain her own ends. For this reason, among others,
+the woman in me would not let me fly, so I remained and went
+through a purgatory of suffering.</p>
+<p>Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was
+always urging me to remain, saying:</p>
+<p>"Why should you go, my lady? You are your husband's wife, aren't
+you? Fight it out, I say. Ladies do so every day. Why shouldn't
+you?"</p>
+<p>Before long the whole island seemed to be astir about our
+reception. Every day the insular newspapers devoted columns to the
+event, giving elaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could
+accomplish for a single night's entertainment. In these
+descriptions there was much eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned
+king of Ellan," as well as praise of Alma, who was "displaying such
+daring originality," but little or no mention of myself.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of
+the forthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our
+insular manners some of the visits I received were painfully
+embarrassing.</p>
+<p>One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy,
+who smiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he
+thanked me for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to
+break up a marriage which was so suitable from points of property
+and position.</p>
+<p>"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his
+hopes," he said. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How
+good! How gratifying!"</p>
+<p>The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever,
+congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that
+the object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic
+become the heir of Castle Raa.</p>
+<p>More delicate, but also more distressing, was a letter from
+Father Dan, saying he had been forbidden my husband's house and
+therefore could not visit me, but having heard an angel's whisper
+of the sweet joy that was coming to me, he prayed the Lord and His
+Holy Mother to carry me safely through.</p>
+<p>"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my
+dear child, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And
+now I know you have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage
+has fulfilled its mission, as I always knew it would. So God bless
+you, my daughter, and keep you pure and fit for eternal union with
+that blessed saint, your mother, whom the Lord has made His
+own."</p>
+<p>More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my
+husband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my
+outraged vanity (as I say, the <i>woman</i> in me), would not let
+me go.</p>
+<p>Three weeks passed.</p>
+<p>The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily
+painted bannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at
+sunset. A covered corridor connecting the theatre with the house
+was being lined with immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by
+lamps that resembled stars.</p>
+<p>A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been
+too much occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I
+confined myself, came up to give me my instructions.</p>
+<p>The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock. I was to be
+dressed as Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room.
+At the sound of a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre
+preceded by a line of pages, and accompanied by my husband. After
+we had taken our places in a private box a great ballet, brought
+specially from a London music-hall, was to give a performance
+lasting until midnight. Then there was to be a cotillon, led by
+Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the dancing was to
+be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of
+butterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to be
+liberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through
+the sunlit space.</p>
+<p>I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy
+scene and the object which I supposed it was intended to serve.</p>
+<p>The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the
+real cause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly
+be aware of what was being done in his name and with his money, and
+begging him to put an end to the entertainment altogether.</p>
+<p>The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod. I can
+see her still as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with
+red hair and irregular features.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Mary," she said, seating herself stiffly on the only
+stiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, "your letter
+has been received, but your father has not seen it, his health
+being such as makes it highly undesirable that he should be
+disturbed by unnecessary worries."</p>
+<p>I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been
+unnecessary, but urgent and important, and if she persisted in
+withholding it from my father I should deliver it myself.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter
+is, having opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself
+in sympathy with what is going on here, I happen to know that your
+father has set his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do
+not choose that it shall be put off."</p>
+<p>I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had
+taken an unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I
+asked her by what right did she, who had entered my father's house
+as a dependent, dare to keep his daughter's letter from him.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were
+always self-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I
+am sorry to see that neither marriage nor education at a convent
+has chastened your ungovernable temper. But I have told you that I
+do not choose that you shall injure your father's health by
+disturbing his plans, and you shall certainly not do so."</p>
+<p>"Then take care," I answered, "that in protecting my father's
+health you do not destroy it altogether."</p>
+<p>In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my
+meaning, for after a moment of silence she said:</p>
+<p>"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in
+the future, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I
+shall not consider that I am in any way responsible for it."</p>
+<p>At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from
+various parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different
+handwritings. Some of them advised me to fly from the island, and
+others enclosed a list of steamers' sailings.</p>
+<p>Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly
+torture can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I
+asked myself if I ought not to escape from my husband's house
+before he returned.</p>
+<p>But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters,
+saying she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening
+towards the end, she came running into my room with a shawl over
+her head, a look of triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in
+her hand.</p>
+<p>"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the
+game in your own hands, my lady, and can send them all
+packing."</p>
+<p>The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had
+seized the arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under
+threat of the law (not to speak of instant personal chastisement)
+the girl had confessed that both this letter and others had been
+written by our housekeeper under the inspiration of her
+mistress.</p>
+<p>Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted
+letter and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing
+me with Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the
+forthcoming entertainment.</p>
+<p>Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out
+of my maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away
+in a drawer Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he
+was leaving London by the early train the following morning and
+would arrive at Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.</p>
+<p>"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store
+for him! But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . .
+No? Ah, I see, you've been saving it all up to tell him face to
+face. Oh, happy, happy you!"</p>
+<p>It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come.
+There was no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had
+been holding me in the net of my sin, so that I could not fly
+away.</p>
+<p>At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day
+fixed for the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my
+husband at Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few
+minutes afterwards I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I
+thought he would come up to me directly, but he did not do so, and
+I did not attempt to go down. When, after a while, I asked what had
+become of him, I was told that he was in the library with Alma, and
+that they were alone.</p>
+<p>Two hours passed.</p>
+<p>To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had
+behaved to me. I remembered that he had married me from the most
+mercenary motives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money
+that came through me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I
+had made to love him; that he had humiliated me by gross
+infidelities committed on my honeymoon. I recalled the scenes in
+Rome, the scenes in Paris, and the insults I had received under my
+own roof.</p>
+<p>It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault
+in breaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse)
+shall be greater than that of the man I do not know. I only know
+that I was trembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being
+dressed for dinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard
+my husband's footsteps approach my door.</p>
+<p>I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held on to the
+mantelpiece as my husband came into the room.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality,
+which pierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I
+could see at a glance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of
+itself from his slow grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which
+replaced it trembled.</p>
+<p>Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation
+he plunged immediately into the matter that was uppermost in his
+mind.</p>
+<p>"I am still at a loss to account for this affair of your
+father's," he said. "Of course I know what it is supposed to
+be&mdash;a reception in honour of our home-coming. That explanation
+may or may not be sufficient for these stupid islanders, but it's
+rather too thin for me. Can you tell me what your father means by
+it?"</p>
+<p>I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a
+sheep that walks up to a barking dog:</p>
+<p>"Hadn't you better ask that question of my father himself?"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn't, so I ask you.
+Your father is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things
+he will not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not
+spend five or ten thousand pounds for nothing. He isn't a fool
+exactly."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," I said. I could not help it. It was forced out of
+me.</p>
+<p>My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the bully in him,
+which always lay underneath, came uppermost.</p>
+<p>"Look here, Mary," he said. "I came for an explanation and I
+intend to have one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he
+pleases, but you must know as well as I do what rumour and report
+are saying, so we might as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that
+the doctor has made certain statements about your own condition,
+and that your father is giving this entertainment because . . .
+well, because he is expecting an heir?"</p>
+<p>To my husband's astonishment I answered:</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me
+how that condition came about?"</p>
+<p>Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer.</p>
+<p>"Can't you speak?" he said.</p>
+<p>But still I remained silent.</p>
+<p>"You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I
+ask you again how does that condition come about?"</p>
+<p>I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage
+came to me and I said:</p>
+<p>"Why do you ask? You seem to know already."</p>
+<p>"I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that's what you
+mean. But I'm your husband and have a right to know from
+<i>you</i>. How does your condition come about, I ask you?"</p>
+<p>I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was
+the desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but,
+stepping to my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price
+had intercepted and threw it on the table.</p>
+<p>He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the
+contents were not news, and then asked how I came by it.</p>
+<p>"It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of
+posting it," I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of
+such letters which had been inspired, if not written, by your
+friend Alma."</p>
+<p>"My friend Alma!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, your friend Alma."</p>
+<p>His face assumed a frightful expression and he said:</p>
+<p>"So that's how it is to be, is it? In spite of the admission you
+have just made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the
+letter) "is a trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of
+it. You're going to brazen it out, are you, and shelter your
+condition under your position as a married woman?"</p>
+<p>I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I
+could not speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say:</p>
+<p>"But it doesn't matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the
+accusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of any
+consequence&mdash;is it true?"</p>
+<p>My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I
+felt as if I were throwing myself over a precipice but I
+answered:</p>
+<p>"It is perfectly true."</p>
+<p>I think that was the last thing he expected. After a moment he
+said:</p>
+<p>"Then you have broken your marriage vows&mdash;is that it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, if you call it so."</p>
+<p>"Call it so? Call it so? Good heavens, what do <i>you</i> call
+it?"</p>
+<p>I did not reply, and after another moment he said:</p>
+<p>"But perhaps you wish me to understand that this man whom I was
+so foolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and
+betrayed my wife. Is that what you mean?"</p>
+<p>"No," I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better
+than you did, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself."</p>
+<p>I shall never forget the look with which my husband received
+this confession. He drew himself up with the air of an injured man
+and said:</p>
+<p>"What? You mean that you yourself . . . deliberately . . . Good
+God!"</p>
+<p>He stopped for a moment and then said with a rush:</p>
+<p>"I suppose you've not forgotten what happened at the time of our
+marriage . . . your resistance and the ridiculous compact I
+submitted to? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence,
+your convent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions
+of matrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . .
+after all my complacency . . . that you have deliberately. . . . In
+the name of God do you know what you are? There's only one name for
+a woman who does what you've done. Do you want me to tell you what
+that name is?"</p>
+<p>I was quivering with shame, but my mind, which was going at
+lightning speed, was thinking of London, of Cairo, of Rome, and of
+Paris.</p>
+<p>"Why don't you speak?" he cried, lifting his voice in his rage.
+"Don't you understand what a letter like this is calling you?"</p>
+<p>My heart choked. But the thought that came to me&mdash;that, bad
+as his own life had been, he considered he had a right to treat me
+in this way because he was a man and I was a woman&mdash;brought
+strength out of my weakness, so that when he went on to curse my
+Church and my religion, saying this was all that had come of "the
+mummery of my masses," I fired up for a moment and said:</p>
+<p>"You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong,
+it is I, and not my Church, that is to blame for it."</p>
+<p>"<i>If</i> you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you
+lost all sense of a woman's duty to her husband? While you have
+been married to me and I have been fool enough not to claim you as
+a wife because I thought you were only fit company for the saints
+and angels, you have been prostituting yourself to this blusterer,
+this . . ."</p>
+<p>"That is a lie," I said, stepping up to him in the middle of the
+floor. "It's true that I am married to you, but <i>he</i> is my
+real husband and you . . . you are nothing to me at all."</p>
+<p>My husband stood for a moment with his mouth agape. Then he
+began to laugh&mdash;loudly, derisively, mockingly.</p>
+<p>"Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though,
+and when your time comes you'll expect it to cover your
+disgrace."</p>
+<p>His face had become shockingly distorted. He was quivering with
+fury.</p>
+<p>"That's not the worst, either," he cried. "It's not enough that
+you should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real
+husband, but you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house.
+Isn't that what it all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of
+your father's . . . that you are going to palm off on me and my
+name and family your own and this man's . . . bastard?"</p>
+<p>And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he
+lifted his arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the
+cheek.</p>
+<p>The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a
+hundred-fold worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I
+suffer. When my mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of
+Martin, who loved me so tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's
+blow to the lowest depths of shame.</p>
+<p>I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next
+moment Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn
+perhaps, as before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing
+outside the door. But even that did not serve to restrain him.</p>
+<p>"No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy
+to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you
+shall! And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your
+father."</p>
+<p>And with that he swung out of the room and went lunging down the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>I was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the blow
+from my husband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after
+clashing the door in the face of the housekeeper, said, with her
+black eyes ablaze:</p>
+<p>"Well, if ever I wanted to be a man before to-day!"</p>
+<p>News of the scene went like wildfire through the house, and
+Alma's mother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way
+she told me of a similar insult she had suffered at the hands of
+the "bad Lord Raa," and how it had been the real reason of her
+going to America.</p>
+<p>"Us married ladies have much to put up with. But cheer up,
+dearie. I guess you'll have gotten over it by to-morrow
+morning."</p>
+<p>When she was gone I sat down before the fire. I did not cry. I
+felt as if I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand
+fathoms too deep for tears. I do not think I wept again for many
+months afterwards, and then it was a great joy, not a great grief,
+that brought me a burst of blessed tears.</p>
+<p>But I could hear my dear good Price crying behind me, and when I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Now you see for yourself that I cannot remain in this house any
+longer," she answered, in a low voice:</p>
+<p>"Yes, my lady."</p>
+<p>"I must go at once&mdash;to-night if possible."</p>
+<p>"You shall. Leave everything to me, my lady."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The bell rang, but of course I did not go down to dinner.</p>
+<p>As soon as Price had gone off to make the necessary arrangements
+I turned the key in the lock of my door, removed my evening gown,
+and began to dress for my flight.</p>
+<p>My brain was numb, but I did my best to confront the new
+situation that was before me.</p>
+<p>Hitherto I had been occupied with the problem of whether I
+should or should not leave my husband's house; now I had to settle
+the question of where I was to go to.</p>
+<p>I dared not think of home, for (Nessy MacLeod and Aunt Bridget
+apart) the house of my father was the last place I could fly to at
+a moment when I was making dust and ashes of his lifelong
+expectations.</p>
+<p>Neither dared I think of Sunny Lodge, although I remembered,
+with a tug of tenderness, Christian Ann's last message about Mary
+O'Neill's little room that was always waiting for me&mdash;for I
+thought of how I had broken my pledge to her.</p>
+<p>The only place I could think of was that which Martin had
+mentioned when he wished to carry me away&mdash;London. In the
+mighty world of London I might hide myself from observation and
+wait until Martin returned from his expedition.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, London," I told myself in my breathless excitement,
+little knowing what London meant.</p>
+<p>I began to select the clothes I was to carry with me and to wear
+on my journey. They must be plain, for I had to escape from a house
+in which unfriendly eyes would be watching me. They must be
+durable, for during my time of waiting I expected to be poor.</p>
+<p>I hunted out some of the quaker-like costumes which had been
+made for me before my marriage; and when I had put them on I saw
+that they made a certain deduction from my appearance, but that did
+not matter to me now&mdash;the only eyes I wished to look well in
+being down in the Antarctic seas.</p>
+<p>Then I tried to think of practical matters&mdash;how I was to
+live in London and how, in particular, I was to meet the situation
+that was before me. Surely never did a more helpless innocent
+confront such a serious problem. I was a woman, and for more than a
+year I had been a wife, but I had no more experience of the hard
+facts of material existence than a child.</p>
+<p>I thought first of the bank-book which my father had sent me
+with authority to draw on his account. But it was then nine
+o'clock, the banks were closed for the day, and I knew enough of
+the world to see that if I attempted to cash a cheque in the
+morning my whereabouts would he traced. That must never happen, I
+must hide myself from everybody; therefore my bank-book was
+useless.</p>
+<p>"Quite useless," I thought, throwing it aside like so much waste
+paper.</p>
+<p>I thought next of my jewels. But there I encountered a similar
+difficulty. The jewels which were really mine, having been bought
+by myself, had been gambled away by my husband at Monte Carlo. What
+remained were the family jewels which had come to me as Lady Raa;
+but that was a name I was never more to bear, a person I was never
+more to think about, so I could not permit myself to take anything
+that belonged to her.</p>
+<p>The only thing left to me was my money. I had always kept a good
+deal of it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to
+put it in the plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish
+prodigality to the boys who tossed somersaults behind the carriage
+in the road.</p>
+<p>Now I found it all over my room&mdash;in my purse, in various
+drawers, and on the toilet-tray under my dressing-glass. Gathered
+together it counted up to twenty-eight pounds. I owed four pounds
+to Price, and having set them aside, I saw that I had twenty-four
+pounds left in notes, gold, and silver.</p>
+<p>Being in the literal and unconventional sense utterly ignorant
+of the value of sixpence, I thought this a great sum, amply
+sufficient for all my needs, or at least until I secured
+employment&mdash;for I had from the first some vague idea of
+earning my own living.</p>
+<p>"Martin would like that," I told myself, lifting my head with a
+thrill of pride.</p>
+<p>Then I began to gather up the treasures which were inexpressibly
+more dear to me than all my other possessions.</p>
+<p>One of them was a little miniature of my mother which Father Dan
+had given me for a wedding-present when (as I know now) he would
+rather have parted with his heart's blood.</p>
+<p>Another was a pearl rosary which the Reverend Mother had dropped
+over my arm the last time she kissed me on the forehead; and the
+last was my Martin's misspelt love-letter, which was more precious
+to me than rubies.</p>
+<p>Not for worlds, I thought, would I leave these behind me, or
+ever part with them under any circumstances.</p>
+<p>Several times while I was busy with such preparations, growing
+more and more nervous every moment, Price came on tip-toe and
+tapped softly at my door.</p>
+<p>Once it was to bring me some food and to tell me, with many
+winks (for the good soul herself was trembling with excitement),
+that everything was "as right as ninepence." I should get away
+without difficulty in a couple of hours, and until to-morrow
+morning nobody would be a penny the wiser.</p>
+<p>Fortunately it was Thursday, when a combined passenger and cargo
+steamer sailed to Liverpool. Of course the motor-car would not be
+available to take me to the pier, but Tommy the Mate, who had a
+stiff cart in which he took his surplus products to market, would
+be waiting for me at eleven o'clock by the gate to the high
+road.</p>
+<p>The people downstairs, meaning my husband and Alma and her
+mother, were going off to the pavilion (where hundreds of
+decorators were to work late and the orchestra and ballet were to
+have a rehearsal), and they had been heard to say that they would
+not be back until "way round about midnight."</p>
+<p>"But the servants?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"They're going too, bless them," said Price. "So eat your dinner
+in peace, my lady, and don't worry about a thing until I come back
+to fetch you."</p>
+<p>Another hour passed. I was in a fever of apprehension. I felt
+like a prisoner who was about to escape from a dungeon.</p>
+<p>A shrill wind was coming up from the sea and whistling about the
+house. I could hear the hammering of the workmen in the pavilion as
+well as the music of the orchestra practising their scores.</p>
+<p>A few minutes before eleven Price returned, carrying one of the
+smaller of the travelling-trunks I had taken to Cairo. I noticed
+that it bore no name and no initials.</p>
+<p>"It's all right," she said. "They've gone off, every mother's
+son and daughter of them&mdash;all except the housekeeper, and I've
+caught her out, the cat!"</p>
+<p>That lynx-eyed person had begun to suspect. She had seen Tommy
+harnessing his horse and had not been satisfied with his
+explanation&mdash;that he was taking tomatoes to Blackwater to be
+sent off by the Liverpool steamer.</p>
+<p>So to watch events, without seeming to watch them, the
+housekeeper (when the other servants had gone off to the rehearsal)
+had stolen upstairs to her room in the West tower overlooking the
+back courtyard.</p>
+<p>But Price had been more than a match for her. Creeping up
+behind, she had locked the door of the top landing, and now the
+"little cat" might scream her head off through the window, and
+(over the noises of the wind and the workmen) it would be only like
+"tom" shrieking on the tiles.</p>
+<p>"We must be quick, though," said Price, tumbling into my
+travelling-trunk as many of my clothes as it would hold.</p>
+<p>When it was full and locked and corded she said:</p>
+<p>"Wait," and stepped out on the landing to listen.</p>
+<p>After a moment she returned saying:</p>
+<p>"Not a sound! Now for it, my lady."</p>
+<p>And then, tying her handkerchief over her head to keep down her
+hair in the wind, she picked up the trunk in her arms and crept out
+of the room on tiptoe.</p>
+<p>The moment had come to go, yet, eager as I had been all evening
+to escape from my husband's house, I could scarcely tear myself
+away, for I was feeling a little of that regret which comes to us
+all when we are doing something for the last time.</p>
+<p>Passing through the boudoir this feeling took complete
+possession of me. Only a few hours before it had been the scene of
+my deepest degradation, but many a time before it had been the
+place of my greatest happiness.</p>
+<p><i>"You are my wife. I am your real husband. No matter where you
+are or what they do with you, you are mine and always will
+be."</i></p>
+<p>Half-closing the door, I took a last look round&mdash;at the
+piano, the desk, the table, the fireplace, all the simple things
+associated with my dearest memories. So strong was the yearning of
+my own soul that I felt as if the soul of Martin were in the room
+with me at that moment.</p>
+<p>I believe it was.</p>
+<p>"Quick, my lady, or you'll lose your steamer," whispered Price,
+and then we crossed the landing (which was creaking again) and
+crept noiselessly down a back staircase. We were near the bottom
+when I was startled by a loud knocking, which seemed to come from a
+distant part of the house. My heart temporarily stopped its
+beating, but Price only laughed and whispered:</p>
+<p>"There she is! We've fairly caught her out, the cat."</p>
+<p>At the next moment Price opened an outer door, and after we had
+passed through she closed and locked it behind us.</p>
+<p>We were then in the courtyard behind the house, stumbling in the
+blinding darkness over cobble-stones.</p>
+<p>"Keep close to me, my lady," said Price.</p>
+<p>After a few moments we reached the drive. I think I was more
+nervous than I had ever been before. I heard the withered leaves
+behind me rustling along the ground before the wind from the sea,
+and thought they were the footsteps of people pursuing us. I heard
+the hammering of the workmen and the music of the orchestra, and
+thought they were voices screaming to us to come back.</p>
+<p>Price, who was forging ahead, carried the trunk in her arms as
+if it had been a child, but every few minutes she waited for me to
+come up to her, and encouraged me when I stumbled in the
+darkness.</p>
+<p>"Only a little further, my lady," she said, and I did my best to
+struggle on.</p>
+<p>We reached the gate to the high road at last. Tommy the Mate was
+there with his stiff cart, and Price, who was breathless after her
+great exertion, tumbled my trunk over the tail-board.</p>
+<p>The time had come to part from her, and, remembering how
+faithful and true she had been to me, I hardly knew what to say. I
+told her I had left her wages in an envelope on the dressing-table,
+and then I stammered something about being too poor to make her a
+present to remember me by.</p>
+<p>"It doesn't need a present to help me to remember a good
+mistress, my lady," she said.</p>
+<p>"God bless you for being so good to me," I answered, and then I
+kissed her.</p>
+<p>"I'll remember you by that, though," she said, and she began to
+cry.</p>
+<p>I climbed over the wheel of the stiff cart and seated myself on
+my trunk, and then Tommy, who had been sitting on the front-board
+with his feet on the outer shaft, whipped up his horse and we
+started away.</p>
+<p>During the next half-hour the springless cart bobbed along the
+dark road at its slow monotonous pace. Tommy never once looked
+round or spoke except to his horse, but I understood my old friend
+perfectly.</p>
+<p>I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be overtaken and
+carried back. Again and again I looked behind. At one moment, when
+a big motor-car, with its two great white eyes, came rolling up
+after us, my stormy heart stood still. But it was not my husband's
+car, and in a little while its red tail-light disappeared in the
+darkness ahead.</p>
+<p>We reached Blackwater in time for the midnight steamer and drew
+up at the landward end of the pier. It was cold; the salt wind from
+the sea was very chill. Men who looked like commercial travellers
+were hurrying along with their coat-collars turned up, and porters
+with heavy trunks on their shoulders were striving to keep pace
+with them.</p>
+<p>I gave my own trunk to a porter who came up to the cart, and
+then turned to Tommy to say good-bye. The old man had got down from
+the shaft and was smoothing his smoking horse, and snuffling as if
+he had caught a cold.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, Tommy," I said&mdash;and then something more which I
+do not wish to write down.</p>
+<p>"Good-bye, lil missie," he answered (that cut me deep), "I never
+believed ould Tom Dug would live to see ye laving home like this .
+. . But wait! Only wait till himself is after coming back, and I'll
+go bail it'll be the divil sit up for some of them."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>It was very dark. No more than three or four lamps on the pier
+were burning, but nevertheless I was afraid that the pier-master
+would recognise me.</p>
+<p>I thought he did so as I approached the gangway to the saloon,
+for he said:</p>
+<p>"Private cabin on main deck aft."</p>
+<p>Nervous as I was, I had just enough presence of mind to say
+"Steerage, please," which threw him off the scent entirely, so that
+he cried, in quite a different voice:</p>
+<p>"Steerage passengers forward."</p>
+<p>I found my way to the steerage end of the steamer; and in order
+to escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down
+to the steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the
+bow, with an open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary
+oil-lamp swinging from a rafter overhead.</p>
+<p>The porter found me there, and in my foolish ignorance of the
+value of money I gave him half a crown for his trouble. He first
+looked at the coin, then tested it between his teeth, then spat on
+it, and finally went off chuckling.</p>
+<p>The first and second bells rang. I grudged every moment of delay
+before the steamer sailed, for I still felt like a prisoner who was
+running away and might even yet be brought back.</p>
+<p>Seating myself in the darkest corner of the cabin, I waited and
+watched. There were only two other steerage passengers and they
+were women. Judging by their conversation I concluded that they
+were cooks from lodging-houses on "the front," returning after a
+long season to their homes in Liverpool. Both were very tired, and
+they were spreading their blankets on the bare bunks so as to
+settle themselves for the night.</p>
+<p>At last the third bell rang. I heard the engine whistle, the
+funnel belch out its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the
+gangways being taken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I
+saw the grey pier gliding behind us.</p>
+<p>After a few moments, with a feeling of safety and a sense of
+danger passed, I went up on deck. But oh, how little I knew what
+bitter pain I was putting myself to!</p>
+<p>We were just then swinging round the lighthouse which stands on
+the south-east headland of the bay, and the flash of its revolving
+light in my face as I reached the top of the cabin stairs brought
+back the memory of the joyous and tumultuous scenes of Martin's
+last departure.</p>
+<p>That, coupled and contrasted with the circumstances of my own
+flight, stealthily, shamefully, and in the dead of night, gave me a
+pang that was almost more than I could bear.</p>
+<p>But my cup was not yet full. A few minutes afterwards we sailed
+in the dark past the two headlands of Port Raa, and, looking up, I
+saw the lights in the windows of my husband's house, and the glow
+over the glass roof of the pavilion.</p>
+<p>What would happen there to-morrow morning when it was discovered
+that I was gone? What would happen to-morrow night when my father
+arrived, ignorant of my flight, as I felt sure the malice of my
+husband would keep him?</p>
+<p>Little as I knew then of my father's real motives in giving that
+bizarre and rather vulgar entertainment, I thought I saw and heard
+everything that would occur.</p>
+<p>I saw the dazzling spectacle, I saw the five hundred guests, I
+saw Alma and my husband, and above all I saw my father, the old man
+stricken with mortal maladies, the wounded lion whom the shadow of
+death itself could not subdue, degraded to the dust in his hour of
+pride by the act of his own child.</p>
+<p>I heard his shouts of rage, his cries of fury, his imprecations
+on me as one who should never touch a farthing of his fortune. And
+then I heard the whispering of his "friends," who were telling the
+"true story" of my disappearance, the tale of my "treacheries" to
+my husband&mdash;just as if Satan had willed it that the only
+result of the foolish f&ecirc;te on which my father had wasted his
+wealth like water should be the publication of my shame.</p>
+<p>But the bitterest part of my experience was still to come. In a
+few minutes we sailed past the headlands of Port Raa, the lights of
+my husband's house shot out of view like meteors on a murky night,
+and the steamer turned her head to the open sea.</p>
+<p>I was standing by a rope which crossed the bow and holding on to
+it to save myself from falling, for, being alone with Nature at
+last, I was seeing my flight for the first time in full light.</p>
+<p>I was telling myself that as surely as my flight became known
+Martin's name would be linked with mine, and the honour that was
+dearer to me than, my own would be buried in disgrace.</p>
+<p>O God! O God! Why should Nature be so hard and cruel to a woman?
+Why should it be permitted that, having done no worse than obey the
+purest impulses of my heart, the iron law of my sex should rise up
+to condemn both me and the one who was dearer to my soul than life
+itself?</p>
+<p>I hardly know how long I stood there, holding on to that rope.
+There was no sound now except the tread of a sailor in his heavy
+boots, an inarticulate call from the bridge, an answering shout
+from the wheel, the rattling of the wind in the rigging, the
+throbbing of the engine in the bowels of the ship, and the
+monotonous wash of the waves against her side.</p>
+<p>Oh, how little I felt, how weak, how helpless!</p>
+<p>I looked up towards the sky, but there seemed to be no sky, no
+moon, and no stars, only a vaporous blackness that came down and
+closed about me.</p>
+<p>I looked out to the sea, but there seemed to be no sea, only a
+hissing splash of green spray where the steamer's forward light
+fell on the water which her bow was pitching up, and beyond that
+nothing but a threatening and thundering void.</p>
+<p>I did not weep, but I felt as other women had felt before me, as
+other women have felt since, as women must always feel after they
+have sinned against the world and the world's law, that there was
+nothing before me but the blackness of night.</p>
+<p>"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my
+cry."</p>
+<p>But all at once a blessed thought came to me. We were travelling
+eastward, and dark as the night was now, in a few hours the day
+would dawn, the sun would shine in our faces and the sky would
+smile over our heads!</p>
+<p>It would be like that with me. Martin would come back. I was
+only going to meet him. It was dark midnight with me now, but I was
+sailing into the sunrise!</p>
+<p>Perhaps I was like a child, but I think that comforted me.</p>
+<p>At all events I went down to the little triangular cabin with a
+cheerful heart, forgetting that I was a runaway, a homeless
+wanderer, an outcast, with nothing before me but the wilderness of
+London where I should be friendless and alone.</p>
+<p>The fire had gone out by this time, the oil-lamp was swinging to
+the motion of the ship, the timbers were creaking, and the
+Liverpool women were asleep.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"SEVENTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>SEVENTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At eight o'clock next morning I was in the train leaving
+Liverpool for London.</p>
+<p>I had selected a second-class compartment labelled "For Ladies,"
+and my only travelling companion was a tall fair woman, in a
+seal-skin coat and a very large black hat. She had filled the
+carriage with the warm odour of eau-de-Cologne and the racks on
+both sides with her luggage, which chiefly consisted of ladies' hat
+boxes of various shapes and sizes.</p>
+<p>Hardly had we started when I realised that she was a very
+loquacious and expansive person.</p>
+<p>Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In
+London perhaps? No? Probably I lived in the country? Yes? That was
+charming, the country being so lovely.</p>
+<p>I saw in a moment that if my flight was to be carried out to any
+purpose I should have to conceal my identity; but how to do so I
+did not know, my conscience never before having had to accuse me of
+deliberate untruth.</p>
+<p>Accident helped me. My companion asked me what was my husband's
+profession, and being now accustomed to think of Martin as my real
+husband, I answered that he was a commander.</p>
+<p>"You mean the commander of a ship?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, you've been staying in Liverpool to see him off on a
+voyage. How sweet! Just what I should do myself if my husband were
+a sailor."</p>
+<p>Then followed a further battery of perplexing questions.</p>
+<p>Had my husband gone on a long voyage? Yes? Where to? The South.
+Did I mean India, Australia, New Zealand? Yes, and still
+farther.</p>
+<p>"Ah, I see," she said again. "He's probably the captain of a
+tramp steamer, and will go from port to port as long as he can find
+a cargo."</p>
+<p>Hardly understanding what my companion meant by this, I half
+agreed to it, and then followed a volley of more personal
+inquiries.</p>
+<p>I was young to be married, wasn't I? Probably I hadn't been
+married very long, had I? And not having settled myself in a home
+perhaps I was going up to London to wait for my husband? Yes? How
+wise&mdash;town being so much more cheerful than the country.</p>
+<p>"Any friends there?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"None whatever?"</p>
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+<p>"But won't you be lonely by yourself in London?"</p>
+<p>"A little lonely perhaps."</p>
+<p>Being satisfied that she had found out everything about me, my
+travelling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told
+me something about herself.</p>
+<p>She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the West End of
+London. Occasionally she made personal visits to the provinces to
+take orders from the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she
+found it more profitable to remain in town, where her connection
+was large, among people who could pay the highest prices.</p>
+<p>By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay
+in getting into the station, my travelling companion put her head
+out of the window to inquire the cause. She was told that a night
+train from Scotland was in front of us, and we should have to be
+coupled on to it before we could proceed to London.</p>
+<p>This threw her into the wildest state of excitement.</p>
+<p>"I see what it is," she said. "The shooting season is over and
+the society people are coming down from the moors. I know lots and
+lots of them. They are my best customers&mdash;the gentlemen at all
+events."</p>
+<p>"The gentlemen?"</p>
+<p>"Why, yes," she said with a little laugh.</p>
+<p>After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the
+Scotch train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen
+in knickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the
+platform.</p>
+<p>My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names,
+generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones.</p>
+<p>Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised,
+passed close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself
+from observation behind the curtain of the window.</p>
+<p>"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He
+married Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I
+may tell you."</p>
+<p>I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have
+hidden my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming
+still more confidential, talked for a long time about her
+aristocratic customers, and I caught a glimpse of a life that was
+on the verge of a kind of fashionable Bohemia.</p>
+<p>More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the
+number of her clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should
+become a subject of discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to
+close my eyes and be silent.</p>
+<p>My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly,
+from Rugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the
+tickets were being collected, she first powdered her face by her
+fashion-glass and then interested herself afresh in my affairs.</p>
+<p>"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"</p>
+<p>I repeated that I had none.</p>
+<p>"Then you will go to an hotel, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>I answered that I should have to look for something less
+expensive.</p>
+<p>"In that case," she said, "I think I know something that will
+suit you exactly."</p>
+<p>It was a quiet boarding establishment in
+Bloomsbury&mdash;comfortable house, reasonable terms, and, above
+all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it was kept by her own sister,
+and if I liked she would take me along in her cab and drop me at
+the door. Should she?</p>
+<p>Looking back at that moment I cannot but wonder that after what
+I had heard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the
+last hour I had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so
+that when my companion offered me a shelter in that great, noisy,
+bewildering city in which I had intended to hide myself, but now
+feared I might be submerged and lost, with a willing if not a
+cheerful heart I accepted.</p>
+<p>Half an hour afterwards our cab drew up in a street off Russell
+Square at a rather grimy-looking house which stood at the corner of
+another and smaller square that was shut off by an iron
+railing.</p>
+<p>The door was opened by a young waiter of sixteen or seventeen
+years, who was wearing a greasy dress-suit and a soiled shirt
+front.</p>
+<p>My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at
+the same moment a still larger and perhaps grosser woman than my
+friend, with the same features and complexion, came out of a room
+to the left with, a serviette in her hand.</p>
+<p>"Sophie!"</p>
+<p>"Jane!" cried my companion, and pointing to me she said:</p>
+<p>"I've brought you a new boarder."</p>
+<p>Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me, who and
+what I was, and why I had come up to London.</p>
+<p>"I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much,
+you know."</p>
+<p>"Why, no, certainly not," said the sister.</p>
+<p>At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing, my trunk into
+the house on his shoulder and my travelling companion was bidding
+me good-bye and saying she would look me up later.</p>
+<p>When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of
+hot food, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear
+the clink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishes in the room
+the landlady had come from.</p>
+<p>"You'd like to go up to your bedroom at once, wouldn't you?" she
+said.</p>
+<p>We went up two flights of stairs covered with rather dirty
+druggeting, along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and
+finally up a third flight that was bare to the boards, until we
+came to a room which seemed to be at the top of the house and
+situated in its remotest corner.</p>
+<p>It was a very small apartment, hardly larger than the room over
+the hall at home in which Aunt Bridget had made me sleep when I was
+a child, and it was nearly as cold and cheerless.</p>
+<p>The wall-paper, which had once been a flowery pink, was now pale
+and patternless; the Venetian blind over the window (which looked
+out on the smaller square) had lost one of its cords and hung at an
+irregular angle; there was a mirror over the mantelpiece with the
+silvering much mottled, and a leather-covered easy chair whereof
+the spring was broken and the seat heavily indented.</p>
+<p>"I dare say this will do for the present," said my landlady, and
+though my heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree.</p>
+<p>"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a
+week," she added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I
+assented, whereupon my landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and
+I could come downstairs when I was ready.</p>
+<p>A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face,
+brought me a fat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and
+combed I found my way down to the dining-room.</p>
+<p>What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was
+a large chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in
+need of refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which
+some twenty persons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the
+top.</p>
+<p>The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed
+to me at that first sight to be dressed in every variety of
+out-of-date clothes, many of them rather shabby and some almost
+grotesque.</p>
+<p>Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I
+entered, and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the
+door until the landlady called to me.</p>
+<p>"Come up here," she said, and when I had done so, and taken the
+seat by her side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she
+whispered:</p>
+<p>"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is
+it?"</p>
+<p>I had no time to deliberate.</p>
+<p>"O'Neill," I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising
+her voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members
+of her family, said:</p>
+<p>"Mrs. O'Neill, my dears."</p>
+<p>Then the ladies at the table inclined their heads at me and
+smiled, while the men (especially those who were the most strangely
+dressed) rose from their seats and bowed deeply.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTIETH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTIETH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTIETH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable
+to me.</p>
+<p>Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very
+home of idle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle.</p>
+<p>I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I
+realised that my fellow-guests were the most reserved and
+self-centred of all possible people.</p>
+<p>One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a
+colonel in the Indian army, was understood to be a student of
+Biblical prophecy, having collected some thousands of texts which
+established the identity of the British nation with the lost tribes
+of Israel.</p>
+<p>Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had
+taken orders without securing a living, was believed to be writing
+a history of the world and (after forty years of continuous labour)
+to have reached the century before Christ.</p>
+<p>An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic
+actress who was studying in secret for a season at the National
+Theatre.</p>
+<p>Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since
+been told that every great city has many such groups of people, the
+great prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great
+actors whom the world does not know&mdash;the odds and ends of
+humanity, thrown aside by the rushing river of life into the
+gulley-ways that line its banks, the odd brothers, the odd sisters,
+the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whom there is no place in the
+family, in society, or in the business of the world.</p>
+<p>It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have
+been safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of
+London into which chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one
+unfortunate happening.</p>
+<p>That was the arrival of the daily newspaper.</p>
+<p>There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the
+morning and was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by
+an unwritten law of the house) it was the duty as well as the
+honour of the person who had first finished breakfast to take it up
+and read the most startling part of the news to the rest of the
+company.</p>
+<p>Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I
+was startled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to
+the fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:</p>
+<p>"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress."</p>
+<p>"Read it," said the old clergyman.</p>
+<p>The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand,
+and when I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what
+was coming, and it came.</p>
+<p>The old colonel read:</p>
+<p>"<i>A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious
+disappearance of the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have
+taken place late on Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday
+morning</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a
+little more than a year ago, and her disappearance is the more
+unaccountable from the fact that during the past month she has been
+actively occupied in preparing for a f&ecirc;te in honour of her
+return home after a long and happy honeymoon</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>The pavilion in which the f&ecirc;te was to have been held
+had been erected on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous
+declivity to the sea, and the only reasonable conjecture is that
+the unhappy lady, going out on Thursday night to superintend the
+final preparations, lost her way in the darkness and fell over the
+cliffs</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally
+known in Ellan until the guests had begun to arrive for the
+reception on Friday evening, when the large assembly broke up in
+great confusion</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken
+husband</i>."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost
+irresistible impulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my
+house-mates looked into my face they must see that I was the person
+indicated.</p>
+<p>They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Most
+mysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her
+f&ecirc;te too!") they began to discuss disappearances in general,
+each illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own
+study.</p>
+<p>"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays," said
+one.</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his
+spectacles, "why should it be extraordinary that one person should
+disappear when whole nations&mdash;the ten tribes for example. . .
+."</p>
+<p>"But that's a different thing altogether," said the old
+clergyman. "Now if you had quoted Biblical examples&mdash;Elisha or
+perhaps Jonah. . . ."</p>
+<p>After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way
+I rose from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the
+room.</p>
+<p>It would take long to tell of the feverish days that
+followed&mdash;how newspaper correspondents were sent from London
+to Ellan to inquire into the circumstances of my disappearance; how
+the theory of accident gave place to the theory of suicide, and the
+theory of suicide to the theory of flight; how a porter on the pier
+at Blackwater said he had carried my trunk to the steamer that
+sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was a maid from the great
+house until I had given him half-a-crown (his proper fee being
+threepence); how two female passengers had declared that a person
+answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool; how
+these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how,
+finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my
+disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped
+from mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea.</p>
+<p>But then came another development.</p>
+<p>My father, who was reported to have received the news of my
+departure in a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses
+(raging and storming at my husband like a man demented), having
+come to the conclusion that I, being in a physical condition
+peculiar to women, had received a serious shock resulting in a loss
+of memory, offered five hundred pounds reward for information that
+would lead to my discovery, which was not only desirable to allay
+the distress of my heart-broken family but urgently necessary to
+settle important questions of title and inheritance.</p>
+<p>With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal
+appearance.</p>
+<p><i>"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black
+hair; lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave
+expression; unusually sunny smile."</i></p>
+<p>It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I
+heard these reports read out by the old colonel and the old
+clergyman. Even the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated
+clatter of my knife and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did
+not realise the truth, which must I thought, be plainly evident to
+all eyes.</p>
+<p>They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories.
+But all the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that
+dingy house in Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than
+once, in my great agitation, when the reports came near to the
+truth, I wanted to cry. "Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"</p>
+<p>That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what
+legal powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the
+terror that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the
+subject of a public quarrel between my father and my husband,
+concerning the legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and
+disgrace which that would bring not only upon me but upon
+Martin.</p>
+<p>I had some reason for this fear.</p>
+<p>After my father's offer of a reward there came various spiteful
+paragraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the
+clumsier hand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that,
+if my disappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight,
+the only "shock" I could have experienced must be a shock of
+conscience, rumour having for some time associated my name with
+that of a person who was not unknown in connection with Antarctic
+exploration.</p>
+<p>It was terrible.</p>
+<p>Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic
+of conversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must
+have provided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in
+the drawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always being
+discussed.</p>
+<p>After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all
+London was discussing my disappearance.</p>
+<p>It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of
+the day everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and
+having nothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets.
+In doing so I was compelled to pass certain newsvendors' stalls,
+and I saw for several days that nearly every placard had something
+about "the missing peeress."</p>
+<p>When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare
+with a sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman
+has when she is going down a dark corridor at night&mdash;that
+noiseless footsteps are coming behind, and a hand may at any moment
+be laid on her shoulder.</p>
+<p>But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our
+boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said
+nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read
+that cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking
+aslant at me.</p>
+<p>One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me
+according to her promise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw
+that, while the old colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on
+the hearthrug about some disappearance which occurred thousands of
+years ago, she was looking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my
+nervousness, I was ruckling up the discoloured chintz of my
+chair.</p>
+<p>Then in a moment&mdash;I don't know why&mdash;it flashed upon me
+that my travelling companion was in correspondence with my
+father.</p>
+<p>That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made
+pretence of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to
+my room, where the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of
+vinegar and laid them on my forehead to relieve my
+headache&mdash;though she increased it, poor thing, by talking
+perpetually.</p>
+<p>Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed
+from my name, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a
+visit from a Sister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals
+to attend to the sick.</p>
+<p>I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but
+feeling that my identity was suspected I dared not give cause for
+further suspicion, so I compelled myself to agree.</p>
+<p>A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing
+with my back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to
+face an attack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a
+gentle hand knocked at my door.</p>
+<p>"Come in," I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a
+swinging bough.</p>
+<p>And then an astonishing thing happened.</p>
+<p>A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door
+behind her. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little
+Sisters of the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face
+in an instant.</p>
+<p>A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over
+me at the sight of her.</p>
+<p>It was Mildred Bankes.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>"Mary," said Mildred, "speak low and tell me everything."</p>
+<p>She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands
+in both of mine, and told her.</p>
+<p>I told her that I had fled from my husband's house because I
+could not bear to remain there any longer.</p>
+<p>I told her that my father had married me against my will, in
+spite of my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I
+had any right to resist him.</p>
+<p>I told her that my father&mdash;God forgive me if I did him a
+wrong&mdash;did not love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to
+his lust of power, and that if he were searching for me now it was
+only because my absence disturbed his plans and hurt his pride.</p>
+<p>I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he
+had married me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and
+secure an income.</p>
+<p>I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but
+he loved somebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me,
+and therefore (for these and other reasons) I could not return to
+him under any circumstances.</p>
+<p>While I was speaking I felt Mildred's hand twitching between
+mine, and when I had finished she said:</p>
+<p>"But, my dear child, they told me your friends were
+broken-hearted about you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps
+your reason, and therefore it would be a good act to help them to
+send you home."</p>
+<p>"It's not true, it's not true," I said.</p>
+<p>And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she
+told me how she came to be there&mdash;that the woman who had
+travelled with me in the train from Liverpool, seeing my father's
+offer of a reward, had written to him to say that she knew where I
+was and only needed somebody to establish my identity; that my
+father wished to come to London for this purpose, but had been
+forbidden by his doctor; that our parish priest, Father Donovan,
+had volunteered to come instead, but had been prohibited by his
+Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his lawyers in
+London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had been
+together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now
+to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their
+people.</p>
+<p>"And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs," she said in
+a whisper, "and they are only waiting for me to say who you are
+that they may apply for an order to send you home."</p>
+<p>This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to
+Mildred to save me.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mildred, save me, save me," I cried.</p>
+<p>"But how can I? how can I?" she asked.</p>
+<p>I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more
+deeply I told her the rest of my story.</p>
+<p>I told her that if I had fled from my husband's house it was not
+merely because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I,
+too, loved somebody else&mdash;somebody who was far away but was
+coming back, and there was nothing I could not bear for him in the
+meantime, no pain or suffering or loneliness, and when he returned
+he would protect me from every danger, and we should love each
+other eternally.</p>
+<p>If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that
+this was the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had
+said it all in a rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed
+on me as if they were about to start from their sockets.</p>
+<p>"But, my dear, dear child," she said, "this is worse and worse.
+Your father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done
+wrong too. Don't you see you have?"</p>
+<p>I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and
+did not believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a
+bond I had been forced to make. But when she was about to rise,
+saying that after all it would be a good thing to send me home
+before I had time to join my life to his&mdash;whoever he
+was&mdash;who had led me to forget my duty as a wife, I held her
+trembling hands and whispered:</p>
+<p>"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even
+yet."</p>
+<p>"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew
+what I was going to say.</p>
+<p>"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not
+merely because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."</p>
+<p>I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women
+like Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way
+of reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read
+mine.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going
+to be?" she whispered.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Does your husband know?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"And your father?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying
+beneath her breath:</p>
+<p>"Oh Mother of my God!"</p>
+<p>I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a
+while I said:</p>
+<p>"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will
+you not?"</p>
+<p>There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in
+her chair as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length
+she said:</p>
+<p>"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will
+come up soon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the
+Sacred Heart, and what am I to say to them?"</p>
+<p>"Say no," I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know
+anything to the contrary. Nobody will know."</p>
+<p>"Nobody?"</p>
+<p>I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried
+to excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.</p>
+<p>"It is Alma," I said.</p>
+<p>"Alma? Alma Lier?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she
+had tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my
+husband, who was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my
+place.</p>
+<p>And then I spoke of Martin again&mdash;I could not help
+it&mdash;saying that the shame which Alma would bring on him would
+be a greater grief to me than anything else that could befall me in
+this world.</p>
+<p>"If you only knew who he is," I said, "and the honour he is held
+in, you would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than
+that any disgrace should fall on him through me."</p>
+<p>I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I
+did not intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of
+my great love I could not help doing so.</p>
+<p>"You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred&mdash;the very
+first. Don't you remember the morning after I arrived at school?
+They had torn me away from my mother, and I was so little and
+lonely, but you were so sweet and kind. You took me into church for
+my first visitation, and then into the garden for my first
+rosary&mdash;don't you remember it?"</p>
+<p>Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very
+white.</p>
+<p>"And then don't you remember the day the news came that my
+mother was very ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off
+at the station, and don't you remember what you said when we were
+sitting in the train? You said we might never meet again, because
+our circumstances would be so different. You didn't think we should
+meet like this, did you?"</p>
+<p>Mildred's face was growing deadly white.</p>
+<p>"My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I
+was all she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in
+my father's house, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend
+Mother was very kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to
+become a nun. Yes indeed, and never so much as on the day you took
+your vows."</p>
+<p>Mildred's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were
+fluttering and she was breathing audibly.</p>
+<p>"How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the
+snow-white sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of
+the Little Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white
+gown and long white veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if
+my father had not come for me then, perhaps I should have been a
+nun like you now."</p>
+<p>Mildred's lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our
+Lady for strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me
+plead the harder.</p>
+<p>"But God knows best what our hearts are made for," I said. "He
+knows that mine was made for love. And though you may not think it
+I know God knows that he who is away is my real husband&mdash;not
+the one they married me to. You will not separate us, will you? All
+our happiness&mdash;his and mine&mdash;is in your hands. You will
+save us, will you not?"</p>
+<p>Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a
+few moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know
+then that Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of
+hope in me. At length she said:</p>
+<p>"Mary, you don't know what you are asking me to do. When I took
+my vows I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no
+matter what the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God
+at the great Day of Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I?
+How can I? Remember my vows, my duty."</p>
+<p>I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all
+my life. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would
+save me, one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the
+men downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the
+bitterest reproaches.</p>
+<p>"You religious women are always talking about your duty," I
+cried. "You never think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but
+no, duty, always duty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out
+of the convent, with your crosses and rosaries, know about
+love&mdash;real love&mdash;the blazing fire in a woman's heart when
+she loves somebody so much that she would give her heart's blood
+for him&mdash;yes, and her soul itself if need be."</p>
+<p>What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I
+was doing until I found myself looking out of the window and
+panting for breath.</p>
+<p>Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my
+reproaches, and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still
+sitting in my chair with both her hands covering her face and the
+tears trickling through her fingers on to the linen of her
+habit.</p>
+<p>That conquered me in a moment.</p>
+<p>I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms
+about her neck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt
+by her side again and asked her to forgive me.</p>
+<p>"Forgive me, sister," I said. "I see now that God has brought us
+to this pass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you
+think is right. I shall always know you couldn't have done
+otherwise. <i>He</i> will know too. And if it must be that disgrace
+is to fall on him through me . . . and that when he comes home he
+will find. . . ."</p>
+<p>But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head
+on Mildred's lap.</p>
+<p>During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps
+coming up the stairs.</p>
+<p>"Listen! They're here," said Mildred. "Get up. Say nothing.
+Leave everything to me."</p>
+<p>I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her
+eyes, got up from the chair and stood with her back to the
+fire-place.</p>
+<p>There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered
+it, but my landlady came into the room, followed by three men in
+tall silk hats.</p>
+<p>"Excuse us, my dear," she said, in an insincere voice. "These
+gentlemen are making an examination of the house, and they wish to
+see your room. May they?"</p>
+<p>I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and
+watching intently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I
+could see they were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say
+as plainly as words could speak:</p>
+<p>"Is it she?"</p>
+<p>Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence and
+then&mdash;may the holy Virgin bless her!&mdash;she shook her
+head.</p>
+<p>I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who
+had looked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to
+talk together in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects.</p>
+<p>"So there's nothing to do here, apparently."</p>
+<p>"Apparently not."</p>
+<p>"Let's go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled
+you."</p>
+<p>I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as
+they passed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as
+they went down the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would
+burst, I turned to throw myself at Sister Mildred's feet.</p>
+<p>But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my
+bed, praying fervently.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my
+father gave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the
+day the milliner's clue failed him I moved about freely.</p>
+<p>Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being
+lost.</p>
+<p>Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was
+practically cut off from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up
+(in the interests of her work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat
+at the top of a lofty building near Piccadilly, where her lighted
+window always reminded me of a lighthouse on the edge of a
+dangerous reef. But in giving me her address she warned me not to
+come to her except in case of urgent need partly because further
+intercourse might discredit her denial, and partly because it would
+not be good for me to be called "one of Sister Veronica's
+girls"&mdash;that being Mildred's name as a nun.</p>
+<p>Oh the awful loneliness of London!</p>
+<p>Others just as friendless have wandered in the streets of the
+big city. I knew I was not the first, and I am sure I have not been
+the last to find London the most solitary place in the world. But I
+really and truly think there was one day of the week when, from
+causes peculiar to my situation, my loneliness must have been
+deeper than that of the most friendless refugee.</p>
+<p>Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once
+a week or once a month a letter containing a remittance from some
+unknown source, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his
+other obligations.</p>
+<p>I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I
+had not made but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's
+wife) I used to go out once a week under pretence of calling at a
+shipping office to draw part of my husband's pay.</p>
+<p>In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I
+selected Saturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of
+encountering my husband, or my husband's friends in the West End
+streets, I chose the less conspicuous thoroughfares at the other
+side of the river.</p>
+<p>Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or
+dry, down the Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along
+Whitehall, round the eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and
+past Westminster Pier (dear to me from one poignant memory), and so
+on and on into the monotonous and inconspicuous streets beyond.</p>
+<p>Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway
+across Hungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most
+painful moments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so
+helpless and so lonely.</p>
+<p>The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark
+river flowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, the
+automobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the
+electric cars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open
+flares blazing over the theatres&mdash;all the never-resting life
+of London&mdash;and myself in the midst of the tumultuous solitude,
+a friendless and homeless girl.</p>
+<p>But God in His mercy saved me from all that&mdash;saved me too,
+in ways in which it was only possible to save a woman.</p>
+<p>The first way was through my vanity.</p>
+<p>Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was
+shocked to see that what with my loneliness and my weary walks I
+was losing my looks, for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was
+pinched, my eyes were heavy with dark rings underneath them, and I
+was plainer than Martin had ever seen me.</p>
+<p>This frightened me.</p>
+<p>It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did
+after that to improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake,
+because every girl whose sweetheart is away knows quite well, and
+it is not important that anybody else should.</p>
+<p>There was a florist's shop in Southampton Row, and I went there
+every morning for a little flower which I wore in the breast of my
+bodice, making believe to myself that Martin had given it to
+me.</p>
+<p>There was a jeweller's shop there too, and I sold my wedding
+ring (having long felt as if it burnt my finger) and bought another
+wedding ring with an inscription on the inside "<i>From Martin to
+Mary</i>."</p>
+<p>As a result of all this caressing of myself I saw after a while,
+to my great joy, that my good looks were coming back; and it would
+be silly to say what a thrill of delight I had when, going into the
+drawing-room of our boarding-house one day, the old actress called
+me "Beauty" instead of the name I had hitherto been known by.</p>
+<p>The second way in which God saved me from my loneliness was
+through my condition.</p>
+<p>I did not yet know what angel was whispering to me out of the
+physical phase I was passing through, when suddenly I became
+possessed by a passion for children.</p>
+<p>It was just as if a whole new world of humanity sprang into life
+for me by magic. When I went out for my walks in the streets I
+ceased to be conscious of the faces of men and women, and it seemed
+as if London were peopled by children only.</p>
+<p>I saw no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants
+on an ant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without
+peering under the lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose
+angel eyes looked up at me.</p>
+<p>There was an asylum for children suffering from incurable
+diseases in the smaller square beside our boarding-house, and every
+morning after breakfast, no matter how cold the day might be, I
+would open my window to hear the cheerful voices of the suffering
+darlings singing their hymn:</p>
+<p>"<i>There's a Friend for little children,<br />
+Above the bright blue sky</i>."</p>
+<p>Thus six weeks passed, Christmas approached, and the sad old
+city began to look glad and young and gay.</p>
+<p>Since a certain night at Castle Raa I had had a vague feeling
+that I had thrown myself out of the pale of the Church, therefore I
+had never gone to service since I came to London, and had almost
+forgotten that confession and the mass used to be sweet to me.</p>
+<p>But going home one evening in the deepening London fog (for the
+weather had begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a
+Catholic church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found
+they were from a little illuminated model of the Nativity with the
+Virgin and Child in the stable among the straw. A group of untidy
+children were looking at it with bright beady eyes and chattering
+under their breath, while a black-robed janitor was rattling his
+keys to make them behave.</p>
+<p>This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But
+it also made me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the
+public dinner, about saying the prayers for the day with his
+comrades, that they might feel that they were not cut off from the
+company of Christian men.</p>
+<p>So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely
+plateau that guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the
+difference of time) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to
+be doing the same thing as Martin at the same moment.</p>
+<p>With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and found
+Christmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my way
+upstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly
+which the old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to
+her.</p>
+<p>They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight
+of me, whereupon the old actress cried:</p>
+<p>"Ah, here's Beauty!"</p>
+<p>Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal
+on Christmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime.</p>
+<p>"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and
+alleys round about, but perhaps you won't mind that," she said.</p>
+<p>I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the
+following afternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the
+dress-circle of the great theatre, from which I could see both the
+stage and the auditorium.</p>
+<p>The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor,
+and I could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had
+put the girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the
+tousled heads of the boys.</p>
+<p>How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the
+wicked sisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright
+when the glittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their
+little dangling feet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid
+went off to the ball behind six little ponies which pranced along
+under the magical moonlight in the falling snow!</p>
+<p>But the part of the performance which they liked best was their
+own part when, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs
+they sang in their lanes and alleys:</p>
+<p>"<i>Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,<br />
+Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips yew see</i>."</p>
+<p>That was so loaded with the memory of one of the happiest days
+of my life (the day I went with Martin to see the <i>Scotia</i>)
+that, in the yearning of the motherhood still unborn in me, I felt
+as if I should like to gather the whole screaming houseful of happy
+children to my breast.</p>
+<p>But oh why, why, why, does not Providence warn us when we are on
+the edge of tragic things?</p>
+<p>The pantomime rehearsal being over I was hurrying home (for the
+evening was cold, though I was so warm within) when I became aware
+of a number of newsmen who were flying up from the direction of the
+Strand, crying their papers at the top of their voice.</p>
+<p>I did not usually listen to such people, but I was compelled to
+do so now, for they were all around me.</p>
+<p>"<i>Paper&mdash;third e'shen&mdash;loss of the Sco-sha</i>."</p>
+<p>The cry fell on me like a thunderbolt. An indescribable terror
+seized me. I felt paralysed and stood dead still. People were
+buying copies of the papers, and at first I made a feeble effort to
+do the same. But my voice was faint; the newsman did not hear me
+and he went flying past.</p>
+<p>"<i>Paper&mdash;third e'shen&mdash;reported loss of the
+Sco-sha</i>."</p>
+<p>After that I dared not ask for a paper. Literally I dared not. I
+dared not know the truth. I dared not see the dreadful fact in
+print.</p>
+<p>So I began to hurry home. But as I passed through the streets,
+stunned, stupefied, perspiring, feeling as if I were running away
+from some malignant curse, the newsmen seemed to be pursuing me,
+for they were darting out from every street.</p>
+<p>"<i>Paper&mdash;third e'shen&mdash;loss of the Sco-sha</i>."</p>
+<p>Faster and faster I hurried along. But the awful cry was always
+ringing in my ears, behind, before, and on either side.</p>
+<p>When I reached our boarding-house my limbs could scarcely
+support me. I had hardly strength enough to pull the bell. And
+before our young waiter had opened the door two news men, crossing
+the square, were crying:</p>
+<p>"<i>Paper&mdash;third edition&mdash;reported loss of the
+'Scotia.'</i>"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old
+clergyman were standing by the dining-room door. They were talking
+excitedly, and while I was going upstairs, panting hard and holding
+on by the handrail, I heard part of their conversation.</p>
+<p>"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper."</p>
+<p>Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so
+failed me that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my
+tired brain recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope
+began to cling as a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar.</p>
+<p>After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor
+below. Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them
+say, in such a casual tone:</p>
+<p>"Rather sad&mdash;this South Pole business, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, if it's true."</p>
+<p>"Doesn't seem much doubt about that&mdash;unless there are two
+ships of the same name, you know."</p>
+<p>At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just
+then the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to
+tea.</p>
+<p>As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a
+newspaper.</p>
+<p>"Here we are," he was saying. "Reported loss of the
+<i>Scotia</i>&mdash;Appalling Antarctic Calamity."</p>
+<p>I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old
+actress made room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table.</p>
+<p>"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered.</p>
+<p>"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the
+old colonel, standing back to the fire, began to read.</p>
+<p>"<i>Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large
+fragments of a ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas.
+Among them were the bulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and
+the stern of a boat, bearing the name 'Scotia.'</i></p>
+<p>"<i>Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to
+the schooner of the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few
+weeks ago, and the character of some of the remnants (being vital
+parts of a ship's structure) lead to the inference that the vessel
+herself must have foundered</i>."</p>
+<p>"Well, well," said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of
+buttered toast.</p>
+<p>The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could
+scarcely see; I could scarcely hear.</p>
+<p>"<i>Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the
+'Scotia' may not be still afloat, or that the members of the
+expedition may not have reached a place of safety, but the presence
+of large pieces of ice attached to some of the fragments seem to
+the best authorities to favour the theory that the unfortunate
+vessel was struck by one of the huge icebergs which have lately
+been floating up from the direction of the Admiralty Mountains, and
+in that case her fate will probably remain one of the many
+insoluble mysteries of the ocean</i>."</p>
+<p>"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate," said the old
+clergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . ."</p>
+<p>"Hush!"</p>
+<p><i>"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the
+families of all the explorers who have apparently perished in a
+brave effort to protect mankind from one of the worst dangers of
+the great deep, the entire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it
+may be) of the heroic young Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who
+certainly belonged to the ever-diminishing race of dauntless and
+intrepid souls who seem to be born will that sacred courage which
+leads men to render up their lives at the lure of the Unknown and
+the call of a great idea."</i></p>
+<p>I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the
+shrieking of waves about my face; at the next the rolling of
+billows over my head.</p>
+<p><i>"Though it seems only too certain . . . this sacred courage
+quenched . . . let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . .
+only wasted lives . . . lives given up . . . inglorious ease . . .
+pursuit of idle amusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left
+behind . . . take comfort . . . inspiring thought . . . if lost . .
+. not died in vain . . . Never pleasure but Death . . . the lure
+that draws true hearts. . . ."</i></p>
+<p>I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating
+on my brain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance.</p>
+<p>"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our
+landlady.</p>
+<p>I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to
+the table cloth to prevent myself from falling.</p>
+<p>The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same
+moment the old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on
+the ground of faintness, and the heat of the house after my quick
+walk home from the theatre.</p>
+<p>Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor
+with my head on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It
+was all over. The great love which had engrossed my life had
+gone.</p>
+<p>In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of
+the world's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only
+think of my own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had
+been torn out of my breast.</p>
+<p>"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart&mdash;why,
+when I was so utterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the
+light by which I lived been quenched.</p>
+<p>After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on
+the bed. The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent
+them down again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the
+floor below.</p>
+<p>"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"</p>
+<p>"What peeress?"</p>
+<p>"Don't you remember&mdash;the one who ran away from that
+reprobate Raa?"</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."</p>
+<p>"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had
+lived to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but
+now. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."</p>
+<p>The long night passed.</p>
+<p>Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with
+galloping footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to
+strike every few minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one
+moment I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringing merrily,
+and by that I knew it was Christmas morning.</p>
+<p>I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere
+in the blank reaches of that short space between night and day
+(like the slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time
+when London rests, I fell into a troubled doze.</p>
+<p>I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning
+consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of
+memory rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I
+felt as if my heart were bleeding.</p>
+<p>The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room
+the window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It
+was my first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it.
+If there had been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart
+would have broken.</p>
+<p>The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and
+wished me "a merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.</p>
+<p>The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it
+down, but I did not touch it.</p>
+<p>Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and,
+finding me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered
+"Yes," and while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of
+my little grate she talked of the news in the newspaper.</p>
+<p>"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as
+'ad a collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em
+jolly well right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking
+their lives for nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of
+their wives and children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I
+wouldn't let him! Not me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I,
+''alf your time you never knows whether you 'as a 'usband or
+'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I <i>am</i> a-talking sense,'
+says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."</p>
+<p>After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the
+fire. I tried to think of others beside myself who must be
+suffering from the same disaster&mdash;especially of Martin's
+mother and the good old doctor. I pictured the sweet
+kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright silver bowls on the
+high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the <i>slouree</i> now.
+The light of that house was out, and two old people were sitting on
+either side of a cold hearth.</p>
+<p>I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and
+told myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had
+hitherto been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on
+and Martin would come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I
+was in the presence of nothingness. The sanctuary within me where
+Martin had lived was only a cemetery of the soul.</p>
+<p>"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.</p>
+<p>Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such
+different plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or
+warning that I was at last compelled to think of something besides
+my own loss.</p>
+<p>My unborn child!</p>
+<p>No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect,
+though millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child
+coming that is doomed before its birth to be fatherless&mdash;there
+is nothing in the world like that.</p>
+<p>I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could
+ever know. If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge
+his offspring in spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But
+being dead he could not be charged with it. Therefore the name of
+the father of my unborn child must never, never, never be
+disclosed.</p>
+<p>The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.</p>
+<p>It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square
+vanished in a vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were
+like rows of bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.</p>
+<p>Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me
+until a little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up,
+rather fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her
+head), to say that the boarders were going to have a dance and
+wished me to join them. I excused myself on the ground of headache,
+and she said:</p>
+<p>"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though!
+Christmas night, too!"</p>
+<p>Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent
+tooting of the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned
+waltzes being played on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise
+on the floor below, mingled with laughter, which told me that the
+old boarders were dancing.</p>
+<p>I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for
+nearly forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had
+given me had brought me near to the blank shadowland which is
+death.</p>
+<p>I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire
+to die. It was not to be suicide&mdash;my religion saved me from
+that&mdash;but death by exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from
+food, having no desire for it.</p>
+<p>Martin was gone&mdash;what was there to live for? Had I not
+better die before my child came to life? And if I could go where
+Martin was I should be with him eternally.</p>
+<p>Still I did not weep, but&mdash;whether audibly or only in the
+unconscious depths of my soul&mdash;more than once I cried to
+Martin by name.</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"</p>
+<p>I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day
+and staring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the
+bottom of the grate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor
+outside. At the next moment my door was opened noiselessly, and
+somebody stepped into the room.</p>
+<p>It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low
+voice:</p>
+<p>"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary&mdash;tell me."</p>
+<p>I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could
+not do so, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must
+have rushed into my eyes was instantly reflected in hers.</p>
+<p>"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my
+head.</p>
+<p>"I thought so from the first," she said. "And now you are
+thinking of . . . of what is to come?"</p>
+<p>Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care
+of you. And I will&mdash;I will."</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>Surely Chance must be the damnedest conspirator against human
+happiness, or my darling could never have been allowed to suffer so
+much from the report that my ship was lost.</p>
+<p>What actually happened is easily told.</p>
+<p>Two days after we left Akaroa, N.Z., which was the last we saw
+of the world before we set our faces towards the Unknown, we ran
+into a heavy lumpy sea and made bad weather of it for forty-eight
+hours.</p>
+<p>Going at good speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179
+degrees E., latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the
+Admiralty Mountains, our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole)
+we encountered a south-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome
+deck cargo, made the handling of the ship difficult.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless the <i>Scotia</i> rode bravely for several hours
+over the mountainous seas, though sometimes she rolled fifty
+degrees from side to side.</p>
+<p>Towards nightfall we shipped a good deal of water; the sea
+smashed in part of our starboard bulwarks, destroyed the upper
+deck, washed out the galley, carried off two of our life boats and
+sent other large fragments of the vessel floating away to
+leeward.</p>
+<p>At last the pumps became choked, and the water found its way to
+the engine-room. So to prevent further disaster we put out the
+fires, and then started, all hands, to bale out with buckets.</p>
+<p>It was a sight to see every man-jack at work on that job
+(scientific staff included), and you would not have thought our
+spirits were much damped, whatever our bodies may have been, if you
+had been there when I cried, "Are we downhearted, shipmates?" and
+heard the shout that came up from fifty men (some of them waist
+deep in the water):</p>
+<p>"No!"</p>
+<p>We had a stiff tussle until after midnight, but we stuck hard,
+and before we turned into our bunks, we had fought the sea and
+beaten it.</p>
+<p>Next morning broke fine and clear, with that fresh crisp air of
+the Antarctic which is the same to the explorer as the sniff of
+battle to the warhorse, and no sign of the storm except the sight
+of some lead-white icebergs which had been torn from the islands
+south-west of us.</p>
+<p>Everybody was in high spirits at breakfast, and when one of the
+company started "Sweethearts and Wives" all hands joined in the
+chorus, and (voice or no voice) I had a bit of a go at it
+myself.</p>
+<p>It is not the most solemn music ever slung together, but perhaps
+no anthem sung in a cathedral has ascended to heaven with a
+heartier spirit of thanksgiving.</p>
+<p>When I went up on deck again, though, I saw that enough of our
+"wooden walls" had gone overboard to give "scarey people" the
+impression (if things were ever picked up, as I knew they would be,
+for the set of the current was to the north-east) that we had
+foundered, and that made me think of my dear one.</p>
+<p>We had no wireless aboard, and the ship would not be going back
+to New Zealand until March, so I was helpless to correct the error;
+but I determined that the very first message from the very first
+station I set up on the Antarctic continent should be sent to her
+to say that I was safe and everything going splendid.</p>
+<p>What happened on Christmas day is a longer story.</p>
+<p>On the eighteenth of December, having landed some of my deck
+cargo and provisions, and sent up my ship to winter quarters, I was
+on my way, with ponies, dogs, and sledges and a large company of
+men, all in A1 condition, to the lower summit of Mount Erebus, for
+I intended to set up my first electric-power-wave station
+there&mdash;that being high enough, we thought, to permit of a
+message reaching the plateau of the Polar zone and low enough
+(allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover the maximum
+distance in a northerly direction.</p>
+<p>It was a long reach, but we chose the rocky ridges and moraines,
+trying to avoid the crevassed glaciers, and all went well until the
+twentieth, when just as we were reaching the steeper gradients a
+strong wind sprang up, blowing straight down the course before
+us.</p>
+<p>All day long we toiled against it, but the weather grew worse,
+with gusts of sleet and snow, until the wind reached the force of a
+hurricane and the temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero.</p>
+<p>There was nothing to do but to wait for the blizzard to blow
+itself out, so we plugged down our tents in the shelter of the
+rocky side of a ravine that had an immense snow-field behind
+it.</p>
+<p>The first night was bad enough, for the canvas of one tent flew
+into ribbons, and the poor chaps in it had to lie uncovered in
+their half-frozen sleeping-bags until morning.</p>
+<p>All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third
+the storm continued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine,
+and whirling the snow in dense masses from the snow-field
+overhead.</p>
+<p>Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees
+below zero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and
+during the greater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to
+our sleeping-bags and half buried in the snow that had drifted in
+on us.</p>
+<p>As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody
+said a De Profundis it was between his crackling lips under his
+frozen beard. We had no Christmas dinner either, except a few
+Plasmon biscuits and a nip of brandy and water, which were served
+out by good old O'Sullivan who had come with me as doctor to the
+expedition.</p>
+<p>On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the
+ponies suffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was
+telling on the men too, for some of them were down with dysentery,
+and the toes of one poor chap were black from frostbite.</p>
+<p>I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of
+sleep or rather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought
+with it.</p>
+<p>The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to
+shake off the backward thought that I ought not to have left my
+dear one behind me. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss
+the idea of her danger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie
+like a log in a sleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my
+recollection of her self-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences
+that might come of it.</p>
+<p>This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of the
+whirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I
+could see her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday
+morning when she was returning from church in her drooping hat and
+fluttering veil, or as she looked at me with her great "seeing
+eyes" at the last moment of all when she compelled me to come
+away.</p>
+<p>But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep
+than I awoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by
+my name.</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin!"</p>
+<p>It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer
+and I think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she
+was crying to me to come back.</p>
+<p>That was about the one thing in the world that was impossible to
+me now, and yet I knew that getting assurance from somewhere that
+my dear one was being cared for was the only way to set my mind at
+rest for the job that was before me.</p>
+<p>It may seem ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but
+everybody who has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes,
+aloof from the tides of life, knows that the soul of man is
+susceptible down there to signs which would seem childish amid the
+noise and bustle of the world.</p>
+<p>It was like that with me.</p>
+<p>I shared my tent with O'Sullivan, the chief of our scientific
+staff, and Treacle, who thought it his duty to take care of me,
+though the work was generally the other way about.</p>
+<p>The old salt had been badly battered, and I had not liked the
+way he had been mumbling about "mother," which is not a good sign
+in a stalwart chap when his strength is getting low.</p>
+<p>So while buttoning up the tent on the night after Christmas Day
+I was a bit touched up to see old Treacle, who had lived the life
+of a rip, fumbling at his breast and hauling something out with an
+effort.</p>
+<p>It was a wooden image of the Virgin (about the length of my
+hand) daubed over with gilt and blue paint, and when he stuck it up
+in front of his face as he lay in his sleeping-bag, I knew that he
+expected to go out before morning, and wished <i>that</i> to be the
+last thing his old eyes should rest on.</p>
+<p>I am not much of a man for saints myself (having found that we
+get out of tight places middling well without them), but perhaps
+what Treacle did got down into some secret place of my soul, for I
+felt calmer as I fell asleep, and when I awoke it was not from the
+sound of my darling's voice, but from a sort of deafening
+silence.</p>
+<p>The roaring of the wind had ceased; the blizzard was over; the
+lamp that hung from the staff of the tent had gone out; and there
+was a sheet of light coming in from an aperture in the canvas.</p>
+<p>It was the midnight sun of the Antarctic, and when I raised my
+head I saw that it fell full on the little gilded image of the
+Virgin. Anybody who has never been where I was then may laugh if he
+likes and welcome, but that was enough for me. It was all right!
+Somebody was looking after my dear one!</p>
+<p>I shouted to my shipmates to get up and make ready, and at dawn,
+when we started afresh on our journey, there may have been dark
+clouds over our heads but the sun was shining inside of us.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded
+for me, because help came immediately.</p>
+<p>I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion
+which every mother knows to be the first real and certain
+consciousness of motherhood.</p>
+<p>It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great
+change. But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like
+that of a miracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my
+sorrow, had sent one of His ministering angels to comfort me.</p>
+<p>It seemed to say:</p>
+<p>"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something
+of himself is about to return."</p>
+<p>I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house
+of London, because Martin's child was to bear me company&mdash;to
+be a link between us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should
+be together to the end.</p>
+<p>I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all
+this&mdash;how it seemed to be a justification of what I did on the
+night before Martin left Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not
+return, had prompted me, so that when my dark hour came I might
+have this great hope for my comforter.</p>
+<p>And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how
+joyful!</p>
+<p>Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn
+child, as a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery
+and the joy of the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had
+shed any tears they would have dried them.</p>
+<p>And then the future!</p>
+<p>I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and
+already I could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As
+she grew up I would talk to her of her father&mdash;the brave
+explorer, the man of destiny, who laid down his life in a great
+work for the world. We should always be talking of him&mdash;we two
+alone together, because he belonged to us and nobody else in the
+world besides. Everything I have written here I should tell
+her&mdash;at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our
+love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could
+quench.</p>
+<p>Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have
+been so happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if
+it was so, and it <i>was</i> so.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my
+physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know.
+But one thing is sure&mdash;that hope and prayer and the desire of
+life awoke in me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I
+became another and a happier woman.</p>
+<p>Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she
+returned a few days later. Then she brought me down plump to
+material matters. We had first to consider the questions of ways
+and means, in order to find out how to face the future.</p>
+<p>It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June,
+and I had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was
+clear that I could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.</p>
+<p>Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live
+inexpensively during their period of waiting. They were partly
+philanthropic and therefore subject to certain regulations, which
+my resolute determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit
+it to be mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but
+Mildred hoped to find one that would take me on her recommendation
+without asking further question.</p>
+<p>In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home.
+What a day of trial we had! I shall never forget it.</p>
+<p>The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the
+neighbourhood of our boarding-house.</p>
+<p>It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me
+exceedingly. After we had passed the broad street door, with its
+large brass plate and small brass grille, we were shown into a
+little waiting-room with tiled floor, distempered walls, and
+coloured pictures of the saints.</p>
+<p>The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the
+inmates, but would come downstairs presently, and while we waited
+we heard the dull hum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the
+singing of the sweet music I knew so well.</p>
+<p>Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray
+that I might be permitted to remain there. But the desire was
+damped when the Mother entered the room.</p>
+<p>She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying
+her arms interlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample
+sleeves of her habit, and her face was so white and expressionless,
+that it might have been cast in plaster of Paris.</p>
+<p>In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand.
+"Mother," she said, "I cannot tell you anything about this young
+lady, and I have come to ask if you will take her on my
+recommendation."</p>
+<p>"My dear child," said the Mother, "that would be utterly against
+our rule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from,
+why she is here, and whether she is married or single or a
+widow&mdash;it is quite impossible."</p>
+<p>Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:</p>
+<p>"She can afford to pay a little."</p>
+<p>"That makes no difference."</p>
+<p>"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . ."</p>
+<p>"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is
+married and can say that her husband consents, or single and can
+give us assurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow
+and can offer satisfactory references . . ."</p>
+<p>Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head.</p>
+<p>"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say," said the
+Mother, and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the
+door.</p>
+<p>Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was
+neither Catholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a
+kind of Universal Church, admitting inmates of all
+denominations.</p>
+<p>It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a
+business office. After Mildred had written her name and the object
+of our visit on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to
+another office with an open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform
+(called a Commissioner) was signing letters and cheques.</p>
+<p>The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me,
+and I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for
+something quite other than I was until Mildred explained our
+errand, and then his manner changed painfully.</p>
+<p>"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy
+implies something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit
+anything to be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should
+not only help the woman, but punish the man by making him realise
+his legal, moral, and religious liability for his wrong-doing.
+Naturally we can only do this by help of the girl, and if she does
+not tell us at the outset who and what the partner of her sin has
+been and where he is to be found. . . ."</p>
+<p>I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet
+I said to Mildred:</p>
+<p>"Let us go, please."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile,
+"I have seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to
+shield the guilty man. But why should she? It may seem generous,
+but it is really wicked. It is a direct means of increasing
+immorality. The girl who protects the author of her downfall is
+really promoting the ruin of another woman, and if. . . ."</p>
+<p>Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the
+face, and in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out
+of the office, and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow
+me.</p>
+<p>Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little
+brick house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large
+lying-in hospital in the West End of London.</p>
+<p>At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the
+drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the
+Conversion of the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby
+into a little back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass
+screen, a large apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had
+the appearance of dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were
+sewing tiny pieces of linen and flannel that were obviously
+baby-clothes.</p>
+<p>There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight
+smell of carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other
+side of the screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping
+of hands in the room overhead.</p>
+<p>After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare
+stairs, followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and
+then the Matron came into the parlour.</p>
+<p>She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress,
+and she seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting
+for Mildred's explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and
+where I came from.</p>
+<p>Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then,
+with even more nervousness than ever, made the same request as
+before.</p>
+<p>The Matron seemed aghast.</p>
+<p>"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream
+of such a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have
+fallen from the path of virtue, as well as their still more
+unfortunate offspring, we always make the most searching inquiries.
+In fact, we keep a record of every detail of every case. Listen to
+this," she added, and opening a large leather-bound hook like a
+ledger, she began to read one of its entries:</p>
+<p><i>"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents,
+was led astray</i> [that was not the word] <i>in a lonely road very
+late at night by a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . .
+."</i></p>
+<p>But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from
+the room and the house into the noisy street outside.</p>
+<p>All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me
+that, while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to
+comfort and console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a
+better woman than I had been before, man, with his false and cruel
+morality, with his machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it
+as a whip to punish not only me but Martin.</p>
+<p>But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would
+die in the streets first!</p>
+<p>Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and
+certainly Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in
+the street we turned our faces homeward and were half way back to
+the boarding-house before we spoke again.</p>
+<p>Then she said:</p>
+<p>"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll
+all want references."</p>
+<p>I answered that they should never get them.</p>
+<p>"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to
+become of you?"</p>
+<p>"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the
+world myself without help from anybody.</p>
+<p>There was a silence again until we reached the door of our
+boarding-house, and then Mildred said:</p>
+<p>"Mary, your father is a rich man, and however much you may have
+displeased him he cannot wish you to be left to the mercy of the
+world&mdash;especially when your time comes. Let me write to him. .
+. ."</p>
+<p>That terrified me, for I saw only one result&mdash;an open
+quarrel between my father and my husband about the legitimacy of my
+child, who would probably be taken away from me as soon as it was
+born.</p>
+<p>So taking Mildred by the arm, regardless of the observation of
+passers-by, I begged and prayed and implored of her not to write to
+my father.</p>
+<p>She promised not to do so, and we parted on good terms; but I
+was not satisfied, and the only result of our day's journeying was
+that I became possessed of the idea that the whole world was
+conspiring to rob me of my unborn child.</p>
+<p>A few days later Mildred called again, and then she said:</p>
+<p>"I had another letter from Father Donovan this morning, Mary.
+Your poor priest is broken-hearted about you. He is sure you are in
+London, and certain you are in distress, and says that with or
+without his Bishop's consent he is coming up to London to look for
+you, and will never go back until you are found."</p>
+<p>I began to suspect Mildred. In the fever of my dread of losing
+my child I convinced myself that with the best intentions in the
+world, merely out of love for me and pity for my position, she
+would give me up&mdash;perhaps in the very hour of my peril.</p>
+<p>To make this impossible I determined to cut myself off from her
+and everybody else, by leaving the boarding-house and taking
+another and cheaper lodging far enough away.</p>
+<p>I was encouraged in this course by the thought of my diminishing
+resources, and though heaven knows I had not too many comforts
+where I was. I reproached myself for spending so much on my own
+needs when I ought to be economising for the coming of my
+child.</p>
+<p>The end of it all was that one morning early I went down to the
+corner of Oxford Street where the motor-omnibuses seem to come and
+go from all parts of London.</p>
+<p>North, south, east, and west were all one to me, leading to
+labyrinths of confused and interminable streets, and I knew as
+little as a child which of them was best for my purpose. But chance
+seems to play the greatest part in our lives, and at that moment it
+was so with me.</p>
+<p>I was standing on the edge of the pavement when a motor-bus
+labelled "Bayswater Road" stopped immediately in front of me and I
+stepped into it, not knowing in the least why I did so.</p>
+<p>Late that evening, having found what I wanted, I returned in the
+mingled mist and darkness to the boarding-house to pack up my
+belongings. That was not difficult to do, and after settling my
+account and sending young John for a cab I was making for the door
+when the landlady came up to me.</p>
+<p>"Will you not leave your new address, my dear, lest anybody
+should call," she said.</p>
+<p>"Nobody will call," I answered.</p>
+<p>"But in case there should he letters?"</p>
+<p>"There will be no letters," I said, and whispering to the driver
+to drive up Oxford Street, I got into the cab.</p>
+<p>It was then quite dark. The streets and shops were alight, and I
+remembered that as I crossed the top of the Charing Cross Road I
+looked down in the direction of the lofty building in which
+Mildred's window would be shining like a lighthouse over
+Piccadilly.</p>
+<p>Poor dear ill-requited Mildred! She has long ago forgiven me.
+She knows now that when I ran away from the only friend I had in
+London it was because I could not help it.</p>
+<p>She knows, too, that I was not thinking of myself, and that in
+diving still deeper into the dungeon of the great city, in hiding
+and burying myself away in it, I was asking nothing of God but that
+He would let me live the rest of my life&mdash;no matter how poor
+and lonely&mdash;with the child that He was sending to be a living
+link between my lost one and me.</p>
+<p>In the light of what happened afterwards, that was all so
+strange, and oh, so wonderful and miraculous!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My new quarters were in the poorer district which stands at the
+back of Bayswater.</p>
+<p>The street was a cul-de-sac (of some ten small houses on either
+side) which was blocked up at the further end by the high wall of a
+factory for the "humanization" of milk, and opened out of a busy
+thoroughfare of interior shops like a gully-way off a noisy
+coast.</p>
+<p>My home in this street was in number one, and I had been
+attracted to it by a printed card in the semi-circular fan-light
+over the front door, saying: "A ROOM TO LET FURNISHED."</p>
+<p>My room, which was of fair size, was on the first floor and had
+two windows to the street, with yellow holland blinds and white
+muslin curtains.</p>
+<p>The furniture consisted of a large bed, a horse-hair sofa, three
+cane-bottomed chairs, a chest of drawers (which stood between the
+windows), and a mirror over the mantelpiece, which had pink paper,
+cut into fanciful patterns, over the gilt frame, to keep off the
+flies.</p>
+<p>The floor was covered with linoleum, but there were two strips
+of carpet, one before the fire and the other by the bed: the walls
+were papered with a bright red paper representing peonies in bloom;
+and there were three pictures&mdash;a portrait of a great Welsh
+preacher with a bardic name ("Dyfed"), an engraving entitled "Feed
+my Sheep" (showing Jesus carrying a lamb), and a memorial card of
+some member of the family of the house, in the form of a tomb with
+a weeping angel on either side.</p>
+<p>I paid five shilling a week for my room, and, as this included
+the use of kettle, cooking utensils, and crockery, I found to my
+great delight at the end of the first week that providing for
+myself (tea, bread and butter, and eggs being my principal food) I
+had only spent ten shillings altogether, which, according to my
+present needs, left me enough for my time of waiting and several
+weeks beyond.</p>
+<p>Every morning I went out with a little hand-bag to buy my
+provisions in the front street; and every afternoon I took a walk
+in the better part of Bayswater and even into the Park (Hyde Park),
+which was not far off, but never near Piccadilly, or so far east as
+Bloomsbury, lest I should meet Sister Mildred or be recognized by
+the old boarders.</p>
+<p>I had no key to my lodgings, but when I returned home I knocked
+at the front door (which was at the top of a short flight of steps
+from the pavement) and then a string was pulled in the
+cellar-kitchen in which the family of my landlady lived, whereupon
+the bolt was shot back and the door opened of itself.</p>
+<p>Finding it necessary to account for myself here as at the
+boarding-house, I had adhered to my former name, but said I was the
+widow of a commander lately lost, at sea, which was as near to the
+truth as I dared venture.</p>
+<p>I had also made no disguise of the fact that I was expecting a
+child, a circumstance which secured me much sympathy from the
+kind-hearted souls who were now my neighbours.</p>
+<p>They were all womanly women, generally the wives of men working
+in the milk factory, and therefore the life of our street was very
+regular.</p>
+<p>At five in the morning you heard the halting step of the old
+"knocker up," who went up and down the street tapping at the
+bedroom windows with a long pole like a fishing-rod. A little
+before six you heard the clashing of many front doors and the
+echoing footsteps of the men going to their work. At half-past
+seven you heard the whoop of the milkman and the rattling of his
+cans. At half-past eight you heard the little feet of the children,
+like the pattering of rain, going off to the Board School round the
+corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you heard the wild
+cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons, the boys
+trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune over
+a rope stretched from parapet to parapet.</p>
+<p>After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women,
+washed and combed, standing knitting at their open doors or
+exchanging confidences across the areas until darkness fell and
+each of the mothers called her children into bed, as an old hen in
+the farmyard clucks up her chickens.</p>
+<p>These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied
+themselves from observation of my habits that I was "respectable,"
+they called me "our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was
+"a nice young thing," though it was a little against me that I did
+not go to church or chapel, and had confessed to being a
+Catholic&mdash;for several of our families (including that of my
+landlady) were members of the Welsh Zion Chapel not far away.</p>
+<p>Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had
+confined myself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and
+very sweet to me.</p>
+<p>During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I
+occupied myself in the making of clothes for my baby&mdash;buying
+linen and flannel and worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh
+landlady.</p>
+<p>This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to
+come, for the heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I
+hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish
+things I did and thought and said to myself in those first days
+when I was alone in my room in that back street in Bayswater.</p>
+<p>Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I
+wished to call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself,
+but because Martin had said it was the most beautiful in the world.
+In the end, however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was
+my mother's name and she had been a far better woman than I was),
+and as I finished my baby's garments one by one I used to put them
+away in their drawer, saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's
+binder," or "Isabel Mary's christening-robe" as the case might
+be.</p>
+<p>I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes
+when I think of it now, but there were none then, for though there
+were moments when, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for
+ever blank, I was almost happy in my poor surroundings, and if it
+was a cage I had fixed myself in there was always a bird singing
+inside of it&mdash;the bird that sang in my own bosom.</p>
+<p>"When Isabel Mary comes everything will he all right," I used to
+think.</p>
+<p>This went on for many weeks and perhaps it might have gone on
+until my time was full but for something which, occurring under my
+eyes, made me tremble with the fear that the life I was living and
+the hope I was cherishing were really very wrong and selfish.</p>
+<p>Of my landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather
+hard but no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm
+of children, besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen
+and slept in the room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a
+carter at the dairy) whom I never saw at all except on the
+staircase at ten o'clock at night, when, after winding the tall
+clock on the landing, he went upstairs to bed in his stocking
+feet.</p>
+<p>But the outstanding member of the family for me was a
+shock-headed girl of fourteen called Emmerjane, which was a running
+version of Emma Jane.</p>
+<p>I understood that Emmerjane was the illegitimate daughter of
+Mrs. Williams's dead sister, and that she had been born in
+Carnarvon, which still shimmered in her memory in purple and
+gold.</p>
+<p>Emmerjane was the drudge of the family, and I first saw her in
+the street at dusk, mothering a brood of her little cousins, taking
+Hughie by one hand and Katie by the other and telling Gwennie to
+lay hold of Davie lest he should be run over by the milk vans.</p>
+<p>Afterwards she became my drudge also&mdash;washing my floor,
+bringing up my coals, and cleaning my grate, for sixpence a week,
+and giving me a great deal of information about my neighbours for
+nothing.</p>
+<p>Thus she told me, speaking broad cockney with a Welsh accent,
+that the people opposite were named Wagstaffe and that the creaking
+noise I heard was that of a mangle, which Mrs. Wagstaffe had to
+keep because her husband was a drunkard, who stole her money and
+came home "a-Saturday nights, when the public-houses turned out,
+and beat her somethink shockin'," though she always forgave him the
+next day and then the creaking went on as before.</p>
+<p>But the greatest interest of this weird little woman, who had a
+premature knowledge of things a child ought not to know, was in a
+house half-way down the street on the other side, where steam was
+always coming from the open door to the front kitchen.</p>
+<p>The people who lived there were named Jones. Mrs. Jones "washed"
+and had a bed-ridden old mother (with two shillings from the
+Guardians) and a daughter named Maggie.</p>
+<p>Maggie Jones, who was eighteen, and very pretty, used to work in
+the dairy, but the foreman had "tiken advantage of her" and she had
+just had a baby.</p>
+<p>This foreman was named Owen Owens and he lived at the last
+number on our side, where two unmarried sisters "kept house" for
+him and sat in the "singing seat" at Zion.</p>
+<p>Maggie thought it was the sisters' fault that Owen Owens did not
+marry her, so she conceived a great scheme for "besting" them, and
+this was the tragedy which, through Emmerjane's quick little eyes
+and her cockney-Welsh tongue, came to me in instalments day by
+day.</p>
+<p>When her baby was a month old Maggie dressed it up "fine" and
+took it to the photographers for its "card di visit." The
+photographs were a long time coming, but when they came they were
+"heavenly lovely" and Maggie "cried to look at them."</p>
+<p>Then she put one in an envelope and addressed it to Owen Owens,
+and though it had only to cross the street, she went out after dark
+to a pillar-box a long way off lest anybody should see her posting
+it.</p>
+<p>Next day she said, "He'll have it now, for he always comes home
+to dinner. He'll take it up to his bedroom, look you, and stand it
+on the washstand, and if either of those sisters touch it he'll
+give them what's what."</p>
+<p>After that she waited anxiously for an acknowledgment, and every
+time the postman passed down our street her pretty pale face would
+be at the door, saying, "Anything for me to-day?" or "Are you
+<i>sure</i> there's nothing for me, postman?"</p>
+<p>At length a letter came, and Maggie Jones trembled so much that
+she dared not open it, but at last she tripped up to her room to be
+"all of herself," and then . . . then there was a "wild screech,"
+and when Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the
+floor in a dead faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph
+which Owen Owens had returned with the words, written in his heavy
+scrawl across the face&mdash;<i>Maggie Jones's bastard</i>.</p>
+<p>It would be impossible to say how this incident affected me. I
+felt as if a moral earthquake had opened under my feet.</p>
+<p>What had I been doing? In looking forward to the child that was
+to come to me I had been thinking only of my own comfort&mdash;my
+own consolation.</p>
+<p>But what about the child itself?</p>
+<p>If my identity ever became known&mdash;and it might at any
+moment, by the casual recognition of a person in the
+street&mdash;how should the position of my child differ from that
+of this poor girl?</p>
+<p>A being born out of the pale of the law, as my husband would say
+it must be, an outcast, a thing of shame, without a father to
+recognise it, and with its mother's sin to lash its back for
+ever!</p>
+<p>When I thought of that, much as I had longed for the child that
+was to be a living link between Martin and me, I asked myself if I
+had any right to wish for it.</p>
+<p>I felt I had no right, and that considering my helpless position
+the only true motherly love was to pray that my baby might be
+still-born.</p>
+<p>But that was too hard. It was too terrible. It was like a second
+bereavement. I could not and would not do it.</p>
+<p>"Never, never, never!" I told myself.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Thinking matters out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I
+concluded that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I
+could stave off poverty no real harm could come to my child.</p>
+<p>I determined to do so. But there was only one way open to me at
+present&mdash;and that was to retrench my expenses.</p>
+<p>I did retrench them. Persuading myself that I had no real need
+of this and that, I reduced my weekly outlay.</p>
+<p>This gave me immense pleasure, and even when I saw, after a
+while, that I was growing thin and pale, I felt no self-pity of any
+sort, remembering that I had nobody to look well for now, and only
+the sweet and glorious duty before me of providing for my
+child.</p>
+<p>I convinced myself, too, that my altered appearance was natural
+to my condition, and that all I needed was fresh air and exercise,
+therefore I determined to walk every day in the Park.</p>
+<p>I did so once only.</p>
+<p>It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the
+air and the sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter,
+seem to be washed by showers of sunshine.</p>
+<p>I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I
+was rather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening
+sheaths were swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number
+of ladies and gentlemen on horseback coming in my direction.</p>
+<p>I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a
+beautiful girl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I
+thought he would see me. But he was too much occupied with his
+companion to do so.</p>
+<p>"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill
+voice, and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me,
+laughing.</p>
+<p>After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind
+Bayswater, but there I was forced back on my old problem, for I
+seemed to be always seeing the sufferings of children.</p>
+<p>Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in
+their hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the
+doors of the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open
+to the poor children of the East End they would stay in their slums
+and alleys.</p>
+<p>But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the
+unfortunate ones who enter the world without any legal right to be
+here, and I seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.</p>
+<p>One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain
+under a dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his
+little heart would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but
+when a rather shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning
+from her work, he burst out on her and cried:</p>
+<p>"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."</p>
+<p>"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet
+pavement to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good
+boy."</p>
+<p>It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that
+tragedy, and the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my
+expenditure still further.</p>
+<p>Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never
+tried to find employment. But there was one delicate impediment
+then&mdash;my condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to
+people in the street, and causing some of them, especially women,
+to look round at me. When this became painful I discontinued my
+walks altogether, and sent Emmerjane on my few errands.</p>
+<p>Then my room became my world.</p>
+<p>I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of
+what was going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London
+as it came to me when I opened my window. I had now, more than
+ever, the sense of living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of
+the sea.</p>
+<p>Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain
+joy in that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and
+the only pain I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did
+every day, and looked at my rapidly diminishing store.</p>
+<p>I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me
+<i>close</i>, meaning mean; but that did not trouble me in the
+least, because I told myself that every penny I saved out of my own
+expenses was for my child, to keep her from poverty and all the
+evils and injustices that followed in its train.</p>
+<p>As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and
+sometimes in the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary
+footstep going down the street I would get up, draw aside one of my
+blinds, and see a light burning in some bedroom window opposite,
+and afterwards hear the muffled cry of the small new being who had
+come as another immigrant into our chill little world.</p>
+<p>But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady
+came up to my room one day and asked if I had settled with a
+doctor. When I answered no, she held up her hands and cried:</p>
+<p>"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time,
+though."</p>
+<p>Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and
+if I wished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor
+came next morning.</p>
+<p>He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and
+a sour expression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any
+hint of a consciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must
+have) that in coming to a woman in my condition he was entering one
+of the sacred chambers of human life.</p>
+<p>He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come
+again, and then spoke about his fee.</p>
+<p>"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance," he said,
+whereupon I went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a
+shilling, not without a certain pang at seeing so much go in a
+moment after I had been saving so long.</p>
+<p>The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with
+oh! such a casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh
+landlady said:</p>
+<p>"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food,
+doctor."</p>
+<p>"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I
+could, out of my dry and parched throat, I told him.</p>
+<p>"Tut! tut! This will never do," he said. "It's your duty to your
+child to have better food than that. Something light and nourishing
+every day, such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and
+farinaceous foods generally."</p>
+<p>I gasped. 'What was the doctor thinking about?</p>
+<p>"Remember," he said, with his finger up, "the health of the
+child is intimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the
+mother is in a morbid state it affects the composition of the
+blood, and does great harm to the health of the offspring, both
+immediately and in after life. Don't forget now. Good day!"</p>
+<p>That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great
+love I had been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now
+I learned that I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps
+life-long injury!</p>
+<p>Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods
+the doctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my
+dismay that I had lost the power of digesting them.</p>
+<p>My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my
+Welsh landlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage
+for me.</p>
+<p>The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her
+first interest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her
+fee.</p>
+<p>She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the
+fortnight, but when she saw my face fall (for I could not help
+thinking how little I had left) she said:</p>
+<p>"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, for
+instance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth
+she's back at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten
+and six won't hurt you."</p>
+<p>I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my
+room when my Welsh landlady said:</p>
+<p>"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you."</p>
+<p>And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker,
+began on a long series of stories of ladies who, having "let
+themselves down" had died, either at childbirth or soon
+afterwards.</p>
+<p>"It's <i>after</i> a lady feels it if she has to nurse her
+baby," said the nurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for
+you nor the child if you don't do yourself justice."</p>
+<p>This was a still more terrible possibility&mdash;the possibility
+that I might die and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted
+me all that day and the following night, but the climax came next
+morning, when Emmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the
+last news of Maggie Jones.</p>
+<p>Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work," asking
+if she had not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin'
+another."</p>
+<p>Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinking
+everybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the
+young minister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she
+had gone out every day, whether the weather was good or bad or
+"mejum."</p>
+<p>This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to
+stay out late because she was afraid to meet her mother's face)
+until one wet night, less than a week ago, she had come home
+drenched to the skin, taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink"
+and died.</p>
+<p>Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity
+fell on our street.</p>
+<p>It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but,
+playing no games, they gathered in whispering groups round the
+house with the drawn blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded
+at the doors with their arms under their aprons and their hidden
+hands over their mouths.</p>
+<p>I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the
+last moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming
+down her steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was
+seamed with labour) all wet and broken up.</p>
+<p>The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have
+known nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into
+the midst of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had
+gathered there with their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the
+dead girl, he gave out a Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London
+street, just as they had been used to do at the cottage doors in
+the midst of their native mountains:</p>
+<p>"<i>Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau<br />
+Ar doriad boreu wawr</i>."</p>
+<p>I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at
+the next moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie
+Jones was on her way to her last mother of all&mdash;the Earth.</p>
+<p>During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but
+Maggie's child, and what was to become of it, and next morning when
+Emmerjane came up she told me that the "young minister" was
+"a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."</p>
+<p>I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came
+back with a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.</p>
+<p>The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled
+me. It brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my
+father was rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my
+child's existence he would hate it and cast it off, as the central
+cause of the downfall of his plans.</p>
+<p>Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It
+could not and must not be!</p>
+<p>Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many
+"Hail Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it
+away.</p>
+<p>Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must
+judge of that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and
+sincerity, what I felt and thought when I stood (as every woman who
+is to be a mother must) at the door of that dark chamber which is
+Life's greatest mystery.</p>
+<p>I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps
+for some good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe.</p>
+<p>I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the
+child that was coming to be a link between us.</p>
+<p>I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's
+clothes; in choosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and
+to God, too, every night and every morning.</p>
+<p>I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept
+burning in the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived
+together.</p>
+<p>I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and
+victory out of the grave. And after that I told myself that,
+however sweet and beautiful, <i>all this had been selfishness and I
+must put it away</i>.</p>
+<p>Then I thought of the child itself, who&mdash;conceived in sin
+as my Church would say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by
+society, inheriting my physical weaknesses, having lost one of its
+parents and being liable to lose the other&mdash;was now in danger
+of being left to the mercies of the world, banned from its birth,
+penniless and without a protector, to become a drudge and an
+outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot.</p>
+<p>This was what I thought and felt.</p>
+<p>And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my
+appointed time I knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a
+fervent prayer, if ever my soul went up to God in passionate
+supplication, it was that the child I had longed for and looked
+forward to as a living link with my lost one <i>might be born
+dead</i>.</p>
+<p>"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born
+dead&mdash;I pray, I beseech Thee."</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>It was Saturday, the seventh of June. The summer had been a cold
+one thus far; the night was chill and heavy rain was beating
+against the window-pane.</p>
+<p>There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several
+months; the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece
+had been turned low, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my
+little flannel and linen garments out of the chest of drawers and
+laying them on the flat steel fender.</p>
+<p>I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the
+moments of consciousness came and went with me, like the diving and
+rising of a sea-bird in the midst of swelling waves.</p>
+<p>At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh
+landlady, as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were
+waiting for the crisis and fearing for my life.</p>
+<p>I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise
+in my ears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a
+cave.</p>
+<p>"She's let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don't know in
+the world what's to happen to her."</p>
+<p>"As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so
+little."</p>
+<p>"I'm not afraid of the mother. I'm more afraid of the child, if
+you ask me."</p>
+<p>Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear
+something within myself saying:</p>
+<p>"Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead."</p>
+<p>At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the
+creaking of the mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of
+the street.</p>
+<p>At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the
+house opposite. A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and
+a man was swearing in a thick hoarse voice.</p>
+<p>I knew what had happened&mdash;it was midnight, the
+"public-houses had turned out," and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home
+drunk.</p>
+<p>The night passed heavily. I heard myself (as I had done before)
+calling on Martin in a voice of wild entreaty:</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin!"</p>
+<p>Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard
+myself praying to the Blessed Virgin:</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . ."</p>
+<p>But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted
+me.</p>
+<p>"Hush, b&acirc;ch, hush! It will make it harder for thee."</p>
+<p>At length peace came. It seemed to me that I was running out of
+a tempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth,
+into a quiet harbour.</p>
+<p>There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and
+the nurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful
+whispers.</p>
+<p>I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the
+storm I had passed through still in my heart and brain. I said:</p>
+<p>"Is it dead?"</p>
+<p>"Dead?" cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than
+usual. "Dear heart no, but alive and well. A beautiful little
+girl!"</p>
+<p>"Yes, your baby is all right, ma'am," said the doctor, and then
+my Welsh landlady cried:</p>
+<p>"Why did'st think it would be dead, bach? As I am a Christian
+woman thee'st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed."</p>
+<p>I could bear no more. The dark thoughts of the days before were
+over me still, and with a groan I turned to the wall. Then
+everything was wiped out as by an angel's wing, and I fell into a
+deep sleep.</p>
+<p>When I awoke my dark thoughts were vanishing away like a bad
+dream in the morning. The rain had ceased, the gas had been put
+out, and I could see by the glow on the peonies of the wall-paper
+that the sun was shining with a soft red light through the holland
+blinds of my windows.</p>
+<p>I heard the sparrows chirping on the sills outside; I heard the
+milkman rattling his cans; I heard the bells of a neighbouring
+church ringing for early communion.</p>
+<p>I closed my eyes and held my breath and listened to the sounds
+in my own room. I heard the kettle singing over the fire; I heard
+somebody humming softly, and beating a foot on the floor in time to
+the tune and then I heard a low voice (it was Emmerjane's) saying
+from somewhere near my bed:</p>
+<p>"I dunno but what she's awake. Her breathing ain't a-goin'
+now."</p>
+<p>Then I turned and saw the nurse sitting before the fire with
+something on her lap. I knew what it was. It was my child, and it
+was asleep. In spite of my dark thoughts my heart yearned for
+it.</p>
+<p>And then came the great miracle.</p>
+<p>My child awoke and began to cry. It was a faint cry, oh! so thin
+and weak, but it went thundering and thundering through me. There
+was a moment of awful struggle, and then a mighty torrent of love
+swept over me.</p>
+<p>It was Motherhood.</p>
+<p>My child! Mine! Flesh of my flesh! Oh God! Oh God!</p>
+<p>All my desire for my baby's death to save it from the pains of
+life was gone, and my heart, starved so long, throbbed with
+tenderness. I raised myself in bed, in spite of my nurse's protest,
+and cried to her to give me my baby.</p>
+<p>"Give her to me. Give her to me."</p>
+<p>"By-and-by, by-and-by," said the nurse.</p>
+<p>"Now, now! I can wait no longer."</p>
+<p>"But you must take some food first. Emmerjane, give her that
+glass of milk and water."</p>
+<p>I drank the milk just to satisfy them, and then held out my arms
+for my child.</p>
+<p>"Give her to me&mdash;quick, quick!"</p>
+<p>"Here she is then, the jewel!"</p>
+<p>Oh! the joy of that moment when I first took my baby in my arms,
+and looked into her face, and saw my own features and the sea-blue
+eyes of Martin! Oh the rapture of my first eager kiss!</p>
+<p>I suppose I must have been rough with my little cherub in the
+fervour of my love, for she began to cry again.</p>
+<p>"There! there!" said the nurse. "Be good now, or I must take
+baby away."</p>
+<p>But heaven had taught me another lesson, and instantly,
+instinctively, I put my baby to my breast. Instantly and
+instinctively, too, my baby turned to it with its little mouth open
+and its little fingers feeling for the place.</p>
+<p>"Oh God! My God! Oh Mother of my God!"</p>
+<p>And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly
+bliss&mdash;the happiness of a mother when she first clasps her
+baby to her breast&mdash;I began to cry.</p>
+<p>I had not cried for months&mdash;not since that night in Ellan
+which I did not wish to remember any more&mdash;but now my tears
+gushed out and ran down my face like rain.</p>
+<p>I cried on Martin once more&mdash;I could not help it. And
+looking down at the closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in
+gratitude to God, who had sent me this for all I had suffered.</p>
+<p>"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad
+for the milk," said the nurse.</p>
+<p>After that I tried to control myself. But I found a fierce and
+feverish delight in suckling my child. It seemed as if every drop
+my baby drew gave me a spiritual as well as a physical
+joy&mdash;cooling my blood and my brain and wiping out all my
+troubles.</p>
+<p>Oh mystery of mysteries! Oh miracle of miracles!</p>
+<p>My baby was at my breast and my sufferings were at an end.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>That was a long, long day of happiness.</p>
+<p>It was both very long and very short, for it passed like a
+dream.</p>
+<p>What wonderful happenings were crowded into it!</p>
+<p>First the nurse, from the dizzy heights of her greater
+experience and superior knowledge, indulged my infantile anxieties
+by allowing me to look on while baby was being bathed, and rewarded
+me for "being good" by many praises of my baby's beauty.</p>
+<p>"I've nursed a-many in my time," she said, "but I don't mind
+saying as I've never had a bonnier babby on my knee. Look at her
+legs now, so white and plump and dimpled. Have you <i>ever</i> seen
+anythink so putty?"</p>
+<p>I confessed that I never had, and when nurse showed me how to
+fix the binder, and put on the barrow-coat without disturbing baby
+while asleep, I thought her a wonderful woman.</p>
+<p>Emmerjane, who had with difficulty been kept out of the room
+last night and was now rushing breathlessly up and down stairs,
+wished to hold baby for a moment, and at length out of the
+magnificence of my generosity I allowed her to do so, only warning
+her, as she loved her life, to hold tight and not let baby
+fall.</p>
+<p>"How'd you mean?" said the premature little mother. "<i>Me</i>
+let her fall? Not much!"</p>
+<p>Every hour, according to the doctor's orders, I gave baby the
+breast. I do not know which was my greatest joy&mdash;to feast my
+eyes on her while she sucked and to see her little head fall back
+with her little mouth open when she had had enough, or to watch her
+when she stretched herself and hiccoughed, and then grasped my
+thumb with her little tight fingers.</p>
+<p>Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!</p>
+<p>Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause
+of wonder.</p>
+<p>It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish
+lip would drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no
+tears in her eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded
+with nurse to let me give her the breast again.</p>
+<p>The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds
+were kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for
+baby's, I thought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be
+poor and shabby, but flights of angels could not have made it more
+heavenly than it was in my eyes then.</p>
+<p>In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself,
+but I would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my
+cherub again, and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I
+sang&mdash;as softly as I could&mdash;a little lullaby.</p>
+<p>It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in
+embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I
+knew quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all
+Mothers, who, after she had been turned away from every door, had
+been forced to take refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such
+an ecstasy of spiritual happiness that I thought it no irreverence
+to change it a little and to sing it in my London lodging to my
+human child.</p>
+<p>"<i>Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,<br />
+Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee</i>."</p>
+<p>I dare say my voice was sweet that day&mdash;a mother's voice is
+always sweet&mdash;for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the
+room, came back to it with a look of awed solemnity, she said:</p>
+<p>"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come
+into this room."</p>
+<p>"So there is, and here she is," I said, beaming down on my
+sleeping child.</p>
+<p>But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and
+when night fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my
+dear ones on my lips, and if one of them was the name of him who
+(as I thought) was in heaven, the other was the name of her who was
+now lying in my arms.</p>
+<p>I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the
+riches of life in my little room.</p>
+<p>I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt
+as if God had justified me by His own triumphant law.</p>
+<p>The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and
+with my baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.</p>
+<p>I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed
+of all my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.</p>
+<p>Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and
+my Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.</p>
+<p>I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed
+of my motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed,
+I was beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to
+having my baby all to myself.</p>
+<p>But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to
+excuse herself.</p>
+<p>"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave
+you, money or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning
+Emmerjane) "is always here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's
+'andy."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.</p>
+<p>On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact
+seems to me now, I thought little of it then.</p>
+<p>I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby,
+and my baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the
+dungeon that had seemed so dreadful to me before&mdash;the great
+dungeon of London to one who is poor and friendless.</p>
+<p>But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more
+inmate in my prison-house&mdash;my child.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SIXTH_PART" id="SIXTH_PART"></a>SIXTH PART</h2>
+<h3>I AM LOST</h3>
+<div class="center"><i>"Is it nothing to you, ye that pass by . . .
+?"</i></div>
+<h2>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</h2>
+<p>I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the
+remainder of my darling's story is to be understood I must say what
+was happening in the meantime to me.</p>
+<p>God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my
+dear one at home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether
+a certain dark fact which always lay at the back of my mind as a
+possibility was actually coming to pass.</p>
+<p>But she would be brave&mdash;I know that quite well&mdash;and I
+saw plainly that, if I had to get through the stiff job that was
+before me, I must put my shadowy fears away and think only of the
+dangers I was sure about.</p>
+<p>The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost,
+so as soon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers
+which contained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to
+send her that first message from the Antarctic which was to say we
+had not been shipwrecked.</p>
+<p>It was a thrilling moment. Exactly at the stroke of midnight on
+January 21, while the midnight sun was shining with its dull sullen
+glow, the whole of our company having gathered round, the wireless
+man prepared to despatch my message.</p>
+<p>As we were not sure of our machinery I had drawn up the words to
+suit any place into which they might fall if they missed their
+intended destination:</p>
+<p>"South Pole Expedition safe. All well. Send greetings to dear
+ones at home."</p>
+<p>For some forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy
+signals into the crisp night air, and then the settled calm
+returned, and we stood in breathless silence like beings on the
+edge of a world waiting for the answer to come as from another
+planet.</p>
+<p>It came. After a few minutes we heard from our magnetic detector
+the faint sound of the S signals, and then we broke into a great
+cheer. It was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific
+staff were congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy
+was not inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature
+over an arc of a great circle, I was thinking of my dear
+one&mdash;that one way or another my message would reach her and
+she would be relieved.</p>
+<p>Then in splendid health and spirits&mdash;dogs, ponies, and men
+all A1&mdash;we started on our journey, making a bee-line for the
+Pole.</p>
+<p>Owing to the heavy weights we had to transport our progress was
+slow, much slower than we had expected; and though the going was
+fair and we kept a steady pace, travelling a good deal by night, it
+was not until the end of March that we reached Mount Darwin, which
+I had fixed on for the second of our electric power stations.</p>
+<p>By this time winter was approaching, the nights were beginning
+to be dark and cold, and the altitude (8000 ft.) was telling on
+some of us.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless our second installation got finished about the last
+week in April, and again we gathered round (not quite such a hearty
+company as before) while the wireless man spoke to the operator we
+had left on Erebus.</p>
+<p>Again the electrical radiations went crackling into space, and
+again we gave a cheer when the answer came back&mdash;all well and
+instruments in perfect order.</p>
+<p>Then, late as it was, we began on the last stage of our journey,
+which we knew would be a hard one. Three hundred geographical miles
+in front; temperature down to minus 40&deg;; the sun several weeks
+gone, and nothing before us but thickening twilight, cold winds,
+snow, the rare aurora and the frequent moon.</p>
+<p>But the worst fact was that our spirits were low, and do what I
+would to keep a good heart and cheer up the splendid fellows who
+had come with me, I could not help feeling the deepening effect of
+that sunless gloom.</p>
+<p>In spite of this, I broke camp on April 25, and started straight
+as a die for the South.</p>
+<p>It was a stiff fight over the upper glacier in latitude 85, with
+its razor-shaped ice, full of snow-covered crevasses, and three
+days out two of our best men fell into one of the worst of
+them.</p>
+<p>I saw the accident from a dozen yards away, and running up I lay
+on my stomach and shouted down, but it was a black bottomless gulf
+and not a sound or a sign came back to me.</p>
+<p>This cast a still deeper gloom on our company, who could not be
+cheered up, though I kept telling them we should be on the great
+plateau soon, please God, and then we should have a clear road to
+the Pole.</p>
+<p>We were not much better on top though, for the surface was much
+broken up, and in that brewing place of the winds there seemed to
+be nothing but surging seas of cumulus cloud and rolling waves of
+snow.</p>
+<p>The Polar march was telling on us badly. We were doing no more
+than seven miles at a stretch. So to help my shipmates to keep up
+their spirits (and perhaps to give a bit of a "heise" to my own) I
+had to sing all day long&mdash;though my darling is right that I
+have no more voice than a corn-crake.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I sang "Ramsey Town," because it did not want much
+music, but generally "Sally's the gel for me," because it had a
+rattling chorus. The men all joined in (scientific experts
+included), and if the angels took any heed of us, I think it must
+have touched them up to look down on our little company of puny men
+singing away as we trudged through that snowy wilderness which
+makes a man feel so small.</p>
+<p>But man can only do his best, and as Father Dan (God bless his
+old heart!) used to say, the angels can do no more. We were making
+middling hard work of it in the 88th parallel, with a temperature
+as low as 50 degrees of frost, when a shrieking, blinding blizzard
+came sweeping down on us from the south.</p>
+<p>I thought it might blow itself out, but it didn't, so we struck
+camp in a broad half-circle, building igloos (snow huts) with their
+backs (like rain-beaten cattle) to the storm.</p>
+<p>There we lay nine days&mdash;and it is not worth while now to
+say how much some of our men suffered from frozen fingers, and more
+from falling spirits.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I heard them saying (in voices that were intended to
+be loud enough for me to hear) it would have been better to have
+built winter quarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until
+the return of summer. And at other times I heard them counting the
+distance to the Pole&mdash;a hundred geographical miles, making
+twenty days' march at this season, with the heavy weights we had to
+carry, and the dwindling of our dogs and ponies, for we had killed
+a lot of them for food.</p>
+<p>But I would not give in, for I felt that to go back without
+finishing my job would break my heart; and one day when old Treacle
+said, "No use, guv'nor, let's give it best," I flew at him like a
+hunted tiger.</p>
+<p>All the same I was more than a bit down myself, for there were
+days when death was very near, and one night it really broke me up
+to hear a big strapping chap saying to the man who shared his
+two-man sack, "I shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife
+and the kiddies."</p>
+<p>God knows I had my own anchor at home, and sometimes it had a
+devil of a tug at me. I fought myself hard, though, and at last in
+my desire to go on and my yearning to go back to my dear one, I
+made an awful proposal, such as a man does not much like to think
+of after a crisis is over.</p>
+<p>"Shipmates," I said, "it isn't exactly my fault that we are here
+in the middle of winter, but here we are, and we must make the best
+of it. I am going forward, and those who want to go with me can go.
+But those who don't want to go can stay; and so that no one may
+have it on his conscience that he has kept his comrades back,
+whether by weakness or by will, I have told the doctor to serve out
+a dose of something to every man, that he may end it whenever he
+wants to."</p>
+<p>To my surprise that awful proposal was joyfully received; and
+never so long as I live shall I forget the sight o' O'Sullivan
+going round the broad circle of my shipmates in the blue gloom of
+that noonday twilight and handing something to every one of them,
+while nobody spoke, and Death seemed to look us in the face.</p>
+<p>And now I come to the incident for which I have told this
+story.</p>
+<p>I could not get a wink of sleep that night for thinking of the
+brave fellows I had doomed to death by their own hands (for that
+was what it came to), because their souls were starving and they
+were thinking of home.</p>
+<p>My soul was starving too, and whether it was the altitude (now
+11,000 ft.) that was getting into my head, and giving me that
+draught in the brain which only travellers in frozen regions know,
+or the Power higher than Nature which speaks to a man in great
+solitudes when life is low, I cannot say, but as God is my witness,
+I was hearing again the voices of my dear ones so far away.</p>
+<p>Sometimes they were the voices of my old people in Ellan, but
+more frequently, and most importunately, it was Mary's voice,
+calling me by my name, and crying to me for help as if she were in
+the shadow of some threatening danger.</p>
+<p>"Martin! Martin! Martin!"</p>
+<p>When this idea took clear possession of me&mdash;it was about
+three a.m. and the hurricane was yowling like a wounded
+dog&mdash;the answering thought came quick. I must go back. No
+matter at what cost or sacrifice&mdash;I must go back.</p>
+<p>It was in vain I reflected that the trouble which threatened my
+darling (whatever it was, and I thought I knew) might be all over
+before I reached her side&mdash;I must go back.</p>
+<p>And even when I reminded myself that I was within twenty days'
+march of that last point of my journey which was to be the crown
+and completion of it all, I also remembered that my dear one was
+calling me, and I had no choice but to obey.</p>
+<p>Next morning, in the first light of the dim Antarctic glow, I
+crept out of my snow hut to look south with powerful glasses in
+order to make sure that there was no reason why I should change my
+mind.</p>
+<p>There was none. Although the snow had ceased the blizzard was
+blowing a hundred miles an hour in cutting gusts, so with a
+bleeding heart (and yet a hot one) I told Treacle to call rip our
+company, and when they stood round me in the shelter of my hut I
+said:</p>
+<p>"Shipmates, I have been thinking things over during the night,
+and I see them differently now. Nature is stronger than man, and
+the nature that is inside of us sometimes hits us harder than that
+which is without. I think it is that way with us here, and I
+believe there isn't a man of you who wouldn't go forward with me if
+he had nobody to think of except himself. . . . Well, perhaps
+<i>I</i> have somebody to think of, too, so we'll stick together,
+shipmates, and whatever regrets there may be, or disappointments,
+or heart-breakings, we'll . . . we'll go back home."</p>
+<p>I think it says something for the mettle my men were made of
+that there was never a cheer after I said that, for they could see
+what it cost me to say it. But by God, there was a shout when I
+added:</p>
+<p>"We've drawn a blank this time, boys, but we'll draw a winner
+yet, and I ask you to swear that you'll come back with me next
+year, please God, to finish the work we've begun."</p>
+<p>Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our
+solemn oath, and God knows we meant to keep it.</p>
+<p>It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men
+were bustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now
+but the packing of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and
+ponies, for we were leaving everything else behind us.</p>
+<p>At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the
+Union Jack on the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a
+hundred yards off I looked back through the gloom and saw it
+blowing stiffly in the wind.</p>
+<p>I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if
+life has another such moment coming for me all I have to say is
+that I hope I may die before I live to see it&mdash;which is Irish,
+but most damnably true.</p>
+<p>That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and
+anybody may make what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I
+can calculate the difference of time between London and where we
+were in the 88th latitude it was the very hour of my dear one's
+peril.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="EIGHTY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"EIGHTY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>EIGHTY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Two weeks passed and if I suffered from getting up too soon I
+was never conscious of it.</p>
+<p>Once or twice, perhaps, in the early days I felt a certain
+dizziness and had to hold on for a moment to the iron rail of my
+bedstead, but I was too much occupied with the tender joys of
+motherhood to think much about myself.</p>
+<p>Bathing, dressing, undressing, and feeding my baby were a
+perpetual delight to me.</p>
+<p>What a joy it all was!</p>
+<p>There must he something almost animal, even voluptuous, in
+mothers' love, for there was nothing I liked so much as having baby
+naked on my knee and devouring its sweet body all over with
+kisses&mdash;putting its little fat hands and even its little fat
+feet into my mouth.</p>
+<p>There must be something almost infantile, too, for sometimes
+after I had talked to my darling with a flood of joyous chatter I
+would even find myself scolding her a little, and threatening what
+I would do if she did not "behave."</p>
+<p>Oh, mysterious laws of motherhood! Only God can fathom the
+depths of them.</p>
+<p>It was just as if sixteen years of my life had rolled back, and
+I was again a child in my mother's room playing with my dolls under
+the table. Only there was something so wonderful now in the sweet
+eyes that looked up at me, that at certain moments I would fall
+into a long reverie and my heart would be full of adoration.</p>
+<p>What lengths I went to!</p>
+<p>It was the height of the London season when baby came; and
+sometimes at night, looking through my window, I saw the tail-end
+of the long queue of carriages and electric broughams which
+stretched to the end of the street I lived in, from the great
+houses fronting the Park where balls and receptions were being held
+until the early hours of morning. But I never envied the society
+ladies they were waiting for. On the contrary I pitied them,
+remembering they were childless women for the most part and
+thinking their pleasures were hollow as death compared with
+mine.</p>
+<p>I pitied the rich mothers too&mdash;the mothers who banish their
+babies to nurseries to be cared for by servants, and I thought how
+much more blessed was the condition of poor mothers like myself who
+kept all that sweetness to themselves.</p>
+<p>How happy I was! No woman coming into a fortune was ever so
+happy. I sang all day long. Sometimes it was the sacred music of
+the convent in which each note, with its own glory of sound, wraps
+one's heart round as with a rainbow, but more frequently it was
+"Ramsey Town" or "Sally's the gel for me," which were only noisy
+nonsense but dear to me by such delicious memories.</p>
+<p>My neighbours would come to their doors to listen, and when I
+had stopped I would hear them say:</p>
+<p>"Our lady is a 'appy 'cart, isn't she?"</p>
+<p>I suppose it was because I was so happy that my looks returned
+to me, though I did not know it was so until one morning, after
+standing a moment at the window, I heard somebody say:</p>
+<p>"Our lady seems to be prettier than ever now her baby has
+come."</p>
+<p>I should not have been a woman if I could have resisted that, so
+I ran to the glass to see if it was true, and it was.</p>
+<p>The ugly lines that used to be in my cheeks had gone, my hair
+had regained its blue-black lustre, and my eyes had suddenly become
+bright like a darkened room when the shutters are opened and the
+sunshine streams into it.</p>
+<p>But the coming of baby did better for me than that. It brought
+me back to God, before whom I now felt so humble and so glad,
+because he had transformed the world for me.</p>
+<p>Every Catholic will know why I could not ask for the benediction
+of the Church after childbirth; but he will also know why I was in
+a fever of anxiety to have my baby baptized at the earliest
+possible moment. It was not that I feared her death (I never
+thought of that in those days), but because I lived in dread of the
+dangers which had darkened my thoughts before she was born.</p>
+<p>So when baby was nearly a fortnight old I wrote to the Rector of
+a neighbouring Catholic Church asking when I might bring her to be
+baptized, and he sent me a printed reply, giving the day and hour,
+and enclosing a card to be filled up with her name and all other
+particulars.</p>
+<p>What a day of joy and rapture was that of my baby's baptism! I
+was up with the sun on the morning appointed to take her to church
+and spent hours and hours in dressing her.</p>
+<p>How lovely she looked when I had finished! I thought she was the
+sweetest thing in the world, sweeter than a rosebud under its
+sparkling web of dew when the rising sun is glistening on it.</p>
+<p>After I had put on all the pretty clothes I had prepared for her
+before she was born&mdash;the christening robe and the pelisse and
+the knitted bonnet with its pink ribbons and the light woollen
+veil&mdash;I lifted her up to the glass to look at herself, being
+such a child myself and so wildly, foolishly happy.</p>
+<p>"That old Rector won't see anything equal to her <i>this</i>
+summer morning anyway," I thought.</p>
+<p>And then the journey to church!</p>
+<p>I have heard that unmarried mothers, going out for the first
+time after their confinement, feel ashamed and confused, as if
+every passer-by must know their shameful secret. I was a kind of
+unmarried mother myself, God help me, but I had no such feeling.
+Indeed I felt proud and gay, and when I sailed out with my baby in
+my arms I thought all the people in our street were looking at me,
+and I am sure I wanted to say "Good morning" to everybody I met on
+my way.</p>
+<p>The church was not in a joyous quarter. It stood on the edge of
+a poor and very populous district, with a flaunting public-house
+immediately opposite. When I got to it I found a number of other
+mothers (all working women), with their babies and the godfathers
+and godmothers they had provided for them, waiting at the door.</p>
+<p>At this sight I felt very stupid, for I had been thinking so
+much about other things (some of them vain enough perhaps) that I
+had forgotten the necessity for sponsors; and I do not know what I
+should have done at that last moment if the sacristan had not come
+to my relief&mdash;finding me two old people who, for a fee of a
+shilling each, were willing to stand godmother and godfather to my
+darling.</p>
+<p>Then the priest came out of the church in his white surplice and
+stole, and we all gathered in the porch for the preliminary part of
+the sacrament.</p>
+<p>What an experience it was! Never since my marriage had I been in
+a state of such spiritual exaltation.</p>
+<p>The sacristan, showing me some preference, had put me in the
+middle of the row, immediately in front of the priest, so what
+happened to the other children I do not know, having eyes and ears
+for nothing but the baptism of my own baby.</p>
+<p>There were some mistakes, but they did not trouble me, although
+one was a little important.</p>
+<p>When the priest said, "What name give you this child?" I handed
+the Rector's card to the sacristan, and whispered "Isabel Mary" to
+the godmother, but the next thing I heard was:</p>
+<p>"Mary Isabel, what dost thou ask of the Church of God?"</p>
+<p>But what did it matter? Nothing mattered except one
+thing&mdash;that my darling should be saved by the power of the
+Holy Sacrament from the dark terrors which threatened her.</p>
+<p>Oh, it is a fearful and awful thing, the baptism of a child, if
+you really and truly believe in it. And I did&mdash;from the bottom
+of my heart and soul I believed in it and trusted it.</p>
+<p>In my sacred joy I must have cried nearly all the time, for I
+had taken baby's bonnet off, I remember, and holding it to my mouth
+I found after a while that I was wetting it with my tears.</p>
+<p>When the exorcisms were over, the priest laid the end of his
+stole over baby's shoulder and led her (as our prayer books say)
+into the church, and we all followed to the baptistery, where I
+knelt immediately in front of the font, with the old godmother
+before me, the other mothers on either side, and a group of
+whispering children behind.</p>
+<p>The church was empty, save for two charwomen who were sweeping
+the floor of the nave somewhere up by the dark and silent altar;
+and when the sacristan closed the outer door there was a solemn
+hush, which was broken only by the priest's voice and the
+godparents' muttered responses.</p>
+<p>"Mary Isabel, dost thou renounce Satan?"</p>
+<p>"I do renounce him."</p>
+<p>"And all his works?"</p>
+<p>"I do renounce them."</p>
+<p>"And all his pomps?"</p>
+<p>"I do renounce them."</p>
+<p>The actual baptism was like a prayer to me. I am sure my whole
+soul went out to it. And though I may have been a sinful woman
+unworthy to be churched, I know, and God knows, that no chaste and
+holy nun ever prayed with a purer heart than I did then, kneeling
+there with my baby's bonnet to my mouth.</p>
+<p>"Mary Isabel, I baptize thee in the name of the Father + and of
+the Son + and of the Holy Ghost.+"</p>
+<p>Except that baby cried a little when the water was poured on her
+head (as she had cried when the salt was put on her tongue), I knew
+no more after that until I saw the candle in the godfather's hand
+(which signified that my child had been made a Child of Light) and
+heard the priest say:</p>
+<p>"Go in peace and the Lord be with thee."</p>
+<p>Then I awoke as from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet.
+The priest was going away. The solemn rite was at an end.</p>
+<p>I rose from my knees, put a little money in the plate which the
+sacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two old
+sponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put
+on her bonnet and veil.</p>
+<p>The spiritual exaltation which had sustained me lasted until I
+reached the street where the other mothers and their friends were
+laughing and joking, in voices that had to be pitched high over the
+rattle of the traffic, about going to the house opposite to "wet
+the baby's head."</p>
+<p>But I think something of the celestial light of the sacrament
+must have been on my face still when I reached home, for I remember
+that as I knocked at the door, and waited for the rope from the
+kitchen to open it, I heard one of my neighbours say:</p>
+<p>"Our lady has taken a new lease of life, hasn't she?"</p>
+<p>I thought I had&mdash;a great new lease of physical and
+spiritual life.</p>
+<p>But how little did I know what Fate had in store for me!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETIETH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETIETH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETIETH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I was taking off baby's outdoor things when my Welsh landlady
+came up to ask how I had got on, and after I had told her she
+said:</p>
+<p>And now thee'st got to get the jewel registered."</p>
+<p>"Registered?"</p>
+<p>"Within three weeks. It's the law, look you."</p>
+<p>That was the first thing that frightened me. I had filled up
+truthfully enough the card which the Rector had sent me, because I
+knew that the register of my Church must be as sacred as its
+confessional.</p>
+<p>But a public declaration of my baby's birth and parentage seemed
+to be quite another matter&mdash;charged with all the dangers to
+me, to Martin, and above all to my child, which had overshadowed my
+life before she was born.</p>
+<p>More than once I felt tempted to lie, to make a false
+declaration, to say that Martin had been my husband and Isabel was
+my legitimate child.</p>
+<p>But at length I resolved to speak the truth, the plain truth,
+telling myself that God's law was above man's law, and I had no
+right to be ashamed.</p>
+<p>In this mood I set off for the Registry Office. It was a long
+way from where I lived, and carrying baby in my arms I was tired
+when I got there.</p>
+<p>I found it to be a kind of private house, with an open vestibule
+and a black-and-white enamelled plate on the door-post, saying
+"Registry of Births and Deaths."</p>
+<p>In the front parlour (which reminded me of Mr. Curphy's office
+in Holmtown) there was a counter by the door and a large table
+covered with papers in the space within.</p>
+<p>Two men sat at this table, an old one and a young one, and I
+remember that I thought the old one must have been reading aloud
+from a newspaper which he held open in his hand, for as I entered
+the young one was saying:</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary! Perfectly extraordinary! And everybody thought
+they were lost, too!"</p>
+<p>In the space between the door and the counter two women were
+waiting. Both were poor and obviously agitated. One had a baby in
+her arms, and when it whimpered for its food she unbuttoned her
+dress and fed it openly. The other woman, whose eyes were red as if
+she had been crying, wore a coloured straw hat over which, in a
+pitiful effort to assume black, she had stretched a pennyworth of
+cheap cr&ecirc;pe.</p>
+<p>In his own good time the young man got up to attend to them. He
+was a very ordinary young clerk in a check suit, looking frankly
+bored by the dull routine of his daily labour, and palpably
+unconscious of the fact that every day and hour of his life he was
+standing on the verge of the stormiest places of the soul.</p>
+<p>Opening one of two registers which lay on the counter (the
+Register of Births) he turned first to the woman with the child.
+Her baby, a boy, was illegitimate, and in her nervousness she
+stumbled and stammered, and he corrected her sharply.</p>
+<p>Then opening the other register (the Register of Deaths) he
+attended to the woman in the cr&ecirc;pe. She had lost her little
+girl, two years old, and produced a doctor's certificate. While she
+gave the particulars she held a soiled handkerchief to her mouth as
+if to suppress a sob, but the young clerk's composure remained
+undisturbed.</p>
+<p>I do not know if it was the agitation of the two poor women that
+made me nervous, but when they were gone and my turn had come, I
+was hot and trembling.</p>
+<p>The young clerk, however, who was now looking at me for the
+first time, had suddenly become respectful. With a bow and a smile
+he asked me if I wished to register my child, and when I answered
+yes he asked me to be good enough to step up to the counter.</p>
+<p>"And what is your baby's name, please?" he asked.</p>
+<p>I told him. He dipped his pen in his metal ink-pot, shook some
+drops back, made various imaginary flourishes over his book and
+wrote:</p>
+<p>"Mary Isabel."</p>
+<p>"And now," he said, with another smile, "the full name,
+profession, and place of residence of the father."</p>
+<p>I hesitated for a moment, and then, making a call on my
+resolution, I said:</p>
+<p>"Martin Conrad, seaman, deceased."</p>
+<p>The young clerk looked up quickly.</p>
+<p>"Did you say Martin Conrad, ma'am?" he asked, and as well as I
+could for a click in my throat I answered:</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>He paused as if thinking; then with the same flourish as before
+he wrote that name also, and after he had done so, he twisted his
+face about to the old man, who was sitting behind him, and said, in
+a voice that was not meant to reach me:</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary coincidence, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"Extraordinary!" said the old man, who had lowered his newspaper
+and was looking across at me over the rims of his spectacles.</p>
+<p>"And now," said the young clerk, "your own name and your maiden
+name if you please."</p>
+<p>"Mary O'Neill."</p>
+<p>The young clerk looked up at me again. I was holding baby on my
+left arm and I could see that his eye caught my wedding ring.</p>
+<p>"Mary Conrad, maiden name O'Neill, I presume?" he said.</p>
+<p>I hesitated once more. The old temptation was surging back upon
+me. But making a great pull on my determination to tell the truth
+(or what I believed to be the truth) I answered:</p>
+<p>"No, Mary O'Neill simply."</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said the young clerk, and I thought his manner changed
+instantly.</p>
+<p>There was silence for some minutes while the young clerk filled
+up his form and made the copy I was to carry away.</p>
+<p>I heard the scratching of the young clerk's pen, the crinkling
+of the old man's newspaper, the hollow ticking of a round clock on
+the wall, the dull hum of the traffic in the streets, and the
+thud-thud-thudding in my own bosom.</p>
+<p>Then the entry was read out to me and I was asked to sign
+it.</p>
+<p>"Sign here, please," said the young clerk in quite a different
+tone, pointing to a vacant line at the bottom of the hook, and I
+signed with a trembling hand and a feeling of only partial
+consciousness.</p>
+<p>I hardly know what happened after that until I was standing in
+the open vestibule, settling baby on my arm afresh for my return
+journey, and telling myself that I had laid a stigma upon my child
+which would remain with her as long as she lived.</p>
+<p>It was a long, long way back, I remember, and when I reached
+home (having looked neither to the right nor left, nor at anything
+or anybody, though I felt as if everybody had been looking at me) I
+had a sense of dimness of sight and of aching in the eyeballs.</p>
+<p>I did not sing very much that day, and I thought baby was rather
+restless.</p>
+<p>Towards nightfall I had a startling experience.</p>
+<p>I was preparing Isabel for bed, when I saw a red flush, like a
+rash, down the left side of her face.</p>
+<p>At first I thought it would pass away, but when it did not I
+called my Welsh landlady upstairs to look at it.</p>
+<p>"Do you see something like a stain on baby's face?" I asked, and
+then waited breathlessly for her answer.</p>
+<p>"No . . . Yes . . . Well," she said, "now that thee'st saying so
+. . . perhaps it's a birthmark."</p>
+<p>"A birthmark?"</p>
+<p>"Did'st strike thy face against anything when baby was
+coming?"</p>
+<p>I made some kind of reply, I hardly know what, but the truth, or
+what I thought to be the truth, flashed on me in a moment.</p>
+<p>Remembering my last night at Castle Raa, and the violent scene
+which had occurred there, I told myself that the flush on baby's
+face was the mark of my husband's hand which, making no impression
+upon me, had been passed on to my child, and would remain with her
+to the end of her life, as the brand of her mother's shame and the
+sign of what had been called her bastardy.</p>
+<p>How I suffered at the sight of it! How time after time that
+night I leaned over my sleeping child to see if the mark had passed
+away! How again and again I knelt by her side to pray that if sin
+of mine had to be punished the punishment might fall on me and not
+on my innocent babe!</p>
+<p>At last I remembered baby's baptism and told myself that if it
+meant anything it meant that the sin in which my child had been
+born, the sin of those who had gone before her (if sin it was), had
+been cast out of her soul with the evil spirits which had inspired
+them.</p>
+<p>"<i>This sign of the Holy Cross + which we make upon her
+forehead do thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate</i>."</p>
+<p>God's law had washed my darling white! What could man's
+law&mdash;his proud but puny morality&mdash;do to injure her? It
+could do nothing!</p>
+<p>That comforted me. When I looked at baby again the flush had
+gone and I went to bed quite happy.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I think it must have been the morning of the next day when the
+nurse who had attended me in my confinement came to see how I was
+going along.</p>
+<p>I told her of the dimness of my sight and the aching of my
+eyeballs, whereupon she held up her hands and cried:</p>
+<p>"There now! What did I tell you? Didn't I say it is <i>after</i>
+a lady feels it?"</p>
+<p>The moral of her prediction was that, being in a delicate state
+of health, and having "let myself low" before baby was born, it was
+my duty to wean her immediately.</p>
+<p>I could not do it.</p>
+<p>Although the nurse's advice was supported by my Welsh landlady
+(with various prognostications of consumption and rickets), I could
+not at first deny myself the wild joy of nursing my baby.</p>
+<p>But a severer monitor soon came to say that I must. I found that
+my money was now reduced to little more than two pounds, and that I
+was confronted by the necessity (which I had so long put off) of
+looking for employment.</p>
+<p>I could not look for employment until I had found a nurse for my
+child, and I could not find a nurse until my baby could do without
+me, so when Isabel was three weeks old I began to wean her.</p>
+<p>At first I contented myself with the hours of night, keeping a
+feeding-bottle in bed, with the cow's milk warmed to the heat of my
+own body. But when baby cried for the breast during the day I could
+not find it in my heart to deny her.</p>
+<p>That made the time of weaning somewhat longer than it should
+have been, but I compromised with my conscience by reducing still
+further my meagre expenses.</p>
+<p>Must I tell how I did so?</p>
+<p>Although it was the month of July there was a snap of cold
+weather such as sometimes comes in the middle of our English
+summer, and yet I gave up having a fire in my room, and for the
+cooking of my food I bought a small spirit stove which cost me a
+shilling.</p>
+<p>This tempted me to conduct which has since had consequences, and
+I am half ashamed and half afraid to speak of it. My baby linen
+being little I had to wash it frequently, and having no fire I . .
+. dried it on my own body.</p>
+<p>Oh, I see now it was reckless foolishness, almost wilful
+madness, but I thought nothing of it then. I was poor and perhaps I
+was proud, and I could not afford a fire. And then a mother's love
+is as deep as the sea, and there was nothing in the wide world I
+would not have done to keep my darling a little longer beside
+me.</p>
+<p>Baby being weaned at last I had next to think of a nurse, and
+that was a still more painful ordeal. To give my child to another
+woman, who was to be the same as a second mother to her, was almost
+more than I could bear to think about.</p>
+<p>I <i>had</i> to think of it. But I could only do so by telling
+myself that, when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see
+her every morning and evening and as often as my employment
+permitted.</p>
+<p>This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in
+the act of drawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when
+my landlady came to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would
+suit me exactly.</p>
+<p>Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her
+friend.</p>
+<p>She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the
+other end of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor
+woman, who was not too happily married, had lost a child of her own
+lately, and was now very lonely, being devoted to children.</p>
+<p>This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the
+fact that Mrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge
+of the country.</p>
+<p>Already in my mind's eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a
+tree (perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her
+gently and singing to her softly, and almost forgetting that she
+was not her own baby whom she had lost . . . though that was a
+two-edged sword which cut me both ways, being a sort of wild joy
+with tears lurking behind it.</p>
+<p>So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver's address (10 Lennard's Row,
+Lennard's Green, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking
+her terms and stating my own conditions.</p>
+<p>A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and
+misspelt letter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working
+woman (perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought),
+though that did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time
+how poor people loved their children.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p><i>"The terms is fore shillins a weke," she wrote, "but i am
+that lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete
+darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as
+offen as you pleas</i>."</p>
+</div>
+<p>In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I
+replied at once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next
+day.</p>
+<p>I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I
+could scarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed
+three pillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself
+to post it.</p>
+<p>I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for
+my Welsh landlady (whom I had taken into my confidence about my
+means) took me to task for crying, telling me that I ought to thank
+God for what had happened, which was like a message from heaven,
+look you, and a dispensation of Providence.</p>
+<p>I tried to see things in that light, though it was difficult to
+do so, for the darker my prospects grew the more radiant shone the
+light of the little angel by whose life I lived, and the harder it
+seemed to live without her.</p>
+<p>"But it isn't like losing my child altogether, is it?" I
+said.</p>
+<p>"'Deed no, and 'twill he better for both of you," said my
+landlady.</p>
+<p>"Although Ilford is a long way off I can go there every day,
+can't I'!"</p>
+<p>"'Deed thee can, if thee'st not minding a journey of nine miles
+or more."</p>
+<p>"And if I can get a good situation and earn a little money I may
+be able to have baby back and hire somebody to nurse her, and so
+keep her all to myself."</p>
+<p>"And why shouldn't thee?" said my Welsh landlady. "Thee reading
+print like the young minister and writing letters like a
+copybook!"</p>
+<p>So in the fierce bravery of motherly love I dried my eyes and
+forced back my sobs, and began to pack up my baby's clothes, and to
+persuade myself that I was still quite happy.</p>
+<p>My purse was very low by this time. After paying my rent and
+some other expenses I had only one pound and a few shillings
+left.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my
+journey.</p>
+<p>I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out,
+and I thought my eyes were too much like the sky at
+daybreak&mdash;all joyful beams with a veil of mist in front of
+them.</p>
+<p>But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I
+been so happy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also
+sure I was doing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to
+a mother as providing for her child?</p>
+<p>My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I
+had gathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses
+for less than a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then,
+so I determined to walk all the way.</p>
+<p>Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as
+the corner of the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little
+woman left me, after nearly smothering baby with kisses.</p>
+<p>"Keep straight as a' arrow and you can't lose your wye," she
+said.</p>
+<p>It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air
+is fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has
+not yet had time to grow tired and dusty.</p>
+<p>I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby's
+feeding-bottle in my pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel
+about my wrist, so I had nothing to carry in my arms except baby
+herself, and at first I did not feel her weight.</p>
+<p>There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early
+hour, yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the
+large houses in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was
+shining on the windows most of the blinds were down.</p>
+<p>I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when
+I reached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide
+of traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led
+me safely over.</p>
+<p>The great "Mediterranean of Oxford Street" was by this time
+running at full tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and
+Underground stations and clambering on to the motor-buses. But in
+the rush nobody hustled or jostled me. A woman with a child in her
+arms was like a queen&mdash;everybody made way for her.</p>
+<p>Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the
+dressmakers' windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not
+covet any of them. I remembered the costly ones I had bought in
+Cairo and how little happiness they had brought me. And then I felt
+as if the wealth of the world were in my arms.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came
+upon a shop for the sale of babies' clothes. Already I foresaw a
+time when baby, dressed in pretty things like these, would be
+running about Lennard's Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs.
+Oliver's garden.</p>
+<p>The great street was very long and I thought it would never end.
+But I think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed
+through the foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two
+young Italian waiters, standing at the door of their caf&eacute;,
+asked each other in their own language which of us (baby or I) was
+"the bambino," I turned to them and smiled.</p>
+<p>Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for
+her food, and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln's
+Inn Fields and sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the
+bottle. It was then ten o'clock, the sun was high and the day was
+becoming hot.</p>
+<p>The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of
+the streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when
+I resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but
+before I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain
+on me.</p>
+<p>I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for
+hospital nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them,
+who was going my way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry
+baby. She looked so sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as
+we walked along we talked.</p>
+<p>She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the
+other end of London, the edge of the country, to Ilford.</p>
+<p>"Ilford!" she cried. "Why, that's miles and miles away. You'll
+have to 'bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it
+through Stratford Market."</p>
+<p>I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and
+she gave me a searching look, but said no more on that subject.</p>
+<p>Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her
+myself, and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been
+forced to wean her, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . .
+.</p>
+<p>"Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse," she said, and I
+answered yes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford.</p>
+<p>"I see," she said, with another searching look, and then it
+flashed upon me that she had formed her own conclusions about what
+had befallen me.</p>
+<p>When we came to a great building in a side street on the left,
+with ambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said
+she was sorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was
+due in the hospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for
+her.</p>
+<p>"But I hope baby's nurse will be a good one. They're not always
+that, you know."</p>
+<p>I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The
+parcel on my wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet
+were beginning to drag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced
+the crowded thoroughfares&mdash;Newgate with its cruel old prison,
+the edge of St. Paul's, and the corner of St. Martin's-le-Grand,
+and so on into Cheapside.</p>
+<p>Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers,
+clerks, and city men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and
+sometimes running along the pavement, making me think of the river
+by my father's house, whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy
+as a child to be always struggling to find out which could get to
+Murphy's Mouth the first and so drown itself in the sea.</p>
+<p>People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody
+brushed me in passing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me
+accidentally he stopped to say he was sorry.</p>
+<p>Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and
+what I should have done without her when I got to the Mansion house
+I do not know, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the
+London traffic, with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in
+different directions and its tremendous tides of human life flowing
+every way.</p>
+<p>But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a
+triangle of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a
+rock on the edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling
+inscription, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," a
+big policeman, seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to
+the drivers and shouted to the pedestrians ("Stand a-one side,
+please"), and then led me safely across, as if the Red Sea had
+parted to let us pass.</p>
+<p>It was then twelve o'clock and baby was once more crying for her
+food, so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave
+her the bottle again.</p>
+<p>Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden,
+but it was a graveyard&mdash;one of the graveyards of the old
+London churches, enclosed by high buildings now, and overlooked by
+office windows.</p>
+<p>Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying
+there in the midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me
+of one of the little islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on
+which the fuchsia and wild rose grow while the river rolls and
+boils about it.</p>
+<p>I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a
+gnarled and blackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when
+I saw that a young girl was sitting beside me.</p>
+<p>She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out
+of a confectioner's bag, while she read a paper-covered novel.
+Presently she looked at baby with her little eyes, which were like
+a pair of shiny boot buttons, and said:</p>
+<p>"That your child?"</p>
+<p>I answered her, and then she asked:</p>
+<p>"Do you like children?"</p>
+<p>I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them
+also.</p>
+<p>"Can't say I'm particularly gone on them," she said, whereupon I
+replied that that was probably because she had not yet had much
+experience.</p>
+<p>"Oh, haven't I? Perhaps I haven't," she said, and then with a
+hard little laugh, she added "Mother's had nine though."</p>
+<p>I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head
+she told me she was a typist.</p>
+<p>"Better screw and your evenings off," she said, and then she
+returned to the subject of children.</p>
+<p>One of her chums in the office who used to go out with her every
+night to the music-halls got into trouble a year or two ago. As a
+consequence she had to marry. And what was the result? Never had
+her nose out of the wash-tub now!</p>
+<p>The story was crude enough, yet it touched me closely.</p>
+<p>"But couldn't she have put her baby out to nurse and get another
+situation somewhere?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Matter o' luck," said the girl. "Some can. Some can't. That's
+their look out. Firms don't like it. If they find you've got a
+child they gen'r'lly chuck you."</p>
+<p>In spite of myself I was a little down when I started on my
+journey again. I thought the parcel was cutting my wrist and I felt
+my feet growing heavier at every step.</p>
+<p>Was Maggie Jones's story the universal one?</p>
+<p>If a child were born beyond the legal limits, was it a thing to
+hide away and be ashamed of?</p>
+<p>And could it be possible that man's law was stronger than God's
+law after all?</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I had walked so slowly and stopped so often that it was two
+o'clock in the afternoon when I passed through Aldgate.</p>
+<p>I was then faint for want of food, so I looked out for a
+tea-shop or restaurant.</p>
+<p>I passed several such places before I found the modest house I
+wanted. Then I stepped into it rather nervously and took the seat
+nearest the door.</p>
+<p>It was an oblong room with red plush seats along the walls
+behind a line of marble-topped tables. The customers were all men,
+chiefly clerks and warehousemen, I thought, and the attendants were
+girls in black frocks and white aprons.</p>
+<p>There seemed to be a constant fire of free-and-easy flirtation
+going on between them. At one table a man in a cloth cap was saying
+to the girl who had served him:</p>
+<p>"What's the damage, dearie?"</p>
+<p>"One roast, one veg, two breads&mdash;'levenpence, and no
+liberties, mister."</p>
+<p>"Sunday off, Em'ly?" said a youth in a red tie at another table,
+and being told it was, he said:</p>
+<p>"Then what do you say to 'oppin' up to 'Endon and 'aving a day
+in a boat?"</p>
+<p>I had to wait some time before anybody came to attend to me, but
+at length a girl from the other end of the room, who had taken no
+part in these amatory exchanges, stepped up and asked what I
+wanted.</p>
+<p>I ordered a glass of cold milk and a scone for myself and a pint
+of hot milk to replenish baby's bottle.</p>
+<p>The girl served me immediately, and after rinsing and refilling
+the feeding-bottle she stood near while the baby used it.</p>
+<p>She had quiet eyes and that indefinable expression of yearning
+tenderness which we sometimes see in the eyes of a dear old maid
+who has missed her motherhood.</p>
+<p>The shop had been clearing rapidly; and as soon as the men were
+gone, and while the other girls were sitting in corners to read
+penny novelettes, my waitress leaned over and asked me if I did not
+wish to go into the private room to attend to baby.</p>
+<p>A moment afterwards I followed her into a small apartment at the
+end of the shop, and there a curious thing occurred.</p>
+<p>She closed the door behind us and asked me in an eager whisper
+to allow her to see to baby.</p>
+<p>I tried to excuse myself, but she whispered:</p>
+<p>"Hush! I have a baby of my own, though they know nothing about
+it here, so you can safely trust me."</p>
+<p>I did so, and it was beautiful to see the joy she had in doing
+what was wanted, saying all sorts of sweet and gentle things to my
+baby (though I knew they were meant for her own), as if the starved
+mother-heart in her were stealing a moment of maternal
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>"There!" she said, "She'll be comfortable now, bless her!"</p>
+<p>I asked about her own child, and, coming close and speaking in a
+whisper, she told me all about it.</p>
+<p>It was a girl and it would be a year old at Christmas. At first
+she had put it out to nurse in town, where she could see it every
+evening, but the foster-mother had neglected it, and the inspector
+had complained, so she had been compelled to take it away. Now it
+was in a Home in the country, ten miles from Liverpool Street, and
+it was as bonny as a peach and as happy as the day is long.</p>
+<p>"See," she whispered, taking a card from her breast, after a
+furtive glance towards the door. "I sent two shillings to have her
+photograph taken and the Matron has just sent it."</p>
+<p>It was the picture of a beautiful baby girl, and I found it easy
+to praise her.</p>
+<p>"I suppose you see her constantly, don't you?" I said.</p>
+<p>The girl's face dropped.</p>
+<p>"Only on visiting days, once a month, and not always that," she
+answered.</p>
+<p>"But how can you live without seeing her oftener?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Matter o' means," she said sadly. "I pay five shillings a week
+for her board, and the train is one-and-eight return, so I have to
+be careful, you see, and if I lost my place what would happen to
+baby?"</p>
+<p>I was very low and tired and down when I resumed my walk. But
+when I thought for a moment of taking omnibuses for the rest of my
+journey I remembered the waitress's story and told myself that the
+little I had belonged to my child, and so I struggled on.</p>
+<p>But what a weary march it was during the next two hours! I was
+in the East End now, and remembering the splendour of the West, I
+could scarcely believe I was still in London.</p>
+<p>Long, mean, monotonous streets, running off to right and left,
+miles on miles of them without form or feature, or any trace of
+nature except the blue strips of sky overhead.</p>
+<p>Such multitudes of people, often badly dressed and generally
+with set and anxious faces, hasting to and fro, hustling, elbowing,
+jostling each other along, as if driven by some invisible power
+that was swinging an unseen scourge.</p>
+<p>No gracious courtesy here! A woman with a child in her arms was
+no longer a queen. Children were cheap, and sometimes it was as
+much as I could do to save myself from being pushed off the
+pavement.</p>
+<p>The air seemed to smell of nothing but ale and coarse tobacco.
+And then the noise! The ceaseless clatter of carts, the clang of
+electric cars, the piercing shrieks of the Underground Railway
+coming at intervals out of the bowels of the earth like explosions
+out of a volcano, and, above all, the raucous, rasping,
+high-pitched voices of the people, often foul-mouthed, sometimes
+profane, too frequently obscene.</p>
+<p>A cold, grey, joyless, outcast city, cut off from the rest of
+London by an invisible barrier more formidable than a wall; a city
+in which the inhabitants seemed to live cold, grey, joyless lives,
+all the same that they joked and laughed; a city under perpetual
+siege, the siege of Poverty, in the constant throes of civil war,
+the War of Want, the daily and hourly fight for food.</p>
+<p>If there were other parts of the East End (and I am sure there
+must be) where people live simple, natural, human lives, I did not
+see them that day, for my course was down the principal
+thoroughfares only.</p>
+<p>Those thoroughfares, telescoping each other, one after another,
+seemed as if they would never come to an end.</p>
+<p>How tired I was! Even baby was no longer light, and the parcel
+on my wrist had become as heavy as lead.</p>
+<p>Towards four o'clock I came to a broad parapet which had strips
+of garden enclosed by railings and iron seats in front of them.
+Utterly exhausted, my arms aching and my legs limp, I sank into one
+of these seats, feeling that I could walk no farther.</p>
+<p>But after a while I felt better, and then I became aware that
+another woman was sitting beside me.</p>
+<p>When I looked at her first I thought I had never in my life seen
+anything so repulsive. She was asleep, and having that
+expressionless look which sleep gives, I found it impossible to
+know whether she was young or old. She was not merely coarse, she
+was gross. The womanhood in her seemed to be effaced, and I thought
+she was utterly brutalised and degraded.</p>
+<p>Presently baby, who had also been asleep, awoke and cried, and
+then the woman opened her eyes and looked at the child, while I
+hushed her to sleep again.</p>
+<p>There must be something in a baby's face that has a miraculous
+effect on every woman (as if these sweet angels, fresh from God,
+make us all young and all beautiful), and it was even so at that
+moment.</p>
+<p>Never shall I forget the transfiguration in the woman's face
+when she looked into the face of my baby. The expression of
+brutality and degradation disappeared, and through the bleared eyes
+and over the coarsened features there came the light of an almost
+celestial smile.</p>
+<p>After a while the woman spoke to me. She spoke in a husky voice
+which seemed to be compounded of the effects of rum and raw night
+air.</p>
+<p>"That your'n," she said.</p>
+<p>I answered her.</p>
+<p>"Boy or gel?"</p>
+<p>I told her.</p>
+<p>"'Ow old?"</p>
+<p>I told her that too.</p>
+<p>The woman was silent for a moment, and then, with a thickening
+of the husky voice, she said:</p>
+<p>"S'pose you'll say I'm a bleedin' liar, but I 'ad a kid as putty
+as that onct&mdash;puttier. It was a boy. The nobbiest little
+b&mdash;&mdash; as you ever come acrost. Your'n is putty, but it
+ain't in it with my Billie, not by a long chalk."</p>
+<p>I asked her what had become of her child.</p>
+<p>"Lawst 'im," she said. "Used to give sixpence a week to the
+woman what 'ad 'alf the 'ouse with me to look after 'im while I was
+workin' at the fact'ry. But what did the bleedin' b&mdash;&mdash;
+do? Blimey, if she didn't let 'im get run over by the dray from the
+brewery."</p>
+<p>"Killed?" I said, clutching at baby.</p>
+<p>The woman nodded without speaking.</p>
+<p>I asked her how old her child had been.</p>
+<p>"More'n four," she said. "Just old enough to run a arrand. It
+was crool. Hit me out, I can tell you. That kid was all I had.
+Apple o' my eye, in a manner of speakin'. When it was gone there
+wasn't much encouragement, was there? The Favver from the Mission
+came jawin' as 'ow Jesus 'ad taken 'im to 'Imself. Rot! When they
+put 'im down in old Bow I didn't care no more for nothin'. Monse
+and monse I walked about night and day, and the bleedin' coppers
+was allus on to me. They got their own way at last. I took the
+pneumonier and was laid up at the London. And when I got out I
+didn't go back to the fact'ry neither."</p>
+<p>"What did you do?" I asked.</p>
+<p>The woman laughed&mdash;bitterly, terribly.</p>
+<p>"Do? Don't you <i>know</i>?"</p>
+<p>I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the
+child.</p>
+<p>"Look here&mdash;are you a good gel?" she said.</p>
+<p>Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so</p>
+<p>"'Ope? Don't you know <i>that</i> neither?"</p>
+<p>Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:</p>
+<p>"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how
+they done it, though."</p>
+<p>I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as
+if by broken lights from hell, of the life behind&mdash;the wrecked
+hope, the shattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and
+at last turned into one.</p>
+<p>Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again. The woman looked
+at her with the same look as before&mdash;not so much a smile as a
+sort of haggard radiance.</p>
+<p>Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath into
+baby's face, and stretching out a coarse fat finger she tickled her
+under the chin.</p>
+<p>Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing this the woman's
+eyes sparkled like sunshine.</p>
+<p>"See that," she cried. "S'elp me Jesus, I b'lieve I could 'ave
+been good meself if I'd on'y 'ad somethink like this to keer
+for."</p>
+<p>I am not ashamed to say that more than once there had been tears
+in my eyes while the woman spoke, though her blasphemies had
+corrupted the air like the gases that rise from a dust-heap. But
+when she touched my child I shuddered as if something out of the
+'lowest depths had tainted her.</p>
+<p>Then a strange thing happened.</p>
+<p>I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely support me,
+and was folding my little angel closely in my arms, when the woman
+rose too and said:</p>
+<p>"You wouldn't let me carry your kiddie a bit, would you?"</p>
+<p>I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know not what The
+woman looked at me again, and after a moment she said:</p>
+<p>"S'pose not. On'y I thought it might make me think as 'ow I was
+carryin' Billie."</p>
+<p>That swept down everything.</p>
+<p>The one remaining window of the woman's soul was open and I
+dared not close it.</p>
+<p>I looked down at my child&mdash;so pure, so sweet, so stainless;
+I looked up at the woman&mdash;so foul, so gross, so degraded.</p>
+<p>There was a moment of awful struggle and then . . . the woman
+and I were walking side by side.</p>
+<p>And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At five o'clock I was once more alone.</p>
+<p>I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now) under the
+statue which is at the back of Bow Church.</p>
+<p>I thought I could walk no farther, and although every penny I
+had in my pocket belonged to Isabel (being all that yet stood
+between her and want) I must borrow a little of it if she was to
+reach Mrs. Oliver's that night.</p>
+<p>I waited for the first tram that was going in my direction, and
+when it came up I signalled to it, but it did not stop&mdash;it was
+full.</p>
+<p>I waited for a second tram, but that was still more crowded.</p>
+<p>I reproached myself for having come so far. I told myself how
+ill-advised I had been in seeking for a nurse for my child at the
+farthest end of the city. I reminded myself that I could not hope
+to visit her every day if my employment was to be in the West, as I
+had always thought it would be. I asked myself if in all this vast
+London, with its myriads of homes, there had been no house nearer
+that could have sheltered my child.</p>
+<p>Against all this I had to set something, or I think my very
+heart would have died there and then. I set the thought of Ilford,
+on the edge of the country, with its green fields and its flowers.
+I set the thought of Mrs. Oliver, who would love my child as
+tenderly as if she were her own little lost one.</p>
+<p>I dare say it was all very weak and childish, but it is just
+when we are done and down, and do not know what we are doing, that
+Providence seems to be directing us, and it was so with me at that
+moment.</p>
+<p>The trams being full I had concluded that Fate had set itself
+against my spending any of Isabel's money, and had made up my mind
+to make a fierce fight over the last stage of my journey, when I
+saw that a little ahead of where I was standing the road divided
+into two branches at an acute angle, one branch going to the right
+and the other to the left.</p>
+<p>Not all Emmerjane's instructions about keeping "as straight as
+a' arrow" sufficed to show me which of the two roads to take and I
+looked about for somebody to tell me.</p>
+<p>It was then that I became aware of a shabby old four-wheeled cab
+which stood in the triangular space in front of the statue, and of
+the driver (an old man, in a long coachman's coat, much worn and
+discoloured, and a dilapidated tall hat, very shiny in patches)
+looking at me while he took the nose-bag off his horse&mdash;a bony
+old thing with its head hanging down.</p>
+<p>I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to
+me&mdash;to the right, over the bridge and through Stratford
+Market.</p>
+<p>I asked how far it was to Ilford.</p>
+<p>"Better nor two mile <i>I</i> call it," he answered.</p>
+<p>After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a
+foolish question&mdash;how long it would take me to get there.</p>
+<p>The old driver looked at me again, and said:</p>
+<p>"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of
+you&mdash;and you carryin' the biby."</p>
+<p>I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very
+tired, yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked
+twenty paces when I heard the cab coming up behind and the old
+driver crying:</p>
+<p>"'Old on, missie."</p>
+<p>I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down
+from his box, opened the door of his cab and said:</p>
+<p>"Ger in."</p>
+<p>I told him I could not afford to ride.</p>
+<p>"Ger in," he said again more loudly, and as if angry with
+himself for having to say it.</p>
+<p>Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking
+fiercely through his grizzly beard:</p>
+<p>"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and
+I wouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a
+face like that."</p>
+<p>I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears
+gushed out and that at the next moment I was sitting in the
+cab.</p>
+<p>What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull
+rumble of the wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and
+that I saw through the mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a
+muddy canal, and patches of marshy fields.</p>
+<p>I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy
+monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep,
+for after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of
+the old driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice
+through the open window at the back of his seat:</p>
+<p>"Stratford Market."</p>
+<p>After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and
+then the old driver cried "Ilford," and asked what part of it I
+wished to go to.</p>
+<p>I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's
+Green," and then sat back with a lighter heart.</p>
+<p>But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars
+passing us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a
+cemetery. This made me think of the woman and her story, and I
+found myself unconsciously clasping my baby closer.</p>
+<p>The cort&egrave;ges became so numerous at last that to shut out
+painful sights I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter
+things.</p>
+<p>I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always
+seen it in my mind's eye&mdash;not a pretentious place at all, only
+a little humble cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with
+creepers and perhaps with roses.</p>
+<p>I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn
+sharply to the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were
+running down a kind of alley-way, with a row of very mean little
+two-storey houses on the one side, and on the other, a kind of
+waste ground strewn with broken bottles, broken iron pans, broken
+earthenware and other refuse, interspersed with tufts of long
+scraggy grass, which looked the more wretched because the sinking
+sun was glistening over it.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man
+jumped from his box and opening his cab door, said:</p>
+<p>"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation."</p>
+<p>There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I
+got out of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I
+was standing on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which
+bore the number 10.</p>
+<p>At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was
+as much as I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to
+fly, and I turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already
+passing round the corner.</p>
+<p>It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from
+Bayswater. I could not possibly carry baby back. What <i>could</i>
+I do?</p>
+<p>Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born
+perhaps of my life in the convent) came over me&mdash;a feeling
+that all that had happened on my long journey, all I had seen and
+everything that had been said to me, had been intended to prepare
+me for (and perhaps to save me from) the dangers that were to
+come.</p>
+<p>I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength
+of body and spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth
+still) I stepped across the pavement and knocked at the door.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>My great-hearted, heroic little woman!</p>
+<p>All this time I, in my vain belief that our expedition was of
+some consequence to the world, was trying to comfort myself with
+the thought that my darling must have heard of my safety.</p>
+<p>But how could I imagine that she had hidden herself away in a
+mass of humanity&mdash;which appears to be the most impenetrable
+depths into which a human being can disappear?</p>
+<p>How could I dream that, to the exclusion of all such interests
+as mine, she was occupied day and night, night and day, with the
+joys and sorrows, the raptures and fears of the mighty passion of
+Motherhood, which seems to be the only thing in life that is really
+great and eternal?</p>
+<p>Above all, how could I believe that in London itself, in the
+heart of the civilised and religious world, she was going through
+trials which make mine, in the grim darkness of the Polar night,
+seem trivial and easy?</p>
+<p>It is all over now, and though, thank God, I did not know at the
+time what was happening to my dear one at home, it is some comfort
+to me to remember that I was acting exactly as if I did.</p>
+<p>From the day we turned hack I heard my darling's voice no more.
+But I had a still more perplexing and tormenting experience, and
+that was a dream about her, in which she was walking on a crevassed
+glacier towards a precipice which she could not see because the
+brilliant rays of the aurora were in her eyes.</p>
+<p>Anybody may make what he likes of that on grounds of natural
+law, and certainly it was not surprising that my dreams should
+speak to me in pictures drawn from the perils of my daily life, but
+only one thing matters now&mdash;that these experiences of my
+sleeping hours increased my eagerness to get back to my dear
+one.</p>
+<p>My comrades were no impediment to that, I can tell you. With
+their faces turned homewards, and the wind at their backs, they
+were showing tremendous staying power, although we had thirty and
+forty below zero pretty constantly, with rough going all the time,
+for the snow had been ruckled up by the blizzard to almost
+impassable heaps and hummocks.</p>
+<p>On reaching our second installation at Mount Darwin I sent a
+message to the men at the foot of Mount Erebus, telling them to get
+into communication (through Macquarie Island) with the captain of
+our ship in New Zealand, asking him to return for us as soon as the
+ice conditions would permit; and this was the last of our jobs
+(except packing our instruments tight and warm) before we started
+down the "long white gateway" for our quarters at the Cape.</p>
+<p>With all the heart in the world, though, our going had to be
+slow. It was the middle of the Antarctic winter, when absolute
+night reigned for weeks and we had nothing to alleviate the
+darkness but the light of the scudding moon, and sometimes the
+glory of the aurora as it encircled the region of the unrisen
+sun.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless my comrades sang their way home through the sullen
+gloom. Sometimes I wakened the echoes of those desolate old hills
+myself with a stave of "Sally's the gel," although I was suffering
+a good deal from my darker thoughts of what the damnable
+hypocrisies of life might be doing with my darling, and my desire
+to take my share of her trouble whatever it might be.</p>
+<p>The sun returned the second week in August. Nobody can know what
+relief that brought us except those who have lived for months
+without it. To see the divine and wonderful thing rise up like a
+god over those lone white regions is to know what a puny thing man
+is in the scheme of the world.</p>
+<p>I think all of us felt like that at sight of the sun, though
+some (myself among the rest) were thinking more of it as a kind of
+message from friends at home. But old Treacle, I remember, who had
+stood looking at it in awed solemnity, said:</p>
+<p>"Well, I'm d&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+<p>After that we got on famously until we reached Winter Quarters,
+where we found everybody well and everything in order, but received
+one piece of alarming intelligence&mdash;that the attempt to get
+into wireless communication with our ship had failed, with the
+result that we should have to wait for her until the time
+originally appointed for her return.</p>
+<p>That did not seem to matter much to my shipmates, who, being
+snugly housed from blinding blizzards, settled down to amuse
+themselves with sing-songs and story-tellings and readings.</p>
+<p>But, do what I would, to me the delay was dreadful, and every
+day, in the fever of my anxiety to get away as soon as the ice
+permitted, I climbed the slopes of old Erebus with O'Sullivan, to
+look through powerful glasses for what the good chap called the
+"open wather."</p>
+<p>Thank God, our wooden house was large enough to admit of my
+having a cabin to myself, for I should have been ashamed of my
+comrades hearing the cries that sometimes burst from me in the
+night.</p>
+<p>It is hard for civilised men at home, accustomed to hold
+themselves under control, to realise how a man's mind can run away
+from him when he is thousands of miles separated from his dear
+ones, and has a kind of spiritual certainty that evil is befalling
+them.</p>
+<p>I don't think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but
+I shiver even yet at the memory of all the torment I went through
+during those days of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve
+before me and I accused myself of a thousand offences which I had
+thought dead and buried and forgotten.</p>
+<p>Some of these were trivial in themselves, such as hot and
+intemperate words spoken in childhood to my good old people at
+home, disobedience or ingratitude shown to them, with all the usual
+actions of a naughty boy, who ought to have been spanked and never
+was.</p>
+<p>But the worst of them concerned my darling, and came with the
+thought of my responsibility for the situation in which I felt sure
+she found herself.</p>
+<p>A thousand times I took myself to task for that, thinking what I
+ought and ought not to have done, and then giving myself every bad
+name and my conduct every damning epithet.</p>
+<p>Up and down my cabin I would walk with hands buried in my
+pockets, revolving these thoughts and working myself up, against my
+will, to a fever of regret and self-accusation.</p>
+<p>Talk about Purgatory&mdash;the Purgatory of dear old Father Dan!
+That was to come after death&mdash;mine came before, and by the
+holy saints, I had enough of it.</p>
+<p>Two months passed like this; and when the water of the Sound was
+open and our ship did not appear, mine was not the only heart that
+was eating itself out, for the spirits of my shipmates had also
+begun to sink.</p>
+<p>In the early part of the Antarctic spring there had been a
+fearful hurricane lasting three days on the sea, with a shrieking,
+roaring chorus of fiends outside, and the conviction now forced
+itself on my men that our ship must have gone down in the
+storm.</p>
+<p>Of course I fought this notion hard, for my last hopes were
+based on not believing it. But when after the lapse of weeks I
+could hold out no longer, and we were confronted by the possibility
+of being held there another year (for how were our friends to know
+before the ice formed again that it was necessary to send relief?),
+I faced the situation firmly&mdash;measuring out our food and
+putting the men on shortened rations, twenty-eight ounces each and
+a thimbleful of brandy.</p>
+<p>By the Lord God it is a fearful thing to stand face to face with
+slow death. Some of my shipmates could scarcely bear it. The utter
+solitude, the sight of the same faces and the sound of the same
+voices, with the prospect of nothing else, seemed to drive most of
+them nearly mad.</p>
+<p>There was no sing-songing among them now, and what speaking I
+overheard was generally about the great dinners they had eaten, or
+about their dreams, which were usually of green fields and
+flower-beds and primroses and daisies&mdash;daisies, by heaven, in
+a world that was like a waste!</p>
+<p>As for me I did my best to play the game of never giving up. It
+was a middling hard game, God knows, and after weeks of waiting a
+sense of helplessness settled down on me such as I had never known
+before.</p>
+<p>I am not what is called a religious man, but when I thought of
+my darling's danger (for such I was sure it was) and how I was cut
+off from her by thousands of miles of impassable sea, there came an
+overwhelming longing to go with my troubles to somebody stronger
+than myself.</p>
+<p>I found it hard to do that at first, for a feeling of shame came
+over me, and I thought:</p>
+<p>"You coward, you forgot all about God when things were going
+well with you, but now that they are tumbling down, and death seems
+certain, you whine and want to go where you never dreamt of going
+in your days of ease and strength."</p>
+<p>I got over that, though&mdash;there's nothing except death a man
+doesn't get over down there&mdash;and a dark night came when (the
+ice breaking from the cliffs of the Cape with a sound that made me
+think of my last evening at Castle Raa) I found myself folding my
+hands and praying to the God of my childhood, not for myself but
+for my dear one, that He before whom the strongest of humanity were
+nothing at all, would take her into His Fatherly keeping.</p>
+<p>"Help her! Help her! <i>I</i> can do no more."</p>
+<p>It was just when I was down to that extremity that it pleased
+Providence to come to my relief. The very next morning I was
+awakened out of my broken sleep by the sound of a gun, followed by
+such a yell from Treacle as was enough to make you think the
+sea-serpent had got hold of his old buttocks.</p>
+<p>"The ship! The ship! Commander! Commander! The ship! The
+ship!"</p>
+<p>And, looking out of my little window I saw him, with six or
+seven other members of our company, half naked, just as they had
+leapt out of their bunks, running like savages to the edge of the
+sea, where the "Scotia," with all flags flying (God bless and
+preserve her!), was steaming slowly up through a grinding pack of
+broken ice.</p>
+<p>What a day that was! What shouting! What hand-shaking! For
+O'Sullivan it was Donnybrook Fair with the tail of his coat left
+out, and for Treacle it was Whitechapel Road with "What cheer, old
+cock?" and an unquenchable desire to stand treat all round.</p>
+<p>But what I chiefly remember is that the moment I awoke, and
+before the idea that we were saved and about to go home had been
+fully grasped by my hazy brain, the thought flashed to my mind:</p>
+<p>"Now you'll hear of <i>her!</i>"</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The door of No. 10 was opened by a rather uncomely woman of
+perhaps thirty years of age, with a weak face and watery eyes.</p>
+<p>This was Mrs. Oliver, and it occurred to me even at that first
+sight that she had the frightened and evasive look of a wife who
+lives under the intimidation of a tyrannical husband.</p>
+<p>She welcomed me, however, with a warmth that partly dispelled my
+depression and I followed her into the kitchen.</p>
+<p>It was the only room on the ground floor of her house (except a
+scullery) and it seemed sweet and clean and comfortable, having a
+table in the middle of the floor, a sofa under the window, a
+rocking-chair on one side of the fireplace, a swinging baby's cot
+on the other side, and nothing about it that was not homelike and
+reassuring, except two large photographs over the mantelpiece of
+men stripped to the waist and sparring.</p>
+<p>"We've been looking for you all day, ma'am, and had nearly give
+you up," she said.</p>
+<p>Then she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and
+pelisse, lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her
+age, kissed her on the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her
+without measure.</p>
+<p>"And what's her name, ma'am?"</p>
+<p>"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel."</p>
+<p>"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she
+<i>is</i> a little angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky
+little mouth! Such blue eyes&mdash;blue as the bluebells in the
+cemet'ry. She's as pretty as a waxwork, she really is, and any
+woman in the world might be proud to nurse her."</p>
+<p>A young mother is such a weakling that praise of her child
+(however crude) acts like a charm on her, and in spite of myself I
+was beginning to feel more at ease, when Mrs. Oliver's husband came
+downstairs.</p>
+<p>He was a short, thick-set man of about thirty-five, with a
+square chin, a very thick neck and a close-cropped red bullet head,
+and he was in his stocking feet and shirt-sleeves as if he had been
+dressing to go out for the evening.</p>
+<p>I remember that it flashed upon me&mdash;I don't know
+why&mdash;that he had seen me from the window of the room upstairs,
+driving up in the old man's four-wheeler, and had drawn from that
+innocent circumstance certain deductions about my character and my
+capacity to pay.</p>
+<p>I must have been right, for as soon as our introduction was over
+and I had interrupted Mrs. Oliver's praises of my baby's beauty by
+speaking about material matters, saying the terms were to be four
+shillings, the man, who had seated himself on the sofa to put on
+his boots said, in a voice that was like a shot out of a
+blunderbus:</p>
+<p>"Five."</p>
+<p>"How'd you mean, Ted?" said Mrs. Oliver, timidly. "Didn't we say
+four?"</p>
+<p>"Five," said the man again, with a still louder volume of
+voice.</p>
+<p>I could see that the poor woman was trembling, but assuming the
+sweet air of persons who live in a constant state of fear, she
+said:</p>
+<p>"Oh yes. It <i>was</i> five, now I remember."</p>
+<p>I reminded her that her letter had said four, but she insisted
+that I must be mistaken, and when I told her I had the letter with
+me and she could see it if she wished, she said:</p>
+<p>"Then it must have been a slip of the pen in a manner of
+speaking, ma'am. We allus talked of five. Didn't we, Ted?"</p>
+<p>"Certainly," said her husband, who was still busy with his
+boots.</p>
+<p>I saw what was going on, and I felt hot and angry, but there
+seemed to be nothing to do except submit.</p>
+<p>"Very well, we'll say five then," I said.</p>
+<p>"Paid in advance," said the man, and when I answered that that
+would suit me very well, he added:</p>
+<p>"A month in advance, you know."</p>
+<p>By this time I felt myself trembling with indignation, as well
+as quivering with fear, for while I looked upon all the money I
+possessed as belonging to baby, to part with almost the whole of it
+in one moment would reduce me to utter helplessness, so I said,
+turning to Mrs. Oliver:</p>
+<p>"Is that usual?"</p>
+<p>It did not escape me that the unhappy woman was constantly
+studying her husband's face, and when he glanced up at her with a
+meaning look she answered, hurriedly:</p>
+<p>"Oh yes, ma'am, quite usual. All the women in the Row has it.
+Number five, she has twins and gets a month in hand with both of
+them. But we'll take four weeks and I can't say no fairer than
+that, can I?"</p>
+<p>"But why?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Well, you see, ma'am, you're . . . you're a stranger to us, and
+if baby was left on our hands . . . Not as we think you'd leave her
+chargeable as the saying is, but if you were ever ill, and got a
+bit back with your payments . . . we being only pore people. . .
+."</p>
+<p>While the poor woman was floundering on in this way my blood was
+boiling and I was beginning to ask her if she supposed for one
+moment that I meant to desert my child, when the man, who had
+finished the lacing of his boots, rose to his feet, and said:</p>
+<p>"You don't want yer baiby to be give over to the Guardians for
+the sake of a week or two, do you?"</p>
+<p>That settled everything. I took out my purse and with a
+trembling hand laid my last precious sovereign on the table.</p>
+<p>A moment or two after this Mr. Oliver, who had put on his coat
+and a cloth cap, made for the door.</p>
+<p>"Evenin', ma'am," he said, and with what grace I could muster I
+bade him good-bye.</p>
+<p>"You aren't a-going to the 'Sun' to-night, are you, Ted?" asked
+Mrs. Oliver.</p>
+<p>"Club," said the man, and the door clashed behind him.</p>
+<p>I breathed more freely when he was gone, and his wife (from
+whose face the look of fear vanished instantly) was like another
+woman.</p>
+<p>"Goodness gracious," she cried, with a kind of haggard hilarity,
+"where's my head? Me never offering you a cup of tea, and you
+looking so white after your journey."</p>
+<p>I took baby back into my arms while she put on the kettle, set a
+black tea-pot on the hob to warm, laid a piece of tablecloth and a
+thick cup and saucer on the end of the table, and then knelt on the
+fender to toast a little bread, talking meantime (half
+apologetically and half proudly) about her husband.</p>
+<p>He was a bricklayer by trade, and sometimes worked at the
+cemetery which I could see at the other side of the road (behind
+the long railings and the tall trees), but was more generally
+engaged as a sort of fighting lieutenant to a Labour leader whose
+business it was to get up strikes. Before they were married he had
+been the "Light Weight Champion of Whitechapel," and those were
+photos of his fights which I could see over the mantelpiece, but
+"he never did no knocking of people about now," being "quiet and
+matrimonual."</p>
+<p>In spite of myself my heart warmed to the woman. I wonder it did
+not occur to me there and then that, living in constant dread of
+her tyrannical husband, she would always be guilty of the
+dissimulation I had seen an example of already and that the effect
+of it would be reflected upon my child.</p>
+<p>It did not. I only told myself that she was clearly fond of
+children and would be a kind nurse to my baby. It even pleased me,
+in my foolish motherly selfishness, that she was a plain-featured
+person, whom baby could never come to love as she would, I was
+sure, love me.</p>
+<p>I felt better after I had taken tea, and as it was then seven
+o'clock, and the sun was setting horizontally through the cypresses
+of the cemetery, I knew it was time to go.</p>
+<p>I could not do that, though, without undressing baby and singing
+her to sleep. And even then I sat for a while with an aching heart,
+and Isabel on my knee, thinking of how I should have to go to bed
+that night, for the first time, without her.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Oliver, in the meantime, examining the surplus linen which
+I had brought in my parcel, was bursting into whispered cries of
+delight over it, and, being told I had made the clothes myself, was
+saying:</p>
+<p>"What a wonderful seamstress you might be if you liked,
+ma'am."</p>
+<p>At length the time came to leave baby, and no woman knows the
+pain of that experience who has not gone through it.</p>
+<p>Though I really believed my darling would be loved and cared
+for, and knew she would never miss me, or yet know that I was gone
+(there was a pang even in that thought, and in every other kind of
+comforting), I could not help it, that, as I was putting my cherub
+into her cot, my tears rained down on her little face and awakened
+her, so that I had to kneel by her side and rock her to sleep
+again.</p>
+<p>"You'll be good to my child, won't you, Mrs. Oliver?" I
+said.</p>
+<p>"'Deed I will, ma'am," the woman replied.</p>
+<p>"You'll bath her every day, will you not?"</p>
+<p>"Night and morning. I allus does, ma'am."</p>
+<p>"And rinse out her bottle and see that she has nice new milk
+fresh from the cow?"</p>
+<p>"Sure as sure, ma'am. But don't you fret no more about the
+child, ma'am. I've been a mother myself, ma'am, and I'll be as good
+to your little angel as if she was my own come back to me."</p>
+<p>"God bless you," I said in a burst of anguish, and after
+remaining a moment longer on my knees by the cot (speaking with all
+my heart and soul, though neither to nurse nor to baby) I rose to
+my feet, dashed the tears from my eyes, and ran out of the
+house.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I knew that my eyes were not fit to be seen in the streets, so I
+dropped my dark veil and hurried along, being conscious of nothing
+for some time except the clang of electric cars and the bustle of
+passers-by, to whom my poor little sorrow was nothing at all.</p>
+<p>But I had not gone far&mdash;I think I had not, though my senses
+were confused and vague&mdash;before I began to feel ashamed, to
+take myself to task, and to ask what I had to cry about.</p>
+<p>If I had parted from my baby it was for her own good, and if I
+had paid away my last sovereign I had provided for her for a month,
+I had nothing to think of now except myself and how to get
+work.</p>
+<p>I never doubted that I should get work, or that I should get it
+immediately, the only open question being what work and where.</p>
+<p>Hitherto I had thought that, being quick with my pen, I might
+perhaps become secretary to somebody; but now, remembering the
+typist's story ("firms don't like it"), and wishing to run no risks
+in respect of my child, I put that expectation away and began to
+soar to higher things.</p>
+<p>How vain they were! Remembering some kind words the Reverend
+Mother had said about me at the convent (where I had taken more
+prizes than Alma, though I had never mentioned it before) I told
+myself that I, too, was an educated woman. I knew Italian, French
+and German, and having heard that some women could make a living by
+translating books for publishers I thought I might do the same.</p>
+<p>Nay, I could even write books myself. I was sure I
+could&mdash;one book at all events, about friendless girls who have
+to face the world for themselves, and all good women would read it
+(some good men also), because they would see that it must be
+true.</p>
+<p>Oh, how vain were my thoughts! Yet in another sense they were
+not all vanity, for I was not thinking of fame, or what people
+would say about what I should write, but only what I should get for
+it.</p>
+<p>I should get money, not a great deal perhaps, yet enough for
+baby and me, that we might have that cottage in the country,
+covered with creepers and roses, where Isabel would run about the
+grass by and by, and pluck the flowers in the garden.</p>
+<p>"So what have <i>you</i> got to cry about, you ridiculous
+thing," I thought while I hurried along, with a high step now, as
+if my soul had been in my feet.</p>
+<p>But a mother's visions of the future are like a mirage (always
+gleaming with the fairy palaces which her child is to inhabit some
+day), and I am not the first to find her shadows fade away.</p>
+<p>I must have been walking for some time, feeling no weariness at
+all, when I came to the bridge by Bow Church. There I had intended
+to take a tram, but not being tired I went on farther, thinking
+every stage I could walk would be so much money to the good.</p>
+<p>I was deep in the Mile End Road, when a chilling thought came to
+me. It was the thought of the distance that would divide me from my
+child, making my visits to her difficult, and putting it out of my
+power to reach her quickly (perhaps even to know in time) if, as
+happened to children, she became suddenly and dangerously ill.</p>
+<p>I remembered the long line of telescoping thoroughfares I had
+passed through earlier in the day (with their big hospitals, their
+big breweries, their big tabernacles, their workmen's
+lodging-houses, their Cinema picture palaces, their Jewish
+theatres, and their numberless public houses); and then the barrier
+of squalid space which would divide me from baby, if I obtained
+employment in the West End, seemed to be immeasurably greater and
+more frightening than the space that had divided me from Martin
+when he was at the other end of the world.</p>
+<p>Not all the allurements of my dream were sufficient to reconcile
+me to such a dangerous separation.</p>
+<p>"It's impossible," I thought. "Quite impossible."</p>
+<p>Insensibly my rapid footsteps slackened. When I reached that
+part of the Mile End Road in which the Jewish tailors live, and
+found myself listening to a foreign language which I afterwards
+knew to be Yiddish, and looking at men with curls at each side of
+their sallow faces, slithering along as if they were wearing
+eastern slippers without heels, I stopped, without knowing why, at
+the corner of a street where an Italian organ-man was playing while
+a number of bright-eyed Jewish children danced.</p>
+<p>I was still looking on, hardly thinking of what I saw, when my
+eyes fell on an advertisement, pasted on the window of a
+sausage-and-ham shop at the corner. In large written characters it
+ran:</p>
+<p><i>Seamstress Wanted. Good Wages.<br />
+Apply No. &mdash;&mdash; Washington Street</i>.</p>
+<p>How little are the things on which our destiny seems to hang! In
+a moment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being
+a good seamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I
+was hurrying up the side street and knocking with my knuckles at an
+open door.</p>
+<p>A rather fat and elderly Jewess, covered with rings and gold
+chains, and wearing a manifest black wig, came from a room at one
+side of the lobby. I explained my errand, and after she had looked
+me over in a sort of surprise, as if I had not been the kind of
+person she expected, she said, in a nasal and guttural voice:</p>
+<p>"Vait! My daughter, she speaks very vell Ainglish."</p>
+<p>Then turning her head over her shoulder, she pitched her voice
+several octaves higher and cried, "Miriam," whereupon there came
+tripping downstairs a Jewish girl of about eighteen, with large
+black eyes, thick black hair, and such a dear good face.</p>
+<p>I repeated my application, and after the girl had interpreted my
+request to her mother, I was asked into the lobby, and put through
+a kind of catechism.</p>
+<p>Was I a seamstress? No, but I wished to become one. Had I aiver
+vorked on vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my
+needle.</p>
+<p>Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure
+of her own need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and
+an eager whisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with
+kindling eyes), she said,</p>
+<p>"Very vell, ve'll see what she can do."</p>
+<p>I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of
+girls (all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of
+waistcoats which, lying about on every side, looked like patterns
+for legs of mutton. One girl was basting, another was pressing, and
+a third was sewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars
+of gimp.</p>
+<p>This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told
+to look and see if I could do it. I watched the girl for a moment
+and then said:</p>
+<p>"Let me try."</p>
+<p>Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to
+me, and after ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and
+handed it back.</p>
+<p>The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said:</p>
+<p>"Very fair, but a leedle slow."</p>
+<p>"Let me try again," I said, and my trembling fingers were so
+eager to please that my next button-hole was not only better but
+more quickly made.</p>
+<p>"Beautiful!" said the daughter. "And mamma, only think, she's
+quicker than Leah, already. I timed them."</p>
+<p>"I muz call your vader, dough," said the Jewess, and she
+disappeared through the doorway.</p>
+<p>While I stood talking to the younger Jewess, who had, I could
+see, formed as quick an attachment for me as I for her, I heard
+another nasal and guttural voice (a man's) coming towards us from
+the hall.</p>
+<p>"Is she von of our people?"</p>
+<p>"Nein! She's a Skihoah"&mdash;meaning, as I afterwards learned,
+a non-Jewish girl.</p>
+<p>Then a tall, thin Jew entered the room behind the elderly
+Jewess. I had never before and have never since seen such a
+patriarchal figure. With his long grey beard and solemn face he
+might have stood for Moses in one of the pictures that used to hang
+on the walls of the convent&mdash;except for his velvet skull-cap
+and the black alpaca apron, which was speckled over with fluffy
+bits of thread and scraps of cloth and silk.</p>
+<p>He looked at me for a moment with his keen eyes, and after his
+wife had shown him my work, and he had taken a pinch of snuff and
+blown his nose on a coloured handkerchief with the sound of a
+trumpet, he put me through another catechism.</p>
+<p>I was trembling lest he should make intimate inquiries, but
+beyond asking my name, and whether I was a Christian, he did not
+concern himself with personal questions.</p>
+<p>"Vat vages do you vant?" he asked.</p>
+<p>I told him I should be pleased to take whatever was paid to
+other girls doing work of the same kind.</p>
+<p>"Ach no! Dese girls are full-timers. You are only a greener
+[meaning a beginner] so you vill not expect anything like so
+much."</p>
+<p>At that his daughter repeated her assurance that I was quicker
+than the girl she had called Leah; but the Jew, with an air of
+parental majesty, told her to be silent, and then said that as I
+was an "improver" he could only take me "on piece," naming the
+price (a very small one) per half-dozen buttons and buttonholes,
+with the condition that I found my own twist and did the work in my
+own home.</p>
+<p>Seeing that I should be no match for the Jew at a bargain, and
+being so eager to get to work at any price, I closed with his
+offer, and then he left the room, after telling me to come back the
+next day.</p>
+<p>"And vhere do you lif, my dear?" said the Jewess.</p>
+<p>I told her Bayswater, making some excuse for being in the East
+End, and getting as near to the truth as I dare venture, but
+feeling instinctively, after my sight of the master of the house,
+that I dared say nothing about my child.</p>
+<p>She told me I must live nearer to my work, and I said that was
+exactly what I wished to do&mdash;asking if she knew where I could
+find a room.</p>
+<p>Fortunately the Jewess herself had two rooms vacant at that
+moment, and we went upstairs to look at them.</p>
+<p>Both were at the top of the house, and one of them I could have
+for two shillings a week, but it was dark and cheerless, being at
+the back and looking into the space over the yards in which the
+tenants dried their washing on lines stretched from pulleys.</p>
+<p>The other, which would cost a shilling a week more, was a lean
+slit of a room, very sparsely furnished, but it was to the front,
+and looked down into the varied life of the street, so I took it
+instantly and asked when I could move in.</p>
+<p>"Ven you like," said the Jewess. "Everyding is ready."</p>
+<p>So, early next morning I bade farewell to my good Welsh landlady
+(who looked grave when I told her what I was going to do) and to
+Emmerjane (who cried when I kissed her smudgy face) and, taking
+possession of my new home, began work immediately in my first and
+only employment.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was a deep decline after the splendours of my dreams,
+but I did not allow myself to think about that. I was near to
+Ilford and I could go to see Isabel every day.</p>
+<p>Isabel! Isabel! Isabel! Everything was Isabel, for now that
+Martin was gone my hopes and my fears, my love and my life,
+revolved on one axis only&mdash;my child.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My employer was a Polish Jew, named Israel Abramovitch.</p>
+<p>He had come to England at the time of the religious persecution
+in the Holy Cities of Russia, set himself up in his trade as a
+tailor in a garret in Whitechapel, hired a "Singer," worked with
+"green" labour for "slop" warehouses, and become in less than
+twenty years the richest foreign Jew in the East End of London,
+doing some of the "best bespoke" work for the large shops in the
+West and having the reputation (as I afterwards found) of being the
+greatest of Jewish "sweaters."</p>
+<p>In spite of this, however, he was in his own way a deeply
+religious man. Strict, severe, almost superstitious in obeying the
+Levitical laws and in practising the sad and rather gloomy
+symbolism of his faith. A famous Talmudist, a pillar of the
+synagogue, one of the two wardens of the Chevra in Brick Lane, and
+consequently a great upholder of moral rectitude.</p>
+<p>His house seemed to be a solid mass of human beings, chiefly
+Jewish girls, who worked all day, and sometimes (when regulations
+could be evaded or double gangs engaged) all night, for the Jew
+drove everybody at high speed, not excepting his wife, who cooked
+the food and pressed the clothes at the same time.</p>
+<p>In this hive of industry I needed no spur to make me work.</p>
+<p>Every morning Mrs. Abramovitch brought up a thick pile of vests
+to my room, and every evening she took them down again, after
+counting my earnings with almost preternatural rapidity and paying
+me, day by day, with unfailing promptitude.</p>
+<p>At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings. I
+was delighted, but after I had paid for my room and my food there
+was not enough for baby's board, so the second week I worked later
+in the evenings, and earned fourteen shillings. This was still
+insufficient, therefore I determined to take something from the
+other end of the day.</p>
+<p>"Morning will be better," I thought, remembering the painful
+noises at night, especially about midnight, when people were being
+thrown out of a public-house higher up the street, where there was
+a placard in the window saying the ale sold there could be
+guaranteed to "make anybody drunk for fourpence."</p>
+<p>Unfortunately (being a little weak) I was always heavy in the
+mornings, but by great luck my room faced the east, so I conceived
+the idea of moving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to
+the top so that the earliest light might fall on my face and waken
+me.</p>
+<p>This device succeeded splendidly, and for many weeks of the late
+summer and early autumn I was up before the sun, as soon as the
+dawn had broadened and while the leaden London daylight was
+filtering through the smoke of yesterday.</p>
+<p>By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings, and,
+as my fingers learned to fly over their work, to seventeen and even
+eighteen.</p>
+<p>That was my maximum, and though it left a narrow margin for
+other needs it enabled me at the end of a month to pay another
+pound for baby's board and to put away a little towards her
+"shortening," which Mrs. Oliver was always saying must be soon.</p>
+<p>I had to stick close to maintain this average, and I grudged
+even the time occupied in buying and eating my food, though that
+was not a long process in the Mile End Road, which is full of shops
+where things can be bought ready cooked. After the first week I did
+not even need to go out for them, for they were brought round to my
+room every morning, thus enabling me to live without leaving my
+work.</p>
+<p>It was a stiff life, perhaps, but let nobody think I looked upon
+myself as a slave. Though I worked so hard I felt no self-pity. The
+thought that I was working for my child sweetened all my labours.
+It was such a joy to think that baby depended upon me for
+everything she wanted.</p>
+<p>Being so happy in those days I sang a great deal, though
+naturally not in the middle of the day, when our house was going
+like a mill-wheel, but in the early mornings before the electric
+trams began to clang, or the hawkers with their barrows to shout,
+and when there was no sound even in the East End except that
+ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp in the front street which always made
+me think of the children of Israel in Egypt drawing burdens for
+Pharaoh.</p>
+<p>Throwing open my window I sang all sorts of things, but, being
+such a child myself and so fond of make-believe, I loved best to
+sing my lullaby, and so pretend that baby was with me in my room,
+lying asleep behind me in my bed.</p>
+<p>"<i>Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,<br />
+Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee</i>."</p>
+<p>I never knew that I had any other audience than a lark in a cage
+on the other side of the street (perhaps I was in a cage myself,
+though I did not think of that then) which always started singing
+when I sang, except the washerwomen from a Women's Shelter going
+off at four to their work at the West End, and two old widows
+opposite who sewed Bibles and stitched cassocks, which being (so
+Miriam told me) the worst-paid of all sweated labour compelled them
+to be up as early as myself.</p>
+<p>It was not a very hopeful environment, yet for some time, in my
+little top room, I was really happy.</p>
+<p>I saw baby every day. Between six and nine every night, I broke
+off work to go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to
+anybody, and leaving the family of the Jew to think it was my time
+for recreation.</p>
+<p>Generally I "trammed" it from Bow Church, because I was so eager
+to get to my journey's end, but usually I returned on foot, for
+though the distance was great I thought I slept better for the
+walk.</p>
+<p>What joyful evenings those were!</p>
+<p>Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but
+that did not matter very much. On closer acquaintance I found my
+baby's nurse to be a "heedless" and "feckless" woman; and though I
+told myself that all allowances must be made for her in having a
+bad husband, I knew in my secret heart that I was deceiving myself,
+and that I ought to listen to the voices that were saying "Your
+child is being neglected."</p>
+<p>Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been
+bathed&mdash;but that only gave me an excuse for bathing her
+myself.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might
+be&mdash;but that only gave me the joy of washing them.</p>
+<p>Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed
+and her milk was not quite fresh&mdash;but that only gave me the
+pleasure of scalding the one and boiling the other.</p>
+<p>More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver
+to do all this&mdash;but then what a deep delight it was to be
+mothering my own baby!</p>
+<p>Thus weeks and months passed&mdash;it is only now I know how
+many, for in those days Time itself had nothing in it for me except
+my child&mdash;and every new day brought the new joy of watching my
+baby's development.</p>
+<p>Oh, how wonderful it all was! To see her little mind and soul
+coming out of the Unknown! Out of the silence and darkness of the
+womb into the world of light and sound!</p>
+<p>First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her
+dear little toes! Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the
+gift of speech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the
+"ma-ma-ma" which the first time I heard it went prancing through
+and through me and was more heavenly to my ears than the music of
+the spheres!</p>
+<p>What evenings of joy I had with her!</p>
+<p>The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the
+bricklayer had got into some trouble by "knocking people about" at
+the "Rising Sun" and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the
+police.</p>
+<p>Then, baby being "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot
+while I sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her
+little lip continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my
+skirts and waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle
+hummed over the fire and the bricklayer's kitchen buzzed softly
+like a hive of bees.</p>
+<p>Oh dear! Oh dear! I may have been down in the depths, yet there
+is no place so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and
+my sunbeam was my child.</p>
+<p>And then Martin&mdash;baby was constantly making me think of
+him. Devouring her with my eyes, I caught resemblances every
+day&mdash;in her eyes, her voice, her smile, and, above all, in
+that gurgling laugh that was like water bubbling out of a
+bottle.</p>
+<p>I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental
+secrets into her ears, just as if she understood, telling her what
+a great man her father had been and how he loved both of
+us&mdash;<i>would</i> have done if he had lived longer.</p>
+<p>I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was all
+foolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holy
+saints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were
+whispering all this in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him
+as much alive as if he had been constantly by my side.</p>
+<p>The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then
+the feeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher
+phase.</p>
+<p>I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it
+was really so sacred and so exalted.</p>
+<p>The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent
+to console me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed
+into the startling and rapturous thought that the very soul of
+Martin had passed into my child.</p>
+<p>"So Martin is not dead at all," I thought, "not really dead,
+because he lives in baby."</p>
+<p>It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it
+filled my heart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little
+body in which the soul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow
+beautiful and strong and worthy of him; how I felt charged with
+another and still greater responsibility to guard and protect her
+with my life itself if need be.</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, my very life itself," I thought.</p>
+<p>Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my
+hard work, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not
+care.</p>
+<p>All that mattered to me then was one thing only&mdash;that
+whereas hitherto I had thought Martin was so far gone from me that
+not Time but only Eternity would bring us together, now I felt that
+he was coming back and back to me&mdash;nearer and nearer and
+nearer every day.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>My dear, noble little woman was right in more ways than she
+knew.</p>
+<p>At that very time I was in literal truth hurrying home to her as
+fast as the fastest available vessel could carry me.</p>
+<p>As soon as we had boarded the <i>Scotia</i> at the Cape and
+greeted our old shipmates, we shouted for our letters.</p>
+<p>There were some for all of us and heaps for me, so I scuttled
+down to my cabin, where I sorted the envelopes like a pack of
+cards, looking for the small delicate hand that used to write my
+letters and speeches.</p>
+<p>To my dismay it was not there, and realizing that fact I bundled
+the letters into a locker and never looked at them again until we
+were two days out&mdash;when I found they were chiefly
+congratulations from my committee, the proprietor of my newspaper,
+and the Royal Geographical Society, all welcome enough in their
+way, but Dead Sea fruit to a man with an empty, heaving heart.</p>
+<p>Going up on deck I found every face about me shining like the
+aurora, for the men had had good news all round, one having come
+into a fortune and another into the fatherhood of twins, and both
+being in a state of joy and excitement.</p>
+<p>But all the good fellows were like boys. Some of them (with
+laughter seasoned by a few tears) read me funny bits out of their
+wives' letters&mdash;bits too that were not funny, about having "a
+pretty fit of hysterics" at reading bad news of us and "wanting to
+kiss the newsboy" when he brought the paper contradicting it.</p>
+<p>I did my best to play the game of rejoicing, pretending I had
+had good news also, and everything was going splendid. But I found
+it hard enough to keep it going, especially while we were sailing
+back to the world, as we called it, and hearing from the crew the
+news of what had happened while we had been away.</p>
+<p>First, there was the reason for the delay in the arrival of the
+ship, which had been due not to failure of the wireless at our end,
+but to a breakdown on Macquarie Island.</p>
+<p>And then there was the account of the report of the loss of the
+<i>Scotia</i> in the gale going out, which had been believed on
+insufficient evidence (as I thought), but recorded in generous
+words of regret that sent the blood boiling to a man's face and
+made him wish to heaven they could be true.</p>
+<p>We were only five or six days sailing to New Zealand, but the
+strain to me was terrible, for the thought was always
+uppermost:</p>
+<p>"Why didn't she write a word of welcome to reach me on my return
+to civilisation?"</p>
+<p>When I was not talking to somebody that question was constantly
+haunting me. To escape from it I joined the sports of my shipmates,
+who with joyful news in their hearts and fresh food in their
+stomachs were feeling as good as new in spite of all they had
+suffered.</p>
+<p>But the morning we smelt land, the morning the cloud banks above
+the eastern horizon came out hard and fast and sure (no dreamland
+this time), I stood at the ship's bow, saying nothing to anybody,
+only straining my eyes for the yet distant world we were coming
+back to out of that desolate white waste, and thinking:</p>
+<p>"Surely I'll have news from her before nightfall."</p>
+<p>There was a big warm-hearted crowd on the pier at Port
+Lyttelton. Treacle said, "Gawd. I didn't know there was so many
+people in the world, Guv'nor;" and O'Sullivan, catching sight of a
+pretty figure under a sunshade, tugged at my arm and cried (in the
+voice of an astronomer who has discovered a planet), "Commanther!
+Commanther! A <i>girl!</i>"</p>
+<p>Almost before we had been brought to, a company of scientific
+visitors came aboard; but I was more concerned about the telegrams
+that had come at the same moment, so hurrying down to my cabin I
+tore them open like a vulture riving its prey&mdash;always looking
+at the signatures first and never touching an envelope without
+thinking:</p>
+<p>"Oh God, what will be inside of it?"</p>
+<p>There was nothing from my dear one! Invitations to dine, to
+lecture, to write books, to do this and that and Heaven knows what,
+but never a word from her who was more to me than all the world
+besides.</p>
+<p>This made me more than ever sure of the "voices" that had called
+me back from the 88th latitude, so I decided instantly to leave our
+ship in New Zealand, in readiness for our next effort, and getting
+across to Sydney to take the first fast steamer home.</p>
+<p>The good people at Port Lyttelton were loath to let us go. But
+after I had made my excuses, ("crazy to get back to wives and
+sweethearts, you know") they sent a school of boys (stunning little
+chaps in Eton suits) to sing us off with "Forty Years
+On"&mdash;which brought more of my mother into my eyes than I knew
+to be left there.</p>
+<p>At Sydney we had the same experience&mdash;the same hearty
+crowds, the same welcome, the same invitations, to which we made
+the same replies, and then got away by a fast liner which happened
+to be ready to sail.</p>
+<p>On the way "back to the world" I had slung together a sort of a
+despatch for the newspaper which had promoted our expedition (a
+lame, limping thing for want of my darling's help to make it go),
+saying something about the little we had been able to do but more
+about what we meant, please God, to do some day.</p>
+<p>"She'll see that, anyway, and know we're coming back," I
+thought.</p>
+<p>But to make doubly sure I sent two personal telegrams, one to my
+dear one at Castle Raa and the other to my old people at home,
+asking for answers to Port Said.</p>
+<p>Out on the sea again I was tormented by the old dream of the
+crevassed glacier; and if anybody wonders why a hulking chap who
+had not been afraid of a ninety-mile blizzard in the region of the
+Pole allowed himself to be kept awake at night by a buzzing in the
+brain, all I can say is that it was so, and I know nothing more
+about it.</p>
+<p>Perhaps my recent experience with the "wireless" persuaded me
+that if two sticks stuck in the earth could be made to communicate
+with each other over hundreds of miles, two hearts that loved each
+other knew no limitations of time or space.</p>
+<p>In any case I was now so sure that my dear one had called me
+home from the Antarctic that by the time we reached Port Said, and
+telegrams were pouring in on me, I had worked myself up to such a
+fear that I dared not open them.</p>
+<p>From sheer dread of the joy or sorrow that might be enclosed in
+the yellow covers, I got O'Sullivan down in my cabin to read my
+telegrams, while I scanned his face and nearly choked with my own
+tobacco smoke.</p>
+<p>There was nothing from my dear one! Nothing from my people at
+home either!</p>
+<p>O'Sullivan got it into his head that I was worrying about my
+parents, and tried to comfort me by saying that old folks never
+dreamt of telegraphing, but by the holy immaculate Mother he'd go
+bail there would be a letter for me before long.</p>
+<p>There was.</p>
+<p>We stayed two eternal days at Port Said while the vessel was
+taking coal for the rest of the voyage, and almost at the moment of
+sailing a letter arrived from Ellan, which, falling into
+O'Sullivan's hands first, sent him flying through the steamer and
+shouting at the top of his voice:</p>
+<p>"Commanther! Commanther!"</p>
+<p>The passengers gave room for him, and told me afterwards of his
+beaming face. And when he burst into my cabin I too felt sure he
+had brought me good news, which he had, though it was not all that
+I wanted.</p>
+<p>"The way I was sure there would be a letter for you soon, and by
+the holy St. Patrick and St. Thomas, here it is," he cried.</p>
+<p>The letter was from my father, and I had to brace myself before
+I could read it.</p>
+<p>It was full of fatherly love, motherly love, too, and the
+extravagant pride my dear good old people had of me ("everybody's
+talking of you, my boy, and there's nothing else in the
+newspapers"); but not a word about my Mary&mdash;or only one, and
+that seemed worse than none at all.</p>
+<p>"You must have heard of the trouble at Castle Raa. Very sad, but
+this happy hour is not the time to say anything about it."</p>
+<p>Nothing more! Only reams and reams of sweet parental chatter
+which (God forgive me!) I would have gladly given over and over
+again for one plain sentence about my darling.</p>
+<p>Being now more than ever sure that some kind of catastrophe had
+overtaken my poor little woman, I telegraphed to her again, this
+time (without knowing what mischief I was making) at the house of
+Daniel O'Neill&mdash;telling myself that, though the man was a
+brute who had sacrificed his daughter to his lust of rank and power
+and all the rest of his rotten aspirations, he was her father, and,
+if her reprobate of a husband had turned her out, he must surely
+have taken her in.</p>
+<p>"Cable reply to Malta. Altogether too bad not hearing from you,"
+I said.</p>
+<p>A blind, hasty, cruel telegram, but thank God she never received
+it!</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Day by day it became more and more difficult for me to throw
+dust in my own eyes about the Olivers.</p>
+<p>One evening on reaching their house a little after six, as
+usual, I found the front door open, the kitchen empty save for
+baby, who, sitting up in her cot, was holding quiet converse with
+her toes, and the two Olivers talking loudly (probably by
+pre-arrangement) in the room upstairs.</p>
+<p>The talk was about baby, which was "a noosance," interfering
+with a man's sleep by night and driving him out of his home by day.
+And how much did they get for it? Nothing, in a manner of speaking.
+What did the woman (meaning me) think the "bleedin' place"
+was&mdash;"a philanthropic institooshun" or a "charity orginisation
+gime"?</p>
+<p>After this I heard the bricklayer thunder downstairs in his
+heavy boots and go out of the house without coming into the
+kitchen, leaving his wife (moral coward that he was) to settle his
+account with me.</p>
+<p>Then Mrs. Oliver came down, with many sighs, expressed surprise
+at seeing me and fear that I might have overheard what had been
+said in the room above.</p>
+<p>"Sorry to say I've been having a few words with Ted, ma'am, and
+tell you the truth it was about you."</p>
+<p>Ted had always been against her nursing, and she must admit it
+wasn't wise of a woman to let her man go to the public-house to get
+out of the way of a crying child; but though she was a-running
+herself off her feet to attend to the pore dear, and milk was up a
+penny, she had growd that fond of my baby since she lost her own
+that she couldn't abear to part with the jewel, and perhaps if I
+could pay a little more&mdash;Ted said seven, but she said six, and
+a shilling a week wouldn't hurt me&mdash;she could over-persuade
+him to let the dear precious stay.</p>
+<p>I was trembling with indignation while I listened to the woman's
+whining (knowing well I was being imposed upon), but I was helpless
+and so I agreed.</p>
+<p>My complacency had a bad effect on the Olivers, who continued to
+make fresh extortions, until their demands almost drove me to
+despair.</p>
+<p>I thought a climax had been reached when one night a neighbour
+came to the door and, calling Mrs. Oliver into the lobby,
+communicated some news in a whisper which brought her back with a
+frightened face for her cloak and hat, saying "something was a
+matter with Ted" and she must "run away quick to him."</p>
+<p>When she returned an hour or two later she was crying, and with
+sobs between her words she told me that Ted (having taken a drop
+too much) had "knocked somebody about" at the "Sun." As a
+consequence he had fallen into the hands of the police, and would
+be brought before the magistrate the following morning, when, being
+unable to pay the fine, he would have to "do time"&mdash;just as a
+strike was a-coming on, too, and he was expecting good pay from the
+Strike Committee.</p>
+<p>"And what is to happen to me and the baby while my 'usband is in
+prison?" she said.</p>
+<p>I knew it was an act of weakness, but, thinking of my child and
+the danger of its being homeless, I asked what the amount of the
+fine would probably be, and being told ten-and-six, I gave the
+money, though it was nearly all I had in the world.</p>
+<p>I paid for my weakness, though, and have reason to remember
+it.</p>
+<p>The extortions of the Olivers had brought me to so narrow a
+margin between my earnings and expenses that I lay awake nearly all
+that night thinking what I could do to increase the one or reduce
+the other. The only thing I found possible was to change to cheaper
+quarters. So next morning, with a rather heavy heart, I asked Mrs.
+Abramovitch if the room at the back of the house was still empty,
+and hearing that it was I moved into it the same day.</p>
+<p>That was a small and not a very wise economy.</p>
+<p>My new room was cheerless as well as dark, with no sights but
+the clothes that were drying from the pulley-lines and no sounds
+but the whoops of the boys of the neighbourhood playing at "Red
+Indians" on the top of the yard walls.</p>
+<p>But it was about the same as the other in size and furniture,
+and after I had decorated it with my few treasures&mdash;the
+Reverend Mother's rosary, which I hung on the head of the bed, and
+my darling mother's miniature, which I pinned up over the
+fire&mdash;I thought it looked bright and homelike.</p>
+<p>All this time, too, I was between the nether and the upper
+mill-stone.</p>
+<p>My employer, the Jew (though he must have seen that I was
+sweating myself much more than the law would have allowed him to
+sweat me), could not forgive himself when he found that I was
+earning more by "piece" than he would have had to pay me by the
+day, or resist the temptation to square accounts with me at the
+earliest possible opportunity.</p>
+<p>Unfortunately, his opportunity came only too quickly, and it led
+(however indirectly) to the most startling fact that has ever,
+perhaps, entered into a woman's life.</p>
+<p>I had not been more than three months at the Jew's house when
+the Jewish festivals came round&mdash;New Year's Day, the Day of
+Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles&mdash;which, falling near
+together and occupying many days, disturbed his own habits of work
+entirely.</p>
+<p>One of the tasks he reserved for himself was that of taking the
+best paid of his "best-bespoke" back to the large shops in the West
+End, and waiting for the return orders. But finding that the
+festivals interfered with these journeys, he decided that they
+should be made by me, who was supposed to know the West End (having
+lived in it) and to present a respectable appearance.</p>
+<p>I was reluctant to undertake the new duty, for though the Jew
+was to pay me a few shillings a week for it, I saw I could earn
+more in the time with my needle. But when he laid his long, hairy
+forefinger on the side of his nose and said with a significant
+smile:</p>
+<p>"You vill be gradeful, and convenience your employer, mine
+child," I agreed.</p>
+<p>Thus it came to pass that not only during the Jewish festivals,
+but for months after they were over, I carried a rather large black
+bag by tram or rail to the district that lies at the back of
+Piccadilly and along Oxford Street as far west as the Marble
+Arch.</p>
+<p>I had to go whenever called upon and to wait as long as wanted,
+so that in the height of the tailoring season I was out in the West
+End at all irregular hours of night, and even returned to my
+lodgings on one or two occasions in the raw sunshine of the early
+mornings.</p>
+<p>The one terror of my West End journeys was that I might meet
+Sister Mildred. I never did. In the multitude of faces which passed
+through the streets, flashing and disappearing like waves under the
+moon at sea, I never once caught a glimpse of a face I knew.</p>
+<p>But what sights I saw for all that! What piercing, piteous
+proofs that between the rich and the poor there is a great gulf
+fixed!</p>
+<p>The splendid carriages driving in and out of the Park; the
+sumptuously dressed ladies strolling through Bond Street; the
+fashionable church paraders; the white plumes and diamond stars
+which sometimes gleamed behind the glow of the electric broughams
+gliding down the Mall.</p>
+<p>"I used to be a-toffed up like that onct," I heard an old woman
+who was selling matches say as a lady in an ermine coat stepped out
+of a theatre into an automobile and was wrapped round in a
+tiger-skin rug.</p>
+<p>Sometimes it happened that, returning to the East End after the
+motor 'buses had ceased to ply, I had to slip through the silent
+Leicester Square and the empty Strand to the Underground Railway on
+the Embankment.</p>
+<p>Then I would see the wretched men and women who were huddled
+together in the darkness on the steps to the river (whose
+ever-flowing waters must have witnessed so many generations of
+human wreckage), and, glancing up at the big hotels and palatial
+mansions full of ladies newly returned from theatres and
+restaurants in their satin slippers and silk stockings, I would
+wonder how they could lie in their white beds at night in rooms
+whose windows looked down on such scenes.</p>
+<p>But the sight that stirred me most (though it did not awaken my
+charity, which shows what a lean-souled thing I was myself) was
+that of the "public women," the street-walkers, as I used to call
+them, whom I saw in Piccadilly with their fine clothes and painted
+faces, sauntering in front of the clubs or tripping along with a
+light step and trying to attract the attention of the men.</p>
+<p>I found no pathos in the position of such women. On the
+contrary, I had an unspeakable horror and hatred and loathing of
+them, feeling that no temptation, no poverty, no pressure that
+could ever be brought to bear upon a woman in life or in death
+excused her for committing so great a wrong on the sanctity of her
+sex as to give up her womanhood at any call but that of love.</p>
+<p>"Nothing could make me do it," I used to think, "nothing in this
+world."</p>
+<p>But O God! how little I knew then what is in a woman's heart to
+do when she has a child to live for, and is helpless and alone!</p>
+<p>I cannot expect anybody to forgive me for what I did (or
+attempted to do), and now that the time has come to tell of it my
+hand trembles, and body and soul seem to be quivering like a
+flame.</p>
+<p>May God (who has brought everything to such a glorious end) have
+mercy on me and forgive me, and help me to be true!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NINETY_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"NINETY_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>NINETY-NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The worst consequence of my West End journeys was that my
+nightly visits to Ilford were fewer than before, and that the
+constant narrowing of the margin between my income and my expenses
+made it impossible for me to go there during the day.</p>
+<p>As a result my baby received less and less attention, and I
+could not be blind to the fact that she was growing paler and
+thinner.</p>
+<p>At length she developed a cough which troubled me a great deal.
+Mrs. Oliver made light of it, saying a few pennyworths of paregoric
+would drive it away, so I hurried off to a chemist, who recommended
+a soothing syrup of his own, saying it was safer and more effectual
+for a child.</p>
+<p>The syrup seemed to stop the cough but to disturb the digestion,
+for I saw the stain of curdled milk on baby's bib and was conscious
+of her increasing weakness.</p>
+<p>This alarmed me very much, and little as I knew of children's
+ailments, I became convinced that she stood in need of more fresh
+air, so I entreated Mrs. Oliver to take her for a walk every
+day.</p>
+<p>I doubt if she ever did so, for as often as I would say:</p>
+<p>"Has baby been out to-day, nurse?" Mrs. Oliver would make some
+lame excuse and pass quickly to another subject.</p>
+<p>At last, being unable to bear the strain any longer, I burst out
+on the woman with bitter reproaches, and then she broke down into
+tears and explained everything. She was behind with her rent, the
+landlord was threatening, and she dared not leave the house for a
+moment lest he should lock her out altogether.</p>
+<p>"I don't mind telling you, it's all along of Ted, ma'am. He's on
+strike wages but he spends it at the 'Sun.' He has never been the
+man to me&mdash;never once since I married him. I could work and
+keep the house comfortable without him, but he wouldn't let me
+a-be, because he knows I love, him dear. Yes, I do, I love him
+dear," she continued, breaking into hysterical sobs, "and if he
+came home and killed me I could kiss him with my last breath."</p>
+<p>This touched me more than I can say. A sense of something tragic
+in the position of the poor woman, who knew the character of the
+man she loved as well as the weakness which compelled her to love
+him, made me sympathise with her for the first time, and think
+(with a shuddering memory of my own marriage) how many millions of
+women there must be in the world who were in a worse position than
+myself.</p>
+<p>On returning to my room that night I began to look about to see
+if I had anything I could sell in order to help Mrs. Oliver, and so
+put an end to the condition that kept my baby a prisoner in her
+house.</p>
+<p>I had nothing, or next to nothing. Except the Reverend Mother's
+rosary (worth no more than three or four shillings) I had only my
+mother's miniature, which was framed in gold and set in pearls, but
+that was the most precious of all my earthly possessions except my
+child.</p>
+<p>Again and again when I looked at it in my darkest hours I had
+found new strength and courage. It had been like a shrine to
+me&mdash;what the image of the Virgin was in happier days&mdash;and
+thinking of all that my darling mother had done and suffered and
+sacrificed for my sake when I was myself a child, I felt that I
+could never part with her picture under the pressure of any
+necessity whatever.</p>
+<p>"Never," I thought, "never under any circumstances."</p>
+<p>It must have been about a week after this that I went to Ilford
+on one of those chill, clammy nights which seem peculiar to the
+East End of London, where the atmosphere, compounded of smoke and
+fog and thin drizzling rain; penetrates to the bone and hangs on
+one's shoulders like a shroud.</p>
+<p>Thinking of this, as I thought of everything, in relation to
+baby, I bought, as I was passing a hosier's shop, a pair of nice
+warm stockings and a little woollen jacket.</p>
+<p>When I reached the Olivers' I found, to my surprise, two strange
+men stretched out at large in the kitchen, one on the sofa and the
+other in the rocking-chair, both smoking strong tobacco and baby
+coughing constantly.</p>
+<p>Before I realised what had happened Mrs. Oliver called me into
+the scullery, and, after closing the door on us, she explained the
+position, in whispers broken by sobs.</p>
+<p>It was the rent. These were the bailiff's men put into
+possession by the landlord, and unless she could find two pounds
+ten by nine o'clock to-morrow morning, she and her husband would be
+sold up and turned into the street.</p>
+<p>"The home as I've been scraping and pinching to keep together!"
+she cried. "For the sake of two pound ten! . . . You couldn't lend
+us that much, could you?"</p>
+<p>I told her I could not, but she renewed her entreaties, asking
+me to think if I had not something I could pawn for them, and
+saying that Ted and she would consider it "a sacred dooty" to
+repay.</p>
+<p>Again I told her I had nothing&mdash;I was trying not to think
+of the miniature&mdash;but just at that moment she caught sight of
+the child's jacket which I was still holding in my hand, and she
+fell on me with bitter reproaches.</p>
+<p>"You've money enough to spend on baby, though. It's crool. Her
+living in lukshry and getting new milk night and day, and fine
+clothes being bought for her constant, and my pore Ted without a
+roof to cover him in weather same as this. It breaks my heart. It
+do indeed. Take your child away, ma'am. Take her to-night, afore
+we're turned out of house and home to-morrow morning."</p>
+<p>Before the hysterical cries with which Mrs. Oliver said this had
+come to an end I was on my way back to my room at the Jew's. But it
+was baby I was thinking of in relation to that cold, clammy
+night&mdash;that it would be impossible to take her out in it (even
+if I had somewhere to take her to, which I had not) without risk to
+her health and perhaps her life.</p>
+<p>With trembling fingers and an awful pain at my heart I took my
+mother's miniature from the wall and wrapped it up in tissue
+paper.</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards I was back in the damp streets, walking
+fast and eagerly, cutting over the lines of the electric trams
+without looking for the crossings.</p>
+<p>I knew where I was going to&mdash;I was going to a pawnbroker's
+in the Mile End Waste which I had seen on my West End journeys.
+When I got there I stole in at a side door, half-closing my eyes as
+I did so, by that strange impulse which causes us to see nothing
+when we do not wish to be seen.</p>
+<p>I shall never forget the scene inside. I think it must have left
+a scar on my brain, for I see it now in every detail&mdash;the
+little dark compartment; the high counter; the shelves at the back
+full of parcels, like those of a left-luggage room at a railway
+station; the heavy, baggy, big-faced man in shirt-sleeves with a
+long cigar held between his teeth at the corner of his frothy
+mouth; and then my own hurried breathing; my thin fingers opening
+the tissue paper and holding out the miniature; the man's coarse
+hands fumbling it; his casual air as he looked at it and cheapened
+it, as if it had been a common thing scarcely worthy of
+consideration.</p>
+<p>"What's this 'ere old-fashion'd thing? Portrait of your
+great-grandmother? Hum! Not 'arf bad-looking fice, neither."</p>
+<p>I think my eyes must have been blazing like hot coals. I am sure
+I bit my lips (I felt them damp and knew they were bleeding) to
+prevent myself from flinging out at the man in spite of my
+necessity. But I did my best to control my trembling mouth, and
+when he asked me how much I wanted on the miniature I answered,
+with a gulp in my throat:</p>
+<p>"Two pounds ten, if you please, sir."</p>
+<p>"Couldn't do it," said the pawnbroker.</p>
+<p>I stood speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say next,
+and then the pawnbroker, with apparent indifference, said:</p>
+<p>"I'll give you two ten for it out and out."</p>
+<p>"You mean I am to <i>sell</i> . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yus, take it or leave it, my dear."</p>
+<p>It is no use saying what I suffered at that moment. I think I
+became ten years older during the few minutes I stood at that
+counter.</p>
+<p>But they came to an end somehow, and the next thing I knew was
+that I was on my way back to Ilford; that the damp air had deepened
+into rain; that miserable and perhaps homeless beings, ill-clad and
+ill-fed, were creeping along in the searching cold with that
+shuffling sound which bad boots make on a wet pavement; and that I
+was telling myself with a fluttering heart that the sheltering
+wings of my beautiful mother in heaven had come to cover my
+child.</p>
+<p>On reaching the Olivers', hot and breathless, I put three gold
+coins, two sovereigns and a half-sovereign, on to the table to pay
+off the broker's men.</p>
+<p>They had been settling themselves for the night, and looked
+surprised and I thought chagrined, but took up the money and went
+away.</p>
+<p>As they were going off one of them called me to the door, and in
+the little space at the foot of the stairs he said, tipping his
+fingers towards the cot:</p>
+<p>"If that's your kiddie, miss, I recommend you to get it out o'
+this 'ere place quick&mdash;see?"</p>
+<p>I stayed an hour or two longer because I was troubled about
+baby's cough; and before I left, being still uneasy, I did what I
+had never done before&mdash;wrote my address at the Jew's house, so
+that I could be sent for if I was ever wanted.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDREDTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDREDTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDREDTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man
+seemed to be ringing in my ears.</p>
+<p>I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house
+of the Olivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to
+know what to do with her.</p>
+<p>To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously
+impossible, and to advertise for a nurse for my child was to run
+the risk of falling into the toils of somebody who might do worse
+than neglect her.</p>
+<p>In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant
+whose child had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some
+moments I thought how much better it would be that baby should be
+"bonny and well" instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when
+I reflected that if I took her to a public institution I should see
+her only once a month, I told myself that I could not and would not
+do so.</p>
+<p>"I'll work my fingers to the bone first," I thought.</p>
+<p>Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got
+hold of her, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that
+I first came to see that for the child's own sake I must part with
+her.</p>
+<p>Somewhere about the time of my moving into the back room my
+employer made a kind of bower of branches and evergreens over the
+lead-flat roof of an outhouse in his back-yard&mdash;a Succah, as
+Miriam called it, built in honour of the Feast of Tabernacles, as a
+symbol of the time when the Israelites in the Wilderness dwelt in
+booths.</p>
+<p>In this Succah the Jew's family ate all their meals during the
+seven or eight days of the Jewish feast, and one morning, as I sat
+at work by my open window, I heard Miriam after breakfast reading
+something from the Books of Moses.</p>
+<p>It was the beautiful story of Jacob parting with Benjamin in the
+days of the famine, when there was corn in Egypt only&mdash;how the
+poor old father in his great love could not bring himself to give
+up his beloved son, although death threatened him; how Judah
+pleaded with Jacob to send the boy with him into the far country
+lest they should all die, "both we and thou and also our little
+ones;" and how at last Jacob said, "If it must be so, do this," but
+"if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."</p>
+<p>It would be hard to say how deeply this story moved me while I
+listened from my room above. And now that I thought of it again, I
+saw that I was only sacrificing my child to my selfish love of her,
+and therefore the duty of a true mother was to put her into a
+Home.</p>
+<p>It would not be for long. The work I was doing was not the only
+kind I was capable of. After I had liberated myself from the daily
+extortions of the Olivers I should be free to look about for more
+congenial and profitable employment; and then by and by baby and I
+might live together in that sweet cottage in the country (I always
+pictured it as a kind of Sunny Lodge, with roses looking in at the
+window of "Mary O'Neill's little room") which still shone through
+my dreams.</p>
+<p>I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this,
+and perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of
+separation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I
+put my faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine,
+and then nothing remained except to select the institution to which
+my only love and treasure was to be assigned.</p>
+<p>Accident helped me in this as in other things. One day on my
+westward journey a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was
+constantly wiping her eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine
+through her tears), could not help telling me, out of the
+overflowing of her poor heart, what had just been happening to
+her.</p>
+<p>She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three
+years old, at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part
+with her, and the little darling had looked so pitiful when she
+came away, it would be the best for both of them in the long
+run.</p>
+<p>I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of
+it, telling me something about the founder&mdash;a good doctor who
+had been a father to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like
+herself.</p>
+<p>That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning,
+putting on my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew
+where to find, having walked round it on my way back from the West
+End and heard the merry voices of happy children who were playing
+behind a high wall.</p>
+<p>I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood
+in which I entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had
+done to me, I really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an
+immense favour upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my
+little woman.</p>
+<p>Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!</p>
+<p>My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was
+dead, and when I was shown into the office of his successor
+(everything bore such a businesslike air) I found an elderly man
+with a long "three-decker" neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing
+his spectacles up on to his forehead, said in a freezing voice:</p>
+<p>"Well, ma'am, what is <i>your</i> pleasure?"</p>
+<p>After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my
+story&mdash;how I had a child and her nurse was not taking proper
+care of her; how I was in uncongenial employment myself, but hoped
+soon to get better; how I loved my little one and expected to be
+able to provide for her presently; and how, therefore, if he would
+receive her for a while, only a little while, on the understanding,
+the clear and definite understanding, that I could take her away as
+soon as I wished to. . . .</p>
+<p>Oh dear! Oh dear:</p>
+<p>I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which
+betrayed me, but I had got no further than this when the old
+gentleman said sharply:</p>
+<p>"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to
+show that it is legitimate?"</p>
+<p>What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the
+truth in a voice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry
+office was rolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing
+into my face.</p>
+<p>The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell,
+drew his spectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy
+tones:</p>
+<p>"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it."</p>
+<p>It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation
+of this experience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening
+my memory and at the same time deadening my pride) I remembered
+something which I had heard the old actress say during my time at
+the boarding-house about a hospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate
+children&mdash;how the good man who founded it had been so firm in
+his determination that no poor mother in her sorrow should be put
+to further shame about her innocent child that he had hung out a
+basket at the gate at night in which she could lay her little one,
+if she liked, and then ring a bell and hide herself away.</p>
+<p>It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but
+after a sleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of
+mingled hope and fear, I set off for this hospital.</p>
+<p>It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End
+were sitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their
+Sunday papers; but when I reached the West all the church bells
+were ringing, and people wearing black clothes and shiny black
+gloves were walking with measured steps through the wide courtyard
+that led to the chapel.</p>
+<p>I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a
+Protestant church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up
+at the gallery of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier,
+so quaint and sweet&mdash;the boys like robins in their bright red
+waistcoats, and the girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with
+fluted frills&mdash;and the service began, and the fresh young
+voices rose in hymns of praise to the good Father of us all, I
+thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel there some day
+and hearing her singing in the choir.</p>
+<p>When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was
+shown into his room.</p>
+<p>I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good
+people wear such wintry weather in their faces that merely to look
+at them pierces a poor woman to the soul?</p>
+<p>Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little
+down), saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in
+that orphanage that she had been born outside the pale of the
+law.</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said the secretary, "that is precisely the
+kind of child this house is intended for."</p>
+<p>But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the
+wish of the founder that no questions of any kind should be asked
+about a child's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered
+all that. Then he proceeded to explain that before a child could be
+received the mother must now go before a committee of gentlemen to
+satisfy them of her previous good character, and that the father of
+her baby had deserted both of them.</p>
+<p>More than that, he told me that on being received the child was
+immediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it
+might be cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination
+of their shame.</p>
+<p>It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with
+which I listened to the secretary while he said all this, with the
+cast-metal face of a man who was utterly unconscious of the
+enormity of the crime he was describing.</p>
+<p>"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"That is so."</p>
+<p>"Who are to ask her all those questions?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"And then they are to change her baby's name?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Is she told what the new name is to be?"</p>
+<p>"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number
+which corresponds with the name in our books."</p>
+<p>I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling
+from head to foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and
+why I was there&mdash;a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking
+shelter for her child&mdash;I burst out on the man in all the mad
+wrath of outraged motherhood.</p>
+<p>"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a
+poor woman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an
+inquisition into the most secret facts of her life, in public, and
+before a committee of men. And then you take her child, and so far
+as she is concerned you bury it, and give her a ticket to its
+grave. A hospital? This is no hospital. It is a cemetery. And yet
+you dare to write over your gates the words of our Lord&mdash;our
+holy and loving and blessed Lord&mdash;who said, 'Suffer little
+children. . . .'"</p>
+<p>But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps
+unjustly) or afterwards in the silence of my own room and the
+helpless intoxication of my rage?</p>
+<p>It was soon stamped out of me.</p>
+<p>By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the
+continued extortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement
+in the Underground Railway of a Home for children in the country
+(asking for subscriptions and showing a group of happy little
+people playing under a chestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make
+one more effort.</p>
+<p>"They can't all be machines," I thought, "with the founders'
+hearts crushed out of them."</p>
+<p>The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's,
+and Mrs. Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover
+my bed, but nevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for
+the orphanage.</p>
+<p>It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost me
+something to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike
+appearance of the place when I reached it, and still more by
+finding that it was conducted by women, for at last, I thought, the
+woman-soul would speak to me.</p>
+<p>But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my
+request (very timidly this time and with such a humble, humble
+heart) that I might be allowed to recover my child as soon as I
+found myself able to provide for her, than she stopped me and
+said:</p>
+<p>"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in
+London on your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we
+expect the parent to give us a legal undertaking that she
+relinquishes all rights in it until it is sixteen years of
+age."</p>
+<p>"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said.</p>
+<p>"Justly severe," said the matron. "Such women should be made to
+maintain their children, and thus realise that the way of
+transgressors is hard."</p>
+<p>How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or
+what happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on
+me, within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late
+that night, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park
+Lane into Piccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their
+painted faces, dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists,
+were promenading in front of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up
+at the windows.</p>
+<p>These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I
+was suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself
+thinking that among the women who sinned against their womanhood
+there might be some who sold themselves for bread to keep those
+they loved and who loved them.</p>
+<p>This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow
+ringing laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight
+of steps talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt
+fronts beneath their overcoats showed that they were in evening
+dress.</p>
+<p>Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she
+laughed and laughed, and feeling as if I <i>knew</i> (because life
+had that day trampled on me also), I said to myself:</p>
+<p>"That woman's heart is dead."</p>
+<p>This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a
+side glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not
+fix.</p>
+<p>"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I
+thought.</p>
+<p>It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the
+woman's resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her
+joyless laughter, compelled me to stop at the next corner and look
+back.</p>
+<p>By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O
+God, how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming
+arm-in-arm in my direction, with their silk hats tilted a little
+back, were saying:</p>
+<p>"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>And then, seeing me, they said:</p>
+<p>"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!"
+"By Jove, no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"</p>
+<p>Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were
+going to speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with
+the woman, who was standing where they had left her, silent now,
+and looking after the men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that
+curled over her forehead.</p>
+<p>Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I
+cried, almost as if the name had been forced out of me:</p>
+<p>"Sister Angela!"</p>
+<p>The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were
+going to run away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking
+searchingly into my face, said:</p>
+<p>"Who are you? . . . I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't
+you?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . that
+man. And now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with
+me and see."</p>
+<p>It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about my
+presence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in
+my eyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do
+when I was a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and
+my will was so broken that I did not attempt to resist her.</p>
+<p>We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric
+light, and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern
+side of it, walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian
+quarter of Soho, we stopped at a private door by the side of a
+caf&eacute; that had an Italian name on the window.</p>
+<p>"This is where we live. Come in," said Angela, and I followed
+her through a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare
+stairs.</p>
+<p>While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the
+caf&eacute;, of men singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and
+guitars) one of the Italian songs which I remembered to have heard
+from the piazza outside the convent on that night when Sister
+Angela left me in bed while she went off to visit the chaplain:</p>
+<p>"<i>Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato<br />
+Onde sorridere volle il creato.</i>"</p>
+<p>"The Italian Club," said Angela. "Only one flight more.
+Come!"</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIRST_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIRST_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on
+the top landing, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in
+the roof.</p>
+<p>As we stepped in I heard rapid breathing, which told me that we
+were in a sick chamber, and then a man's voice, very husky and
+weak, saying:</p>
+<p>"Is that you, Agnes?"</p>
+<p>"It's only me, dear," said Angela..</p>
+<p>After a moment she turned up the solitary gas-jet, which had
+been burning low, and I saw the shadowy form of a man lying in a
+bed that stood in a corner. He was wasted with consumption, his
+long bony hands were lying on the counterpane, his dark hair was
+matted over his forehead as from sweat, but I could not mistake the
+large, lively grey eyes that looked out of his long thin face. It
+was Father Giovanni.</p>
+<p>Angela went up to him and kissed him, and I could see that his
+eyes lighted with a smile as he saw her coming into the room.</p>
+<p>"There's somebody with you, isn't there?" he said.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Who do you think it is?"</p>
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+<p>"Don't you remember little Margaret Mary at the Sacred
+Heart?"</p>
+<p>"Is this she?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Angela, and then in a hoarse, angry voice the man
+said:</p>
+<p>"What has she come here for?"</p>
+<p>Angela told him that I had seen her on Piccadilly, and being a
+great lady now, I (Oh heaven!) was one of the people who came out
+into the streets at midnight to rescue lost ones.</p>
+<p>"She looked as if she wondered what had brought me down to that
+life, so I've fetched her home to see."</p>
+<p>I was shocked at Angela's mistake, but before I could gather
+strength or courage to correct her Giovanni was raising himself in
+bed and saying, with a defiant air, his eyes blazing like
+watch-fires:</p>
+<p>"She does it for me, if you want to know. I've been eleven
+months ill&mdash;she does it all for me, I tell you."</p>
+<p>And then, in one of those outbursts of animation which come to
+the victims of that fell disease, he gave me a rapid account of
+what had happened to them since they ran away from Rome&mdash;how
+at first he had earned their living as a teacher of languages; how
+it became known that he was an unfrocked and excommunicated priest
+who had broken his vows, and then his pupils had left him; how they
+had struggled on for some years longer, though pursued by this
+character as by a malignant curse; and how at length his health had
+quite broken down, and he would have starved but for Agnes (Angela
+being her nun's name), who had stuck to him through everything.</p>
+<p>While the sick man said this in his husky voice, Angela was
+sitting on the bed by his side with her arm about his waist,
+listening to him with a sort of pride and looking at me with a kind
+of triumph.</p>
+<p>"I dare say you wonder why I didn't try to get work," she said.
+"I <i>could</i> have got it if I had wanted to. I could have got it
+at the Italian laundry. But what was two shillings a day to a man
+who was ordered new milk and fresh eggs five times every
+twenty-four hours, not to speak of the house rent?"</p>
+<p>"She ought to have let me die first," said Giovanni, and then,
+looking at me again with his large, glittering, fierce eyes, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> think she ought to have let me die, don't you?"</p>
+<p>"No, no, no," I said&mdash;it was all I <i>could</i> say, for
+their mistake about myself was choking me.</p>
+<p>Perhaps my emotion appeased both of them, for after a moment
+Angela beat out Giovanni's pillow and straightened his counterpane,
+and then told him to lie down and be quiet, while she brought a
+chair for me and took off her things in her own bedroom.</p>
+<p>But hardly had she gone into an adjoining chamber when the sick
+man raised himself again and, reaching over in my direction, told
+me in a hoarse whisper the story of the first night of her present
+way of life&mdash;how the doctor had said he must be removed to the
+hospital; how Agnes would not part with him; how the landlord had
+threatened to turn them out; and how at last, after sitting with
+her head in her hands the whole evening, Aggie had got up and gone
+out and, coming back at midnight, had thrown two sovereigns on the
+table and said, "There you are, Giovanni&mdash;that's our rent and
+your eggs and milk for one week, anyway."</p>
+<p>By this time Angela had returned to the room (her paint and
+rouge washed off, and her gay clothes replaced by a simple woollen
+jacket over a plain underskirt), and she began to beat up an egg,
+to boil some milk, to pour out a dose of medicine, and to do, with
+all a good woman's tact, a good woman's tenderness, the little
+services of which an invalid stands in need.</p>
+<p>Oh heavens, how beautiful it was&mdash;fearfully, awfully
+tragically beautiful!</p>
+<p>I was deeply moved as I sat in silence watching her; and when at
+length Giovanni, who had been holding her hand in his own long,
+bony ones and sometimes putting it to his lips, dropped off to
+sleep (tired out, perhaps, by talking to me), and she, drawing up
+to where I sat by the end of the bed, resumed her self-defence,
+saying in a whisper that ladies like me could not possibly
+understand what a woman would do, in spite of herself, when the
+life of one she loved was threatened, I could bear her mistake no
+longer, but told her of my real condition&mdash;that I was no
+longer a lady, that I had run away from my husband, that I had a
+child, and was living as a poor seamstress in the East End of
+London.</p>
+<p>Angela listened to my story in astonishment; and when I had come
+to an end she was holding my hand and looking into my eyes with
+just that look which she had when she put me to bed for the first
+time at school, and, making her voice very low, told me to be a
+good child of the Infant Jesus.</p>
+<p>"It's nearly one o'clock. You can't go back to the East End
+to-night," she whispered.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I must, I must," I said, getting up and making for the
+door. But before I had reached it my limbs gave way, whether from
+the strain of emotion or physical weakness, and if it had not been
+for Angela I should have dropped to the floor.</p>
+<p>After that she would hear of no excuses. I must stay until
+morning. I could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she
+could lay a mattress for herself on the floor by the side of
+Giovanni's. There would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going
+to be one of Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and
+down all the time anyway.</p>
+<p>Half an hour later I was in bed in a little room that was
+separated by a thin papered partition from the room of the poor
+consumptive, and Angela, who had brought me a cup of hot milk, was
+saying in a whisper:</p>
+<p>"He's very bad. The doctor says he can't last longer than a
+week. Sister Veronica (you remember her, she's Mildred Bankes that
+used to be) tried to get him into a home for the dying. It was all
+arranged, too, but at the last moment he wouldn't go. He told them
+that, if they wanted to separate him from Agnes, they had better
+bring his coffin because he would be dead before they got him to
+the door."</p>
+<p>When she had gone I lay a long time in the dark, listening to
+the sounds on the other side of the partition.</p>
+<p>Giovanni awoke with an alarming fit of coughing, and in the
+querulous, plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids
+have, he grumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a
+burden he was to her, while she, moving about the room in her bare
+feet, coaxed and caressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk
+or his medicine.</p>
+<p>Through all this I would hear at intervals the drumming noises
+of the singing downstairs, which sounded in my ears (as the singers
+were becoming more and more intoxicated) like the swirling and
+screeching of an ironical requiem for the dying man before he was
+dead:</p>
+<p>"<i>Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato<br />
+Onde sorridere volle il creato</i>."</p>
+<p>But somewhere in those dead hours in which London sleeps
+everything became still, and my mind, which had been questioning
+the grim darkness on the worst of the world's tragedies (what a
+woman will do for those she loves), fell back on myself and I
+thought of the Christian institutions which had turned me from
+their doors, and then of this "street-walker" who had given up her
+own bed to me and was now lying in the next room on a mattress on
+the floor.</p>
+<p>I could not help it if I felt a startling reverence for Angela,
+as a ministering angel faithful unto death, and I remembered that
+as I fell asleep I was telling myself that we all needed God's
+mercy, God's pardon, and that, God would forgive her because she
+had loved much.</p>
+<p>But sleep was more tolerant still I dreamt that Angela died, and
+on reaching the gates of heaven all the saints of God met her, and
+after they had clothed her in a spotless white robe, one of
+them&mdash;it was the blessed Mary Magdalene&mdash;took her hand
+and said:</p>
+<p>"Here is another of the holy martyrs."</p>
+<p>I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my
+forehead. But I dare not say what confused and terrible thoughts
+came next, except that they were about baby&mdash;what I might do
+myself if driven to the last extremity. When I slept and dreamt
+again, it was I who was dead, and it was my darling mother who met
+me and took me to the feet of the Blessed Virgin and said:</p>
+<p>"Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's
+heart, this is my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong.
+It was all for the sake of her child."</p>
+<p>When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off
+through the gloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a
+nightmare. It terrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the
+edge of a precipice and some awful forces were trying to push me
+over it.</p>
+<p>The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head,
+and I could faintly hear the Italian criers in the front
+street:</p>
+<p>"Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!"</p>
+<p>In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the
+tenderness that had been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling
+of shame at finding myself lying where I was, and I got up to run
+away that I might cleanse my soul of the evil thoughts which had
+come to me while there.</p>
+<p>As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All
+was quiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little
+rest.</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room
+without looking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the
+staircase I opened it as noiselessly as I could.</p>
+<p>Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so
+much love.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SECOND_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SECOND_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear,
+clean, frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the
+worst places, seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and
+drink of the night before.</p>
+<p>I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to
+which I had gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage
+when I was struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was)
+of loving Martin.</p>
+<p>Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a
+gorgeous landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman
+drew up at the bottom of them.</p>
+<p>The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady
+in long furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large
+doll in her arms, and a nurse.</p>
+<p>I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had
+come to confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child
+to sit quiet and be good and she would not keep her long.</p>
+<p>"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber,"
+said the child.</p>
+<p>The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a
+proud and happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into
+the church, while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her
+and bowed deeply.</p>
+<p>I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the
+carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the
+baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the
+church.</p>
+<p>Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were
+rising from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was
+putting out, a few communicants were still on their knees, and
+others with light yet echoing footsteps were making for the
+door.</p>
+<p>The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the
+confessional boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was
+occupied by a priest, I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to
+fix my mind on the prayers (once so familiar) for the examination
+of conscience before confession:</p>
+<p>"<i>Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that
+I may bewail my sins and rightly confess them</i>."</p>
+<p>But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in
+the daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I
+could not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs
+with the coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.</p>
+<p>She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my
+tightly closed eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if
+I had not given up everything for love&mdash;wealth, rank, title,
+luxury.</p>
+<p>God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once
+thought I had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel
+lightning, I saw myself as I was&mdash;a peeress who had run away
+from her natural condition and was living in the slums, working
+like any other work-girl.</p>
+<p>Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the
+rosy-faced child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at
+Mrs. Oliver's as I had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with
+her little bib stained by her curdled milk, a feeling I had never
+had before pierced to my very soul.</p>
+<p>I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and
+permitted&mdash;that because I had obeyed what I still believed to
+be the purest impulse of my nature, love, my child must be made to
+suffer.</p>
+<p>Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself
+that what I had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and
+deception.</p>
+<p>All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my
+prayer, which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for
+me with my Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.</p>
+<p>"<i>Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my
+sins to the priest, thy Vicar</i>."</p>
+<p>It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what
+I had intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night
+before was vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting
+my head, looked boldly up at the altar.</p>
+<p>Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her
+confession, went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her
+kneeling-place at the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did
+not attempt to take it, and some minutes passed in which I stood
+biting my lips to prevent a cry. Then the priest parted his
+curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved across and stood
+stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.</p>
+<p>"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was
+fluttering, "I came here to make my confession, but something has
+come over me since I entered this church, and now I cannot."</p>
+<p>"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.</p>
+<p>"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that
+He is a kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and
+pities the sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong
+and false. <i>God does not care</i>."</p>
+<p>The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of
+silence he said in a quivering voice:</p>
+<p>"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the
+devil tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in
+your ear, at this moment."</p>
+<p>I shuddered, and the priest added:</p>
+<p>"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you
+love are suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that
+account? Look round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of
+the Cross]. Think of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in
+the hour of His death, at the malicious power of the world, cried,
+'<i>Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani</i>: My God, My God, why hast Thou
+forsaken Me?'"</p>
+<p>I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands
+were clasped together.</p>
+<p>"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you
+because He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous?
+Have you every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching
+for your soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited
+trouble? Have you lost some one who was dearer to you than your
+heart of hearts? Then take courage, for our holy and blessed
+Saviour has marked you for His own."</p>
+<p>I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice,
+which, coming through the grating of the confessional, produced the
+effect of the supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now,
+that he must have been a great as well as a good man.</p>
+<p>I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed
+into the streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built
+up in my soul a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and
+sunshine.</p>
+<p>Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No
+matter how mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I
+should work all day and all night if necessary. And since I had
+failed to get my child into an orphanage, it was clearly intended
+that I should keep her with me, for my own charge and care and
+joy.</p>
+<p>This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the
+Jew.</p>
+<p>It was Saturday morning, and though the broader thoroughfares of
+the East End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life,
+the Jew's house was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath.</p>
+<p>As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was
+dressing for the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: <i>Lerho
+daudee likras kollo</i>&mdash;"Come, O friend, let us go forth to
+meet the Bride, let us receive the Sabbath with joy!"</p>
+<p>Then came a shock.</p>
+<p>When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of
+vests which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had
+been removed; and just as I was telling myself that no one else
+except Mrs. Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling
+footsteps on the stair, and knew that her husband was coming up to
+me.</p>
+<p>A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed
+in his Sabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of
+his homely calling, the patriarchal appearance which had first
+struck me was even more marked than before. His face was pale, his
+expression was severe, and if his tongue betrayed the broken
+English of the Polish Jew, I, in my confusion and fear, did not
+notice it then.</p>
+<p>My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for
+neglecting my work, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my
+absence. But at a second glance I saw that something had happened,
+something had become known, and that he was there to condemn and
+denounce me.</p>
+<p>"You have been out all night," he said. "Can you tell me where
+you have been?"</p>
+<p>I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I
+had slept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my
+friend was, and what, I should be speechless.</p>
+<p>The Jew waited for my reply and then said:</p>
+<p>"You have given us a name&mdash;can you say it is your true and
+right one?"</p>
+<p>Again I made no answer, and after another moment the Jew
+said:</p>
+<p>"Can you deny that you have a child whom you have hidden from
+our knowledge?"</p>
+<p>I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak.</p>
+<p>"Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your
+Christian marriage?"</p>
+<p>I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent;
+and after a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew
+was summing me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"Then it is true? . . . Very well, you will understand that from
+this day you cease to be in my service."</p>
+<p>All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody
+else had come into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to
+plead for me.</p>
+<p>"Father . . ." she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew
+cried passionately:</p>
+<p>"Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to
+speak for such a woman."</p>
+<p>I heard the girl going slowly down the stairs, and then the Jew,
+stepping up to me and speaking more loudly than before, said:</p>
+<p>"Woman, leave my house at once, before you corrupt the
+conscience of my child."</p>
+<p>Again I became aware that some one had come into the room. It
+was Mrs. Abramovitch, and she, too, was pleading for me.</p>
+<p>"Israel! Calm thyself! Do not give way to injustice and anger.
+On Shobbos morning, too!"</p>
+<p>"Hannah," said the Jew, "thou speakest with thy mouth, not thy
+heart. The Christian doth not deny that she hath given thee a false
+name, and is the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she
+were a Jewish woman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and
+in better days our law of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she,
+because she is a Christian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The
+hand of the Lord would go out against me."</p>
+<p>"But she is homeless, and she hath been a good servant to thee,
+Israel. Give her time to find another shelter."</p>
+<p>There was a moment of silence after that, and then the Jew
+said:</p>
+<p>"Very well! It shall not be said that Israel Abramovitch knows
+not to temper justice with mercy."</p>
+<p>And then, my face being still down, I heard him saying over my
+head:</p>
+<p>"You may stay here another week. After that I wash my hands of
+thee."</p>
+<p>With these hard words he turned away, and I heard him going
+heavily down the stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying
+something in a kind voice, which I did not comprehend, and then she
+followed him.</p>
+<p>I do not think I had spoken a word. I continued to stand where
+the Jew had left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking
+the door of his own apartment, and knew that he was going off to
+his synagogue in Brick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back
+of his head like a skull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind
+him, carrying his leather-bound prayer-book.</p>
+<p>I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like
+a dead body on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In
+its place there was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life
+were rolling over me.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling!</p>
+<p>It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness,
+in the name of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of
+God, were persecuting my poor little woman.</p>
+<p>But why speak of myself at all, or interrupt my darling's
+narrative, except to say what was happening in my efforts to reach
+her?</p>
+<p>While we were swinging along in our big liner over the heaving
+bosom of the Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger
+never left me day or night.</p>
+<p>That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to
+haunt my sleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora
+glistening in my dear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind
+her.</p>
+<p>The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where
+I expected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port
+Said to the house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at
+the thought of the joy or sorrow ahead of me.</p>
+<p>Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was
+one from the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to
+Marseilles to meet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way
+home with us.</p>
+<p>Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of
+the letter I had written for my dear one on the day I left Castle
+Raa. Sixteen months had passed since then, serious things had
+happened in the interval, and I had never thought of that letter
+before.</p>
+<p>It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to
+her husband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my
+darling sending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her
+during my absence.</p>
+<p>If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would
+be that my dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits
+as to require help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he
+must have done what I wished, and therefore everything would be
+well.</p>
+<p>There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in
+all this, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was
+on deck searching for my chairman among the people waiting for us
+on the pier.</p>
+<p>I saw him immediately, waving his travelling cap with a flourish
+of joy, and I snatched a little comfort from that.</p>
+<p>As soon as the steamer was brought to, he was the first to come
+aboard, and I scanned his face as he hurried up the gangway. It was
+beaming.</p>
+<p>"It's all right," I thought; "a man could not look as happy as
+that if he were bringing me bad news."</p>
+<p>A moment afterwards he was shaking my hand, clapping me on the
+shoulder, and saying:</p>
+<p>"Splendid! Magnificent! Glorious achievement! Proved your point
+up to the hilt, my boy!"</p>
+<p>And when I said something about not having gone all the way he
+cried:</p>
+<p>"Never mind! You'll do it next time," which made some of my
+shipmates who were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye,
+sir," and then one of them (it was good old O'Sullivan)
+shouted:</p>
+<p>"By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's
+after saying that the Commanther was turned back this time by
+anything less than the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you
+may say there's forty-eight of us here to tell him he lies."</p>
+<p>"I believe it," said the chairman, and then there were further
+congratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but
+never a word from my dear one.</p>
+<p>Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private
+matter until we were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But
+he had nothing to say there, either, except about articles to be
+written, reports to be compiled, and invitations to be
+accepted.</p>
+<p>Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my
+longing to know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not
+ask from fear of a bad answer.</p>
+<p>Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a
+roundabout way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it
+had not been my parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive
+me!), but somebody else whom he had seen and spoken to.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean Mal . . . I should say Lady . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"By the holy saints, the way I was thinking that when I brought
+you the letter at Port Said, and saw the clouds of heaven still
+hanging on you."</p>
+<p>I found that the good fellow had a similar trouble of his own
+(not yet having heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my
+plan, which was that of cross-questioning the chairman about my
+dear one, and I about his, and then meeting secretly and imparting
+what we had learned.</p>
+<p>Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering
+fellows afraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but
+it grips me by the throat to this day to see myself taking our
+chairman into a quiet corner of the smoke-room and saying:</p>
+<p>"Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet.
+She was sick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to
+go with anybody except myself. You haven't heard of her, have
+you?"</p>
+<p>And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with:</p>
+<p>"The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a
+good heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of
+news of a great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl . . . a
+lady, I mane. You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir . . .
+eh?"</p>
+<p>Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at
+last) I asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from
+me, and he answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't.
+Though I did not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I
+began to feel that she was the last person in the world to use it,
+being (God bless her!) of the mettle that makes a woman want to
+fight her own battles without asking help of any one.</p>
+<p>This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent
+no reply to my cables, I could not find any escape from the
+conclusion that she was where no word could come from her&mdash;she
+was dead!</p>
+<p>Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I
+used to walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night,
+trying and condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and
+jury.</p>
+<p>"She is dead. I have killed her," I thought.</p>
+<p>Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I
+ever saw on earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be
+necessary to speak of it now but for the glorious confidence it
+brought me.</p>
+<p>It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom
+Providence comes to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix
+the place of mine as certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We
+had called at Gibraltar (where O'Sullivan had received a letter
+from his mother, saying she was splendid) and were running along
+the coast of Portugal.</p>
+<p>It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember.
+While my shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the
+smoke-room (O'Sullivan with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel
+Boy" to a chorus of noisy cheers) I was walking up and down the
+deck with my little stock of courage nearly gone, for turn which
+way I would it was dark, dark, dark, when just as we picked up the
+lights of Finisterre something said to me, as plainly as words
+could speak:</p>
+<p>"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean
+to say that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have
+been hurried home without the loss of a moment, only to find
+everything over at the end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor,
+dear, heroic little woman is alive! She may be in danger, and beset
+by all the powers of the devil, but that's just why you have been
+brought home to save her, and you <i>will</i> save her, as surely
+as the sun will rise to-morrow morning."</p>
+<p>There are thoughts which, like great notes in music, grip you by
+the soul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong
+to. This was one of them.</p>
+<p>Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my
+own man once more; and though I continued to walk the deck while
+our good ship sped along in the night, it was only because there
+was a kind of wild harmony between the mighty voice of the rolling
+billows of the Bay and the unheard anthem of boundless hope that
+was singing in my breast.</p>
+<p>I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me.
+It was the same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of
+that perpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under
+the shelter of our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking
+above us:</p>
+<p>"<i>Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Lead Thou me
+on."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>But the light was within me now, and I knew as certainly as that
+the good ship was under my feet that I was being carried home at
+the call of the Spirit to rescue my stricken darling.</p>
+<p>God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England!
+Less than a week and I should be there!</p>
+<p>That was early hours on Saturday morning&mdash;the very Saturday
+when my poor little woman, after she had been turned away by those
+prating philanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute.</p>
+<p>Let him explain it who can. I cannot.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRD_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRD_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of my
+bed&mdash;stunned, stupefied, unable to think&mdash;when Miriam,
+back from the synagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a
+messenger had come for me about six o'clock the night before.</p>
+<p>"He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how
+he came to know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to
+come immediately,' he said."</p>
+<p>I was hardly conscious of what happened next&mdash;hardly aware
+of passing through the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses
+flying by as they seem to do from an express train; of my knees
+trembling; of my throat tightening; and of my whole soul crying out
+to God to save the life of my child until I could get to her.</p>
+<p>When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears
+were relieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on
+her lap.</p>
+<p>At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my
+delay, and how she could not be held responsible if anything
+happened; but caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I
+took baby from her without more words.</p>
+<p>My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to
+rouse her I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had
+lasted twenty-four hours, during which she had taken no
+nourishment, with the result that she was now very thin.</p>
+<p>I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct
+must have come to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby,
+and she awoke, and then took a little food.</p>
+<p>But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs.
+Oliver, who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look
+at her.</p>
+<p>Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs.
+Oliver, not me, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody,"
+and I found a certain consolation in that.</p>
+<p>Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened
+beyond the narrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard
+the squirling of a brass band that was going up the street, with
+the shuffling of an irregular procession.</p>
+<p>"It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window.
+"There's Ted, carrying a banner."</p>
+<p>A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting,
+which was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a
+frog-pond, with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's)
+crying "Buckle your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in,
+boys." Still later I heard the procession going away, singing with
+a slashing sound that was like driving wind and pelting rain:</p>
+<p>"<i>The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land,<br />
+Gawd gave the land to the people</i>."</p>
+<p>But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon
+(the idea that she was really ill having taken complete possession
+of me) I asked where I could find the nearest doctor, and being
+told, I went off in search of him.</p>
+<p>The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message
+indicating baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her
+immediately.</p>
+<p>On the way back I passed a number of children's
+funerals&mdash;easily recognisable by the combined coach and
+hearse, the white linen "weepers" worn by the coachman and his
+assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled with cheap flowers, in
+the glass case behind the driver's seat. These sights, which
+brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby down the
+Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses.</p>
+<p>I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands
+and dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the
+doctor, in his gig, pulled up at the door.</p>
+<p>He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a
+moment. I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's
+nurse? Yes.</p>
+<p>Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and
+I went through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when
+we are waiting for the doctor's first word.</p>
+<p>"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and
+then something about finding out the cause of it.</p>
+<p>But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap
+than there came a faintly discoloured vomit.</p>
+<p>"What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs.
+Oliver.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her
+milk, but the doctor said sharply:</p>
+<p>"Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her."</p>
+<p>Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought
+down a bottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I
+had myself bought for baby's cough.</p>
+<p>"As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and
+opening it, he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite,
+saying as he did so:</p>
+<p>"If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing
+syrup I'll see what the Inspector has to say."</p>
+<p>After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and
+intimate questions&mdash;if I had had a great grief or shock or
+worry while baby was coming, and whether and how long I had nursed
+her.</p>
+<p>I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of
+his inquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me
+next.</p>
+<p>He said nothing then, however, except to make his
+recommendations. And remembering my loss of work, my heart sank as
+he enumerated baby's needs&mdash;fresh cow's milk diluted with lime
+water, small quantities of meat juice, and twenty to thirty drops
+of the best brandy three or four times a day.</p>
+<p>When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but
+he cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was
+leaving the kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning
+if there were a change in the symptoms.</p>
+<p>Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was
+trembling in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and
+followed the doctor to the door.</p>
+<p>"Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?"</p>
+<p>He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes."</p>
+<p>"Dangerously ill?"</p>
+<p>Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my
+lower lip trembling) he said:</p>
+<p>"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by
+overdoses of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and
+unscrupulous people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her
+real trouble comes of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that
+is good nourishment and above all fresh air and sunshine."</p>
+<p>"Will she get better?"</p>
+<p>"If you can take her away, into the country she will,
+certainly."</p>
+<p>"And if . . . if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to
+my lips, "will she . . . <i>die</i>?"</p>
+<p>The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip
+to keep it firm), and said:</p>
+<p>"She <i>may</i>."</p>
+<p>When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face
+with another of the great mysteries of a woman's
+life&mdash;Death&mdash;the death of my child, which my very love
+and tenderness had exposed her to.</p>
+<p>Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall,
+was excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a
+spent wave. She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for
+worlds, and if it hadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night
+and wanted sleep after walking in percession. . . .</p>
+<p>Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the
+last of my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor.
+While she was away, and I was looking down at the little silent
+face on my lap, praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's
+sea-blue eyes, the bricklayer came lunging into the house.</p>
+<p>"Where's Lizer?" he said.</p>
+<p>I told him and he cried:</p>
+<p>"The baiby again! Allus the baiby!"</p>
+<p>With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut
+and rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and
+lit it&mdash;filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made
+baby bark and cough without rousing her.</p>
+<p>I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke.</p>
+<p>"Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been
+called and what he had said about fresh air.</p>
+<p>"So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of
+something I want to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a
+manner o' speaking. Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and
+here's Lizer out on a sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be
+'ospital nurses to a sick baiby they ought to be paid, mind ye.
+We're only pore, and it may be a sacred dooty walkin' in
+percession, but it ain't fillin'."</p>
+<p>Choking with anger, I said:</p>
+<p>"Put out your pipe, please."</p>
+<p>"Ma'am to <i>you</i>!"</p>
+<p>"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find
+somebody to make you."</p>
+<p>The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe
+to the two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:</p>
+<p>"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn
+as is interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if
+I've forgot 'ow to use 'em."</p>
+<p>I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby
+into the cot I turned on the man and cried:</p>
+<p>"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate
+cause of my baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving
+overdoses of a drug at your direction. If you don't leave this
+house in one minute I'll go straight to the police-station and
+charge you with poisoning my child."</p>
+<p>The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment.</p>
+<p>"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in
+the East End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn
+it slipped out in the 'eat of the moment&mdash;see?"</p>
+<p>"Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem,
+the man went flying before my face as if I had been a fury.</p>
+<p>It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day
+following, the next and the next and the next&mdash;how baby became
+less drowsy, but more restless; how being unable to retain her food
+she grew thinner and thinner; how I wished to send for the doctor,
+but dared not do so from fear of his fee; how the little money I
+had left was barely sufficient to buy the food and stimulants which
+were necessary to baby's cure: how I sat for long hours with my
+little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyes into her face; and how
+I cried to God for the life of my child, which was everything I had
+or wanted.</p>
+<p>All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it
+late every night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing
+happened there that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One
+day Miriam, looking at me with her big black eyes, said:</p>
+<p>"You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself
+ill."</p>
+<p>"No, no, I am not ill," I answered, and then remembering how
+necessary my life was to the life of my child, I said, "I must not
+be ill."</p>
+<p>At last on the Saturday morning&mdash;I know now it must have
+been Saturday, but time did not count with me then&mdash;I
+overheard Mrs. Abramovitch pleading for me with her husband, saying
+they knew I was in trouble and therefore I ought to have more time
+to find lodging, another week&mdash;three days at all events. But
+the stern-natured man with his rigid religion was inexorable. It
+was God's will that I should be punished, and who was he to step in
+between the All-high and his just retribution?</p>
+<p>"The woman is displeasing to God," he said, and then he declared
+that, the day being Sabbath (the two tall candlesticks and the
+Sabbath loaves must have been under his eyes at the moment), he
+would give me until nine o'clock that night, and if I had not moved
+out by that time he would put my belongings into the street.</p>
+<p>I remember that the Jew's threat made no impression upon my
+mind. It mattered very little to me where I was to lodge next week
+or what roof was to cover me.</p>
+<p>When I reached the Olivers' that morning I found baby distinctly
+worse. Even the brandy would not stay on her stomach and hence her
+strength was plainly diminishing. I sat for some time looking
+steadfastly into my child's face, and then I asked myself, as
+millions of mothers must have done before me, why my baby should
+suffer so. Why? Why? Why?</p>
+<p>There seemed to be no answer to that question except one. Baby
+was suffering because I was poor. If I had not been poor I could
+have taken her into the country for fresh air and sunshine, where
+she would have recovered as the doctor had so confidently assured
+me.</p>
+<p>And why was I poor? I was poor because I had refused to be
+enslaved by my father's authority when it was vain and wrong, or my
+husband's when it, was gross and cruel, and because I had obeyed
+the highest that was in me&mdash;the call of love.</p>
+<p>And now God looked down on the sufferings of my baby, who was
+being killed for my conduct&mdash;killed by my poverty!</p>
+<p>I tremble to say what wild impulses came at that thought. I felt
+that if my baby died and I ever stood before God to be judged I
+should judge Him in return. I should ask Him why, if He were
+Almighty, He permitted the evil in the world to triumph over the
+good, and if He were our heavenly Father why He allowed innocent
+children to suffer? Was there any <i>human</i> father who could be
+so callous, so neglectful, so cruel, as that?</p>
+<p>I dare say it was a terrible thing to bring God to the bar of
+judgment, to be judged by His poor weak ignorant creature; but it
+was also terrible to sit with a dying baby on my lap (I thought
+mine was dying), and to feel that there was nothing&mdash;not one
+thing&mdash;I could do to relieve its sufferings.</p>
+<p>My faith went down like a flood during the heavy hours of that
+day&mdash;all that I had been taught to believe about God's
+goodness and the marvellous efficacy of the Sacraments of His
+Church.</p>
+<p>I thought of the Sacrament of my marriage, which the Pope told
+me had been sanctioned by my Redeemer under a natural law that
+those who entered into it might live together in peace and
+love&mdash;and then of my husband and his brutal infidelities.</p>
+<p>I thought of the Sacrament of my baby's baptism, which was to
+exorcise all the devils out of my child&mdash;and then of the worst
+devil in the world, poverty, which was taking her very life.</p>
+<p>After that a dark shadow crossed my soul, and I told myself that
+since God was doing nothing, since He was allowing my only treasure
+to be torn away from me, I would fight for my child's life as any
+animal fights for her young.</p>
+<p>By this time a new kind of despair had taken hold of me. It was
+no longer the paralysing despair but the despair that has a driving
+force in it.</p>
+<p>"My child shall not die," I thought. "At least poverty shall not
+kill her!"</p>
+<p>Many times during the day I had heard Mrs. Oliver trying to
+comfort me with various forms of sloppy sentiment. Children were a
+great trial, they were allus makin' and keepin' people pore, and it
+was sometimes better for the dears themselves to be in their
+'eavenly Father's boosim.</p>
+<p>I hardly listened. It was the same as if somebody were talking
+to me in my sleep. But towards nightfall my deaf ear caught
+something about myself&mdash;that "it" (I knew what that meant)
+might be better for me, also, for then I should be free of
+encumbrances and could marry again.</p>
+<p>"Of course you could&mdash;you so young and good-lookin'. Only
+the other day the person at number five could tell me as you were
+the prettiest woman as comes up the Row, and the Vicar's wife
+couldn't hold a candle to you. 'Fine feathers makes fine birds,'
+says she: 'Give your young lady a nice frock and a bit o' colour in
+her checks, and there ain't many as could best her in the West End
+neither.'"</p>
+<p>As the woman talked dark thoughts took possession of me. I began
+to think of Angela. I tried not to, but I could not help it.</p>
+<p>And then came the moment of <i>my</i> fiercest trial. With a
+sense of Death hanging over my child I told myself that the only
+way to drive it off was to make <i>some great sacrifice</i>.</p>
+<p>Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to
+baby, but now I felt that <i>I myself</i> belonged to her. I had
+brought her into the world, and it was my duty to see that she did
+not suffer.</p>
+<p>All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting
+hard with me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself
+from doing what I meant to do.</p>
+<p>"<i>Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee</i> . .
+."</p>
+<p>I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use
+struggling against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I
+thought it) which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it
+conquered me.</p>
+<p>"I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will
+die. I&mdash;must&mdash;get&mdash;money."</p>
+<p>Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on
+my coat and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins.</p>
+<p>"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver.</p>
+<p>"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered.</p>
+<p>And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again&mdash;my
+sweet child, my Isabel&mdash;I tore the street door open, and
+pulled it noisily behind me.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram,
+for though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague
+memories of lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric
+cars.</p>
+<p>At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further
+fare) because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the
+lights in the shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the
+edge of the pavement, where women with baskets on their arms were
+doing their Saturday night's shopping.</p>
+<p>My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and
+I know I was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror
+in a chemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce
+as flame.</p>
+<p>At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a
+drunken woman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm
+about the neck of a drunken sailor.</p>
+<p>"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried.</p>
+<p>It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry
+past her she said:</p>
+<p>"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never
+get drunk? No? What a bleedin' fool you are! Want to get out o'
+this 'ere 'ole? Tike my tip then&mdash;gettin' drunk's on'y way out
+of it."</p>
+<p>Farther on I had to steer my way through jostling companies of
+young people of both sexes who were going (I thought) the same way
+as the woman&mdash;girls out of the factories with their free walk,
+and their boisterous "fellers" from the breweries.</p>
+<p>It was a cold and savage night. As I approached the side street
+in which I lived I saw by the light of the arc lamps a small group
+of people, a shivering straggle of audience, with the hunched-up
+shoulders of beings thinly clad and badly fed, standing in stupid
+silence at the corner while two persons wearing blue uniforms (a
+man in a peaked cap and a young woman in a poke bonnet) sang a
+Salvation hymn of which the refrain was "It is well, it is well
+with my soul."</p>
+<p>The door of the Jew's house was shut (for the first time in my
+experience), so I had to knock and wait, and while I waited I could
+not help but hear the young woman in the poke bonnet pray.</p>
+<p>Her prayer was about "raising the standard of Calvary," and
+making the drunkards and harlots of the East End into "seekers" and
+"soul yielders" and "prisoners of the King of Kings."</p>
+<p>Before the last words of the prayer were finished the man in the
+peaked cap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman
+joined him with an accordion:</p>
+<p>"<i>Shall we gather at the river,<br />
+Where bright angel feet have trod</i>. . . ."</p>
+<p>The door was opened by the Jew himself, who, assuming a severe
+manner, said something to me in his guttural voice which I did not
+hear or heed, for I pushed past him and walked firmly upstairs.</p>
+<p>When I had reached my room and lit the gas, I closed and locked
+the door, as if I were preparing to commit a crime&mdash;and
+perhaps I was.</p>
+<p>I did not allow myself to think of what I intended to do that
+night, but I knew quite well, and when at one moment my conscience
+pressed me hard something cried out in my heart:</p>
+<p>"Who can blame me since my child's life is in danger?"</p>
+<p>I opened my trunk and took out my clothes&mdash;all that
+remained of the dresses I had brought from Ellan. They were few,
+and more than a little out of fashion, but one of them, though far
+from gay, was bright and stylish&mdash;a light blue frock with a
+high collar and some white lace over the bosom.</p>
+<p>I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during
+the week, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad
+that I had not done so.</p>
+<p>It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I
+first came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the
+weather was warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that,
+thinking only that it was my best and most attractive.</p>
+<p>After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little
+swinging looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time
+that my face was deadly pale, and that made me think of some
+bottles and cardboard boxes which lay in the pockets of my
+trunk.</p>
+<p>I knew what they contained&mdash;the remains of the cosmetics
+which I had bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying
+to make my husband love me. Never since then had I looked at them,
+but now I took them out (with a hare's foot and some pads and
+brushes) and began to paint my pale face&mdash;reddening my cracked
+and colourless lips and powdering out the dark rings under my
+eyes.</p>
+<p>While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the
+deadened sound of the singing in the front street, with the young
+woman's treble voice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the
+accordion:</p>
+<p>"<i>Yes, we'll gather, at the river,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where bright angel feet have
+trod,</span><br />
+With its, crystal tide for ever<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flowing by the throne of
+God."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time,
+poor vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that
+while I listened I laughed&mdash;thinking what mockery was to sing
+of "angel feet" and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at
+the corner of the London street in the smoky night air.</p>
+<p>"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"</p>
+<p>Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking
+out of my trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn
+since I left Ellan, I began to pull them on.</p>
+<p>I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing
+this, and trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was
+suddenly smitten by a new thought.</p>
+<p>I was about to commit suicide&mdash;the worst kind of suicide,
+not the suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on
+earth after death!</p>
+<p>After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should
+never he able to think of her again! I should have killed her and
+buried her and stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone
+from me for ever!</p>
+<p>That made a grip at my heart&mdash;awakening memories of happy
+days in my childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short
+period of my great love, and even making me think of my life in
+Rome, with its confessions, its masses, and the sweetness of its
+church bells.</p>
+<p>I was saying farewell to Mary O'Neill! And parting with oneself
+seemed so terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready
+to burst.</p>
+<p>"But who can blame me when my child's life is in danger?" I
+asked myself again, still tugging at my long gloves.</p>
+<p>By the time I had finished dressing the Salvationists were going
+off to their barracks with their followers behind them. Under the
+singing I could faintly hear the shuffling of bad shoes, which made
+a sound like the wash of an ebbing tide over the teeth of a rocky
+beach&mdash;up our side street, past the Women's Night Shelter
+(where the beds never had time to become cool), and beyond the
+public-house with the placard in the window saying the ale sold
+there could be guaranteed to make anybody drunk for fourpence.</p>
+<p>"<i>We'll stand the storm, it won't be long,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And we'll anchor in the sweet
+by-and-by."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>I listened and tried to laugh again, but I could not do so now.
+There was one last spasm of my cruelly palpitating heart, in which
+I covered my face with both hands, and cried:</p>
+<p>"For baby's sake! For my baby's sake!"</p>
+<p>And then I opened my bedroom door, walked boldly downstairs and
+went out into the streets.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>I don't call it Chance that this was the very day of my return
+to England.</p>
+<p>If I had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of
+what is best in the human story, and the whole of what we are
+taught about a guiding Providence and the spiritual influences
+which we cannot reason about and prove.</p>
+<p>We were two days late arriving, having made dirty weather of it
+in the Bay of Biscay, which injured our propeller and compelled us
+to lie to, so I will not say that the sense of certainty which came
+to me off Finisterre did not suffer a certain shock.</p>
+<p>In fact the pangs of uncertainty grew so strongly upon me as we
+neared home that in the middle of the last night of our voyage I
+went to O'Sullivan's cabin, and sat on the side of his bunk for
+hours, talking of the chances of my darling being lost and of the
+possibility of finding her.</p>
+<p>O'Sullivan, God bless him, was "certain sure" that everything
+would be right, and he tried to take things gaily.</p>
+<p>"The way I'm knowing she'll be at Southampton in a new hat and
+feather! So mind yer oi, Commanther."</p>
+<p>We passed the Channel Islands in the spring of morning, and at
+breakfast-time we picked up the pilot, who had brought out a group
+of reporters. I did my best for the good chaps (though it is mighty
+hard to talk about exploring when you are thinking of another
+subject), and then handed them over to my shipmates.</p>
+<p>Towards seven o'clock at night we heaved up to the grey stone
+pier at the head of Southampton Water. It was then dark, so being
+unable to see more than the black forms and waving hands of the
+crowd waiting for us with the lights behind them, I arranged with
+O'Sullivan that he should slip ashore as soon as we got alongside,
+and see if he could find my dear one.</p>
+<p>"Will you remember her face?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"And why wouldn't I? By the stars of God, there's only one of it
+in the world," he answered.</p>
+<p>The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a
+vain man proud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have
+had a little of both feelings if the right woman had been there to
+share them.</p>
+<p>My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door
+of it as long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name,
+but feeling as if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help
+me!</p>
+<p>O'Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that
+everything was ready, and it was time to go ashore.</p>
+<p>I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not
+pretend that the warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God
+knows there was a moment when, for want of a face I did not see, I
+could have turned about and gone back to the South Pole there and
+then, without an instant's hesitation.</p>
+<p>When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand
+four-square to the storm of hand-shaking that fell on me. And
+perhaps if I had been in better trim I should have found lots of
+fun in the boyish delight of my shipmates in being back, with old
+Treacle shaking hands with everybody from the Mayor of the town to
+the messenger-boys (crying "What cheer, matey?"), while the
+scientific staff were bringing up their wives to be introduced to
+me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with their big
+sisters at school.</p>
+<p>At last O'Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could
+see nothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said:</p>
+<p>"Never mind! She'll be waiting for us in London perhaps."</p>
+<p>It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got
+off at last in a special train commissioned by our
+chairman&mdash;half of our company with their wives and a good many
+reporters having crammed themselves into the big saloon carriage
+reserved for me.</p>
+<p>At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers
+through my window, and as soon as we were well away I took up one
+of them and tried to read it, but column after column fell blank on
+my eyes, for my mind was full of other matters.</p>
+<p>The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least.
+It was about the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections,
+the fall of ministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows
+what&mdash;things that had looked important when we were in the
+dumb solitude of Winter Quarters, but seemed to be of no account
+now when I was hungering for something else.</p>
+<p>At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him
+about Ellan.</p>
+<p>"That's my native island, you know&mdash;anything going on
+there?"</p>
+<p>The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the
+failure of banks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its
+biggest financial man gone smash.</p>
+<p>"Is his name O'Neill?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"That's it."</p>
+<p>"Anything else happened there while I've been away?"</p>
+<p>"No . . . yes . . . well, now that I think of it, there was a
+big scare a year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared
+mysteriously."</p>
+<p>"Was . . . was it Lady Raa?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said the reporter, and then (controlling myself as well
+as I could) I listened to a rapid version of what had become known
+about my dear one down to the moment when she "vanished as utterly
+as if she had been dropped into the middle of the Irish Sea."</p>
+<p>It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that
+flying in an express train to London, I was as impatient of space
+and time as if I had been in a ship down south stuck fast in the
+rigid besetment of the ice.</p>
+<p>I could not talk, and I dared not think, so I shouted for a
+sing-song, and my shipmates (who had been a little low at seeing me
+so silent) jumped at the proposal like schoolboys let loose from
+school.</p>
+<p>Of course O'Sullivan gave us "The Minsthrel Boy"; and Treacle
+sang "Yew are the enny"; and then I, yes I (Oh, God!), sang
+"Sally's the gel," and every man of my company joined in the
+ridiculous chorus.</p>
+<p>Towards ten o'clock we changed lines on the loop at Waterloo and
+ran into Charing Cross, where we found another and still bigger
+crowd of hearty people behind a barrier, with a group of my
+committee, my fellow explorers, and geographers in general, waiting
+on the platform.</p>
+<p>I could not help it if I made a poor return to their
+warm-hearted congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching
+for a face I could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I
+heard the superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me
+to the hotel was ready and waiting.</p>
+<p>But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and
+a nun were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of
+Mary.</p>
+<p>The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be
+Sister Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight
+of their sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I
+knew what they had come to say before they said it&mdash;that my
+darling was lost, and Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had
+concluded that I was the first man who ought to be told of it.</p>
+<p>Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me
+like a thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home,
+I believe in my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan
+into the automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur
+to drive like the deuce to the hotel.</p>
+<p>He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard
+surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one,
+saying heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed
+of not having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get
+there next time or leave my bones on the way.</p>
+<p>We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken
+darling had stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we
+reached my room I locked the door and said:</p>
+<p>"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."</p>
+<p>Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too
+slow for me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had
+hardly got further than his difference with his Bishop, and the
+oath he had sworn by him who died for us to come to London and
+never go back until he had found my darling, when I shook his old
+hand and looked towards the Sister.</p>
+<p>She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew
+something of my dear one's story&mdash;how she had fled from home
+on my account, and for my sake had become poor; how she had lodged
+for a while in Bloomsbury; how hard she had been hit by the report
+of the loss of my ship; and how (Oh my poor, suffering, heroic,
+little woman!) she had disappeared on the approach of another event
+of still more serious consequence.</p>
+<p>It was no time for modesty, not from me at all events, so while
+the Father's head was down, I asked plainly if there was a child,
+and was told there was, and the fear of having it taken from her (I
+could understand that) was perhaps the reason my poor darling had
+hidden herself away.</p>
+<p>"And now, when, where, and by whom was she seen last?" I
+asked.</p>
+<p>"Last week, and again to-day, to-night, here in the West
+End&mdash;by a fallen woman," answered the Sister.</p>
+<p>"And what conclusion do you draw from that?"</p>
+<p>The Sister hesitated for a moment and then said:</p>
+<p>"That her child is dead; that she does not know you are alive;
+and that she is throwing herself away, thinking there is nothing
+left to live for."</p>
+<p>"What?" I cried. "You believe that? Because she left that brute
+of a husband . . . and because she came to me . . . you believe
+that she could. . . . Never! Not Mary O'Neill! She would beg her
+bread, or die in the streets first."</p>
+<p>I dare say my thickening voice was betraying me; but when I
+looked at Mildred and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and
+heard her excuses (it was "what hundreds of poor women were driven
+to every day"), I was ashamed and said so, and she put her kind
+hand in my hand in token of her forgiveness.</p>
+<p>"But what's to be done now?" she asked.</p>
+<p>O'Sullivan was for sending for the police, but I would not hear
+of that. I was beginning to feel as I used to do when I lost a
+comrade in a blizzard down south, and (without a fact or a clue to
+guide me) sent a score of men in a broad circle from the camp (like
+spokes in a wheel) to find him or follow back on their tracks.</p>
+<p>There were only four of us, but I mapped out our courses, where
+we were to go, when we were to return, and what we were to do if
+any of us found my lost one&mdash;take her to Sister's flat, which
+she gave the address of.</p>
+<p>It was half-past eleven when we started on our search, and I
+dare say our good old Father Dan, after his fruitless journeys,
+thought it a hopeless quest. But I had found myself at last. My
+spirits which had been down to zero had gone up with a bound. I had
+no ghost of an idea that I had been called home from the 88th
+latitude for nothing. And I had no fear that I had come too
+late.</p>
+<p>Call it frenzy if you like&mdash;I don't much mind what people
+call it. But I was as sure as I have ever been of anything in this
+life, or ever expect to be, that the sufferings of my poor martyred
+darling were at an end, and that within an hour I should be holding
+her in my arms.</p>
+<p>M.C.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>There must be a physical power in fierce emotion to deprive us
+of the use of our senses of hearing and even of sight, for my
+memory of what happened after I left the Jew's has blank places in
+it.</p>
+<p>Trying to recall the incidents of that night is like travelling
+on a moorland road under a flying moon, with sometimes the whitest
+light in which everything is clearly seen, and then the blackest
+darkness.</p>
+<p>I remember taking the electric car going west, and seeing the
+Whitechapel Road shooting by me, with its surging crowds of
+pedestrians, its public-houses, its Cinema shows, and its Jewish
+theatres.</p>
+<p>I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through
+that dead belt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is
+alive like a beehive by day and silent and deserted by night.</p>
+<p>I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking
+up cigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a
+flock of sheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven
+through the echoing streets from the river-side towards the
+slaughter-houses near Smithfield Market.</p>
+<p>I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the
+cathedral were very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But
+on Ludgate Hill the traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet
+Street crowds of people were standing in front of the newspaper
+offices, reading large placards in written characters which were
+pasted on the windows.</p>
+<p>I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their
+news was nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and
+for whom the world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round
+one of the crowds, which extended to the middle of the street,
+somebody said:</p>
+<p>"He has landed at Southampton, it seems."</p>
+<p>I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on
+the fringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people,
+who seemed to be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a
+noise like the crackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:</p>
+<p>"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait
+yet."</p>
+<p>Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church
+into Leicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were
+swinging along with a high step and laughing loudly, and that one
+of them was Angela, and that she stopped on seeing me and
+cried:</p>
+<p>"Hello! Here I am again, you see! <i>Giovanni's dead, and I
+don't care a damn!</i>"</p>
+<p>I remember that she said something else&mdash;it was about
+Sister Mildred, but my mind did not take it in&mdash;and at the
+next moment she left me, and I heard her laughter once more as she
+swept round the corner.</p>
+<p>I hardly know what happened next, for here comes one of the
+blank places in my memory, with nothing to light it except vague
+thoughts of Martin (and that soulless night in Bloomsbury when the
+newspapers announced that he was lost), until, wandering aimlessly
+through streets and streets of people&mdash;such multitudes of
+people, no end of people&mdash;I found myself back at Charing
+Cross.</p>
+<p>The waiting crowd was now larger and more excited than before,
+and the traffic at both sides of the station was stopped.</p>
+<p>"He's coming! He's coming! Here he is!" the people cried, and
+then there were deafening shouts and cheers.</p>
+<p>I recall the sight of a line of policemen pushing people back (I
+was myself pushed back); I recall the sight of a big motor-car
+containing three men and a woman, ploughing its way through; I
+recall the sight of one of the men raising his cap; of the crowd
+rushing to shake hands with him; then of the car swinging away, and
+of the people running after it with a noise like that of the racing
+of a noisy river.</p>
+<p>It is the literal truth that never once did I ask myself what
+this tumult was about, and that for some time after it was
+over&mdash;a full hour at least&mdash;I had a sense of walking in
+my sleep, as if my body were passing through the streets of the
+West End of London while my soul was somewhere else altogether.</p>
+<p>Thus at one moment, as I was going by the National Gallery and
+thought I caught the sound of Martin's name, I felt as if I were
+back in Glen Raa, and it was I myself who had been calling it.</p>
+<p>At another moment, when I was standing at the edge of the
+pavement in Piccadilly Circus, which was ablaze with electric light
+and thronged with people (for the theatres and music-halls were
+emptying, men in uniform were running about with whistles,
+policemen were directing the traffic, and streams of carriages were
+flowing by), I felt as if I were back in my native island, where I
+was alone on the dark shore while the sea was smiting me.</p>
+<p>Again, after a brusque voice had said, "Move on, please," I
+followed the current of pedestrians down Piccadilly&mdash;it must
+have been Piccadilly&mdash;and saw lines of "public women," chiefly
+French and Belgian, sauntering along, and heard men throwing light
+words to them as they went by, I was thinking of the bleating sheep
+and the barking dog.</p>
+<p>And again, when I was passing a men's club and the place where I
+had met Angela, my dazed mind was harking back to Ilford (with a
+frightened sense of the length of time since I had been
+there&mdash;"Good heavens, it must be five hours at least!"), and
+wondering if Mrs. Oliver was giving baby her drops of brandy and
+her spoonfuls of diluted milk.</p>
+<p>But somewhere about midnight my soul seemed to take full
+possession of my body, and I saw things clearly and sharply as I
+turned out of Oxford Street into Regent Street.</p>
+<p>The traffic was then rapidly dying down, the streets were
+darker, the caf&eacute;s were closing, men and women were coming
+Pout of supper rooms, smoking cigarettes, getting into taxis and
+driving away; and another London day was passing into another
+night.</p>
+<p>People spoke to me. I made no answer. At one moment an elderly
+woman said something to which I replied, "No, no," and hurried on.
+At another moment, a foreign-looking man addressed me, and I pushed
+past without replying. Then a string of noisy young fellows,
+stretching across the broad pavement arm-in-arm, encircled me and
+cried:</p>
+<p>"Here we are, my dear. Let's have a kissing-bee."</p>
+<p>But with angry words and gestures I compelled them to let me go,
+whereupon one of the foreign women who were sauntering by said
+derisively:</p>
+<p>"What does she think she's out for, I wonder?"</p>
+<p>At length I found myself standing under a kind of loggia at the
+corner of Piccadilly Circus, which was now half-dark, the theatres
+and music-halls being closed, and only one group of arc lamps
+burning on an island about a statue.</p>
+<p>There were few people now where there had been so dense a crowd
+awhile ago; policemen were tramping leisurely along; horse-cabs
+were going at walking pace, and taxis were moving slowly; but a few
+gentlemen (walking home from their clubs apparently) were passing
+at intervals, often looking at me, and sometimes speaking as they
+went by.</p>
+<p>Then plainly and pitilessly the taunt of the foreign woman came
+back to me&mdash;what was I there for?</p>
+<p>I knew quite well, and yet I saw that not only was I not doing
+what I came out to do, but every time an opportunity had offered I
+had resisted it. It was just as if an inherited instinct of
+repulsion had restrained me, or some strong unseen arm had always
+snatched me away.</p>
+<p>This led me&mdash;was it some angel leading me?&mdash;to think
+again of Martin and to remember our beautiful and sacred parting at
+Castle Raa.</p>
+<p>"Whatever happens to either of us, we belong to each other for
+ever," he had said, and I had answered, "For ever and ever."</p>
+<p>It was a fearful shock to think of this now. I saw that if I did
+what I had come out to do, not only would Mary O'Neill be dead to
+me after to-night, but Martin Conrad would be dead also.</p>
+<p>When I thought of that I realised that, although I had accepted,
+without question, the newspaper reports of Martin's death, he had
+never hitherto been dead to me at all. He had lived with me every
+moment of my life since, supporting me, sustaining me and inspiring
+me, so that nothing I had ever done&mdash;not one single
+thing&mdash;would have been different if I had believed him to be
+alive and been sure that he was coming back.</p>
+<p>But now I was about to kill Martin Conrad as well as Mary
+O'Neill, by breaking the pledge (sacred as any sacrament) which
+they had made for life and for eternity.</p>
+<p>Could I do that? In this hideous way too? Never! Never! Never! I
+should die in the streets first.</p>
+<p>I remember that I was making a movement to go back to Ilford
+(God knows how), when, on the top of all my brave thinking, came
+the pitiful thought of my child. My poor helpless little baby, who
+had made no promise and was party to no pledge. She needed
+nourishment and fresh air and sunshine, and if she could not get
+them&mdash;if I went back to her penniless&mdash;she would die!</p>
+<p>My sweet darling! My Isabel, my only treasure! Martin's child
+and mine!</p>
+<p>That put a quick end to all my qualms. Again I bit my lip until
+it bled, and told myself that I should speak to the Very next man
+who came along.</p>
+<p>"Yes, the very next man who comes along," I thought.</p>
+<p>I was standing at that moment in the shadow of one of the
+pilasters of the loggia, almost leaning against it, and in the
+silence of the street I heard distinctly the sharp firm step of
+somebody coming my way.</p>
+<p>It was a man. As he came near me he slowed down, and stopped. He
+was then immediately behind me. I heard his quick breathing. I felt
+that his eyes were fixed on me. One sidelong glance told me that he
+was wearing a long ulster and a cap, that he was young, tall,
+powerfully built, had a strong, firm, clean-shaven face, and an
+indescribable sense of the open air about him.</p>
+<p>"Now, now!" I thought, and (to prevent myself from running away)
+I turned quickly round to him and tried to speak.</p>
+<p>But I said nothing. I did not know what women say to men under
+such circumstances. I found myself trembling violently, and before
+I was aware of what was happening I had burst into tears.</p>
+<p>Then came another blinding moment and a tempest of conflicting
+feelings.</p>
+<p>I felt that the man had laid hold of me, that his strong hands
+were grasping my arms, and that he was looking into my face. I
+heard his voice. It seemed to belong to no waking moment but to
+come out of the hours of sleep.</p>
+<p>"Mary! Mary!"</p>
+<p>I looked up at him, but before my eyes could carry the news to
+my brain I knew who it was&mdash;I knew, I knew, I knew!</p>
+<p>"Don't be afraid! It's I!"</p>
+<p>Then something&mdash;God knows what&mdash;made me struggle to
+escape, and I cried:</p>
+<p>"Let me go!"</p>
+<p>But even while I was struggling&mdash;trying to fly away from my
+greatest happiness&mdash;I was praying with all my might that the
+strong arms would hold me, conquer me, master me.</p>
+<p>They did. And then something seemed to give way within my head,
+and through a roaring that came into my brain I heard the voice
+again, and it was saying:</p>
+<p>"Quick, Sister, call a cab. Open the door, O'Sullivan. No, leave
+her to me. I've got her, thank God!"</p>
+<p>And then blinding darkness fell over me and everything was
+blotted out.</p>
+<p>But only a moment afterwards (or what seemed to be a moment)
+memory came back in a great swelling wave of joy. Though I did not
+open my eyes I knew that I was safe and baby was safe, and all was
+well. Somebody&mdash;it was the same beloved voice again&mdash;was
+saying:</p>
+<p>"Mally! My Mally! My poor, long-suffering darling! My own again,
+God bless her!"</p>
+<p>It was he, it was Martin, my Martin. And, oh Mother of my Lord,
+he was carrying me upstairs in his arms.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SEVENTH_PART" id="SEVENTH_PART"></a>SEVENTH PART</h2>
+<h3>I AM FOUND</h3>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>My return to consciousness was a painful, yet joyful experience.
+It was almost like being flung in a frail boat out of a tempestuous
+sea into a quiet harbour.</p>
+<p>I seemed to hear myself saying, "My child shall not die. Poverty
+shall not kill her. I am going to take her into the country . . .
+she will recover. . . . No, no, it is not Martin. Martin is dead. .
+. . But his eyes . . . don't you see his eyes. . . . Let me
+go."</p>
+<p>Then all the confused sense of nightmare seemed to be carried
+away as by some mighty torrent, and there came a great calm, a kind
+of morning sweetness, with the sun shining through my closed
+eyelids, and not a sound in my ears but the thin carolling of a
+bird.</p>
+<p>When I opened my eyes I was in bed in a room that was strange to
+me. It was a little like the Reverend Mother's room in Rome, having
+pictures of the Saints on the walls, and a large figure of the
+Sacred Heart over the mantelpiece; but there was a small gas fire,
+and a canary singing in a gilded cage that hung in front of the
+window.</p>
+<p>I was trying to collect my senses in order to realize where I
+was when Sister Mildred's kind face, in her white wimple and
+gorget, leaned over me, and she said, with a tender smile, "You are
+awake now, my child?"</p>
+<p>Then memory came rushing back, and though the immediate past was
+still like a stormy dream I seemed to remember everything.</p>
+<p>"Is it true that I saw. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mildred.</p>
+<p>"Then he was not shipwrecked?"</p>
+<p>"That was a false report. Within a month or two the newspapers
+had contradicted it."</p>
+<p>"Where is he?" I asked, rising from my pillow.</p>
+<p>"Hush! Lie quiet. You are not to excite yourself. I must call
+the doctor."</p>
+<p>Mildred was about to leave the room, but I could not let her
+go.</p>
+<p>"Wait! I must ask you something more."</p>
+<p>"Not now, my child. Lie down."</p>
+<p>"But I must. Dear Sister, I must. There is somebody else."</p>
+<p>"You mean the baby," said Mildred, in a low voice.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"She has been found, and taken to the country, and is getting
+better rapidly. So lie down, and be quiet," said Mildred, and with
+a long breath of happiness I obeyed.</p>
+<p>A moment afterwards I heard her speaking to somebody over the
+telephone (saying I had recovered consciousness and was almost
+myself again), and then some indistinct words came hack in the
+thick telephone voice like that of a dumb man shouting down a
+tunnel, followed by sepulchral peals of merry laughter.</p>
+<p>"The doctor will be here presently," said Mildred, returning to
+me with a shining face.</p>
+<p>"And . . . he?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, perhaps he will be permitted to come, too."</p>
+<p>She was telling me how baby had been discovered&mdash;by means
+of Mrs. Oliver's letter which had been found in my
+pocket&mdash;when there was the whirr of an electric bell in the
+corridor outside, followed (as soon as Mildred could reach the
+door) by the rich roll of an Irish voice.</p>
+<p>It was Dr. O'Sullivan, and in a moment he was standing by my
+bed, his face ablaze with smiles.</p>
+<p>"By the Saints of heaven, this is good, though," he said. "It's
+worth a hundred dozen she is already of the woman we brought here
+first."</p>
+<p>"That was last night, wasn't it?" I asked.</p>
+<p>"Well, not last night exactly," he answered. And then I gathered
+that I had been ill, seriously ill, being two days unconscious, and
+that Martin had been in a state of the greatest anxiety.</p>
+<p>"He's coming, isn't he?" I said. "Will he be here soon? How does
+he look? Is he well? Did he finish his work?"</p>
+<p>"Now, now, now," said the doctor, with uplifted hands. "If it's
+exciting yourself like this you're going to be, it isn't myself
+that will he taking the risk of letting him come at all."</p>
+<p>But after I had pleaded and prayed and promised to be good he
+consented to allow Martin to see me, and then it was as much as I
+could do not to throw my arms about his neck and kiss him.</p>
+<p>I had not noticed what Mildred was doing during this time, and
+almost before I was aware of it somebody else had entered the
+room.</p>
+<p>It was dear old Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"Glory be to God!" he cried at sight of me, and then he
+said:</p>
+<p>"Don't worry, my daughter, now don't worry,"&mdash;with that
+nervous emphasis which I knew by long experience to be the surest
+sign of my dear Father's own perturbation.</p>
+<p>I did not know then, or indeed until long afterwards, that for
+six months past he had been tramping the streets of London in
+search of me (day after day, and in the dark of the night and the
+cold of the morning); but something in his tender old face, which
+was seamed and worn, so touched me with the memory of the last
+scene in my mother's room that my eyes began to overflow, and
+seeing this he began to laugh and let loose his Irish tongue on
+us.</p>
+<p>"My blissing on you, doctor! It's the mighty proud man ye'll be
+entoirely to be saving the life of the swatest woman in the world.
+And whisha, Sister, if ye have a nip of something neat anywhere
+handy, faith it isn't my cloth will prevent me from drinking the
+health of everybody."</p>
+<p>If this was intended to cheer me up it failed completely, for
+the next thing I knew was that the doctor was bustling the dear old
+Father out of the room, and that Mildred was going out after
+him.</p>
+<p>She left the door open, though, and as soon as I had calmed down
+a little I listened intently for every sound outside.</p>
+<p>It was then that I heard the whirr of the electric bell again,
+but more softly this time, and followed by breathless whispered
+words in the corridor (as of some one who had been running) and
+once more . . . I knew, I knew, I knew!</p>
+<p>After a moment Mildred came to ask me in a whisper if I was
+quite sure that I could control myself, and though my heart was
+thumping against my breast, I answered Yes.</p>
+<p>Then I called for a hand-glass and made my hair a shade neater,
+and after that I closed my eyes (God knows why) and waited.</p>
+<p>There was a moment of silence, dead silence, and then&mdash;then
+I opened my eyes and saw him standing in the open doorway.</p>
+<p>His big, strong, bronzed face&mdash;stronger than ever now, and
+marked with a certain change from the struggles he had gone
+through&mdash;was utterly broken up. For some moments he did not
+speak, but I could see that he saw the change that life had made in
+me also. Then in a low voice, so low that it was like the breath of
+his soul, he said:</p>
+<p>"Forgive me! Forgive me!"</p>
+<p>And stepping forward he dropped to his knees by the side of my
+bed, and kissed the arms and hands I was stretching out to him.</p>
+<p>That was more than I could bear, and the next thing I heard was
+my darling's great voice crying:</p>
+<p>"Sister! Sister! Some brandy! Quick! She has fainted."</p>
+<p>But my poor little fit of hysterics was soon at an end, and
+though Martin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer,
+a mighty wave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never
+known before and may never know again.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations
+of the Great Surgeon an an&aelig;sthetic has not yet been found,
+but within a week I was sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but
+gloriously alive and without the whisper of a cry.</p>
+<p>By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me
+with a solemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant
+depart in peace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to
+give up one of her rooms to me as long as I should need it.</p>
+<p>Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then
+ten, and finally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought
+such an atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand
+seemed to give me new strength&mdash;being so pale and bloodless
+now that I thought the sun might have shone through me as through a
+sea-gull.</p>
+<p>I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting
+by my side, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make
+sure he was there.</p>
+<p>How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about
+his expedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a
+dark scene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was all
+a-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes,
+though he laughed and made so light of them.</p>
+<p>It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole;
+and when he told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to
+him which had brought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if
+I had been a coward, unworthy of the man who loved me.</p>
+<p>Sometimes he talked about baby&mdash;he called her
+"Girlie"&mdash;telling a funny story of how he had carried her off
+from Ilford, where the bricklayer had suddenly conceived such a
+surprising affection for my child ("what he might go so far as to
+call a fatherly feeling") that he had been unwilling to part with
+her until soothed down by a few sovereigns&mdash;not to say
+frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearly broken
+his wrist.</p>
+<p>"She's as right as a trivet now, though," said Martin, "and I'll
+run down to Chevening every other day to see how she's getting
+on."</p>
+<p>My darling was in great demand from the first, but when he could
+not be with me in the flesh he was with me in the spirit, by means
+of the newspapers which Mildred brought up in armfuls.</p>
+<p>I liked the illustrated ones best, with their pictures of scenes
+in the Expedition, particularly the portraits of Martin himself in
+his Antarctic outfit, with his broad throat, determined lips, clear
+eyes, and that general resemblance to the people we all know which
+makes us feel that the great men of every age are brothers of one
+family.</p>
+<p>But what literary tributes there were, too! What interviews,
+what articles! A member of the scientific staff had said that "down
+there," with Nature in her wrath, where science was nothing and
+even physical strength was not all, only one thing really counted,
+and that was the heroic soul, and because Martin had it, he had
+always been the born leader of them all.</p>
+<p>And then, summing up the tangible gains of the Expedition, the
+<i>Times</i> said its real value was moral and spiritual, because
+it showed that in an age when one half of the world seemed to be
+thinking of nothing but the acquisition of wealth (that made me
+think of my father) and the other half of nothing but the pursuit
+of pleasure (that reminded me of my husband and Alma), there could
+be found men like Martin Conrad and his dauntless comrades who had
+faced death for the sake of an ideal and were ready to do so
+again.</p>
+<p>Oh dear! what showers of tears I shed over those newspapers! But
+the personal honours that were bestowed on Martin touched me most
+of all.</p>
+<p>First, the Royal Geographical Society held a meeting at the
+Albert Hall, where the Gold Medal was presented to him. I was in a
+fever of anxiety on the night of that function, I remember, until
+Dr. O'Sullivan (heaven bless, him!) came flying upstairs, to tell
+me that it had been a "splendid success," and Martin's speech (he
+hadn't prepared a word of it) "a perfect triumph."</p>
+<p>Then some of the Universities conferred degrees on my darling,
+which was a source of inexpressible amusement to him, especially
+when (after coming back from Edinburgh) he marched up and down my
+room in his Doctor's cap and gown, and I asked him to spell
+"promise" and he couldn't.</p>
+<p>Oh, the joy of it all! It was so great a joy that at length it
+became a pain.</p>
+<p>The climax came when the Home Secretary wrote to say that the
+King had been graciously pleased to confer a Knighthood upon
+Martin, in recognition of his splendid courage and the substantial
+contribution he had already made to the material welfare of the
+world.</p>
+<p>That frightened me terribly, though only a woman would know why.
+It was one thing to share the honours of the man I loved (however
+secretly and as it were by stealth), but quite another thing to
+feel that they were carrying him away from me, drawing him off,
+lifting him up, and leaving me far below.</p>
+<p>When the sense of this became acute I used to sit at night, when
+Mildred was out at her work, by the lofty window of her room,
+looking down on the precincts of Piccadilly, and wondering how much
+my darling really knew about the impulse that took me there, and
+how nearly (but for the grace of God) its awful vortex had
+swallowed me up.</p>
+<p>It was then that I began to write these notes (having persuaded
+Mildred to buy me this big book with its silver clasp and key), not
+intending at first to tell the whole story of my life, but only to
+explain to him for whom everything has been written (what I could
+not bring myself to say face to face), how it came to pass that I
+was tempted to that sin which is the most awful crime against her
+sex that a woman can commit.</p>
+<p>Three months had gone by this time, the spring was coming and I
+was beginning to feel that Martin (who had not yet been home) was
+being kept in London on my account, when Dr. O'Sullivan announced
+that I was well enough to be moved, and that a little of my native
+air would do me good.</p>
+<p>Oh, the thrill that came with that prospect! I suppose there is
+a sort of call to one's heart from the soil that gave one birth,
+but in my case it was coupled with a chilling thought of the poor
+welcome I should receive there, my father's house being closed to
+me and my husband's abandoned for ever.</p>
+<p>The very next morning, however, there came a letter from Father
+Dan, giving me all the news of Ellan: some of it sad enough, God
+knows (about the downfall of my father's financial schemes); some
+of it deliciously wicked, such as it would have required an angel
+not to rejoice in (about the bad odour in which Alma and my husband
+were now held, making the pendulum of popular feeling swing back in
+my direction); and some of it utterly heart-breaking in its
+assurances of the love still felt for me in my native place.</p>
+<p>Of course the sweetest part of that came from Christian Ann,
+who, after a stiff fight with her moral principles, had said that
+whatever I had done I was as "pure as the mountain turf," and, who
+then charged Father Dan with the message that "Mary O'Neill's
+little room" was waiting for her still.</p>
+<p>This settled everything&mdash;everything except one thing, and
+that was the greatest thing of all. But when Martin came later the
+same day, having received the same message, and declared his
+intention of taking me home, there seemed to be nothing left to
+wish for in earth or heaven.</p>
+<p>Nevertheless I shouldn't have been a woman If I had not
+coquetted with my great happiness, so when Martin had finished I
+said:</p>
+<p>"But dare you?"</p>
+<p>"Dare I&mdash;what?" said Martin.</p>
+<p>"Dare you go home . . . with <i>me</i>?"</p>
+<p>I knew what I wanted him to say, and he said it like a
+darling.</p>
+<p>"Look here, Mary, I'm just spoiling for a sight of the little
+island, and the old people are destroyed at not seeing me; but if I
+can't go back with you, by the Lord God! I'll never go back at
+all."</p>
+<p>I wanted to see baby before going away, but that was forbidden
+me.</p>
+<p>"Wait until you're well enough, and we'll send her after you,"
+said Dr. O'Sullivan.</p>
+<p>So the end of it all was that inside a week I was on my way to
+Ellan, not only with Martin, but also with Mildred, who, being a
+little out of health herself, had been permitted to take me
+home.</p>
+<p>Shall I ever forget our arrival at Blackwater! The steamer we
+sailed in was streaming with flags from stem to stern, and as she
+slid up the harbour the dense crowds that packed the pier from end
+to end seemed frantic with excitement. Such shouting and cheering!
+Such waving of hats and handkerchiefs!</p>
+<p>There was a sensible pause, I thought, a sort of hush, when the
+gangway being run down, Martin was seen to give his arm to me, and
+I was recognised as the lost and dishonoured one.</p>
+<p>But even that only lasted for a moment, it was almost as if the
+people felt that this act of Martin's was of a piece with the
+sacred courage that had carried him down near to the Pole, for
+hardly had he brought me ashore, and put me into the automobile
+waiting to take us away, when the cheering broke out into almost
+delirious tumult.</p>
+<p>I knew it was all for Martin, but not even the humility of my
+position, and the sense of my being an added cause of my darling's
+glory, could make me otherwise than proud and happy.</p>
+<p>We drove home, with the sunset in our faces, over the mountain
+road which I had crossed with my husband on the day of my marriage;
+and when we came to our own village I could not help seeing that a
+little&mdash;just a little&mdash;of the welcome waiting for us was
+meant for me.</p>
+<p>Father Dan was there. He got into the car and sat by my side;
+and then some of the village women, who had smartened themselves up
+in their Sunday clothes, reached over and shook hands with me,
+speaking about things I had said and done as a child and had long
+forgotten.</p>
+<p>We had to go at a walking pace the rest of the way, and while
+Martin saluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father
+Dan talked in my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been
+going on at Sunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the
+little room being made ready for me, and the best bedroom (the
+doctor's and Christian Ann's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the
+dairy for the old people themselves&mdash;as if their beloved son
+had been good in not forgetting them, and had condescended in
+coming home.</p>
+<p>"Is it true?" they had asked each other. "Is he really, really
+coming?" "What does he like to eat, mother?" "What does he drink?"
+"What does he smoke?"</p>
+<p>I had to close my eyes as I came near the gate of my father's
+house, and, except for the rumbling of the river under the bridge
+and the cawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known
+when we were there.</p>
+<p>The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and his
+close-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house
+at the toot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for
+the little that was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy
+by the car, at the side on which Martin sat.</p>
+<p>I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and
+there it was behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into
+bloom.</p>
+<p>There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and
+before the automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and
+had her in his arms.</p>
+<p>I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment
+my spirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps
+her heart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son.</p>
+<p>But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically
+weak and slipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred
+were helping me to alight, my Martin's mother rushed at me and
+gathered me in her arms, crying:</p>
+<p>"Goodness gracious me, doctor&mdash;if it isn't little Mary
+O'Neill, God bless her!"&mdash;just as she did in the old, old days
+when I came as a child "singing carvals to her door."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_EIGHTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_EIGHTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room," with
+its odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun
+was shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle
+were lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way
+across the sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a
+far-off murmur of the sea.</p>
+<p>Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and
+Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old
+love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and
+white blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of
+burning peat from the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed
+from the shore.</p>
+<p>Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went
+downstairs to the sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and
+fresh, Christian Ann, who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on
+the griddle, cried to me, as to a child:</p>
+<p>"Come your ways, <i>villish</i>; you know the house."</p>
+<p>And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the
+"elbow-chair" in the <i>chiollagh</i>, under the silver bowls that
+stood on the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing
+the universe in general, for there was nobody else in the room:</p>
+<p>"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen
+great wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she
+is, as nice and comfortable as if she had never been away!"</p>
+<p>Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had
+been watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old
+people's bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came
+in, saying:</p>
+<p>"The boy's late, mother&mdash;what's doing on him, I
+wonder?"</p>
+<p>We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the
+homely beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk,
+its honey and cakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like
+cream!</p>
+<p>In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and
+served, and I will not say that for me there was not a startling
+delight in being waited upon once more, being asked what I would
+like, and getting it, giving orders and being obeyed&mdash;me, me,
+me!</p>
+<p>At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on
+Christian Ann sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't
+eat, but went on talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.</p>
+<p>It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her
+beautiful faith that he was still alive when the report came that
+he had been lost at sea.</p>
+<p>What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going
+down on her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in
+the papers? If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't <i>she</i>
+have known it&mdash;having borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard
+birth, too"), and being the first to hear his living voice in the
+world?</p>
+<p>So while people thought she was growing "weak in her
+intellects," she had clung to the belief that her beloved son would
+come back to her. And behold! one dark night in winter, when she
+was sitting in the <i>chiollagh</i> alone, and the wind was loud in
+the trees, and the doctor upstairs was calling on her to come to
+bed ("you're wearing yourself away, woman"), she heard a sneck of
+the garden gate and a step on the gravel path, and it was old Tommy
+the Mate, who without waiting for her to open the door let a great
+yell out of him through the window that a "talegraf" had come to
+say her boy was safe.</p>
+<p>Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded
+cassock (the same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a
+child), and then Martin himself came swinging up, with his big
+voice, like a shout from the quarter-deck.</p>
+<p>"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his
+mother, though there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and
+hardly more love than license.</p>
+<p>When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house,
+and said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was
+ready to settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have
+to go back to London presently, she cried:</p>
+<p>"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been
+away, it's witched they are&mdash;longing and longing to go back
+again. What's there in London that's wanting him?"</p>
+<p>Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud
+lift of his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:</p>
+<p>"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him,
+woman."</p>
+<p>"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his
+own, they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting
+mine?"</p>
+<p>"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing,
+"do you want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust
+but I might give her away."</p>
+<p>"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young
+rascal! He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but
+he mustn't come here expecting his mother and his old priest to
+worship him."</p>
+<p>How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was
+doing most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in
+all my life before.</p>
+<p>Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke,
+and Sister Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann
+took up her knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of
+home&mdash;sad news, most of it, about my father, God pity him, and
+how his great schemes for "galvanising the old island into life"
+had gone down to failure and fatuity, sending some to the asylum
+and some to the graveyard, and certain of the managers of
+corporations and banks to gaol.</p>
+<p>My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed
+to be a ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his
+mother's old cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to
+care for him&mdash;having left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and
+cousin Betsy, who declared (so I gathered or guessed) that I had
+disgraced their name and should never look on their faces
+again.</p>
+<p>"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said
+Christian Ann, catching a word of Martin's.</p>
+<p>Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard
+something of my husband also&mdash;that he had applied (according
+to the laws of Ellan) for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular
+legislature was likely to grant it.</p>
+<p>Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the
+bluebells were in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and
+it was old Tommy again, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put
+a sight on himself") had come round to welcome me as well&mdash;a
+little older, a little feebler, "tacking a bit," as he said, with
+"romps in his fetlock joints," but feeling "well tremenjus."</p>
+<p>He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and
+crabs for me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full
+of his mouth" of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left
+immediately after myself&mdash;Price also, neither of them being
+willing to stay with a master who had "the rough word" for
+everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the black curse on her" that
+would "carry her naked sowl to hell."</p>
+<p>"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . .
+. no, not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold."</p>
+<p>What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day
+like it, too, during the sweet time following, when spring was
+smiling once more upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself
+were undergoing a resurrection no less marvellous.</p>
+<p>After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able
+to take walks with Martin&mdash;through the leafy lanes with the
+golden gorse on the high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the
+air, as far, sometimes, as to the shore, where we talked about
+"asploring" or perhaps (without speaking at all) looked into each
+other's eyes and laughed.</p>
+<p>There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation
+from my child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in
+my own position which the presence of my baby would make acute
+(setting all the evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I
+grew stronger, I yearned for my little treasure.</p>
+<p>The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage
+and asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.</p>
+<p>"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now,
+so why shouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business
+soon, and I'll bring her home with me."</p>
+<p>But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still
+confronted by one cause of anxiety&mdash;Christian Ann. I could not
+even be sure she knew of the existence of my child, still less that
+Martin intended to fetch her.</p>
+<p>So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat
+together in the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the
+trees, Christian Ann knitting and I pretending to read, I told her
+all.</p>
+<p>She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only
+been waiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches
+she said:</p>
+<p>"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan
+himself will say. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy
+water, and she's my own child's child, God bless her!"</p>
+<p>After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for
+the little stranger who was to come&mdash;cutting up blankets and
+sheets, and smuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room"
+the wooden cradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it
+with bows and ribbons.</p>
+<p>We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when
+he wondered "what all the fuss was about," and if "the island
+expected a visit from the Queen," we told him (Christian Ann did)
+to "ask us no questions and we'd tell no lies."</p>
+<p>What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young
+one! I used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had
+"somebody's eyes," and then the dear simple old thing would
+say:</p>
+<p>"Somebody's eyes, has she? Well, well! Think of that, now!"</p>
+<p>But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of
+one child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and
+counsellor, answering all my foolish questions when I counted up
+baby's age (eleven months now) and wondered if she could walk and
+talk by this time, how many of her little teeth should have come
+and whether she could remember me.</p>
+<p>As the time approached for Martin's return our childishness
+increased, and on the last day of all we carried on such a game
+together as must have made the very Saints themselves look down on
+us and laugh.</p>
+<p>Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself,
+"Now they're on their way to Euston," and every time I heard the
+clock strike I was thinking, "Now they're in the train," or "Now
+they're at Liverpool," or "Now they're on the steamer"; but all the
+while I sang "Sally" and other nonsense, and pretended to be as
+happy as the day was long.</p>
+<p>Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she
+was always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be
+composed, I saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the
+tablecloth, and the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the
+tongs.</p>
+<p>Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to
+such a state of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to
+bed; but sitting down in the <i>chiollagh</i>, and watching the
+road from the imprisonment of the "elbow-chair," I saw at last the
+two big white eyes of the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by
+the gate of my father's house.</p>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen
+with a nice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her
+breast.</p>
+<p>She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and
+then a strange thing happened.</p>
+<p>I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying
+up, and we two women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch
+at her, when she blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then
+held out her arms to her grandmother!</p>
+<p>That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the
+Lord for it), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven
+of rapture.</p>
+<p>"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her
+bosom&mdash;her eyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks
+were slushed as with rain.</p>
+<p>I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to
+show the nurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with
+Martin, I did not care, in the intoxication of my happiness, how
+silly I was in my praise of her.</p>
+<p>"Isn't she a little fairy, a little angel, a little cherub?" I
+cried. "And that nasty, nasty birthmark quite, quite gone."</p>
+<p>The ugly word had slipped out unawares, but Martin had caught
+it, and though I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace
+until I had told him what it meant&mdash;with all the humiliating
+story of my last night at Castle Raa and the blow my husband had
+struck me.</p>
+<p>"But that's all over now," I said.</p>
+<p>"Is it? By the Lord God I swear it isn't, though!" said Martin,
+and his face was so fierce that it made me afraid.</p>
+<p>But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the
+old doctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked
+in on his way to the "Plough," and hinting at my going to church
+again some day, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght
+mulish" under my "perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising
+children) "the Bishop himself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at
+which Martin laughed so much that I thought he had forgotten his
+vow about my husband.</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>I hadn't, though.</p>
+<p>The brute! The bully! When my darling told me that story (I had
+to drag it out of her) I felt that if I had been within a hundred
+miles at the time, and had had to crawl home to the man on my hands
+and knees, there wouldn't have been enough of him left now to throw
+on the dust-heap.</p>
+<p>Nearly two years had passed since the debt was incurred, but I
+thought a Christian world could not go on a day longer until I had
+paid it back&mdash;with interest.</p>
+<p>So fearing that my tender-hearted little woman, if she got wind
+of my purpose, might make me promise to put away my vow of
+vengeance, I got up early next morning and ordered the motor-car to
+be made ready for a visit to Castle Raa.</p>
+<p>Old Tommy happened to be in the yard of the inn while I was
+speaking to the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to
+go with me. I agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting
+in a corner of the car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his
+shaggy eyebrows, and his knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn
+that had a head as big as a turnip.</p>
+<p>We did not talk too much on the way&mdash;I had to save up my
+strength for better business&mdash;and it was a long spin, but we
+got to our journey's end towards the middle of the morning.</p>
+<p>As we went up the drive (sacred to me by one poignant memory) an
+open carriage was coming down. The only occupant was a rather
+vulgar-looking elderly woman (in large feathers and flowing
+furbelows) whom I took to be the mother of Alma.</p>
+<p>Three powdered footmen came to the door of the Castle as our car
+drove up. Their master was out riding. They did not know when he
+would be back.</p>
+<p>"I'll wait for him," I said, and pushed into the hall, old Tommy
+following me.</p>
+<p>I think the footmen had a mind to intercept us, but I suppose
+there was something in my face which told them it would be better
+not to try, so I walked into the first room with the door open.</p>
+<p>It turned out to be the dining-room, with portraits of the
+owner's ancestors all round the walls&mdash;a solid square of
+evil-looking rascals, every mother's son of them.</p>
+<p>Tommy, still resting his knotty hands on his big blackthorn, was
+sitting on the first chair by the door, and I on the end of the
+table, neither saying a word to the other, when there came the
+sound of horses' hoofs on the path outside. A little later there
+were voices in the hall, both low and loud ones&mdash;the footmen
+evidently announcing my arrival and their master abusing them for
+letting me into the house.</p>
+<p>At the next moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room.
+He was carrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid.
+Behind him came Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a
+lithe whip in her gloved hands.</p>
+<p>I saw that my noble lord was furious, but that mood suited me as
+well as another, so I continued to sit on the end of the table.</p>
+<p>"So I hear, sir," he said, striding up to me, "I hear that you
+have taken possession of my place without so much as 'by your
+leave'?"</p>
+<p>"That's so," I answered.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you done enough mischief here, without coming to insult
+me by your presence?"</p>
+<p>"Not quite. I've a little more to do before I've finished."</p>
+<p>"Jim," said the woman (in such a weary voice), "don't put
+yourself about over such a person. Better ring the bell for the
+servants and have him turned out of doors."</p>
+<p>I looked round at her. She tried an insolent smile, but it broke
+down badly, and then his lordship strode up to me with quivering
+lips.</p>
+<p>"Look here, sir," he said. "Aren't you ashamed to show your face
+in my house?"</p>
+<p>"I'm not," I replied. "But before I leave it, I believe
+<i>you'll</i> be ashamed to show your face anywhere."</p>
+<p>"Damn it, sir! Will you do me the honour to tell me why you are
+here?" said his lordship, with fury in his looks.</p>
+<p>"Certainly. That's exactly what I've come for," I said, and then
+I stated my business without more ado.</p>
+<p>I told him what he had done to the woman who was ten thousand
+times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties,
+degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the
+domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face
+like a coward and a cur.</p>
+<p>"Liar!" he cried, fairly gasping in his rage. "You're a liar and
+your informant is a liar, too."</p>
+<p>"Tommy," I said, "will you step outside for a moment?"</p>
+<p>Tommy went out of the room at once, and the woman, who was now
+looking frightened, tried to follow him.</p>
+<p>I stopped her. Rising from the table, I stepped over to the door
+and locked it.</p>
+<p>"No, madam," I said. "I want you to see what takes place between
+his lordship and me."</p>
+<p>The wretched woman fell back, but the man, grinding his teeth,
+came marching up to me.</p>
+<p>"So you've come to fight me in my own house, have you?" he
+cried.</p>
+<p>"Not at all," I answered. "A man fights his equal. I've come to
+<i>thrash you</i>."</p>
+<p>That was enough for him, he lifted his hunting-crop to strike,
+but it didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse
+the arm with which he was lunging out at me.</p>
+<p>And then, seizing him by the white stock at his throat, I
+thrashed him. I thrashed him as I should have thrashed vicious ape.
+I thrashed him while he fumed and foamed, and cursed and swore. I
+thrashed him while he cried for help, and then yelled with pain and
+whined for mercy. I thrashed him under the eyes of his ancestors,
+the mad, bad race he came from, and, him the biggest blackguard of
+them all. And then I flung him to the ground, bruised in every
+bone, and his hunting-crop after him.</p>
+<p>"I hear you're going to court for an Act of Divorce," I said.
+"Pity you can't take something to back you, so take that, and say I
+gave it you."</p>
+<p>I was turning towards the door when I heard a low, whining cry,
+like that of a captured she-bear. It was from the woman. The
+wretched creature was on her knees at the farthest corner of the
+room, apparently mumbling prayers, as if in terror that her own
+turn might be coming next.</p>
+<p>In her sobbing fear I thought she looked more than ever like a
+poisonous snake, and I will not say that the old impulse to put my
+foot on it did not come back for a moment. But I only said as I
+passed, pointing to the writhing worm on the floor:</p>
+<p>"Look at him, madame. I wish you joy of your nobleman, and him
+of you."</p>
+<p>Then I opened the door, and notwithstanding the grim business I
+had been going through, I could have laughed at the scene
+outside.</p>
+<p>There was old Tommy with his back to the dining-room door, his
+Glengarry awry on his tousled head, and his bandy legs stretched
+firmly apart, flourishing his big-headed blackthorn before the
+faces of the three powdered footmen, and inviting them to "come
+on."</p>
+<p>"Come on, now, you bleating ould billy-goats, come on, come
+on!"</p>
+<p>I was in no hurry to get away, but lit a cigar in front of the
+house while the chauffeur was starting the motor and Tommy was
+wiping his steaming forehead on the sleeve of his coat.</p>
+<p>All the way home the old man talked without ceasing, sometimes
+to me, and sometimes to the world in general.</p>
+<p>"You gave him a piece of your mind, didn't you?" he asked, with
+a wink of his "starboard eye."</p>
+<p>"I believe I did," I answered.</p>
+<p>"I allus said you would. 'Wait till himself is after coming
+home, and it'll be the devil sit up for some of them,' says I."</p>
+<p>There was only one limitation to Tommy's satisfaction over our
+day's expedition&mdash;that he had not cracked the powdered skulls
+of "some o' them riddiclus dunkeys."</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_NINTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_NINTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>Another month passed, and then began the last and most important
+phase of my too changeful story.</p>
+<p>Every week Martin had been coming and going between Ellan and
+London, occupied when he was away with the business of his next
+Expedition (for which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when
+he was at home with reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs
+toward a book he was writing about his last one.</p>
+<p>As for myself, I had been (or tried to think I had been)
+entirely happy. With fresh air, new milk, a sweet bedroom, and
+above all, good and tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all
+she did for me!), my health had improved every day&mdash;or
+perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness which goes with certain
+maladies, it had seemed to me to do so.</p>
+<p>Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though
+the sun was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under
+eclipse. In spite of the sheltered life I lived in that home of
+charity and love, I was never entirely free from a certain
+indefinable uneasiness about my position.</p>
+<p>I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father,
+not to speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling,
+for sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would
+answer to my thoughts, and it was just as if we were all silently
+waiting, waiting, waiting for some event that was to justify and
+rehabilitate me.</p>
+<p>It came at last&mdash;for me with a startling suddenness.</p>
+<p>One morning, nurse being out on an errand and Christian Ann
+patting her butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the
+rag-work hearthrug when our village newsman came to the threshold
+of the open door.</p>
+<p>"Take a <i>Times</i>," he said. "You might as well be out of the
+world, ma'am, as not know what's going on in it."</p>
+<p>I took one of his island newspapers, and after he had gone I
+casually glanced at it.</p>
+<p>But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my
+face was&mdash;</p>
+<p>"INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED."</p>
+<p>It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our
+Ellan legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its
+ecclesiastical members) had granted my husband's petition.</p>
+<p>Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or
+perhaps I should have gone down on my knees there and then, and
+thanked God that the miserable entanglement of the horrible
+marriage that had been forced upon me was at last at an end.</p>
+<p>But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my
+fingers&mdash;shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did
+it matter about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so
+famous, I had, through my husband's malice, been the means of
+dragging through the dust.</p>
+<p>I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my
+darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he
+always did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that
+was left to me was to hide myself and die.</p>
+<p>But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain
+I heard the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware
+of what else was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house
+like a rush of wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my
+face, my neck, and my hands with kisses&mdash;never having done so
+before since I came to live at his mother's home.</p>
+<p>"Such news! Such news!" he cried. "We are free, free, free!"</p>
+<p>Then, seeing the newspaper at my feet on the floor, he said:</p>
+<p>"Ah, I see you know already. I told them to keep everything away
+from you&mdash;all the miserable legal business. But no matter!
+It's over now. Of course it's shocking&mdash;perfectly
+shocking&mdash;that that squirming worm, after his gross
+infidelities, should have been able to do what he has done. But
+what matter about that either? He has done just what we
+wanted&mdash;what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away,
+your conscience forbidding you. The barrier that has divided us is
+down . . . now we can be married at any time."</p>
+<p>I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to
+believe fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long
+had come to me at last, that for some time I could not speak. And
+when I did speak, though my heart was clamouring loud, I only
+said:</p>
+<p>"But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband
+and wife?"</p>
+<p>"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I
+do think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough,
+my poor girl. But all that you have gone through has to be
+forgotten, and you are never to look back again."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but
+what about you?"</p>
+<p>"Me?"</p>
+<p>"I looked forward to being a help&mdash;at least not a trouble
+to you, Martin."</p>
+<p>"And so you will be. Why shouldn't you?"</p>
+<p>"Martin," I said (I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help
+doing it), "wouldn't it injure you to marry me . . . being what I
+am now . . . in the eyes of the world, I mean?"</p>
+<p>He looked at me for a moment as if trying to catch my meaning,
+and then snatched me still closer to his breast.</p>
+<p>"Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable
+insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If <i>you</i>
+don't care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord
+God I swear that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms."</p>
+<p>That conquered me&mdash;poor trembling hypocrite that I was,
+praying with all my soul that my objections would be overcome.</p>
+<p>In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck
+and kissed and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my
+months and years of fiery struggle that in the eyes of God and man
+I had a <i>right</i> to do so.</p>
+<p>And oh dear, oh dear! When Martin had gone back to his work,
+what foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!</p>
+<p>I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and
+then took her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who
+must have overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I
+noticed that her voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an
+octave higher.</p>
+<p>Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning
+nap, and after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp,
+milk-like odour of her sweet body and breath, I stood up before the
+glass and looked at my own hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and
+sparkling eyes.</p>
+<p>Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have
+been the unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood&mdash;my lost
+girlhood&mdash;was flowing back upon me. A vision of my
+marriage-day rose up before me and I saw myself as a bride, in my
+bridal veil and blossoms.</p>
+<p>How happy I was going to be! But indeed I felt just then as if I
+had always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream
+of holy water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my
+recent days in London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that
+moment mentioned Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the
+Jew, or spoken of the maternity homes and the orphanages, I should
+have screamed.</p>
+<p>Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds,
+and I noticed that <i>his</i> voice was pitched higher too. We
+never once spoke about the great news, the great event, while we
+sat at table; but I could not help noticing that we were all
+talking loud and fast and on the top of each other, as if some dark
+cloud which had hovered over our household had suddenly slid
+away.</p>
+<p>After luncheon, nurse being back with baby, I went out for a
+walk alone, feeling wonderfully well and light, and having two
+hours to wait for Martin, who must be still pondering over his
+papers at the "Plough."</p>
+<p>How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the
+earth! How joyous the air&mdash;so sweet and so full of
+song-birds!</p>
+<p>I remember that I thought life had been so good to me that I
+ought to be good to everybody else&mdash;especially to my father,
+from whom it seemed wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever
+he was and whatever he had done to her.</p>
+<p>So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored
+cottage on the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my
+father; and I only slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I
+began to think of Nessy MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps
+impossible) it might be to reach him.</p>
+<p>Even then I faced about for a moment to the Big House with some
+vain idea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping
+upstairs to my mother's room&mdash;having such a sense of joyous
+purity that I wished to breathe the sacred air my blessed saint had
+lived in.</p>
+<p>But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of
+the Presbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself,
+with a little access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only
+right and proper that I should bring my happiness where I had so
+often brought my sorrow&mdash;to the dear priest who had been my
+friend since the day of my birth and my darling mother's friend
+before.</p>
+<p>Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him!</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>A few minutes afterwards I was tripping upstairs (love and hope
+work wonderful miracles!) behind the Father's Irish housekeeper,
+Mrs. Cassidy, who was telling me how well I was looking ("smart and
+well extraordinary"), asking if it "was on my two feet I had walked
+all the way," and denouncing the "omathauns" who had been "after
+telling her there wasn't the width of a wall itself betune me and
+the churchyard."</p>
+<p>I found Father Dan in his cosy study lined with books; and being
+so much wrapped up in my own impetuous happiness I did not see at
+first that he was confused and nervous, or remember until next day
+that, though (at the sound of my voice from the landing) he cried
+"Come in, my child, come in," he was standing with his back to the
+door as I entered&mdash;hiding something (it must have been a
+newspaper) under the loose seat of his easy-chair.</p>
+<p>"Father," I said, "have you heard the news?"</p>
+<p>"The news. . . ."</p>
+<p>"I mean the news in the newspaper."</p>
+<p>"Ah, the news in the newspaper."</p>
+<p>"Isn't it glorious? That terrible marriage is over at last!
+Without my doing anything, either! Do you remember what you said
+the last time I came here?"</p>
+<p>"The last time. . . ."</p>
+<p>"You said that I, being a Catholic, could not break my marriage
+without breaking my faith. But my husband, being a Protestant, had
+no compunction. So it has come to the same thing in the end, you
+see. And now I'm free."</p>
+<p>"You're free . . . free, are you?"</p>
+<p>"It seems they have been keeping it all away from
+me&mdash;making no defence, I suppose&mdash;and it was only this
+morning I heard the news."</p>
+<p>"Only this morning, was it?"</p>
+<p>"I first saw it in a newspaper, but afterwards Martin himself
+came to tell me."</p>
+<p>"Martin came, did he?"</p>
+<p>"He doesn't care in the least; in fact, he is glad, and says we
+can be married at any time."</p>
+<p>"Married at any time&mdash;he says that, does he?"</p>
+<p>"Of course nothing is arranged yet, dear Father, but I couldn't
+help coming to see you about it. I want everything to be simple and
+quiet&mdash;no display of any kind."</p>
+<p>"Simple and quiet, do you?"</p>
+<p>"Early in the morning&mdash;immediately after mass,
+perhaps."</p>
+<p>"Immediately after mass. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Only a few wild flowers on the altar, and the dear homely souls
+who love me gathered around."</p>
+<p>"The dear, homely souls. . . ."</p>
+<p>"It will be a great, great thing for me, but I don't want to
+force myself upon anybody, or to triumph over any one&mdash;least
+of all over my poor father, now that he is so sick and down."</p>
+<p>"No, no . . . now that he is so sick and down."</p>
+<p>"I shall want you to marry us, Daddy Dan&mdash;not the Bishop or
+anybody else of that kind, you know."</p>
+<p>"You'll want me to marry you&mdash;not the Bishop or anybody
+else of that kind."</p>
+<p>"But Father Dan," I cried, laughing a little uneasily (for I had
+begun to realise that he was only repeating my own words), "why
+don't you say something for yourself?"</p>
+<p>And then the cheery sunshine of the cosy room began to fade
+away.</p>
+<p>Father Dan fumbled the silver cross which hung over his cassock
+(a sure sign of his nervousness), and said with a grave face and in
+a voice all a-tremble with emotion:</p>
+<p>"My child. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+<p>"You believe that I wouldn't pain or distress or shock you if I
+could avoid it?"</p>
+<p>"Indeed I do."</p>
+<p>"Yet I am going to pain and distress and shock you now. I . . .
+I cannot marry you to Martin Conrad. I daren't. The Church thinks
+that you are married already&mdash;that you are still the wife of
+your husband."</p>
+<p>Though my dear priest had dealt me my death-blow, I had not yet
+begun to feel it, so I smiled up into his troubled old face and
+said:</p>
+<p>"But how can the Church think that, dear Father? My husband has
+no rights over me now, and no duties or responsibilities with
+respect to me. He can marry again if he likes. And he will, I am
+sure he will, and nobody can prevent him. How, then, can the Church
+say that I am still his wife?"</p>
+<p>"Because marriage, according to the law of the Church, can only
+be dissolved by death," said Father Dan. "Haven't I told you that
+before, my daughter? Didn't we go over it again and again when you
+were here the last time?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, but I thought if somebody else sought the
+divorce&mdash;somebody who had never believed in the
+indissolubility of marriage and wasn't bound by the law of the
+Church . . . we've heard of cases of that kind, haven't we?"</p>
+<p>Father Dan shook his head.</p>
+<p>"My poor child, no. The Church thinks marriage is a sacred
+covenant which no difference of belief, no sin on either side, can
+ever break."</p>
+<p>"But, Father," I cried, "don't you see that the law has already
+broken it?"</p>
+<p>"Only the civil law, my daughter. Remember the words of our
+blessed and holy Redeemer: '<i>Every one that putteth away his wife
+and marrieth another committeth adultery; and he that marrieth one
+that is put away committeth adultery.'</i> . . . My poor child, my
+heart bleeds for you, but isn't that the Divine Commandment?"</p>
+<p>"Then you think," I said (the room was becoming dark and I could
+feel my lip trembling), "you think that because I went through that
+marriage ceremony two years ago . . . and though the civil law has
+dissolved it . . . you think I am still bound by it, and will
+continue to be so . . . to the end of my life?"</p>
+<p>Father Dan plucked at his cassock, fumbled his print
+handkerchief, and replied:</p>
+<p>"I am sorry, my child, very, very sorry."</p>
+<p>"Father Dan," I said sharply, for by this time my heart was
+beginning to blaze, "have you thought about Martin? Aren't you
+afraid that if our Church refuses to marry us he may ask some other
+church to do so?"</p>
+<p>"Christ's words must be the final law for all true Christians,
+my daughter. And besides. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"Besides that. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+<p>"It blisters my tongue to say it, my child, knowing your
+sufferings and great temptations, but. . . ."</p>
+<p>"But what, dear Father?"</p>
+<p>"You are in the position of the guilty party, and therefore no
+good clergyman of any Christian Church in the world, following the
+Commandment of his Master, would dare to marry you."</p>
+<p>What happened after that I cannot exactly say. I remember that,
+feeling the colour flying to my face, I flung up my hands to cover
+it, and that when I came to full possession of my senses again
+Father Dan (himself in a state of great agitation) was smoothing my
+arms and comforting me.</p>
+<p>"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the
+truth&mdash;the bitter truth, my daughter."</p>
+<p>He had always seen this dark hour coming to him, and again and
+again he had prayed to be delivered from it&mdash;in the long
+nights of his fruitless wanderings when I was lost in London, and
+again since I had been found and had come home and he had looked
+on, with many a pang, at our silent hopes and
+expectations&mdash;Martin's and mine, we two children.</p>
+<p>"And when you came into my little den to-day, my daughter, with
+a face as bright as stars and diamonds, God knows I would have
+given half of what is left of my life that mine should not be the
+hand to dash the cup of your happiness away."</p>
+<p>As soon as I was sufficiently composed, within and without,
+Father Dan led me downstairs (praying God and His Holy Mother to
+strengthen me on my solitary way), and then stood at the door in
+his cassock to watch me while I walked up the road.</p>
+<p>It was hardly more than half an hour since I had passed over the
+ground before, yet in that short time the world seemed to have
+become pale and grey&mdash;the sun gone out, the earth grown dark,
+the still air joyless, nothing left but the everlasting heavens and
+the heavy song of the sea.</p>
+<p>As I approached the doctor's house Martin came swinging down the
+road to meet me, with his strong free step and that suggestion of
+the wind from the mountain-tops which seemed to be always about
+him.</p>
+<p>"Hello!" he cried. "Thought you were lost and been hunting all
+over the place for you."</p>
+<p>But as he came nearer and saw how white and wan my face was,
+though I was doing my best to smile, he stopped and said:</p>
+<p>"My poor little woman, where have you been, and what have they
+been doing to you?"</p>
+<p>And then, as well as I could, I told him.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_ELEVENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_ELEVENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>"It's all my fault," he said.</p>
+<p>He had led me to the garden-house, which stood among the
+bluebells at the end of the orchard, and was striding to and fro in
+front of it.</p>
+<p>"I knew perfectly what the attitude of the Church would be, and
+I ought to have warned you."</p>
+<p>I had never before seen him so excited. There was a wild look in
+his eyes and his voice was quivering like the string of a bow.</p>
+<p>"Poor old Father Dan! He's an old angel, with as good a heart as
+ever beat under a cassock. But what a slave a man may be to the
+fetish of his faith! Only think what he says, my darling! The
+guilty party! I'll never believe you are the guilty party, but
+consider! The guilty party may never marry! No good clergyman of
+any Christian Church in the world dare marry her! What an infamy!
+Ask yourself what the churches are here for. Aren't they here to
+bring salvation to the worst of sinners? Yet they cast out the
+woman who has sinned against her marriage vow&mdash;denying her
+access to the altar and turning her out of doors&mdash;though she
+may have repented a thousand times, with bitter, bitter tears!"</p>
+<p>He walked two or three paces in front of the garden-house and
+then came back to me with flaming eyes.</p>
+<p>"But that's not your case, anyway," he said. "Father Dan knows
+perfectly that your marriage was no marriage at all&mdash;only a
+sordid bit of commercial bargaining, in which your husband gave you
+his bad name for your father's unclean money. It was no marriage in
+any other sense either, and might have been annulled if there had
+been any common honesty in annulment. And now that it has tumbled
+to wreck and ruin, as anybody might have seen it would do, you are
+told that you are bound to it to the last day and hour of your
+life! After all you have gone through&mdash;all you have
+suffered&mdash;never to know another hour of happiness as long as
+you live! While your husband, notwithstanding his brutalities and
+infidelities, is free to do what he likes, to marry whom he
+pleases! How stupid! How disgusting! how damnable!"</p>
+<p>His passionate voice was breaking, he could scarcely control
+it.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know what they'll say. It will be the old, old song,
+'Whom God hath joined together.' That's what this old Church of
+ours has been saying for centuries to poor women with broken
+hearts. Has the Church itself got a heart to break?
+No&mdash;nothing but its cast-iron laws which have been broken a
+thousand times and nobody a penny the worse."</p>
+<p>"But I wonder," he continued, "I wonder why these churchmen, who
+would talk about the impossibility of putting asunder those whom
+God has joined together, don't begin by asking themselves how and
+when and where God joins them. Is it in church, when they stand
+before the altar and are asked a few questions, and give a few
+answers? If so, then God is responsible for some of the most
+shocking transactions that ever disgraced humanity&mdash;all the
+pride and vanity and deliberate concubinage that have covered
+themselves in every age, and are covering themselves still, with
+the cloak of marriage."</p>
+<p>"But no," said Martin, "it's not in churches that God marries
+people. They've got to be married before they go there, or they are
+never married at all&mdash;never! They've got to be married in
+their <i>hearts</i>, for that's where God joins people together,
+not in churches and before priests and altars."</p>
+<p>I sat listening to him with a rising and throbbing heart, and
+after another moment he stepped into the garden-house, and sat
+beside me.</p>
+<p>"Mary," he said, in his passionate voice, "that's our case,
+isn't it? God married us from the very first. There has never been
+any other woman for me, and there never has been any other man for
+you&mdash;isn't that so, my darling? . . . Then what are they
+talking about&mdash;these churches and churchmen? It's <i>they</i>
+who are the real divorcers&mdash;trying to put those asunder whom
+God Himself has joined together. That's the plain sense of the
+matter, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>I was trembling with fear and expectation. Perhaps it was the
+same with me as it had been before; perhaps I wanted (now more than
+ever) to believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know
+enough to be able to answer him; perhaps my overpowering love and
+the position I stood in compelled me to agree. But I could not help
+it if it seemed to me that his clear mind&mdash;clear as a mountain
+river and as swift and strong&mdash;was sweeping away all the
+worn-out sophistries.</p>
+<p>"Then what . . . what are we to do?" I asked him.</p>
+<p>"Do? Our duty to ourselves, my darling, that's what we have to
+do. If we cannot be married according to the law of the Church, we
+must be married according to the law of the land. Isn't that
+enough? This is our own affair, dearest, ours and nobody else's.
+It's only a witness we want anyway&mdash;a witness before God and
+man that we intend to be man and wife in future."</p>
+<p>"But Father Dan?"</p>
+<p>"Leave him to me," said Martin. "I'll tell him everything. But
+come into the house now. You are catching a cold. Unless we take
+care they'll kill you before they've done."</p>
+<p>Next day he leaned over the back of my chair as I sat in the
+<i>chiollagh</i> with baby in my lap, and said, in a low tone:</p>
+<p>"I've seen Father Dan."</p>
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+<p>"The old angel took it badly. 'God forbid that you should do
+that same, my boy,' he said, 'putting both yourself and that sweet
+child of mine out of the Church for ever.' 'It's the Church that's
+putting us out,' I told him. 'But God's holy law condemns it, my
+son,' he said. 'God's law is love; and He has no other law,' I
+answered."</p>
+<p>I was relieved and yet nervous, glad and yet afraid.</p>
+<p>A week passed, and then the time came for Martin to go to
+Windsor for his investiture. There had been great excitement in
+Sunny Lodge in preparation for this event, but being a little
+unwell I had been out of the range of it.</p>
+<p>At the moment of Martin's departure I was in bed, and he had
+come upstairs to say good-bye to me.</p>
+<p>What had been happening in the meantime I hardly knew, but I had
+gathered that he thought pressure would be brought to bear on
+me.</p>
+<p>"Our good old Church is like a limpet on the shore," he said.
+"Once it gets its suckers down it doesn't let go in a hurry. But
+sit tight, little woman. Don't yield an inch while I'm away," he
+whispered.</p>
+<p>When he left me I reached up to see him going down the road to
+the railway station. His old father was walking proudly by his
+side, bare-headed as usual and still as blithe as a boy.</p>
+<p>Next day I was startled by an unexpected telegram. It came from
+a convent in Lancashire and was addressed to "Mary O'Neill, care of
+Doctor Conrad." It ran:</p>
+<p>"<i>Am making a round of visits to the houses of our Society and
+would like to see you on my way to Ireland. May I cross to-morrow?
+Mother Magdalene</i>."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TWELFTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_TWELFTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>She arrived the following afternoon&mdash;my dear Reverend
+Mother with the pale spiritual face and saint-like eyes.</p>
+<p>Except that her habit was now blue and white instead of black,
+she seemed hardly changed in any respect since our days at the
+Sacred Heart.</p>
+<p>Finding that I was in bed, she put up at the "Plough" and came
+every day to nurse me.</p>
+<p>I was naturally agitated at seeing her again after so many years
+and such various experiences, being uncertain how much she knew of
+them.</p>
+<p>Remembering Martin's warning, I was also fairly certain that she
+had been sent for, but my uneasiness on both heads soon wore
+off.</p>
+<p>Her noiseless step, her soft voice, and her sweet smile soothed
+and comforted me. I began to feel afresh the influence she had
+exercised over me when I was a child, and to wonder why, during my
+dark time in London, I had never thought of writing to her.</p>
+<p>During the first days of her visit she said nothing about
+painful things&mdash;never mentioning my marriage, or what had
+happened since she saw me last.</p>
+<p>Her talk was generally about our old school and my old
+schoolfellows, many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats,"
+which were under the spiritual direction of one of the Pope's
+domestic prelates.</p>
+<p>Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who
+had "become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat
+Maestro of the Pope's choir who had cried when I first sang the
+hymn to the Virgin, ("Go on, little angel,"); and sometimes about
+the two old lay sisters (now quite toothless) who still said I
+might have been a "wonderful washerwoman" if I had "put my mind to
+it."</p>
+<p>I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this
+consciously in order to break down my defences, but the effect was
+the same. Little by little, during the few days she was with me,
+she bridged the space back to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I
+found myself stirred by the emotions of the convent, and breathing
+again the air of my beloved Rome.</p>
+<p>On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up
+by her side in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just
+such a peaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was
+stirring; not a breath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard
+were the lowing of the cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur
+of the sea, and the jolting of a springless cart that was coming up
+from the shore, laden with sea wrack.</p>
+<p>As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of
+the village in front&mdash;especially in the window of my mother's
+room, which was just visible over the tops of the apple trees in
+the orchard.</p>
+<p>The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome
+she would be in church singing the <i>Ora pro nobis</i>.</p>
+<p>"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said.</p>
+<p>At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by
+my own thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent
+air the holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of
+eternity:</p>
+<p>"Mater purissima<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ora pro nobis.</span><br />
+Mater castissima<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ora pro nobis."</span></p>
+<p>When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting
+it gently she said:</p>
+<p>"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"So soon?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, but I can't go without telling you why I came"&mdash;and
+then her mission was revealed to me.</p>
+<p>She had heard about my marriage and the ruin it had fallen to;
+my disappearance from home and the circumstances of my recovery; my
+husband's petition for divorce and the disclosures that had
+followed it.</p>
+<p>But sad and serious and even tragic as all this might be, it was
+as nothing (in the eyes of the Church and of God) compared with the
+awful gravity of the step I now contemplated&mdash;a second
+marriage while my husband was still alive.</p>
+<p>She had nothing to say against Martin. Except the facts that
+concerned myself she had never heard a word to his discredit. She
+could even understand those facts, though she could not condone
+them. Perhaps he had seen my position (married to a cruel and
+unfaithful husband) and his pity had developed into love&mdash;she
+had heard of such happenings.</p>
+<p>"But only think, my child, what an abyss he is driving you to!
+He asks you to break your marriage vows! . . . Oh, yes, yes, I can
+see what he will say&mdash;that pressure was put upon you and you
+were too young to know what you were doing. That may be true, but
+it isn't everything. I thought it wrong, cruelly wrong, that your
+father should choose a husband for you without regard to your wish
+and will. But it was you, not your father, who made your marriage
+vows, and you can never get away from that&mdash;never!"</p>
+<p>Those marriage vows were sacred; our blessed Saviour had said
+they could never be broken, and our holy Church had taken His
+Commandment for law.</p>
+<p>"Think, my child, only think what would happen to the world if
+every woman who has made an unhappy marriage were to do as you
+think of doing. What a chaos! What an uprooting of all the sacred
+ties of home and family! And how women would suffer&mdash;women and
+children above all. Don't you see that, my daughter?"</p>
+<p>The security of society lay in the sanctity of marriage; the
+sanctity of marriage lay in its indissolubility; and its
+indissolubility centred in the fact that God was a party to it.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you are told that your marriage will be your own
+concern only and that God and the Church have nothing to do with
+it. But if women had believed that in all ages, how different the
+world would be to-day! Oh, believe me, your marriage vow is sacred,
+and you cannot break it without sin&mdash;mortal sin, my
+daughter."</p>
+<p>The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad,
+wash my heart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of
+seeing him again, and if possible forget him altogether.</p>
+<p>"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . ."</p>
+<p>"It will be quite impossible," I said as well as I could, for my
+very lips were trembling.</p>
+<p>I had been shaken to the depths of my soul by what the Reverend
+Mother said, but remembering Martin's warning I now struggled to
+resist her.</p>
+<p>"Two years ago, while I was living with my husband I tried to do
+that and I couldn't," I said. "And if I couldn't do it then, when
+the legal barrier stood between us, how can I do it now when the
+barrier is gone?"</p>
+<p>After that I told her of all I had passed through since as a
+result of my love for Martin&mdash;how I had parted from him when
+he went down to the Antarctic; how I had waited for him in London;
+how I had sacrificed family and friends and home, and taken up
+poverty and loneliness and hard work for him; how I had fallen into
+fathomless depths of despair when I thought I had lost him; and how
+joy and happiness had returned only when God, in His gracious
+goodness, had given him back.</p>
+<p>"No, no, no", I cried. "My love for Martin can never be overcome
+or forgotten&mdash;never as long as I live in the world!"</p>
+<p>"Then," said the Reverend Mother (she had been listening
+intently with her great eyes fixed on my hot and tingling face),
+"then," she said, in her grave and solemn voice, "If that is the
+case, my child, there is only one thing for you to do&mdash;to
+leave it."</p>
+<p>"Leave it?"</p>
+<p>"Leave the world, I mean. Return with me to Rome and enter the
+convent."</p>
+<p>It would be impossible to say how this affected me&mdash;how it
+shook me to the heart's core&mdash;how, in spite of my efforts to
+act on my darling's warning, it seemed to penetrate to the inmost
+part of my being and to waken some slumbering instinct in my
+soul.</p>
+<p>For a long time I sat without speaking again, only listening
+with a fluttering heart to what the Reverend Mother was
+saying&mdash;that it was one of the objects of the religious life
+to offer refuge to the tortured soul that could not trust itself to
+resist temptation; and that taking my vows as a nun to God would be
+the only way (known to and acknowledged by the Church) of
+cancelling my vows as a wife to my husband.</p>
+<p>"You will be a bride still, my child, but a bride of Christ. And
+isn't that better&mdash;far better? You used to wish to be a nun,
+you know, and if your father had not come for you on that most
+unhappy errand you might have been one of ourselves already. Think
+of it, my child. The Mothers of our convent will be glad to welcome
+you, if you can come as a willing and contented Sister. And how can
+I leave you here, at the peril of your soul, my daughter?"</p>
+<p>I was deeply moved, but I made one more effort.</p>
+<p>I told the Reverend Mother that, since the days when I had
+wished to be a nun, a great change had come over me. I had become a
+woman, with all a woman's passions&mdash;the hunger and thirst for
+love, human love, the love of the good man who loved me with all
+his soul and strength. Therefore I could never be a willing and
+contented Sister. I should only break the peace and harmony of
+their house. And though she were to put me down in the lowest cell
+of her convent, my love would follow me there; it would interrupt
+my offices, it would clamour through my prayers, and I should
+always be unhappy&mdash;miserably unhappy.</p>
+<p>"Not so unhappy there as you will be if you remain in the world
+and carry out your intention," said the Reverend Mother. "Oh
+believe me, my child, I know you better than you know yourself. If
+you marry again, you will never be able to forget that you have
+broken your vow. Other women may forget it&mdash;frivolous
+women&mdash;women living in society and devoting their lives to
+selfish pleasures. Such women may divorce their husbands, or be
+divorced by them, and then marry again, without remembering that
+they are living in a state of sin, whatever the civil law may
+say&mdash;open and wicked and shameless sin. But you will remember
+it, and it will make you more unhappy than you have ever been in
+your life before."</p>
+<p>"Worse than that," she continued, after a moment, "it will make
+your husband unhappy also. He will see your remorse, and share it,
+because he will know he has been the cause. If he is a good man the
+mere sight of your grief will torture him. The better man he is the
+more will he suffer. If you were a runaway nun he would wish to
+take you back to your convent, for though it might tear his heart
+out to part with you, he would want to restore your soul. But being
+a wife who has broken her marriage vows he will never be able to do
+anything. An immense and awful shadow will stand between you and
+darken every hour of your lives that is left."</p>
+<p>When the Reverend Mother had done I sat motionless and
+speechless, with an aching and suffocating heart, staring down on
+the garden over which the night was falling.</p>
+<p>After a while she patted my cold hand and got up to go, saying
+she would call early in the morning to bid me good-bye. Her visit
+to Ireland would not last longer than three weeks, and after that
+she might come back for me, if I felt on reflection (she was sure I
+should) that I ought to return with her to Rome.</p>
+<p>I did not reply. Perhaps it was partly because I was physically
+weak that my darling's warning was so nearly overcome. But the
+moment the door closed on the Reverend Mother a conviction of the
+truth of what she had said rushed upon me like the waves of an
+overflowing sea.</p>
+<p>Yet how cruel! After all our waiting, all our longing, all our
+gorgeous day-dreams of future happiness! When I was going to be a
+bride, a happy bride, with my lost and stolen girlhood coming back
+to me!</p>
+<p>For the second time a dark and frowning mountain had risen
+between Martin and me. Formerly it had been my marriage&mdash;now
+it was my God.</p>
+<p>But if God forbade my marriage with Martin what was I to do?
+What was left in life for me? Was there anything left?</p>
+<p>I was sitting with both hands over my face, asking myself these
+questions and struggling with a rising tempest of tears, when I
+heard baby crying in the room below, and Christian Ann hushing and
+comforting her.</p>
+<p>"What's doing on the <i>boght</i>, I wonder?"</p>
+<p>A few minutes later they came upstairs, Isabel on her
+grandmother's arm, in her nightdress, ready for bed.</p>
+<p>"If it isn't the wind I don't know in the world what's doing on
+the <i>millish</i>," said the old lady.</p>
+<p>And then baby smiled through the big round beads that stood in
+her sea-blue eyes and held out her arms to me.</p>
+<p>Oh God! Oh God! Was not <i>this</i> my answer?</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_THIRTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same
+conclusion. Long before the thought came to me she had conceived
+the idea that Father Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to
+carry me off, and in her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak
+of higher and nobler instincts) she had resented this
+intensely.</p>
+<p>For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to
+baby in half-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We're no women
+for these nun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we,
+<i>villish</i>?"), but on the fifth day it burst into the fiercest
+flame and the gentle old thing flung out at everybody.</p>
+<p>That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother,
+who, after saying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned
+to the parlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to
+the railway station.</p>
+<p>What provoked Christian Ann's outburst I never rightly knew, for
+though the door to the staircase was open, and I could generally
+catch anything that was said in the room below (through the open
+timbers of the unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend
+Mother never reached me, and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels
+only rumbled up like the sound of a drum.</p>
+<p>But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of a
+breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering
+with emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.</p>
+<p>"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're
+saying to the Father about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome
+is she? To the convent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will!
+Not if I know her, ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am.
+. . . Temptation, you say? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call
+it overcoming temptation&mdash;going into hidlands to get out of
+the way of it. . . . Yes, I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic
+too, please the Saints, but asking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not
+thinking too much of your convents, or believing the women inside
+of them are living such very unselfish lives either, ma'am."</p>
+<p>Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then&mdash;</p>
+<p>"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a
+nun myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But
+it's all as one&mdash;I know what's going on in the convents, I'm
+thinking. . . . Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and
+envy sometimes, too, or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us,
+ma'am. . . . As for Mary O'Neill, <i>she</i> has something better
+to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After doing wrong, is she? Maybe she
+is, the <i>boght millish</i>, maybe we all are, ma'am, and have
+need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never heard that praying
+is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And if it is, I
+wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as well
+when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're
+saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."</p>
+<p>Another interruption and then&mdash;"There's Bella Kinnish
+herself who keeps the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at
+the 'mackerel' two years for Easter. He left her with three little
+children and a baby unborn, and Bella's finding it middling hard to
+get a taste of butcher's meat, or even a bit of loaf-bread itself
+for them, ma'am. And when she's sitting late at night, as the
+doctor's telling me, and all the rest of the village dark, darning
+little Liza's stockings, and patching little Willie's coat, or
+maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the measles, the Lord is
+as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of your nun bodies
+in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel before the
+tabernacle."</p>
+<p>There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both
+Father Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian
+Ann's clear notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes
+threatening to stop.</p>
+<p>"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and
+holy state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too,
+though some ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to
+think so. . . . A mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is
+her child, wedlock or no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her
+little one, and bringing it up well, and teaching it true, I don't
+know that when her time comes the Lord will be asking her which
+side of her wedding-day it was born on. . . .</p>
+<p>"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking
+about her saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to
+save too, ma'am. God gave her the <i>boght villish</i>, and is she
+to run away from it? It's a fine blessing would be on her for that,
+isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm surprised at you&mdash;such a
+terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as you're thinking. I
+thought you were a better man than that&mdash;I really did. . . .
+And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no
+mothers at all and never will be&mdash;tempting a poor woman in her
+trouble to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . .
+."</p>
+<p>Still another rumble of soft voices and then&mdash;</p>
+<p>"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's
+only too eager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is
+on the hearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill,
+it's there she'll be for the rest of <i>my</i> life, and it's sorry
+I am for the darling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . .
+.</p>
+<p>"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into
+any convent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she
+did. I'm a mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You
+might put the black hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful
+powerful thing, and she'd never go to bed at night or get up in the
+morning without thinking of her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be
+asking herself. 'What's happening to my motherless child?' she'd be
+saying. And as the years went on she'd be thinking, 'Is she well,
+and has she taken her first communion, and is she growing up a good
+woman, and what's the world doing on her?' . . .</p>
+<p>"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her
+child is here to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill!
+I'll never believe it of her! Never in this world!"</p>
+<p>I heard nothing more for a long time after that&mdash;nothing
+but a noise in my own head which drowned all other noises. And when
+I recovered my composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must
+have gone, for there was no sound in the room below except that of
+the rocking-chair (which was going rapidly) and Christian Ann's
+voice, fierce but broken as if baby had cried and she was
+comforting her.</p>
+<p>Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The
+mighty passion of motherhood&mdash;which another mighty passion had
+temporarily overlaid&mdash;sweeping down on me once more out of the
+big, simple, child-like heart of my Martin's mother.</p>
+<p>In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve
+all the problems of life for me.</p>
+<p>If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I
+had already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently
+or under what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great
+sin, and baby was the living sign of it, there was only one thing
+left me to do&mdash;to remain as I was and consecrate the rest of
+my life to my child.</p>
+<p>That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a
+convent. To live for my child! Alone with her! Here, where my sin
+had been, to work out my atonement!</p>
+<p>This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first
+thought of it. And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how
+hard it would be to tear myself away from the love which waited
+with open arms for me (So near, so sweet, so precious), there
+seemed to be something majestic, almost sublime, in the sacrifice I
+was about to make&mdash;the sacrifice of everything in the world
+(except one thing) that was dearer to me than life itself.</p>
+<p>A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this
+sacrifice. I saw myself as a woman who, having pledged herself to
+God in her marriage and sinned against the law in breaking her
+marriage vows, was now going to accept her fate and to humble
+herself before the bar of Eternal Justice.</p>
+<p>But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was
+so strong and noble!</p>
+<p>After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pains of
+my poor torn heart and almost persuading myself that I had won a
+victory, a letter came by the evening post which turned all my
+great plans to dust and ashes.</p>
+<p>The letter was from Martin. Only four little pages, written in
+my darling's rugged hand, half serious and half playful, yet they
+made the earth rock and reel beneath me.</p>
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"MY DEAR LITTLE WOMAN,&mdash;<i>Just back from Windsor. Stunning
+'do.' Tell you all about it when I get back home. Meantime up to my
+eyes in work. Arrangements for next Expedition going ahead
+splendidly. Had a meeting of the committee yesterday and settled to
+sail by the 'Orient' third week in August, so as to get down to
+Winter Quarters in time to start south in October</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>Our own little affair has got to come off first, though, so
+I'll see the High Bailiff as soon as I return</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>And what do you think, my 'chree'? The boys of the 'Scotia'
+are all coming over to Ellan for the great event. 'Deed, yes,
+though, every man-jack of them! Scientific staff included, not to
+speak of O'Sullivan and old Treacle&mdash;who swears you blew a
+kiss to him. They remember you coming down to Tilbury. Aw, God
+bless me soul, gel, the way they're talking of you! There's no
+holding them at all at all</i>!</p>
+<p>"<i>Seriously, darling, you have no time to lose in making your
+preparations. My plan is to take you to New Zealand and leave you
+at Wellington (good little town, good people, too) while I make my
+bit of a trip to the Pole</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>We'll arrange about Girlie when I reach home, which will be
+next week, I hope&mdash;or rather fear&mdash;for every day is like
+a month when I'm away from you</i>.</p>
+<p>"<i>But never mind, little woman! Once I get this big Expedition
+over we are not going to be separated any more. Not for a single
+day as long as we live, dearest! No, by the Lord God&mdash;life's
+too short for it</i>.</p>
+<p>"MART."</p>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FOURTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>After I had read this letter I saw that my great battle, which I
+had supposed to be over, was hardly begun.</p>
+<p>Martin was coming home with his big heart full of love for me,
+and my own heart ran out to meet him.</p>
+<p>He intended to sail for New Zealand the second week in August,
+and he expected to take me with him.</p>
+<p>In spite of all my religious fears and misgivings, I asked
+myself why I should not go? What was to prevent me? What sin had I
+really committed? What was there for reparation? Was it anything
+more than the letter of the Divine law that I had defied and
+broken?</p>
+<p>My love was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever.
+He was going out on a great errand in the service of humanity.
+Couldn't I go to be his partner and helpmate? And if there
+<i>had</i> been sin, if the law of God <i>had</i> been broken,
+wouldn't that, too, be a great atonement?</p>
+<p>Thus my heart fought with my soul, or with my instincts as a
+child of the Church, or whatever else it was that brought me back
+and back, again and again, in spite of all the struggles of my
+love, to the firm Commandment of our Lord.</p>
+<p>Father Dan had been right&mdash;I could not get away from that.
+The Reverend Mother had been right, too&mdash;other women might
+forget that they had broken the Divine law but I never should. If I
+married Martin and went away with him, I should always be thinking
+of the falseness of my position, and that would make me unhappy. It
+would also make Martin unhappy to witness my unhappiness, and that
+would be the worst bitterness life could bring.</p>
+<p>Then what was left to me? If it was impossible that I should
+bury myself in a convent it was equally impossible that I should
+live alone, and Martin in the same world with me.</p>
+<p>Not all the spiritual pride I could conjure up in the majesty
+and solemnity of my self-sacrifice could conquer the yearning of my
+heart as a woman. Not all my religious fervour could keep me away
+from Martin. In spite of my conscience, sooner or later I should go
+to him&mdash;I knew quite well I should. And my child, instead of
+being a barrier dividing us, would be a natural bond calling on us
+and compelling us to come together.</p>
+<p>Then what was left to a woman in my position who believed in the
+Divine Commandment&mdash;who could not get away from it? Were all
+the doors of life locked to her? Turn which way she would, was
+there no way out?</p>
+<p>Darker and darker every day became this question, but light came
+at last, a kind of light or the promise of light. It was terrible,
+and yet it brought me, oh, such immense relief!</p>
+<p>I am almost afraid to speak of it, so weak and feeble must any
+words be in which I attempt to describe that unforgetable change.
+Already I had met some of the mysteries of a woman's life&mdash;now
+I was to meet the last, the greatest, the most tragic, and yet the
+kindest of them all.</p>
+<p>I suppose the strain of emotion I had been going through had
+been too much for my physical strength, for three days after the
+arrival of Martin's letter I seemed to be really ill.</p>
+<p>I am ashamed to dwell on my symptoms, but for a moment I am
+forced to do so. My eyes were bright, my cheeks were coloured, and
+there was no outward indication of any serious malady. But towards
+evening I always had a temperature, and in the middle of the night
+(I was sleeping badly) it rose very high, with a rapid pulse and
+anxious breathing, and in the morning there was great
+exhaustion.</p>
+<p>Old Doctor Conrad, who had been coming to me twice a day, began
+to look very grave. At last, after a short examination, he said,
+rather nervously:</p>
+<p>"I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me.
+Will you receive him?"</p>
+<p>I said "Yes" on one condition&mdash;that if the new doctor had
+anything serious to say he should report it first to me.</p>
+<p>A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and the
+consulting physician was sent for. He came early the next
+day&mdash;a beautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the
+sea bringing the smell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying
+between.</p>
+<p>He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow
+cross his clean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me.
+They were those tender but searching eyes which are so often seen
+in doctors, who are always walking through the Valley of the Shadow
+and seem to focus their gaze accordingly.</p>
+<p>Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the
+hand I held out to him, he said:</p>
+<p>"I trust we'll not frighten you, my lady."</p>
+<p>I liked that (though I cared nothing about my lost title, I
+thought it was nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I
+should not be too restless.</p>
+<p>While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such
+beautiful soft hands) he told me that he had had a daughter of my
+own age once.</p>
+<p>"Once? Where is she now?" I asked him.</p>
+<p>"In the Kingdom. She died like a Saint," he answered.</p>
+<p>Then he made a long examination (returning repeatedly to the
+same place), and when it was over and he raised his face I thought
+it looked still more serious.</p>
+<p>"My child," he said (I liked that too), "you've never spared
+yourself, have you?"</p>
+<p>I admitted that I had not.</p>
+<p>"When you've had anything to do you've done it, whatever it
+might cost you."</p>
+<p>I admitted that also. He looked round to see if there was
+anybody else in the room (there was only the old doctor, who was
+leaning over the end of the bed, watching the face of his
+colleague) and then said, in a low voice:</p>
+<p>"Has it ever happened that you have suffered from privation and
+hard work and loss of sleep and bad lodgings and . . . and
+exposure?"</p>
+<p>His great searching eyes seemed to be looking straight into my
+soul, and I could not have lied to him if I had wished, so I told
+him a little (just a little) about my life in London&mdash;at
+Bayswater, in the East End and Ilford.</p>
+<p>"And did you get wet sometimes, very wet, through all your
+clothes?" he asked me.</p>
+<p>I told him No, but suddenly remembering that during the cold
+days after baby came (when I could not afford a fire) I had dried
+her napkins on my body, I felt that I could not keep that fact from
+him.</p>
+<p>"You dried baby's napkins on your own body?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Sometimes I did. Just for a while," I answered, feeling a
+little ashamed, and my tears rising.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" he said, and then turning to the old doctor, "What a
+mother will do for her child, Conrad!"</p>
+<p>The eyes of Doctor Conrad (which seemed to have become swollen)
+were still fixed on the face of his colleague, and, speaking as if
+he had forgotten that I was present with them in the room, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"You think she's very ill, don't you?"</p>
+<p>"We'll talk of that in your consulting-room," said the strange
+doctor.</p>
+<p>Then, telling me to lie quiet and they would come back
+presently, he went downstairs and Martin's father followed him.</p>
+<p>Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of
+me during the last few days), and I asked her who were in the
+parlour-kitchen.</p>
+<p>"Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad&mdash;and baby," she told
+me.</p>
+<p>Then the doctors came back&mdash;the consultant first, trying to
+look cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his
+head down, as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to
+receive sentence.</p>
+<p>"My lady," said the strange doctor, "you are a brave woman if
+ever there was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about
+your condition."</p>
+<p>And then he told me.</p>
+<p>I was not afraid. I will not say that I was not sorry. I could
+have wished to live a little longer&mdash;especially now when (but
+for the Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within
+my grasp.</p>
+<p>But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, something
+supernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the
+bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and
+led me out of it.</p>
+<p>Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to
+anybody except a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no
+need of them.</p>
+<p>All fear had vanished from my thoughts. I had no fear for
+myself, I remembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was
+for Martin&mdash;he loved me so; there had never been any other
+woman in the world for him.</p>
+<p>After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given
+them too much trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into
+stupefaction and said nothing; but the strange doctor tried to
+comfort me by saying there would be no pain, and that my malady was
+of a kind that would probably make no outward manifestation.</p>
+<p>Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I
+asked him if it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared,
+although everything was in God's hands and nobody could say
+certainly.</p>
+<p>I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a
+sound of crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing
+her. I knew what was happening&mdash;the good souls were listening
+at the bottom of the stairs.</p>
+<p>My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry.
+Then I had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and
+know that what I was going through was nothing. But finally I
+bethought me of Martin, and asked that they might both be brought
+up, for I had something to say to them.</p>
+<p>After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her
+simple pure dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both
+looking very sorrowful, the sweet old children.</p>
+<p>Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the
+bed) I told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that
+they were to tell nobody else&mdash;nobody whatever, especially
+Martin.</p>
+<p>"Leave <i>me</i> to tell <i>him</i>," I said. "Do you faithfully
+promise me?"</p>
+<p>I could see how difficult it was for them to keep back their
+tears, but they gave me their word and that was all I wanted.</p>
+<p>"My boy! My poor boy <i>veen!</i> He's thinking there isn't
+another woman in the world like her," said Christian Ann.</p>
+<p>And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting
+the same promise concerning myself, when I was a child at
+school.</p>
+<p>After that the Blackwater doctor stepped up to say good-bye.</p>
+<p>"I leave you in good hands, but you must let me come to see you
+again some day," he said, and then with a playful smile he
+added:</p>
+<p>"They've got lots of angels up in heaven&mdash;we must try to
+keep some of them on earth, you know."</p>
+<p>That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our
+national day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the
+houses in the village.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_FIFTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what
+reaction of my whole being, physical and spiritual, has set in
+since yesterday, but my heart is lighter than for a long time, and
+sleep, which I had come to look upon as a lost blessing, came to me
+last night for four solid hours&mdash;beautiful and untroubled as a
+child's.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th.
+Letter full of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home,
+dearest." Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get
+him back, yet I almost dread his coming. When he was away before,
+Time could not go fast enough for me. Now it is going too fast. I
+know what that means&mdash;the story I have to tell. How am I to
+tell it?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I
+must be up when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in
+bed when he comes would be too much a shock for him.</p>
+<p>"Servants are such domineering tyrants," says Christian Ann, who
+never had but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in
+the house that the poor mistress was grateful to God when
+Hollantide came round and the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse
+is a dear, though. How glad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann
+to let her stay.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a
+proud and stately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I
+am terribly weak (no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on
+dressing and going downstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a
+white tea-gown, which Sister Mildred gave me in London. Martin
+likes me best in white.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling
+across the island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was
+dressed and downstairs by four, sitting in the <i>chiollagh</i> and
+watching the road through the window opposite. But he was half an
+hour late, and Christian Ann and I were in such a fever that
+anybody would have believed it to be half a century and that the
+world had stood still.</p>
+<p>We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys"
+(the same that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) had
+insisted on a demonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin
+had got down and shaken hands with everybody&mdash;the joiner and
+the grocer and the blacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner
+shop&mdash;so that it had taken him a quarter of an hour to get
+through, amid a general chorus of "The boy he is, though!" and "No
+pride at all at all!"</p>
+<p>After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught
+the musical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good
+gracious, what excitement!</p>
+<p>"Quick nurse, help me to the gate."</p>
+<p>I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a
+precipitate bound out of the car and then . . . what an
+embrace!</p>
+<p>It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I
+don't know how I should have got back to the house, being so weak
+and breathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my
+waist.</p>
+<p>Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird,
+and after I had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such
+a largesse of affection to distribute generally), whereupon he
+blushed like a boy, bless him, and stammered out something about
+St. Patrick and St. Thomas, and how he wouldn't have believed
+anybody who had said there was anything so sweet, etc.</p>
+<p>Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he
+wouldn't have believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so
+much better in the time.</p>
+<p>My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds
+during the next hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor
+ordered me back to bed, though I refused to go until he had
+faithfully promised that the door to the staircase should be kept
+open, so that I could hear what was said downstairs.</p>
+<p>What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come
+in "to put a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old
+Tommy the Mate, who told everybody over and over again that he had
+"known the lad since he was a lump" and "him and me are same as
+brothers."</p>
+<p>The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see.
+It was "Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have
+cried to hear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I
+cannot remember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me
+"your ladyship," now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what
+we women are, you see!</p>
+<p>At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and
+then the talk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann wanted
+to know if he wasn't "freckened" to be there, "not being used of
+Kings," whereupon he cried:</p>
+<p>"What! Frightened of another man&mdash;and a stunning good one,
+too!"</p>
+<p>And then came a story of how the King had asked if he hadn't
+been in fear of icebergs, and how he had answered No, you could
+strike more of them in a day in London (meaning icy-hearted people)
+than in a life-time in the Antarctic.</p>
+<p>I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard
+was:</p>
+<p>"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"</p>
+<p>"Aw, yes, the poor <i>veg veen</i>," said a sad voice. It was
+Christian Ann's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the
+child who "sang carvals to her door."</p>
+<p>What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though.
+To-morrow I must tell him.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really
+couldn't.</p>
+<p>I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the
+bannisters at one side and using nurse's shoulder as my other
+crutch, when I saw the brightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby
+and Martin were on hands and knees on the rag-work hearthrug, face
+to face&mdash;Martin calling her to come, Isabel lifting up her
+little head to him, like a fledgling in a nest, and both laughing
+with that gurgling sound as of water bubbling out of a bottle.</p>
+<p>This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first
+moment. And when Martin, after putting me into my place in the
+<i>chiollagh</i>, plunged immediately into a rapturous account of
+his preparations for our departure&mdash;how we were to be married
+by special license at the High Bailiff's on the tenth (if that date
+would do), how I was to rest a day and then travel up to London on
+the twelfth, and then rest other four days (during which warm
+clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the <i>Orient</i> on
+the sixteenth&mdash;I could not find it in my heart to tell him
+then of the inexorable fate that confronted us.</p>
+<p>It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to
+pay for it. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to
+his mother to say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was
+gone, and Christian Ann (in such a different tone) said Yes, she
+would look after Girlie when I was gone, I decided that I dared not
+tell him at all&mdash;I would die rather than do so.</p>
+<p>The end of it all is that I have arranged with Christian Ann,
+the old doctor, and Father Dan that Time and Martin's own
+observation are to tell him what is going to happen, and none of us
+are to say anything about it.</p>
+<p>What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish
+love for Martin. It would be such a blow to him&mdash;disturbing
+his plans, upsetting everything, perhaps causing him to postpone
+his Expedition, or even to abandon it altogether. "Let the truth
+fall soft on him. He'll see it soon enough. Don't let us be
+cruel."</p>
+<p>The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all
+in&mdash;all my vain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the
+part of pretending to fall in with Martin's plans, and they are to
+stand by and say nothing.</p>
+<p>Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing
+to see how I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and
+disguises.</p>
+<p>Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving
+me at Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter
+Quarters, having met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist
+in my kind of malady (I wonder how much he knows of it), who
+declared that the climate of the Antarctic would act on me like
+magic.</p>
+<p>Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating
+air! New life with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too,
+so cosy and comfortable! And then the men whom he would leave
+behind while he slipped down South&mdash;they would worship me!</p>
+<p>"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be
+mistress over a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in
+out of the snow and want to eat up everything!"</p>
+<p>Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and
+then I see the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father
+Dan) dropping their heads or stealing out of the room.</p>
+<p>I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only this
+temperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in
+the mornings.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for
+a long hour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the
+heavens blue, and gleams of sunshine coming through the
+trellis-work.</p>
+<p>Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to
+feel a flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make
+me forget that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away
+by a puff of wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be
+lifted up to the highest reaches of the soul.</p>
+<p>I always say there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the
+poet wasn't dumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or
+anticyclone, or whatever it is which covers the region of the South
+Pole like a cap, and determines the weather of a great part of the
+habitable globe.</p>
+<p>"We are going to take from God his word and pass it on to the
+world," he said.</p>
+<p>After that he made reference (for the first time since his
+return) to the difficulties of our position, saying what a glorious
+thing it would be to escape to that great free region from the
+world of civilisation, with its effete laws and worn-out creeds
+which enslave humanity.</p>
+<p>"Only a month to-day until we start, and you'll be well enough
+to travel then, dearest."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes, only a month to-day, and I shall be well enough then,
+dearest."</p>
+<p>Oh, Mary O'Neill! How much longer will you be able to keep it
+up, dear?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 17. Martin brought the proofs of his new book from London,
+and to-day in the summer-house (bluebells paling out and hanging
+their heads, but the air full of the odour of fruit trees) he and
+Dr. O'Sullivan and I have been correcting "galleys"&mdash;the
+doctor reading aloud, Martin smoking his briar-root pipe, and I (in
+a crater of cushions) supposed to be sitting as judge and jury.</p>
+<p>Such simple, straight, natural writing! There may have been a
+thousand errors but my ears heard none of them. The breathless bits
+about the moments when death was near; the humorous bits about
+patching the tent with the tails of their shirts when an overturned
+lamp burnt a hole in the canvas&mdash;this was all I was conscious
+of until I was startled by the sound of a sepulchral voice,
+groaning out "Oh Lord a-massy me!" and by the sight of a Glengarry
+cap over the top of the fuchsia hedge. Old Tommy was listening from
+the road.</p>
+<p>We sat late over our proofs and then, the dew having begun to
+fall, Martin said he must carry me indoors lest my feet should get
+wet&mdash;which he did, with the result that, remembering what had
+happened on our first evening at Castle Raa, I had a pretty fit of
+hysterics as soon as we reached the house.</p>
+<p>"Let's skip, Commanther," was the next thing I heard, and then I
+was helped upstairs to bed.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 18. What a flirt I am becoming! Having conceived the idea
+that Dr. O'Sullivan is a little wee bit in love with me too, I have
+been playing him off against Martin.</p>
+<p>It was so delicious (after all I have gone through) to have two
+magnificent men, out of the heroic youth of the world, waiting hand
+and foot on one little woman, that the feminine soul in me to-day
+couldn't resist the temptation to an innocent effort at
+coquetry.</p>
+<p>So before we began business on the proofs I told Martin that, if
+he was determined to leave me behind at winter quarters while he
+went away to the Pole, he must allow Dr. O'Sullivan to remain
+behind to take care of me.</p>
+<p>Of course the doctor rose to my bait like a dear, crying:</p>
+<p>"He will too&mdash;by St. Patrick and St. Thomas he will, and a
+mighty proud man he'll be entirely. . . ."</p>
+<p>But good gracious! A momentary shadow passed over Martin's face,
+then came one of his big broad smiles, then out shot his clinched
+fist, and . . . the poor doctor and his garden seat were rolling
+over each other on the grass.</p>
+<p>However, we got through without bloodshed, and did good day's
+work on the book.</p>
+<p>I must not write any more. I have always written in my own book
+at night, when I haven't been able to get any kind of Christian
+sleep; but I'm weaker now, so must stop, lest I shouldn't have
+strength enough for Martin's.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 20. Oh dear! I am dragging all these other poor dears into
+my deceptions. Christian Ann does not mind what lies, or half-lies,
+she has to tell in order to save pain to her beloved son. But the
+old doctor! And Father Dan!</p>
+<p>To-day itself, as Martin's mother would say, I had to make my
+poor old priest into a shocking story-teller.</p>
+<p>I developed a cough a few weeks ago, and though it is not really
+of much account I have been struggling to smother it while Martin
+has been about, knowing he is a doctor himself, and fearing his ear
+might detect the note.</p>
+<p>But this afternoon (whether a little damp, with a soft patter of
+sweet rain on the trees and the bushes) I had a rather bad bout, at
+which Martin's face looked grave, until I laughed and said:</p>
+<p>"It's nothing! I've had this sort of cough every summer since I
+was born&mdash;haven't I, Father Dan?"</p>
+<p>"Ye-es."</p>
+<p>I shall have to remember that in my next confession, but what
+Father Dan is to do I really don't know.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 21. I have been rather down to-day about a newspaper that
+came to me anonymously from Paris, with a report marked for my
+special delectation.</p>
+<p>"FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE OF AN ENGLISH PEER AND AN AMERICAN
+HEIRESS."</p>
+<p>My husband's and Alma's! It took place at the American Embassy,
+and was attended by great numbers of smart people. There was a long
+account of the grandeur of the bride's dress and of the splendour
+of the bridegroom's presents. They have taken an apartment on the
+Champs Elys&eacute;es and will spend most of the year in Paris.</p>
+<p>Ah well, why should I trouble about a matter that so little
+concerns me? Alma is still beautiful; she will be surrounded by
+admirers; her salon will be frequented by the fashionable parasites
+of Europe and America.</p>
+<p>As for my husband, the straw-fire of his wife's passion for him
+will soon burn out, especially now that she has gained what she
+wanted&mdash;his name, his title.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Martin carried me upstairs to bed to-night. I was really feeling
+weaker than usual, but we made a great game of it. Nurse went
+first, behind a mountain of pillows; Martin and I came next, with
+his arms about my body and mine around his neck; and Dr. O'Sullivan
+last, carrying two tall brass candlesticks.</p>
+<p>How we laughed! We all laughed together, as if trying to see
+which of us could laugh the loudest. Only Christian Ann looked
+serious, standing at the bottom of the stairs, nursing baby in her
+nightdress.</p>
+<p>It is three o'clock in the morning as I write, and I can hear
+our laughter still&mdash;only it sounds like sobbing now.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 22. Have heard something to-day that has taken all the
+warmth of life out of me. It is about my father, whom the old
+doctor still attends. Having been told of my husband's marriage he
+has announced his intention of claiming my child if anything
+happens to me!</p>
+<p>What his object may be I do not know. He cannot be thinking of
+establishing a claim to my husband's title&mdash;Isabel being a
+girl. Remembering something his lawyer said about the marriage
+settlement when I consulted him on the subject of divorce, I can
+only assume that (now he is poor) he is trying to recover the
+inheritance he settled on my husband.</p>
+<p>It frightens me&mdash;raising my old nightmare of a lawsuit
+about the legitimacy of my child. I want to speak to Martin about
+it. Yet how can I do so without telling him the truth which I have
+been struggling so hard to conceal?</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 23. Oh, Mary O'Neill, what are you coming to?</p>
+<p>I told Martin about father's threat, only I gave it another
+colour. He had heard of the Reverend Mother's visit, so I said the
+rumour had reached my father that I intended to enter a convent,
+and he had declared that, if I did so, he would claim my child from
+Christian Ann, being its nearest blood relation.</p>
+<p>"Can he do so&mdash;when I am . . . when we are gone?" I
+asked.</p>
+<p>I thought Martin's strong face looked sterner than I had ever
+seen it. He made a vague reply and left me soon afterwards on some
+sort of excuse.</p>
+<p>About an hour later he came back to carry me upstairs, and just
+as he was setting me down, and Christian Ann was coming in with the
+candles, he whispered:</p>
+<p>"Don't worry about Girlie. I've settled that matter, I'm
+thinking."</p>
+<p>What has he done, I wonder?</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>What I had done is easily told. I had gone straight to Daniel
+O'Neill himself, intending to know the truth of the story and to
+act accordingly.</p>
+<p>Already I knew enough to scent mischief. I could not be so
+stupefied into blindness of what was going on under my eyes as not
+to see that the dirty question of money, and perhaps the dirtier
+question of the aims and expectations of the woman MacLeod, were at
+the root of the matter that was distressing my darling.</p>
+<p>Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his
+mother's old cottage for two reasons&mdash;first, to delude the law
+into the idea that he was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy
+to which he had brought the whole island; and next, to gratify the
+greed of his mistress, who wanted to get him to herself at the end,
+so that he might be persuaded to marry her (if it were only on his
+death-bed) and so establish, against any claim of his daughter's,
+her widow's rights in what a husband leaves behind him&mdash;which
+is half of everything in Ellan.</p>
+<p>What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of
+the child I had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without
+another hour's delay, so I set off for the cottage on the
+curragh.</p>
+<p>It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the
+ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to
+guide me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my
+darling had communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and
+at first he looked afraid.</p>
+<p>"Well . . . yes, yes . . . why shouldn't I?" he said, and then,
+"Yes, I will, I will"&mdash;with the air of a man who had made up
+his mind to a daring enterprise.</p>
+<p>Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the
+sea, undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and
+sallow bushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a
+mist over it that night, and hence it was not easy even for Father
+Dan (accustomed to midnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the
+house which had once been the home of "Neale the Lord."</p>
+<p>We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who
+was standing at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of
+a gorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses
+smoking in the thick night air.</p>
+<p>When, over the shingle of what we call "the street," we reached
+the low straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree
+(supposed to keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles
+at the door, and it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a
+candle in her hand.</p>
+<p>This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her
+red hair combed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots
+over two stalks of rhubarb.</p>
+<p>Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr.
+O'Neill, and to step into the house while saying so, a hoarse,
+husky, querulous man's voice cried from within:</p>
+<p>"Who is it, Nessy?"</p>
+<p>It's Father Dan, and Martin . . . I mean Sir. . . ."</p>
+<p>"That'll do," I said, and the next moment we were in the
+living-room&mdash;a bare, bleak, comfortless Curraghman's
+kitchen.</p>
+<p>A more incongruous sight than we saw there human eyes never
+beheld.</p>
+<p>Daniel O'Neill, a shadow of the big brute creature he once was,
+a shrivelled old man, with his bony hands scored and contracted
+like an autumn leaf, his shrunken legs scarcely showing through his
+baggy trousers, his square face whiter than the wall behind it, and
+a piece of red flannel hanging over his head like a cowl, sat in
+the elbow-chair at the side of the hearth-fire, while at a deal
+table, which was covered with papers that looked like law deeds and
+share certificates (being stamped and sealed), sat the Bishop of
+the island, and its leading lawyer, Mr. Curphy.</p>
+<p>On hearing my name and seeing me enter the house, Daniel O'Neill
+lost all control of himself. He struggled to his feet by help of a
+stick, and as I walked up to him he laid hold of me.</p>
+<p>"You devil!" he cried. "You infernal villain! You. . . ."</p>
+<p>But it is of no use to repeat what else he said in the fuming of
+his rage, laying hold of me by the collar of my coat, and tugging
+at it as if he would drag me to his feet.</p>
+<p>I was half sorry for the man, badly as I thought of him, so I
+only opened his hand (easy enough to do, for the grip was gone from
+it) and said:</p>
+<p>"You're an old man, sir, and you're a sick man&mdash;don't tempt
+me to forget that you are the father of Mary O'Neill. Sit
+down."</p>
+<p>He sat down, breathless and broken, without another word. But
+the Bishop, with a large air of outraged dignity, faced about to
+poor Father Dan (who was standing near the door, turning his round
+hat in his trembling hands) and said:</p>
+<p>"Father Donovan, did you know that Mr. O'Neill was very
+ill?"</p>
+<p>"I did, Monsignor," said Father Dan.</p>
+<p>"And that a surgeon is coming from London to perform an
+operation upon him&mdash;did you know that?"</p>
+<p>"I did, Monsignor."</p>
+<p>"Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr.
+Curphy to important affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred
+duties?"</p>
+<p>"I knew that too, Monsignor."</p>
+<p>"Then," said the Bishop, pointing at me, "how dare you bring
+this man here&mdash;this man of all others, who has been the chief
+instrument in bringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend
+and his deeply injured family?"</p>
+<p>"So that's how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest
+of my Church who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with
+notorious sinners as to see things in any other light."</p>
+<p>"Sinners, Bishop?"</p>
+<p>"Didn't you hear me, Father Donovan? Or do you desire me to use
+a harder name for them&mdash;for one of them in particular, on whom
+you have wasted so much weak sentimentality, to the injury of your
+spiritual influence and the demoralisation of your parish. I have
+warned you already. Do you wish me to go further, to remove you
+from your Presbytery, or perhaps report your conduct to those who
+have power to take the frock off your back? What standard of
+sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony do you expect to
+maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with a woman
+who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . . I
+grieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the
+poor wreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . .
+."</p>
+<p>I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant. But
+there was somebody before me. It was Father Dan. The timid old
+priest seemed to break in one moment the bonds of a life-long
+tyranny.</p>
+<p>"What's that you say, Monsignor?" he cried in a shrill voice.
+"<i>I</i> degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Never in this
+world! But if there's anybody in the island of Ellan who has done
+that same every day of his life, it's yourself, and never more
+cruelly and shamefully than in the case we're talking of at this
+present speaking."</p>
+<p>"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father
+Donovan," began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan
+caught him up by crying:</p>
+<p>"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and
+that's now. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own
+purposes wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no
+choice in the matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't
+believe in the sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that
+paved the way for him?"</p>
+<p>"You actually mean that <i>I</i>. . . ."</p>
+<p>"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could
+never have been married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance,
+either. When somebody told you&mdash;somebody who is here
+now&mdash;that the man to whom you were going to marry that
+innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a profligate, a
+reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned scoundrel. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him," I said, when
+the old priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the
+word that had burst from his lips.</p>
+<p>"Let's have an end of this," said the Bishop mightily.</p>
+<p>"Wait a bit, sir," I said, and then Father Dan went on to say
+how he had been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had
+been forbidden to inquire into it.</p>
+<p>"That's how you made <i>me</i> a party to this wicked marriage,
+God and his Holy Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the
+end you might have expected, and the poor helpless child who was
+bought and sold like a slave is in the position of the sinner, you
+want me to cut her off, to turn the hearts of all good people
+against her, to cast her out of communion, to make her a thing to
+point the finger at&mdash;me, her spiritual father who baptized
+her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who bore her and
+giving her to Christ&mdash;or if I won't you'll deprive me of my
+living, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Do it, Monsignor," cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to
+the Bishop and lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if
+our holy Church will permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old
+shoulders and go round the houses of my parish in my old age,
+begging a bite of bread and a basin of meal, and sleeping under a
+thorn bush, rather than lay my head on my pillow and know that that
+poor victim of your wicked scheming is in the road."</p>
+<p>The throbbing and breaking of the old priest's voice had
+compelled me to drop my head, and it was not until I heard the
+sneck of the lock of the outer door that I realised that, overcome
+by his emotion, he had fled from the house.</p>
+<p>"And now I guess you can follow your friend," said Daniel
+O'Neill.</p>
+<p>"Not yet, sir," I answered; "I have something to say first."</p>
+<p>"Well, well, what is it, please?" said the lawyer sharply and
+insolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one
+side of the hearth-place.</p>
+<p>"You'll hear soon enough, Master Curphy," I answered.</p>
+<p>Then, turning back to Daniel O'Neill, I told him what rumour had
+reached my dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and
+asked him to say whether there was any truth in it.</p>
+<p>"Answer the man, Curphy," said Daniel O'Neill, and thereupon the
+lawyer, with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said:</p>
+<p>"What is it you wish to know, sir?"</p>
+<p>"Whether, if Mary O'Neill is unable from any cause to keep
+control of her child (which God forbid!), her father intends to
+take possession of it."</p>
+<p>"Why shouldn't he? If the mother dies, for instance, her father
+will be the child's legal guardian."</p>
+<p>"But if by that time the father is dead too&mdash;what
+then?"</p>
+<p>"Then the control of the child will&mdash;with the consent of
+the court&mdash;devolve upon his heir and representative."</p>
+<p>"Meaning this lady?" I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who
+was now standing at the back of Daniel O'Neill's chair.</p>
+<p>"Possibly."</p>
+<p>"And what will she do with it?"</p>
+<p>"Do with it?"</p>
+<p>The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and
+trying to look perplexed.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Curphy, I'll ask you not to pretend to be unable to
+understand me. If and when this lady gets possession of Mary
+O'Neill's child, what is she going to do with it?"</p>
+<p>"Very well," said the advocate, seeing I meant business, "since
+my client permits me to speak, I'll tell you plainly. Whatever the
+child's actual parentage . . . perhaps you know best. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Go on, sir."</p>
+<p>"Whatever the child's parentage, it was born in wedlock. Even
+the recent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that. Therefore
+we hold that the child has a right to the inheritance which in due
+time should come to Mary O'Neill's offspring by the terms of the
+settlement upon her husband."</p>
+<p>It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at
+the thought of my darling's child in the hands of that
+frozen-hearted woman.</p>
+<p>"So that is the law, is it?"</p>
+<p>"That is the law in Ellan."</p>
+<p>"In the event of Mary O'Neill's death, and her father's death,
+her child and all its interests will come into the hands of. . .
+."</p>
+<p>"Of her father's heir and representative."</p>
+<p>"Meaning, again, this lady?"</p>
+<p>"Probably."</p>
+<p>The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless.</p>
+<p>"I don't know, sir," she said, "if your repeated references to
+me are intended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to
+bring up the child well and look after its interests properly."</p>
+<p>"They are, madam&mdash;they most certainly and assuredly are," I
+answered.</p>
+<p>"Daniel!" she cried.</p>
+<p>"Be quiet, gel," said Daniel O'Neill. "Let the man speak. We'll
+see what he has come for presently. Go on, sir."</p>
+<p>I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I
+understood things it was intended to appeal to the courts in order
+to recover (nominally for the child) succession to the money which
+had been settled on Mary O'Neill's husband at the time of their
+marriage, when the old man cried, struggling again to his feet:</p>
+<p>"There you are! The money! It's the money the man's after! He
+took my daughter, and now he's for taking my fortune&mdash;what's
+left of it, anyway. He shan't, though! No, by God he shan't! . . .
+Go back to your woman, sir. Do you hear me?&mdash;your woman, and
+tell her that neither you nor she shall touch one farthing of my
+fortune. I'm seeing to that now. It's what we're here for
+to-night&mdash;before that damnable operation to-morrow, for nobody
+knows what will come of it. She has defied me and ruined me, and
+made me the byword of the island, God's curse on her. . . ."</p>
+<p>"Daniel! Daniel!" cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify the
+infuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat.</p>
+<p>I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O'Neill
+could have been a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp
+of a thing with one foot in the grave. But I controlled myself as
+well as I could and said:</p>
+<p>"Mr. O'Neill, your daughter doesn't want your fortune, and as
+for myself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen
+sitting on a nest of addled eggs. Give it to the lady at the back
+of your chair&mdash;she has earned it, apparently."</p>
+<p>"Really," said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from
+Father Dan's onslaught. "Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this
+is too outrageous&mdash;that you should come to this lonely house
+at this time of night, interrupting most urgent business, not to
+speak of serious offices, and make injurious insinuations against
+the character of a respectable person&mdash;you, sir, who had the
+audacity to return openly to the island with the partner of your
+sin, and to lodge her in the house of your own mother&mdash;your
+own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kind of mother it can be
+who harbours her son's sin-laden mistress, his woman, as our sick
+friend says. . . ."</p>
+<p>Lord! how my hands itched! But controlling myself again, with a
+mighty effort I said:</p>
+<p>"Monsignor, I don't think I should advise you to say that
+again."</p>
+<p>"Why not, sir?"</p>
+<p>"Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be
+sorry to see it soiled."</p>
+<p>"Violence!" cried the Bishop, rising to his feet. "You threaten
+me with violence? . . . Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr.
+Curphy?"</p>
+<p>"There's one at the corner of the road, Bishop," I said. "I
+brought him along with me. I should have brought the High Bailiff
+too, if there had been time. You would perhaps be no worse for a
+few witnesses to the business that seems to be going on here."</p>
+<p>Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit
+harder than I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had
+also risen) dropped back into their seats and looked at each other
+with expressions of surprise.</p>
+<p>Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them,
+I said, as calmly and deliberately as I could:</p>
+<p>"Now listen to me. I am leaving this island in about three weeks
+time, and expect to be two years&mdash;perhaps three
+years&mdash;away. Mary O'Neill is going with me&mdash;as my wife.
+She intends to leave her child in the care of my mother, and I
+intend to promise her that she may set her mind at ease that it
+shall never under any circumstances be taken away. You seem to have
+made up your minds that she is going to die. Please God she may
+disappoint your expectations and come back strong and well. But if
+she does not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her
+child has been removed from the protection in which she left it, do
+you know what I shall do?"</p>
+<p>"Go to the courts, I presume," said the lawyer.</p>
+<p>"Oh dear, no! I'll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy. I'll go to the
+people who have set the courts in motion&mdash;which means that
+I'll go to <i>you</i> and <i>you</i> and <i>you</i> and <i>you</i>.
+Heaven knows how many of us may be living when that day comes; but
+as surely as I am, if I find that the promise I made to Mary
+O'Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is under this
+woman's control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man's
+money, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us
+there isn't one soul of you here present who will be alive the
+following morning."</p>
+<p>That seemed to be enough for all of them. Even old Daniel
+O'Neill (the only man in the house who had an ounce of fight in
+him) dropped his head back in his chair, with his mouth wide open
+and his broken teeth showing behind his discoloured lips.</p>
+<p>I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the
+trammon on "the street," but he had gone back to the Presbytery and
+sent Tommy the Mate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to
+the main road.</p>
+<p>The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business
+which had brought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour,
+and on parting from me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:</p>
+<p>"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming
+to him?"</p>
+<p>And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had
+one he answered:</p>
+<p>"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle
+some o' them big fellas."</p>
+<p>Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of
+the scene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not
+without precedent in the history of the world, though the
+priesthood as a whole is so pure and noble)&mdash;the midnight
+marriage of a man dying in unnatural hatred of his own daughter
+(and she the sweetest woman in the world) while the priest and the
+prostitute divided the spoils.</p>
+<p>[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER" id=
+"ONE_HUNDRED_AND_SIXTEENTH_CHAPTER"></a>ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH
+CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>JULY 25. The old doctor brought me such sad and startling news
+to-day. My poor father is dead&mdash;died yesterday, after an
+operation which he had deferred too long, refusing to believe it
+necessary.</p>
+<p>The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me
+but from everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from
+the failure of banks, &amp;c., which has brought the whole island
+to the verge of bankruptcy.</p>
+<p>He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's&mdash;very early,
+almost before daybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who
+wished to catch the first steamer <i>en route</i> for Rome.</p>
+<p>As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy
+that has surrounded my father's life of late, people are saying
+that he is not dead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he
+has escaped from the island (going off with the Bishop in a sort of
+disguise), and that the coffin put into the grave this morning did
+not contain a human body.</p>
+<p>"But that's all wrong," said the old doctor. "Your father is
+really dead and buried, and the strange man who went away with the
+Bishop was the London surgeon who performed the operation."</p>
+<p>I can hardly realise it&mdash;that the strong, stalwart being,
+the stern old lion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor
+mother's room, used to make the very house shake, is gone.</p>
+<p>He died as he had lived, it seems. To the last self-centred,
+inflexible, domineering&mdash;a peasant yet a great man (if
+greatness is to be measured by power), ranking, I think, in his own
+little scene of life with the tragic figures of history.</p>
+<p>I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child
+there has been a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like
+a beetling mountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether
+he wished to see me at the end. Perhaps he did, and was
+over-persuaded by the cold and savourless nature of Nessy MacLeod,
+who is giving it out, I hear, that grief and shame for me killed
+him.</p>
+<p>People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a
+snob&mdash;heaven knows what. All wrong! For the true reading of
+his character one has to go back to the day when he was a ragged
+boy and the liveried coachman of the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his
+mother on the road, and he swore that when he was a man she should
+have a carriage of her own, and then "nobody should never lash
+her."</p>
+<p>He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more
+willing than Tell to bend the knee to it.</p>
+<p>My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul,
+for either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will
+be with him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what
+it has been, I send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not
+my love, my forgiveness.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing
+when I told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would
+collapse if I failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it
+everything depended upon me. It is utterly frightening to think
+what would happen to the Expedition if he thought I could not sail
+with him on the sixteenth.</p>
+<p>Martin is not one of the men who weep for their wives as if the
+sun had suffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves
+are green. So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I
+am getting better every day, and shall be "ready to go, never
+fear," I have to keep it up.</p>
+<p>I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful
+actress after all. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him
+looking at me uneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort.
+At such moments I have to avoid his eyes lest anything should
+happen, for my great love seems to be always lying in wait to break
+down my make-believe.</p>
+<p>To-day (though I had resolved not to give way to tears) when he
+was talking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and
+how the invigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman
+of me," I cried:</p>
+<p>"How splendid! How glorious!"</p>
+<p>"Then why are you crying?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Oh, good gracious, that's nothing&mdash;for <i>me</i>," I
+answered.</p>
+<p>But if I am throwing dust in Martin's eyes I am deceiving nobody
+else, it seems. To-night after he and Dr. O'Sullivan had gone back
+to the "Plough," Father Dan came in to ask Christian Ann how she
+found me, and being answered rather sadly, I heard him say:</p>
+<p>"<i>Ugh cha nee!</i> [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a
+vapour which appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth
+away."</p>
+<p>And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some
+lobsters (he still declares they are the only food for invalids)
+and to ask "how's the lil woman now?" I heard him moaning, as he
+was going out:</p>
+<p>"There'll be no shelter for her this voyage, the <i>vogh!</i>
+She'll carry the sea in with her to the Head, I'm thinking."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 27. I <i>must</i> keep it up&mdash;I must, I must! To allow
+Martin's hopes and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough
+to kill me outright.</p>
+<p>I don't want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the
+impression that their highest impulse is the praise of achievement,
+and once they have done something all they've got to do next is to
+stay at home and talk about it. Martin is not like that.
+Exploration is a passion with him. The "lure of the little voices"
+and the "call of the Unknown" have been with him from the
+beginning, and they will be with him to the end.</p>
+<p>I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid
+to rest in the green peace of English earth&mdash;dear and sweet as
+that is to tamer natures, mine for instance. I can only think of
+that wild heroic soul going up to God from the broad white
+wilderness of the stormy South, and leaving his body under heaving
+hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a requiem over his
+grave.</p>
+<p>Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing
+heart make it impossible? Never, never, never!</p>
+<p>Moral&mdash;I'm going to get up every day&mdash;whatever my
+nurse may say.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 28. I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when
+Christian Ann, who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel
+between Aunt Bridget and Nessy MacLeod.</p>
+<p>It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father
+immediately before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all
+that is left, and as the estate includes the Big House she is
+"putting the law on" Aunt Bridget to obtain possession.</p>
+<p>Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for
+Betsy Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all
+her treatment of me&mdash;to be turned out of doors by her own
+step-daughter!</p>
+<p>When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said:</p>
+<p>"Chut! Sarves her right, I say! It's the black life the Big
+Woman lived before, and it's the black life she'll be living now,
+and her growing old, and the Death looking in on her."</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan
+has gone back with them. I thought he looked rather <i>wae</i> when
+he came to say good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of
+noise his voice was husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints)
+he talked about "returning for the tenth with all the boys,
+including Treacle."</p>
+<p>Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But
+I'm sure he loves me all the same&mdash;many, many people love me.
+I don't know what I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a
+great deal of love in my life now that I come to think of it.</p>
+<p>We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was
+tired at the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs
+to-night there was less laughter than usual, and I thought he
+looked serious as he set me down by the bed.</p>
+<p>I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"),
+but towards midnight the truth flashed upon me&mdash; I am becoming
+thinner and therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to
+notice it.</p>
+<p>Moral&mdash;I must try to walk upstairs in future.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 30. Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race
+between me and the Expedition&mdash;which shall come off
+first&mdash;and sometimes I am afraid I am going to be the
+loser!</p>
+<p>Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth&mdash;only seventeen days!
+I am expected to be married on the tenth&mdash;only eleven! Oh,
+Mary O'Neill, what a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look
+straight before you, dear, and don't be afraid.</p>
+<p>I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is
+crossing from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she
+intended, so I suppose Father Dan must have sent for her.</p>
+<p>I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A
+struggle between my religion and my love would he more than I could
+bear now.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after
+daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should
+come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!</p>
+<p>He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again,
+so he had taken me at my word.</p>
+<p>I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that
+he was utterly astonished&mdash;couldn't understand how I came to
+be alive&mdash;and said he would never again deny the truth of the
+old saying about dying of a broken heart, because I was clearly
+living by virtue of a whole one.</p>
+<p>I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out
+of the room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and
+whispered "<i>When?</i>"</p>
+<p>He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of
+God which no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word
+out of him which made me happy, or at least content.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far
+more sorrowful&mdash;dying of a broken heart, for example, and
+(whatever else is amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed,
+gloriously healed, after its bruises, so thank God for that,
+anyway!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought
+my darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said,
+and then covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my
+baby, and she said she had had to do the same&mdash;leaving me.
+"That's what we mothers come to&mdash;so many of us&mdash;but
+heaven is over all," she whispered.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a
+matter for much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of
+what the strange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day,
+not only in my tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace
+which nurse lent me to wrap about my throat.</p>
+<p>I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs
+leaning on nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and
+though he did not speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into
+his blue eyes was the same as on that last night at Castle Raa when
+he said something about a silvery fir-tree with its dark head
+against the sky.</p>
+<p>Oh, my own darling, I could wish to live for you, such as I am,
+if I could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than
+a help, if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not
+already answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His
+great; unalterable, irrevocable No!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last
+night, has been with me all day. I think she <i>knows</i>, for she
+has said nothing more about the convent&mdash;only (with her eyes
+so soft and tender) that she intends to remain with me a little
+while, having need of rest herself.</p>
+<p>To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously.
+This evening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she
+meant by that), she is willing to believe that he is a true man,
+and, notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a
+Christian gentleman.</p>
+<p>Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in
+the garden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn
+chattering in the field opposite), when I felt a tugging at my
+skirts, and who should it be but Isabel, who had been crawling
+along the dry grass plucking daisies, and now, dragging herself up
+to my side, emptied them into my lap.</p>
+<p>No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet
+it rather "touches me up," as Martin says, to see how one's vainest
+dreams seem to come to pass.</p>
+<p>I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he
+rattled away about Girlie having two other mothers
+now&mdash;Grandma, who would keep her while we were down South, and
+the Reverend Mother, who would take her to school when she was old
+enough.</p>
+<p>So there's nothing more to fear about baby.</p>
+<p>But what about Martin himself? Am I dealing fairly in allowing
+him to go on with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not
+to tell him the truth?</p>
+<p>This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some
+real sleep perhaps I could solve it.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough;
+nothing but exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was
+growing more than ever like my mother&mdash;that "sweet saint whom
+the Lord has made his own." I know what he means&mdash;like her as
+she was at the last.</p>
+<p>My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a
+child&mdash;a woman can see through and through him.</p>
+<p>Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel
+like baby when she is tired after walking round the chairs and
+comes to be nursed. What children we all are at the end&mdash;just
+children!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement
+to-day. It seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of
+some sort of censure from Rome through his Bishop&mdash;about his
+toleration of me, I suppose&mdash;but behold! it's the Bishop
+himself who has suffered censure, having been sent into quarantine
+at one of the Roman Colleges and forbidden to return to his
+diocese.</p>
+<p>And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor
+of Ellan, to be distributed by Father Dan!</p>
+<p>I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the
+dear Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a
+general thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to
+old St. Mary's and then Rosary and Benediction.</p>
+<p>It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my
+last day in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.</p>
+<p>How God governs everything!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on.
+This morning he told me he had bought the special license for our
+marriage, and this evening he showed me our tickets for
+Sydney&mdash;two berths, first cabin, steadiest part of the ship.
+Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew that I have had my ticket these
+many days, and that it is to take me out first on the Great
+Expedition&mdash;to the still bigger Unknown, the Everlasting Sea,
+the Immeasurable Eternity!</p>
+<p>I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I
+<i>can</i> be brave.</p>
+<p>I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how
+can I look into his face and say. . . .</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say
+things so much easier in a letter&mdash;I can, anyway. Even my
+voice affects me&mdash;swelling and falling when I am moved, like a
+billow on the ocean.</p>
+<p>I find my writing cannot any longer be done in a sitting
+position in bed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write
+lying down.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MARY O'NEILL'S LETTER TO MARTIN CONRAD</h2>
+<p><i>August 9th</i>, 6 A.M.</p>
+<p>MY OWN DARLING,&mdash;Strengthen yourself for what I am going to
+say. It will be very hard for you&mdash;I know that, dear.</p>
+<p>To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day
+week we were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we
+were to have reached Winter Quarters.</p>
+<p>But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with
+you to Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go
+anywhere from here. It is impossible, quite impossible.</p>
+<p>I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out
+for me. My great love&mdash;love for my mother, for my darling
+baby, and above all for you&mdash;has consumed me and I cannot live
+much longer.</p>
+<p>Forgive me for not telling you this before&mdash;for deceiving
+you by saying that I was getting better and growing stronger when I
+knew I was not. I used to think it was cowardice which kept me from
+telling you the truth, but I see now that it was love, too.</p>
+<p>I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this
+house of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it.
+You will try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive
+me for keeping you in the dark down to the very last moment.</p>
+<p>This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart
+to save you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did
+not think you would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that
+in the time to come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill,
+and now there is no other woman in the world for him." I should not
+be a woman if I did not feel like that&mdash;should I?</p>
+<p>But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been
+strong and had years and years still to live, what a life would
+have been before me&mdash;before both of us.</p>
+<p>We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I
+should never have been able to shake off the thought that the
+world, which would always be opening its arms to you, did not want
+me. That would be so, wouldn't it&mdash;after all I have gone
+through? The world never forgives a woman for the injuries it
+inflicts on her itself, and I have had too many wounds, darling, to
+stand by your side and be any help to you.</p>
+<p>Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything
+for love of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth
+and rank and ease, and therefore I will choose her before
+everything else in the world." But I know what would come to us in
+the end, dear, and I should always feel that your love for me had
+dragged you down, closed many of the doors of life to you. I should
+know that you were always hearing behind you the echoing footsteps
+of my fate, and that is the only thing I could not bear.</p>
+<p>Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this
+world&mdash;the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can
+never be man and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is
+there?</p>
+<p>Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you&mdash;that I
+think it a sin to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made
+my heart what it is must know that I am doing no wrong.</p>
+<p>And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to
+answer to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He
+will know that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were
+trying to control my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the
+right He gave me to be mistress of myself and sovereign of my
+soul.</p>
+<p><i>You</i> must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach
+yourself in any way, for when we stand together before God's
+footstool He will see that from the beginning I was yours and you
+were mine, and He will cover us with the wings of His loving
+mercy.</p>
+<p>Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what
+happened afterwards&mdash;first in Ellan and then in
+London&mdash;as, in any sense, a punishment. I have never done that
+at any time, and now I believe from the bottom of my heart that, if
+I suffered while you were away, it was not for my sin but my
+salvation.</p>
+<p>Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage,
+and if I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my
+soul would have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the
+souls of so many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and
+degrading husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is
+not dying, whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God
+for the sweet and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.</p>
+<p>All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I
+took my vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took
+it, or under whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in
+heaven.</p>
+<p>It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that
+stern Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation
+to it&mdash;you say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you,
+even if I wished to, which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw
+all such mistakes, and all the hardships that would come to many
+poor women (perhaps some men, too), as well as the wreck the world
+might fall to for want of this unyielding stay, when He issued his
+divine and irrevocable law that never under any circumstances
+should marriage be broken.</p>
+<p>Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His
+unsearchable wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn.</p>
+<p>Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon
+us! Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the
+Church which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment
+longer. The instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to
+where it belongs. If I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty
+years, this might be cold comfort, but I am not.</p>
+<p>Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and
+I cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite
+us! Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of
+death is passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will
+never end! So Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter!
+Don't you see that, dearest? One moment of parting&mdash;hardly a
+moment, perhaps&mdash;and then we shall be together through all
+Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How triumphant!</p>
+<p>Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe
+that in the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are
+in heaven. More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from
+this life I shall live with my dear ones who are still on earth.
+That is why I am willing to go&mdash;because I am sure that the
+moment I draw my last breath I shall be standing by your side.</p>
+<p>So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here
+for tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember&mdash;love
+is immortal.</p>
+<p>I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little
+longer&mdash;if things had been otherwise with both of us. I should
+like to live to see your book published and your work finished (I
+know it will be some day), and baby grow up to be a good girl and a
+beautiful one too (for that's something, isn't it?); and I should
+like to live a little longer for another reason, a woman's
+reason&mdash;simply to be loved, and to be told that I am loved,
+for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it said and is
+never tired of hearing it.</p>
+<p>But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully
+ungrateful to regret anything when we have so many reasons for
+thankfulness.</p>
+<p>And then about Girlie&mdash;I used to think it would be terrible
+(for me, I mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any
+clear memory of her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and
+love&mdash;only the cold, blank, unfilled by a face, which must be
+all that remains to most of those whose parents passed away while
+they were children. But I am not afraid of that now, because I know
+that in the future, when our little girl asks about her mother, you
+will describe me to her as <i>you</i> saw and remember me&mdash;and
+that will be <i>so</i> much sweeter and lovelier than I ever was,
+and it will be <i>such</i> a joy to think that my daughter sees me
+through her father's eyes.</p>
+<p>Besides, dearest, there is something still more
+thrilling&mdash;the thought that Girlie may grow to be like me
+(like what you <i>think</i> me), and that in the time to come she
+may startle you with undescribable resemblances, in her voice or
+smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some day,
+perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may
+touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it
+will seem to you as if Mary herself (<i>your</i> Mary) were by your
+side. Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy
+victory?</p>
+<p>Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any
+cold feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say
+to yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many
+waters cannot quench it."</p>
+<p>Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last
+few days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me
+his last volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have
+been his last poem I thought of you, dear:</p>
+<p>"<i>No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Greet the unseen with a
+cheer!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bid him forward, breast and back as
+either should be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Strive and thrive!' Cry
+'Speed,&mdash;fight on, fare ever</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">There as
+here!'"</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do
+that is just a little important&mdash;to give you this manuscript
+book, in which I have been writing every day (or rather every night
+since you found me in London.)</p>
+<p>You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no
+more on that subject.</p>
+<p>I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about
+myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time,
+and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets
+all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of
+some women as well.</p>
+<p>I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain
+and foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to
+show what a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever,
+she is denied the right God gave her of choosing the best for
+herself and her children.</p>
+<p>There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring
+the slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time
+certainly, and perhaps not even in Girlie's.</p>
+<p>And yet, why not?</p>
+<p>Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which
+thrilled me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you
+passed in the Antarctic Ocean&mdash;five hundred feet above the
+surface of the sea and therefore five hundred below it, going
+steadily on and on, against all the force of tempestuous wind and
+wave, by power of the current underneath.</p>
+<p>Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that,
+dearest? So perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie
+than it has been for me. And in any case, I shall always feel that,
+after all and in spite of everything, it has been glorious to be a
+woman.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for
+a little while, I want to write what I should like to say when I
+part from you to-morrow if I did not know that something in my
+throat would choke me.</p>
+<p>I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have
+never loved anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me
+from loving you to the last.</p>
+<p>I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me
+in return&mdash;all the way back from the time when I was a child.
+Oh, my dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you
+have brought into my life&mdash;every single day of it, joyful days
+and sorrowful ones, bright days and dark, but all shining with the
+glory of your love.</p>
+<p>Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy
+one. Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had
+happiness. And when I have not had happiness I have had something
+far higher and better&mdash;blessedness.</p>
+<p>I have had <i>such</i> joy in my life, dear&mdash;joy in the
+beauty of the world, in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and
+the flowers and the songs of the birds, and then (apart from the
+divine love that is too holy to speak about) in my religion, in my
+beloved Church, in the love of my dear mother and my sweet child,
+and above all&mdash;above all in <i>you</i>.</p>
+<p>I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to
+me, and if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for
+ever in the next.</p>
+<p>So good-bye, my dearest me&mdash;<i>just for a little
+moment</i>! My dearest one, Good-bye!</p>
+<p>MARY O'NEILL.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div>
+<h2>MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE<br />
+WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL</h2>
+</div>
+<p>AUGUST 9-10.</p>
+<p>It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He
+knows now. I almost think he has known all along.</p>
+<p>I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish
+lace about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in
+my mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual
+kind crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day)
+everybody said how much better I was looking.</p>
+<p>Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a
+little late in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with
+its clear air and quiet sunshine&mdash;one of those evenings when
+Nature is like a nun "breathless with adoration."</p>
+<p>Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time
+together we talked on the usual subjects&mdash;the High Bailiff,
+the special license, "the boys" of the <i>Scotia</i> who were
+coming over for my wedding, and how some of them would have to
+start out early in the morning.</p>
+<p>But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we
+felt, and I felt entirely happy&mdash;sitting there in my cushions,
+with my white hand in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes
+and ruddy face or up to the broad blue of the sky.</p>
+<p>The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St.
+Mary's Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and
+drop their heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the
+dew.</p>
+<p>Then we went back to the house&mdash;I walking firmly, by
+Martin's side, though I held his arm so close.</p>
+<p>The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room,
+and we could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her
+darling white cot&mdash;she sleeps with grandma now.</p>
+<p>The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book,
+which I had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the
+last pages first.</p>
+<p>Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know
+all about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I
+thought I had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had
+been playing a game of make-believe with me, and had known
+everything from the first. There was a certain relief in that, yet
+there was a certain sting in it, too. What strange creatures we
+are, we women!</p>
+<p>For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs,
+holding each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to
+break down as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that
+thrilling, swelling feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes
+into a woman's life, perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to
+strengthen the strong.</p>
+<p>It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great
+gentle arms about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said,
+<i>silently</i> but oh, so eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God
+bless you!"</p>
+<p>Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached
+the top he was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down
+to him, then walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then
+. . . down, all my strength gone in a moment.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was
+like a dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to
+make too much of it&mdash;to say that it was a vision or any
+supernatural manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks
+about. Perhaps it was only the result of memory operating on my
+past life, my thoughts and desires. But perhaps it was something
+higher and more spiritual, and God, for my comforting, has
+permitted me to look for one moment behind the veil.</p>
+<p>I thought it was to-morrow&mdash;my wedding day, and the day of
+Father Dan's thanksgiving celebration&mdash;and I was sitting by my
+French window (which was wide open) to look at the procession.</p>
+<p>I seemed to see everything&mdash;Father Dan in his surplice, the
+fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their
+Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows
+with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of
+the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking
+on from the bridge.</p>
+<p>I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to
+the church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to
+kneel on the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers
+which lean towards each other, their foundations having given
+way.</p>
+<p>Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang
+I sang also. I heard myself singing:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mater purissima,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ora pro
+nobis."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the
+Reverend Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her
+deep rich voice under mine:</p>
+<p>"<i>Mater castissima<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ora pro
+nobis."</span><br /></i></p>
+<p>Then I thought the <i>Ora</i> ended, and in the silence that
+followed it I heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel
+path below. I had closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I
+felt as if I were under some strange sweet an&aelig;sthetic which
+had taken away all pain but not all consciousness.</p>
+<p>Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift
+baby up to me, and say something about her.</p>
+<p>I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then
+there was darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody
+sobbing and Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother
+died:</p>
+<p>"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful
+paradise after all her suffering."</p>
+<p>After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices
+faded away, and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful,
+marvellous, celestial light, such as Martin describes when he
+speaks about the aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white
+snowy plateau, and Martin was walking by my side.</p>
+<p>How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my
+wedding. Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am
+glad now for his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his
+comrades about him he will control himself and be strong.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p>Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St.
+Mary's Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on
+the face of the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It
+is like the humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden
+and the swallows are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist
+is lying over the meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating
+between the earth and the sky.</p>
+<p>How beautiful the world is!</p>
+<p>Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun
+will come again and . . . there will be no more night.</p>
+<p>[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]</p>
+<p>MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD</p>
+<p>My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been
+hoping against hope&mdash;that the voyage would set her up, and the
+air of the Antarctic cure her.</p>
+<p>Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at
+me with her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I
+forgot all my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had
+never expected it.</p>
+<p>With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back
+to my room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into
+the next day&mdash;all her dear story, straight from her heart,
+written out in her small delicate, beautiful characters, with
+scarcely an erasure.</p>
+<p>No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I
+had never known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of,
+and could never repay her for now!</p>
+<p>How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my
+dear one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her
+sweet resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers
+so meekly (before the Divine Commandment), and to see that
+marriage, true marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world,
+it was not then that I thought anything about that.</p>
+<p>I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of
+civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been
+crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth,
+merely because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign
+of her soul."</p>
+<p>What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement
+of divine truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good
+time that was to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and
+straying womanhood, or the sufferings of neglected children, or the
+tragedies of the whole girlhood of the world? What did I care about
+anything but my poor martyred darling? The woman God gave me was
+mine and I could not give her up&mdash;not now, after all she had
+gone through.</p>
+<p>Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to
+Sunny Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the
+hearth-rug. My mother was silent and trying not to let me see her
+swollen eyes. My dear one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day
+long, the sleep of an angel. Strange and frightening fact, nobody
+being able to remember that she had ever been seen to sleep
+before!</p>
+<p>After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore
+where we had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored
+on the beach. The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of
+the Rock, which stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand,
+gloomy.</p>
+<p>Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into
+the quiet smoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull
+torpor by the hearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old
+man did not say a word to me. He put some turf on the fire and then
+sat on a three-legged stool at the other side of the
+hearth-place.</p>
+<p>Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred
+the peats and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening,
+when the rising sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man
+followed me to the door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he
+said:</p>
+<p>"She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye
+this&mdash;<i>she's fetching the harbour all right at
+last</i>."</p>
+<p>Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and
+saw a procession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's
+celebration of thanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel
+O'Neill's ill-gotten wealth sent back from Rome for the poor.</p>
+<p>Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod
+hedge and crossed a field until I came to a back gate to our
+garden, near to "William Rufus's" burial place&mdash;stone
+overgrown with moss, inscription almost obliterated.</p>
+<p>On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by
+her side.</p>
+<p>"How is she now?" I asked.</p>
+<p>She was awake&mdash;had been awake these two hours, but in a
+strange kind of wakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining
+like stars as if smiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and
+her lips moving as if speaking some words which nobody else could
+hear.</p>
+<p>"What art thou saying, <i>boght millish</i>?" my mother had
+asked, and after a moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture,
+my darling had answered:</p>
+<p>"Hush! I am speaking to mamma&mdash;telling her I am leaving
+Isabel with Christian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad."</p>
+<p>We walked round to the front of the house until we came close
+under the window of "Mary O'Neill's little room," which was wide
+open.</p>
+<p>The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation
+singing in the church and on the path in front of it.</p>
+<p>Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was my
+darling&mdash;in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never
+heard the like of in this world and never shall again.</p>
+<p>After a moment another voice joined hers&mdash;a deep voice, the
+Reverend Mother's.</p>
+<p>All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush
+had fallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my
+precious darling's last breath. The sun was going down, very red in
+its setting, and the sky was full of glory.</p>
+<p>When the singing came to an end baby was babbling in my mother's
+arms&mdash;"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma." I took her and held her up to the
+open window, crying:</p>
+<p>"Look, darling! Here's Girlie!"</p>
+<p>There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend
+Mother came to the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual,
+and her lips trembled. She did not speak, but she made the sign of
+the Cross.</p>
+<p>And by that . . . I knew.</p>
+<p>"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my
+cry."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE AUTHOR TO THE READER</h2>
+<p>I saw him off at Tilbury when he left England on his last
+Expedition. Already he was his own man once more. After the
+blinding, stunning effect of the great event there had been a quick
+recuperation. His spirit had risen to a wonderful strength and even
+a certain cheerfulness.</p>
+<p>I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was
+not merely that Time, the great assuager, had begun to do its work
+with him, but that he had brought himself to accept without qualm
+or question Mary O'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief)
+in the immortality of personal love, and was firmly convinced that,
+freed from the imprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every
+day and hour, and that as long as he lived she always would be.</p>
+<p>There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish,
+nothing unmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a
+steady soul and a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it
+braced a strong man for life to face Death in that way.</p>
+<p>As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I
+thought he was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic,
+in expectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening
+region.</p>
+<p>As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear
+down the Thames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the
+South Pole, and finish his task there, than that the sun would rise
+the following morning.</p>
+<p>Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward."</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR</h2>
+<p>WIRELESS&mdash;ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (<i>via</i> MACQUARIE ISLAND
+AND RADIO HOBART 16).</p>
+<p>Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a
+breath of wind. Sun never going down. Constellations revolving
+without dipping. Feel as if we can see the movement of the world.
+Start south to-morrow. Calmer than I have ever been since She was
+taken from me. But She was right. She is here. "Love is stronger
+than death, many waters cannot quench it."</p>
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woman Thou Gavest Me
+       Being the Story of Mary O'Neill
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: January 4, 2005 [EBook #14597]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Woman
+Thou Gavest Me
+
+Being the Story of Mary O'Neill
+
+By HALL CAINE
+
+Author of "The Prodigal Son," Etc.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Published August, 1913
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
+
+_How much of the story of Mary O'Neill is a work of my own imagination,
+and how much comes from an authentic source I do not consider it
+necessary to say. But as I have in this instance drawn more largely and
+directly from fact than is usually the practice of the novelist, I have
+thought it my duty to defeat all possible attempts at personal
+identification by altering and disguising the more important scenes and
+characters. Therefore this novel is not to be understood as referring to
+any living person or persons, and the convent school described in it is
+not to be identified with any similar educational institution in Rome_.
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR
+
+_Here are the Memoranda we have talked about. Do as you like with them.
+Alter, amend, add to or take away from them, exactly as you think best.
+They were written in the first instance for my own eye alone, and hence
+they take much for granted which may need explanation before they can be
+put to the more general uses you have designed for them. Make such
+explanation in any way you consider suitable. It is my wish that in this
+matter your judgment should be accepted as mine. The deep feeling you
+could not conceal when I told you the story of my dear one's life gives
+me confidence in your discretion.
+
+Whatever the immediate effect may be, I feel that in the end I shall be
+justified--fully justified--in allowing the public to look for a little
+while into the sacred confessional of my darling's stainless heart.
+
+I heard her voice again to-day. She was right--love is immortal. God
+bless her! My ever lovely and beloved one!_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL
+
+                                   PAGE
+     FIRST PART: MY GIRLHOOD          1
+     SECOND PART: MY MARRIAGE        97
+     THIRD PART: MY HONEYMOON       135
+     FOURTH PART: I FALL IN LOVE    210
+     FIFTH PART: I BECOME A MOTHER  308
+     SIXTH PART: I AM LOST          401
+     SEVENTH PART: I AM FOUND       505
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE: _The name Raa (of Celtic origin with many variations
+among Celtic races) is pronounced Rah in Ellan._
+
+
+
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL
+
+
+FIRST PART
+
+MY GIRLHOOD
+
+FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+"Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths," begins the most
+beautiful of the services of our church, and it is out of the depths of
+my life that I must bring the incidents of this story.
+
+I was an unwanted child--unwanted as a girl at all events. Father Dan
+Donovan, our parish priest, told me all about it. I was born in October.
+It had been raining heavily all day long. The rain was beating hard
+against the front of our house and running in rivers down the
+window-panes. Towards four in the afternoon the wind rose and then the
+yellow leaves of the chestnuts in the long drive rustled noisily, and
+the sea, which is a mile away, moaned like a dog in pain.
+
+In my father's room, on the ground floor, Father Dan sat by the fire,
+fingering his beads and listening to every sound that came from my
+mother's room, which was immediately overhead. My father himself, with
+his heavy step that made the house tremble, was tramping to and fro,
+from the window to the ingle, from the ingle to the opposite wall.
+Sometimes Aunt Bridget came down to say that everything was going on
+well, and at intervals of half an hour Doctor Conrad entered in his
+noiseless way and sat in silence by the fire, took a few puffs from a
+long clay pipe and then returned to his charge upstairs.
+
+My father's impatience was consuming him.
+
+"It's long," he said, searching the doctor's face.
+
+"Don't worry--above all don't worry," said Father Dan.
+
+"There's no need," said Doctor Conrad.
+
+"Then hustle back and get it over," said my father. "It will be five
+hundred dollars to you if this comes off all right."
+
+I think my father was a great man at that time. I think he is still a
+great man. Hard and cruel as he may have been to me, I feel bound to
+say that for him. If he had been born a king, he would have made his
+nation feared and perhaps respected throughout the world. He was born a
+peasant, the poorest of peasants, a crofter. The little homestead of his
+family, with its whitewashed walls and straw-thatched roof, still stands
+on the bleak ayre-lands of Ellan, like a herd of mottled cattle
+crouching together in a storm.
+
+His own father had been a wild creature, full of daring dreams, and the
+chief of them had centred in himself. Although brought up in a mud
+cabin, and known as Daniel Neale, he believed that he belonged by lineal
+descent to the highest aristocracy of his island, the O'Neills of the
+Mansion House (commonly called the Big House) and the Barons of Castle
+Raa. To prove his claim he spent his days in searching the registers of
+the parish churches, and his nights in talking loudly in the village
+inn. Half in jest and half in earnest, people called him "Neale the
+Lord." One day he was brought home dead, killed in a drunken quarrel
+with Captain O'Neill, a dissolute braggart, who had struck him over the
+temple with a stick. His wife, my grandmother, hung a herring net across
+the only room of her house to hide his body from the children who slept
+in the other bed.
+
+There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she had to
+fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficient
+living she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours. It was
+ill-paid labour--ninepence a day fine days and sixpence all weathers,
+with a can of milk twice a week and a lump of butter thrown in now and
+then. The ways were hard and the children were the first to feel them.
+Five of them died. "They weren't willing to stay with me," she used to
+say. My father alone was left to her, and he was another Daniel. As he
+grew up he was a great help to his mother. I feel sure he loved her.
+Difficult as it may be to believe it now, I really and truly think that
+his natural disposition was lovable and generous to begin with.
+
+There is a story of his boyhood which it would be wrong of me not to
+tell. His mother and he had been up in the mountains cutting gorse and
+ling, which with turf from the Curragh used to be the crofter's only
+fuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it by a straw rope when,
+dipping into the high road by a bridge, they crossed the path of a
+splendid carriage which swirled suddenly out of the drive of the Big
+House behind two high-spirited bays driven by an English coachman in
+gorgeous livery. The horses reared and shied at the bundle of kindling,
+whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and then
+the brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip,
+struck the boy on his naked legs.
+
+At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the head of
+the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain
+O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing.
+But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his
+eyes with his ragged sleeve and said:
+
+"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a
+man, and then nobody shall never lash you."
+
+His mother died. He was twenty years of age at that time, a
+large-limbed, lusty-lunged fellow, almost destitute of education but
+with a big brain and an unconquerable will; so he strapped his chest and
+emigrated to America. What work he found at first I never rightly knew.
+I can only remember to have heard that it was something dangerous to
+human life and that the hands above him dropped off rapidly. Within two
+years he was a foreman. Within five years he was a partner. In ten years
+he was a rich man. At the end of five-and-twenty years he was a
+millionaire, controlling trusts and corporations and carrying out great
+combines.
+
+I once heard him say that the money tumbled into his chest like crushed
+oats out of a crown shaft, but what happened at last was never fully
+explained to me. Something I heard of a collision with the law and of a
+forced assignment of his interests. All that is material to my story is
+that at forty-five years of age he returned to Ellan. He was then a
+changed man, with a hard tongue, a stern mouth, and a masterful lift of
+the eyebrows. His passion for wealth had left its mark upon him, but the
+whole island went down before his face like a flood, and the people who
+had made game of his father came crawling to his feet like cockroaches.
+
+The first thing he did on coming home was to buy up his mother's croft,
+re-thatch the old house, and put in a poor person to take care of it.
+
+"Guess it may come handy some day," he said.
+
+His next act was worthy of the son of "Neale the Lord." Finding that
+Captain O'Neill had fallen deeply into debt, he bought up the braggart's
+mortgages, turned him out of the Big House, and took up his own abode in
+it.
+
+Twelve months later he made amends, after his own manner, by marrying
+one of the Captain's daughters. There were two of them. Isabel, the
+elder, was a gentle and beautiful girl, very delicate, very timid, and
+most sweet when most submissive, like the woodland herbs which give out
+their sweetest fragrance when they are trodden on and crushed. Bridget,
+the younger, was rather homely, rather common, proud of her strength of
+mind and will.
+
+To the deep chagrin of the younger sister, my father selected the elder
+one. I have never heard that my mother's wishes were consulted. Her
+father and my father dealt with the marriage as a question of business,
+and that was an end of the matter. On the wedding day my father did two
+things that were highly significant. He signed the parish register in
+the name of Daniel O'Neill by right of Letters Patent; and on taking his
+bride back to her early home, he hoisted over the tower of his chill
+grey house the stars and stripes of his once adopted country stitched to
+the flag of his native island. He had talked less than "Neale the Lord,"
+but he had thought and acted more.
+
+Two years passed without offspring, and my father made no disguise of
+his disappointment, which almost amounted to disgust. Hitherto he had
+occupied himself with improvements in his house and estate, but now his
+restless energies required a wider field, and he began to look about
+him. Ellan was then a primitive place, and its inhabitants, half
+landsmen, half seamen, were a simple pious race living in a sweet
+poverty which rarely descended into want. But my father had magnificent
+schemes for it. By push, energy and enterprise he would galvanise the
+island into new life, build hotels, theatres, casinos, drinking halls
+and dancing palaces, lay out race-courses, construct electric railways
+to the tops of the mountains, and otherwise transform the place into a
+holiday resort for the people of the United Kingdom.
+
+"We'll just sail in and make this old island hum," he said, and a number
+of his neighbours, nothing loth to be made rich by magic--advocates,
+bankers and insular councillors--joined hands with him in his
+adventurous schemes.
+
+But hardly had he begun when a startling incident happened. The old Lord
+Raa of Castle Raa, head of the O'Neills, the same that had sworn at my
+grandmother, after many years in which he had lived a bad life abroad
+where he had contracted fatal maladies, returned to Ellan to die. Being
+a bachelor, his heir would have been Captain O'Neill, but my mother's
+father had died during the previous winter, and in the absence of direct
+male issue it seemed likely that both title and inheritance (which, by
+the conditions of an old Patent, might have descended to the nearest
+living male through the female line) would go to a distant relative, a
+boy, fourteen years of age, a Protestant, who was then at school at
+Eton.
+
+More than ever now my father chewed the cud of his great disappointment.
+But it is the unexpected that oftenest happens, and one day in the
+spring, Doctor Conrad, being called to see my mother, who was
+indisposed, announced that she was about to bear a child.
+
+My father's delight was almost delirious, though at first his happiness
+was tempered by the fear that the child that was to be born to him might
+not prove a boy. Even this danger disappeared from his mind after a
+time, and before long his vanity and his unconquerable will had so
+triumphed over his common sense that he began to speak of his unborn
+child as a son, just as if the birth of a male child had been
+prearranged. With my mother, with Doctor Conrad, and above all with
+Father Dan, he sometimes went the length of discussing his son's name.
+It was to be Hugh, because that had been the name of the heads of the
+O'Neills through all the ages, as far back as the legendary days in
+which, as it was believed, they had been the Kings of Ellan.
+
+My mother was no less overjoyed. She had justified herself at last, and
+if she was happy enough at the beginning in the tingling delight of the
+woman who is about to know the sweetest of human joys, the joy of
+bearing a child, she acquiesced at length in the accepted idea that her
+child would be a boy. Perhaps she was moved to this merely by a desire
+to submit to her husband's will, and to realise his hopes and
+expectations. Or perhaps she had another reason, a secret reason, a
+reason that came of her own weakness and timidity as a woman, namely,
+that the man child to be born of her would be strong and brave and free.
+
+All went well down to the end of autumn, and then alarming news came
+from Castle Raa. The old lord had developed some further malady and was
+believed to be sinking rapidly. Doctor Conrad was consulted and he gave
+it as his opinion that the patient could not live beyond the year. This
+threw my father into a fever of anxiety. Sending for his advocate, he
+took counsel both with him and with Father Dan.
+
+"Come now, let us get the hang of this business," he said; and when he
+realised that (according to the terms of the ancient Patent) if the old
+lord died before his child was born, his high-built hopes would be in
+the dust, his eagerness became a consuming fire.
+
+For the first time in his life his excitement took forms of religion and
+benevolence. He promised that if everything went well he would give a
+new altar to Our Lady's Chapel in the parish church of St. Mary, a ton
+of coals to every poor person within a radius of five miles, and a
+supper to every inhabitant of the neighbouring village who was more than
+sixty years of age. It was even rumoured that he went so far in secret
+as to provide funds for the fireworks with which some of his flatterers
+were to celebrate the forthcoming event, and that one form of
+illumination was a gigantic frame which, set upon the Sky Hill,
+immediately in front of our house, was intended to display in brilliant
+lights the glowing words "God Bless the Happy Heir." Certainly the birth
+was to be announced by the ringing of the big bell of the tower as
+signal to the country round about that the appointed festivities might
+begin.
+
+Day by day through September into October, news came from Castle Raa by
+secret channels. Morning by morning, Doctor Conrad was sent for to see
+my mother. Never had the sun looked down on a more gruesome spectacle.
+It was a race between the angel of death and the angel of life, with my
+father's masterful soul between, struggling to keep back the one and to
+hasten on the other.
+
+My father's impatience affected everybody about him. Especially it
+communicated itself to the person chiefly concerned. The result was just
+what might have been expected. My mother was brought to bed prematurely,
+a full month before her time.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+By six o'clock the wind had risen to the force of a hurricane. The last
+of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare
+branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder
+than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore,
+was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the
+clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of
+billows over the port-holes of a ship at sea.
+
+"Pity for the poor folk with their fireworks," said Father Dan.
+
+"They'll eat their suppers for all that," said my father.
+
+It was now dark, but my father would not allow the lamps to be lighted.
+There was therefore no light in his gaunt room except a sullen glow from
+the fire of peat and logs. Sometimes, in a momentary lull of the storm,
+an intermittent moan would come from the room above, followed by a dull
+hum of voices.
+
+"Guess it can't be long now," my father would say.
+
+"Praise the Lord," Father Dan would answer.
+
+By seven the storm was at its height. The roaring of the wind in the
+wide chimney was as loud as thunder. Save for this the thunderous noise
+of the sea served to drown all sounds on the land. Nevertheless, in the
+midst of the clamour a loud rapping was heard at the front door. One of
+the maid-servants would have answered it, but my father called her back
+and, taking up a lantern, went to the door himself. As quietly as he
+could for the rush of wind without, he opened it, and pulling it after
+him, he stepped into the porch.
+
+A man in livery was there on horseback, with another saddled horse
+beside him. He was drenched through, but steaming with sweat as if he
+had ridden long and hard. Shouting above the roar of the storm, he said:
+
+"Doctor Conrad is here, is he?"
+
+"He is--what of it?" said my father.
+
+"Tell him he's wanted and must come away with me at once."
+
+"Who says he must?"
+
+"Lord Raa. His lordship is dangerously ill. He wishes to see the doctor
+immediately."
+
+I think my father must then have gone through a moment of fierce
+conflict between his desire to keep the old lord alive and his hope of
+the immediate birth of his offspring. But his choice was quickly made.
+
+"Tell the lord," he cried, "that a woman is here in child-birth, and
+until she's delivered the doctor cannot come to him."
+
+"But I've brought a horse, and the doctor is to go back with me."
+
+"Give the lord my message and say it is Daniel O'Neill who sends it."
+
+"But his lordship is dying and unless the doctor is there to tap him, he
+may not live till morning."
+
+"Unless the doctor is here to deliver my wife, my child may be dead
+before midnight."
+
+"What is the birth of your child to the death of his lordship?" cried
+the man; but, before the words were well out of his mouth, my father, in
+his great strength, had laid hold of the reins and swung both horse and
+rider round about.
+
+"Get yourself to the other side of my gate, or I'll fling you into the
+road," he cried; and then, returning to the porch, he re-entered the
+house and clashed the door behind him.
+
+Father Dan used to say that for some moments more the groom from Castle
+Raa could be heard shouting the name of the doctor to the lighted
+windows of my mother's room. But his voice was swirled away in the
+whistling of the wind, and after a while the hoofs of his horses went
+champing over the gravel in the direction of the gate.
+
+When my father returned to his room, shaking the rain from his hair and
+beard, he was fuming with indignation. Perhaps a memory of forty years
+ago was seething in his excited brain.
+
+"The old scoundrel," he said. "He'd like it, wouldn't he? They'd all
+like it! Which of them wants a son of mine amongst them?"
+
+The roaring night outside became yet more terrible. So loud was the
+noise from the shore that it was almost as if a wild beast were trying
+to liberate itself from the womb of the sea. At one moment Aunt Bridget
+came downstairs to say that the storm was frightening my mother. All the
+servants of the house were gathered in the hall, full of fear, and
+telling each other superstitious stories.
+
+Suddenly there came a lull. Rain and wind seemed to cease in an instant.
+The clamour of the sea became less and the tolling of the bell on St.
+Mary's Rock died away in the distance. It was almost as if the world,
+which had been whirling through space, suddenly stood still.
+
+In that moment of silence a deeper moan than usual came from the room
+overhead. My father dropped into a chair, clasped his hands and closed
+his eyes. Father Dan rattled his pearl beads and moved his lips, but
+uttered no sound.
+
+Then a faint sound came from the room overhead. My father opened his
+eyes and listened. Father Dan held his breath. The sound was repeated,
+but louder, clearer, shriller than before. There could be no mistaking
+it now. It was Nature's eternal signal that out of the womb of silence a
+living soul had been born into the world.
+
+"It's over," said my father.
+
+"Glory be to God and all the Saints!" said Father Dan.
+
+"That'll beat 'em," cried my father, and he leapt to his feet and
+laughed.
+
+Going to the door of the room, he flung it open. The servants in the
+hall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the gardener, Tom
+Dug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and asked if he ought
+to ring the big bell.
+
+"Certainly," said my father. "Isn't that what you've been standing by
+for?"
+
+A few minutes later the bell of the tower began to ring, and it was
+followed almost immediately by the bell of our parish church, which rang
+out a merry peal.
+
+"That'll beat 'em, I say," cried my father, and laughing in his triumph
+he tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than ever.
+
+All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a confused
+rumble of voices overhead. My father stopped, his face straightened, and
+his voice, which had rung out like a horn, wheezed back like a whistle.
+
+"What's going doing? Where's Conrad? Why doesn't Conrad come to me?"
+
+"Don't worry. He'll be down presently," said Father Dan.
+
+A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing heard, and
+then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the foot
+of the staircase and shouted the doctor's name.
+
+A moment later the doctor's footsteps were heard on the stone stairs.
+They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps. Then the doctor
+entered my father's room. Even in the sullen light of the peat fire his
+face was white, ashen white. He did not speak at first, and there was an
+instant of silence, dead silence. Then my father said:
+
+"Well, what is it?"
+
+"It is . . ."
+
+"Speak man! . . . Do you mean it is . . . _dead?_"
+
+"No! Oh no! Not that."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"It is a girl."
+
+"A gir . . . Did you say a girl?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"My God!" said my father, and he dropped back into the chair. His lips
+were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became fixed
+on the dying fire in a stupid stare.
+
+Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody's
+crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girls
+were the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly
+pilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had
+been born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.
+
+All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to
+be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the
+firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for
+the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "God
+Bless the Happy Heir."
+
+In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth
+stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.
+
+"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think
+of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may
+not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet
+of the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be without
+women? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Think
+of the Holy Virgin herself. . . ."
+
+"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet, he
+began to curse and swear.
+
+"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put out
+those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell trying
+to laugh at me?"
+
+With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out of
+the room.
+
+My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floor
+between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed. She
+felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain she
+turned to the wall and fainted.
+
+The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches of
+the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwards
+the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possession
+of his inheritance.
+
+But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like an
+account that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers and
+insular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old island
+into new life.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Out of the mist and veil of my own memory, as distinguished from Father
+Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing a big
+bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an
+image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a
+sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp.
+
+When I came to recognise and to classify I realised that this was my
+mother's room, and that the sweet somebody who used to catch me up in
+her arms when I went tottering on voyages of discovery round the vast
+place was my mother herself, and that she would comfort me when I fell,
+and stroke my head with her thin white hand, while she sang softly and
+rocked me to and fro.
+
+As I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother in any other
+part of our house, or indeed in any other place except our carriage when
+we drove out in the sunshine, I conclude that from the time of my birth
+she had been an invalid.
+
+Certainly the faces which first emerge from the islands of my memory are
+the cheerful and sunny ones of Doctor Conrad and Father Dan. I recall
+the soft voice of the one as he used to enter our room after breakfast
+saying, "How are we this morning ma'am?" And I remember the still softer
+voice of the other as he said "And how is my daughter to-day?"
+
+I loved both of them, but especially Father Dan, who used to call me his
+Nanny and say I was the plague and pet of his life, being as full of
+mischief as a goat. He must have been an old child himself, for I have
+clear recollection of how, immediately after confessing my mother, he
+would go down on all fours with me on the floor and play at
+hide-and-seek around the legs of the big bed, amid squeals and squeaks
+of laughter. I remember, too, that he wore a long sack coat which
+buttoned close at the neck and hung loose at the skirts, where there
+were two large vertical pockets, and that these pockets were my
+cupboards and drawers, for I put my toys and my doll and even the
+remnants of my cakes into them to be kept in safe custody until wanted
+again.
+
+My mother called me Mally veen (Mary dear) and out of love of her only
+child she must have weaned me late, for I have vague memories of her
+soft white breasts filled with milk. I slept in a little wickerwork cot
+placed near her bed, so that she could reach me if I uncovered myself in
+the night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlike
+in my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remember
+myself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and
+chirping about our chill and rather cheerless house.
+
+If I was like a bird my mother was like a flower. Her head, which was
+small and fair, and her face, which was nearly always tinged with
+colour, drooped forward from her delicate body like a rose from its
+stalk. She was generally dressed in black, I remember, but she wore a
+white lace collar as well as a coif such as we see in old pictures, and
+when I call her back to my mind, with her large liquid eyes and her
+sweet soft mouth, I think it cannot be my affection alone, or the magic
+of my childish memory, which makes me think, after all these years and
+all the countries I have travelled in, and all the women I have seen,
+that my darling mother, though so little known and so little loved, was
+the most beautiful woman in the world.
+
+Even yet I cannot but wonder that other people, my father especially,
+did not see her with my eyes. I think he was fond of her after his own
+fashion, but there was a kind of involuntary contempt in his affection,
+which could not conceal itself from my quick little eyes. She was
+visibly afraid of him, and was always nervous and timid when he came
+into our room with his customary salutation,
+
+"How now, Isabel? And how's this child of yours?"
+
+From my earliest childhood I noticed that he always spoke of me as if I
+had been my mother's child, not his, and perhaps this affected my
+feeling for him from the first.
+
+I was in terror of his loud voice and rough manner, the big bearded man
+with the iron grey head and the smell of the fresh air about his thick
+serge clothes. It was almost as if I had conceived this fear before my
+birth, and had brought it out of the tremulous silence of my mother's
+womb.
+
+My earliest recollections are of his muffled shout from the room below,
+"Keep your child quiet, will you?" when I was disturbing him over his
+papers by leaping and skipping about the floor. If he came upstairs when
+I was in bed I would dive under the bedclothes, as a duck dives under
+water, and only come to the surface when he was gone. I am sure I never
+kissed my father or climbed on to his knee, and that during his short
+visits to our room I used to hold my breath and hide my head behind my
+mother's gown.
+
+I think my mother must have suffered both from my fear of my father and
+from my father's indifference to me, for she made many efforts to
+reconcile him to my existence. Some of her innocent schemes, as I recall
+them now, seem very sweet but very pitiful. She took pride, for
+instance, in my hair, which was jet black even when I was a child, and
+she used to part it in the middle and brush it smooth over my forehead
+in the manner of the Madonna, and one day, when my father was with us,
+she drew me forward and said:
+
+"Don't you think our Mary is going to be very pretty? A little like the
+pictures of Our Lady, perhaps--don't you think so, Daniel?"
+
+Whereupon my father laughed rather derisively and answered:
+
+"Pretty, is she? Like the Virgin, eh? Well, well!"
+
+I was always fond of music, and my mother used to teach me to sing to a
+little upright piano which she was allowed to keep in her room, and on
+another day she said:
+
+"Do you know our Mary has such a beautiful voice, dear? So sweet and
+pure that when I close my eyes I could almost think it is an angel
+singing."
+
+Whereupon my father laughed as before, and answered:
+
+"A voice, has she? Like an angel's, is it? What next, I wonder?"
+
+My mother made most of my clothes. There was no need for her to do so,
+but in the absence of household duties I suppose it stimulated the
+tenderness which all mothers feel in covering the little limbs they
+love; and one day, having made a velvet frock for me, from a design in
+an old pattern book of coloured prints, which left the legs and neck and
+arms very bare, she said:
+
+"Isn't our Mary a little lady? But she will always look like a lady,
+whatever she is dressed in."
+
+And then my father laughed still more contemptuously and replied,
+
+"Her grandmother weeded turnips in the fields though--ninepence a day
+dry days, and sixpence all weathers."
+
+My mother was deeply religious, never allowing a day to pass without
+kneeling on her prayer-stool before the image of the Virgin, and one day
+I heard her tell my father that when I was a little mite, scarcely able
+to speak, she found me kneeling in my cot with my doll perched up before
+me, moving my lips as if saying my prayers and looking up at the ceiling
+with a rapt expression.
+
+"But she has always had such big, beautiful, religious eyes, and I
+shouldn't wonder if she becomes a Nun some day!"
+
+"A nun, eh? Maybe so. But I take no stock in the nun business anyway,"
+said my father.
+
+Whereupon my mother's lips moved as if she were saying "No, dearest,"
+but her dear, sweet pride was crushed and she could go no farther.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There was a whole colony on the ground floor of our house who, like my
+father, could not reconcile themselves to my existence, and the head of
+them was Aunt Bridget.
+
+She had been married, soon after the marriage of my mother, to one
+Colonel MacLeod, a middle-aged officer on half-pay, a widower, a Belfast
+Irishman, and a tavern companion of my maternal grandfather. But the
+Colonel had died within a year, leaving Aunt Bridget with one child of
+her own, a girl, as well as a daughter of his wife by the former
+marriage. As this happened about the time of my birth, when it became
+obvious that my mother was to be an invalid, my father invited Aunt
+Bridget to come to his house as housekeeper, and she came, and brought
+her children with her.
+
+Her rule from the outset had been as hard as might have been expected
+from one who prided herself on her self-command--a quality that covered
+everybody, including my mother and me, and was only subject to softening
+in favour of her own offspring.
+
+Aunt Bridget's own daughter, a year older than myself, was a fair child
+with light grey eyes, round cheeks of the colour of ripe apples, and
+long yellow hair that was carefully combed and curled. Her name was
+Betsy, which was extended by her mother to Betsy Beauty. She was usually
+dressed in a muslin frock with a sash of light blue ribbon, and being
+understood to be delicate was constantly indulged and nearly always
+eating, and giving herself generally the airs of the daughter of the
+house.
+
+Aunt Bridget's step-daughter, ten years older, was a gaunt, ungainly
+girl with red hair and irregular features. Her name was Nessy, and,
+having an instinctive sense of her dependent position, she was very
+humble and subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to say, "as smooth as
+an old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers, which always meant my Aunt,
+but spiteful, insolent, and acrid to anybody who was outside my Aunt's
+favour, which usually meant me.
+
+Between my cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which Nessy
+MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my poor
+mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I was a
+wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing how
+disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was being brought up.
+
+These skirmishes went on for a considerable time without consequences,
+but they came at last to a foolish climax which led to serious results.
+
+Even my mother's life had its gleams of sunshine, and flowers were a
+constant joy to her. Old Tommy, the gardener, was aware of this, and
+every morning sent up a bunch of them, freshly cut and wet with the dew.
+But one day in the spring he could not do so, being out in the dubs of
+the Curragh, cutting peat for the fires. Therefore I undertook to supply
+the deficiency, having already, with the large solemnity of six, begun
+to consider it my duty to take charge of my mother.
+
+"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you," I said (every _f_
+being an _s_ in those days), and armed with a pair of scissors I skipped
+down to the garden.
+
+I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant, and
+was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who had been
+watching from a window, came bouncing down me.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked,
+underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you know
+this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"
+
+I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the Mate,
+but Nessy would hear no such explanation.
+
+"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that your
+Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be done
+without her."
+
+Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little heart
+there had long been a secret pang of mortified pride--how born I do not
+know--at seeing Aunt Bridget take the place of my mother, and now,
+choking with vexation but without saying a word, I swept off the heads
+of all the flowers in the bed, and with my arms full of them--ten times
+more than I wanted--I sailed back to my mother's room.
+
+Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was doomed to
+punishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt Bridget kept
+suspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs, but it was my
+poor mother who paid the penalty.
+
+"Isabel," cried Aunt Bridget, "I hope you are satisfied with your child
+at last."
+
+"What has Mary been doing now, dear?" said my mother.
+
+"Don't ask me what she has been doing. You know quite well, or if you
+don't you ought to."
+
+My mother glanced at the flowers and she seemed to understand what had
+happened, for her face fell and she said submissively,
+
+"Mary has done wrong, but I am sure she is sorry and will never do it
+again."
+
+"Sorry, indeed!" cried my Aunt. "Not she sorry. And she'll do it again
+at the very next opportunity. The vixen! The little wilful, underhand
+vixen! But what wonder if children go wrong when their own mothers
+neglect to correct them."
+
+"I daresay you are quite right, dear Bridget--you are always right,"
+said my mother in a low, grave voice. "But then I'm not very well, and
+Mary is all I have, you know."
+
+My mother was in tears by this time, but Aunt Bridget was not content
+with her triumph. Sweeping downstairs she carried her complaint to my
+father, who ordered that I was to be taken out of my mother's charge on
+the ground that she was incapable of attending to my upbringing--a task
+which, being assigned to my Aunt Bridget, provided that I should
+henceforward live on the ground floor and eat oaten cake and barley
+bonnag and sleep alone in the cold room over the hall while Betsy Beauty
+ate wheaten bread and apple tart and slept with her mother in the room
+over the kitchen in which they always kept a fire.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The altered arrangements were a cause of grief to my mother, but I am
+bound to confess that for me they had certain compensations. One of them
+was the greater ease with which I could slip out to Tommy the Mate, who
+had been a sailor before he was a gardener, and was still a fine old
+salt, with grizzled beard and shaggy eyebrows, and a merry twinkle in
+what he called his "starboard" eye.
+
+I think Tommy was one of the few about my father's house who were really
+fond of me, but perhaps that was mainly because he loathed aunt Bridget.
+He used to call her the Big Woman, meaning that she was the master and
+mistress of everything and everybody about the place. When he was told
+of any special piece of her tyranny to servant or farmhand he used to
+say: "Aw, well, she'll die for all"; and when he heard how she had
+separated me from my mother, who had nothing else to love or live for,
+he spat sideways out of his mouth and said:
+
+"Our Big Woman is a wicked devil, I'm thinking, and I wouldn't trust
+[shouldn't wonder] but she'll burn in hell."
+
+What definite idea I attached to this denunciation I do not now recall,
+but I remember that it impressed me deeply, and that many a night
+afterwards, during the miserable half-hours before I fell asleep with my
+head under the clothes in the cold bedroom over the hall to which (as
+Nessy MacLeod had told me) the bad fairies came for bad children, I
+repeated the strange words again and again.
+
+Another compensation was the greater opportunity I had for cultivating
+an acquaintance which I had recently made with the doctor's son, when he
+came with his father on visits to my mother. As soon as the hoofs of the
+horse were heard on the gravel, and before the bell could be rung, I
+used to dart away on tiptoe, fly through the porch, climb into the gig
+and help the boy to hold the reins while his father was upstairs.
+
+This led to what I thought a great discovery. It was about my mother. I
+had always known my mother was sick, but now I got a "skute" (as old
+Tommy used to say) into the cause of her illness. It was a matter of
+milk. The doctor's boy had heard his father saying so. If my mother
+could only have milk morning, noon and night, every day and all day,
+"there wouldn't be nothing the matter with her."
+
+This, too, impressed me deeply, and the form it took in my mind was that
+"mammy wasn't sed enough," a conclusion that gained colour from the fact
+that I saw Betsy Beauty perched up in a high chair in the dining-room
+twice or thrice a day, drinking nice warm milk fresh from the cow. We
+had three cows, I remember, and to correct the mischief of my mother's
+illness, I determined that henceforth she should not have merely more of
+our milk--she should have all of it.
+
+Losing no time in carrying my intentions into effect, I crept into the
+dairy as soon as the dairymaid had brought in the afternoon's milking.
+There it was, still frothing and bubbling in three great bowls, and
+taking up the first of them in my little thin arms--goodness knows
+how--I made straight for my mother's room.
+
+But hardly had I climbed half-way up the stairs, puffing and panting
+under my burden, when I met Nessy MacLeod coming down, and she fell on
+me with her usual reproaches.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, you wilful, underhand little vixen, whatever are you
+doing with the milk?"
+
+Being in no mood for explanations I tried to push past, but Nessy
+prevented me.
+
+"No, indeed, you shan't go a step further. What will your Aunt Bridget
+say? Take the milk back, miss, this very minute."
+
+Nessy's loud protest brought Betsy Beauty out of the dining-room, and in
+a moment my cousin, looking more than ever like a painted doll in her
+white muslin dress with a large blue bow in her yellow hair, had run
+upstairs to assist her step-sister.
+
+I was now between the two, the one above and the other below, and they
+laid hold of my bowl to take it from me. They tugged and I resisted and
+there was a struggle in which the milk was in danger of being spilled.
+
+"She's a stubborn little thing and she ought to be whipped," cried
+Nessy.
+
+"She's stealing my milk, and I'll tell mamma," said Betsy.
+
+"Tell her then," I cried, and in a burst of anger at finding myself
+unable to recover control of my bowl I swept it round and flung its
+contents over my cousin's head, thereby drenching her with the frothing
+milk and making the staircase to run like a river of whitewash.
+
+Of course there was a fearful clamour. Betsy Beauty shrieked and Nessy
+bellowed, whereupon Aunt Bridget came racing from her parlour, while my
+mother, white and trembling, halted to the door of her room.
+
+"Mally, Mally, what have you done?" cried my mother, but Aunt Bridget
+found no need of questions. After running upstairs to her dripping
+daughter, wiping her down with a handkerchief, calling her "my poor
+darling," and saying, "Didn't I tell you to have nothing more to do with
+that little vixen?" she fell on my mother with bitter upbraidings.
+
+"Isabel, I hope you see now what your minx of a child is--the little
+spiteful fury!"
+
+By this time I had dropped my empty bowl on the stairs and taken refuge
+behind my mother's gown, but I heard her timid voice trying to excuse
+me, and saying something about my cousin and a childish quarrel.
+
+"Childish quarrel, indeed!" cried my Aunt; "there's nothing childish
+about that little imp, nothing. And what's more, I shall be obliged to
+you, Isabel, if you will never again have the assurance to speak of my
+Betsy Beauty in the same breath with a child of yours."
+
+That was more than I could hear. My little heart was afire at the
+humiliation put upon my mother. So stepping out to the head of the
+stairs, I shouted down in my shrillest treble:
+
+"Your Betsy Beauty is a wicked devil, and I wouldn't trust but she'll
+burn in hell!"
+
+Never, to the last hour of my life, shall I forget the effect of that
+pronouncement. One moment Aunt Bridget stood speechless in the middle of
+the stairs, as if all breath had been broken out of her. Then, ghastly
+white and without a word, she came flying up at me, and, before I could
+recover my usual refuge, she caught me, slapped me on the cheek and
+boxed both my ears.
+
+I do not remember if I cried, but I know my mother did, and that in the
+midst of the general tumult my father came out of his room and demanded
+in a loud voice, which seemed to shake the whole house, to be told what
+was going on.
+
+Aunt Bridget told him, with various embellishments, which my mother did
+not attempt to correct, and then, knowing she was in the wrong, she
+began to wipe her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and to say she could
+not live any longer where a child was encouraged to insult her.
+
+"I have to leave this house--I have to leave it to-morrow," she said.
+
+"You don't have to do no such thing," cried my father. "But I'm just
+crazy to see if a man can't be captain in his own claim. These children
+must go to school. They must all go--the darned lot of 'em."
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Before I speak of what happened at school, I must say how and when I
+first became known to the doctor's boy.
+
+It was during the previous Christmastide. On Christmas Eve I awoke in
+the dead of night with the sense of awakening in another world. The
+church-bells were ringing, and there was singing outside our house,
+under the window of my mother's room. After listening for a little while
+I made my voice as soft as I could and said:
+
+"Mamma, what is it'?"
+
+"Hush, dear! It is the Waits. Lie still and listen," said my mother.
+
+I lay as long as my patience would permit, and then creeping over to the
+window I saw a circle of men and women, with lanterns, and the frosty
+air smoking about their red faces. After a while they stopped singing,
+and then the chain of our front door rattled, and I heard my father's
+loud voice asking the singers into the house.
+
+They came in, and when I was back in bed, I heard them talking and then
+laughing in the room below, with Aunt Bridget louder than all the rest,
+and when I asked what she was doing my mother told me she was serving
+out bunloaf and sherry-wine.
+
+I fell asleep before the incident was over, but as soon as I awoke in
+the morning I conceived the idea of singing the Waits myself. Being an
+artful little thing I knew that my plan would be opposed, so I said
+nothing about it, but I got my mother to play and sing the carol I had
+heard overnight, until my quick ear had mastered both tune and words,
+and when darkness fell on Christmas night I proceeded to carry out my
+intention.
+
+In the heat of my impatience I forgot to put on cloak or hat, and
+stealing out of the house I found myself in the carriage drive with
+nothing on but a pair of thin slippers and the velvet frock that left my
+neck and arms so bare. It was snowing, and the snow-flakes were whirling
+round me and making me dizzy, for in the light from my mother's window
+they seemed to come up from the ground as well as down from the sky.
+
+When I got out of the light of the window, it was very dark, and I could
+only see that the chestnuts in the drive seemed to have white blankets
+on them which looked as if they had been hung out to dry. It was a long
+time before I got to the gate, and then I had begun to be nervous and to
+have half a mind to turn back. But the thought of the bunloaf and the
+sherry-wine buoyed me up, and presently I found myself on the high road,
+crossing a bridge and turning down a lane that led to the sea, whose
+moaning a mile away was the only sound I could hear.
+
+I knew quite well where I was going to. I was going to the doctor's
+house. It was called Sunny Lodge, and it was on the edge of Yellow Gorse
+Farm. I had seen it more than once when I had driven out in the carriage
+with my mother, and had thought how sweet it looked with its whitewashed
+walls and brown thatched roof and the red and white roses which grew
+over the porch.
+
+I was fearfully cold before I got there. The snow was in my slippers and
+down my neck and among the thickening masses of my hair. At one moment I
+came upon some sheep and lambs that were sheltering under a hedge, and
+they bleated in the silence of the night.
+
+But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor's cottage, and
+coming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was clogged with
+snow, and stepped up to the porch. My teeth were now chattering with
+cold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and in my thin and creachy
+voice I had got as far as--
+
+     "_Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+         Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+         Ch'ist was born in Bef-lem,
+           An' in a manger laid_. . . ."
+
+when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house.
+
+Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman whom I
+knew to be the doctor's wife looked down into my face with an expression
+of bewilderment, and then cried:
+
+"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God
+bless her!"
+
+"Bring her in at once, then," said the voice of Doctor Conrad from
+within, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort of
+kitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had a
+kettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork hearth-rug, a
+dresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle covered with red cloth.
+
+I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me to faint,
+for I have no recollection of what happened next, except that I was
+sitting on somebody's lap and that she was calling me _boght millish_
+(little sweet) and _veg-veen_ (little dear) while she rubbed my
+half-frozen limbs and did other things that were, I am sure, all womanly
+and good.
+
+When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to sleep
+there that night, and he must go over to the Big House and tell my
+mother what had happened. He went, and by the time he came back, I had
+been bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire, and was being
+carried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too large for me) to a
+little dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet smelling "scraas" under the
+sloping thatch of the roof came down almost to my face.
+
+I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I was
+feeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the doctor's
+wife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that seemed far
+away. But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget came in her satin
+mantle and big black hat, and said something, while standing at the end
+of my bed, about people paying the penalty when they did things that
+were sly and underhand.
+
+Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in to see me
+at night he said:
+
+"How are we this evening? Ah, better, I see. Distinctly better!"
+
+And then turning to his wife he said:
+
+"No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann."
+
+"But won't the _boght millish_ be afraid to be left alone?" she asked.
+
+I said I shouldn't, and she kissed me and told me to knock at the wall
+if I wanted anything. And then, with her husband's arm about her waist,
+the good soul left me to myself.
+
+I don't know how I knew, but I did know that that house was a home of
+love. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that that sweet woman,
+who had been the daughter of a well-to-do man, had chosen the doctor out
+of all the men in the world when he was only a medical student fresh
+from Germany or Switzerland. I don't know how I knew, but I did know,
+that leaving father and mother and a sheltered home she had followed her
+young husband when he first came to Ellan without friends or
+connections, and though poor then and poor still, she had never
+regretted it. I don't know how I knew, but I did know, that all this was
+the opposite of what had happened to my own dear mother, who having
+everything yet had nothing, while this good creature having nothing yet
+had all.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning the sun was shining, and, after my hair had
+been brushed smooth over my forehead, I was sitting up in bed, eating
+for breakfast the smallest of bantam eggs with the smallest of silver
+spoons, when the door opened with a bang and a small figure tumbled into
+my room.
+
+It was a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket
+and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felt
+hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim,
+and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair sticking
+through it, gave him the appearance of a damaged mushroom.
+
+Except that on entering he tipped up his head so that I saw his face,
+which was far from beautiful and yet had two big blue eyes--as blue as
+the bluest sea--he took no notice of my presence, but tossed a
+somersault in the middle of the floor, screwed his legs over the back of
+a chair, vaulted over a table and finally stood on his hands with his
+legs against the wall opposite to my bed, and his inverted countenance
+close to the carpet.
+
+In this position, in which he was clearly making a point of remaining as
+long as possible, while his face grew very red, we held our first
+conversation. I had hitherto sat propped up as quiet as a mouse, but now
+I said:
+
+"Little boy, what's your name?"
+
+"Mart," was the answer.
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+"Spitzbergen."
+
+I cannot remember that this intelligence astonished me, for when the
+inverted face had become scarlet, and the legs went down and the head
+came up, and my visitor tossed several somersaults over the end of my
+bed, to the danger of my breakfast tray, and then, without a word more,
+tumbled out of the room, I was still watching in astonishment.
+
+I did not know at that time that these were the ways which since the
+beginning of the world have always been employed by savages and boys
+when they desire to commend themselves to the female of their kind, so
+that when the doctor's wife came smiling upstairs I asked her if the
+little boy who had been to see me was not quite well.
+
+"Bless you, yes, dear, but that's his way," she said, and then she told
+me all about him.
+
+His name was Martin Conrad and he was her only child. His hat, which had
+awakened my interest, was an old one of his father's, and it was the
+last thing he took off when he undressed for bed at night and the first
+thing he put on in the morning. When the hole came into its crown his
+mother had tried to hide it away but he had always found it, and when
+she threw it into the river he had fished it out again.
+
+He was the strangest boy, full of the funniest fancies. He used to say
+that before he was born he lived in a tree and was the fellow who turned
+on the rain. It was with difficulty that he could be educated, and every
+morning on being awakened, he said he was "sorry he ever started this
+going to school." As a consequence he could not read or write as well as
+other boys of his age, and his grammar was still that of the peasant
+people with whom he loved to associate.
+
+Chief among these was our gardener, old Tommy the Mate, who lived in a
+mud cabin on the shore and passed the doctor's house on his way to work.
+Long ago Tommy had told the boy a tremendous story. It was about Arctic
+exploration and an expedition he had joined in search of Franklin. This
+had made an overpowering impression on Martin, who for mouths afterwards
+would stand waiting at the gate until Tommy was going by, and then say:
+
+"Been to the North Pole to-day, Tommy?"
+
+Whereupon Tommy's "starboard eye" would blink and he would answer:
+
+"Not to-day boy. I don't go to the North Pole more nor twice a day now."
+
+"Don't you, though?" the boy would say, and this would happen every
+morning.
+
+But later on Martin conceived the idea that the North Pole was the
+locality immediately surrounding his father's house, and every day he
+would set out on voyages of exploration over the garden, the road and
+the shore, finding, by his own account, a vast world of mysterious
+things and undiscovered places. By some means--nobody knew how--the boy
+who could not learn his lessons studied his father's German atlas, and
+there was not a name in it north of Spitzbergen which he had not got by
+heart. He transferred them all to Ellan, so that the Sky Hill became
+Greenland, and the Black Head became Franz Josef Land, and the Nun's
+Well became Behring Strait, and Martha's Gullet became New Siberia, and
+St. Mary's Rock, with the bell anchored on it, became the pivot of the
+earth itself.
+
+He could swim like a fish and climb a rock like a lizard, and he kept a
+log-book, on the back pages of the Doctor's book of visits, which he
+called his "diarrhea." And now if you lost him you had only to look up
+to the ridge of the roof, or perhaps on to the chimney stack, which he
+called his crow's nest, and there you found him, spying through his
+father's telescope and crying out:
+
+"Look-out ahead! Ice floes from eighty-six latitude fourteen point
+north, five knots to the starboard bow."
+
+His mother laughed until she cried when she told me all this, but there
+is no solemnity like that of a child, and to me it was a marvellous
+story. I conceived a deep admiration for the doctor's boy, and saw
+myself with eyes of worship walking reverently by his side. I suppose my
+poor lonely heart was hungering after comradeship, for being a
+sentimental little ninny I decided to offer myself to the doctor's boy
+as his sister.
+
+The opportunity was dreadfully long in coming. It did not come until the
+next morning, when the door of my room flew open with a yet louder bang
+than before, and the boy entered in a soap-box on wheels, supposed to be
+a sledge, and drawn by a dog, an Irish terrier, which being red had been
+called William Rufus. His hat was tied over his ears with a tape from
+his mother's apron, and he wore a long pair of his father's knitted
+stockings which covered his boots and came up to his thighs.
+
+He did not at first take any more notice of me than on the previous day,
+but steering his sledge round the room he shouted to his dog that the
+chair by the side of my bed was a glacier and the sheep-skin rug was
+floating ice.
+
+After a while we began to talk, and then, thinking my time had come, I
+tried to approach my subject. Being such a clever little woman I went
+artfully to work, speaking first about my father, my mother, my cousin,
+Nessy MacLeod, and even Aunt Bridget, with the intention of showing how
+rich I was in relations, so that he might see how poor he was himself.
+
+I felt myself a bit of a hypocrite in all this, but the doctor's boy did
+not know that, and I noticed that as I passed my people in review he
+only said "Is she any good?" or "Is he a stunner?"
+
+At length my great moment came and with a fluttering heart I took it.
+
+"Haven't you got a sister?" I said.
+
+"Not _me_!" said the doctor's boy, with a dig of emphasis on the last
+word which cut me to the quick.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to have one?"
+
+"Sisters isn't no good," said the doctor's boy, and he instanced "chaps"
+at school--Jimmy Christopher and others--whose sisters were afraid of
+everything--lobsters and crabs and even the sea.
+
+I knew I was as timid as a hare myself, but my lonely little heart was
+beginning to bleed, and as well as I could for my throat which was
+choking me, I said:
+
+"I'm not afraid of the sea--not crabs neither."
+
+In a moment the big mushroom hat was tipped aside and the sea-blue eyes
+looked aslant at me.
+
+"Isn't you, though?"
+
+"No."
+
+That did it. I could see it did. And when a minute afterwards, I invited
+the doctor's boy into bed, he came in, stockings and all, and sat by my
+right side, while William Rufus, who had formed an instant attachment
+for me, lay on my left with his muzzle on my lap.
+
+Later the same day, my bedroom door being open, so that I might call
+downstairs to the kitchen, I heard the doctor's boy telling his mother
+what I was. I was a "stunner."
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+From that day forward the doctor's boy considered that I belonged to
+him, but not until I was sent to school, with my cousin and her
+stepsister, did he feel called upon to claim his property.
+
+It was a mixed day-school in the village, and it was controlled by a
+Board which had the village butcher as its chairman. The only teacher
+was a tall woman of thirty, who plaited her hair, which was of the
+colour of flax, into a ridiculous-looking crown on the top of her head.
+But her expression, I remember, was one of perpetual severity, and when
+she spoke through her thin lips she clipped her words with great
+rapidity, as if they had been rolls of bread which were being chopped in
+a charity school.
+
+Afterwards I heard that she owed her position to Aunt Bridget, who had
+exercised her influence through the chairman, by means of his account
+with the Big House. Perhaps she thought it her duty to display her
+gratitude. Certainly she lost no time in showing me that my character
+had gone to school before me, for in order that I might be directly
+under her eye, she placed me in the last seat in the lowest class,
+although my mother's daily teaching would have entitled me to go higher.
+
+I dare say I was, as Father Dan used to say, as full of mischief as a
+goat, and I know I was a chatterbox, but I do not think I deserved the
+fate that followed.
+
+One day, not more than a week after we had been sent to school. I held
+my slate in front of my face while I whispered something to the girl
+beside and the girl behind me. Both began to titter.
+
+"Silence!" cried the schoolmistress, who was sitting at her desk, but I
+went on whispering and the girls began to choke with laughter.
+
+I think the schoolmistress must have thought I was saying something
+about herself--making game, perhaps, of her personal appearance--for
+after a moment she said, in her rapid accents:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, please repeat what you have just been saying."
+
+I held my slate yet closer to my face and made no answer.
+
+"Don't you hear, miss? Speak! You've a tongue in your head, haven't
+you?"
+
+But still I did not answer, and then the schoolmistress said:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, come forward."
+
+She had commanded me like a dog, and like a dog I was about to obey when
+I caught sight of Betsy Beauty's face, which, beaming with satisfaction,
+seemed to be saying: "Now, we shall see."
+
+I would not stir after that, and the schoolmistress, leaving her desk,
+came towards me, and looking darkly into my face, said:
+
+"You wilful little vixen, do you think you can trifle with me? Come out,
+miss, this very moment."
+
+I knew where that language came from, so I made no movement.
+
+"Don't you hear? Or do you suppose that because you are pampered and
+spoiled by a foolish person at home, you can defy _me_?"
+
+That reflection on my mother settled everything. I sat as rigid as a
+rock.
+
+Then pale as a whitewashed wall, and with her thin lips tightly
+compressed, the schoolmistress took hold of me to drag me out of my
+seat, but with my little nervous fingers I clung to the desk in front of
+me, and as often as she tore one of my hands open the other fixed itself
+afresh.
+
+"You minx! We'll see who's mistress here. . . . Will none of you big
+girls come and help me?"
+
+With the utmost alacrity one big girl from a back bench came rushing to
+the schoolmistress' assistance. It was Nessy MacLeod, and together,
+after a fierce struggle, they tore me from my desk, like an ivy branch
+from a tree, and dragged me into the open space in front of the classes.
+By this time the schoolmistress' hands, and I think her neck were
+scratched, and from that cause also she was quivering with passion.
+
+"Stand there, miss," she said, "and move from that spot at your peril."
+
+My own fury was now spent, and in the dead silence which had fallen on
+the entire school, I was beginning to feel the shame of my ignominious
+position.
+
+"Children," cried the schoolmistress, addressing the whole of the
+scholars, "put down your slates and listen."
+
+Then, as soon as she had recovered her breath she said, standing by my
+side and pointing down to me:
+
+"This child came to school with the character of a wilful, wicked little
+vixen, and she has not belied her character. By gross disobedience she
+has brought herself to where you see her. 'Spare the rod, spoil the
+child,' is a scriptural maxim, and the foolish parents who ruin their
+children by overindulgence deserve all that comes to them. But there is
+no reason why other people should suffer, and, small as this child is
+she has made the life of her excellent aunt intolerable by her
+unlovable, unsociable, and unchildlike disposition. Children, she was
+sent to school to be corrected of her faults, and I order you to stop
+your lessons while she is publicly punished. . . ."
+
+With this parade of the spirit of justice, the schoolmistress stepped
+back and left me. I knew what she was doing--she was taking her cane out
+of her desk which stood by the wall. I heard the desk opened with an
+impatient clash and then closed with an angry bang. I was as sure as if
+I had had eyes in the back of my head, that the schoolmistress was
+holding the cane in both hands and bending it to see if it was lithe and
+limber.
+
+I felt utterly humiliated. Standing there with all eyes upon me I was
+conscious of the worst pain that enters into a child's experience--the
+pain of knowing that other children are looking upon her degradation. I
+thought of Aunt Bridget and my little heart choked with anger. Then I
+thought of my mother and my throat throbbed with shame. I remembered
+what my mother had said, of her little Mary being always a little lady,
+and I felt crushed at the thought that I was about to be whipped before
+all the village children.
+
+At home I had been protected if only by my mother's tears, but here I
+was alone, and felt myself to be so little and helpless. But just as my
+lip was beginning to drop, at the thought of what my mother would suffer
+if she saw me in this position of infamy, and I was about to cry out to
+the schoolmistress: "Don't beat me! Oh! please don't beat me!" a strange
+thing happened, which turned my shame into surprise and triumph.
+
+Through the mist which had gathered before my eyes I saw a boy coming
+out of the boys' class at the end of the long room. It was Martin
+Conrad, and I remember that he rolled as he walked like old Tommy the
+gardener. Everybody saw him, and the schoolmistress said in her sharp
+voice:
+
+"Martin Conrad, what right have you to leave your place without
+permission? Go back, sir, this very moment."
+
+Instead of going back Martin came on, and as he did so he dragged his
+big soft hat out of the belt of his Norfolk jacket and with both hands
+pulled it down hard on his head.
+
+"Go back, sir!" cried the schoolmistress, and I saw her step towards him
+with the cane poised and switching in the air, as if about to strike.
+
+The boy said nothing, but just shaking himself like a big dog he dropped
+his head and butted at the schoolmistress as she approached him, struck
+her somewhere in the waist and sent her staggering and gasping against
+the wall.
+
+Then, without a word, he took my hand, as something that belonged to
+him, and before the schoolmistress could recover her breath, or the
+scholars awake from their astonishment, he marched me, as if his little
+stocky figure had been sixteen feet tall, in stately silence out of the
+school.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was never sent back to school, and I heard that Martin, by order of
+the butcher, was publicly expelled. This was a cause of distress to our
+mothers, who thought the future of our lives had been permanently
+darkened, but I cannot say that it ever stood between us and our
+sunshine. On the contrary it occurred that--Aunt Bridget having washed
+her hands of me, and Martin's father being unable to make up his mind
+what to do with him--we found ourselves for some time at large and were
+nothing loth to take advantage of our liberty, until a day came which
+brought a great disaster.
+
+One morning I found Martin with old Tommy the Mate in his potting-shed,
+deep in the discussion of their usual subject--the perils and pains of
+Arctic exploration, when you have little food in your wallet and not too
+much in your stomach.
+
+"But you has lots of things when you gets there--hams and flitches and
+oranges and things--hasn't you?" said Martin.
+
+"Never a ha'p'orth," said Tommy. "Nothing but glory. You just takes your
+Alping stock and your sleeping sack and your bit o' biscuit and away you
+go over crevaxes deeper nor Martha's gullet and mountains higher nor
+Mount Blank and never think o' nothing but doing something that nobody's
+never done before. My goodness, yes, boy, that's the way of it when
+you're out asploring. 'Glory's waiting for me' says you, and on you go."
+
+At that great word I saw Martin's blue eyes glisten like the sea when
+the sun is shining on it; and then, seeing me for the first time, he
+turned back to old Tommy and said:
+
+"I s'pose you lets women go with you when you're out asploring--women
+and girls?"
+
+"Never a woman," said Tommy.
+
+"Not never--not if they're stunners?" said Martin.
+
+"Well," says Tommy, glancing down at me, while his starboard eye
+twinkled, "I won't say never--not if they're stunners."
+
+Next day Martin, attended by William Rufus, arrived at our house with a
+big corn sack on his shoulder, a long broom-handle in his hand, a
+lemonade bottle half filled with milk, a large sea biscuit and a small
+Union Jack which came from the confectioner's on the occasion of his
+last birthday.
+
+"Glory's waiting for me--come along, shipmate," he said in a mysterious
+whisper, and without a word of inquiry, I obeyed.
+
+He gave me the biscuit and I put it in the pocket of my frock, and the
+bottle of milk, and I tied it to my belt, and then off we went, with the
+dog bounding before us.
+
+I knew he was going to the sea, and my heart was in my mouth, for of all
+the things I was afraid of I feared the sea most--a terror born with me,
+perhaps, on the fearful night of my birth. But I had to live up to the
+character I had given myself when Martin became my brother, and the one
+dread of my life was that, finding me as timid as other girls, he might
+want me no more.
+
+We reached the sea by a little bay, called Murphy's Mouth, which had a
+mud cabin that stood back to the cliff and a small boat that was moored
+to a post on the shore. Both belonged to Tommy the Mate, who was a
+"widow man" living alone, and therefore there were none to see us when
+we launched the boat and set out on our voyage. It was then two o'clock
+in the afternoon, the sun was shining, and the tide, which was at the
+turn, was beginning to flow.
+
+I had never been in a boat before, but I dared not say anything about
+that, and after Martin had fixed the bow oar for me and taken the stroke
+himself, I spluttered and plunged and made many blunders. I had never
+been on the sea either, and almost as soon as we shot clear of the shore
+and were lifted on to the big waves, I began to feel dizzy, and dropped
+my oar, with the result that it slipped through the rollocks and was
+washed away. Martin saw what had happened as we swung round to his
+rowing, but when I expected him to scold me, he only said:
+
+"Never mind, shipmate! I was just thinking we would do better with one,"
+and, shipping his own oar in the stern of the boat, he began to scull.
+
+My throat was hurting me, and partly from shame and partly from fear, I
+now sat forward, with William Rufus on my lap, and said as little as
+possible. But Martin was in high spirits, and while his stout little
+body rolled to the rocking of the boat he whistled and sang and shouted
+messages to me over his shoulder.
+
+"My gracious! Isn't this what you call ripping?" he cried, and though my
+teeth were chattering, I answered that it was.
+
+"Some girls--Jimmy Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy
+Beauty--would be frightened to come asploring, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Wouldn't they?" I said, and I laughed, though I was trembling down to
+the soles of my shoes.
+
+We must have been half an hour out, and the shore seemed so far away
+that Murphy's Mouth and Tommy's cabin and even the trees of the Big
+House looked like something I had seen through the wrong end of a
+telescope, when he turned his head, with a wild light in his eyes, and
+said:
+
+"See the North Pole out yonder?"
+
+"Don't I?" I answered, though I was such a practical little person, and
+had not an ounce of "dream" in me.
+
+I knew quite well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's
+Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most
+afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing
+twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall,
+with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a
+multitude of hungry sea-fowl.
+
+A white cloud of the birds rose from their sleep as we approached, and
+wheeled and whistled and screamed and beat their wings over our heads. I
+wanted to scream too, but Martin said:
+
+"My gracious, isn't this splendiferous?"
+
+"Isn't it?" I answered, and, little hypocrite that I was, I began to
+sing.
+
+I remember that I sang one of Tommy's sailor-songs, "Sally," because its
+jolly doggerel was set to such a jaunty tune--
+
+     "_Oh Sally's the gel for me,
+         Our Sally's the gel for me,
+         I'll marry the gel that I love best
+         When I come back from sea_."
+
+My pretence of happiness was shortlived, for at the next moment I made
+another mistake. Drawing up his boat to a ledge of the rock, and laying
+hold of our painter, Martin leapt ashore, and then held out his hand to
+me to follow him, but in fear of a big wave I held back when I ought to
+have jumped, and he was drenched from head to foot. I was ashamed, and
+thought he would have scolded me, but he only shook himself and said:
+
+"That's nothing! We don't mind a bit of wet when we're out asploring."
+
+My throat was hurting me again and I could not speak, but without
+waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told
+me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the
+rock and took possession of it in the name of the king.
+
+"Do or die we allus does that when we're out asploring," he said, and
+with his sack over his shoulder, his broom-handle in his hand and his
+little Union Jack sticking out of the hole in the crown of his hat, he
+clambered up the crag and disappeared over the top of it.
+
+Being left alone, for the dog had followed him, my nervousness increased
+tenfold, and thinking at last that the rising tide was about to submerge
+the ledge on which I stood, I tried in my fright to climb the cliff. But
+hardly had I taken three steps when my foot slipped and I clutched the
+seaweed to save myself from falling, with the result that the boat's
+rope slid from my arm, and went rip-rip-ripping down the rock until it
+fell with a splash into the sea.
+
+I saw what I had done, and I screamed, and then Martin's head appeared
+after a moment on the ledge above me. But it was too late for him to do
+anything, for the boat had already drifted six yards away, and just when
+I thought he would have shrieked at me for cutting off our only
+connection with the shore, he said:
+
+"Never mind, shipmate! We allus expecs to lose a boat or two when we're
+out asploring."
+
+I was silent from shame, but Martin, having hauled me up the rock by
+help of the broom handle, rattled away as if nothing had
+happened--pointing proudly to a rust-eaten triangle with a bell
+suspended inside of it and his little flag floating on top.
+
+"But, oh dear, what are we to do now?" I whimpered.
+
+"Don't you worrit about that," he said. "We'll just signal back to the
+next base--we call them bases when we're out asploring."
+
+I understood from this that he was going to ring the bell which, being
+heard on the land, would bring somebody to our relief. But the bell was
+big, only meant to be put in motion on stormy nights by the shock and
+surging of an angry sea, and when Martin had tied a string to its tongue
+it was a feeble sound he struck from it.
+
+Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours, and still I saw nothing on the
+water but our own empty boat rocking its way back to the shore.
+
+"Will they ever come?" I faltered.
+
+"Ra--ther! Just you wait and you'll see them coming. And when they take
+us ashore there'll be crowds and crowds with bugles and bands and things
+to take us home. My goodness, yes," he said, with the same wild look,
+"hundreds and tons of them!"
+
+But the sun set over the sea behind us, the land in front grew dim, the
+moaning tide rose around the quaking rock and even the screaming
+sea-fowl deserted us, and still there was no sign of relief. My heart
+was quivering through my clothes by this time, but Martin, who had
+whistled and sung, began to talk about being hungry.
+
+"My goodness yes, I'm that hungry I could eat. . . . I could eat a
+dog--we allus eats our dogs when we're out asploring."
+
+This reminded me of the biscuit, but putting my hand to the pocket of my
+frock I found to my dismay that it was gone, having fallen out, perhaps,
+when I slipped in my climbing. My lip fell and I looked up at him with
+eyes of fear, but he only said:
+
+"No matter! We never minds a bit of hungry when we're out asploring."
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that my little boy who could not
+learn his lessons and had always been in disgrace, was a born gentleman,
+but my throat was thick and my eyes were swimming and to hide my emotion
+I pretended to be ill.
+
+"I know," said Martin. "Dizzingtory! [dysentery]. We allus has
+dizzingtory when we're out asploring."
+
+There was one infallible cure for that, though--milk!
+
+"I allus drinks a drink of milk, and away goes the dizzingtory in a
+jiffy."
+
+This recalled the bottle, but when I twisted it round on my belt, hoping
+to make amends for the lost biscuit, I found to my confusion that it had
+suffered from the same misadventure, being cracked in the bottom, and
+every drop of the contents gone.
+
+That was the last straw, and the tears leapt to my eyes, but Martin went
+on whistling and singing and ringing the big bell as if nothing had
+happened.
+
+The darkness deepened, the breath of night came sweeping over the sea,
+the boom of the billows on the rock became still more terrible, and I
+began to shiver.
+
+"The sack!" cried Martin. "We allus sleeps in sacks when we're out
+asploring."
+
+I let him do what he liked with me now, but when he had packed me up in
+the sack, and put me to lie at the foot of the triangle, telling me I
+was as right as ninepence, I began to think of something I had read in a
+storybook, and half choking with sobs I said:
+
+"Martin!"
+
+"What now, shipmate?"
+
+"It's all my fault . . . and I'm just as frightened as Jimmy
+Christopher's sister and Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty . . . and I'm
+not a stunner . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me
+here and save yourself and . . ."
+
+But Martin stopped me with a shout and a crack of laughter.
+
+"Not _me_! Not much! We never leaves a pal when we're out asploring.
+Long as we lives we never does it. Not never!"
+
+That finished me. I blubbered like a baby, and William Rufus, who was
+sitting by my side, lifted his nose and joined in my howling.
+
+What happened next I never rightly knew. I was only aware, though my
+back was to him, that Martin, impatient of his string, had leapt up to
+the bell and was swinging his little body from the tongue to make a
+louder clamour. One loud clang I heard, and then came a crash and a
+crack, and then silence.
+
+"What is it?" I cried, but at first there was no answer.
+
+"Have you hurt yourself?"
+
+And then through the thunderous boom of the rising sea on the rock,
+came the breaking voice of my boy (he had broken his right arm) mingled
+with the sobs which his unconquered and unconquerable little soul was
+struggling to suppress--
+
+"We never minds a bit of hurt . . . we never minds _nothing_ when we're
+out asploring!"
+
+Meantime on shore there was a great commotion. My father was railing at
+Aunt Bridget, who was upbraiding my mother, who was crying for Father
+Dan, who was flying off for Doctor Conrad, who was putting his horse
+into his gig and scouring the parish in search of the two lost children.
+
+But Tommy the Mate, who remembered the conversation in the potting-shed
+and thought he heard the tinkle of a bell at sea, hurried off to the
+shore, where he found his boat bobbing on the beach, and thereby came to
+his own conclusions.
+
+By the light of a lantern he pulled out to St. Mary's Rock, and there,
+guided by the howling of the dog, he came upon the great little
+explorers, hardly more than three feet above high water, lying together
+in the corn sack, locked in each other's arms and fast asleep.
+
+There were no crowds and bands of music waiting for us when Tommy
+brought us ashore, and after leaving Martin with his broken limb in his
+mother's arms at the gate of Sunny Lodge, he took me over to the
+Presbytery in order that Father Dan might carry me home and so stand
+between me and my father's wrath and Aunt Bridget's birch.
+
+Unhappily there was no need for this precaution. The Big House, when we
+reached it, was in great confusion. My mother had broken a blood vessel.
+
+
+
+
+TENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+During the fortnight in which my mother was confined to bed I was her
+constant companion and attendant. With the mighty eagerness of a child
+who knew nothing of what the solemn time foreboded I flew about the
+house on tiptoe, fetching my mother's medicine and her milk and the ice
+to cool it, and always praising myself for my industry and thinking I
+was quite indispensable.
+
+"You couldn't do without your little Mally, could you, mammy?" I would
+say, and my mother would smooth my hair lovingly with her thin white
+hand and answer:
+
+"No, indeed, I couldn't do without my little Mally." And then my little
+bird-like beak would rise proudly in the air.
+
+All this time I saw nothing of Martin, and only heard through Doctor
+Conrad in his conversations with my mother, that the boy's broken arm
+had been set, and that as soon as it was better, he was to be sent to
+King George's College, which was at the other end of Ellan. What was to
+be done with myself I never inquired, being so satisfied that my mother
+could not get on without me.
+
+I was partly aware that big letters, bearing foreign postage-stamps and
+seals and coats of arms, with pictures of crosses and hearts, were
+coming to our house. I was also aware that at intervals, while my mother
+was in bed, there was the sound of voices, as if in eager and sometimes
+heated conference, in the room below, and that my mother would raise her
+pale face from her pillow and stop my chattering with "Hush!" when my
+father's voice was louder and sterner than usual. But it never occurred
+to me to connect these incidents with myself, until the afternoon of the
+day on which my mother got up for the first time.
+
+She was sitting before the fire, for autumn was stealing on, and I was
+bustling about her, fixing the rug about her knees and telling her if
+she wanted anything she was to be sure and call her little Mally, when a
+timid knock came to the door and Father Dan entered the room. I can see
+his fair head and short figure still, and hear his soft Irish voice, as
+he stepped forward and said:
+
+"Now don't worry, my daughter. Above all, don't worry."
+
+By long experience my mother knew this for a sign of the dear Father's
+own perturbation, and I saw her lower lip tremble as she asked:
+
+"Hadn't Mary better run down to the garden?"
+
+"No! Oh no!" said Father Dan. "It is about Mary I come to speak, so our
+little pet may as well remain."
+
+Then at a signal from my mother I went over to her and stood by her
+side, and she embraced my waist with a trembling arm, while the Father
+took a seat by her side, and, fumbling the little silver cross on his
+chain, delivered his message.
+
+After long and anxious thought--and he might say prayer--it had been
+decided that I should be sent away to a Convent. It was to be a Convent
+of the Sacred Heart in Rome. He was to take me to Rome himself and see
+me safely settled there. And they (meaning my father and Aunt Bridget)
+had promised him--faithfully promised him--that when the holidays came
+round he should be sent to bring me home again. So there was nothing to
+fear, nothing to worry about, nothing to . . . to . . .
+
+My mother listened as long as she could, and then--her beautiful white
+face distorted by pain--she broke in on the Father's message with a cry
+of protest.
+
+"But she is so young! Such a child! Only seven years old! How can any
+one think of sending such a little one away from home?"
+
+Father Dan tried to pacify her. It was true I was very young, but then
+the Reverend Mother was such a good woman. She would love me and care
+for me as if I were her own child. And then the good nuns, God bless
+their holy souls. . . .
+
+"But Mary is all I have," cried my mother, "and if they take her away
+from me I shall be broken-hearted. At such a time too! How cruel they
+are! They know quite well what the doctor says. Can't they wait a little
+longer?"
+
+I could see that Father Dan was arguing against himself, for his eyes
+filled as he said:
+
+"It's hard, I know it's hard for you, my daughter. But perhaps it's best
+for the child that she should go away from home--perhaps it's all God's
+blessed and holy will. Remember there's a certain person here who isn't
+kind to our little innocent, and is making her a cause of trouble. Not
+that I think she is actuated by evil intentions. . . ."
+
+"But she is, she is," cried my mother, who was growing more and more
+excited.
+
+"Then all the more reason why Mary should go to the convent--for a time
+at all events."
+
+My mother began to waver, and she said:
+
+"Let her be sent to a Convent in the island then."
+
+"I thought of that, but there isn't one," said Father Dan.
+
+"Then . . . then . . . then take her to the Presbytery," said my mother.
+"Dear, dear Father," she pleaded, "let her live with you, and have
+somebody to teach her, and then she can come to see me every day, or
+twice a week, or even once a week--I am not unreasonable."
+
+"It would be beautiful," said Father Dan, reaching over to touch my arm.
+"To have our little Mary in my dull old house would be like having the
+sun there always. But there are reasons why a young girl should not be
+brought up in the home of a priest, so it is better that our little
+precious should go to Rome."
+
+My mother was breaking down and Father Dan followed up his advantage.
+
+"Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for the
+child. She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus first, then a
+child of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself. And then remember,
+Rome! The holy city! The city of the Holy Father! Why, who knows, she
+may even see himself some day!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said my mother, and then turning with her melting
+eyes to me she said:
+
+"Would my Mary like to go--leaving her mamma but coming home in the
+holidays--would she?"
+
+I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly get on
+without me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her bunch of
+keys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and catching my mother's
+last words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched voice.
+
+"Isabel! You astonish me! To defer to the will of a child! Such a child
+too! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If _we_ say it is good for
+her to go she _must_ go!"
+
+I could feel through my mother's arm, which was still about my waist,
+that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she did not speak
+and Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on:
+
+"We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten your
+death by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more blood
+vessels. So we are consulting your welfare as well as the girl's in
+sending her away."
+
+My mother's timid soul could bear no more. I think it must have been the
+only moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but, gathering all her
+strength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in ungovernable excitement.
+
+"Bridget," she said, "you are doing nothing of the kind. You know you
+are not. You are only trying to separate me from my child and my child
+from me. When you came to my house I thought you would be kinder to my
+child than a anybody else, but you have not been, you have been cruel to
+her, and shut your heart against her, and while I have been helpless
+here, and in bed, you have never shown her one moment of love and
+kindness. No, you have no feeling except for your own, and it never
+occurs to you that having brought your own child into my house you are
+trying to turn my child out of it."
+
+"So that's how you look at it, is it?" said Aunt Bridget, with a flash
+of her cold grey eyes. "I thought I came to this house--your house as
+you call it--only out of the best intentions, just to spare you trouble
+when you were ill and unable, to attend to your duties as a wife. But
+because I correct your child when she is wilful and sly and
+wicked. . . ."
+
+"Correct your own child, Bridget O'Neill!" cried my mother, "and leave
+mine to me. She's all I have and it isn't long I shall have her. You
+know quite well how much she has cost me, and that I haven't had a very
+happy married life, but instead of helping me with her father. . . ."
+
+"Say no more," said Aunt Bridget, "we don't want you to hurt yourself
+again, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the cause of
+another hemorrhage."
+
+"Bridget O'Neill," cried my mother, rising up from her chair, "you are a
+hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition. You know as well as I do that
+it wasn't Mary who made me ill, but you--you, who reproached me and
+taunted me about my child until my heart itself had to bleed. For seven
+years you have been doing that, and now you are disposing of my darling
+over my head without consulting me. Has a mother no rights in her own
+child--the child she has suffered for, and loved and lived for--that
+other people who care nothing for it should take it away from her and
+send it into a foreign country where she may never see it again? But you
+shall not do that! No, you shall not'! As long as there's breath in my
+body you shall not do it, and if you attempt. . . ."
+
+In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling hands
+into Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped about me,
+when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she stopped speaking.
+She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was my father. He entered
+the room with his knotty forehead more compressed than usual and said:
+
+"What's this she shall not do?"
+
+My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt Bridget,
+wiping' her eyes on her black apron--she only wept when my father was
+present--proceeded to explain.
+
+It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and though,
+I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for seven years
+I'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of it. It seems
+too, that we have no business--none of us have--to say what ought to be
+done for this girl--her mother being the only person who has any rights
+in the child, and if we attempt . . ."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and in his
+loud voice he said:
+
+"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He has to
+provide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to him she has to
+look for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh? Always has been, all
+the world over. Then what's all this hustling about?"
+
+My mother made a feeble effort to answer him.
+
+"I was only saying, Daniel . . ."
+
+"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man can do
+what he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my child and I say
+she is to go somewhere, she is to go." And saying this my father brought
+down his thick hand with a thump on to a table.
+
+It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that acted on
+my mother, as she said, submissively:
+
+"Very well, dear. _You_ know best what is best for Mary, and if you
+say--you and Bridget and . . . and Father Dan. . . ."
+
+"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this Convent
+scheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for the future
+if a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles for his important
+business."
+
+My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said nothing aloud,
+and my father turned on his heel, and left the room, shaking the floor
+at every step under the weight of his sixteen stone. At the next moment,
+Aunt Bridget, jingling her keys, went tripping after him.
+
+Hardly had they gone when my mother broke into a long fit of coughing,
+and when it was over she lay back exhausted, with her white face and her
+tired eyes turned upwards. Then I clasped her about the neck, and Father
+Dan, whose cheeks were wet with tears patted her drooping hand.
+
+My darling mother! Never once have I thought of her without the greatest
+affection, but now that I know for myself what she must have suffered I
+love best to think of her as she was that day--my sweet, beautiful,
+timid angel--standing up for one brief moment, not only against Aunt
+Bridget, but against the cruelty of all the ages, in the divine right of
+her outraged motherhood.
+
+
+
+
+ELEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My mother's submission was complete. Within twenty-four hours she was
+busy preparing clothes for my journey to Rome. The old coloured pattern
+book was brought out again, material was sent for, a sewing-maid was
+engaged from the village, and above all, in my view, an order was
+dispatched to Blackwater for a small squirrel-skin scarf, a large
+squirrel-skin muff, and a close-fitting squirrel-skin hat with a feather
+on the side of it.
+
+A child's heart is a running brook, and it would wrong the truth to say
+that I grieved much in the midst of these busy preparations. On the
+contrary I felt a sort of pride in them, poor innocent that I was, as in
+something that gave me a certain high superiority over Betsy Beauty and
+Nessy MacLeod, and entitled me to treat them with condescension.
+
+Father Dan, who came more frequently than ever, fostered this feeling
+without intending to do so, by telling me, whenever we were alone, that
+I must be a good girl to everybody now, and especially to my mother.
+
+"My little woman would be sorry to worry mamma, wouldn't she?" he would
+whisper, and when I answered that I would be sorrier than sorry, he
+would say:
+
+"Wisha then, she must be brave. She must keep up. She must not grieve
+about going away or cry when the time comes for parting."
+
+I said "yes" and "yes" to all this, feeling very confidential and
+courageous, but I dare say the good Father gave the same counsel to my
+mother also, for she and I had many games of make-believe, I remember,
+in which we laughed and chattered and sang, though I do not think I ever
+suspected that the part we played was easier to me than to her.
+
+It dawned on me at last, though, when in the middle of the night, near
+to the time of my going away, I was awakened by a bad fit of my mother's
+coughing, and heard her say to herself in the deep breathing that
+followed:
+
+"My poor child! What is to become of her?"
+
+Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure. It had been
+arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two daily
+steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the first
+sign of daylight. So great was my delight that I began to dance in my
+nightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, who
+always rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the room below.
+
+My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion.
+It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including my
+furs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myself
+in a mirror. I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write to
+her as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool,
+which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters.
+
+Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription "Mrs. Daniel
+O'Neill" was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, and
+my throat began to hurt me dreadfully. But I remembered what Father Dan
+had told me to do, so I said:
+
+"Never mind, mammy. Don't worry--I'll be home for the holidays."
+
+Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window,
+and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funny
+bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through a
+little cloud of white breath, that everything was ready.
+
+I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her
+pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a sign
+from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold. I squeezed back the
+water in my eyes and cried:
+
+"Good-bye mammy. I'll be back for Christmas," and then darted across to
+the door.
+
+I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say "Mary" in a
+strange low voice, and I turned and saw her--I can see her still--with
+her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me.
+
+Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying,
+"Mally veen! My Mally veen!" and I could feel her heart beating through
+her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poor
+little game of make-believe broke down utterly.
+
+At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late
+for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let
+me go.
+
+Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing
+Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my
+composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately
+silence with my little bird-like head in the air.
+
+I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a
+shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said:
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me good-bye, then?"
+
+"No," I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"Because you've been unkind to mamma and cruel to me, and because you
+think there's nobody but Betsy Beauty. And I'll tell them at the Convent
+that you are making mamma ill, and you're as bad as . . . as bad as the
+bad women in the Bible!"
+
+"My gracious!" said Aunt Bridget, and she tried to laugh, but I could
+see that her face became as white as a whitewashed wall. This did not
+trouble me in the least until I reached the carriage, when Father Dan,
+who was sitting inside, said:
+
+"My little Mary won't leave home like that--without kissing her aunt and
+saying good-bye to her cousins."
+
+So I returned and shook hands with Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty, and
+lifted my little face to my Aunt Bridget.
+
+"That's better," she said, after she had kissed me, but when I had
+passed her my quick little ear caught the words:
+
+"Good thing she's going, though."
+
+During this time my father, with the morning mist playing like
+hoar-frost about his iron-grey hair, had been tramping the gravel and
+saying the horses were getting cold, so without more ado he bundled me
+into the carriage and banged the door on me.
+
+But hardly had we started when Father Dan, who was blinking his little
+eyes and pretending to blow his nose on his coloured print handkerchief,
+said, "Look!" and pointed up to my mother's room.
+
+There she was again, waving and kissing her hand to me through her open
+window, and she continued to do so until we swirled round some trees and
+I lost the sight of her.
+
+What happened in my mother's room when her window was closed I do not
+know, but I well remember that, creeping into a corner of the carriage.
+I forgot all about the glory and grandeur of going away, and that it
+did not help me to remember when half way down the drive a boy with a
+dog darted from under the chestnuts and raced alongside of us.
+
+It was Martin, and though his right arm was in a sling, he leapt up to
+the step and held on to the open window by his left hand while he pushed
+his head into the carriage and made signs to me to take out of his mouth
+a big red apple which he held in his teeth by the stalk. I took it, and
+then he dropped to the ground, without uttering a word, and I could
+laugh now to think of the gruesome expression of his face with its
+lagging lower lip and bloodshot eyes. I had no temptation to do so then,
+however, and least of all when I looked back and saw his little
+one-armed figure in the big mushroom hat, standing on the top of the
+high wall of the bridge, with William Rufus beside him.
+
+We reached Blackwater in good tithe for the boat, and when the funnels
+had ceased trumpeting and we were well away, I saw that we were sitting
+in one of two private cabins on the upper deck; and then Father Dan told
+me that the other was occupied by the young Lord Raa, and his guardian,
+and that they were going up together for the first time to Oxford.
+
+I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so false
+is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur.
+And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawn
+on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to pay
+his respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of the
+cabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I had
+been turned out of my father's house, and would never see my mother and
+Martin any more.
+
+I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern,
+making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded
+away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery
+crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway.
+
+It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was. He
+was the young Lord Raa. And at first I thought how handsome and well
+dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled. After a moment he
+stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said:
+
+"So you are little Mary O'Neill, are you?"
+
+I did not speak. I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all,
+having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.
+
+"The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?"
+
+Still I did not speak. I was thinking his voice was like Nessy
+MacLeod's--shrill and harsh and grating.
+
+"Poor little mite! Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn't she?"
+
+Even yet I did not speak. I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt
+Bridget's--cold and grey and piercing.
+
+"So silent and demure, though! Quite a little nun already. A deuced
+pretty one, too, if anybody asks me."
+
+I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.
+
+"Where did you get those big angel eyes from? Stole them from some
+picture of the Madonna, I'll swear."
+
+By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so I
+turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say:
+
+"I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman,
+aren't you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, but you must--we are relations, you know."
+
+"I won't."
+
+He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kiss
+me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling my
+little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.
+
+Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by
+servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised and
+angry.
+
+"The spitfire!" he said. "Who would have believed it? The face of a nun
+and the temper of a devil! But you'll have to make amends for this, my
+lady."
+
+With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer was
+drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while the
+passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with Father
+Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said:
+
+"Going to give me that kiss to make amends, or are you to owe me a
+grudge for the rest of your life, my lady?"
+
+"My little Mary couldn't owe a grudge to anybody," said Father Dan.
+"She'll kiss his lordship and make amends; I'm certain."
+
+And then I did to the young Lord Raa what I had done to Aunt Bridget--I
+held up my face and he kissed me.
+
+It was a little, simple, trivial incident, but it led with other things
+to the most lamentable fact of my life, and when I think of it I
+sometimes wonder how it comes to pass that He who numbers the flowers of
+the field and counts the sparrows as they fall has no handwriting with
+which to warn His children that their footsteps may not fail.
+
+
+
+
+TWELFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Of our journey to Rome nothing remains to me but the memory of sleeping
+in different beds in different towns, of trains screaming through
+tunnels and slowing down in glass-roofed railway stations, of endless
+crowds of people moving here and there in a sort of maze, nothing but
+this, and the sense of being very little and very helpless and of having
+to be careful not to lose sight of Father Dan, for fear of being
+lost--until the afternoon of the fourth day after we left home.
+
+We were then crossing a wide rolling plain that was almost destitute of
+trees, and looked, from the moving train, like green billows of the sea
+with grass growing over them. Father Dan was reading his breviary for
+the following day, not knowing what he would have to do in it, when the
+sun set in a great blaze of red beyond the horizon, and then suddenly a
+big round black ball, like a captive balloon, seemed to rise in the
+midst of the glory.
+
+I called Father Dan's attention to this, and in a moment he was
+fearfully excited.
+
+"Don't worry, my child," he cried, while tears of joy sprang to his
+eyes. "Do you know what that is? That's the dome of St. Peter's! Rome,
+my child, Rome!"
+
+It was nine o'clock when we arrived at our destination, and in the midst
+of a great confusion I walked by Father Dan's side and held on to his
+vertical pocket, while he carried his own bag, and a basket of mine,
+down the crowded platform to an open cab outside the station.
+
+Then Father Dan wiped his forehead with his print handkerchief and I sat
+close up to him, and the driver cracked his long whip and shouted at the
+pedestrians while we rattled on and on over stony streets, which seemed
+to be full of statues and fountains that were lit up by a great white
+light that was not moonlight and yet looked like it.
+
+But at last we stopped at a little door of a big house which seemed to
+stand, with a church beside it, on a high shelf overlooking the city,
+for I could see many domes like that of St. Peter lying below us.
+
+A grill in the little door was first opened and then a lady in a black
+habit, with a black band round her forehead and white bands down each
+side of her face, opened the door itself, and asked us to step in, and
+when we had done so, she took us down a long passage into a warm room,
+where another lady, dressed in the same way, only a little grander, sat
+in a big red arm-chair.
+
+Father Dan, who was still wearing his knitted muffler, bowed very low to
+this lady, calling her the Reverend Mother Magdalene, and she answered
+him in English but with a funny sound which I afterwards knew to be a
+foreign accent.
+
+I remember that I thought she was very beautiful, nearly as beautiful as
+my mother, and when Father Dan told me to kiss her hand I did so, and
+then she put me to sit in a chair and looked at me.
+
+"What is her age?" she asked, whereupon Father Dan said he thought I
+would be eight that month, which was right, being October.
+
+"Small, isn't she?" said the lady, and then Father Dan said something
+about poor mamma which I cannot remember.
+
+After that they talked about other things, and I looked at the pictures
+on the walls--pictures of Saints and Popes and, above all, a picture of
+Jesus with His heart open in His bosom.
+
+"The child will be hungry," said the lady. "She must have something to
+eat before she goes to bed--the other children have gone already."
+
+Then she rang a hand-bell, and when the first lady came back she said:
+
+"Ask Sister Angela to come to me immediately."
+
+A few minutes later Sister Angela came into the room, and she was quite
+young, almost a girl, with such a sweet sad face that I loved her
+instantly.
+
+"This is little Mary O'Neill. Take her to the Refectory and give her
+whatever she wants, and don't leave her until she is quiet and
+comfortable."
+
+"Very well, Mother," said Sister Angela, and taking my hand she
+whispered: "Come, Mary, you look tired."
+
+I rose to go with her, but at the same moment Father Dan rose too, and I
+heard him say he must lose no time in finding an hotel, for his Bishop
+had given him only one day to remain in Rome, and he had to catch an
+early train home the following morning.
+
+This fell on me like a thunderbolt. I hardly know what I had led myself
+to expect, but certainly the idea of being left alone in Rome had never
+once occurred to me.
+
+My little heart was fluttering, and dropping the Sister's hand I stepped
+back and took Father Dan's and said:
+
+"You are not going to leave your little Mary are you, Father?"
+
+It was harder for the dear Father than for me, for I remember that,
+fearfully flurried, he stammered in a thick voice something about the
+Reverend Mother taking good care of me, and how he was sure to come back
+at Christmas, according to my father's faithful promise, to take me home
+for the holidays.
+
+After that Sister Angela led me, sniffing a little still, to the
+Refectory, which was a large, echoing room, with rows of plain deal
+tables and forms, ranged in front of a reading desk that had another and
+much larger picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall above it. Only one
+gasjet was burning, and I sat under it to eat my supper, and after I had
+taken a basin of soup I felt more comforted.
+
+Then Sister Angela lit a lamp and taking my hand she led me up a stone
+staircase to the Dormitory, which was a similar room, but not so silent,
+because it was full of beds, and the breathing of the girls, who were
+all asleep, made it sound like the watchmaker's shop in our village,
+only more church-like and solemn.
+
+My bed was near to the door, and after Sister Angela had helped me to
+undress, and tucked me in, she made her voice very low, and said I would
+be quite comfortable now, and she was sure I was going to be a good
+little girl and a dear child of the Infant Jesus; and then I could not
+help taking my arms out again and clasping her round the neck and
+drawing her head down and kissing her.
+
+After that she took the lamp and went away to a cubicle which was
+partitioned off the end of the Dormitory and there I could see her
+prepare to go to bed herself--taking the white bands off her cheeks and
+the black band off her forehead, and letting her long light hair fall
+in beautiful wavy masses about her face, which made her look so sweet
+and home like.
+
+But oh, I was so lonely! Never in my life since--no, not even when I was
+in my lowest depths--have I felt so little and helpless and alone. After
+the Sister had gone to bed and everything was quiet in the Dormitory
+save for the breathing of the girls--all strangers to me and I to
+them--from mere loneliness I covered up my head in the clothes just as I
+used to do when I was a little thing and my father came into my mother's
+room.
+
+I try not to think bitterly of my father, but even yet I am at a loss to
+know how he could have cast me away so lightly. Was it merely that he
+wanted peace for his business and saw no chance of securing it in his
+own home except by removing the chief cause of Aunt Bridget's jealousy?
+Or was it that his old grudge against Fate for making me a girl made him
+wish to rid himself of the sight of me?
+
+I do not know. I cannot say. But in either case I try in vain to see how
+he could have thought he had a right, caring nothing for me, to tear me
+from the mother who loved me and had paid for me so dear; or how he
+could have believed that because he was my father, charged with the care
+of my poor little body, he had control over the little bleeding heart
+which was not his to make to suffer.
+
+He is my father--God help me to think the best of him.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At half past six in the morning I was awakened by the loud ringing of
+the getting-up bell, and as soon as I could rouse myself from the deep
+sleep of childhood I saw that a middle-aged nun with a severe face was
+saying a prayer, and that all the girls in the dormitory were kneeling
+in their beds while they made the responses.
+
+A few minutes later, when the girls were chattering and laughing as they
+dressed, making the room tingle with twittering sounds like a tree full
+of linnets in the spring, a big girl came up to me and said:
+
+"I am Mildred Bankes and Sister Angela says I am to look after you
+to-day."
+
+She was about fifteen years of age, and had a long plain-featured face
+which reminded me of one of my father's horses that was badly used by
+the farm boys; but there was something sweet in her smile that made me
+like her instantly.
+
+She helped me to dress in my brown velvet frock, but said that one of
+her first duties would be to take me to the lay sisters who made the
+black habits which all the girls in the convent wore.
+
+It was still so early that the darkness of the room was just broken by
+pale shafts of light from the windows, but I could see that the children
+of my own age were only seven or eight altogether, while the majority of
+the girls were several years older, and Mildred explained this by
+telling me that the children of the Infant Jesus, like myself, were so
+few that they had been put into the dormitory of the children of the
+Sacred Heart.
+
+In a quarter of an hour everybody was washed and dressed, and then, at a
+word from Sister Angela, the girls went leaping and laughing downstairs
+to the Meeting Room, which was a large hail, with a platform at the
+farther end of it and another picture of the Sacred Heart, pierced with
+sharp thorns, on the wall.
+
+The Reverend Mother was there with the other nuns of the Convent, all
+pale-faced and slow eyed women wearing rosaries, and she said a long
+prayer, to which the scholars (there were seventy or eighty altogether)
+made responses, and then there was silence for five minutes, which were
+supposed to be devoted to meditation, although I could not help seeing
+that some of the big girls were whispering to each other while their
+heads were down.
+
+After that, and Mass in the Church, we went scurrying away to the
+Refectory, which was now warm with the steam from our breakfast and
+bubbling with cheerful voices, making a noise that was like water
+boiling in a saucepan.
+
+I was so absorbed by all I saw that I forgot to eat until Mildred nudged
+me to do so, and even when my spoon was half way to my mouth something
+happened which brought it down again.
+
+At the tinkle of a hand-bell one of the big girls had stepped up to the
+reading-desk and begun to read from a book which I afterwards knew to be
+"The Imitation of Christ." She was about sixteen years of age, and her
+face was so vivid that I could not take my eyes off it.
+
+Her complexion was fair and her hair was auburn, but her eyes were so
+dark and searching that when she raised her head, as she often did, they
+seemed to look through and through you.
+
+"Who is she?" I whispered.
+
+"Alma Lier," Mildred whispered back, and when breakfast was over, and we
+were trooping off to lessons, she told me something about her.
+
+Alma was an American. Her father was very rich and his home was in New
+York. But her mother lived in Paris, though she was staying at an hotel
+in Rome at present, and sometimes she came in a carriage to take her
+daughter for a drive.
+
+Alma was the cleverest girl in the school too, and sometimes at the end
+of terms, when parents and friends came to the Convent and one of the
+Cardinals distributed the prizes, she had so many books to take away
+that she could hardly carry them down from the platform.
+
+I listened to this with admiring awe, thinking Alma the most wonderful
+and worshipful of all creatures, and when I remember it now, after all
+these years, and the bitter experiences which have come with them, I
+hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the thought that such was the
+impression she first made on me.
+
+My class was with the youngest of the children, and Sister Angela was my
+teacher. She was so sweet to me that her encouragement was like a kiss
+and her reproof like a caress; but I could think of nothing but Alma,
+and at noon, when the bell rang for lunch and Mildred took me back to
+the Refectory, I wondered if the same girl would read again.
+
+She did, but this time in a foreign language, French as Mildred
+whispered--from the letters of the Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque--and
+my admiration for Alma went up tenfold. I wondered if it could possibly
+occur that I should ever come to know her.
+
+There is no worship like that of a child, and life for me, which had
+seemed so cold and dark the day before, became warm and bright with a
+new splendour.
+
+I was impatient of everything that took me away from the opportunity of
+meeting with Alma--the visit to the lay-sisters to be measured for my
+new black clothes, the three o'clock "rosary," when the nuns walked with
+their classes in the sunshine and, above all, the voluntary visit to the
+Blessed Sacrament in the Church of the Convent, which seemed to me
+large and gorgeous, though divided across the middle by an open bronze
+screen, called a Cancello--the inner half, as Mildred whispered, being
+for the inmates of the school, while the outer half was for the
+congregation which came on Sunday to Benediction.
+
+But at four o'clock we had dinner, when Alma read again--this time in
+Italian--from the writings of Saint Francis of Sales--and then, to my
+infinite delight, came a long recreation, when all the girls scampered
+out into the Convent garden, which was still bright with afternoon
+sunshine and as merry with laughter and shouts as the seashore on a
+windy summer morning.
+
+The garden was a large bare enclosure, bounded on two sides by the
+convent buildings and on the other two by a yellow wall and an avenue
+made by a line of stone pines with heads like open umbrellas, but it had
+no other foliage except an old tree which reminded me of Tommy the Mate,
+having gnarled and sprawling limbs, and standing like a weather-beaten
+old sailor, four-square in the middle.
+
+A number of the girls were singing and dancing around this tree, and I
+felt so happy just then that I should have loved to join them, but I was
+consumed by a desire to come to close quarters with the object of my
+devotion, so I looked eagerly about me and asked Mildred if Alma was
+likely to be there.
+
+"Sure to be," said Mildred, and hardly were the words out of her mouth
+when Alma herself came straight down in our direction, surrounded by a
+group of admiring girls, who were hanging on to her and laughing at
+everything she said.
+
+My heart began to thump, and without knowing what I was doing I stopped
+dead short, while Mildred went on a pace or two ahead of me.
+
+Then I noticed that Alma had stopped too, and that her great searching
+eyes were looking down at me. In my nervousness, I tried to smile, but
+Alma continued to stare, and at length, in the tone of one who had
+accidentally turned up something with her toe that was little and
+ridiculous, she said:
+
+"Goodness, girls, what's this?"
+
+Then she burst into a fit of laughter, in which the other girls joined,
+and looking me up and down they all laughed together.
+
+I knew what they were laughing at--the clothes my mother had made for me
+and I had felt so proud of. That burnt me like iron, and I think my lip
+must have dropped, but Alma showed no mercy.
+
+"Dare say the little doll thinks herself pretty, though," she said. And
+then she passed on, and the girls with her, and as they went off they
+looked back over their shoulders and laughed again.
+
+Never since has any human creature--not even Alma herself--made me
+suffer more than I suffered at that moment. My throat felt tight, tears
+leapt to my eyes, disappointment, humiliation, and shame swept over me
+like a flood, and I stood squeezing my little handkerchief in my hand
+and feeling as if I could have died.
+
+At the next moment Mildred stepped back to me, and putting her arm about
+my waist she said:
+
+"Never mind, Mary. She's a heartless thing. Don't have anything to do
+with her."
+
+But all the sunshine had gone out of the day for me now and I cried for
+hours. I was still crying, silently but bitterly, when, at eight
+o'clock, we were saying the night prayers, and I saw Alma, who was in
+the opposite benches, whispering to one of the girls who sat next to her
+and then looking straight across at me.
+
+And at nine o'clock when we went to bed I was crying more than ever, so
+that after the good-night-bell had been rung and the lights had been put
+down, Sister Angela, not knowing the cause of my sorrow, stepped up to
+my bed before going down stairs for her own studies, and whispered:
+
+"You mustn't fret for home, Mary. You will soon get used to it."
+
+But hardly had I been left alone, with the dull pain I could find no
+ease for, when somebody touched me on the shoulder, and, looking up, I
+saw a girl in her nightdress standing beside me. It was Alma and she
+said:
+
+"Say, little girl, is your name O'Neill?"
+
+Trembling with nervousness I answered that it was.
+
+"Do you belong to the O'Neills of Ellan?"
+
+Still trembling I told her that I did.
+
+"My!" she said in quite another tone, and then I saw that by some means
+I had begun to look different in her eyes.
+
+After a moment she sat on the side of my bed and asked questions about
+my home--if it was not large and very old, with big stone staircases,
+and great open fireplaces, and broad terraces, and beautiful walks going
+down to the sea.
+
+I was so filled with the joy of finding myself looking grand in Alma's
+eyes that I answered "yes" and "yes" without thinking too closely about
+her questions, and my tears were all brushed away when she said:
+
+"I knew somebody who lived in your house once, and I'll tell her all
+about you."
+
+She stayed a few moments longer, and when going off she whispered:
+
+"Hope you don't feel badly about my laughing in the garden to-day. I
+didn't mean a thing. But if any of the girls laugh again just say you're
+Alma Lier's friend and she's going to take care of you."
+
+I could hardly believe my ears. Some great new splendour had suddenly
+dawned upon me and I was very happy.
+
+I did not know then that the house which Alma had been talking of was
+not my father's house, but Castle Raa. I did not know then that the
+person who had lived there was her mother, and that in her comely and
+reckless youth she had been something to the bad Lord Raa who had lashed
+my father and sworn at my grandmother.
+
+I did not know anything that was dead and buried in the past, or
+shrouded and veiled in the future. I only knew that Alma had called
+herself my friend and promised to take care of me. So with a glad heart
+I went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Alma kept her word, though perhaps her method of protection was such as
+would have commended itself only to the heart of a child.
+
+It consisted in calling me Margaret Mary after our patron saint of the
+Sacred Heart, in taking me round the garden during recreation as if I
+had been a pet poodle, and, above all, in making my bed the scene of the
+conversaziones which some of the girls held at night when they were
+supposed to be asleep.
+
+The secrecy of these gatherings flattered me, and when the unclouded
+moon, in the depths of the deep blue Italian sky, looked in on my group
+of girls in their nightdresses, bunched together on my bed, with my own
+little body between, I had a feeling of dignity as well as solemnity and
+awe.
+
+Of course Alma was the chief spokeswoman at these whispered
+conferences. Sometimes she told us of her drives into the Borghese
+Gardens, where she saw the King and Queen, or to the Hunt on the
+Campagna, where she met the flower of the aristocracy, or to the Pincio,
+where the Municipal band played in the pavilion, while ladies sat in
+their carriages in the sunshine, and officers in blue cloaks saluted
+them and smiled.
+
+Sometimes she indicated her intentions for the future, which was
+certainly not to be devoted to retreats and novenas, or to witness
+another black dress as long as she lived, and if she married (which was
+uncertain) it was not to be to an American, but to a Frenchman, because
+Frenchmen had "family" and "blood," or perhaps to an Englishman, if he
+was a member of the House of Lords, in which case she would attend all
+the race-meetings and Coronations, and take tea at the Carlton, where
+she would eat _meringues glaces_ every day and have as many _eclairs_ as
+she liked.
+
+And sometimes she would tell us the stories of the novels which she
+bribed one of the washing-women to smuggle into the convent--stories of
+ladies and their lovers, and of intoxicating dreams of kissing and
+fondling, at which the bigger girls, with far-off suggestions of sexual
+mysteries still unexplored, would laugh and shudder, and then Alma would
+say:
+
+"But hush, girls! Margaret Mary will be shocked."
+
+Occasionally these conferences would be interrupted by Mildred's voice
+from the other end of the dormitory, where she would raise her head from
+her pillow and say:
+
+"Alma Lier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--keeping that child up
+when she ought to be asleep, instead of listening to your wicked
+stories."
+
+"Helloa, Mother Mildred, is that you?" Alma would answer, and then the
+girls would laugh, and Mildred was supposed to be covered with
+confusion.
+
+One night Sister Angela's footsteps were heard on the stairs, and then
+the girls flew back to their beds, where, with the furtive instinct of
+their age and sex, they pretended to be sleeping soundly when the Sister
+entered the room. But the Sister was not deceived, and walking up the
+aisle between the beds she said in an angry tone:
+
+"Alma Lier, if this ever occurs again I'll step down to the Reverend
+Mother and tell her all about you."
+
+Little as I was, I saw that between Alma and Sister Angela there was a
+secret feud, which must soon break into open rupture, but for my own
+part I was entirely happy, being still proud of Alma's protection and
+only feeling any misgivings when Mildred's melancholy eyes were looking
+at me.
+
+Thus week followed week until we were close upon Christmas, and the
+girls, who were to be permitted to go home before the Feast, began to
+count the days to the holidays. I counted them too, and when anybody
+talked of her brother I thought of Martin Conrad, though his faithful
+little figure was fading away from me, and when anybody spoke of her
+parents I remembered my mother, for whom my affection never failed.
+
+But, within a week from the time for breaking up, the Reverend Mother
+sent for me, and with a sinking heart I went to her room, knowing well
+what she was going to say.
+
+"You are not to go home for the holidays this time, my child. You are to
+remain here, and Sister Angela is to stay to take care of you."
+
+She had a letter from Father Dan, telling her that my mother was still
+unwell, and for this and other reasons it was considered best that I
+should not return at Christmas.
+
+Father Dan had written a letter to me also, beginning, "My dear daughter
+in Jesus" and ending "Yours in Xt," saying it was not his fault that he
+could not fulfil his promise, but my father was much from home
+now-a-days and Aunt Bridget was more difficult than ever, so perhaps I
+should be happier at the Convent.
+
+It was a bitter blow, though the bitterest part of it lay in the fear
+that the girls would think I was of so little importance to my people
+that they did not care to see me.
+
+But the girls were too eager about their own concerns to care much about
+me, and even on the very last day and at the very last moment, when
+everything was bustle and joy, and boxes were being carried downstairs,
+and everybody was kissing everybody else and wishing each other a Happy
+Christmas, and then flying away like mad things, and I alone was being
+left, Alma herself, before she stepped into a carriage in which a stout
+lady wearing furs was waiting to receive her, only said:
+
+"By-by, Margaret Mary! Take care of Sister Angela."
+
+Next day the Reverend Mother went off to her cottage at Nemi, and the
+other nuns and novices to their friends in the country, and then Sister
+Angela and I were alone in the big empty, echoing convent--save for two
+elderly lay Sisters, who cooked and cleaned for us, and the Chaplain,
+who lived by himself in a little white hut like a cell which stood at
+the farthest corner of the garden.
+
+We moved our quarters to a room in the front of the house, so as to look
+out over the city, and down into the piazza which was full of traffic,
+and after a while we had many cheerful hours together.
+
+During the days before Christmas we spent our mornings in visiting the
+churches and basilicas where there were little illuminated models of the
+Nativity, with the Virgin and the Infant Jesus in the stable among the
+straw. The afternoons we spent at home in the garden, where the
+Chaplain, in his black soutane and biretta, was always sitting under the
+old tree, reading his breviary.
+
+His name was Father Giovanni and he was a tall young man with a long,
+thin, pale face, and when Sister Angela first took me up to him she
+said:
+
+"This is our Margaret Mary."
+
+Then his sad face broke into warm sunshine, and he stroked my head, and
+sent me away to skip with my skipping-rope, while he and Sister Angela
+sat together under the tree, and afterwards walked to and fro in the
+avenue between the stone pines and the wall, until they came to his cell
+in the corner, where she craned her neck at the open door as if she
+would have liked to go in and make things more tidy and comfortable.
+
+On Christmas Day we had currant cake in honour of the feast, and Sister
+Angela asked Father Giovanni to come to tea, and he came, and was quite
+cheerful, so that when the Sister, who was also very happy, signalled to
+me to take some mistletoe from the bottom of a picture I held it over
+his head and kissed him from behind. Then he snatched me up in his arms
+and kissed me back, and we had a great romp round the chairs and tables.
+
+But the Ave Maria began to ring from the churches, and Father Giovanni
+(according to the rule of our Convent) having to go, he kissed me again,
+and then I said:
+
+"Why don't you kiss Sister Angela too?"
+
+At that they only looked at each other and laughed, but after a moment
+he kissed her hand, and then she went downstairs to see him out into the
+garden.
+
+When she came back her eyes were sparkling and her cheeks were flushed,
+and, that night, when she took away her black and white whimple and
+gorget on going to bed, she stood before a looking-glass and wound her
+beautiful light hair round her finger and curled it over her forehead
+in the way it was worn by the ladies we saw in the streets.
+
+I think it was two nights later that she told me I was to go to bed
+early because Father Giovanni was not well and she would have to go over
+to see him.
+
+She went, and I got into bed, but I could not sleep, and while I lay
+waiting for Sister Angela I listened to some men who as they crossed the
+piazza were singing, in tremulous voices, to their mandolines and
+guitars, what I believed to be love songs, for I had begun to learn
+Italian.
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli. Oh suol beato
+         Onde soiridere volta il creato_."
+
+It was late when Sister Angela came back and then she was breathing hard
+as if she had been running. I asked if Father Giovanni's sickness was
+worse, and she said no, it was better, and I was to say nothing about
+it. But she could not rest and at last she said:
+
+"Didn't we forget to say our prayers, Mary?"
+
+So I got up again and Sister Angela said one of the beautiful prayers
+out of our prayer-book. But her voice was very low and when she came to
+the words:
+
+"O Father of all mankind, forgive all sinners who repent of their sins,"
+she broke down altogether.
+
+I thought she was ill, but she said it was only a cold she had caught in
+crossing the garden and I was to go to sleep like a good girl and think
+no more about her.
+
+But in the middle of the night I awoke, and Sister Angela was crying.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Most of the girls were depressed when they returned to school, but Alma
+was in high spirits, and on the first night of the term she crept over
+to my bed and asked what we had been doing during the holidays.
+
+"Not a thing, eh?"
+
+I answered that we had done lots of things and been very happy.
+
+"Happy? In this gloomy old convent? You and Sister Angela alone?"
+
+I told her we had two lay sisters-and then there was Father Giovanni.
+
+"Father Giovanni? That serious old cross-bones?"
+
+I said he was not always serious, and that on Christmas Day he had come
+to tea and kissed me under the mistletoe.
+
+"Kissed you under the mistletoe!" said Alma, and then she whispered
+eagerly,
+
+"He didn't kiss Sister Angela, did he?"
+
+I suppose I was flattered by her interest, and this loosened my tongue,
+for I answered:
+
+"He kissed her hand, though."
+
+"Kissed her hand? My! . . . Of course she was very angry . . . wasn't
+she angry?"
+
+I answered no, and in my simplicity I proceeded to prove this by
+explaining that Sister Angela had taken Father Giovanni down to the
+door, and when he was ill she had nursed him.
+
+"Nursed him? In his own house, you mean?"
+
+"Yes, at night, too, and she stayed until he was better, and caught a
+cold coming back."
+
+"Well, I never!" said Alma, and I remember that I was very pleased with
+myself during this interview, for by the moonlight which was then
+shining into the room, I could see that Alma's eyes were sparkling.
+
+The next night we recommenced our conferences in bed, when Alma told us
+all about her holiday, which she had spent "way up in St. Moritz," among
+deep snow and thick ice, skating, bobbing, lugging, and above all riding
+astride, and dragging a man on skis behind her.
+
+"Such lots of fun," she said. And the best of it was at night when there
+were dances and fancy-dress balls with company which included all the
+smart people in Europe, and men who gave a girl such a good time if she
+happened to be pretty and was likely to have a dot.
+
+Alma had talked so eagerly and the girls had listened so intently, that
+nobody was aware that Sister Angela had returned to the room until she
+stepped forward and said:
+
+"Alma Lier, I'm ashamed of you. Go back to your bed, miss, this very
+minute."
+
+The other girls crept away and I half covered my face with my
+bed-clothes, but Alma stood up to Sister Angela and answered her back.
+
+"Go to bed yourself, and don't speak to me like that, or you'll pay for
+your presumption."
+
+"Pay? Presumption? You insolent thing, you are corrupting the whole
+school and are an utter disgrace to it. I warned you that I would tell
+the Reverend Mother what you are and now I've a great mind to do it."
+
+"Do it. I dare you to do it. Do it to-night, and to-morrow morning _I_
+will do something."
+
+"What will you do, you brazen hussy?" said Sister Angela, but I could
+see that her lip was trembling.
+
+"Never mind what. If I'm a hussy I'm not a hypocrite, and as for
+corrupting the school, and being a disgrace to it, I'll leave the
+Reverend Mother to say who is doing that."
+
+Low as the light was I could see that Sister Angela was deadly pale.
+There was a moment of silence in which I thought she glanced in my
+direction, and then stammering something which I did not hear, she left
+the dormitory.
+
+It was long before she returned and when she did so I saw her creep into
+her cubicle and sit there for quite a great time before going to bed. My
+heart was thumping hard, for I had a vague feeling that I had been
+partly to blame for what had occurred, but after a while I fell asleep
+and remembered no more until I was awakened in the middle of the night
+by somebody kissing me in my sleep.
+
+It was Sister Angela, and she was turning away, but I called her back,
+and she knelt by my bed and whispered:
+
+"Hush! I know what has happened, but I don't blame you for it."
+
+I noticed that she was wearing her out-door cloak, and that she was
+breathing rapidly, just as she did on the night she came from the
+chaplain's quarters, and when I asked if she was going anywhere she said
+yes, and if I ever heard anything against Sister Angela I was to think
+the best of her.
+
+"But you are so good. . . ."
+
+"No, I am not good. I am very wicked. I should never have thought of
+being a nun, but I'm glad now that I'm only a novice and have never
+taken the vows."
+
+After that she told me to go to sleep, and then she kissed me again, and
+I thought she was going to cry, but she rose hurriedly and left the
+room.
+
+Next morning after the getting-up bell had been rung, and I had roused
+myself to full consciousness, I found that four or five nuns were
+standing together near the door of the dormitory talking about something
+that had happened during the night--Sister Angela had gone!
+
+Half an hour afterwards when full of this exciting event, the girls went
+bursting down to the Meeting Room they found the nuns in great
+agitation over an incident of still deeper gravity--Father Giovanni also
+had disappeared!
+
+A convent school is like a shell on the shore of a creek, always
+rumbling with the rumour of the little sea it lives under; and by noon
+the girls, who had been palpitating with curiosity, thought they knew
+everything that had happened--how at four in the morning Father Giovanni
+and Sister Angela had been seen to come out of the little door which
+connected the garden with the street; how at seven they had entered a
+clothing emporium in the Corso, where going in at one door as priest and
+nun they had come out at another as ordinary civilians; how at eight
+they had taken the first train to Civita Vecchia, arriving in time to
+catch a steamer sailing at ten, and how they were now on their way to
+England.
+
+By some mysterious instinct of their sex the girls had gathered with
+glistening eyes in front of the chaplain's deserted quarters, where Alma
+leaned against the wall with her insteps crossed and while the others
+talked she smiled, as much as to say, "I told you so."
+
+As for me I was utterly wretched, and being now quite certain that I was
+the sole cause of Sister Angela's misfortune, I was sitting under the
+tree in the middle of the garden, when Alma, surrounded by her usual
+group of girls, came down on me.
+
+"What's this?" she said. "Margaret Mary crying? Feeling badly for Sister
+Angela, is she? Why, you little silly, you needn't cry for her. She's
+having the time of her life, she is!"
+
+At this the girls laughed and shuddered, as they used to do when Alma
+told them stories, but just at that moment the nun with the stern face
+(she was the Mother of the Novices) came up and said, solemnly:
+
+"Alma Lier, the Reverend Mother wishes to speak to you."
+
+"To me?" said Alma, in a tone of surprise, but at the next moment she
+went off jauntily.
+
+Hours passed and Alma did not return, and nothing occurred until
+afternoon "rosary," when the Mother of the Novices came again and taking
+me by the hand said:
+
+"Come with me, my child."
+
+I knew quite well where we were going to, and my lip was trembling when
+we entered the Reverend Mother's room, for Alma was there, sitting by
+the stove, and close beside her, with an angry look, was the stout lady
+in furs whom I had seen in the carriage at the beginning of the
+holidays.
+
+"Don't be afraid," said the Reverend Mother, and drawing me to her side
+she asked me to tell her what I had told Alma about Sister Angela.
+
+I repeated our conversation as nearly as I could remember it, and more
+than once Alma nodded her head as if in assent, but the Reverend
+Mother's face grew darker at every word and, seeing this, I said:
+
+"But if Sister Angela did anything wrong I'm sure she was very sorry,
+for when she came back she said her prayers, and when she got to 'Father
+of all mankind, forgive all sinners . . .'"
+
+"Yes, yes, that will do," said the Reverend Mother, and then she handed
+me back to the Mother of the Novices, telling her to warn me to say
+nothing to the other children.
+
+Alma did not return to us at dinner, or at recreation, or at chapel
+(when another chaplain said vespers), or even at nine o'clock, when we
+went to bed. But next morning, almost as soon as the Mother of the
+Novices had left the dormitory, she burst into the room saying:
+
+"I'm leaving this silly old convent, girls. Mother has brought the
+carriage, and I've only come to gather up my belongings."
+
+Nobody spoke, and while she wrapped up her brushes and combs in her
+nightdress, she joked about Sister Angela and Father Giovanni and then
+about Mildred Bankes, whom she called "Reverend Mother Mildred," saying
+it would be her turn next.
+
+Then she tipped up her mattress, and taking a novel from under it she
+threw the book on to my bed, saying:
+
+"Margaret Mary will have to be your story-teller now. By-by, girls!"
+
+Nobody laughed. For the first time Alma's humour had failed her, and
+when we went downstairs to the Meeting Room it was with sedate and quiet
+steps.
+
+The nuns were all there, with their rosaries and crosses, looking as
+calm as if nothing had occurred, but the girls were thinking of Alma,
+and when, after prayers, during the five minutes of silence for
+meditation, we heard the wheels of a carriage going off outside, we knew
+what had happened--Alma had gone.
+
+We were rising to go to Mass when the Reverend Mother said,
+
+"Children, I have a word to say to you. You all know that one of our
+novices has left us. You also know that one of our scholars has just
+gone. It is my wish that you should forget both of them, and I shall
+look upon it as an act of disobedience if any girl in the Convent ever
+mentions their names again."
+
+All that day I was in deep distress, and when, night coming, I took my
+troubles to bed, telling myself I had now lost Alma also, and it was all
+my fault, somebody put her arms about me in the darkness and whispered:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, are you awake?"
+
+It was Mildred, and I suppose my snuffling answered her, for she said:
+
+"You mustn't cry for Alma Lier. She was no friend of yours, and it was
+the best thing that ever happened to you when she was turned out of the
+convent."
+
+
+
+
+SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+A child lives from hour to hour, and almost at the same moment that my
+heart was made desolate by the loss of my two friends it was quickened
+to a new interest.
+
+Immediately after the departure of Sister Angela and Alma we were all
+gathered in the Meeting Room for our weekly rehearsal of the music of
+the Benediction--the girls, the novices, the nuns, the Reverend Mother,
+and a Maestro from the Pope's choir, a short fat man, who wore a black
+soutane and a short lace tippet.
+
+Benediction was the only service of our church which I knew, being the
+one my mother loved best and could do most of for herself in the
+solitude of her invalid room, but the form used in the Convent differed
+from that to which I had been accustomed, and even the _Tantum ergo_ and
+the _O Salutaris Hostia_ I could not sing.
+
+On this occasion a litany was added which I had heard before, and then
+came a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well. My mother
+sang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when the Maestro,
+swinging his little ivory baton, began in his alto voice--
+
+     "_Ave maris stella,
+         Dei Mater alma--_"
+
+I joined in with the rest, but sang in English instead of Latin Of all
+appeals to the memory that of music is the strongest, and after a moment
+I forgot that I was at school in Rome, being back in my mother's room in
+Ellan, standing by her piano and singing while she played. I think I
+must have let my little voice go, just as I used to do at home, when it
+rang up to the wooden rafters, for utterly lost to my surroundings I had
+got as far as--
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+         To thy shelter take us--_"
+
+when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the children
+about me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton slowing down. Then I
+saw that all eyes were turned in my direction, and overwhelmed with
+confusion I stopped, for my voice broke and slittered into silence.
+
+"Go on, little angel," said the Maestro, but I was trembling all over by
+this time and could not utter a sound.
+
+Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing the hymn
+in church in future."
+
+As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the presence of
+the girls, I did so, singing the first line of each verse alone, and I
+remember to have heard that the congregations on Sunday afternoons grew
+larger and larger, until, within a few weeks, the church was densely
+crowded.
+
+Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for I
+remember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the bronze
+screen that separated us from the public and whisper among themselves,
+"Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with the big eyes!"
+"God bless her!"
+
+But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to have a
+certain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in the life of
+the Convent, and particularly in the services of the church, so that
+home itself began to fade away, and when the holidays came round and
+excuses were received for not sending for me, the pain of my
+disappointment became less and less until at last it disappeared
+altogether.
+
+If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments when I
+reproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day. These were
+the moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling me she was less
+well than before and her spark of life had to be coaxed and trimmed or
+it would splutter out altogether.
+
+But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother wrote
+herself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because she knew
+that though so long separated we should soon be together, and the time
+would not seem long.
+
+Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like these, I
+was nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until little by
+little it faded away from me in the distance, just as the island itself
+had done on the day when I sailed out with Martin Conrad on our great
+voyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock.
+
+Thus two years and a half passed since I arrived in Rome before the
+great fact befell me which was to wipe all other facts out of my
+remembrance.
+
+It was Holy Week, the season of all seasons for devotion to the Sacred
+Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritual
+duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls in
+Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of the
+Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of the
+Gloria and the return of the Alleluia.
+
+But beyond all this for me were the arrangements for my first
+confession, which, coming a little late, I made with ten or twelve other
+girls of my sodality, feeling so faint when I took my turn and knelt by
+the grating, and heard the whispering voice within, like something from
+the unseen, something supernatural, something divine, that I forgot all
+I had come to say and the priest had to prompt me.
+
+And beyond that again were the arrangements for my first communion,
+which was to take place on Easter morning, when I was to walk in
+procession with the other girls, dressed all in white, behind a gilded
+figure of the Virgin, singing "Ave maris stella," through the piazza
+into the church, where one of the Cardinals, in the presence of the
+fathers and mothers of the other children, was to put the Holy Wafer on
+our tongues and we were to know for the first time the joy of communion
+with our Lord.
+
+But that was not to be for me.
+
+On the morning of Holy Wednesday the blow fell. The luminous grey of the
+Italian dawn was filtering through the windows of the dormitory, like
+the light in a tomb, and a multitude of little birds on the old tree in
+the garden were making a noise like water falling on small stones in a
+fountain, when the Mother of the Novices came to my bedside and said:
+
+"You are to go to the Reverend Mother as soon as possible, my child."
+
+Her voice, usually severe, was so soft that I knew something had
+happened, and when I went downstairs I also knew, before the Reverend
+Mother had spoken, what she was going to say.
+
+"Mary," she said, "I am Sorry to tell you that your mother is ill."
+
+I listened intently, fearing that worse would follow.
+
+"She is very ill--very seriously ill, and she wishes to see you.
+Therefore you are to go home immediately."
+
+The tears sprang to my eyes, and the Reverend Mother drew me to her side
+and laid my head on her breast and comforted me, saying my dear mother
+had lived the life of a good Christian and could safely trust in the
+redeeming blood of our Blessed Saviour. But I thought she must have some
+knowledge of the conditions of my life at home, for she told me that
+whatever happened I was to come back to her.
+
+"Tell your father you _wish_ to come back to me," she said, and then she
+explained the arrangements that were being made for my journey.
+
+I was to travel alone by the Paris express which left Rome at six
+o'clock that evening. The Mother of the Novices was to put me in a
+sleeping car and see that the greatest care would be taken of me until I
+arrived at Calais, where Father Donovan was to meet the train and take
+me home.
+
+I cried a great deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind,
+and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, the
+sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to
+all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to me
+also--poor, helpless innocent--and I felt a certain distinction in my
+sorrow.
+
+At five o'clock the omnibus of the Convent had been brought round to the
+door, and I was seated in one corner of it, with the Mother of the
+Novices in front of me, when Mildred Bankes came running breathlessly
+downstairs to say that the Reverend Mother had given her permission to
+see me off.
+
+Half an hour later Mildred and I were sitting in a compartment of the
+Wagon-Lit, while the Mother was talking to the conductor on the
+platform.
+
+Mildred, whose eyes were wet, was saying something about herself which
+seems pitiful enough now in the light of what has happened since.
+
+She was to leave the Convent soon, and before I returned to it she would
+be gone. She was poor and an orphan, both her parents being dead, and if
+she had her own way she would become a nun. In any case our
+circumstances would be so different, our ways of life so far apart, that
+we might never meet again; but if . . .
+
+Before she had finished a bell rang on the platform, and a moment or two
+afterwards the train slid out of the station.
+
+Then for the first time I began to realise the weight of the blow that
+had fallen on me. I was sitting alone in my big compartment, we were
+running into the Campagna, the heavens were ablaze with the glory of the
+sunset, which was like fields of glistening fire, but darkness seemed to
+have fallen on all the world.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Early on Good Friday I arrived at Calais. It was a misty, rimy, clammy
+morning, and a thick fog was lying over the Channel.
+
+Almost before the train stopped I saw Father Dan, with his coat collar
+turned up, waiting for me on the platform. I could see that he was
+greatly moved at the sight of me, but was trying hard to maintain his
+composure.
+
+"Now don't worry, my child, don't worry," he said. "It will be all
+ri. . . . But how well you are looking! And how you have grown! And
+how glad your poor mother will be to see you!"
+
+I tried to ask how she was. "Is she . . ."
+
+"Yes, thank God, she's alive, and while there's life there's hope."
+
+We travelled straight through without stopping and arrived at Blackwater
+at seven the same evening. There we took train, for railways were
+running in Ellan now, and down the sweet valleys that used to be green
+with grass, and through the little crofts that used to be red with
+fuchsia, there was a long raw welt of upturned earth.
+
+At the station of our village my father's carriage was waiting for us
+and a strange footman shrugged his shoulders in answer to some whispered
+question of Father Dan's, and from that I gathered that my mother's
+condition was unchanged.
+
+We reached home at dusk, just as somebody was lighting a line of new
+electric lamps that had been set up in the drive to show the way for the
+carriage under the chestnuts in which the rooks used to build and caw.
+
+I knew the turn of the path from which the house could be first seen,
+and I looked for it, remembering the last glimpse I had of my mother at
+her window. Father Dan looked, too, but for another reason--to see if
+the blinds were down.
+
+Aunt Bridget was in the hall, and when Father Dan, who had grown more
+and more excited as we approached the end of our journey, asked how my
+mother was now, poor thing, she answered:
+
+"Worse; distinctly worse; past recognising anybody; so all this trouble
+and expense has been wasted."
+
+As she had barely recognised me I ran upstairs with a timid and quiet
+step and without waiting to take off my outer clothes made my way to my
+mother's bedroom.
+
+I remember the heavy atmosphere of the room as I opened the door. I
+remember the sense I had of its being lower and smaller than I thought.
+I remember the black four-foot bedstead with the rosary hanging on a
+brass nail at the pillow end. I remember my little cot which still stood
+in the same place and contained some of the clothes I had worn as a
+child, and even some of the toys I had played with.
+
+A strange woman, in the costume of a nurse, turned to look at me as I
+entered, but I did not at first see my mother, and when at length I did
+see her, with her eyes closed, she looked so white and small as to be
+almost hidden in the big white bed.
+
+Presently Father Dan came in, followed by Doctor Conrad and Aunt
+Bridget, and finally my father, who was in his shirt sleeves and had a
+pen in his ear, I remember.
+
+Then Father Dan, who was trembling very much, took me by the hand and
+led me to my mother's side, where stooping over her, and making his
+voice very low, yet speaking as one who was calling into a long tunnel,
+he said:
+
+"My daughter! My daughter! Here is our little Mary. She has come home to
+see you."
+
+Never shall I forget what followed. First, my mother's long lashes
+parted and she looked at me with a dazed expression as if still in a
+sort of dream. Then her big eyes began to blaze like torches in dark
+hollows, and then (though they had thought her strength was gone and her
+voice would never be heard again) she raised herself in her bed,
+stretched out her arms to me, and cried in loud strong tones:
+
+"Mally veen! My Mally veen!"
+
+How long I lay with my arms about my mother, and my mother's arms about
+me I do not know. I only know that over my head I heard Father Dan
+saying, as if speaking to a child:
+
+"You are happy now, are you not?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I am happy now," my mother answered.
+
+"You have everything you want?"
+
+"Everything--everything!"
+
+Then came my father's voice, saying:
+
+"Well, you've got your girl, Isabel. You wanted her, so we sent for her,
+and here she is."
+
+"You have been very good to me, Daniel," said my mother, who was kissing
+my forehead and crying in her joy.
+
+When I raised my head I found Father Dan in great excitement.
+
+"Did you see that then?" he was saying to Doctor Conrad.
+
+"I would have gone on my knees all the way to Blackwater to see it."
+
+"I couldn't have believed it possible," the Doctor replied.
+
+"Ah, what children we are, entirely. God confounds all our reckoning. We
+can't count with His miracles. And the greatest of all miracles is a
+mother's love for her child."
+
+"Let us leave her now, though," said the Doctor. "She's like herself
+again, but still . . ."
+
+"Yes, let us leave them together," whispered Father Dan, and having
+swept everybody out before him (I thought Aunt Bridget went away
+ashamed) he stepped off himself on tiptoe, as if treading on holy
+ground.
+
+Then my mother, who was holding my hand and sometimes putting it to her
+lips, said:
+
+"Tell me everything that has happened."
+
+As soon as my little tongue was loosed I told her all about my life at
+the Convent--about the Reverend Mother and the nuns and the novices and
+the girls (all except Sister Angela and Alma) and the singing of the
+hymn to the Virgin--talking on and on and on, without observing that,
+after a while, my mother's eyes had closed again, and that her hand had
+become cold and moist.
+
+At length she said: "Is it getting dark, Mary?"
+
+I told her it was night and the lamp was burning.
+
+"Is it going out then?" she asked, and when I answered that it was not
+she did not seem to hear, so I stopped talking, and for some time there
+was silence in which I heard nothing but the ticking of the clock on the
+mantelpiece, the barking of a sheep dog a long way off, and the husky
+breathing in my mother's throat.
+
+I was beginning to be afraid when the nurse returned. She was going to
+speak quite cheerfully, but after a glance at my mother she went out
+quickly and came back in a moment with Doctor Conrad and Father Dan.
+
+I heard the doctor say something about a change, whereupon Father Dan
+hurried away, and in a moment there was much confusion. The nurse spoke
+of taking me to another room but the doctor said:
+
+"No, our little woman will be brave," and then leading me aside he
+whispered that God was sending for my mother and I must be quiet and not
+cry.
+
+Partly undressing I climbed into my cot and lay still for the next half
+hour, while the doctor held his hand on my mother's pulse and the nurse
+spread a linen cloth over a table and put four or five lighted candles
+on it.
+
+I remember that I was thinking that if "God sending for my mother" meant
+that she was to be put into a box and buried under the ground it was
+terrible and cruel, and perhaps if I prayed to our Lady He would not
+find it in His heart to do so. I was trying to do this, beginning under
+my breath, "O Holy Virgin, thou art so lovely, thou art so gracious . . ."
+when the nurse said:
+
+"Here they are back again."
+
+Then I heard footsteps outside, and going to the window I saw a sight
+not unlike that which I had seen on the night of the Waits.
+
+A group of men were coming towards the house, with Father Dan in the
+middle of them. Father Dan, with his coat hung over his arms like a
+cloak, was carrying something white in both hands, and the men were
+carrying torches to light him on his way.
+
+I knew what it was--it was the Blessed Sacrament, which they were
+bringing to my mother, and when Father Dan had come into the room,
+saying "Peace be to this house," and laid a little white box on the
+table, and thrown off his coat, he was wearing his priest's vestments
+underneath.
+
+Then the whole of my father's household--all except my father
+himself--came into my mother's room, including Aunt Bridget, who sat
+with folded arms in the darkness by the wall, and the servants, who
+knelt in a group by the door.
+
+Father Dan roused my mother by calling to her again, and after she had
+opened her eyes he began to read. Sometimes his voice seemed to be
+choked with sobs, as if the heart of the man were suffering, and
+sometimes it pealed out loudly as if the soul of the priest were
+inspiring him.
+
+After Communion he gave my mother Extreme Unction--anointing the sweet
+eyes which had seen no evil, the dear lips which had uttered no wrong,
+and the feet which had walked in the ways of God.
+
+All this time there was a solemn hush in the house like that of a
+church--no sound within except my father's measured tread in the room
+below, and none without except the muffled murmur which the sea makes
+when it is far away and going out.
+
+When all was over my mother seemed more at ease, and after asking for me
+and being told I was in the cot, she said:
+
+"You must all go and rest. Mary and I will be quite right now."
+
+A few minutes afterwards my mother and I were alone once more, and then
+she called me into her bed and clasped her arms about me and I lay with
+my face hidden in her neck.
+
+What happened thereafter seems to be too sacred to write of, almost too
+sacred to think about, yet it is all as a memory of yesterday, while
+other events of my life have floated away to the ocean of things that
+are forgotten and lost.
+
+"Listen, darling," she said, and then, speaking in whispers, she told me
+she had heard all I had said about the Convent, and wondered if I would
+not like to live there always, becoming one of the good and holy nuns.
+
+I must have made some kind of protest, for she went on to say how hard
+the world was to a woman and how difficult she had found it.
+
+"Not that your father has been to blame--you must never think that,
+Mary, yet still . . ."
+
+But tears from her tender heart were stealing down her face and she had
+to stop.
+
+Even yet I had not realised all that the solemn time foreboded, for I
+said something about staying with my mother; and then in her sweet
+voice, she told me nervously, breaking the news to me gently, that she
+was going to leave me, that she was going to heaven, but she would
+think of me when she was there, and if God permitted she would watch
+over me, or, if that might not be, she would ask our Lady to do so.
+
+"So you see we shall never be parted, never really. We shall always be
+together. Something tells me that wherever you are, and whatever you are
+doing, I shall know all about it."
+
+This comforted me, and I think it comforted my mother also, though God
+knows if it would have done so, if, with her dying eyes, she could have
+seen what was waiting for her child.
+
+It fills my heart brimful to think of what happened next.
+
+She told me to say a _De Profundis_ for her sometimes, and to think of
+her when I sang the hymn to the Virgin. Then she kissed me and told me
+to go to sleep, saying she was going to sleep too, and if it should
+prove to be the eternal sleep, it would be only like going to sleep at
+night and awaking in the morning, and then we should be together again,
+and "the time between would not seem long."
+
+"So good-night, darling, and God bless you," she said.
+
+And as well as I could I answered her "Good-night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I awoke from the profound slumber of childhood it was noon of the
+next day and the sun was shining. Doctor Conrad was lifting me out of
+bed, and Father Dan, who had just thrown open the window, was saying in
+a tremulous voice:
+
+"Your dear mother has gone to God."
+
+I began to cry, but he checked me and said:
+
+"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful Paradise after
+all her suffering. Let her go!"
+
+So I lost her, my mother, my saint, my angel.
+
+It was Easter Eve, and the church bells were ringing the Gloria.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+After my mother's death there was no place left for me in my father's
+house.
+
+Betsy Beauty (who was now called Miss Betsy and gave herself more than
+ever the airs of the daughter of the family) occupied half her days with
+the governess who had been engaged to teach her, and the other half in
+driving, dressed in beautiful clothes, to the houses of the gentry round
+about.
+
+Nessy MacLeod, called the young mistress, had become my father's
+secretary, and spent most of her time in his private room, a privilege
+which enlarged her pride without improving her manners.
+
+Martin Conrad I did not see, for in reward for some success at school
+the doctor had allowed him to spend his Easter holidays in London in
+order to look at Nansen's ship, the _Fram_, which had just then arrived
+in the Thames.
+
+Hence it happened that though home made a certain tug at me, with its
+familiar sights and sounds, and more than once I turned with timid steps
+towards my father's busy room, intending to say, "Please, father, don't
+send me back to school," I made no demur when, six or seven days after
+the funeral, Aunt Bridget began to prepare for my departure.
+
+"There's odds of women," said Tommy the Mate, when I went into the
+garden to say good bye to him "They're like sheep's broth, is women. If
+there's a head and a heart in them they're good, and if there isn't you
+might as well be supping hot water. Our Big Woman is hot water--but
+she'll die for all."
+
+Within a fortnight I was back at the Convent, and there the Reverend
+Mother atoned to me for every neglect.
+
+"I knew you would come back to me," she said, and from that hour onward
+she seemed to be trying to make up to me for the mother I had lost.
+
+I became deeply devoted to her. As a consequence her spirit became my
+spirit, and, little by little, the religious side of the life of the
+Convent took complete possession of me.
+
+At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Mother
+loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, the
+flowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion,
+the mysteries of our religion took hold of me--the Confessional with its
+sense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.
+
+For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side of my
+mind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the holidays came
+round the Reverend Mother took me with her to her country home at Nemi.
+
+That was a beautiful place--a sweet white cottage, some twenty
+kilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the middle of the
+remains of a mediaeval village which contained a castle and a monastery,
+and had a little blue lake lying like an emerald among the green and red
+of the grass and poppies in the valley below.
+
+In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with
+its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the
+rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in
+velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous
+outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to
+girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.
+
+Years went by without my being aware of their going, for after a while I
+became entirely happy.
+
+I heard frequently from home. Occasionally it was from Betsy Beauty, who
+had not much to say beyond stories of balls at Government House, where
+she had danced with the young Lord Raa, and of hunts at which she had
+ridden with him. More rarely it was from Aunt Bridget, who usually began
+by complaining of the ever-increasing cost of my convent clothes and
+ended with accounts of her daughter's last new costume and how well she
+looked in it.
+
+From Nessy MacLeod and my father I never heard at all, but Father Dan
+was my constant correspondent and he told me everything.
+
+First of my father himself--that he had carried out many of his great
+enterprises, his marine works, electric railways, drinking and dancing
+palaces, which had brought tens of thousands of visitors and hundreds of
+thousands of pounds to Ellan, though the good Father doubted the
+advantage of such innovations and lamented the decline of piety which
+had followed on the lust for wealth.
+
+Next of Aunt Bridget--that she was bringing up her daughter in the ways
+of worldly vanity and cherishing a serpent in her bosom (meaning Nessy
+MacLeod) who would poison her heart some day.
+
+Next, of Tommy the Mate--that he sent his "best respec's" to the
+"lil-missy" but thought she was well out of the way of the Big Woman who
+"was getting that highty-tighty" that "you couldn't say Tom to a cat
+before her but she was agate of you to make it Thomas."
+
+Then of Martin Conrad--that he was at college "studying for a doctor,"
+but his heart was still at the North Pole and he was "like a sea-gull in
+the nest of a wood pigeon," always longing to be out on the wild waves.
+
+Finally of the young Lord Raa--that the devil's dues must be in the man,
+for after being "sent down" from Oxford he had wasted his substance in
+riotous living in London and his guardian had been heard to say he must
+marry a rich wife soon or his estates would go to the hammer.
+
+Such was the substance of the news that reached me over a period of six
+years. Yet welcome as were Father Dan's letters the life they described
+seemed less and less important to me as time went on, for the outer
+world was slipping away from me altogether and I was becoming more and
+more immersed in my spiritual exercises.
+
+I spent much of my time reading religious books--the life of Saint
+Teresa, the meditations of Saint Francis of Sales, and, above all, the
+letters and prayers of our Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose love of
+the Sacred Heart was like a flaming torch to my excited spirit.
+
+The soul of Rome, too, seemed to enter into my soul--not the new Rome,
+for of that I knew nothing, but the old Rome, the holy city, that could
+speak to me in the silence of the night within the walls of my
+convent-school, with its bells of the Dominican and Franciscan
+monasteries on either side, its stories of miracles performed on the
+sick and dying by the various shrines of the Madonna, its accounts of
+the vast multitudes of the faithful who came from all ends of the earth
+to the ceremonials at St. Peter's, and, above all, its sense of the
+immediate presence of the Pope, half a mile away, the Vicar and
+mouthpiece of God Himself.
+
+The end of it all was that I wished to become a nun. I said nothing of
+my desire to anybody, not even to the Reverend Mother, but day by day my
+resolution grew.
+
+Perhaps it was natural that the orphaned and homeless girl should plunge
+with all this passion into the aurora of a new spiritual life; but when
+I think how my nature was made for love, human love, the love of husband
+and children, I cannot but wonder with a thrill of the heart whether my
+mother in heaven, who, while she was on earth, had fought so hard with
+my father for the body of her child, was now fighting with him for her
+soul.
+
+I was just eighteen years of age when my desire to become a nun reached
+its highest point, and then received its final overthrow.
+
+Mildred Bankes, who had returned to Rome, and was living as a novice
+with the Little Sisters of the Poor, was about to make her vows, and the
+Reverend Mother took me to see the ceremony.
+
+Never shall I forget the effect of it. The sweet summer morning,
+tingling with snow-white sunshine, the little white chapel in the
+garden of the Convent, covered with flowers, the altar with its lighted
+tapers, the friends from without clad in gay costumes as for a festival,
+the bishop in his bright vestments, and then, Mildred herself, dressed
+as a bride in a beautiful white gown with a long white veil and attended
+by other novices as bridesmaids.
+
+It was just like a marriage to look upon, except for the absence of a
+visible bridegroom, the invisible one being Christ. And the taking of
+the vows was like a marriage service too--only more solemn and sacred
+and touching--the bride receiving the ring on her finger, and promising
+to serve and worship her celestial lover from that day forward, for
+better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as
+long as life should last and through the eternity that was to follow it.
+
+I cried all through the ceremony for sheer joy of its loveliness; and
+when it was over and we went into the refectory, and Mildred told me she
+was returning to England to work among the fallen girls of London, I
+vowed in my heart, though I hardly understood what she was going to do,
+that I would follow her example.
+
+It was something of a jar to go back into the streets, so full of noise
+and bustle; and all the way home with the Reverend Mother I was forming
+the resolution of telling her that very night that I meant to be a nun,
+for, stirred to the depths of my soul by what I had seen and remembering
+what my poor mother had wished for me, I determined that no other life
+would I live under any circumstances.
+
+Then came the shock.
+
+As we drew up at our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them
+was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my
+father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed
+it to me. It ran:
+
+"_Madam,
+
+"I have come to Rome to take back my daughter. I believe her education
+will now be finished, and I reckon the time has arrived to prepare her
+for the change in life that is before her.
+
+"The Bishop of our diocese has come with me, and we propose to pay our
+respects to you at ten o'clock prompt to-morrow morning.
+
+"Yours, Madam_,
+
+"DANIEL O'NEILL."
+
+
+
+
+NINETEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I saw, as by a flash of light, what was before me, and my whole soul
+rose in rebellion against it. That my father after all the years during
+which he had neglected me, should come to me now, when my plans were
+formed, and change the whole current of my life, was an outrage--an
+iniquity. It might be his right--his natural right--but if so his
+natural right was a spiritual wrong--and I would resist it--to my last
+breath and my last hour I would resist it.
+
+Such were the brave thoughts with which I passed that night, but at ten
+o'clock next morning, when I was summoned to meet my father himself, it
+was on trembling limbs and with a quivering heart that I went down to
+the Reverend Mother's room.
+
+Except that his hair was whiter than before my father was not much
+changed. He rose as I entered, saying, "Here she is herself," and when I
+went up to him he put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face.
+
+"Quite a little Italian woman grown! Like your mother though," he said,
+and then speaking over my head to the Bishop, who sat on the other side
+of the room, he added:
+
+"Guess this will do, Bishop, eh?"
+
+"Perfectly," said the Bishop.
+
+I was colouring in confusion at the continued scrutiny, with a feeling
+of being looked over for some unexplained purpose, when the Reverend
+Mother called me, and turning to go to her I saw, by the look of pain on
+her face that she, too, had been hurt by it.
+
+She put me to sit on a stool by the side of her chair, and taking my
+right hand she laid it in her lap and held it there during the whole of
+the interview.
+
+The Bishop, whom I had never seen before, was the first to speak. He was
+a type of the fashionable ecclesiastic, suave, smiling, faultlessly
+dressed in silk soutane and silver buckled shoes, and wearing a heavy
+gold chain with a jewelled cross.
+
+"Reverend Mother," he said, "you would gather from Mr. O'Neill's letter
+that he wishes to remove his daughter immediately--I presume there will
+be no difficulty in his doing so?"
+
+The Reverend Mother did not speak, but I think she must have bent her
+head.
+
+"Naturally," said the Bishop, "there will be a certain delay while
+suitable clothes are being made for her, but I have no doubt you will
+give Mr. O'Neill your help in these preparations."
+
+My head was down, and I did not see if the Reverend Mother bowed again.
+But the two gentlemen, apparently satisfied with her silence, began to
+talk of the best date for my removal, and just when I was quivering with
+fear that without a word of protest I was to be taken away, the Reverend
+Mother said:
+
+"Monsignor!"
+
+"Reverend Mother!"
+
+"You are aware that this child"--here she patted my trembling hand--"has
+been with me for ten years?"
+
+"I am given to understand so."
+
+"And that during that time she has only once been home?"
+
+"I was not aware--but no doubt it is as you say."
+
+"In short, that during the greater part of her life she has been left to
+my undivided care?"
+
+"You have been very good to her, very, and I'm sure her family are
+extremely grateful."
+
+"In that case, Monsignor, doesn't it seem to you that I am entitled to
+know why she is being so suddenly taken away from me, and what is the
+change in life which Mr. O'Neill referred to in his letter?"
+
+The smile which had been playing upon the Bishop's face was smitten away
+from it by that question, and he looked anxiously across at my father.
+
+"Tell her," said my father, and then, while my heart thumped in my bosom
+and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to compose me, the Bishop gave a
+brief explanation.
+
+The time had not come when it would be prudent to be more definite, but
+he might say that Mr. O'Neill was trying to arrange a happy and enviable
+future for his daughter, and therefore he wished her to return home to
+prepare for it.
+
+"Does that mean marriage?" said the Reverend Mother.
+
+"It may be so. I am not quite prepared to . . ."
+
+"And that a husband has already been found for her?"
+
+"That too perhaps. I will not say . . ."
+
+"Monsignor," said the Reverend Mother, sitting up with dignity "is that
+fair?"
+
+"Fair?"
+
+"Is it fair that after ten years in which her father has done nothing
+for her, he should determine what her life is to be, without regard to
+her wish and will?"
+
+I raised my eyes and saw that the Bishop looked aghast.
+
+"Reverend Mother, you surprise me," he said. "Since when has a father
+ceased to be the natural guardian of his child? Has he not been so since
+the beginning of the world? Doesn't the Church itself build its laws on
+that foundation?"
+
+"Does it?" said the Reverend Mother shortly. And then (I could feel her
+hand trembling as she spoke): "Some of its servants do, I know. But when
+did the Church say that anybody--no matter who--a father or anybody
+else--should take the soul of another, and control it and govern it, and
+put it in prison? . . ."
+
+"My good lady," said the Bishop, "would you call it putting the girl in
+prison to marry her into an illustrious family, to give her an historic
+name, to surround her with the dignity and distinction . . ."
+
+"Bishop," said my father, raising his hand, "I guess it's my right to
+butt in here, isn't it?"
+
+I saw that my father's face had been darkening while the Reverend Mother
+spoke, and now, rolling his heavy body in his chair so as to face her,
+he said:
+
+"Excuse me, ma'am, but when you say I've done nothing for my gel here I
+suppose you'll allow I've kept her and educated her?"
+
+"You've kept and educated your dogs and horses, also, I dare say, but do
+you claim the same rights over a human being?"
+
+"I do, ma'am--I think I do. And when the human being happens to be my
+own daughter I don't allow that anybody else has anything to say."
+
+"If her mother were alive would _she_ have nothing to say?"
+
+I thought my father winced at that word, but he answered:
+
+"Her mother would agree to anything I thought best."
+
+"Her mother, so far as I can see, was a most unselfish, most submissive,
+most unhappy woman," said the Reverend Mother.
+
+My father glanced quickly at me and then, after a moment, he said:
+
+"I'm obliged to you, ma'am, much obliged. But as I'm not a man to throw
+words away I'll ask you to tell me what all this means. Does it mean
+that you've made plans of your own for my daughter without consulting
+me?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then perhaps it means that the gel herself . . ."
+
+"That may be so or not--I cannot say. But when you sent your daughter to
+a convent-school . . ."
+
+"Wrong, ma'am, wrong for once. It was my wife's sister--who thinks the
+gel disobedient and rebellious and unruly . . ."
+
+"Then your wife's sister is either a very stupid or a very bad-hearted
+woman."
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"I have known your daughter longer than she has, and there isn't a word
+of truth in what she says."
+
+It was as much as I could do not to fall on the Reverend Mother's neck,
+but I clung to her hand with a convulsive grasp.
+
+"May be so, ma'am, may be no," said my father. "But when you talk about
+my sending my daughter to a convent-school I would have you know that
+I've been so busy with my business . . ."
+
+"That you haven't had time to take care of the most precious thing God
+gave you."
+
+"Ma'am," said my father, rising to his feet, "may I ask what right you
+have to speak to me as if . . ."
+
+"The right of one who for ten years has been a mother to your motherless
+child, sir, while you have neglected and forgotten her."
+
+At that my father, whose bushy eyebrows were heavily contracted, turned
+to the Bishop.
+
+"Bishop," he said, "is this what I've been paying my money for? Ten
+years' fees, and middling high ones too, I'm thinking?"
+
+And then the Bishop, apparently hoping to make peace, said suavely:
+
+"But aren't we crossing the river before we reach the bridge? The girl
+herself may have no such objections. Have you?" he asked, turning to me.
+
+I was trembling more than ever now, and at first I could not reply.
+
+"Don't you wish to go back home with your father?"
+
+"No, sir," I answered.
+
+"And why not, please?"
+
+"Because my father's home is no home to me--because my aunt has always
+been unkind to me, and because my father has never cared for me or
+protected me, and because . . ."
+
+"Well, what else?"
+
+"Because . . . because I wish to become a nun."
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then my father broke into bitter
+laughter.
+
+"So that's it, is it? I thought as much. You want to go into partnership
+with the Mother in the nun business, eh?"
+
+"My mother wished me to become a nun, and I wish it myself, sir."
+
+"Your mother was a baby--that's what she was."
+
+"My mother was an angel, sir," I said, bridling up, "and when she was
+dying she hoped I should become a nun, and I can never become anything
+else under any circumstance."
+
+"Bah!" said my father, with a contemptuous lift of the hand, and then
+turning to the Reverend Mother he said:
+
+"Hark here, ma'am. There's an easy way and a hard way in most
+everything. I take the easy way first, and if it won't work I take the
+hard way next, and then it's stiff pulling for the people who pull
+against me. I came to Rome to take my daughter home. I don't feel called
+upon to explain why I want to take her home, or what I'm going to do
+with her when I get her there. I believe I've got the rights of a father
+to do what I mean to do, and that it will be an ugly business for
+anybody who aids and abets my daughter in resisting her father's will.
+So I'll leave her here a week longer, and when I come back, I'll expect
+her to be ready and waiting and willing--ready and waiting and willing,
+mind you--to go along with me."
+
+After saying this my father faced about and with his heavy flat step
+went out of the room, whereupon the Bishop bowed to the Reverend Mother
+and followed him.
+
+My heart was by this time in fierce rebellion--all that the pacifying
+life of the convent-school had done for me in ten years being suddenly
+swept away--and I cried:
+
+"I won't do it! I won't do it!"
+
+But I had seen that the Reverend Mother's face had suddenly become very
+white while my father spoke to her at the end and now she said, in a
+timid, almost frightened tone:
+
+"Mary, we'll go out to Nemi to-day. I have something to say to you."
+
+
+
+
+TWENTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+In the late afternoon of the same day we were sitting together for the
+last time on the terrace of the Reverend Mother's villa.
+
+It was a peaceful evening, a sweet and holy time. Not a leaf was
+stirring, not a breath of wind was in the air; but the voice of a young
+boy, singing a love-song, came up from somewhere among the rocky ledges
+of the vineyards below, and while the bell of the monastic church behind
+us was ringing the Ave Maria, the far-off bell of the convent church at
+Gonzano was answering from the other side of the lake--like angels
+calling to each other from long distances in the sky.
+
+"Mary," said the Reverend Mother, "I want to tell you a story. It is the
+story of my own life--mine and my sister's and my father's."
+
+I was sitting by her side and she was holding my hand in her lap, and
+patting it, as she had done during the interview of the morning.
+
+"They say the reason so few women become nuns is that a woman is too
+attached to her home to enter the holy life until she has suffered
+shipwreck in the world. That may be so with most women. It was not so
+with me.
+
+"My father was what is called a self-made man. But his fortune did not
+content him. He wanted to found a family. If he had had a son this might
+have been easy. Having only two daughters, he saw no way but that of
+marrying one of us into the Italian nobility.
+
+"My sister was the first to disappoint him. She fell in love with a
+young Roman musician. The first time the young man asked for my sister
+he was contemptuously refused; the second time he was insulted; the
+third time he was flung out of the house. His nature was headstrong and
+passionate, and so was my father's. If either had been different the
+result might not have been the same. Yet who knows? Who can say?"
+
+The Reverend Mother paused for a moment. The boy's voice in the vineyard
+was going on.
+
+"To remove my sister from the scene of temptation my father took her
+from Rome to our villa in the hills above Albano. But the young musician
+followed her. Since my father would not permit him to marry her he was
+determined that she should fly with him, and when she hesitated to do so
+he threatened her. If she did not meet him at a certain hour on a
+certain night my father would be dead in the morning."
+
+The Reverend Mother paused again. The boy's voice had ceased; the
+daylight was dying out.
+
+"My sister could not bring herself to sacrifice either her father or
+her lover. Hence she saw only one way left--to sacrifice herself."
+
+"Herself?"
+
+The Reverend Mother patted my hand. "Isn't that what women in tragic
+circumstances are always doing?" she said.
+
+"By some excuse--I don't know what--she persuaded our father to change
+rooms with her that night--he going upstairs to her bedroom in the
+tower, and she to his on the ground floor at the back, opening on to the
+garden and the pine forest that goes up the hill.
+
+"What happened after that nobody ever knew exactly. In the middle of the
+night the servants heard two pistol shots, and next morning my sister
+was found dead--shot to the heart through an open window as she lay in
+my father's bed.
+
+"The authorities tried in vain to trace the criminal. Only one person
+had any idea of his identity. That was my father, and in his fierce
+anger he asked himself what he ought to do in order to punish the man
+who had killed his daughter.
+
+"Then a strange thing happened. On the day before the funeral the young
+musician walked into my father's room. His face was white and wasted,
+and his eyes were red and swollen. He had come to ask if he might be
+allowed to be one of those to carry the coffin. My father consented.
+'I'll leave him alone,' he thought. 'The man is punished enough.'
+
+"All the people of Albano came to the funeral and there was not a dry
+eye as the cortege passed from our chapel to the grave. Everybody knew
+the story of my sister's hopeless love, but only two in the world knew
+the secret of her tragic death--her young lover, who was sobbing aloud
+as he staggered along with her body on his shoulder, and her old father,
+who was walking bareheaded and in silence, behind him."
+
+My heart was beating audibly and the Reverend Mother stroked my hand to
+compose me--perhaps to compose herself also. It was now quite dark, the
+stars were coming out, and the bells of the two monasteries on opposite
+sides of the lake were ringing the first hour of night.
+
+"That's my sister's story, Mary," said the Reverend Mother after a
+while, "and the moral of my own is the same, though the incidents are
+different.
+
+"I was now my father's only child and all his remaining hopes centred in
+me. So he set himself to find a husband for me before the time came when
+I should form an attachment for myself. His choice fell on a
+middle-aged Roman noble of distinguished but impoverished family.
+
+"'He has a great name; you will have a great fortune--what more do you
+want?' said my father.
+
+"We were back in Rome by this time, and there--at school or elsewhere--I
+had formed the conviction that a girl must passionately love the man she
+marries, and I did not love the Roman noble. I had also been led to
+believe that a girl should be the first and only passion of the man who
+marries her, and, young as I was, I knew that my middle-aged lover had
+had other domestic relations.
+
+"Consequently I demurred, but my father threatened and stormed, and
+then, remembering my sister's fate, I pretended to agree, and I was
+formally engaged.
+
+"I never meant to keep my promise, and I began to think out schemes by
+which to escape from it. Only one way seemed open to me then, and
+cherishing the thought of it in secret, I waited and watched and made
+preparations for carrying out my purpose.
+
+"At length the moment came to me. It was mid-Lent, and a masked ball was
+given by my fiance's friends in one of the old Roman palaces. I can see
+it still--the great hall, ablaze with glowing frescoes, beautiful
+Venetian candelabras, gilded furniture, red and yellow damask and
+velvet, and then the throng of handsome men in many uniforms and
+beautiful women with rows of pearls falling from their naked throats.
+
+"I had dressed myself as a Bacchante in a white tunic embroidered in
+gold, with bracelets on my bare arms, a tiger-skin band over my
+forehead, and a cluster of grapes in my hair.
+
+"I danced every dance, I remember, most of them with my middle-aged
+lover, and I suppose no one seemed so gay and happy and heedless. At
+three o'clock in the morning I returned home in my father's carriage. At
+six I had entered a convent.
+
+"Nobody in the outer world ever knew what had become of me, and neither
+did I know what happened at home after I left it. The rule of the
+convent was very strict. Sometimes, after morning prayers, the Superior
+would say, 'The mother of one of you is dead--pray for her soul,' and
+that was all we ever heard of the world outside.
+
+"But nature is a mighty thing, my child, and after five years I became
+restless and unhappy. I began to have misgivings about my vocation, but
+the Mother, who was wise and human, saw what was going on in my heart.
+'You are thinking about your father,' she said, 'that he is growing old,
+and needing a daughter to take care of him. Go out, and nurse him, and
+then come back to your cell and pray.'
+
+"I went, but when I reached my father's house a great shock awaited me.
+A strange man was in the porter's lodge, and our beautiful palace was
+let out in apartments. My father was dead--three years dead and buried.
+After my disappearance he had shut himself up in his shame and grief,
+for, little as I had suspected it and hard and cruel as I had thought
+him, he had really and truly loved me. During his last days his mind had
+failed him and he had given away all his fortune--scattered it, no one
+knew how, as something that was quite useless--and then he died, alone
+and broken-hearted."
+
+That was the end of the Reverend Mother's narrative. She did not try to
+explain or justify or condemn her own or her sister's conduct, neither
+did she attempt to apply the moral of her story to my own circumstances.
+She left me to do that for myself.
+
+I had been spell-bound while she spoke, creeping closer and closer to
+her until my head was on her breast.
+
+For some time longer we sat like this in the soft Italian night, while
+the fire-flies came out in clouds among the unseen flowers of the garden
+and the dark air seemed to be alive with sparks of light.
+
+When the time came to go to bed the Reverend Mother took me to my room,
+and after some cheerful words she left me. But hardly had I lain down,
+shaken to the heart's core by what I had heard, and telling myself that
+the obedience of a daughter to her father, whatever he might demand of
+her, was an everlasting and irreversible duty, imposed by no human
+law-giver, and that marriage was a necessity, which was forced upon most
+women by a mysterious and unyielding law of God, when the door opened
+and the Reverend Mother, with a lamp in her hand, came in again.
+
+"Mary," she said, "I forgot to tell you that I am leaving the Sacred
+Heart. The Sisters of my old convent have asked me to go back as
+Superior. I have obtained permission to do so and am going shortly, so
+that in any case we should have been parted soon. It is the Convent
+of. . . ."
+
+Here she gave me the name of a private society of cloistered nuns in the
+heart of Rome.
+
+"I hope you will write to me as often as possible, and come to see me
+whenever you can. . . . And if it should ever occur that . . . but no, I
+will not think of that. Marriage is a sacred tie, too, and under proper
+conditions God blesses and hallows it."
+
+With that she left me in the darkness. The church bell was ringing, the
+monks of the Passionist monastery were getting up for their midnight
+offices.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+A week later I was living with my father in the Hotel Europa on the edge
+of the Piazza di Spagna.
+
+He was kinder to me than he had ever been before, but he did not tell me
+what the plans were which he had formed for my future, and I was left to
+discover them for myself.
+
+Our apartment was constantly visited by ecclesiastics--Monsignori,
+Archbishops, even one of the Cardinals of the Propaganda, brought there
+by Bishop Walsh (the Bishop of our own diocese), and I could not help
+but hear portions of their conversation.
+
+"It will be difficult, extremely difficult," the Cardinal would say.
+"Such marriages are not encouraged by the Church, which holds that they
+are usually attended by the worst consequences to both wife and husband.
+Still--under the exceptional circumstances--that the bridegroom's family
+was Catholic before it was Protestant--it is possible, just
+possible. . . ."
+
+"Cardinal," my father would answer, while his strong face was darkening,
+"excuse me, sir, but I'm kind of curious to get the hang of this
+business. Either it can be done or it can't. If it can, we'll just sail
+in and do it. But if it can't, I believe I'll go home quick and spend my
+money another way."
+
+Then there would be earnest assurances that in the end all would be
+right, only Rome moved slowly, and it would be necessary to have
+patience and wait.
+
+My father waited three weeks, and meantime he occupied himself in seeing
+the sights of the old city.
+
+But the mighty remains which are the luminous light-houses of the
+past--the Forum with the broken columns of its dead centuries; the
+Coliseum with its gigantic ruins, like the desolate crater of a moon;
+the Campagna with its hollow, crumbling tombs and shattered
+aqueducts,--only vexed and irritated him.
+
+"Guess if I had my way," he said, "I would just clean out this old
+stone-yard of monuments to dead men, and make it more fit for living
+ones."
+
+At length the Bishop came to say that the necessary business had been
+completed, and that to mark its satisfactory settlement the Pope had
+signified his willingness to receive in private audience both my father
+and myself.
+
+This threw me into a state of the greatest nervousness, for I had begun
+to realise that my father's business concerned myself, so that when,
+early the following morning (clad according to instructions, my father
+in evening dress and I in a long black mantilla), we set out for the
+Vatican, I was in a condition of intense excitement.
+
+What happened after we got out of the carriage at the bronze gate near
+St. Peter's I can only describe from a vague and feverish memory. I
+remember going up a great staircase, past soldiers in many-coloured
+coats, into a vast corridor, where there were other soldiers in other
+costumes. I remember going on and on, through salon after salon, each
+larger and more luxurious than the last, and occupied by guards still
+more gorgeously dressed than the guards we had left behind. I remember
+coming at length to a door at which a Chamberlain, wearing a sword,
+knelt and knocked softly, and upon its being opened announced our names.
+And then I remember that after all this grandeur as of a mediaeval court
+I found myself in a plain room like a library with a simple white figure
+before me, and . . . I was in the presence of the Holy Father himself.
+
+Can I ever forget that moment?
+
+I had always been taught in the Convent to think of the Pope with a
+reverence only second to that which was due to the Saints, so at first I
+thought I should faint, and how I reached the Holy Father's feet I do
+not know. I only know that he was very sweet and kind to me, holding out
+the delicate white hand on which he wore the fisherman's emerald ring,
+and smoothing my head after I had kissed it.
+
+When I recovered myself sufficiently to look up I saw that he was an old
+man, with a very pale and saintly face; and when he spoke it was in such
+a soft and fatherly voice that I loved and worshipped him.
+
+"So this is the little lady," he said, "who is to be the instrument in
+the hands of Providence in bringing back an erring family into the folds
+of Mother Church."
+
+Somebody answered him, and then he spoke to me about marriage, saying it
+was a holy state, instituted by the Almighty under a natural law and
+sanctioned by our divine Redeemer into the dignity of a Sacrament, so
+that those who entered it might live together in peace and love.
+
+"It is a spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type of the
+holy mystery of Christ's relation to His Church."
+
+Then he told me I was to make the best possible preparation for marriage
+in order to obtain the abundant graces of God, and to approach the altar
+only after penance and communion.
+
+"And when you leave the church, my daughter," he said, "do not profane
+the day of your marriage by any sinful thought or act, but remember to
+bear yourself as if Jesus Christ Himself were with you, as He was at the
+marriage-feast in Cana of Galilee."
+
+Then he warned me that when I entered into the solemn contract of holy
+matrimony I was to do so in the full consciousness that it could not be
+broken but by death.
+
+"Whom God has joined together let no man put asunder--remember that,
+too, my daughter."
+
+Finally he said something about children--that a Catholic marrying a
+person of another religion must not enter into any agreement whereby any
+of her children should be brought up in any other than the Catholic
+faith.
+
+After that, and something said to my father which I cannot recall, he
+gave me his blessing, in words so beautiful and a voice so sweet that it
+fell on me like the soft breeze that comes out of the rising sun on a
+summer morning.
+
+"May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob be with
+you, my daughter. May your marriage be a yoke of love and peace, and may
+you see your children's children to the third and fourth generation."
+
+Then he raised me to my feet, and at a touch from the Chamberlain, I
+backed out of the room.
+
+When the door had closed on me I drew a deep breath, feeling as if I had
+come out of the Holy of Holies, and when I reached the Piazza of St.
+Peter's and came again upon the sight and sound of common things--the
+cabs and electric cars--it was the same as if I had suddenly descended
+from heaven to earth.
+
+After my audience with the Pope, following on the Reverend Mother's
+story, all my objections to marriage had gone, and I wished to tell my
+father so, but an opportunity did not arise until late the same night
+and then it was he who was the first to speak.
+
+Being in good spirits, after a dinner to the ecclesiastics, he said, as
+soon as his guests had gone--speaking in the tone of one who believed he
+was doing a great thing for me--
+
+"Mary, matters are not quite settled yet, but you might as well know
+right here what we're trying to fix up for you."
+
+Then he told me.
+
+I was to marry the young Lord Raa!
+
+I was stunned. It was just as if the power of thought had been smitten
+out of me.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+That night, and during the greater part of the following day, I felt,
+without quite knowing why, as if I were living under the dark cloud of a
+gathering thunderstorm. All my fear of the world, and my desire to
+escape from it, had fallen upon me afresh. Hence it was not altogether
+by the blind leading of fate that half an hour before Ave Maria I
+entered the church of the Convent which the Reverend Mother had given me
+the name of.
+
+The church was empty when I pushed past the leather hanging that covered
+the door, but the sacristan was lighting the candles for Benediction, so
+I went up to the bronze screen, the Cancello, that divides the public
+part from the part occupied by the Sisters, and knelt on the nearest
+step.
+
+After a while the church-bell rang overhead, and then (the congregation
+having gathered in the meantime) the nuns came in by way of a corridor
+which seemed to issue out of the darkness from under a figure of the
+Virgin and Child.
+
+They were all in white, snow-white from head to foot, with a glimmer of
+blue scapular beneath their outer garment, and they wore long thick
+veils which entirely concealed their features when they entered but were
+raised when they reached their seats and faced the altar.
+
+Familiar as I was with similar scenes this one moved me as I had never
+before been moved--the silent white figures, with hands clasped on their
+breasts, coming in one by one with noiseless and unhurried footsteps,
+like a line of wraiths from another world.
+
+But a still deeper emotion was to come to me.
+
+As the last of the nuns entered, the Superior as I knew she would be, I
+recognised her instantly. It was my own Reverend Mother herself; and
+when, after kneeling to the altar, she came down to her seat nearest to
+the screen, immediately in front of the place where I knelt, I knew by
+the tremor of the clasped hands which held the rosary, that she had seen
+and recognised me.
+
+I trembled and my heart thumped against my breast.
+
+Then the priest entered and the Litany began. It was sung throughout.
+Almost the whole of the service was sung. Never had Benediction seemed
+so beautiful, so pathetic, so appealing, so irresistible.
+
+By the time the _Tantum ergo_ had been reached and the sweet female
+voices, over the soft swell of the organ, were rising to the vaulted
+roof in sorrowful reparation for the sins of all sinners in the world
+who did not pray for themselves, the religious life was calling to me as
+it had never called before.
+
+"Come away from the world," it seemed to say. "Obedience to your
+heavenly Father cancels all duty to your earthly one. Leave everything
+you fear behind you, and find peace and light and love."
+
+The service was over, the nuns had dropped their veils and gone out as
+slowly and noiselessly as they had come in (the last of them with her
+head down): the sacristan with his long rod was extinguishing the
+candles on the altar; the church was growing dark and a lay-sister in
+black was rattling a bunch of keys at the door behind me before I moved
+from my place beside the rails.
+
+Then I awoke as from a dream, and looking longingly back at the dark
+corridor down which the nuns had disappeared, I was turning to go when I
+became aware that a young man was standing beside me and smiling into my
+face.
+
+"Mally," he said very softly, and he held out his hand.
+
+Something in the voice made me giddy, something in the blue eyes made me
+tremble. I looked at him but did not speak.
+
+"Don't you know me, Mally?" he said.
+
+I felt as if a rosy veil were falling over my face and neck. A flood of
+joy was sweeping through me. At last I knew who it was.
+
+It was Martin Conrad, grown to be a man, a tall, powerful, manly man,
+but with the same face still--an elusive ghost of the boy's face I used
+to look up to and love.
+
+A few minutes later we were out on the piazza in front of the church,
+and with a nervous rush of joyous words he was telling me what had
+brought him to Rome.
+
+Having just "scraped through" his examinations, and taken his
+degree--couldn't have done so if the examiners had not been "jolly good"
+to him--he had heard that Lieut. . . .--was going down to the great ice
+barrier that bounds the South Pole, to investigate the sources of winds
+and tides, so he had offered himself as doctor to the expedition and
+been accepted.
+
+Sailing from the Thames ten days ago they had put into Naples that
+morning for coal, and taking advantage of the opportunity he had run up
+to Rome, remembering that I was at school here, but never expecting to
+see me, and coming upon me by the merest accident in the
+world--something having said to him, "Let's go in here and look at this
+queer old church."
+
+He had to leave to-morrow at two, though, having to sail the same night,
+but of course it would be luck to go farther south than Charcot and make
+another attack on the Antarctic night.
+
+I could see that life was full of faith and hope and all good things for
+him, and remembering some episodes of the past I said:
+
+"So you are going 'asploring' in earnest at last?"
+
+"At last," he answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and laughed
+as we stood together on the church steps, with little tender waves of
+feeling from our childhood sweeping to our feet.
+
+"And you?" he said. "You look just the same. I knew you instantly. Yet
+you are changed too. So grown and so . . . so wonderfully. . . ."
+
+I knew what he meant to say, and being too much of a child to pretend
+not to know, and too much of a woman (notwithstanding my nun-like
+impulses) not to find joy in it, I said I was glad.
+
+"You've left the Convent, I see. When did that happen?"
+
+I told him three weeks ago--that my father had come for me and we were
+going back to Ellan.
+
+"And then? What are you going to do then?" he asked.
+
+For a moment I felt ashamed to answer, but at last I told him that I was
+going home to be married.
+
+"Married? When? To whom?"
+
+I said I did not know when, but it was to be to the young Lord Raa.
+
+"Raa? Did you say Raa? That . . . Good G----But surely you know. . . ."
+
+He did not finish what he was going to say, so I told him I did not know
+anything, not having seen Lord Raa since I came to school, and
+everything having been arranged for me by my father.
+
+"Not seen him since . . . everything arranged by your father?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then he asked me abruptly where I was staying, and when I told him he
+said he would walk back with me to the hotel.
+
+His manner had suddenly changed, and several times as we walked together
+up the Tritoni and along the Du Marcelli he began to say something and
+then stopped.
+
+"Surely your father knows. . . ."
+
+"If he does, I cannot possibly understand. . . ."
+
+I did not pay as much attention to his broken exclamations as I should
+have done but for the surprise and confusion of coming so suddenly upon
+him again; and when, as we reached the hotel, he said:
+
+"I wonder if your father will allow me to speak. . . ."
+
+"I'm sure he'll be delighted," I said, and then, in my great impatience,
+I ran upstairs ahead of him and burst into my father's room, crying:
+
+"Father, whom do you think I have brought to see you--look!"
+
+To my concern and discomfiture my father's reception of Martin was very
+cool, and at first he did not even seem to know him.
+
+"You don't remember me, sir?" said Martin.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't just place you," said my father.
+
+After I had made them known to each other they sat talking about the
+South Pole expedition, but it was a chill and cheerless interview, and
+after a few minutes Martin rose to go.
+
+"I find it kind of hard to figure you fellows out," said my father. "No
+money that I know of has ever been made in the Unknown, as you call it,
+and if you discover both Poles I don't just see how they're to be worth
+a two-cent stamp to you. But you know best, so good-bye and good luck to
+you!"
+
+I went out to the lift with Martin, who asked if he could take me for a
+walk in the morning. I answered yes, and inquired what hour he would
+call for me.
+
+"Twelve o'clock," he replied, and I said that would suit me exactly.
+
+The Bishop came to dine with us that night, and after dinner, when I had
+gone to the window to look out over the city for the three lights on the
+Loggia of the Vatican, he and my father talked together for a long time
+in a low tone. They were still talking when I left them to go to bed.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+At breakfast next morning my father told me that something unexpected
+had occurred to require that we should return home immediately, and
+therefore he had sent over to Cook's for seats by the noon express.
+
+I was deeply disappointed, but I knew my father too well to demur, so I
+slipped away to my room and sent a letter to Martin, explaining the
+change in our plans and saying good-bye to him.
+
+When we reached the station, however, I found Martin waiting on the
+platform in front of the compartment that was labelled with our name.
+
+I thought my father was even more brusque with him than before, and the
+Bishop, who was to travel with us, was curt almost to rudeness. But
+Martin did not seem to mind that this morning, for his lower lip had the
+stiff setting which I had seen in it when he was a boy, and after I
+stepped into the carriage he stepped in after me, leaving the two men on
+the platform.
+
+"Shall you be long away?" I asked.
+
+"Too long unfortunately. Six months, nine--perhaps twelve, worse luck!
+Wish I hadn't to go at all," he answered.
+
+I was surprised and asked why, whereupon he stammered some excuse, and
+then said abruptly:
+
+"I suppose you'll not be married for some time at all events?"
+
+I told him I did not know, everything depending on my father.
+
+"Anyhow, you'll see and hear for yourself when you reach home, and then
+perhaps you'll. . . ."
+
+I answered that I should have to do what my father desired, being a
+girl, and therefore. . . .
+
+"But surely a girl has some rights of her own," he said, and then I was
+silent and a little ashamed, having a sense of female helplessness
+which I had never felt before and could find no words for.
+
+"I'll write to your father," he said, and just at that moment the bell
+rang, and my father came into the compartment, saying:
+
+"Now then, young man, if you don't want to be taken up to the North Pole
+instead of going down to the South one. . . ."
+
+"That's all right, sir. Don't you trouble about _me_. I can take care of
+myself," said Martin.
+
+Something in his tone must have said more than his words to my father
+and the Bishop, for I saw that they looked at each other with surprise.
+
+Then the bell rang again, the engine throbbed, and Martin said,
+"Good-bye! Good-bye!"
+
+While the train moved out of the station he stood bareheaded on the
+platform with such a woebegone face that looking back at him my throat
+began to hurt me as it used to do when I was a child.
+
+I was very sad that day as we travelled north. My adopted country had
+become dear to me during my ten years' exile from home, and I thought I
+was seeing the last of my beautiful Italy, crowned with sunshine and
+decked with flowers.
+
+But there was another cause of my sadness, and that was the thought of
+Martin's uneasiness about my marriage the feeling that if he had
+anything to say to my father he ought to have said it then.
+
+And there was yet another cause of which I was quite unconscious--that
+like every other girl before love dawns on her, half of my nature was
+still asleep, the half that makes life lovely and the world dear.
+
+To think that Martin Conrad was the one person who could have wakened my
+sleeping heart! That a word, a look, a smile from him that day could
+have changed the whole current of my life, and that. . . .
+
+But no, I will not reproach him. Have I not known since the day on St.
+Mary's Rock that above all else he is a born gentleman?
+
+And yet. . . . And yet. . . .
+
+
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+
+And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken to
+Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:
+
+"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughter
+is a profligate and a reprobate? If you _do_ know this, are you
+deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rank
+and power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"
+
+That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of being
+thought to have personal motives--of interfering where I wasn't wanted,
+of butting in when I had no right.
+
+Yet I felt I _had_ a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everything
+and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had been
+looking forward to and I could not give it up.
+
+So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took me
+a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction. By that time we
+were at Port Said, and from there I posted three letters,--the first to
+Daniel O'Neill, the second to Bishop Walsh, the third to Father Dan.
+
+Would they reach in time? If so, would they be read and considered or
+resented and destroyed?
+
+I did not know. I could not guess. And then I was going down into the
+deep Antarctic night, where no sound from the living world could reach
+me.
+
+What would happen before I could get back? Only God could say.
+
+     M.C.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND PART
+
+MY MARRIAGE
+
+TWENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Notwithstanding my father's anxiety to leave Rome we travelled slowly
+and it was a week before we reached Ellan. By that time my depression
+had disappeared, and I was quivering with mingled curiosity and fear at
+the thought of meeting the man who was to be my husband.
+
+My father, for reasons of his own, was equally excited, and as we sailed
+into the bay at Blackwater he pointed out the developments which had
+been made under his direction--the hotels, theatres, dancing palaces and
+boarding houses that lined the sea-front, and the electric railways that
+ran up to the tops of the mountains.
+
+"See that?" he cried. "I told them I could make this old island hum."
+
+On a great stone pier that stood deep into the bay, a crowd of people
+were waiting for the arrival of the steamer.
+
+"That's nothing," said my father. "Nothing to what you see at the height
+of the season."
+
+As soon as we had drawn up alongside the pier, and before the passengers
+had landed, four gentlemen came aboard, and my heart thumped with the
+thought that my intended husband would be one of them; but he was not,
+and the first words spoken to my father were--
+
+"His lordship's apologies, sir. He has an engagement to-day, but hopes
+to see you at your own house to-morrow morning."
+
+I recognised the speaker as the guardian (grown greyer and even less
+prepossessing) who had crossed with the young Lord Raa when he was going
+up to Oxford; and his companions were a smooth-faced man with searching
+eyes who was introduced as his lordship's solicitor from London, a Mr.
+Curphy, whom I knew to be my father's advocate, and my dear old Father
+Dan.
+
+I was surprised to find Father Dan a smaller man than I had thought him,
+very plain and provincial, a little country parish priest, but he had
+the tender smile I always remembered, and the sweet Irish roll of the
+vowels that I could never forget.
+
+"God bless you," he said. "How well you're looking! And how like your
+mother, Lord rest her soul! I knew the Blessed Virgin would take care of
+you, and she has, she has."
+
+Three conveyances were waiting for us--a grand brougham for the Bishop,
+a big motor-car for the guardian and the London lawyer, and a still
+bigger one for ourselves.
+
+"Well, s'long until to-morrow then," cried my father, getting up into
+the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and Father
+Dan and myself behind.
+
+On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought me
+back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have said
+of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, and
+the world was so censorious--and then there was no measuring the
+miraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman.
+
+He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when he
+spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl's life at her
+marriage--her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and her
+first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence which
+a man could never know.
+
+"Even an old priest may see that," he said, with a laugh and a pat of my
+hand.
+
+We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father sat
+with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he had
+done, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that were
+before me.
+
+"You'll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won't be a
+mother's son that dare say boo to you."
+
+I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestion
+of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil;
+and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returned
+home from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the people
+who had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood.
+
+Such of them as had not done so then (being of the "aristocracy" of the
+island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now,
+for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter's marriage,
+he was going to triumph over them all.
+
+"We'll beat 'em, gel! My gough, yes, we'll beat 'em!" he cried, with a
+flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows.
+
+As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed them
+out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone of
+contempt.
+
+"See that? That's Christian of Balla-Christian. The man snubbed me six
+months ago. He'll know better six months to come. . . . That's Eyreton.
+His missus was too big to call on your mother--she'll call on you,
+though, you go bail. See yonder big tower in the trees? That's
+Folksdale, where the Farragans live. The daughters have been walking
+over the world like peacocks, but they'll crawl on it like cockroaches
+. . . Hulloh, here's ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage
+with his English coachman. . . . See that, though? See him doff his hat
+to you, the ould hypocrite? He knows something. He's got an inkling.
+Things travel. We'll beat 'em, gel, we'll beat 'em! They'll be round us
+like bees about a honeypot."
+
+It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father's triumphant
+spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight as
+I recognised the scenes associated with my childhood--the village, the
+bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy's Mouth, and the trees that
+bordered our drive.
+
+Nearly everything looked smaller or narrower or lower than I had
+thought, but I had forgotten how lovely they all were, lying so snugly
+under the hill and with the sea in front of them.
+
+Our house alone when we drove up to it seemed larger than I had
+expected, but my father explained this by saying:
+
+"Improvements, gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow morning."
+
+Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap),
+Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness)
+and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her
+best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up,
+and they received me with surprising cordiality.
+
+"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget.
+
+"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty.
+
+There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt Bridget
+declaring she could not have believed it, she really could not), and
+then Nessy undertook to take me to my room.
+
+"It's the same room still, Mary," said my Aunt, calling to me as I went
+upstairs. "When they were changing everything else I remembered your
+poor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their changing that. It isn't a
+bit altered."
+
+It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just as I was
+beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to Aunt
+Bridget, Nessy said:
+
+"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wiped
+out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her own
+daughter instead."
+
+More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression that my
+father was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return was not too
+welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I was
+left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers.
+
+How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!
+
+From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything had
+something to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!
+
+Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at its
+head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on the
+wall above it.
+
+I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in the
+crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoon
+sunshine; there was St Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed,
+and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it.
+
+Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the
+house--going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts were
+still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, where
+the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads against
+the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in their
+noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of the
+odour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on a
+griddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy
+the Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was still
+working as before.
+
+The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and recognised me
+instantly.
+
+"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well!
+Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes,"
+he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been the
+match of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"
+
+I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had been
+watching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" a
+cup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my father
+being busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for half
+an hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners and
+general accomplishments.
+
+"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.
+
+I saw him the following morning.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to tell
+her of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and raising my
+eyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained three gentlemen,
+one of them wore goggles and carried a silver-haired terrier on his
+knees.
+
+A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and his party
+had arrived and I was wanted immediately.
+
+I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming trouble.
+Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended husband for the
+first time--there being nothing in his appearance to awaken in me the
+memory of ever having seen him before.
+
+He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy Beauty,
+who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him, and at the
+same time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to speak to the
+three gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's trustee or guardian) who
+were standing with my father in the middle of the floor.
+
+He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of breeding, but
+even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character of
+a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a dissipated life.
+
+His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and heavy, his
+moustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his forehead, and
+he had a general appearance of being much older than his years, which I
+knew to be thirty-three.
+
+His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle, almost
+playful and indulgent, but through all their softness there pierced a
+certain hardness, not to say brutality, which I afterwards learned (when
+life had had its tug at me) to associate with a man who has spent much
+of his time among women of loose character.
+
+Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a drawling
+voice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it was quite
+unnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made each other's
+acquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was the prettiest
+little woman in the world, he remembered, though perhaps my manners were
+not quite cordial.
+
+"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you remember
+it?"
+
+Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to say that
+he wished to show his lordship the improvements he had been making, and
+the rest of us were at liberty to follow them.
+
+The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old house,
+containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been modelled, as
+I found later, on the corresponding room in Castle Raa.
+
+With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the beauties
+of his new possession, while my intended husband, with his monocle to
+his eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and answered with a
+languid humour that narrowly bordered on contempt.
+
+"Oak, sir, solid oak," said my father, rapping with his knuckles on the
+tall, dark, heavy wainscoting.
+
+"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose," said Lord
+Raa.
+
+"Harder than some, sir," said my father.
+
+"Exactly," said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was general
+laughter.
+
+The bell rang for luncheon, and we went into the plain old dining room,
+where Aunt Bridget placed her principal guest on her right and told him
+all about her late husband, the Colonel, his honours and military
+achievements.
+
+I could see that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more than
+once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather supercilious
+responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, Aunt
+Bridget seemed quite oblivious.
+
+I was so nervous and embarrassed that I spoke very little during
+luncheon, and even Aunt Bridget observed this at last.
+
+"Mary, dear, why don't you speak?" she said.
+
+But without waiting for my reply she proceeded to explain to his
+lordship that the strangest change had come over me since I was a child,
+when I had been the sauciest little chatterbox in the world, whereas now
+I was so shy that it was nearly impossible to get a word out of me.
+
+"Hope I shall be able to get one word out of her, at least," said his
+lordship, whereupon Aunt Bridget smiled significantly and Betsy Beauty
+burst into fits of laughter.
+
+Almost before the meal was over, my father rose from his seat at the
+head of the table, and indicating the lawyers who sat near to him, he
+said:
+
+"These gentlemen and I have business to fix up--money matters and all
+that--so I guess we'll step into the library and leave you young people
+to look after yourselves."
+
+Everybody rose to leave the room.
+
+"All back for tea-time," said Aunt Bridget.
+
+"Of course you don't want _me_," said Betsy Beauty with a giggle, and at
+the next moment I was alone with his lordship, who drew a long breath
+that was almost like a yawn, and said:
+
+"Is there no quiet place we can slip away to?"
+
+There was the glen at the back of the house (the Cape Flora of Martin
+Conrad), so I took him into that, not without an increasing sense of
+embarrassment. It was a clear October day, the glen was dry, and the air
+under the shadow of the thinning trees was full of the soft light of the
+late autumn.
+
+"Ah, this is better," said his lordship.
+
+He lit a cigar and walked for some time by my side without speaking,
+merely flicking the seeding heads off the dying thistles with his
+walking stick, and then ruckling it through the withered leaves with
+which the path was strewn.
+
+But half way up the glen he began to look aslant at me through his
+monocle, and then to talk about my life in Rome, wondering how I could
+have been content to stay so long at the Convent, and hinting at a
+rumour which had reached him that I had actually wished to stay there
+altogether.
+
+"Extraordinary! 'Pon my word, extraordinary! It's well enough for women
+who have suffered shipwreck in their lives to live in such places, but
+for a young gal with any fortune, any looks . . . why I wonder she
+doesn't die of _ennui_."
+
+I was still too nervous and embarrassed to make much protest, so he went
+on to tell me with what difficulty he supported the boredom of his own
+life even in London, with its clubs, its race-meetings, its dances, its
+theatres and music halls, and the amusement to be got out of some of the
+ladies of society, not to speak of certain well-known professional
+beauties.
+
+One of his great friends--his name was Eastcliff--was going to marry the
+most famous of the latter class (a foreign dancer at the "Empire"), and
+since he was rich and could afford to please himself, why shouldn't he?
+
+When we reached the waterfall at the top of the glen (it had been the
+North Cape of Martin Conrad), we sat on a rustic seat which stands
+there, and then, to my still deeper embarrassment, his lordship's
+conversation came to close quarters.
+
+Throwing away his cigar and taking his silver-haired terrier on his lap
+he said:
+
+"Of course you know what the business is which the gentlemen are
+discussing in the library?"
+
+As well as I could for the nervousness that was stifling me, I answered
+that I knew.
+
+He stroked the dog with one hand, prodded his stick into the gravel with
+the other, and said:
+
+"Well, I don't know what your views about marriage are. Mine, I may say,
+are liberal."
+
+I listened without attempting to reply.
+
+"I think nine-tenths of the trouble that attends married life--the
+breakdowns and what not--come of an irrational effort to tighten the
+marriage knot."
+
+Still I said nothing.
+
+"To imagine that two independent human beings can be tied together like
+a couple of Siamese twins, neither to move without the other, living
+precisely the same life, year in, year out . . . why, it's silly,
+positively silly."
+
+In my ignorance I could find nothing to say, and after another moment my
+intended husband swished the loosened gravel with his stick and said:
+
+"I believe in married people leaving each other free--each going his and
+her own way--what do you think?"
+
+I must have stammered some kind of answer--I don't know what--for I
+remember that he said next:
+
+"Quite so, that's my view of matrimony, and I'm glad to see you appear
+to share it. . . . Tell the truth, I was afraid you wouldn't," he added,
+with something more about the nuns and the convent.
+
+I wanted to say that I didn't, but my nervousness was increasing every
+moment, and before I could find words in which to protest he was
+speaking to me again.
+
+"Our friends in the library seem to think that you and I could get along
+together, and I'm disposed to think they're right--aren't you?"
+
+In my ignorance and helplessness, and with the consciousness of what I
+was expected to do, I merely looked at him without speaking.
+
+Then he fixed his monocle afresh, and, looking back at me in a curious
+way, he said:
+
+"I don't think I should bore you, my dear. In fact, I should be rather
+proud of having a good-looking woman for my wife, and I fancy I could
+give you a good time. In any case"--this with a certain
+condescension--"my _name_ might be of some use to you."
+
+A sort of shame was creeping over me. The dog was yawning in my face. My
+intended husband threw it off his knee.
+
+"Shall we consider it a settled thing, then?" he asked, and when in my
+confusion I still made no reply (having nothing which I felt myself
+entitled to say), he said something about Aunt Bridget and what she had
+told him at luncheon about my silence and shyness, and then rising to
+his feet he put my arm through his own, and turned our faces towards
+home.
+
+That was all. As I am a truthful woman, that was everything. Not a word
+from me, nay, not half a word, merely a passive act of silent
+acquiescence, and in my youthful and almost criminal innocence I was
+committed to the most momentous incident of my life.
+
+But if there was no love-making, no fondling, no kissing, no courtship
+of any kind, and none of the delirious rapture which used to be
+described in Alma's novels, I was really grateful for that, and
+immensely relieved to find that matters could he completed without them.
+
+When we reached the house, the bell was ringing for tea and my father
+was coming out of the library, followed by the lawyers.
+
+"So that's all right, gentlemen?" he was saying.
+
+"Yes, that's all right, sir," they were answering; and then, seeing us
+as we entered, my father said to Lord Raa:
+
+"And what about you two?"
+
+"We're all right also," said his lordship in his drawling voice.
+
+"Good!" said my father, and he slapped his lordship sharply on the back,
+to his surprise, and I think, discomfiture.
+
+Then with a cackle of light laughter among the men, we all trooped into
+the drawing room.
+
+Aunt Bridget in her gold-rimmed spectacles and new white cap, poured out
+the tea from our best silver tea-pot, while Nessy MacLeod with a
+geranium in her red hair, and Betsy Beauty, with large red roses in her
+bosom, handed round the cups. After a moment, my father, with a radiant
+face, standing back to the fire, said in a loud voice:
+
+"Friends all, I have something to tell you."
+
+Everybody except myself looked up and listened, though everybody knew
+what was coming.
+
+"We've had a stiff tussle in the library this afternoon, but everything
+is settled satisfactory--and the marriage is as good as made."
+
+There was a chorus of congratulations for me, and a few for his
+lordship, and then my father said again:
+
+"Of course there'll be deeds to draw up, and I want things done correct,
+even if it costs me a bit of money. But we've only one thing more to fix
+up to-day, and then we're through--the wedding. When is it to come off?"
+
+An appeal was made to me, but I felt it was only formal, so I glanced
+across to Lord Raa without speaking.
+
+"Come now," said my father, looking from one to the other. "The clean
+cut is the short cut, you know, and when I'm sot on doing a thing, I
+can't take rest till it's done. What do you say to this day next month?"
+
+I bowed and my intended husband, in his languid way, said:
+
+"Agreed!"
+
+A few minutes afterwards the motor was ordered round, and the gentlemen
+prepared to go. Then the silver-haired terrier was missed, and for the
+first time that day his lordship betrayed a vivid interest, telling us
+its price and pedigree and how much he would give rather than lose it.
+But at the last moment Tommy appeared with the dog in his arms and
+dropped it into the car, whereupon my intended husband thanked him
+effusively.
+
+"Yes," said Tommy, "I thought you set store by _that_, sir."
+
+At the next moment the car was gone.
+
+"Well, you _are_ a lucky girl," said Betsy Beauty; and Aunt Bridget
+began to take credit to herself for all that had come to pass, and to
+indicate the methods by which she meant to manage Castle Raa as soon as
+ever I became mistress of it.
+
+Thus in my youth, my helplessness, my ignorance, and my inexperience I
+became engaged to the man who had been found and courted for me. If I
+acquiesced, I had certainly not been consulted. My father had not
+consulted me. My intended husband had not consulted me. Nobody consulted
+me. I am not even sure that I thought anybody was under any obligation
+to consult me. Love had not spoken to me, sex was still asleep in me,
+and my marriage was arranged before my deeper nature knew what was being
+done.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The next weeks were full of hurry, hubbub and perturbation. Our house
+was turned upside down. Milliners, sewing-maids and dressmakers were
+working day and night. Flowers, feathers and silk remnants were flowing
+like sea-wrack into every room. Orders were given, orders were retracted
+and given again, and then again retracted.
+
+Such flying up and down stairs! Everybody so breathless! Everybody so
+happy! Every face wearing a smile! Every tongue rippling with laughter!
+The big grey mansion which used to seem so chill and cold felt for the
+first time like a house of joy.
+
+In the midst of these busy preparations I had no time to think. My
+senses were excited. I was dazed, stunned, wrapped round by a kind of
+warm air of hot-house happiness, and this condition of moral
+intoxication increased as the passing of the days brought fresh
+developments.
+
+Our neighbours began to visit us. My father had been right about the
+great people of the island. Though they had stood off so long, they
+found their account in my good fortune, and as soon as my marriage was
+announced they came in troops to offer their congratulations.
+
+Never, according to Tommy the Mate, had the gravel of our carriage drive
+been so rucked up by the pawing feet of high-bred horses. But their
+owners were no less restless. It was almost pitiful to see their
+shamefacedness as they entered our house for the first time, and to
+watch the shifts they were put to in order to account for the fact that
+they had never been there before.
+
+Aunt Bridget's vanity was too much uplifted by their presence to be
+particular about their excuses, but my father's contempt of their
+subterfuges was naked and undisguised, and I hardly know whether to feel
+amused or ashamed when I think of how he scored off them, how he lashed
+them to the bone, with what irony and sarcasm he scorched their
+time-serving little souls.
+
+When they were very great folks, the "aristocracy" of Ellan, he
+pretended not to know who they were, and asked their names, their
+father's names, and what parishes they came from.
+
+"Some of the Christians of Balla-Christian, are you? Think of that now.
+And me a born Ellanman, and not knowing you from Adam!"
+
+When they were very near neighbours, with lands that made boundary with
+our own, he pretended to think they had been twenty years abroad, or
+perhaps sick, or even dead and buried.
+
+"Too bad, ma'am, too bad," he would say. "And me thinking you were under
+the sod through all the lonely years my poor wife was ill and dying."
+
+But when they were insular officials, who "walked on the stars," and
+sometimes snubbed him in public, the rapier of ridicule was too light
+for his heavy hand, and he took up the sledge-hammer, telling them he
+was the same man to-day as yesterday, and only his circumstances were
+different--his daughter being about to become the lady of the first
+house in the island, and none of them being big enough to be left out of
+it.
+
+After such scenes Aunt Bridget, for all her despotism within her own
+doors, used to tremble with dread of our neighbours taking lasting
+offence, but my father would say:
+
+"Chut, woman, they'll come again, and make no more faces about it."
+
+They did, and if they were shy of my father they were gracious enough
+to me, saying it was such a good thing for society in the island that
+Castle Raa was to have a lady, a real lady, at the head of it at last.
+
+Then came their wedding presents--pictures, books, silver ornaments,
+gold ornaments, clocks, watches, chains, jewellery, until my bedroom was
+blocked up with them. As each fresh parcel arrived there would be a rush
+of all the female members of our household to open it, after which Betsy
+Beauty would say:
+
+"What a lucky girl you are!"
+
+I began to think I was. I found it impossible to remain unaffected by
+the whirlwind of joyous turmoil in which I lived. The refulgence of the
+present hour wiped out the past, which seemed to fade away altogether.
+After the first few days I was flying about from place to place, and
+wherever I went I was a subject for congratulation and envy.
+
+If there were moments of misgiving, when, like the cold wind out of a
+tunnel, there came the memory of the Reverend Mother and the story she
+had told me at Nemi, there were other moments when I felt quite sure
+that, in marrying Lord Raa, I should be doing a self-sacrificing thing
+and a kind of solemn duty.
+
+One such moment was when Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, who with his
+clammy hands always made me think of an over-fatted fish, came to tell
+him that, after serious legal difficulties, the civil documents had been
+agreed to, for, after he had finished with my father, he drew me aside
+and said, as he smoothed his long brown beard:
+
+"You ought to be a happy girl, Mary. I suppose you know what you are
+doing for your father? You are wiping out the greatest disappointment of
+his life, and rectifying the cruelty--the inevitable cruelty--of the
+law, when you were born a daughter after he had expected a son."
+
+Another such moment was when the Bishop came, in his grand carriage, to
+say that after much discussion he had persuaded his lordship to sign the
+necessary declaration that all the children of our union, irrespective
+of sex, should be brought up as Catholics, for taking me aside, as the
+advocate had done the day before, he said, in his suave voice, fingering
+his jewelled cross:
+
+"I congratulate you, my child. Yours is a great and precious
+privilege--the privilege of bringing back to the Church a family which
+has been estranged from it for nineteen years."
+
+At the end of a fortnight we signed the marriage settlement. The little
+ceremony took place in the drawing-room of my father's house. My
+intended husband, who had not been to see me in the meantime, brought
+with him (as well as his trustee and lawyer) a lady and a gentleman.
+
+The lady was his maiden aunt, Lady Margaret Anslem, a fair woman of
+about forty, fashionably dressed, redolent of perfume, and (except to
+me, to whom she talked quite amicably) rather reserved and haughty, as
+if the marriage of her nephew into our family were a bitter pill which
+she had compelled herself to swallow.
+
+The gentleman was a tall young man wearing a very high collar and
+cravat, and using a handkerchief with embroidered initials in the corner
+of it. He turned out to be the Hon. Edward Eastcliff--the great friend
+who, being rich enough to please himself, was about to marry the
+professional beauty.
+
+I noticed that Aunt Bridget, with something of the instinct of the fly
+about the flame, immediately fixed herself upon the one, and that Betsy
+Beauty attached herself to the other.
+
+Lord Raa himself looked as tired as before, and for the first half-hour
+he behaved as if he did not quite know what to do with himself for
+wretchedness and _ennui_.
+
+Then the deeds were opened and spread out on a table, and though the
+gentlemen seemed to be trying not to discuss the contents aloud I could
+not help hearing some of the arrangements that had been made for the
+payment of my intended husband's debts, and certain details of his
+annual allowance.
+
+Looking back upon that ugly hour, I wonder why, under the circumstances,
+I should have been so wounded, but I remember that a sense of discomfort
+amounting to shame came upon me at sight of the sorry bargaining. It
+seemed to have so little to do with the spiritual union of souls, which
+I had been taught to think marriage should be. But I had no time to
+think more about that before my father, who had signed the documents
+himself in his large, heavy hand, was saying.
+
+"Now, gel, come along, we're waiting for your signature."
+
+I cannot remember that I read anything. I cannot remember that anything
+was read to me. I was told where to sign, and I signed, thinking what
+must be must be, and that was all I had to do with the matter.
+
+I was feeling a little sick, nevertheless, and standing by the tire
+with one foot on the fender, when Lord Raa came up to me at the end, and
+said in his drawling voice:
+
+"So it's done."
+
+"Yes, it's done," I answered.
+
+After a moment he talked of where we were to live, saying we must of
+course pass most of our time in London.
+
+"But have you any choice about the honeymoon," he said, "where we should
+spend it, I mean?"
+
+I answered that he would know best, but when he insisted on my choosing,
+saying it was my right to do so, I remembered that during my time in the
+Convent the one country in the world I had most desired to see was the
+Holy Land.
+
+Never as long as I live shall I forget the look in his lordship's grey
+eyes when I gave this as my selection.
+
+"You mean Jerusalem--Nazareth--the Dead Sea and all that?" he asked.
+
+I felt my face growing red as at a frightful _faux pas_, but his
+lordship only laughed, called me his "little nun," and said that since I
+had been willing to leave the choice to him he would suggest Egypt and
+Italy, and Berlin and Paris on the way back, with the condition that we
+left Ellan for London on the day of our marriage.
+
+After the party from Castle Raa had gone, leaving some of their family
+lace and pearls behind for the bride to wear at her wedding, and after
+Aunt Bridget had hoped that "that woman" (meaning Lady Margaret) didn't
+intend to live at the Castle after my marriage, because such a thing
+would not fit in with her plans "at all, at all," I mentioned the
+arrangements for the honeymoon, whereupon Betsy Beauty, to whom Italy
+was paradise, and London glimmered in an atmosphere of vermillion and
+gold, cried out as usual:
+
+"What a lucky, lucky girl you are!"
+
+But the excitement which had hitherto buoyed me up was partly dispelled
+by this time, and I was beginning to feel some doubt of it.
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+As my wedding-day approached and time ran short, the air of joy which
+had pervaded our house was driven out by an atmosphere of irritation. We
+were all living on our nerves. The smiles that used to be at everybody's
+service gave place to frowns, and, in Aunt Bridget's case, to angry
+words which were distributed on all sides and on all occasions.
+
+As a consequence I took refuge in my room, and sat long hours there in
+my dressing-gown and slippers, hearing the hubbub that was going on in
+the rest of the house, but taking as little part in it as possible. In
+this semi-conventual silence and solitude, the excitement which had
+swept me along for three weeks subsided rapidly.
+
+I began to think, and above all to feel, and the one thing I felt beyond
+everything else was a sense of something wanting.
+
+I remembered the beautiful words of the Pope about marriage as a mystic
+relation, a sacred union of souls, a bond of love such as Christ's love
+for His Church, and I asked myself if I felt any such love for the man
+who was to become my husband.
+
+I knew I did not. I reminded myself that I had had nearly no
+conversation with him, that our intercourse had been of the briefest,
+that I had seen him only three times altogether, and that I scarcely
+knew him at all.
+
+And yet I was going to marry him! In a few days more I should be his
+wife, and we should be bound together as long as life should last!
+
+Then I remembered what Father Dan had said about a girl's first love,
+her first love-letter, and all the sweet, good things that should come
+to her at the time of her marriage.
+
+None of them had come to me. I do not think my thoughts of love were
+ever disturbed by any expectation of the delights of the heart--languors
+of tenderness, long embraces, sighs and kisses, and the joys and fevers
+of the flesh--for I knew nothing about them. But, nevertheless, I asked
+myself if I had mistaken the matter altogether. Was love really
+necessary? In all their busy preparations neither my father, nor my
+husband, nor the lawyers, nor the Bishop himself, had said anything
+about that.
+
+I began to sleep badly and to dream. It was always the same dream. I was
+in a frozen region of the far north or south, living in a ship which was
+stuck fast in the ice, and had a great frowning barrier before it that
+was full of dangerous crevasses. Then for some reason I wanted to write
+a letter, but was unable to do so, because somebody had trodden on my
+pen and broken it.
+
+It seems strange to me now as I look back upon that time, that I did not
+know what angel was troubling the waters of my soul--that Nature was
+whispering to me, as it whispers to every girl at the first great crisis
+of her life. But neither did I know what angel was leading my footsteps
+when, three mornings before my wedding-day, I got up early and went out
+to walk in the crisp salt air.
+
+Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the shore,
+and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found myself near
+Sunny Lodge. The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and there was a
+smell of burning turf coming from the house, which was so pretty and
+unchanged, with the last of the year's roses creeping over the porch and
+round the windows of the room in which I had slept when a child.
+
+Somebody was digging in the garden. It was the doctor in his shirt
+sleeves.
+
+"Good morning, doctor," I called, speaking over the fence.
+
+He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment.
+
+"Don't you know who I am?" I asked.
+
+"Why yes, of course; you must be. . . ."
+
+Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried:
+
+"Mother! Mother! Come and see who's here at last!"
+
+Martin's mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but
+with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as
+sweet as may-blossom.
+
+She held up both hands at sight of me and cried:
+
+"There, now! What did I tell you, doctor! Didn't I say they might marry
+her to fifty lords, but she wouldn't forget her old friends!"
+
+I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the sweetest
+part of it was that she did not know what we were laughing at.
+
+Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, and
+involuntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal from
+the porridge she was making) before taking mine.
+
+"Goodness me, it's Mary O'Neill."
+
+"Yes, it's I."
+
+"But let me have a right look at you," she said, taking me now by both
+hands. "They were saying such wonderful things about the young misthress
+that I wasn't willing to believe them. But, no, no," she said, after a
+moment, "they didn't tell me the half."
+
+I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to cry, so I
+said:
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"My goodness yes, and welcome," she said, and calling to the doctor to
+wash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the kitchen-parlour,
+where the kettle was singing from the "slowery" and a porridge-pot was
+bubbling over the fire.
+
+"Sit down. Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth place].
+There! That's nice. Aw, yes, you know the house."
+
+Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that was
+hurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so closely
+linked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin's mother
+(herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in her face) went
+on talking while she stirred the porridge with a porridge-stick.
+
+"Well, well! To think of all the years since you came singing carols to
+my door! You remember it, don't you? . . . Of course you do. 'Doctor,' I
+said, 'don't talk foolish. _She'll_ not forget. _I_ know Mary O'Neill.
+She may be going to be a great lady, but haven't I nursed her on my
+knee?'"
+
+"Then you've heard what's to happen?" I asked.
+
+"Aw yes, woman, yes," she answered in a sadder tone, I thought.
+"Everybody's bound to hear it--what with the bands practising for the
+procession, and the bullocks roasting for the poor, and the fireworks
+and the illuminations, and I don't know what."
+
+She was silent for a moment after that, and then in her simple way she
+said:
+
+"But it's all as one if you love the man, even if he _is_ a lord."
+
+"You think that's necessary, don't you?"
+
+"What, _millish?_"
+
+"Love. You think it's necessary to love one's husband?"
+
+"Goodness sakes, girl, yes. If you don't have love, what have you?
+What's to keep the pot boiling when the fire's getting low and the
+winter's coming on, maybe? The doctor's telling me some of the fine
+ladies in London are marrying without it--just for money and titles and
+all to that. But I can't believe it, I really can't! They've got their
+troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and what's the use of their
+fine clothes and grand carriages when the dark days come and the night's
+falling on them?"
+
+It was harder than ever to speak now, so I got up to look at some silver
+cups that stood on the mantelpiece.
+
+"Martin's," said his mother, to whom they were precious as rubies. "He
+won them at swimming and running and leaping and climbing and all to
+that. Aw, yes, yes! He was always grand at games, if he couldn't learn
+his lessons, poor boy. And now he's gone away from us--looking for South
+Poles somewheres."
+
+"I know--I saw him in Rome," said I.
+
+She dropped her porridge-stick and looked at me with big eyes.
+
+"Saw him? In Rome, you say? After he sailed, you mean?"
+
+I nodded, and then she cried excitedly to the doctor who was just then
+coming into the house, after washing his hands under the pump.
+
+"Father, she saw himself in Rome after he sailed."
+
+There was only one _himself_ in that house, therefore it was not
+difficult for the doctor to know who was meant. And so great was the
+eagerness of the old people to hear the last news of the son who was the
+apple of their eye that I had to stay to breakfast and tell them all
+about our meeting.
+
+While Martin's mother laid the tables with oat-cake and honey and bowls
+of milk and deep plates for the porridge, I told the little there was to
+tell, and then listened to their simple comments.
+
+"There now, doctor! Think of that! Those two meeting in foreign parts
+that used to be such friends when they were children! Like brother and
+sister, you might say. And whiles and whiles we were thinking that some
+day . . . but we'll say no more about that now, doctor."
+
+"No, we'll say no more about that now, Christian Ann," said the doctor.
+
+Then there was a moment of silence, and it was just as if they had been
+rummaging among half-forgotten things in a dark corner of their house,
+and had come upon a cradle, and the child that had lived in it was dead.
+
+It was sweet, but it was also painful to stay long in that house of
+love, and as soon as I had eaten my oat-cake and honey I got up to go.
+The two good souls saw me to the door saying I was not to expect either
+of them at the Big House on my wedding-day, because she was no woman for
+smart clothes, and the doctor, who was growing rheumatic, had given up
+his night-calls, and therefore his gig, so as to keep down expenses.
+
+"We'll be at the church, though," said Martin's mother. "And if we
+don't see you to speak to, you'll know we're there and wishing you
+happiness in our hearts."
+
+I could not utter a word when I left them; but after I had walked a
+little way I looked back, intending to wave my farewell, and there they
+were together at the gate still, and one of her hands was on the
+doctor's shoulder--the sweet woman who had chosen love against the
+world, and did not regret it, even now when the night was falling on
+her.
+
+I had to pass the Presbytery on my way home, and as I did so, I saw
+Father Dan in his study. He threw up the window sash and called in a
+soft voice, asking me to wait until he came down to me.
+
+He came down hurriedly, just as he was, in his worn and discoloured
+cassock and biretta, and walked up the road by my side, breathing
+rapidly and obviously much agitated.
+
+"The Bishop is staying with me over the wedding, and he is in such a
+fury that . . . Don't worry. It will be all right. But . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Did you see young Martin Conrad while you were in Rome?"
+
+I answered that I did.
+
+"And did anything pass between you . . . about your marriage, I mean?"
+
+I told him all that I had said to Martin, and all that Martin had said
+to me.
+
+"Because he has written a long letter to the Bishop denouncing it, and
+calling on him to stop it."
+
+"To stop it?"
+
+"That's so. He says it is nothing but trade and barter, and if the
+Church is willing to give its blessing to such rank commercialism, let
+it bless the Stock Exchange, let it sanctify the slave market."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The Bishop threatens to tell your father. 'Who is this young man,' he
+says, 'who dares to . . .' But if I thought there was nothing more to
+your marriage than . . . If I imagined that what occurred in the case of
+your dear mother . . . But that's not all."
+
+"Not all?"
+
+"No. Martin has written to me too, saying worse--far worse."
+
+"What does he say, Father Dan?"
+
+"I don't really know if I ought to tell you, I really don't. Yet if it's
+true . . . if there's anything in it . . ."
+
+I was trembling, but I begged him to tell me what Martin had said. He
+told me. It was about my intended husband--that he was a man of
+irregular life, a notorious loose liver, who kept up a connection with
+somebody in London, a kind of actress who was practically his wife
+already, and therefore his marriage with me would be--so Martin had
+said--nothing but "legalised and sanctified concubinage."
+
+With many breaks and pauses my dear old priest told me this story, as if
+it were something so infamous that his simple and innocent heart could
+scarcely credit it.
+
+"If I really thought it was true," he said, "that a man living such a
+life could come here to marry my little . . . But no, God could not
+suffer a thing like that. I must ask, though. I must make sure. We live
+so far away in this little island that . . . But I must go back now. The
+Bishop will be calling for me."
+
+Still deeply agitated, Father Dan left me by the bridge, and at the gate
+of our drive I found Tommy the Mate on a ladder, covering, with flowers
+from the conservatory, a triumphal arch which the joiner had hammered up
+the day before.
+
+The old man hardly noticed me as I passed through, and this prompted me
+to look up and speak to him.
+
+"Tommy," I said, "do you know you are the only one who hasn't said a
+good word to me about my marriage?"
+
+"Am I, missy?" he answered, without looking down. "Then maybe that's
+because I've had so many bad ones to say to other people."
+
+I asked which other people.
+
+"Old Johnny Christopher, for one. I met him last night at the 'Horse and
+Saddle.' 'Grand doings at the Big House, they're telling me,' says
+Johnny. 'I won't say no,' I says. 'It'll be a proud day for the
+grand-daughter of Neill the Lord when she's mistress of Castle Raa,'
+says Johnny. 'Maybe so,' I says, 'but it'll be a prouder day for Castle
+Raa when she sets her clane little foot in it.'"
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I should find it difficult now, after all that has happened since, to
+convey an adequate idea of the sense of shame and personal dishonour
+which was produced in me by Father Dan's account of the contents of
+Martin's letter. It was like opening a door out of a beautiful garden
+into a stagnant ditch.
+
+That Martin's story was true I had never one moment's doubt, first
+because Martin had told it, and next because it agreed at all points
+with the little I had learned of Lord Raa in the only real conversation
+I had yet had with him.
+
+Obviously he cared for the other woman, and if, like his friend
+Eastcliff, he had been rich enough to please himself, he would have
+married her; but being in debt, and therefore in need of an allowance,
+he was marrying me in return for my father's money.
+
+It was shocking. It was sinful. I could not believe that my father, the
+lawyers and the Bishop knew anything about it.
+
+I determined to tell them, but how to do so, being what I was, a young
+girl out of a convent, I did not know.
+
+Never before had I felt so deeply the need of my mother. If she had been
+alive I should have gone to her, and with my arms about her neck and my
+face in her breast, I should have told her all my trouble.
+
+There was nobody but Aunt Bridget, and little as I had ever expected to
+go to her under any circumstances, with many misgivings and after much
+hesitation I went.
+
+It was the morning before the day of my marriage. I followed my aunt as
+she passed through the house like a biting March wind, scolding
+everybody, until I found her in her own room.
+
+She was ironing her new white cap, and as I entered (looking pale, I
+suppose) she flopped down her flat iron on to its stand and cried:
+
+"Goodness me, girl, what's amiss? Caught a cold with your morning walks,
+eh? Haven't I enough on my hands without that? We must send for the
+doctor straight. We can't have _you_ laid up now, after all this trouble
+and expense."
+
+"It isn't that, Auntie."
+
+"Then in the name of goodness what is it?"
+
+I told her, as well as I could for the cold grey eyes that kept looking
+at me through their gold-rimmed spectacles. At first my aunt listened
+with amazement, and then she laughed outright.
+
+"So _you've_ heard that story, have you? Mary O'Neill," she said, with a
+thump of her flat iron, "I'm surprised at you."
+
+I asked if she thought it wasn't true.
+
+"How do I know if it's true? And what do I care whether it is or isn't?
+Young men will be young men, I suppose."
+
+She went on with her ironing as she added:
+
+"Did you expect you were marrying a virgin? If every woman asked for
+that there would be a nice lot of old maids in the world, wouldn't
+there?"
+
+I felt myself flushing up to the forehead, yet I managed to say:
+
+"But if he is practically married to the other woman. . . ."
+
+"Not he married. Whoever thinks about marriage in company like that? You
+might as well talk about marriage in the hen coop."
+
+"But all the same if he cares for her, Auntie. . . ."
+
+"Who says he cares for her? And if he does he'll settle her off and get
+rid of her before he marries you."
+
+"But will that be right?" I said, whereupon my aunt rested her iron and
+looked at me as if I had said something shameful.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, what do you mean? Of course it will be right. He
+shouldn't have two women, should he? Do you think the man's a barn-door
+rooster?"
+
+My confusion was increasing, but I said that in any case my intended
+husband could not care for _me_, or he would have seen more of me.
+
+"Oh, you'll see enough of him by and by. Don't you worry about that."
+
+I said I was not sure that he had made me care much for him.
+
+"Time enough for that, too. You can't expect the man to work miracles."
+
+Then, with what courage was left me, I tried to say that I had been
+taught to think of marriage as a sacrament, instituted by the Almighty
+so that those who entered it might live together in union, peace and
+love, whereas . . .
+
+But I had to stop, for Aunt Bridget, who had been looking at me with her
+hard lip curled, said:
+
+"Tut! That's all right to go to church with on Sunday, but on weekdays
+marriage is no moonshine, I can tell you. It's a practical matter. Just
+an arrangement for making a home, and getting a family, and bringing up
+children--that's what marriage is, if you ask me."
+
+"But don't you think love is necessary?"
+
+"Depends what you mean by love. If you mean what they talk about in
+poetry and songs--bleeding hearts and sighs and kisses and all that
+nonsense--no!" said my aunt, with a heavy bang on her ironing.
+
+"That's what people mean when they talk about marrying for love, and it
+generally ends in poverty and misery, and sensible women have nothing to
+do with it. Look at me," she said, spitting on the bottom of her iron,
+"do you think I married for love when I married the colonel? No indeed!
+'Here's a quiet respectable man with a nice income,' I said, 'and if I
+put my little bit to his little bit we'll get along comfortably if he
+_is_ a taste in years,' I said. Look at your mother, though. She was one
+of the marrying-for-love kind, and if we had let her have her way where
+would she have been afterwards with her fifteen years as an invalid? And
+where would you have been by this time? No," said Aunt Bridget, bringing
+down her flat-iron with a still heavier bang, "a common-sense marriage,
+founded on suitability of position and property, and all that, is the
+only proper sort of match. And that's what's before you now, girl, so
+for goodness' sake don't go about like the parish pan, letting every
+busybody make mischief with you. My Betsy wouldn't if she had your
+chance--I can tell you that much, my lady."
+
+I did not speak. There was another bang or two of the flat-iron, and
+then,
+
+"Besides, love will come. Of course it will. It will come in time. If
+you don't exactly love your husband when you marry him you'll love him
+later on. A wife ought to teach herself to love her husband. I know I
+had to, and if. . . ."
+
+"But if she can't, Auntie?"
+
+"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself, and say nothing about it."
+
+It was useless to say more, so I rose to go.
+
+"Yes, go," said Aunt Bridget. "I'm so bothered with other people's
+business that my head's all through-others. And, Mary O'Neill," she
+said, looking after me as I passed through the door, "for mercy's sake
+do brighten up a hit, and don't look as if marrying a husband was like
+taking a dose of jalap. It isn't as bad as that, anyway."
+
+It served me right. I should have known better. My aunt and I spoke
+different languages; we stood on different ground.
+
+Returning to my room I found a letter from Father Dan. It ran--
+
+_"Dear Daughter in Jesus,
+
+"I have been afraid to go far into the story we spoke about from fear of
+offending my Bishop, but I have inquired of your father and he assures
+me that there is not a word of truth in it.
+
+"So I am compelled to believe that our good Martin must have been
+misinformed, and am dismissing the matter from my mind. Trusting you
+will dismiss it from your mind also,
+
+"Yours in Xt.,
+
+"D.D."_
+
+
+
+
+TWENTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I could not do as Father Dan advised, being now enmeshed in the threads
+of innumerable impulses unknown to myself, and therefore firmly
+convinced that Martin's story was not only true, but a part of the whole
+sordid business whereby a husband was being bought for me.
+
+With this thought I went about all day, asking myself what I could do
+even yet, but finding no answer until nine o'clock at night, when,
+immediately after supper (we lived country fashion), Aunt Bridget said:
+
+"Now then, off to bed, girls. Everybody must be stirring early in the
+morning."
+
+And then I slipped upstairs to my room, and replied to Father Dan.
+
+Never had I written such a letter before. I poured my whole heart on to
+the paper, saying what marriage meant to me, as the Pope himself had
+explained it, a sacrament implying and requiring love as the very soul
+of it, and since I did not feel this love for the man I was about to
+marry, and had no grounds for thinking he felt it for me, and being sure
+that other reasons had operated to bring us together, I begged Father
+Dan, by his memory of my mother, and his affection for me, and his
+desire to see me good and happy, to intervene with my father and the
+Bishop, even at this late hour, and at the church door itself to stop
+the ceremony.
+
+It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was asleep,
+but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving in the room
+below, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a new thought I
+went downstairs and knocked at his door.
+
+"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in."
+
+He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a looking-glass
+which was propped up against two ledgers. The lather on his upper lip
+gave his face a fierce if rather grotesque expression.
+
+"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sit down. Got to do this to-night--goodness
+knows if I'll have time for it in the morning."
+
+I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the night of
+my birth. The fire had nearly burnt out.
+
+"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been in bed
+myself but for this business. Look there"--he pointed with the handle of
+his razor to the table littered with papers--"that's a bit of what I've
+had to do for you. I kind o' think you ought to be grateful to your
+father, my gel."
+
+I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:
+
+"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"
+
+Not catching my meaning he laughed.
+
+"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between the tips
+of his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as right as law
+and wax can make it."
+
+"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . ."
+
+"What?" he said, facing round.
+
+Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord Raa. Lord
+Raa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake, for his sake,
+for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's sake also) to
+postpone our marriage.
+
+At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears.
+
+"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything signed and
+sealed and witnessed!"
+
+"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . ."
+
+I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in a
+towering rage.
+
+"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? The
+greatest match this island has ever seen, and you say postpone--put it
+off, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you want to make a fool of a man?
+At the last moment, too. Just when there's nothing left but to go to the
+High Bailiff and the Church! . . . But I see--I see what it is. It's
+that young Conrad--he's been writing to you."
+
+I tried to say no, but my father bore me down.
+
+"Don't go to deny it, ma'am. He has been writing to every one--the
+Bishop, Father Dan, myself even. Denouncing the marriage if you plaze."
+
+My father, in his great excitement, was breaking with withering scorn
+into his native speech.
+
+"Aw yes, though, denouncing and damning it, they're telling me! Mighty
+neighbourly of him, I'm sure! Just a neighbour lad without a penny at
+his back to take all that throuble! If I had known he felt like that
+about it I might have axed his consent! The imperence, though! The
+imperence of sin! A father has no rights, it seems! A daughter is a
+separate being, and all to that! Well, well! Amazing thick, isn't it?"
+
+He was walking up and down the room with his heavy tread, making the
+floor shake.
+
+"Then that woman in Rome--I wouldn't trust but she has been putting
+notions into your head, too. All the new-fangled fooleries, I'll go
+bail. Women and men equal, not a ha'p'orth of difference between them!
+The blatherskites!"
+
+I was silenced, and I must have covered my face and cried, for after a
+while my father softened, and touching my shoulder he asked me if a man
+of sixty-five was not likely to know better than a girl of nineteen what
+was good for her, and whether I supposed he had not satisfied himself
+that this marriage was a good thing for me and for him and for
+everybody.
+
+"Do you think I'm not doing my best for you, gel--my very best?"
+
+I must have made some kind of assent, for he said:
+
+"Then don't moither me any more, and don't let your Aunt Bridget moither
+me--telling me and telling me what I might have done for her own
+daughter instead."
+
+At last, with a kind of rough tenderness, he took me by the arm and
+raised me to my feet.
+
+"There, there, go to bed and get some sleep. We'll have to start off for
+the high Bailiff's early in the morning."
+
+My will was broken down. I could resist no longer. Without a word more I
+left him.
+
+Returning to my room I took the letter I had been writing to Father Dan
+and tore it up piece by piece. As I did so I felt as if I were tearing
+up a living thing--something of myself, my heart and all that was
+contained in it.
+
+Then I threw open the window and leant out. I could hear the murmur of
+the sea. I felt as if it were calling to me, though I could not
+interpret its voice. The salt air was damp and it refreshed my eyelids.
+
+At length I got into bed, shivering with cold. When I had put out the
+light I noticed that the moon, which was near the full, had a big yellow
+ring of luminous vapour around it.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+My sleep that night was much troubled by dreams. It was the same dream
+as before, again and again repeated--the dream of frozen regions and of
+the great ice barrier, and then of the broken pen.
+
+When I awoke in the hazy light of the dawn I thought of what the Pope
+had said about beginning my wedding-day with penance and communion, so I
+rose at once to go to church.
+
+The dawn was broadening, but the household was still asleep, only the
+servants in the kitchen stirring when I stepped through a side door, and
+set out across the fields.
+
+The dew was thick on the grass, and under the gloom of a heavy sky the
+day looked cold and cheerless. A wind from the south-east had risen
+during the night, the sea was white with breakers, and from St. Mary's
+Rock there came the far-off moaning of surging waves.
+
+The church, too, when I reached it, looked empty and chill. The
+sacristan in the dim choir was arranging lilies and marguerites about
+the high altar, and only one poor woman, with a little red and black
+shawl over her head and shoulders, was kneeling in the side chapel where
+Father Dan was saying Mass, with a sleepy little boy in clogs to serve
+him.
+
+The woman was quite young, almost as young as myself, but she was
+already a widow, having lately lost her husband "at the herrings"
+somewhere up by Stornoway, where he had gone down in a gale, leaving her
+with one child, a year old, and another soon to come.
+
+All this she told me the moment I knelt near her. The poor thing seemed
+to think I ought to have remembered her, for she had been at school with
+me in the village.
+
+"I'm Bella Quark that was," she whispered. "I married Willie Shimmin of
+the Lhen, you recollect. It's only a month this morning since he was
+lost, but it seems like years and years. There isn't nothing in the
+world like it."
+
+She knew about my marriage, and said she wished me joy, though the world
+was "so dark and lonely for some." Then she said something about her
+"lil Willie." She had left him asleep in her cottage on the Curragh, and
+he might awake and cry before she got back, so she hoped Father Dan
+wouldn't keep her long.
+
+I was so touched by the poor thing's trouble that I almost forgot my
+own, and creeping up to her side I put my arm through hers as we knelt
+together, and that was how the Father found us when he turned to put the
+holy wafer on our tongues.
+
+The wind must have risen higher while I was in the church, for when I
+was returning across the fields it lashed my skirts about my legs so
+that I could scarcely walk. A mist had come down and made a sort of
+monotonous movement in the mountains where they touched the vague line
+of the heavy sky.
+
+I should be afraid to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in
+her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of
+yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleating
+to the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock
+was the last sound I heard as I re-entered the house.
+
+Everything there was running like a mill-race by this time. The servants
+were flying to and fro, my cousins were calling downstairs in accents of
+alarm, Aunt Bridget was answering them in tones of vexation, and my
+father was opening doors with a heavy push and closing them with a
+clash.
+
+They were all so suddenly pacified when I appeared that it flashed upon
+me at the moment that they must have thought I had run away.
+
+"Goodness gracious me, girl, where have you been?" said Aunt Bridget.
+
+I told her, and she was beginning to reproach me for not ordering round
+the carriage, instead of making my boots and stockings damp by traipsing
+across the grass, when my father said:
+
+"That'll do, that'll do! Change them and take a snack of something. I
+guess we're due at Holmtown in half an hour."
+
+I ate my breakfast standing, the car was brought round, and by eight
+o'clock my father and I arrived at the house of the High Bailiff, who
+had to perform the civil ceremony of my marriage according to the
+conditions required by law.
+
+The High Bailiff was on one knee before the fire in his office, holding
+a newspaper in front of it to make it burn.
+
+"Nobody else here yet?" asked my father.
+
+"Traa dy liooar" (time enough), the High Bailiff muttered.
+
+He was an elderly man of intemperate habits who spent his nights at the
+"Crown and Mitre," and was apparently out of humour at having been
+brought out of bed so early.
+
+His office was a room of his private house. It had a high desk, a stool
+and a revolving chair. Placards were pinned on the walls, one over
+another, and a Testament, with the binding much worn, lay on a table.
+The place looked half like a doctor's consulting room, and half like a
+small police court.
+
+Presently Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, came in, rather irritatingly
+cheerful in that chill atmosphere, and, half an hour late, my intended
+husband arrived, with his London lawyer and his friend Eastcliff.
+
+My mind was far from clear and I had a sense of seeing things by flashes
+only, but I remember that I thought Lord Raa was very nervous, and it
+even occurred to me that early as it was he had been drinking.
+
+"Beastly nuisance, isn't it?" he said to me aside, and then there was
+something about "this legal fuss and fuddlement."
+
+With the air of a man with a grievance the High Bailiff took a big book
+out of the desk, and a smaller one off a shelf, and then we sat in a
+half circle, and the ceremony began.
+
+It was very brief and cold like a matter of business. As far as I can
+remember it consisted of two declarations which Lord Raa and I made
+first to the witnesses present and afterwards to each other. One of them
+stated that we knew of no lawful impediment why we should not be joined
+together in matrimony, and the other declared that we were there and
+then so joined.
+
+I remember that I repeated the words automatically, as the High Bailiff
+in his thick alcoholic voice read them out of the smaller of his books,
+and that Lord Raa, in tones of obvious impatience, did the same.
+
+Then the High Bailiff opened the bigger of his books, and after writing
+something in it himself he asked Lord Raa to sign his name, and this
+being done he asked me also.
+
+"Am I to sign, too?" I asked, vacantly.
+
+"Well, who else do you think?" said Mr. Curphy with a laugh. "Betsy
+Beauty perhaps, eh?"
+
+"Come, gel, come," said my father, sharply, and then I signed.
+
+I had no longer any will of my own. In this as in everything I did
+whatever was asked of me.
+
+It was all as dreary and lifeless as an empty house. I can remember that
+it made no sensible impression upon my heart. My father gave some money
+(a few shillings I think) to the High Bailiff, who then tore a piece of
+perforated blue paper out of the bigger of his books and offered it to
+me, saying:
+
+"This belongs to you."
+
+"To me?" I said.
+
+"Who else?" said Mr. Curphy, who was laughing again, and then something
+was said by somebody about marriage lines and no one knowing when a wise
+woman might not want to use them.
+
+The civil ceremony of my marriage was now over, and Lord Raa, who had
+been very restless, rose to his feet, saying:
+
+"Beastly early drive. Anything in the house to steady one's nerves, High
+Bailiff?"
+
+The High Bailiff made some reply, at which the men laughed, all except
+my father. Then they left me and went into another room, the
+dining-room, and I heard the jingling of glasses and the drinking of
+healths while I sat before the fire with my foot on the fender and my
+marriage lines in my hand.
+
+My brain was still numbed. I felt as one might feel if drowned in the
+sea and descending, without quite losing consciousness, to the depths of
+its abyss.
+
+I remember I thought that what I had just gone through differed in no
+respect from the signing of my marriage settlement, except that in the
+one case I had given my husband rights over my money, my father's money,
+whereas in this case I seemed to have given him rights over myself.
+
+Otherwise it was all so cold, so drear, so dead, so unaffecting.
+
+The blue paper had slipped out of my hand on to the worn hearthrug when
+my helpless meditations were interrupted by the thrumming and throbbing
+of the motor-car outside, and by my father, who was at the office door,
+saying in his loud, commanding voice:
+
+"Come, gel, guess it's time for you to be back."
+
+Half an hour afterwards I was in my own room at home, and given over to
+the dressmakers. I was still being moved automatically--a creature
+without strength or will.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+I have only an indefinite memory of floating vaguely through the sights
+and sounds of the next two hours--of everybody except myself being
+wildly excited; of my cousins railing repeatedly from unseen regions of
+the house: of Aunt Bridget scolding indiscriminately; of the dressmakers
+chattering without ceasing as they fitted on my wedding dress; of their
+standing off from me at intervals with cries of delight at the success
+of their efforts; of the wind roaring in the chimney; of the
+church-bells ringing in the distance; of the ever-increasing moaning of
+the sea about St. Mary's Rock; and finally of the rumbling of the rubber
+wheels of several carriages and the plash of horses' hoofs on the gravel
+of the drive.
+
+When the dressmakers were done with me I was wearing an ivory satin
+dress, embroidered in silver, with a coronal of myrtle and orange
+blossoms under the old Limerick lace of the family veil, as well as a
+string of pearls and one big diamond of the noble house I was marrying
+into. I remember they said my black hair shone with a blue lustre
+against the sparkling gem, and I dare say I looked gay on the outside
+anyway.
+
+At last I heard a fluttering of silk outside my room, and a running
+stream of chatter going down the stairs, followed by the banging of
+carriage doors, and then my father's deep voice, saying:
+
+"Bride ready? Good! Time to go, I guess."
+
+He alone had made no effort to dress himself up, for he was still
+wearing his every-day serge and his usual heavy boots. There was not
+even a flower in his button-hole.
+
+We did not speak very much on our way to church, but I found a certain
+comfort in his big warm presence as we sat together in the carriage with
+the windows shut, for the rising storm was beginning to frighten me.
+
+"It will be nothing," said my father. "Just a puff of wind and a slant
+of rain maybe."
+
+The little church was thronged with people. Even the galleries were full
+of the children from the village school. There was a twittering overhead
+like that of young birds in a tree, and as I walked up the nave on my
+father's arm I could not help but hear over the sound of the organ the
+whispered words of the people in the pews on either side of us.
+
+"Dear heart alive, the straight like her mother she is, bless her!"
+
+"Goodness yes, it's the poor misfortunate mother come to life again."
+
+"Deed, but the daughter's in luck, though."
+
+Lord Raa was waiting for me by the communion rail. He looked yet more
+nervous than in the morning, and, though he was trying to bear himself
+with his usual composure, there was (or I thought there was) a certain
+expression of fear in his face which I had never seen before.
+
+His friend and witness, Mr. Eastcliff, wearing a carnation button-hole,
+was by his side, and his aunt, Lady Margaret, carrying a sheaf of
+beautiful white flowers, was standing near.
+
+My own witnesses and bridesmaids, Betsy Beauty and Nessy MacLeod, in
+large hats, with soaring black feathers, were behind me. I could hear
+the rustle of their rose-coloured skirts and the indistinct buzz of
+their whispered conversation, as well as the more audible reproofs of
+Aunt Bridget, who in a crinkly black silk dress and a bonnet like a half
+moon, was telling them to be silent and to look placid.
+
+At the next moment I was conscious that a bell had been rung in the
+chancel; that the organ had stopped; that the coughing and hemming in
+the church had ceased; that somebody was saying "Stand here, my lord";
+that Lord Raa, with a nervous laugh, was asking "Here?" and taking a
+place by my side; that the lighted altar, laden with flowers, was in
+front of me; and that the Bishop in his vestments, Father Dan in his
+surplice and white stole, and a clerk carrying a book and a vessel of
+holy water were beginning the service.
+
+Surely never was there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl under
+similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains and
+penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yet
+there came to me in the course of the service such a startling change of
+thought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget the
+compulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm of
+spiritual ecstasy.
+
+The Bishop began with a short litany which asked God's blessing on the
+ceremony which was to join together two of His children in the bonds of
+holy wedlock. While that was going on I was conscious of nothing except
+the howling of the wind about the church windows and the far-off tolling
+of the bell on St. Mary's Rock--nothing but this and a voice within me
+which seemed to say again and again, "I don't love him! I don't love
+him!"
+
+But hardly had the actual ceremony commenced when I began to be overawed
+by the solemnity and divine power of the service, and by the sense of
+God leaning over my littleness and guiding me according to His will.
+
+What did it matter how unworthy were the preparations that had led up
+to this marriage if God was making it? God makes all marriages that are
+blessed by His Church, and therefore He overrules to His own good ends
+all human impulses, however sordid or selfish they may be.
+
+After that thought came to me nothing else seemed to matter, and
+nothing, however jarring or incongruous, was able to lower the
+exaltation of my spirit.
+
+But the service, which had this effect upon me, appeared to have an
+exactly opposite effect on Lord Raa. His nervousness increased visibly,
+though he did his best to conceal it by a lightness of manner that
+sometimes looked like derision.
+
+Thus when the Bishop stepped down to us and said:
+
+"James Charles Munster, wilt thou take Mary here present for thy lawful
+wife, according to the rite of our holy Mother the Church," my husband
+halted and stammered over his answer, saying beneath his breath, "I
+thought I was a heretic."
+
+But when the corresponding question was put to me, and Father Dan
+thinking I must be nervous, leaned over me and whispered, "Don't worry,
+child, take your time," I replied a loud, clear, unfaltering voice:
+
+"I will."
+
+And again, when my husband had to put the ring and the gold and silver
+on the salver (he fumbled and dropped them as he did so, and fumbled and
+dropped them a second time when he had to take them up after they had
+been blessed, laughing too audibly at his own awkwardness), and then
+repeat after the Bishop:
+
+"With this ring I thee wed; this gold and silver I thee give; with my
+body I thee worship; and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," he
+tendered the ring slowly and with an obvious effort.
+
+But I took it without trembling, because I was thinking that, in spite
+of all I had heard of his ways of life, this solemn and sacred sacrament
+made him mine and no one else's.
+
+It is all very mysterious; I cannot account for it; I only know it was
+so, and that, everything considered, it was perhaps the strangest fact
+of all my life.
+
+I remember that more than once during the ceremony Father Dan spoke to
+me softly and caressingly, as if to a child, but I felt no need of his
+comforting, for my strength was from a higher source.
+
+I also remember that it was afterwards said that all through the
+ceremony the eyes of the newly-wedded couple seemed sedulously to shun
+each other, but if I did not look at my husband it was because my
+marriage was like a prayer to me, carrying me back, with its sense of
+purity and sanctity, to the little sunlit church in Rome where Mildred
+Bankes had taken her vows.
+
+After the marriage service there was Nuptial Mass and Benediction
+(special dispensation from Rome), and that raised to a still higher
+pitch the spiritual exaltation which sustained me.
+
+Father Dan read the Epistle beginning "Let wives be subject to their
+husbands," and then the Bishop read the Gospel, concluding, "Therefore
+now they are not two, but one flesh: what therefore God hath joined
+together, let not man put asunder."
+
+I had trembled when I thought of these solemn and sonorous words in the
+solitude of my own room, but now that they were spoken before the
+congregation I had no fear, no misgiving, nothing but a sense of rapture
+and consecration.
+
+The last words being spoken and Lord Raa and I being man and wife, we
+stepped into the sacristy to sign the register, and not even there did
+my spirit fail me. I took up the pen and signed my name without a
+tremor. But hardly had I done so when I heard a rumbling murmur of
+voices about me--first the Bishop's voice (in such a worldly tone) and
+then my father's and then my husband's, and then the voices of many
+others, in light conversation mingled with trills of laughter. And then,
+in a moment, in a twinkling, as fast as a snowflake melts upon a stream,
+the spell of the marriage service seemed to break.
+
+I have heard since that my eyes were wet at that moment and I seemed to
+have been crying all through the ceremony. I know nothing about that,
+but I do know that I felt a kind of internal shudder and that it was
+just as if my soul had suddenly awakened from an intoxicating drug.
+
+The organ began to play the Wedding March, and my husband, putting my
+arm through his, said, "Come."
+
+There was much audible whispering among the people waiting for us in the
+church, and as we walked towards the door I saw ghostly faces smiling at
+me on every side, and heard ghostly voices speaking in whispers that
+were like the backward plash of wavelets on the shore.
+
+"Sakes alive, how white's she's looking, though," said somebody, and
+then somebody else said--I could not help but hear it--
+
+"Dear heart knows if her father has done right for all that."
+
+I did not look at anybody, but I saw Martin's mother at the back, and
+she was wiping her eyes and saying to some one by her side--it must have
+been the doctor--
+
+"God bless her for the sweet child veen she always was, anyway."
+
+The storm had increased during the service; and the sacristan, who was
+opening the door for us, had as much as he could do to hold it against
+the wind, which came with such a rush upon us when we stepped into the
+porch that my veil and the coronal of myrtle and orange blossoms were
+torn off my head and blown back into the church.
+
+"God bless my sowl," said somebody--it was Tommy's friend, Johnny
+Christopher--"there's some ones would he calling that bad luck, though."
+
+A band of village musicians, who were ranged up in the road, struck up
+"The Black and Grey" as we stepped out of the churchyard, and the next
+thing I knew was that my husband and I were in the carriage going home.
+
+He had so far recovered from the frightening effects of the marriage
+service that he was making light of it, and saying:
+
+"When will this mummery come to an end, I wonder?"
+
+The windows of the carriage were rattling with the wind, and my husband
+had begun to talk of the storm when we came upon the trunk of a young
+tree which had been torn up by the roots and was lying across the road,
+so that our coachman had to get down and remove it.
+
+"Beastly bad crossing, I'm afraid. Hope you're a good sailor. Must be in
+London to-morrow morning, you know."
+
+The band was playing behind us. The leafless trees were beating their
+bare boughs in front. The wedding bells were pealing. The storm was
+thundering through the running sky. The sea was very loud.
+
+At my father's gate Tommy the Mate, with a serious face, was standing,
+cap in hand, under his triumphal arch, which (as well as it could for
+the wind that was tearing its flowers and scattering them on the ground)
+spelled out the words "God bless the Happy Bride."
+
+When we reached the open door of the house a group of maids were
+waiting for us. They were holding on to their white caps and trying to
+control their aprons, which were swirling about their black frocks. As I
+stepped out of the carriage they addressed me as "My lady" and "Your
+ladyship." The seagulls, driven up from the sea, were screaming about
+the house.
+
+My husband and I went into the drawing-room, and as we stood together on
+the hearthrug I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass over the
+mantelpiece. It was deadly white, and had big staring eyes and a look of
+faded sunshine. I fixed afresh the pearls about my neck and the diamond
+in my hair, which was much disordered.
+
+Almost immediately the other carriages returned, and relatives and
+guests began to pour into the room and offer us their congratulations.
+First came my cousins, who were too much troubled about their own
+bedraggled appearance to pay much attention to mine. Then Aunt Bridget,
+holding on to her half-moon bonnet and crying:
+
+"You happy, happy child! But what a wind! There's been nothing like it
+since the day you were born."
+
+My father came next, like a gale of wind himself, saying:
+
+"I'm proud of you, gel. Right proud I am. You done well."
+
+Then came Lady Margaret, who kissed me without saying many words, and
+finally a large and varied company of gaily-dressed friends and
+neighbours, chiefly the "aristocracy" of our island, who lavished many
+unnecessary "ladyships" upon me, as if the great name reflected a
+certain glory upon themselves.
+
+I remember that as I stood on the hearthrug with my husband, receiving
+their rather crude compliments, a vague gaiety came over me, and I
+smiled and laughed, although my heart was growing sick, for the effect
+of the wedding-service was ebbing away into a cold darkness like that of
+a night tide when the moonlight has left it.
+
+It did not comfort me that my husband, without failing in good manners,
+was taking the whole scene and company with a certain scarcely-veiled
+contempt which I could not help but see.
+
+And neither did it allay my uneasiness to glance at my father, where he
+stood at the end of the room, watching, with a look of triumph in his
+glistening black eyes, his proud guests coming up to me one by one, and
+seeming to say to himself, "They're here at last! I've bet them! Yes,
+by gough, I've bet them!"
+
+Many a time since I have wondered if his conscience did not stir within
+him as he looked across at his daughter in the jewels of the noble house
+he had married her into--the pale bride with the bridegroom he had
+bought for her--and thought of the mockery of a sacred union which he
+had brought about to gratify his pride, his vanity, perhaps his revenge.
+
+But it was all over now. I was married to Lord Raa. In the eyes equally
+of the law, the world and the Church, the knot between us was
+irrevocably tied.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I am no mystic and no spiritualist, and I only mention it as one of the
+mysteries of human sympathy between far-distant friends, that during a
+part of the time when my dear one was going through the fierce struggle
+she describes, and was dreaming of frozen regions and a broken pen, the
+ship I sailed on had got itself stuck fast in a field of pack ice in
+latitude 76, under the ice barrier by Charcot Bay, and that while we
+were lying like helpless logs, cut off from communication with the
+world, unable to do anything but groan and swear and kick our heels in
+our bunks at every fresh grinding of our crunching sides, my own mind,
+sleeping and waking, was for ever swinging back, with a sort of yearning
+prayer to my darling not to yield to the pressure which I felt so
+damnably sure was being brought to bear on her.
+
+     M.C.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD PART
+
+MY HONEYMOON
+
+THIRTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+When the Bishop and Father Dan arrived, the bell was rung and we went in
+to breakfast.
+
+We breakfasted in the new dining-room, which was now finished and being
+used for the first time.
+
+It was a gorgeous chamber beblazoned with large candelabra, huge
+mirrors, and pictures in gold frames--resembling the room it was
+intended to imitate, yet not resembling it, as a woman over-dressed
+resembles a well-dressed woman.
+
+My father sat at the head of his table with the Bishop, Lady Margaret
+and Aunt Bridget on his right, and myself, my husband, Betsy Beauty and
+Mr. Eastcliff on his left. The lawyers and the trustee were midway down,
+Father Dan with Nessy MacLeod was at the end, and a large company of our
+friends and neighbours, wearing highly-coloured flowers on their breasts
+and in their buttonholes, sat between.
+
+The meal was very long, and much of the food was very large--large fish,
+large roasts of venison, veal, beef and mutton, large puddings and large
+cheeses, all cut on the table and served by waiters from Blackwater.
+There were two long black lines of them--a waiter behind the chair of
+nearly every other guest.
+
+All through the breakfast the storm raged outside. More than once it
+drowned the voices of the people at the table, roaring like a wild beast
+in the great throat of the wide chimney, swirling about the lantern
+light, licking and lashing and leaping at the outsides of the walls like
+lofty waves breaking against a breakwater, and sending up a thunderous
+noise from the sea itself, where the big bell of St. Mary's Rock was
+still tolling like a knell.
+
+Somebody--it must have been Aunt Bridget again--said there had been
+nothing like it since the day of my birth, and it must be "fate."
+
+"Chut, woman!" said my father. "We're living in the twentieth century.
+Who's houlding with such ould wife's wonders now?"
+
+He was intensely excited, and, his excitement betrayed itself, as usual,
+in reversion to his native speech. Sometimes he surveyed in silence,
+with the old masterful lift of his eyebrows, his magnificent room and
+the great guests who were gathered within it; sometimes he whispered to
+the waiters to be smarter with the serving of the dishes; and sometimes
+he pitched his voice above the noises within and without and shouted, in
+country-fashion, to his friends at various points of the table to know
+how they were faring.
+
+"How are you doing, Mr. Curphy, sir?"
+
+"Doing well, sir. Are you doing well yourself, Mr. O'Neill, sir?"
+
+"Lord-a-massy yes, sir. I'm always doing well, sir."
+
+Never had anybody in Ellan seen so strange a mixture of grandeur and
+country style. My husband seemed to be divided between amused contempt
+for it, and a sense of being compromised by its pretence. More than once
+I saw him, with his monocle in his eye, look round at his friend
+Eastcliff, but he helped himself frequently from a large decanter of
+brandy and drank healths with everybody.
+
+There were the usual marriage pleasantries, facetious compliments and
+chaff, in which to my surprise (the solemnity of the service being still
+upon me) the Bishop permitted himself to join.
+
+I was now very nervous, and yet I kept up a forced gaiety, though my
+heart was cold and sick. I remember that I had a preternatural power of
+hearing at the same time nearly every conversation that was going on at
+the table, and that I joined in nearly all the laughter.
+
+At a more than usually loud burst of wind somebody said it would be a
+mercy if the storm did not lift the roof off.
+
+"Chut, man!" cried my father. "Solid oak and wrought iron here. None of
+your mouldy old monuments that have enough to do to keep their tiles
+on."
+
+"Then nobody," said my husband with a glance at his friend, "need be
+afraid of losing his head in your house, sir?"
+
+"Not if he's got one to come in with, sir."
+
+Betsy Beauty, sitting next to Mr. Eastcliff, was wondering if he would
+do us the honour to visit the island oftener now that his friend had
+married into it.
+
+"But, my dear Betsy," said my husband, "who would live in this
+God-forsaken place if he could help it?"
+
+"God-forsaken, is it?" said my father. "Maybe so, sir--but that's what
+the cuckoo said after he had eaten the eggs out of the thrush's nest and
+left a mess in it."
+
+Aunt Bridget was talking in doleful tones to Lady Margaret about my
+mother, saying she had promised her on her death-bed to take care of her
+child and had been as good as her word, always putting me before her own
+daughter, although her ladyship would admit that Betsy was a handsome
+girl, and, now that his lordship was married, there were few in the
+island that were fit for her.
+
+"Why no, Mrs. MacLeod," said my husband, after another significant
+glance at his friend, "I dare say you've not got many who can make
+enough to keep a carriage?"
+
+"Truth enough, sir," said my father. "We've got hundreds and tons that
+can make debts though."
+
+The breakfast came to an end at length, and almost before the last of
+the waiters had left the room my father rose to speak.
+
+"Friends all," he said, "the young married couple have to leave us for
+the afternoon steamer."
+
+"In this weather?" said somebody, pointing up to the lantern light
+through which the sky was now darkening.
+
+"Chut! A puff of wind and a slant of rain, as I've been saying to my gel
+here. But my son-in-law, Lord Raa," (loud cheers followed this
+description, with some laughter and much hammering on the table), "my
+son-in-law says he has to be in London to-morrow, and this morning my
+daughter has sworn obedience. . . . What's that, Monsignor? Not
+obedience exactly? Something like it then, so she's bound to go along
+with him. So fill up your glasses to the brim and drink to the bride and
+bridegroom."
+
+As soon as the noise made by the passing of decanters had died down my
+father spoke again.
+
+"This is the proudest day of my life. It's the day I've worked for and
+slaved for and saved for, and it's come to pass at last."
+
+There was another chorus of applause.
+
+"What's that you were saying in church, Mr. Curphy, sir? Time brings in
+its revenges? It does too. Look at me."
+
+My father put his thumbs in the arm-pits of his waistcoat.
+
+"You all know what I am, and where I come from."
+
+My husband put his monocle to his eye and looked up.
+
+"I come from a mud cabin on the Curragh, not a hundred miles from here.
+My father was kill . . . but never mind about that now. When he left us
+it was middling hard collar work, I can tell you--what with me working
+the bit of a croft and the mother weeding for some of you--some of your
+fathers I mane--ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all weathers.
+When I was a lump of a lad I was sworn at in the high road by a
+gentleman driving in his grand carriage, and the mother was lashed by
+his . . . but never mind about that neither. I guess I've hustled round
+considerable since then, and this morning I've married my daughter into
+the first family in the island."
+
+There was another burst of cheering at this, but it was almost drowned
+by the loud rattling of the rain which was now falling on the lantern
+light.
+
+"Monsignor," cried my father, pitching his voice still higher, "what's
+that you were saying in Rome about the mills of God?"
+
+Fumbling his jewelled cross and smiling blandly the Bishop gave my
+father the familiar quotation.
+
+"Truth enough, too. The mills of God grind slowly but they're grinding
+exceeding small. Nineteen years ago I thought I was as sure of what I
+wanted as when I got out of bed this morning. If my gel here had been
+born a boy, my son would have sat where his lordship is now sitting. But
+all's well that ends well! If I haven't got a son I've got a son-in-law,
+and when I get a grandson he'll be the richest man that ever stepped
+into Castle Raa, and the uncrowned king of Ellan."
+
+At that there was a tempest of cheers, which, mingling with the clamour
+of the storm, made a deafening tumult.
+
+"They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and children--daughters
+being separate beings, and all to that. But show me the daughter that
+could do better for herself than my gel's father has done for her. She
+has a big fortune, and her husband has a big name, and what more do they
+want in this world anyway?"
+
+"Nothing at all," came from various parts of the room.
+
+"Neighbours," said my father, looking round him with a satisfied smile,
+"I'm laying you dry as herrings in a hould, but before I call on you to
+drink this toast I'll ask the Bishop to spake to you. He's a grand man
+is the Bishop, and in fixing up this marriage I don't in the world know
+what I could have done without him."
+
+The Bishop, still fingering his jewelled cross and smiling, spoke in his
+usual suave voice. He firmly believed that the Church had that morning
+blessed a most propitious and happy union. Something might be said
+against mixed marriages, but under proper circumstances the Church had
+never forbidden them and his lordship (this with a deep bow to my
+husband) had behaved with great liberality of mind.
+
+As for what their genial and rugged host had said of certain foolish and
+dangerous notions about the relations of father and child, he was
+reminded that there were still more foolish and dangerous ones about the
+relations of husband and wife.
+
+From the earliest ages of the Church, however, those relations had been
+exactly defined. "Let wives be subject to their husbands," said the
+Epistle we had read this morning, and no less conclusive had been our
+closing prayer, asking that the wife keep true faith with her husband,
+being lovely in his eyes even as was Rachel, wise as was Rebecca, and
+dutiful as was Sara.
+
+"Beautiful!" whispered Aunt Bridget to Lady Margaret. "It's what I
+always was myself in the days of the dear Colonel."
+
+"And now," said the Bishop, "before you drink this toast and call upon
+the noble bridegroom to respond to it," (another deep bow to my
+husband), "I will ask for a few words from the two legal gentlemen who
+have carried out the admirably judicious financial arrangements without
+which this happy marriage would have been difficult if not impossible."
+
+Then my husband's lawyer, with a supercilious smile on his clean-shaven
+face, said it had been an honour to him to assist in preparing the way
+for the "uncrowned king of Ellan." ("It _has_, sir," cried my father in
+a loud voice which straightened the gentleman's face instantly); and
+finally Mr. Curphy, speaking through his long beard, congratulated my
+father and my husband equally on the marriage, and gave it as his
+opinion that there could be no better use for wealth than to come to the
+rescue of an historic family which had fallen on evil times and only
+required a little money to set it on its feet again.
+
+"The bride and bridegroom!" cried my father; and then everybody rose and
+there was much cheering, with cries of "His lordship," "His lordship."
+
+All through the speech-making my husband had rolled uneasily in his
+chair. He had also helped himself frequently from the decanter, so that
+when he got up to reply he was scarcely sober.
+
+In his drawling voice he thanked the Bishop, and said that having made
+up his mind to the marriage he had never dreamt of raising difficulties
+about religion. As to the modern notions about the relations of husband
+and wife, he did not think a girl brought up in a convent would give him
+much trouble on that subject.
+
+"Not likely," cried my father. "I'll clear her of that anyway."
+
+"So I thank you for myself and for my family," continued my husband,
+"and . . . Oh, yes, of course," (this to Lady Margaret). "I thank you
+for my wife also, and . . . and that's all."
+
+I felt sick and cold and ashamed. A rush of blood came under the skin of
+my face that must have made me red to the roots of my hair.
+
+In all this speaking about my marriage there had not been one word about
+myself--myself really, a living soul with all her future happiness at
+stake. I cannot say what vague impulse took possession of me, but I
+remember that when my husband sat down I made a forced laugh, though I
+knew well that I wanted to cry.
+
+In an agony of shame I was beginning to feel a wild desire to escape
+from the room and even from the house, that I might breathe in some of
+the free wind outside, when all at once I became aware that somebody
+else was speaking.
+
+It was Father Dan. He had risen unannounced from his seat at the end of
+the table. I saw his sack coat which was much worn at the seams; I saw
+his round face which was flushed; I heard the vibrating note in his soft
+Irish voice which told me he was deeply moved; and then I dropped my
+head, for I knew what was coming.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+"Mr. O'Neill," said Father Dan, "may your parish priest take the liberty
+of speaking without being spoken to?"
+
+My father made some response, and then a hush fell over the dining-room.
+Either the storm ceased for a time, or in my great agitation it seemed
+to do so, for I did not hear it.
+
+"We have heard a great deal about the marriage we have celebrated
+to-day, but have we not forgotten something? What _is_ marriage? Is it
+the execution of a contract? Is it the signing of a register? Is it even
+the taking of an oath before an altar? No. Marriage is the sacred
+covenant which two souls make with each other, the woman with the man,
+the man with the woman, when she chooses him from all other men, when he
+chooses her from all other women, to belong to each other for ever, so
+that no misfortune, no storm of life, no sin on either side shall ever
+put them apart. That's what marriage is, and all we have been doing
+to-day is to call on God and man to bear witness to that holy bond."
+
+My heart was beating high. I raised my head, and I think my eyes must
+have been shining. I looked across at the Bishop. His face was showing
+signs of vexation.
+
+"Mr. O'Neill, sir," cried Father Dan, raising his trembling voice, "you
+say your daughter has a big fortune and her husband has a big name, and
+what more do they want in this world? I'll tell you what they want, sir.
+They want love, love on both sides, if they are to be good and happy,
+and if they've got that they've got something which neither wealth nor
+rank can buy."
+
+I had dropped my head again, but under my eyelashes I could see that the
+company were sitting spell-bound. Only my husband was shuffling in his
+seat, and the Bishop was plucking at his gold chain.
+
+"My Bishop," said Father Dan, "has told us of the submission a wife owes
+to her husband, and of her duty to be lovely and wise and faithful in
+his eyes. But isn't it the answering thought that the husband on his
+part owes something to the wife? Aren't we told that he shall put away
+everything and everybody for her sake, and cleave to her and cling to
+her and they shall be one flesh? Isn't that, too, a divine commandment?"
+
+My heart was throbbing so loud by this time that the next words were
+lost to me. When I came to myself again Father Dan was saying:
+
+"Think what marriage means to a woman--a young girl especially. It means
+the breaking of old ties, the beginning of a new life, the setting out
+into an unknown world on a voyage from which there can be no return. In
+her weakness and her helplessness she leaves one dependency for another,
+the shelter of a father for the shelter of a husband. What does she
+bring to the man she marries? Herself, everything she is, everything
+she can be, to be made or marred by him, and never, never, never to be
+the same to any other man whatsoever as long as life shall last."
+
+More than ever now, but for other reasons, I wanted to fly from the
+room.
+
+"Friends," cried Father Dan, "we don't know much of the bridegroom in
+this parish, but we know the bride. We've known her all her life. We
+know what she is. I do, anyway. If you are her father, Mr. O'Neill, sir,
+I am her father also. I was in this house when she was born. I baptized
+her. I took her out of the arms of the angel who bore her. So she's my
+child too, God bless her. . . ."
+
+His voice was breaking--I was sobbing--though he was speaking so loudly
+I could scarcely hear him--I could scarcely see him--I only knew that he
+was facing about in our direction and raising his trembling hand to my
+husband.
+
+"She is my child, too, I say, and now that she is leaving us, now that
+you are taking her away from us, I charge you, my lord, to be good and
+faithful to her, as you will have to answer for her soul some day."
+
+What else he said I do not know. From that moment I was blind and deaf
+to everything. Nevertheless I was conscious that after Father Dan had
+ceased to speak there was a painful silence. I thought the company
+seemed to be startled and even a little annoyed by the emotion so
+suddenly shot into their midst. The Bishop looked vexed, my father
+looked uncomfortable, and my husband, who had been drinking glass after
+glass of brandy, was muttering something about "a sermon."
+
+It had been intended that Mr. Eastcliff should speak for the
+bridesmaids, and I was afterwards told by Betsy Beauty that he had
+prepared himself with many clever epigrams, but everybody felt there
+could be no more speaking of any kind now. After a few awkward moments
+my father looked at his watch and said it was about time for us to start
+if we were to catch the steamer, so I was hurried upstairs to change for
+our journey.
+
+When I came down again, in my tailor-made travelling dress with sables,
+the whole company was in the hall and everybody seemed to be talking at
+the same time, making a noise like water in a weir.
+
+I was taken possession of by each in turn. Nessy MacLeod told me in an
+aside what an excellent father I had. Betsy Beauty whispered that Mr.
+Eastcliff was so handsome and their tastes were so similar that she
+hoped I would invite him to Castle Raa as soon as I came back. Aunt
+Bridget, surrounded by a group of sympathising ladies (including Lady
+Margaret, who was making an obvious effort to be gracious) was wiping
+her eyes and saying I had always been her favourite and she had
+faithfully done her duty by me.
+
+"Mary, my love," she said, catching my eye, "I'm just telling her
+ladyship I don't know in the world what I'll do when you are gone."
+
+My husband was there too, wearing a heavy overcoat with the collar up,
+and receiving from a group of insular gentlemen their cheerful
+prognostics of a bad passage.
+
+"'Deed, but I'm fearing it will be a dirty passage, my lord."
+
+"Chut!" said my father. "The wind's from the south-west. They'll soon
+get shelter."
+
+The first of our two cars came round and my husband's valet went off in
+advance with our luggage. Then the second car arrived, and the time came
+for our departure. I think I kissed everybody. Everybody seemed to be
+crying--everybody except myself, for my tears were all gone by this
+time.
+
+Just as we were about to start, the storm, which must certainly have
+fallen for a while, sprang up suddenly, and when Tommy the Mate (barely
+recognisable in borrowed black garments) opened the door the wind came
+rushing into the house with a long-drawn whirr.
+
+I had said good-bye to the old man, and was stepping into the porch when
+I remembered Father Dan. He was standing in his shabby sack coat with a
+sorrowful face in a dark corner by the door, as if he had placed himself
+there to see the last of me. I wanted to put my arms around his neck,
+but I knew that would be wrong, so I dropped to my knees and kissed his
+hand and he gave me his blessing.
+
+My husband, who was waiting by the side of the throbbing automobile,
+said impatiently:
+
+"Come, come, dear, don't keep me in the rain."
+
+I got into the landaulette, my husband got in after me, the car began to
+move, there were cries from within the house ("Good-bye!" "Good luck")
+which sounded like stifled shrieks as they were carried off by the wind
+without, and then we were under weigh.
+
+As we turned the corner of the drive something prompted me to look back
+at my mother's window--with its memories of my first going to school.
+
+At the next moment we were crossing the bridge--with its memories of
+Martin Conrad and William Rufus.
+
+At the next we were on the road.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+"Thank God, that's over," said my husband. Then, half apologetically, he
+added: "You didn't seem to enjoy it any more than myself, my dear."
+
+At the entrance to our village a number of men stood firing guns; in the
+middle a group of girls were stretching a rope across the road; a number
+of small flags, torn by the wind and wet with the rain, were rattling on
+flagstaffs hung out from some of the window sills; a few women, with
+shawls over their heads, were sheltering on the weather side of their
+porches to see us pass.
+
+My husband was impatient of our simple island customs. Once or twice he
+lowered the window of the car, threw out a handful of silver and at the
+same time urged the chauffeur to drive quicker. As soon as we were clear
+of the village he fell back in his seat, saying:
+
+"Heavens, how sleepy I am! No wonder either! Late going to bed last
+night and up so early this morning."
+
+After a moment he began to yawn, and almost before he could have been
+aware of it he had closed his eyes. At the next moment he was asleep.
+
+It was a painful, almost a hideous sleep. His cheeks swelled and sank;
+his lips parted, he was breathing heavily, and sometimes gaping like a
+carp out of water.
+
+I could not detach my eyes from his face, which, without eyes to relieve
+it, seemed to be almost repulsive now. It would be difficult to describe
+my sensations. I felt dreadfully humiliated. Even my personal pride was
+wounded. I remembered what Father Dan had said about husband and wife
+being one flesh, and told myself that _this_ was what I belonged to,
+what belonged to me--_this!_ Then I tried to reproach and reprove
+myself, but in order to do so I had to turn my eyes away.
+
+Our road to Blackwater lay over the ridge of a hill much exposed to the
+wind from the south-west. When we reached this point the clouds seemed
+to roll up from the sea like tempestuous battalions. Torrential rain
+fell on the car and came dripping in from the juncture of the
+landaulette roof. Some of it fell on the sleeper and he awoke with a
+start.
+
+"Damn--"
+
+He stopped, as if, caught in guilt, and began to apologise again.
+
+"Was I asleep? I really think I must have been. Stupid, isn't it? Excuse
+me."
+
+He blinked his eyes as if to empty them of sleep, looked me over for a
+moment or two in silence, and then said with a smile which made me
+shudder:
+
+"So you and I are man and wife, my dear!"
+
+I made no answer, and, still looking fixedly at me, he said:
+
+"Well, worse things might have happened after all--what do _you_ think?"
+
+Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust.
+Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance.
+
+"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"
+
+That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it was
+because the words gave me the sense of having been used before to other
+women. I turned my eyes away again.
+
+"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of yours. I
+adore black eyes. They always pierce me like a gimlet."
+
+He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt frightened and
+pushed him off.
+
+"What's this?" he said, as if surprised.
+
+But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who had
+had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, he
+said:
+
+"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"
+
+Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist,
+but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.
+
+His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.
+
+"Oh, I see," he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for having paid
+so little court to her? Well, she's right there too, bless her! But
+never mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little woman, my dear, and
+if I have neglected you thus far, I intend to make up for it during the
+honeymoon. So come, little gal, let's be friends."
+
+Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the same time
+his hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face aside and
+prevented him.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man who was
+quite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun will get over
+that by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"
+
+By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that was
+entirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it, but
+it was there, and I could not escape from it.
+
+Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had been
+troubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant to myself
+by love--the love of husband and wife--was the kind of feeling I had for
+the Reverend Mother, heightened and deepened and spiritualised, as I
+believed, by the fact (with all its mysterious significance) that the
+one was a man and the other a woman.
+
+But this was something quite different. Not having found in marriage
+what I had expected, I was finding something else, for there could be no
+mistaking my husband's meaning when he looked at me with his passionate
+eyes and said, "Wait awhile!"
+
+I saw what was before me, and in fear of it I found myself wishing that
+something might happen to save me. I was so frightened that if I could
+have escaped from the car I should have done so. The only thing I could
+hope for was that we should arrive at Blackwater too late for the
+steamer, or that the storm would prevent it from sailing. What relief
+from my situation I should find in that, beyond the delay of one day,
+one night (in which I imagined I might be allowed to return home), I did
+not know. But none the less on that account I began to watch the clouds
+with a feverish interest.
+
+They were wilder than ever now--rolling up from the south-west in huge
+black whorls which enveloped the mountains and engulfed the valleys. The
+wind, too, was howling at intervals like a beast being slaughtered. It
+was terrible, but not so terrible as the thing I was thinking of. I was
+afraid of the storm, and yet I was fearfully, frightfully glad of it.
+
+My husband, who, after my repulse, had dropped back into his own corner
+of the car, was very angry. He talked again of our "God-forsaken
+island," and the folly of living in it, said our passage would be a long
+one in any case, and we might lose our connection to London.
+
+"Damnably inconvenient if we do. I've special reasons for being there in
+the morning," he said.
+
+At a sharp turn of the road the wind smote the car as with an invisible
+wing. One of the windows was blown in, and to prevent the rain from
+driving on to us my husband had to hold up a cushion in the gap.
+
+This occupied him until we ran into Blackwater, and then he dropped the
+cushion and put his head out, although the rain was falling heavily, to
+catch the first glimpse of the water in the bay.
+
+It was in terrific turmoil. My heart leapt up at the sight of it. My
+husband swore.
+
+We drew up on the drenched and naked pier. My husband's valet, in
+waterproofs, came to the sheltered side of the car, and, shouting above
+the noises of the wind in the rigging of the steamer, he said:
+
+"Captain will not sail to-day, my lord. Inshore wind. Says he couldn't
+get safely out of the harbour."
+
+My husband swore violently. I was unused to oaths at that time and they
+cut me like whipcord, but all the same my pulse was bounding joyfully.
+
+"Bad luck, my lord, but only one thing to do now," shouted the valet.
+
+"What's that?" said my husband, growling.
+
+"Sleep in Blackwater to-night, in hopes of weather mending in the
+morning."
+
+Anticipating this course, he had already engaged rooms for us at the
+"Fort George."
+
+My heart fell, and I waited for my husband's answer. I was stifling.
+
+"All right, Hobson. If it must be, it must," he answered.
+
+I wanted to speak, but I did not know what to say. There seemed to be
+nothing that I could say.
+
+A quarter of an hour afterwards we arrived at the hotel, where the
+proprietor, attended by the manageress and the waiters, received us with
+rather familiar smiles.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I began to write I determined to tell the truth and the whole
+truth. But now I find that the whole truth will require that I should
+invade some of the most sacred intimacies of human experience. At this
+moment I feel as if I were on the threshold of one of the sanctuaries
+of a woman's life, and I ask myself if it is necessary and inevitable
+that I should enter it.
+
+I have concluded that it _is_ necessary and inevitable--necessary to the
+sequence of my narrative, inevitable for the motive with which I am
+writing it.
+
+Four times already I have written what is to follow. In the first case I
+found that I had said too much. In the second I had said too little. In
+the third I was startled and shocked by the portrait I had presented of
+myself and could not believe it to be true. In the fourth I saw with a
+thrill of the heart that the portrait was not only true, but too true.
+Let me try again.
+
+I entered our rooms at the hotel, my husband's room and mine, with a
+sense of fear, almost of shame. My sensations at that moment had nothing
+in common with the warm flood of feeling which comes to a woman when she
+finds herself alone for the first time with the man she loves, in a
+little room which holds everything that is of any account to her in the
+world. They were rather those of a young girl who, walking with a candle
+through the dark corridors of an empty house at night, is suddenly
+confronted by a strange face. I was the young girl with the candle; the
+strange face was my husband's.
+
+We had three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the middle with
+bedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was large and it
+contained a huge bed with a covered top and tail-boards. That on the
+left was small, and it had a plain brass and iron bedstead, which had
+evidently been meant for a lady's maid. I had no maid yet. It was
+intended that I should engage a French one in London.
+
+Almost immediately on entering the sitting-room my husband, who had not
+yet recovered from his disappointment, left me to go downstairs, saying
+with something like a growl that he had telegrams to send to London and
+instructions to give to his man Hobson.
+
+Without taking off my outer things I stepped up to the windows, which
+were encrusted with salt from the flying spray. The hotel stood on a
+rocky ledge above the harbour, and the sound of the sea, beating on the
+outer side of the pier, came up with a deafening roar. The red-funnelled
+steamer we should have sailed by lay on the pier's sheltered side,
+letting down steam, swaying to her creaking hawsers, and heaving to the
+foam that was surging against her bow.
+
+I was so nervous, so flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears that I
+hardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our trunks and asked
+me where they were to place them, but I scarcely know how I answered
+them, although I was aware that everything--both my husband's luggage
+and mine--was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she
+ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes,"
+and presently I heard the fire crackling.
+
+After awhile my husband came back in a better temper and said:
+
+"Confounded nuisance, but I suppose we must make the best of it."
+
+He laughed as he said this, and coming closer and looking me over with a
+smile which was at the same time passionate and proud, he whispered:
+
+"Dare say we'll not find the time long until to-morrow morning. What do
+_you_ think, my little beauty?"
+
+Something in his voice rather than in his question made my heart beat,
+and I could feel my face growing hot.
+
+"Not taken off your things yet?" he said. "Come, let me help you."
+
+I drew out my hat-pins and removed my hat. At the same moment my husband
+removed my sables and cloak, and as he did so he put his arms about me,
+and held me close to him.
+
+I shuddered. I tried not to, but I could not help it. My husband laughed
+again, and said:
+
+"Not got over it yet, little woman? Perhaps that's only because you are
+not quite used to me."
+
+Still laughing he pulled me still closer to him, and putting one of his
+hands under my chin he kissed me on the mouth.
+
+It will be difficult and perhaps it will be ridiculous to say how my
+husband's first kiss shocked me. My mouth felt parched, I had a sense of
+intense disgust, and before I was quite aware of what I was doing I had
+put up both hands to push him off.
+
+"Come, come, this is going too far," he said, in a tone that was half
+playful, half serious. "It was all very well in the automobile; but
+here, in your own rooms, you know. . . ."
+
+He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meant
+that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charming
+for him.
+
+I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, and
+crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before the
+fire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, and
+then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders and
+kissed my neck.
+
+A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of
+indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with the
+look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud and
+insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much as
+contemplated resistance.
+
+"Well, this is funny," he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll see!"
+
+A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked for
+dinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering excitedly by
+this time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of other
+people gave me.
+
+While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of the
+day. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given us "the
+sermon" at the wedding breakfast--he had evidently forgotten that he had
+seen the Father before.
+
+I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a saint if
+ever there was one.
+
+"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not synonymous with
+simpleton, though."
+
+Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony." By
+holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused more
+misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural
+adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair by
+marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and a
+scoundrel.
+
+I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of all
+this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife. I am
+sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every word
+he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepen
+into horror.
+
+My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with my
+handkerchief. I was feeling more frightened and more ashamed than I had
+ever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat down to dinner I tried to
+compose myself. Partly for the sake of appearance before the servants,
+and partly because I was taking myself to task for the repugnance I
+felt towards my husband, I found something to say, though my voice
+shook.
+
+My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal. Once or twice, when he
+insisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses with him.
+Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and disgust, I
+sometimes allowed myself to laugh.
+
+Encouraged by this he renewed his endearments even before the waiters
+had left the room, and when they had gone, with orders not to return
+until he rang, and the door was closed behind them, he switched off the
+lights, pushed a sofa in front of the fire, put me to sit on it, sat
+down beside me and redoubled his tenderness.
+
+"How's my demure little nun now?" he said. "Frightened, wasn't she?
+They're all frightened at first, bless them!"
+
+I could smell the liquor he had been drinking. I could see by the
+firelight the prominent front tooth (partly hidden by his moustache)
+which I had noticed when I saw him first, and the down of soft hair
+which grew as low on his hands as his knuckles. Above all I thought I
+could feel the atmosphere of other women about him--loose women, bad
+women as it seemed to me--and my fear and disgust began to be mixed with
+a kind of physical horror.
+
+For a little while I tried to fight against this feeling, but when he
+began to put his arms about me, calling me by endearing names,
+complaining of my coldness, telling me not to be afraid of him,
+reminding me that I belonged to him now, and must do as he wished, a
+faintness came over me, I trembled from head to foot and made some
+effort to rise.
+
+"Let me go," I said.
+
+"Nonsense," he said, laughing and holding me to my seat. "You bewitching
+little woman! You're only teasing me. How they love to tease, these
+charming little women!"
+
+The pupils of his eyes were glistening. I closed my own eyes in order to
+avoid his look. At the next moment I felt his hand stray down my body
+and in a fury of indignation I broke out of his arms and leapt to my
+feet.
+
+When I recovered my self-possession I was again looking out of the
+window, and my husband, who was behind me, was saying in a tone of anger
+and annoyance:
+
+"What's the matter with you? I can't understand. What have I done? Good
+heavens, we are man and wife, aren't we?"
+
+I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was becoming
+cold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an outrage on my
+natural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence against my dignity
+as a woman.
+
+It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing. The
+rain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the rocks. I
+wanted to fly, but I felt caged--morally and physically caged.
+
+My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down the
+sitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile he
+approached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:
+
+"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long and
+exhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up early."
+
+Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the large
+bedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to undress and get
+into bed, and after that he said something about waiting. Then he closed
+the door softly and I was alone.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There was a fire in the bedroom and I sat down in front of it. Many
+forces were warring within me. I was trying to fix my thoughts and found
+it difficult to do so.
+
+Some time passed. My husband's man came in with the noiseless step of
+all such persons, opened one of the portmanteaux and laid out his
+master's combs and brushes on the dressing table and his sleeping suit
+on the bed. A maid of the hotel followed him, and taking my own sleeping
+things out of the top tray of my trunk she laid them out beside my
+husband's.
+
+"Good-night, my lady," they said in their low voices as they went out on
+tiptoe.
+
+I hardly heard them. My mind, at first numb, was now going at lightning
+speed. Brought face to face for the first time with one of the greatest
+facts of a woman's life I was asking myself why I had not reckoned with
+it before.
+
+I had not even thought of it. My whole soul had been so much occupied
+with one great spiritual issue--that I did not love my husband (as I
+understood love), that my husband did not love me--that I had never once
+plainly confronted, even in my own mind, the physical fact that is the
+first condition of matrimony, and nobody had mentioned it to me or even
+hinted at it.
+
+I could not plead that I did not know of this condition. I was young but
+I was not a child. I had been brought up in a convent, but a convent is
+not a nursery. Then why had I not thought of it?
+
+While sitting before the fire, gathering together these dark thoughts, I
+was in such fear that I was always conscious of my husband's movements
+in the adjoining room. At one moment there was the jingling of his glass
+against the decanter, at another moment the smell of his cigarette
+smoke. From time to time he came to the door and called to me in a sort
+of husky whisper, asking if I was in bed.
+
+"Don't keep me long, little girl."
+
+I shuddered but made no reply.
+
+At last he knocked softly and said he was coming in. I was still
+crouching over the fire as he came up behind me.
+
+"Not in bed yet?" he said. "Then I must put you to bed."
+
+Before I could prevent him he had lifted me in his arms, dragged me on
+to his knee and was pulling down my hair, laughing as he did so, calling
+me by coarse endearing names and telling me not to fight and struggle.
+
+But the next thing I knew I was back in the sitting-room, where I had
+switched up the lights, and my husband, whose face was distorted by
+passion, was blazing out at me.
+
+"What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband, am I not? You are my
+wife, aren't you? What did you marry for? Good heavens, can it be
+possible that you don't know what the conditions of matrimony are? Is
+that what comes of being brought up in a convent? But has your father
+allowed you to marry without. . . . And your Aunt--what in God's name
+has the woman been doing?"
+
+I crossed towards the smaller bedroom intending to enter it, but my
+husband intercepted me.
+
+"Don't be a fool," he said, catching at my wrist. "Think of the
+servants. Think what they'd say. Think what the whole island would say.
+Do you want to make a laughing stock of both of us?"
+
+I returned and sat by the table. My husband lit another cigarette.
+Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of his left hand,
+and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his lips, he told me I
+was mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a scene like this. He thought
+he could spend his time better. I was equally mistaken if I imagined
+that he had desired our marriage at all. Something quite different might
+have happened if he could have afforded to please himself.
+
+He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not thought of
+that, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a person like my
+father for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and my cousins--ugh!
+
+The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to make
+all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics!
+Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the
+muss and mummery of the Church!
+
+It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my confessor.
+Did any rational man want another man to come between him and his
+wife--knowing all he did and said, and everything about him?
+
+I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral of it
+was that if I had been allowed to marry without being instructed in the
+first conditions of married life my husband had suffered a gross and
+shocking injustice.
+
+The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating and
+degrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view, and when I
+remembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked to me like this,
+and that he could claim rights in me, to-night, to-morrow, as long as I
+lived, until death parted us, a wild impulse of impotent anger at
+everybody and everything made me drop my head on to the table and burst
+into tears.
+
+My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything. Taking my
+crying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his arms round my
+shoulders again and renewed his fondling.
+
+"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes," he said. "The people
+of the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be all sorts of
+ridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common people you are a
+different pair of shoes altogether."
+
+He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my shuddering) and
+saying:
+
+"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've kept you
+in ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little woman, we'll soon
+repair that."
+
+I could bear no more. I _must_ speak and I did. Leaping up and facing
+round on him I told him my side of the story--how I had been married
+against my will, and had not wanted him any more than he had wanted me;
+how all my objections had been overruled, all my compunctions borne
+down; how everybody had been in a conspiracy to compel me, and I had
+been bought and sold like a slave.
+
+"But you can't go any farther than that," I said. "Between you, you have
+forced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey you, because I
+won't."
+
+I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had finished
+it was ashen-white.
+
+"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more he
+tramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying to
+account to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me again and
+said, in the tone of one who thought he was making peace:
+
+"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have some other
+attachment--that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think I'm blaming you. I may
+be in the same case myself for all you know to the contrary. But
+circumstances have been too strong for us and here we are. Well, we're
+in it, and we've got to make the best of it and why shouldn't we? Lots
+of people in my class are in the same position, and yet they get along
+all right. Why can't we do the same? I'll not be too particular. Neither
+will you. For the rest of our lives let each of us go his and her own
+way. But that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our
+wedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . .
+Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look
+here, we won't expect too much affection from each other--but let's stop
+this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. Come, now."
+
+Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as
+he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the
+immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and I cried:
+
+"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"
+
+There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen on my
+husband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride had
+expected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a moment,
+recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot blood run cold,
+he said:
+
+"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as such you
+belong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I will."
+
+The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming towards
+me with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils fixed. In the
+drunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally.
+
+But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse. I
+wanted to strike him on the face.
+
+"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the window," I
+said.
+
+"No fear of that," he said, catching me quickly in his arms.
+
+"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house down," I
+cried.
+
+That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the next
+moment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without resistance on my
+husband's part I entered the little bedroom to the left and locked the
+door behind me.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Some further time passed. I sat by the fireless grate with my chin in my
+hand. If the storm outside was still raging I did not hear it. I was
+listening to the confused sounds that came from the sitting-room.
+
+My husband was pacing to and fro, muttering oaths, knocking against the
+furniture, breaking things. At one moment there was a crash of glass, as
+if he had helped himself to brandy and then in his ungovernable passion
+flung the decanter into the fire grate.
+
+Somebody knocked at the sitting-room. It must have been a waiter, for
+through the wall I heard the muffled sound of a voice asking if there
+had been an accident. My husband swore at the man and sent him off.
+Hadn't he told him not to come until he was rung for?
+
+At length, after half an hour perhaps, my husband knocked at the door of
+my little room.
+
+"Are you there?" he asked.
+
+I made no answer.
+
+"Open the door."
+
+I sat motionless.
+
+"You needn't be afraid. I'm not going to do anything. I've something to
+say."
+
+Still I made no reply. My husband went away for a moment and then came
+back.
+
+"If you are determined not to open the door I must say what I've got to
+say from here. Are you listening?"
+
+Sitting painfully rigid I answered that I was.
+
+Then he told me that what I was doing would entitle him to annul our
+marriage--in the eyes of the Church at all events.
+
+If he thought that threat would intimidate me he was mistaken--a wave of
+secret joy coursed through me.
+
+"It won't matter much to me--I'll take care it won't--but it will be a
+degrading business for you--invalidity and all that. Are you prepared
+for it?"
+
+I continued to sit silent and motionless.
+
+"I daresay we shall both be laughed at, but I cannot help that. We can't
+possibly live together on terms like these."
+
+Another wave of joy coursed through me.
+
+"Anyhow I intend to know before I leave the island how things are to be.
+I'm not going to take you away until I get some satisfaction. You
+understand?"
+
+I listened, almost without breathing, but I did not reply.
+
+"I'm think of writing a letter to your father, and sending Hobson with
+it in the car immediately. Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you know what your father is. Unless I'm much mistaken he's not a
+man to have much patience with your semi-romantic, semi-religious
+sentiments. Are you quite satisfied?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Very well! That's what I'll do, then."
+
+After this there was a period of quiet in which I assumed that my
+husband was writing his letter. Then I heard a bell ring somewhere in
+the corridor, and shortly afterwards there was a second voice in the
+sitting-room, but I could not hear the words that were spoken. I suppose
+it was Hobson's low voice, for after another short interval of silence
+there came the thrum and throb of a motor-car and the rumble of
+india-rubber wheels on the wet gravel of the courtyard in front of the
+hotel.
+
+Then my husband knocked at my door again.
+
+"I've written that letter and Hobson is waiting to take it. Your father
+will probably get it before he goes to bed. It will be a bad break on
+the festivities he was preparing for the village people. But you are
+still of the same mind, I suppose?"
+
+I did not speak, but I rose and went over to the window. For some reason
+difficult to explain, that reference to the festivities had cut me to
+the quick.
+
+My husband must have been fuming at my apparent indifference, and I felt
+as if I could see him looking at me, passionate and proud.
+
+"Between the lot of you I think you've done me a great injustice. Have
+you nothing to say?"
+
+Even then I did not answer.
+
+"All right! As you please."
+
+A few minutes afterwards I heard the motor-car turning and driving away.
+
+The wind had fallen, the waves were rolling into the harbour with that
+monotonous moan which is the sea's memory of a storm, and a full moon,
+like a white-robed queen, was riding through a troubled sky.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet
+as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning
+before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and
+jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay
+down to sleep.
+
+I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an impatient
+voice crying:
+
+"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"
+
+It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile. When I
+opened the door to her she came sailing into the room with her new
+half-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on hurriedly in the
+dim light of early morning, and, looking at me with her cold grey eyes
+behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she began to bombard me with
+mingled ridicule and indignant protest.
+
+"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little simpleton,
+tell me what has happened!"
+
+She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh before. But
+her vexation soon got the better of her merriment.
+
+"His lordship's letter arrived in the middle of the night and nearly
+frightened us out of our senses. Your father was for coming away
+straight, and it would have been worse for you if he had. But I said:
+'No, this is work for a woman, I'll go,' and here I am. And now tell me,
+what in the name of goodness does this ridiculous trouble mean?"
+
+It was hard to say anything on such a subject under such circumstances,
+especially when so challenged, but Aunt Bridget, without waiting for my
+reply, proceeded to indicate the substance of my husband's letter.
+
+From this I gathered that he had chosen (probably to save his pride) to
+set down my resistance to ignorance of the first conditions of
+matrimony, and had charged my father first and Aunt Bridget afterwards
+with doing him a shocking injustice in permitting me to be married to
+him without telling me what every girl who becomes a wife ought to know.
+
+"But, good gracious," said my Aunt Bridget, "who would have imagined you
+_didn't_ know. I thought every girl in the world knew before she put up
+her hair and came out of short frocks. My Betsy did, I'm sure of that.
+And to think that you--you whom we thought so cute, so cunning. . . .
+Mary O'Neill, I'm ashamed of you. I really, really am! Why, you goose"
+(Aunt Bridget was again trying to laugh), "how did you suppose the world
+went on?"
+
+The coarse ridicule of what was supposed to be my maidenly modesty cut
+me like a knife, but I could not permit myself to explain, so my Aunt
+Bridget ran on talking.
+
+"I see how it has been. It's the fault of that Reverend Mother at the
+convent. What sort of a woman is she? Is she a woman at all, I wonder,
+or only a piece of stucco that ought to be put up in a church corner! To
+think she could have you nine years and never say one word about. . . .
+Well, well! What has she been doing with you? Talking about the
+mysteries, I suppose--prayers and retreats and novenas, and the
+spiritual bridegroom and the rest of it, while all the while. . . . But
+you must put the convent out of your head, my girl. You are a married
+woman now. You've got to think of your husband, and a husband isn't a
+spiritual bridegroom I can tell you. He's flesh and blood, that's what a
+husband is, and you can't expect _him_ to spend his time talking about
+eternity and the rosary. Not on his wedding-day, anyway."
+
+I was hot in my absurd embarrassment, and I dare say my face was
+scarlet, but Aunt Bridget showed me no mercy.
+
+"The way you have behaved is too silly for anything. . . . It really is.
+A husband's a husband, and a wife's a wife. The wife has to obey her
+husband. Of course she has. Every wife has to. Some don't like it. I
+can't say that I liked it very much myself. But to think of anybody
+objecting. Why, it's shocking! Nobody ever heard of such a thing."
+
+I must have flushed up to my forehead, for I became conscious that in my
+Aunt Bridget's eyes there had been a kind of indecency in my conduct.
+
+"But, come," she said, "we must be sensible. It's timidity, that's what
+it is. I was a little timid myself when I was first married, but I soon
+got over it. Once get over your timidity and you will be all right.
+Sakes alive, yes, you'll be as happy as the day is long, and before this
+time to-morrow you'll wonder what on earth you made all this fuss
+about."
+
+I tried to say that what she predicted could never be, because I did not
+love my husband, and therefore . . . but my Aunt Bridget broke in on me,
+saying:
+
+"Mary O'Neill, don't be a fool. Your maiden days are over now, and you
+ought to know what your husband will do if you persist."
+
+I jumped at the thought that she meant he would annul our marriage, but
+that was not what she was thinking of.
+
+"He'll find somebody else--that's what he'll do. Serve you right, too.
+You'll only have yourself to blame for it. Perhaps you think you'll be
+able to do the same, but you won't. Women can't. He'll be happy enough,
+and you'll be the only one to suffer, so don't make a fool of yourself.
+Accept the situation. You may not like your husband too much. I can't
+say I liked the Colonel particularly. He took snuff, and no woman in the
+world could keep him in clean pocket handkerchiefs. But when a sensible
+person has got something at stake, she puts up with things. And that's
+what you must do. He who wants fresh eggs must raise his own chickens,
+you know."
+
+Aunt Bridget ran on for some time longer, telling me of my father's
+anger, which was not a matter for much surprise, seeing how he had built
+himself upon my marriage, and how he had expected that I should have a
+child, a son, to carry on the family.
+
+"Do you mean to disappoint him after all he has done for you? It would
+be too silly, too stupid. You'd be the laughing-stock of the whole
+island. So get up and get dressed and be ready and willing to go with
+his lordship when he sails by this afternoon's steamer."
+
+"I can't," I said.
+
+"You can't? You mean you won't?"
+
+"Very well, Auntie, I won't."
+
+At that Aunt Bridget stormed at me for several minutes, telling me that
+if my stubborn determination not to leave the island with my husband
+meant that I intended to return home she might inform me at once that I
+was not wanted there and I need not come.
+
+"I've enough on my hands in that house already, what with Betsy
+unmarried, and your father doing nothing for her, and that nasty Nessy
+MacLeod making up to him. You ungrateful minx! You are ruining
+everything! After all I've done for you too! But no matter! If you
+_will_ make your bed I shall take care that you lie on it."
+
+With that, and the peak of her half-moon bonnet almost dancing over her
+angry face, Aunt Bridget flounced out of my room.
+
+Half an hour afterwards, when I went into the sitting-room, I found my
+father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, waiting for me. He looked down at me with
+an indulgent and significant smile, which brought the colour rushing
+back to my face, put me to sit by his side, touched my arm with one of
+his large white clammy hands, stroked his long brown beard with the
+other, and then in the half-reproving tone which a Sunday-school teacher
+might have used to a wayward child, he began to tell me what the
+consequences would be if I persisted in my present conduct.
+
+They would be serious. The law was very clear on marital rights. If a
+wife refused to live with her husband, except on a plea of cruelty or
+something equally plausible, he could apply to the court and compel her
+to do so; and if she declined, if she removed herself from his abode, or
+having removed, refused to return, the Court might punish her--it might
+even imprison her.
+
+"So you see, the man is the top dog in a case like this, my dear, and he
+can compel the woman to obey him."
+
+"Do you mean," I said, "that he can use force to compel her?"
+
+"Reasonable force, yes. I think that's so. And quite right, too, when
+you come to think of it. The woman has entered into a serious contract,
+and it is the duty of the law to see that she fulfills the conditions of
+it."
+
+I remembered how little I had known of the conditions of the contract I
+had entered into, but I was too heart-sick and ashamed to say anything
+about that.
+
+"Aw yes, that's so," said the advocate, "force, reasonable force! You
+may say it puts a woman in a worse position as a wife than she would be
+if she were a mistress. That's true, but it's the law, and once a woman
+has married a man, the only escape from this condition of submission is
+imprisonment."
+
+"Then I would rather that--a thousand times rather," I said, for I was
+hot with anger and indignation.
+
+Again the advocate smiled indulgently, patted my arm, and answered me as
+if I were a child.
+
+"Tut, tut, my dear, tut, tut! You've made a marriage that is founded on
+suitability of position, property and education, and everything will
+come right by and by. Don't act on a fit of pique or spleen, and so
+destroy your happiness, and that of everybody about you. Think of your
+father. Remember what he has done to make this marriage. I may tell you
+that he has paid forty thousand pounds to discharge your husband's debts
+and undertaken responsibility for an allowance of six thousand a year
+beside. Do you want him to lose all that money?"
+
+I was so sick with disgust at hearing this that I could not speak, and
+the advocate, who, in his different way, was as dead to my real feelings
+as my husband had been, went on to say:
+
+"Come, be reasonable. You may have suffered some slight, some indignity.
+No doubt you have. Your husband is proud and he has peculiarities of
+temper which we have all to make allowances for. But even if you could
+establish a charge of cruelty against him and so secure a
+separation--which you can't--what good would that do you? None at
+all--worse than none! The financial arrangements would remain the same.
+Your father would be a frightful loser. And what would you be? A married
+widow! The worst condition in the world for a woman--especially if she
+is young and attractive, and subject to temptations. Ask anybody who
+knows--anybody."
+
+I felt as if I would suffocate with shame.
+
+"Come now," said the advocate in his superior way, taking my hand as if
+he were going to lead me like a child to my husband, "let us put an end
+to this little trouble. His lordship is downstairs and he has
+consented--kindly and generously consented--to wait an hour for your
+answer. But he must leave the island by the afternoon steamer, and
+if. . . ."
+
+"Then tell him he must leave it without me," I said, as well as I could
+for the anger that was choking me.
+
+The advocate looked steadily into my face. I think he understood the
+situation at last.
+
+"You mean that--really and truly mean it?" he asked.
+
+"I do," I answered, and unable to say or hear any more without breaking
+out on him altogether I left the room.
+
+
+
+
+THIRTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Down to this moment I had put on a brave front though my very heart had
+been trembling; but now I felt that all the weight of law, custom,
+parental authority and even religion was bearing me down, down, down,
+and unless help came I must submit in the long run.
+
+I was back in the small bedroom, with my hot forehead against the cold
+glass of the window, looking out yet seeing nothing, when somebody
+knocked at the door, softly almost timidly. It was Father Dan, and the
+sight of his dear face, broken up with emotion, was the same to me as
+the last plank of a foundering ship to a sailor drowning at sea.
+
+My heart was so full that, though I knew I ought not, I threw my arms
+about his neck and burst into a flood of tears. The good old priest did
+not put me away. He smoothed my drooping head and patted my shoulders
+and in his sweet and simple way he tried to comfort me.
+
+"Don't cry! Don't worry! It will be all right in the end, my child."
+
+There was something almost grotesque in his appearance. Under his soft
+clerical outdoor hat he was wearing his faded old cassock, as if he had
+come away hurriedly at a sudden call. I could see what had happened--my
+family had sent him to reprove me and remonstrate with me.
+
+He sat on a chair by my bed and I knelt on the floor at his feet, just
+as my mother used to do when I was a child and she was making her
+confession. Perhaps he thought of that at the same moment as myself, for
+the golden light of my mother's memory lay always about him. For some
+moments we did not speak. I think we were both weeping.
+
+At length I tried to tell him what had happened--hiding nothing,
+softening nothing, speaking the simple and naked truth. I found it
+impossible to do so. My odd-sounding voice was not like my own, and even
+my words seemed to be somebody else's. But Father Dan understood
+everything.
+
+"I know! I know!" he said, and then, to my great relief, interrupting my
+halting explanations, he gave his own interpretation of my husband's
+letter.
+
+There was a higher love and there was a lower love and both were
+necessary to God's plans and purposes. But the higher love must come
+first, or else the lower one would seem to be cruel and gross and
+against nature.
+
+Nature was kind to a young girl. Left to itself it awakened her sex very
+gently. First with love, which came to her like a whisper in a dream,
+like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so that when she
+awoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did not startle or appal
+her.
+
+But sex in me had been awakened rudely and ruthlessly. Married without
+love I had been suddenly confronted by the lower passion. What wonder
+that I had found it brutal and barbarous?
+
+"That's it, my child! That's it! I know! I know!"
+
+Then he began to blame himself for everything, saying it was all his
+fault and that he should have held out longer. When he saw how things
+stood between me and my husband he should have said to my father, to the
+Bishop, and to the lawyers, notwithstanding all their bargainings: "This
+marriage must not go on. It will lead to disaster. It begins to end
+badly."
+
+"But now it is all over, my child, and there's no help for it."
+
+I think the real strength of my resistance to Aunt Bridget's coarse
+ridicule and the advocate's callous remonstrance must have been the
+memory of my husband's threat when he talked about the possible
+annulment of our marriage. The thought of that came back to me now, and
+half afraid, half ashamed, with a fluttering of the heart, I tried to
+mention it.
+
+"Is there no way out?" I asked.
+
+"What way can there be?" said Father Dan. "God knows I know what
+pressure was put upon you; but you are married, you have made your vows,
+you have given your promises. That's all the world sees or cares about,
+and in the eyes of the law and the Church you are responsible for all
+that has happened."
+
+With my head still buried in Father Dan's cassock I got it out at last.
+
+"But annulment! Isn't that possible--under the circumstances?" I asked.
+
+The good old priest seemed to be too confused to speak for a moment.
+Then he explained that what I hoped for was quite out of the question.
+
+"I don't say that in the history of the Church marriages have not been
+annulled on equally uncertain grounds, but in this case the civil law
+would require proof--something to justify nullity. Failing that there
+would have to be collusion either on one side or both, and that is not
+possible--not to you, my child, not to the daughter of your mother, that
+dear saint who suffered so long and was silent."
+
+More than ever now I felt like a ship-broken man with the last plank
+sinking under him. The cold mysterious dread of my husband was creeping
+back, and the future of my life with him stood before me with startling
+vividness. In spite of all my struggling and fighting of the night
+before I saw myself that very night, the next night, and the next, and
+every night and day of my life thereafter, a victim of the same
+sickening terror.
+
+"Must I submit, then?" I said.
+
+Father Dan smoothed my head and told me in his soft voice that
+submission was the lot of all women. It always had been so in the
+history of the world, and perhaps it always would be.
+
+"Remember the Epistle we read in church yesterday morning: 'Wives submit
+yourselves to your husbands.'"
+
+With a choking sensation in my throat I asked if he thought I ought to
+go away with my husband when he left the island by the afternoon
+steamer.
+
+"I see no escape from it, my poor child. They sent me to reprove you. I
+can't do that, but neither can I encourage you to resist. It would be
+wrong. It would be cruel. It would only lead you into further trouble."
+
+My mouth felt parched, but I contrived to say:
+
+"Then you can hold out no hope for me?"
+
+"God knows I can't."
+
+"Although I do not love this man I must live with him as his wife?"
+
+"It is hard, very hard, but there seems to be no help for it."
+
+I rose to my feet, and went back to the window. A wild impulse of
+rebellion was coming over me.
+
+"I shall feel like a bad woman," I said.
+
+"Don't say that," said Father Dan. "You are married to the man anyway."
+
+"All the same I shall feel like my husband's mistress--his married
+mistress, his harlot."
+
+Father Dan was shocked, and the moment the words were out of my mouth I
+was more frightened than I had ever been before, for something within
+seemed to have forced them out of me.
+
+When I recovered possession of my senses Father Dan, nervously fumbling
+with the silver cross that hung over his cassock, was talking of the
+supernatural effect of the sacrament of marriage. It was God Who joined
+people together, and whom God joined together no man might put asunder.
+No circumstances either, no trial or tribulation. Could it be thought
+that a bond so sacred, so indissoluble, was ever made without good
+effect? No, the Almighty had His own ways with His children, and this
+great mystery of holy wedlock was one of them.
+
+"So don't lose heart, my child. Who knows what may happen yet? God works
+miracles now just as He did in the old days. You may come . . . yes, you
+may come to love your husband, and then--then all will be well."
+
+Suddenly out of my despair and my defiance a new thought came to me. It
+came with the memory of the emotion I had experienced during the
+marriage service, and it thrilled me through and through.
+
+"Father Dan?" I said, with a nervous cry, for my heart was fluttering
+again.
+
+"What is it, my child?"
+
+It was hard to say what I was thinking about, but with a great effort I
+stammered it out at last. I should be willing to leave the island with
+my husband, and live under the same roof with him, and bear his name, so
+that there might be no trouble, or scandal, and nobody except ourselves
+might ever know that there was anything dividing us, any difference of
+any kind between us, if he, on his part, would promise--firmly and
+faithfully promise--that unless and until I came to love him he would
+never claim my submission as a wife.
+
+While I spoke I hardly dared to look at Father Dan, fearing he would
+shake his head again, perhaps reprove me, perhaps laugh at me. But his
+eyes which had been moist began to sparkle and smile.
+
+"You mean that?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you will go away with him on that condition?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"Then he must agree to it."
+
+The pure-minded old priest saw no difficulties, no dangers, no risks of
+breakdown in my girlish scheme. Already my husband had got all he had
+bargained for. He had got my father's money in exchange for his noble
+name, and if he wanted more, if he wanted the love of his wife, let him
+earn it, let him win it.
+
+"That's only right, only fair. It will be worth winning, too--better
+worth winning than all your father's gold and silver ten times over. I
+can tell him that much anyway."
+
+He had risen to his feet in his excitement, the simple old priest with
+his pure heart and his beautiful faith in me.
+
+"And you, my child, you'll try to love him in return--promise you will."
+
+A shiver ran through me when Father Dan said that--a sense of the
+repugnance I felt for my husband almost stifled me.
+
+"Promise me," said Father Dan, and though my face must have been
+scarlet, I promised him.
+
+"That's right. That alone will make him a better man. He may be all that
+people say, but who can measure the miraculous influence of a good
+woman?"
+
+He was making for the door.
+
+"I must go downstairs now and speak to your husband. But he'll agree.
+Why shouldn't he? I know he's afraid of a public scandal, and if he
+attempts to refuse I'll tell him that. . . . But no, that will be quite
+unnecessary. Good-bye, my child! If I don't come back you'll know that
+everything has been settled satisfactorily. You'll be happy yet. I'm
+sure you will. Ah, what did I say about the mysterious power of that
+solemn and sacred sacrament? Good-bye!"
+
+I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God knows I
+did. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven alone the
+judge of it?
+
+At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for England. I went
+with him.
+
+
+
+
+FORTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of it. I
+had faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I prepared to do
+so.
+
+Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect and even
+reverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do that by
+shutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing only his
+better qualities.
+
+What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and humiliating
+disillusionments!
+
+On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable hotel
+in a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is inhabited
+chiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons. Here, to my
+surprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of visitors waited
+upon my husband the following morning.
+
+I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt of pride
+came to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my husband must be
+a man of some importance in the metropolis.
+
+But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and bookmakers,
+to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been unable or unwilling
+to disclose to my father and his advocate.
+
+One of my husband's visitors was a pertinacious little man who came
+early and stayed late. He was a solicitor, and my husband was obviously
+in some fear of him. The interviews between them, while they were
+closeted together morning after morning in one of our two sitting-rooms,
+were long and apparently unpleasant, for more than once I caught the
+sound of angry words on both sides, with oaths and heavy blows upon the
+table.
+
+But towards the end of the week, my husband's lawyer arrived in London,
+and after that the conversations became more pacific.
+
+One morning, as I sat writing a letter in the adjoining room, I heard
+laughter, the popping of corks, the jingling of glasses, and the
+drinking of healths, and I judged that the, difficult and disagreeable
+business had been concluded.
+
+At the close of the interview I heard the door opened and my husband
+going into the outer corridor to see his visitors to the lift, and then
+something prompted me--God alone knows what--to step into the room they
+had just vacated.
+
+It was thick with tobacco smoke. An empty bottle of champagne (with
+three empty wine glasses) was on the table, and on a desk by the window
+were various papers, including a sheet of foolscap which bore a seal and
+several signatures, and a thick packet of old letters bound together
+with a piece of purple ribbon.
+
+Hardly had I had time to recognise these documents when my husband
+returned to the room, and by the dark expression of his face I saw
+instantly that he thought I had looked at them.
+
+"No matter!" he said, without any preamble. "I might as well tell you at
+once and have done with it."
+
+He told me. The letters were his. They had been written to a woman whom
+he had promised to marry, and he had had to buy them back from her.
+Although for three years he had spent a fortune on the creature she had
+shown him no mercy. Through her solicitor, who was a scoundrel, she had
+threatened him, saying in plain words that if he married anybody else
+she would take proceedings against him immediately. That was why, in
+spite of the storm, we had to come up to London on the day after our
+wedding.
+
+"Now you know," said my husband. "Look here" (holding out the sheet of
+foolscap), "five thousand pounds--that's the price I've had to pay for
+marrying."
+
+I can give no idea of the proud imperiousness and the impression of
+injury with which my husband told his brutal story. But neither can I
+convey a sense of the crushing shame with which I listened to it. There
+was not a hint of any consciousness on his part of my side of the case.
+Not a suggestion of the clear fact that the woman he had promised to
+marry had been paid off by money which had come through me. Not a
+thought of the humiliation he had imposed upon his wife in dragging her
+up to London at the demand of his cast-off mistress.
+
+When my husband had finished speaking I could not utter a word. I was
+afraid that my voice would betray the anger that was boiling in me. But
+I was also degraded to the very dust in my own eyes, and to prevent an
+outburst of hysterical tears I ran back to my room and hid my face in my
+pillow.
+
+What was the good of trying to make myself in love with a man who was
+separated from me by a moral chasm that could never be passed? What was
+the good? What was the good?
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+But next morning, having had time to think things out in my simple and
+ignorant way, I tried to reconcile myself to my position. Remembering
+what Aunt Bridget had said, both before my marriage and after it, about
+the different moralities of men and women, I told myself I had placed my
+standard too high.
+
+Perhaps a husband was not a superior being, to be regarded with respect
+and reverence, but a sort of grown-up child whom it was the duty of a
+wife to comfort, coax, submit to and serve.
+
+I determined to do this. Still clinging to the hope of falling in love
+with my husband, I set myself to please him by every means within my
+power, even to the length of simulating sentiments which I did not feel.
+
+But what a task I was setting myself! What a steep and stony Calvary I
+was attempting to climb!
+
+After the degrading business with the other woman had been concluded I
+thought we should have left England immediately on the honeymoon tour
+which my husband had mapped out for us, but he told me that would not be
+convenient and we must remain in London a little longer. We stayed six
+weeks altogether, and never did a young wife pass a more cheerless and
+weary time.
+
+I had no friends of my own within reach, and to my deep if secret
+mortification no woman of my husband's circle called upon me. But a few
+of his male friends were constantly with us, including Mr. Eastcliff,
+who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, though
+the brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapid
+person, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an
+abrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave
+the impression of screeching against the wind.
+
+With these two men, and others of a similar kind, we passed many hours
+of nearly every day, lunching with them, dining with them, walking with
+them, driving with them, and above all playing bridge with them in one
+of our sitting rooms in the hotel.
+
+I knew nothing of the game to begin with, never having touched a card in
+my life, but in accordance with the theories which I believed to be
+right and the duties I had imposed upon myself, I took a hand with my
+husband when he could find nobody better to be his partner.
+
+The results were very disheartening. In spite of my desire to please I
+was slow to learn, and my husband's impatience with my mistakes, which
+confused and intimidated me, led to some painful humiliations. First he
+laughed, next he sneered, then he snapped me up in the midst of my
+explanations and apologies, and finally, at a moment of loss, he broke
+out on me with brutal derision, saying he had never had much opinion of
+my intellect, but was now quite sure that I had no more brains than a
+rabbit and could not say Boo to a goose.
+
+One day when we were alone, and he was lying on the couch with his
+vicious little terrier by his side, I offered to sing to him.
+Remembering how my voice had been praised, I thought it would be
+pleasant to my husband to see that there was something I really could
+do. But nine years in a convent had left me with next to no music but
+memories of the long-breathed harmonies of some of the beautiful masses
+of our Church, and hardly had I begun on these when my husband cried:
+
+"Oh, stop, stop, for heaven's sake stop, or I shall think we're
+attending a funeral."
+
+Another day I offered to read to him. The Reverend Mother used to say I
+was the best reader she had ever heard, but perhaps it was not
+altogether my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion. And
+indeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would have
+laughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and intonation
+which I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis of Assisi, the
+mystic allusions to "certs," and "bookies," and "punters," and "evens,"
+and "scratchings," which formed the substance of the sporting journals
+that were my husband's only literature.
+
+"Oh, stop it, stop it," he cried again. "You read the 'Winning Post' as
+if it were the Book of Revelation."
+
+As time passed the gulf that separated me from my husband became still
+greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip we
+might have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him,
+and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He loved
+the town; I loved the country; he loved the night and the blaze of
+electric lights; I loved the morning and the sweetness of the sun.
+
+At the bottom of my heart I knew that his mind was common, low and
+narrow, and that his tastes were gross and vulgar, but I was determined
+to conquer the repulsion I felt for him.
+
+It was impossible. If I could have struck one spark from the flint of
+his heart the relations between us might have been different. If his
+look could have met my look in a single glance of understanding I could
+have borne with his impatience and struggled on.
+
+But nothing of this kind ever happened, and when one dreary night after
+grumbling at the servants, cursing his fate and abusing everybody and
+everything, he put on his hat and went out saying he had "better have
+married Lena [the other woman] after all," for in that case he would
+have had "some sort of society anyway," the revulsion I had felt on the
+night of my marriage came sweeping over me like a wave of the sea, and I
+asked myself again, "What's the good? What's the good?"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+Nevertheless next day I found myself taking my husband's side against
+myself.
+
+If he had sacrificed anything in order to marry me it was my duty to
+make it up to him.
+
+I resolved that I _should_ make it up to him. I would study my husband's
+likes and dislikes in every little thing. I would share in his pleasures
+and enter into his life. I would show him that a wife was something
+other and better than any hired woman in the world, and that when she
+cast in her lot with her husband it was for his own sake only and not
+for any fortune he could spend on her.
+
+"Yes, yes, that's what I'll do," I thought, and I became more solicitous
+of my husband's happiness than if I had really and truly loved him.
+
+A woman would smile at the efforts which I made in my inexperience to
+make my husband forget his cast-off mistress, and indeed some of them
+were very childish.
+
+The first was a ridiculous failure.
+
+My husband's birthday was approaching and I wished to make him a
+present. It was difficult to know what to select, for I knew little or
+nothing of his tastes or wants; but walking one day in a street off
+Oxford Street I saw, in the window of a shop for the sale of objects of
+ecclesiastical _vertu_, among crosses and crucifixes and rosaries, a
+little ivory ink-stand and paper-holder, which was surmounted by a
+figure of the Virgin.
+
+I cannot for the life of me conceive why I thought this would be a
+suitable present for my husband, except that the face of Our Lady was so
+young, so sweet, so beautiful, and so exquisitely feminine that it
+seemed impossible that any man in the world should not love her. But
+however that might be I bought her, and carrying her home in a cab, I
+set her on my husband's desk without a word, and then stood by, like the
+mother of Moses, to watch the result.
+
+There was no result--at first at all events. My husband was several
+hours in the room with my treasure without appearing to be aware of its
+presence. But towards evening his two principal friends came to play
+bridge with him, and then, from the ambush of my own apartments, I heard
+the screechy voice of Mr. Vivian saying:
+
+"Dash it all, Jimmy, you don't say you're going to be a Pape?"
+
+"Don't fret yourself, old fellow," replied my husband. "That's my wife's
+little flutter. Dare say the poor fool has had to promise her priest to
+make me a 'vert.'"
+
+My next experiment was perhaps equally childish but certainly more
+successful.
+
+Seeing that my husband was fond of flowers, and was rarely without a
+rose in his buttonhole, I conceived the idea of filling his room with
+them in honour of his birthday. With this view I got up very early,
+before anybody in the hotel was stirring, and hurried off to Covent
+Garden, through the empty and echoing streets, while the air of London
+was fresh with the breath of morning and the big city within its
+high-built walls seemed to dream of the green fields beyond.
+
+I arrived at the busy and noisy square just as the waggons were rolling
+in from the country with huge crates of red and white roses, bright with
+the sunshine and sparkling with the dew. Then buying the largest and
+loveliest and costliest bunch of them (a great armful, as much as I
+could hold), I hurried back to the hotel and set them in vases and
+glasses in every part of my husband's room--his desk, his sideboard, his
+mantelpiece, and above all his table, which a waiter was laying for
+breakfast--until the whole place was like a bridal bower.
+
+"Ah, this is something like," I heard my husband say as he came out of
+his bedroom an hour or two afterwards with his vicious terrier at his
+heels.
+
+I heard no more until he had finished breakfast, and then, while drawing
+on his gloves for his morning walk, he said to the waiter, who was
+clearing the table,
+
+"Tell your Manageress I am much obliged to her for the charming flowers
+with which she has decorated my room this morning."
+
+"But it wasn't the manageress, my lord," said the waiter.
+
+"Then who was it?"
+
+"It was her . . . her ladyship," said the waiter.
+
+"O-oh!" said my husband in a softer, if more insinuating tone, and a few
+minutes afterwards he went out whistling.
+
+God knows that was small reward for the trouble I had taken, but I was
+so uplifted by the success of my experiment that I determined to go
+farther, and when towards evening of the same day a group of my
+husband's friends came to tell him that they had booked a box at a
+well-known musical comedy theatre, I begged to be permitted to join
+them.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear! Brompton Oratory would suit you better," said my
+husband, chucking me under the chin.
+
+But I persisted in my importunities, and at length Mr. Eastcliff said:
+
+"Let her come. Why shouldn't she?"
+
+"Very well," said my husband, pinching my cheek. "As you please. But if
+you don't like it don't blame _me_."
+
+It did not escape me that as a result of my change of front my husband
+had risen in his own esteem, and that he was behaving towards me as one
+who thought he had conquered my first repugnance, or perhaps
+triumphantly ridden over it. But in my simplicity I was so fixed in my
+determination to make my husband forget the loss of his mistress that I
+had no fear of his familiarities and no misgivings about his mistakes.
+
+All that was to come later, with a fresh access of revulsion and
+disgust.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I had seen enough of London by this time to know that the dresses which
+had been made for me at home were by no means the _mode_; but after I
+had put on the best-fitting of my simple quaker-like costumes with a
+string of the family pearls about my neck and another about my head, not
+all the teaching of the good women of the convent could prevent me from
+thinking that my husband and his friends would have no reason to be
+ashamed of me.
+
+We were a party of six in all, whereof I was the only woman, and we
+occupied a large box on the first tier near the stage, a position of
+prominence which caused me a certain embarrassment, when, as happened
+at one moment of indefinable misery, the opera glasses of the people in
+the dress-circle and stalls were turned in our direction.
+
+I cannot say that the theatre impressed me. Certainly the building
+itself did not do so, although it was beautifully decorated in white and
+gold, for I had seen the churches of Rome, and in my eyes they were much
+more gorgeous.
+
+Neither did the audience impress me, for though I had never before seen
+so many well-dressed people in one place, I thought too many of the men,
+when past middle life, seemed fat and overfed, and too many of the
+women, with their plump arms and bare shoulders, looked as if they
+thought of nothing but what to eat and what to put on.
+
+Nor did the performers impress me, for though when the curtain rose,
+disclosing the stage full of people, chiefly girls, in delicate and
+beautiful toilettes, I thought I had never before seen so many lovely
+and happy faces, after a while, when the faces fell into repose, I
+thought they were not really lovely and not really happy, but hard and
+strained and painful, as if life had been very cruel.
+
+And, above all, I was not impressed by the play, for I thought, in my
+ignorance of such productions, that I had never heard anything so
+frivolous and foolish, and more than once I found myself wondering
+whether my good nuns, if they could have been present, would not have
+concluded that the whole company had taken leave of their senses.
+
+There was, however, one thing which did impress me, and that was the
+leading actor. It was a woman, and when she first came on to the stage I
+thought I had never in my life seen anybody so beautiful, with her
+lovely soft round figure, her black eyes, her red lips, her pearly white
+teeth, and a smile so sunny that it had the effect of making everybody
+in the audience smile with her.
+
+But the strange thing was--I could not account for it--that after a few
+minutes I thought her extremely ugly and repellent, for her face seemed
+to be distorted by malice and envy and hatred and nearly every other bad
+passion.
+
+Nevertheless she was a general favourite, for not only was she applauded
+before she did anything, but everything she said, though it was
+sometimes very silly, was accompanied by a great deal of laughter, and
+everything she sang, though her voice was no great matter, was followed
+by a chorus of applause.
+
+Seeing this, and feeling that her appearance had caused a flutter of
+interest in the box behind me, I laughed and applauded also, in
+accordance with the plan I had prepared for myself, of sharing my
+husband's pleasures and entering into his life, although at the bottom
+of my heart I really thought the joy was not very joyful or the mirth
+very merry.
+
+This went on for nearly an hour, and then a strange thing happened. I
+was leaning forward on the velvet barrier of the box in front of me,
+laughing and clapping my hands with the rest, when all at once I became
+aware that the lady had wheeled about, and, walking down the stage in
+the direction of our box, was looking boldly back at me.
+
+I could not at first believe it to be so, and even now I cannot say
+whether it was something in her face, or something whispered at my back
+which flashed it upon my mind that this was the woman my husband ought
+to have married, the woman whose place I had taken, the woman of the
+foolscap document and the letters in the purple ribbon.
+
+After that I could play my poor little part no longer, and though I
+continued to lean on the yellow velvet of the barrier in front of me I
+dropped my eyes as often as that woman was on the stage, and hoped and
+prayed for the end of the performance.
+
+It came at length with a crash of instruments and voices, and a few
+minutes afterwards my husband and I were in the cab on our way back to
+the hotel.
+
+I was choking with mingled anger and shame--anger at my husband for
+permitting me to come to a place in which I could be exposed to a public
+affront from his cast-off mistress, shame at the memory of the pitiful
+scheme for entering into his life which had fallen to such a welter of
+wreck and ruin.
+
+But my husband himself was only choking with laughter.
+
+"It was as good as a play," he said. "Upon my soul it was! I never saw
+anything funnier in the whole course of my life."
+
+That served him, repeated again and again, until we reached the hotel,
+when he ordered a bottle of wine to be sent upstairs, and then shook
+with suppressed laughter as we went up in the lift.
+
+Coming to our floor I turned towards my bedroom, wishing to be alone
+with my outraged feelings, but my husband drew me into one of our
+sitting-rooms, telling me he had something to say.
+
+He put me to sit in an arm-chair, threw off his overcoat, lit a
+cigarette, as well as he could for the spurts and gusts of his laughter,
+and then, standing back to the fire-place, with one hand in his pocket
+and his coat-tail over his arm, he told me the cause of his merriment.
+
+"I don't mind telling you that was Lena," he said. "The good-looking
+girl in the scarlet dress and the big diamonds. She spotted me the
+moment she stepped on to the stage. Must have guessed who you were, too.
+Did you see how she looked at you? Thought I had brought you there to
+walk over her. I'm sure she did!"
+
+There was another gust of laughter and then--
+
+"She'd been going about saying I had married an old frump for the sake
+of her fortune, and when she saw that you could wipe her off the face of
+the earth without a gown that was worth wearing, she was ready to die
+with fury."
+
+There was another gust of laughter through the smoke that was spurting
+from his mouth and then--
+
+"And you, too, my dear! Laughing and applauding! She thought you were
+trying to crow over her! On her own particular barn-door, too! Upon my
+soul, it was too amusing. I wonder she didn't throw something at you.
+She's like that when she's in her tantrums."
+
+The waiter came in with the wine and my husband poured out a glass for
+me.
+
+"Have a drink. No? Well, here's to your health, my dear. I can't get
+over it. I really can't. Lena's too funny for anything. Why, what else
+do you think she's been saying? She's been saying I'll come back to her
+yet. Yes, 'I'll give him six months to come crawling back to me,' she
+said to Eastcliff and Vivian and some of the other fellows at the Club.
+Wonder if she thinks so now? . . . I wonder?"
+
+He threw away his cigarette, drank another glass of the wine, came close
+up to me and said in a lower tone, which made my skin creep as with
+cold.
+
+"Whether she's right or wrong depends on you, though."
+
+"On me?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course. That's only natural. One may have all the goodwill
+in the world, but a man's a man, you know."
+
+I felt my lips quivering with anger, and in an effort to control myself
+I rose to go, but my husband drew me back into my chair and sat on the
+arm of it.
+
+"Don't go yet. By the way, dear, I've never thanked you for the
+beautiful flowers with which you decorated my room this morning.
+Charming! But I always knew you would soon come round to it."
+
+"Come round to what?" I said, but it was just as if somebody else were
+speaking.
+
+"_You_ know. Of course you know. When that simple old priest proposed
+that ridiculous compact I agreed, but I knew quite well that it would
+soon break down. Not on my side, though. Why should it? A man can afford
+to wait. But I felt sure you would soon tire of your resistance. And you
+have, haven't you? Oh, I'm not blind. I've seen what's been going on,
+though I've said nothing about it."
+
+Again I tried to rise, and again my husband held me to my seat, saying:
+
+"Don't be ashamed. There's no reason for that. You were rather hard on
+me, you know, but I'm going to forget all about it. Why shouldn't I?
+I've got the loveliest little woman in the world, so I mean to meet her
+half way, and she's going to get over her convent-bred ideas and be my
+dear little darling wife. Now isn't she?"
+
+I could have died of confusion and the utter degradation of shame. To
+think that my poor efforts to please him, my vain attempts to look up to
+him and reverence him, my bankrupt appeals to the spiritual woman in me
+that I might bring myself to love him, as I thought it was my duty to
+do, should have been perverted by his gross and vulgar mind into
+overtures to the animal man in him--this was more than I could bear. I
+felt the tears gushing to my eyes, but I kept them back, for my
+self-pity was not so strong as my wrath.
+
+I rose this time without being aware of his resistance.
+
+"Let me go to bed," I said.
+
+"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . ."
+
+"Let me go to bed," I said again, and at the next moment I stepped into
+my room.
+
+He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what was
+taking place behind me.
+
+My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first of
+amazement and then of rage.
+
+"I can't understand you," he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There isn't a
+man in the world who could." After that he strode into his own bedroom
+and clashed the door after him.
+
+"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again.
+
+It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was no use
+trying.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I must leave it to those who know better than I do the way to read the
+deep mysteries of a woman's heart, to explain how it came to pass that
+the only result of this incident was to make me sure that if we remained
+in London much longer my husband would go back to the other woman, and
+to say why (seeing that I did not love him) I should have become
+feverishly anxious to remove him from the range of this temptation.
+
+Yet so it was, for the very next morning, I wrote to my father saying I
+had been unwell and begging him to use his influence with my husband to
+set out on the Egyptian trip without further delay.
+
+My father's answer was prompt. What he had read between the lines of my
+letter I do not know; what he said was this--
+
+     "Daughter--Certainly! I am writing to son-in-law telling him to
+     quit London quick. I guess you've been too long there already. And
+     while you are away you can draw on me yourself for as much as you
+     please, for where it is a matter of money you must never let nobody
+     walk over you.
+
+     Yours--&c."
+
+The letter to my husband produced an immediate result. Within
+twenty-four hours, the telephone was at work with inquiries about trains
+and berths on steamers; and within a week we were on our way to
+Marseilles to join the ship that was to take us to Port Said.
+
+Our state-rooms were on the promenade deck of the steamer with a
+passage-way between them. This admitted of entirely separate existences,
+which was well, for knowing or guessing my share in our altered
+arrangements, my husband had become even more morose than before, and no
+conversation could be sustained between us.
+
+He spent the greater part of his time in his state-room, grumbling at
+the steward, abusing his valet, beating his bad-tempered terrier and
+cursing the luck that had brought him on this senseless voyage.
+
+More than ever now I felt the gulf that divided us. I could not pass one
+single hour with him in comfort. My life was becoming as cold as an
+empty house, and I was beginning to regret the eagerness with which I
+had removed my husband from a scene in which he had at least lived the
+life of a rational creature, when an unexpected event brought me a
+thrill of passing pleasure.
+
+Our seats in the saloon were at the top of the doctor's table, and the
+doctor himself was a young Irishman of three or four-and-twenty, as
+bright and breezy as a March morning and as racy of the soil as new-cut
+peat.
+
+Hearing that I was from Ellan he started me by asking if by chance I
+knew Martin Conrad.
+
+"Martin Conrad?" I repeated, feeling (I hardly knew why) as if a rosy
+veil were falling over my face and neck.
+
+"Yes, Mart Conrad, as we call him. The young man who has gone out as
+doctor with Lieutenant ----'s expedition to the South Pole?"
+
+A wave of tender feeling from my childhood came surging up to my throat
+and I said:
+
+"He was the first of my boy friends--in fact the only one."
+
+The young doctor's eyes sparkled and he looked as if he wanted to throw
+down his soup-spoon, jump up, and grasp me by both hands.
+
+"God bless me, is that so?" he said.
+
+It turned out that Martin and he had been friends at Dublin University.
+They had worked together, "roomed" together, and taken their degrees at
+the same time.
+
+"So you know Mart? Lord alive, the way things come out!"
+
+It was easy to see that Martin was not only his friend but his hero. He
+talked of him with a passionate love and admiration with which men,
+whatever they feel, rarely speak of each other.
+
+Martin was the salt of the earth. He was the finest fellow and the
+staunchest friend and the bravest-hearted chap that walked under the
+stars of God.
+
+"The greatest chum I have in the world, too, and by the holy Immaculate
+Mother I'm destroyed at being away from him."
+
+It was like music to hear him speak. A flood of joy went sweeping
+through me at every word of praise he gave to Martin. And yet--I cannot
+explain why, unless it was the woman in me, the Irish-woman, or
+something like it--but I began to depreciate Martin, in order to "hoosh"
+him on, so that he might say more on the same subject.
+
+"Then he _did_ take his degree," I said. "He was never very clever at
+his lessons, I remember, and I heard that he was only just able to
+scrape through his examinations."
+
+The young doctor fell to my bait like a darling. With a flaming face and
+a nervous rush of racy words which made me think that if I closed my
+eyes I should be back on the steps of the church in Rome talking to
+Martin himself, he told me I was mistaken if I thought his friend was a
+numskull, for he had had "the biggest brain-pan in College Green," and
+the way he could learn things when he wanted to was wonderful.
+
+He might be a bit shaky in his spelling, and perhaps he couldn't lick
+the world in Latin, but his heart was always in exploring, and the way
+he knew geography, especially the part of it they call the "Unknown,"
+the Arctic, and the Antarctic, and what Charcot had done there, and
+Biscoe and Bellamy and D'Urville and Greely and Nansen and Shackleton
+and Peary, was enough to make the provost and professors look like fools
+of the earth by the side of him.
+
+"Why, what do you think?" said the doctor. "When he went to London to
+apply for his billet, the Lieutenant said to him: 'You must have been
+down there before, young man.' 'No such luck,' said Martin. 'But you
+know as much about the Antarctic already as the whole boiling of us put
+together,' said the Lieutenant. Yes, by St. Patrick and St. Thomas, he's
+a geographer any way."
+
+I admitted that much, and to encourage the doctor to go on I told him
+where I had seen Martin last, and what he had said of his expedition.
+
+"In Rome you say?" said the doctor, with a note of jealousy. "You beat
+me there then. I saw him off from London, though. A few of us Dublin
+boys, being in town at the time, went down to Tilbury to see him sail,
+and when they were lifting anchor and the tug was hitching on, we stood
+on the pier--sixteen strong--and set up some of our college songs. 'Stop
+your noising, boys,' said he, 'the Lieutenant will be hearing you.' But
+not a bit of it. We sang away as long as we could see him going out with
+the tide, and then we went back in the train, smoking our pipes like so
+many Vauxhall chimneys, and narra a word out of the one of us. . . .
+Yes, yes, there are some men like that. They come like the stars of
+night and go like the light of heaven. Same as there are some women who
+walk the world like the sun, and leave the grass growing green wherever
+their feet have trod."
+
+It was very ridiculous, I did not then understand why it should be so,
+but the tears came gushing into my eyes while the doctor spoke, and it
+was as much as I could do to preserve my composure.
+
+What interpretation my husband put upon my emotion I do not know, but I
+saw that his face darkened, and when the doctor turned to him to ask if
+he also knew Martin he answered curtly and brusquely,
+
+"Not I. No loss either, I should say."
+
+"No loss?" said the doctor. "Show me the man under the stars of God
+that's fit to hold a candle to Martin Conrad, and by the angel Gabriel
+I'll go fifty miles out of my way to put a sight on him."
+
+More than ever after this talk about Martin Conrad I was feeling
+defenceless, and at the mercy of my husband's wishes and whims, when
+something happened which seemed to change his character altogether.
+
+The third day out, on a bright and quiet morning, we called at Malta,
+and while my husband went ashore to visit some friends in the garrison,
+I sat on deck watching the life of the little port and looking at the
+big warships anchored in the bay.
+
+A Maltese woman came on board to sell souvenirs of the island, and
+picking out of her tray a tiny twisted thing in coral, I asked what it
+was.
+
+"That's a charm, my lady," said the woman.
+
+"A charm for what?"
+
+"To make my lady's husband love her."
+
+I felt my face becoming crimson, but my heart was sore, so in my
+simplicity I bought the charm and was smuggling it into my bag when I
+became aware that one of my fellow-passengers, a lady, was looking down
+at me.
+
+She was a tall, singularly handsome woman, fashionably and (although on
+shipboard) almost sumptuously dressed. A look in her face was haunting
+me with a memory I could not fix when she stooped and said:
+
+"Aren't you Mary O'Neill?"
+
+The voice completed the identification, and I knew who it was. It was
+Alma Lier.
+
+She was now about seven-and-twenty and in the prime of her young
+womanhood. Her beautiful auburn hair lay low over her broad forehead,
+almost descending to her long sable-coloured eyebrows. Her cheeks were
+very white, (rather beyond the whiteness of nature, I thought), and her
+lips were more than commonly red, with the upper one a little thin and
+the lower slightly set forward. But her eyes were still her
+distinguishing feature, being larger and blacker than before and having
+that vivid gaze that looked through and through you and made you feel
+that few women and no man in the world would have the power to resist
+her.
+
+Her movements were almost noiseless, and as she sank into the chair by
+my side there was a certain over-sweetness in the soft succulent tones
+of the voice with which she began to tell me what had happened to her
+since I had seen her last.
+
+It was a rather painful story. After two or three years in a girls'
+college in her own country she had set out with her mother for a long
+tour of the European capitals. In Berlin, at what was falsely called a
+Charity Ball, she had met a young Russian Count who was understood to be
+rich and related to one of the Grand Ducal families. Against the
+protests of her father (a shrewd American banker), she had married the
+Count, and they had returned to New York, where her mother had social
+ambitions.
+
+There they had suffered a serious shock. It turned out that her husband
+had deceived them, and that he was really a poor and quite nameless
+person, only remotely related to the family he claimed to belong to.
+
+Nevertheless Alma had "won out" at last. By digging deep into her
+father's treasury she got rid of her treacherous husband, and going "way
+out west," she had been able, in due time, to divorce him.
+
+Since then she had resumed her family name, being known as Madame Lier,
+and now she was on her way to Egypt to spend the season at Cairo.
+
+"And you?" she said. "You stayed long at the convent--yes?"
+
+I answered that I had, and then in my fluttering voice (for some of the
+old spell of her presence had come sweeping back upon me) I replied one
+by one to the questions she asked about the Reverend Mother, the
+"Reverend Mother Mildred," Sister Angela and Father Giovanni, not to
+speak of myself, whom she had always thought of as "Margaret Mary"
+because I had looked so innocent and nun-like.
+
+"And now you are married!" she said. "Married so splendidly, too! We
+heard all about it. Mother was so interested. What a lucky girl you are!
+Everybody says your husband is so handsome and charming. He is, isn't
+he?"
+
+I was doing my utmost to put the best face upon my condition without
+betraying the facts or simulating sentiments which I could not feel,
+when a boat from the shore pulled up at the ship's side, and my husband
+stepped on to the deck.
+
+In his usual morose manner he was about to pass without speaking on his
+way to his state-room, when his eyes fell on Alma sitting beside me.
+Then he stopped and looked at us, and, stepping up, he said, in a tone I
+had never heard from him before:
+
+"Mary, my dear, will you not present me to your friend?"
+
+I hesitated, and then with a quivering of the lips I did so. But
+something told me as I introduced my husband to Alma, and Alma to my
+husband, and they stood looking into each other's eyes and holding each
+other's hands (for Alma had risen and I was sitting between them), that
+this was the most momentous incident of my life thus far--that for good
+or ill my hour had struck and I could almost hear the bell.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+From that hour forward my husband was a changed man. His manner to me,
+so brusque before, became courteous, kind, almost affectionate. Every
+morning he would knock at the door of my state-room to ask if I had
+slept well, or if the movement of the steamer had disturbed me.
+
+His manner to Alma was charming. He was up before breakfast every day,
+promenading the deck with her in the fresh salt air. I would slide back
+my window and hear their laughter as they passed, above the throb of the
+engines and the wash of the sea. Sometimes they would look in upon me
+and joke, and Alma would say:
+
+"And how's Margaret Mary this morning?"
+
+Our seats in the saloon had been changed. Now we sat with Alma at the
+Captain's table, and though I sorely missed the doctor's racy talk about
+Martin Conrad I was charmed by Alma's bright wit and the fund of her
+personal anecdotes. She seemed to know nearly everybody. My husband knew
+everybody also, and their conversation never flagged.
+
+Something of the wonderful and worshipful feeling I had had for Alma at
+the Sacred Heart came back to me, and as for my husband it seemed to me
+that I was seeing him for the first time.
+
+He persuaded the Captain to give a dance on our last night at sea, so
+the awnings were spread, the electric lights were turned on, and the
+deck of the ship became a scene of enchantment.
+
+My husband and Alma led off. He danced beautifully and she was dressed
+to perfection. Not being a dancer myself I stood with the Captain in the
+darkness outside, looking in on them in the bright and dazzling circle,
+while the moon-rays were sweeping the waters like a silver fan and the
+little waves were beating the ship's side with friendly pats.
+
+I was almost happy. In my simplicity I was feeling grateful to Alma for
+having wrought this extraordinary change, so that when, on our arrival
+at Port Said, my husband said,
+
+"Your friend Madame Lier has made no arrangements for her rooms at
+Cairo--hadn't I better telegraph to our hotel, dear?" I answered, "Yes,"
+and wondered why he had asked me.
+
+Our hotel was an oriental building, situated on an island at the further
+side of the Nile. Formerly the palace of a dead Khedive, who had built
+it in honour of the visit of an Empress, it had a vast reception hall
+with a great staircase.
+
+There, with separated rooms, as in London, we remained for three months.
+I was enthralled. Too young and inexperienced to be conscious of the
+darker side of the picture before me, I found everything beautiful. I
+was seeing fashionable life for the first time, and it was entrancing.
+
+Lovely and richly-dressed ladies in silk, velvet, lace, and no limit of
+jewellery--the dark French women, the blonde German women, the stately
+English women, and the American women with their flexuous grace. And
+then the British soldiers in their various uniforms, the semi-Turks in
+their red tarbooshes, and the diplomats of all nationalities, Italian,
+Austrian, French, German--what a cosmopolitan world it was, what a
+meeting-place of all nations!
+
+Every hour had its interest, but I liked best the hour of tea on the
+terrace, for that was the glorious hour of woman, when every condition
+invested her dress with added beauty and her smile with greater charm.
+
+Such a blaze of colour in the sunshine! Such a sea of muslin, flowers,
+and feathers! Such lovely female figures in diaphanous clouds of
+toilettes, delicate as gossamer and varied as the colours in the
+rainbow! They were like a living bouquet, as they sat under the shade of
+the verandah, with the green lawns and the palm trees in front, the
+red-coated orchestra behind, and the noiseless forms of swarthy
+Bednouins and Nubians moving to and fro.
+
+Although I had been brought up in such a different world altogether I
+could not help being carried away by all this beauty. My senses
+burgeoned out and my heart seemed to expand.
+
+As for Alma and my husband, they seemed to belong to the scene of
+themselves. She would sit at one of the tea-tables, swishing away the
+buzzing flies with a little whip of cord and cowries, and making
+comments on the crowd in soft undertones which he alone seemed to catch.
+Her vivid and searching eyes, with their constant suggestion of
+laughter, seemed to be picking out absurdities on every side and finding
+nearly everybody funny.
+
+She found me funny also. My innocence and my convent-bred ideas were a
+constant subject of jest with her.
+
+"What does our dear little Margaret Mary think of that?" she would say
+with a significant smile, at sights that seemed to me quite harmless.
+
+After a while I began to have a feeling of indefinable uneasiness about
+Alma. She was daily redoubling her cordiality, always calling me her
+"dearest sweetest girl," and "the oldest friend she had in the world."
+But little by little I became conscious of a certain commerce between
+her and my husband in which I had no part. Sometimes I saw her eyes
+seeking his, and occasionally I heard them exchange a few words about me
+in French, which (because I did not speak it, being uncertain of my
+accent) they thought I did not understand.
+
+Perhaps this helped to sharpen my wits, for I began to see that I had
+gone the wrong way to work with my husband. Instead of trying to make
+myself fall in love with my husband, I should have tried to make my
+husband fall in love with me.
+
+When I asked myself how this was to be done I found one obvious
+answer--I must become the sort of woman my husband admired and liked; in
+short I must imitate Alma.
+
+I resolved to do this, and after all that has happened since I feel a
+little ashamed to tell of the efforts I made to play a part for which I
+was so ill-fitted by nature and education.
+
+Some of them were silly enough perhaps, but some were almost pathetic,
+and I am not afraid that any good woman will laugh at the futile shifts
+I was put to, in my girlish ignorance, to make my husband love me.
+
+"I must do it," I thought. "I must, I must!"
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Hitherto I had attended to myself, but now I determined to have a maid.
+I found one without much difficulty. Her name was Price. She was a very
+plain woman of thirty, with piercing black eyes; and when I engaged her
+she seemed anxious above all else to make me understand that she "never
+saw anything."
+
+I soon discovered that she saw everything, especially the relations
+between myself and my husband, and that she put her own interpretation
+(not a very flattering one) on our separated apartments. She also saw
+the position of Alma, and putting her own interpretation upon that also,
+she tortured me with many pin-pricks.
+
+Under the guidance of my maid I began to haunt the shops of the
+dressmakers, the milliners and the jewellers. It did not require the
+memory of my father's letter to make me spend his money--I spent it like
+water. Feeling ashamed of my quaker-cut costumes (Alma had a costume for
+every day of the week, and wore a large gold snake on her arm), I bought
+the most costly toilettes, and loaded myself with bracelets, rings and
+necklaces.
+
+I was dressing for my husband, and for him I did many things I had never
+dreamt of doing before. For him I filed my nails, put cream on my skin,
+perfume on my handkerchief, and even rouge on my lips. Although I did
+not allow myself to think of it so, I was running a race with Alma.
+
+My maid knew that before I did, and the first night she put me into one
+of my uncomfortable new gowns she stood off from me and said:
+
+"His lordship must be a strange gentleman if he can resist you _now_."
+
+I felt ashamed, yet pleased too, and went downstairs with a certain
+confidence.
+
+The result was disappointing. My husband smiled rather condescendingly,
+and though Alma praised me beyond measure I saw that she was secretly
+laughing as she said:
+
+"Our Margaret Mary is coming out, isn't she?"
+
+Nevertheless I persevered. Without too much preparation for so perilous
+an enterprise, I threw myself into the gaieties of Cairo, attending polo
+matches, race-meetings, picnics at the Pyramids, dances at the different
+hotels, and on the island of Roda, where according to tradition,
+Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes.
+
+I think I may say that I drew the eyes of other men upon me,
+particularly those of the colonel commanding on the Citadel, a fine type
+of Scotsman, who paid me the most worshipful attention. But I thought of
+nobody but my husband, being determined to make him forget Alma and fall
+in love with me.
+
+It was a hopeless task, and I had some heart-breaking hours. One day,
+calling at a jeweller's to see a diamond necklace which I greatly
+coveted, I was told in confidence that my husband had been pricing it,
+but had had to give it up because it was a thousand francs too dear for
+him. I was foolish enough to pay the thousand francs myself, under a
+pledge of secrecy, and to tell the jeweller to send the necklace to my
+husband, feeling sure in my simplicity that it had been meant for me.
+
+Next night I saw it on Alma's neck, and could have died of mortification
+and shame.
+
+I daresay it was all very weak and very childish, but I really think my
+last attempt, if rather ridiculous, was also very pitiful.
+
+Towards the end of our stay the proprietors of the hotel gave a
+Cotillon. As this was the event of the season, and nearly every woman
+was giving a dinner in honour of it, I resolved that I too would give
+one, inviting the gayest of the gay acquaintances I had made in Cairo.
+
+Feeling that it would be my last battle, and that so much depended upon
+it, I dressed myself with feverish care, in a soft white satin gown,
+which was cut lower than I had ever worn before, with slippers to match,
+a tight band of pearls about my throat and another about my head.
+
+When Price had finished dressing me she said:
+
+"Well, if his lordship prefers anybody else in the world to-night I
+shan't know where he puts his eyes."
+
+The compliment was a crude one, but I had no time to think of that, for
+my heart was fluttering with hopes and fears, and I think any woman
+would forgive me under the circumstances if I told myself, as I passed
+the tall mirrors on the stairs, that I too was beautiful.
+
+The dining-room was crowded when I entered it with my guests, and seeing
+that we were much observed it flashed upon me that my husband and I had
+become a subject of gossip. Partly for that reason I strangled the ugly
+thing that was writhing in my bosom, and put Alma (who had flown to me
+with affectionate rapture) next to my husband, and the colonel
+commanding on the Citadel in the seat beside me.
+
+Throughout the dinner, which was very long, I was very nervous, and
+though I did my best to keep up conversation with the colonel, I knew
+quite well that I was listening to what was being said at the other side
+of my big round table, and as often as any mention was made of "Margaret
+Mary" I heard it.
+
+More than once Alma lifted her glass with a gracious nod and smile,
+crying, "Mary dearest!" and then in another moment gave my husband one
+of her knowing glances which seemed to me to say, "Look at that foolish
+little wife of yours!"
+
+By the time we returned to the hall for coffee we were rather a noisy
+party, and even the eyes of the ladies betrayed the fact that they had
+dined. The talk, which had grown louder, was also a little more free,
+and God forgive me, I joined in it, being feverishly anxious to outdo
+Alma, and be looked upon as a woman of the world.
+
+Towards eleven o'clock, the red-coated orchestra began to play a waltz,
+and then the whole variegated company of ladies, soldiers, and diplomats
+stood up to dance, and the colonel asked me to join him.
+
+I was ashamed to tell him that I had never danced except with a
+schoolgirl, so I took his hand and started. But hardly had we begun,
+when I made mistakes, which I thought everybody saw (I am sure Alma saw
+them), and before we had taken many turns my partner had to stop,
+whereupon I retired to my seat with a forced laugh and a sense of
+confusion.
+
+It was nearly twelve when they began the Cotillon, which Alma and my
+husband led with supreme self-possession. As one of the hostesses I sat
+in the front row of the square, and when I was taken out I made further
+mistakes, which also Alma saw and communicated by smiles to my husband.
+
+Before the Cotillon came to an end the night was far spent and then the
+company, which had become very boisterous, began to look for some new
+excitement, no matter how foolish. One or other started "turkey trot"
+and "grizzly bear" and finally Alma, with memories of the winter sports
+at St. Moritz, proposed that they should toboggan down the great
+staircase.
+
+The suggestion was welcomed with a shout, and a broad board was
+immediately laid on the first long flight of stairs for people to slide
+on.
+
+Soldiers went first, and then there were calls for the ladies, when Alma
+took her turn, tucking her dress under her at the top and alighting
+safely on her feet at the bottom. Other ladies followed her example,
+with similar good fortune, and then Alma, who had been saying "Such fun!
+Such lots of fun!" set up a cry of "Margaret Mary."
+
+I refused at first, feeling ashamed of even looking at such unwomanly
+folly, but something Alma said to my husband and something that was
+conveyed by my husband's glance at me set my heart afire and, poor
+feverish and entangled fool that I was, I determined to defy them.
+
+So running up to the top and seating myself on the toboggan I set it in
+motion. But hardly had I done so when it swayed, reeled, twisted and
+threw me off, with the result that I rolled downstairs to the bottom.
+
+Of course there were shrieks of laughter, and if I had been in the
+spirit of the time and place I suppose I should have laughed too, and
+there would have been an end of the matter. But I had been playing a
+part, a tragic part, and feeling that I had failed and covered myself
+with ridicule, I was overwhelmed with confusion.
+
+I thought my husband would be angry with me, and feel compromised by my
+foolishness, but he was not; he was amused, and when at last I saw his
+face it was running in rivulets from the laughter he could not restrain.
+
+That was the end of all things, and when Alma came up to me, saying
+everything that was affectionate and insincere, about her "poor dear
+unfortunate Margaret Mary" (only women know how to wound each other so),
+I brushed her aside, went off to my bedroom, and lay face down on the
+sofa, feeling that I was utterly beaten and could fight no more.
+
+Half an hour afterwards my husband came in, and though I did not look up
+I heard him say, in a tone of indulgent sympathy that cut me to the
+quick:
+
+"You've been playing the wrong part, my child. A Madonna, yes, but a
+Venus, no! It's not your _metier_."
+
+"What's the good? What's the good? What's the good?" I asked myself.
+
+I thought my heart was broken.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+With inexpressible relief I heard the following day that we were to
+leave for Rome immediately.
+
+Alma was to go with us, but that did not matter to me in the least.
+Outside the atmosphere of this place, so artificial, so unrelated to
+nature, her power over my husband would be gone. Once in the Holy City
+everything would be different. Alma would be different, I should be
+different, above all my husband would be different. I should take him to
+the churches and basilicas; I should show him the shrines and papal
+processions, and he would see me in my true "part" at last!
+
+But what a deep disappointment awaited me!
+
+On reaching Rome we put up at a fashionable hotel in the new quarter of
+the Ludovisi, and although that was only a few hundred yards from the
+spot on which I had spent nine happy years it seemed to belong to
+another world altogether. Instead of the church domes and the monastery
+bells, there were the harsh clang of electric trams, the thrum and throb
+of automobiles, the rattle of cars and the tramp of soldiers.
+
+Then I realised that there were two Romes--an old Rome and a new one,
+and that the Rome we had come to hardly differed from the Cairo we had
+left behind.
+
+There was the same varied company of people of all nations, English,
+Americans, French, German; the same nomad tribes of the rich and
+dissolute, pitching their tents season by season in the sunny resorts of
+Europe; the same aimless society, the same debauch of fashion, the same
+callous and wicked luxury, the same thirst for selfish pleasures, the
+same busy idleness, the same corruption of character and sex.
+
+This made me very unhappy, but from first to last Alma was in the
+highest spirits. Everybody seemed to be in Rome that spring, and
+everybody seemed to be known either to her or to my husband. For Alma's
+sake we were invited everywhere, and thus we saw not only the life of
+the foreign people of the hotels but that of a part (not the better
+part) of the Roman aristocracy.
+
+Alma was a great success. She had the homage of all the men, and being
+understood to be rich, and having the gift of making every man believe
+he was her special favourite, she was rarely without a group of Italian
+noblemen about her chair.
+
+With sharper eyes the Italian women saw that her real reckoning lay with
+my husband, but they seemed to think no worse of her for that. They
+seemed to think no worse of him either. It was nothing against him that,
+having married me (as everybody appeared to know) for the settlement of
+his financial difficulties, he had transferred his attentions, even on
+his honeymoon, to this brilliant and alluring creature.
+
+As for me, I was made to realise that I was a person of a different
+class altogether. When people wished to be kind they called me
+_spirituelle_, and when they were tempted to be the reverse they voted
+me insipid.
+
+As a result I became very miserable in this company, and I can well
+believe that I may have seemed awkward and shy and stupid when I was in
+some of their grey old palaces full of tapestry and bronze, for I
+sometimes found the talk there so free (especially among the women) that
+the poisoned jokes went quivering through me.
+
+Things I had been taught to think sacred were so often derided that I
+had to ask myself if it could be Rome, my holy and beloved Rome--this
+city of license and unbelief.
+
+But Alma was entirely happy, especially when the talk turned on conjugal
+fidelity, and the faithful husband was held up to ridicule. This
+happened very often in one house we used to go to--that of a Countess of
+ancient family who was said to have her husband and her lover at either
+side of her when she sat down to dinner.
+
+She was a large and handsome person of middle age, with a great mass of
+fair hair, and she gave me the feeling that in her case the body of a
+woman was inhabited by the soul of a man.
+
+She christened me her little Irish _bambino_, meaning her child; and one
+night in her drawing-room, after dinner, before the men had joined us,
+she called me to her side on the couch, lit a cigarette, crossed her
+legs, and gave us with startling candour her views of the marriage bond.
+
+"What can you expect, you women?" she said. "You run after the men for
+their titles--they've very little else, except debts, poor things--and
+what is the result? The first result is that though you have bought them
+you belong to them. Yes, your husband owns his beautiful woman, just as
+he owns his beautiful horse or his beautiful dog."
+
+This was so pointed that I felt my face growing crimson, but Alma and
+the other women only laughed, so the Countess went on:
+
+"What then? Once in a blue moon each goes his and her own way without
+sin. You agree to a sort of partnership for mutual advantage in which
+you live together in chastity under the same roof. What a life! What an
+ice-house!"
+
+Again the other women laughed, but I felt myself blushing deeply.
+
+"But in the majority of cases it is quite otherwise. The business
+purpose served, each is open to other emotions. The man becomes
+unfaithful, and the woman, if she has any spirit, pays him out tit for
+tat--and why shouldn't she?"
+
+After that I could bear no more, and before I knew what I was saying I
+blurted out:
+
+"But I find that wrong and wicked. Infidelity on the part of the man
+does not justify infidelity in the woman. The prayer-book says so."
+
+Alma burst out laughing, and the Countess smiled and continued:
+
+"Once in a hundred years there comes a great passion--Dante and
+Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura. The woman meets the right man too late.
+What a tragedy! What a daily and hourly crucifixion! Unless," said the
+Countess with emphasis, "she is prepared to renounce the law and reject
+society and live a life of complete emancipation. But in a Catholic
+country, where there is no divorce, what woman can afford to do that?
+Nobody in the higher classes can--especially if she has to sacrifice her
+title. So the wise woman avoids scandal, keeps her little affair with
+her lover to herself, and . . . and that's marriage, my dears."
+
+A twitter of approval, led by Alma, came from the other women, but I was
+quivering with anger and I said:
+
+"Then marriage is an hypocrisy and an imposture. If I found I loved
+somebody better than my husband, I should go to him in spite of the law,
+and society, and title and . . . and everything."
+
+"Of course you would, my dear," said the Countess, smiling at me as at a
+child, "but that's because you are such a sweet, simple, innocent little
+Irish _bambino_."
+
+It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited to the
+Roman Hunt. I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to use me in
+order to "save her face" in relation to my husband, induced me to drive
+them out in a motor-car to the place on the Campagna where they were to
+mount their horses.
+
+"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "How could we possibly go without you?"
+
+It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my husband
+in his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San Giovanni, and
+past the _osterie_ where the pleasure-loving Italian people were playing
+under the pergolas with their children, until we came to the
+meeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane.
+
+A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there with their
+horses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband with great
+cordiality. What they thought of me I do not know, except that I was a
+childish and complacent wife; and when at the sound of the horn the hunt
+began, and my husband and Alma went prancing off with the rest, without
+once looking back, I asked myself in my shame and distress if I could
+bear my humiliation much longer.
+
+But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice on the
+other side of the car said:
+
+"Good morning, Lady Raa."
+
+It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put into
+Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he had
+run up to look at Rome.
+
+"But have you heard the news?" he cried.
+
+"What news?"
+
+"About the South Pole Expedition--they're on their way home."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week."
+
+"And . . . and . . . and Martin Conrad?"
+
+"He's well, and what's better, he has distinguished himself."
+
+"I . . . I . . . I knew he would."
+
+"So did I! The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart half a
+chance he would come out top! Do or die--that was his watch-word."
+
+"I know! I know!"
+
+His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyous
+rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with "Yes," "Yes," "Yes") he told
+of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the London
+papers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned--how he had been
+put in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had worked
+wonders.
+
+"How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!" I said.
+
+"Isn't it?" said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quick
+questions and replies like children playing at battledore and
+shuttlecock. Then he said:
+
+"But I'm after thinking it's mortal strange I never heard him mention
+you. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that was
+a man--a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling him--that's short for
+Maloney, I suppose."
+
+"For Mary," I said.
+
+"Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of St.
+Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of that
+before? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye've a right to be
+proud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds of you. I was
+mortal jealous of Mally, I remember. 'Mally's a stunner,' he used to
+say. 'Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it, in spite of the devil and
+hell.'"
+
+The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman in me
+made me say--I couldn't help it--
+
+"I dare say he's had many girl friends since my time, though?"
+
+"Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him in
+Dublin--they're the queens of the world too, those Dublin girls--but
+never a skute of the eye was he giving to the one of them. I used to
+think it was work, but maybe it wasn't . . . maybe it was. . . ."
+
+I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say--I didn't know
+what would happen to me if he did--so I jumped in by telling him that,
+if he would step into the car, I would drive him back to Rome.
+
+He did so, and all the way he talked of Martin, his courage and resource
+and the hardships he had gone through, until (with backward thoughts of
+Alma and my husband riding away over the Campagna) my heart, which had
+been leaping like a lamb, began to ache and ache.
+
+We returned by the Old Appian Way, where the birds were building their
+nests among the crumbling tombs, through the Porta San Paolo, and past
+the grave of the "young English poet" of whom I have always thought it
+was not so sad that he died of consumption as in the bitterness of a
+broken heart.
+
+All this time I was so much at home with the young Irish doctor, who was
+Martin's friend, that it was not until I was putting him down at his
+hotel that I remembered I did not even know his name.
+
+It was O'Sullivan.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Every day during our visit to Rome I had reminded myself of the Reverend
+Mother's invitation to call on her, and a sense of moral taint had
+prevented me, but now I determined to see her at least by going to
+Benediction at her Convent church the very next day.
+
+It happened, however, that this was the time when the Artists' Club of
+Rome were giving a Veglione (a kind of fancy-dress ball), and as Alma
+and my husband desired to go to it, and were still in the way of using
+me to keep themselves in countenance, I consented to accompany them on
+condition that I did not dress or dance, and that they would go with me
+to Benediction the following day.
+
+"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "We'll do whatever you like. Of course we
+will."
+
+I wore my soft satin without any ornaments, and my husband merely put
+scarlet facings on the lapels of his evening coat, but Alma was clad in
+a gorgeous dress of old gold, with Oriental skirts which showed her
+limbs in front but had a long train behind, and made her look like a
+great vampire bat.
+
+It was eleven o'clock before we reached the theatre, but already the
+auditorium was full, and so well had the artists done their work of
+decoration, making the air alive with floating specks of many-coloured
+lights, like the fire-flies at Nemi, that the scene was one of
+enchantment.
+
+It was difficult to believe that on the other side of the walls was the
+street, with the clanging electric bells and people hurrying by with
+their collars up, for the night was cold, and it had begun to rain as we
+came in, and one poor woman, with a child under her shawl, was standing
+by the entrance trying to sell evening papers.
+
+I sat alone in a box on the ground tier while Alma and my husband and
+their friends were below on the level of the _poltroni_ (the stalls)
+that had been arranged for the dancing, which began immediately after we
+arrived and went on without a break until long after midnight.
+
+Then there was supper on the stage, and those who did not eat drank a
+good deal until nearly everybody seemed to be under the influence of
+alcohol. As a consequence many of the people, especially some of the
+women (not good women I fear), seemed to lose all control of themselves,
+singing snatches of noisy songs, sipping out of the men's glasses,
+taking the smoke of cigarettes out of the men's mouths, sitting on the
+men's knees, and even riding astride on the men's arms and shoulders.
+
+I bore these sights as long as I could, making many fruitless appeals to
+my husband to take me home; and I was just about to leave of myself,
+being sick of the degradation of my sex, when a kind of rostrum, with an
+empty chair on top of it, was carried in on the shoulders of a number of
+men.
+
+This was for the enthronement of the Queen of Beauty, and as it passed
+round the arena, with the mock judges in paper coronets, walking ahead
+to make their choice, some of the women, lost to all sense of modesty,
+were shouting "Take _me_! Take _me_!"
+
+I felt sure they would take Alma, so I reached forward to get a better
+view of her, where she stood below my box; but as they approached her,
+with the chair still empty, I saw her make a movement in my direction
+and say something to the judges about "the little nun," which made my
+husband nod his head and then laugh uproariously.
+
+At the next moment, before I knew what they were doing, six or seven men
+jumped into my box, lifted me on to the rostrum and placed me in the
+chair, whereupon the whole noisy company in the theatre broke into wild
+shouts of salutation and pelted me with flowers and confetti.
+
+If there was any pride there was more mortification in the position to
+which Alma and my husband had exposed me, for as I was being carried
+round the arena, with the sea of foaming faces below me, all screaming
+out of their hot and open mouths, I heard the men cry:
+
+"Smile, Signorina!"
+
+"Not so serious, Mademoiselle!"
+
+It would do no good to say what memories of other scenes flashed back
+on my mind as I was being borne along in the mad procession. I felt as
+if it would last for ever. But it came to an end at length, and as soon
+as I was released, I begged my husband again to take me home, and when
+he said, "Not yet; we'll all be going by-and-by," I stole away by
+myself, found a cab, and drove back to the hotel.
+
+The day was dawning as I passed through the stony streets, and when I
+reached my room, and pulled down my dark green blinds, the bell of the
+Capuchin monastery in the Via Veneto was ringing and the monks were
+saying the first of their offices.
+
+I must have been some time in bed, hiding my hot face in the
+bed-clothes, when Price, my maid, came in to apologise for not having
+seen me come back alone. The pain of the woman's scrutiny was more than
+I could bear at that moment, so I tried to dismiss her, but I could not
+get her to go, and at last she said:
+
+"If you please, my lady, I want to say something."
+
+I gave her no encouragement, yet she continued.
+
+"I daresay it's as much as my place is worth, but I'm bound to say it."
+
+Still I said nothing, yet she went on:
+
+"His Lordship and Madame have also arrived. . . . They came back half an
+hour ago. And just now . . . I saw his lordship . . . coming out of
+Madame's room."
+
+"Go away, woman, go away," I cried in the fierce agony of my shame, and
+she went out at last, closing the door noisily behind her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We did not go next day to Benediction at the Reverend Mother's church.
+But late the same night, when it was quite dark, I crept out of my room
+into the noisy streets, hardly knowing where my footsteps were leading
+me, until I found myself in the piazza of the Convent of the Sacred
+Heart.
+
+It was quiet enough there. Only the Carabinieri were walking on the
+paved way with measured steps, and the bell of the Dominican monastery
+was slowly ringing under the silent stars. I could see the light on the
+Pope's loggia at the Vatican and hear the clock of St. Peter's striking
+nine.
+
+There were lights in the windows of some of the dormitories also, and by
+that I knew that the younger children, the children of the Infant Jesus,
+were going to bed. There was a light too, in the large window of the
+church, and that told me that the bigger girls were saying their night
+prayers.
+
+Creeping close to the convent wall I heard the girls' voices rising and
+falling, and then through the closed door of the church came the muffled
+sound of their evening hymn--
+
+     "_Ave maris stella
+         Dei Mater Alma--_"
+
+I did not know why I was putting myself wilfully to this bitter
+pain--the pain of remembering the happy years in which I myself was a
+girl singing so, and then telling myself that other girls were there now
+who knew nothing of me.
+
+I thought of the Reverend Mother, and then of my own mother, my saint,
+my angel, who had told me to think of her when I sang that hymn; and
+then I remembered where I was and what had happened to me.
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+     To thy shelter take me_."
+
+I felt like an outcast. A stifling sensation came into my throat and I
+dropped to my knees in the darkness. I thought I was broken-hearted.
+
+
+
+
+FORTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Not long after that we left Italy on our return to England. We were to
+reach home by easy stages so as to see some of the great capitals of
+Europe, but I had no interest in the journey.
+
+Our first stay was at Monte Carlo, that sweet garden of the
+Mediterranean which God seems to smile upon and man to curse.
+
+If I had been allowed to contemplate the beautiful spectacle of nature I
+think I could have been content, but Alma, with her honeyed and
+insincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual plea of keeping her
+in countenance.
+
+I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis
+d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and
+its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery and
+despair.
+
+As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower fetes in the
+streets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and think I was on my native
+rocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit in my room and watch the poor
+wounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps as they tumbled and ducked into
+the sea after the shots fired, by cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen,
+from the rifle-range below.
+
+In Monte Carlo my husband's vices seemed to me to grow rank and fast.
+The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first he won and
+then he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then his nature became
+still more ugly and repulsive.
+
+One evening towards eight o'clock, I was in my room, trying to comfort a
+broken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through the open window,
+when my husband entered with wild eyes.
+
+"The red's coming up at all the tables," he cried breathlessly. "Give me
+some money, quick!"
+
+I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse.
+
+"You've a cheque book--give me a cheque, then."
+
+I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that
+night, the banks being closed.
+
+"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stop
+fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn."
+
+The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer
+in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted
+and went out hurriedly without more words.
+
+After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings
+about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place"
+immediately or we should all be ruined.
+
+Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great
+French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must
+be the sink of every kind of corruption.
+
+We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysees, and there (as
+well as in the cafes in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on
+Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and
+Americans on their way home after the winter. It seemed to me strange
+that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to
+do, merely loafing round it like tramps--the richest being the idlest,
+and the idlest the most immoral.
+
+My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he
+spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma's
+instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.
+
+"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us in
+places like those?"
+
+I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged
+around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself that
+if I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason or
+under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch
+by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the
+contaminations of his company.
+
+As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no
+efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went
+together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of
+the society papers throughout Europe.
+
+I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from
+those sources--that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut
+out of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she did
+the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night
+was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a
+queen--princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members
+of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other
+countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock with
+every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after
+supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the
+dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a _Chaine diabolique_ at
+seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and
+the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.
+
+I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the
+Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced
+upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when--the priest
+standing at the foot of the altar--the choir sang the _Kyrie eleison_,
+down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being
+washed from all the taint of the contaminating days since my marriage.
+
+The music was Perosi's, I remember, and the voices in the _Gloria in
+excelsis_, which I used to sing myself, seemed to carry up the cry of my
+sorrowful heart to the very feet of the Virgin whose gracious figure
+hung above me.
+
+"Cleanse me and intercede for me, O Mother of my God."
+
+It was as though our Blessed Lady did so, for as I walked out of the
+church and down the broad steps in front of it, I had a feeling of
+purity and lightness that I had never known since my time at the Sacred
+Heart.
+
+It was a beautiful day, with all the freshness and fragrance of early
+morning in summer, when the white stone houses of Paris seem to blush in
+the sunrise; and as I walked up the Champs Elysees on my way back to the
+hotel, I met under the chestnut trees, which were then in bloom, a
+little company of young girls returning to school after their first
+communion.
+
+How sweet they looked! In their white muslin frocks, white shoes and
+stockings and gloves, white veils and coronets of white flowers, they
+were twittering away as merrily as the little birds that were singing
+unseen in the leaves above them.
+
+It made me feel like a child myself to look at their sweet faces; but
+turning into the hotel I felt like a woman too, for I thought the great
+and holy mystery, the sacrament of union and love, had given me such
+strength that I could meet any further wrong I might have to endure in
+my walk through the world with charity and forgiveness.
+
+But how little a woman knows of her heart until it is tried in the fires
+of passion!
+
+As I entered the salon which (as usual) divided my husband's bedroom
+from mine, I came upon my maid, Price, listening intently at my
+husband's closed door. This seemed to me so improper that I was
+beginning to reprove her, when she put her finger to her lip and coming
+over to me with her black eyes ablaze she said:
+
+"I know you will pack me off for what I'm going to say, yet I can't help
+that. You've stood too much already, my lady, but if you are a woman and
+have any pride in yourself as a wife, go and listen at that door and see
+if you can stand any more."
+
+With that she went out of the salon, and I tried to go to my own room,
+but I could not stir. Something held me to the spot on which I stood,
+and I found myself listening to the voices which I could distinctly hear
+in my husband's bedroom.
+
+There were two voices, one a man's, loud and reckless, the other a
+woman's soft and cautious.
+
+There was no need to tell myself whose voices they were, and neither did
+I ask myself any questions. I did not put to my mind the pros and cons
+of the case for myself or the case for my husband. I only thought and
+felt and behaved as any other wife would think and feel and behave at
+such a moment. An ugly and depraved thing, which my pride or my
+self-respect had never hitherto permitted me to believe in, suddenly
+leapt into life.
+
+I was outraged. I was a victim of the treachery, the duplicity, the
+disloyalty, and the smothered secrecy of husband and friend.
+
+My heart and soul were aflame with a sense of wrong. All the sweetening
+and softening and purifying effects of the sacrament were gone in an
+instant, and, moving stealthily across the carpet towards my husband's
+door, I swiftly turned the handle.
+
+The door was locked.
+
+I heard a movement inside the room and in a moment I hurried from the
+salon into the corridor, intending to enter by another door. As I was
+about to do so I heard the lock turned back by a cautious hand within.
+Then I swung the door open and boldly entered the room.
+
+Nobody was there except my husband.
+
+But I was just in time to catch the sound of rustling skirts in the
+adjoining apartment and to see a door closed gently behind them.
+
+I looked around. Although the sun was shining, the blinds were down and
+the air was full of a rank odour of stale tobacco such as might have
+been brought back in people's clothes from that shameless woman's salon.
+
+My husband, who had clearly been drinking, was looking at me with a
+half-senseless grin. His thin hair was a little disordered. His
+prominent front teeth showed hideously. I saw that he was trying to
+carry things off with an air.
+
+"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure. I think it must be the first
+time . . . the very first time that. . . ."
+
+I felt deadly cold; I almost swooned; I could scarcely breathe, but I
+said:
+
+"Is that all you've got to say to me?"
+
+"All? What else, my dear? I don't understand. . . ."
+
+"You understand quite well," I answered, and then looking towards the
+door of the adjoining apartment, I said, "both of you understand."
+
+My husband began to laugh--a drunken, idiotic laugh.
+
+"Oh, you mean that . . . perhaps you imagine that. . . ."
+
+"Listen," I said. "This is the end of everything between you and me."
+
+"The end? Why, I thought that was long ago. In fact I thought everything
+ended before it began."
+
+"I mean. . . ." I knew I was faltering . . . "I mean that I can no
+longer keep up the farce of being your wife."
+
+"Farce!" Again he laughed. "I congratulate you, my dear. Farce is
+exactly the word for it. Our relations have been a farce ever since the
+day we were married, and if anything has gone wrong you have only
+yourself to blame for it. What's a man to do whose wife is no company
+for anybody but the saints and angels?"
+
+His coarse ridicule cut me to the quick. I was humiliated by the thought
+that after all in his own gross way my husband had something to say for
+himself.
+
+Knowing I was no match for him I wanted to crawl away without another
+word. But my silence or the helpless expression of my face must have
+been more powerful than my speech, for after a few seconds in which he
+went on saying in his drawling way that I had been no wife to him, and
+if anything had happened I had brought it on myself, he stopped, and
+neither of us spoke for a moment.
+
+Then feeling that if I stayed any longer in that room I should faint, I
+turned to go, and he opened the door for me and bowed low, perhaps in
+mockery, as I passed out.
+
+When I reached my own bedroom I was so weak that I almost dropped, and
+so cold that my maid had to give me brandy and put hot bottles to my
+feet.
+
+And then the tears came and I cried like a child.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was far from well next morning and Price wished to keep me in bed, but
+I got up immediately when I heard that my husband was talking of
+returning to London.
+
+Our journey was quite uneventful. We three sat together in the railway
+carriage and in the private cabin on the steamer, with no other company
+than Bimbo, my husband's terrier, and Prue, Alma's Pekinese spaniel.
+
+Although he made no apology for his conduct of the day before my husband
+was quiet and conciliatory, and being sober he looked almost afraid, as
+if telling himself that he might have to meet my father soon--the one
+man in the world of whom he seemed to stand in fear.
+
+Alma looked equally frightened, but she carried off her nervousness with
+a great show of affection, saying she was sorry I was feeling "badly,"
+that France and the South did not agree with me, and that I should be
+ever so much better when I was "way up north."
+
+We put up at a well-known hotel near Trafalgar Square, the same that in
+our girlhood had been the subject of Alma's dreams of future bliss, and
+I could not help observing that while my husband was selecting our rooms
+she made a rather ostentatious point of asking for an apartment on
+another floor.
+
+It was late when we arrived, so I went to bed immediately, being also
+anxious to be alone that I might think out my course of action.
+
+I was then firmly resolved that one way or other my life with my husband
+should come to an end; that I would no longer be befouled by the mire he
+had been dragging me through; that I should live a clean life and drink
+a pure draught, and oh, how my very soul seemed to thirst for it!
+
+This was the mood in which I went to sleep, but when I awoke in the
+morning, almost before the dawn, the strength of my resolution ebbed
+away. I listened to the rumble of the rubber-bound wheels of the
+carriages and motor-cars that passed under my window and, remembering
+that I had not a friend in London, I felt small and helpless. What could
+I do alone? Where could I turn for assistance?
+
+Instinctively I knew it would be of no use to appeal to my father, for
+though it was possible that he might knock my husband down, it was not
+conceivable that he would encourage me to separate from him.
+
+In my loneliness and helplessness I felt like a shipwrecked sailor, who,
+having broken away from the foundering vessel that would have sucked him
+under, is yet tossing on a raft with the threatening ocean on every
+side, and looking vainly for a sail.
+
+At last I thought of Mr. Curphy, my father's advocate, and decided to
+send a telegram to him asking for the name of some solicitor in London
+to whom I could apply for advice.
+
+To carry out this intention I went down to the hall about nine o'clock,
+when people were passing into the breakfast-room, and visitors were
+calling at the bureau, and livened page-boys were shouting names in the
+corridors.
+
+There was a little writing-room at one side of the hall and I sat there
+to write my telegram. It ran--
+
+"Please send name and address reliable solicitor London whom I can
+consult on important business."
+
+I was holding the telegraph-form in my hand and reading my message again
+and again to make sure that it would lead to no mischief, when I began
+to think of Martin Conrad.
+
+It seemed to me that some one had mentioned his name, but I told myself
+that must have been a mistake,--that, being so helpless and so much in
+need of a friend at that moment, my heart and not my ears had heard it.
+
+Nevertheless as I sat holding my telegraph-form I became conscious of
+somebody who was moving about me. It was a man, for I could smell the
+sweet peaty odour of his Harris tweeds.
+
+At length with that thrill which only the human voice can bring to us
+when it is the voice of one from whom we have been long parted, I heard
+somebody say, from the other side of the desk:
+
+"Mary, is it you?"
+
+I looked up, the blood rushed to my face and a dazzling mist floated
+before my eyes, so that for a moment I could hardly see who was there.
+But I _knew_ who it was--it was Martin himself.
+
+He came down on me like a breeze from the mountain, took me by both
+hands, telegram and all, and said:
+
+"My goodness, this is stunning!"
+
+I answered, as well as I could for the confusion that overwhelmed me.
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!"
+
+"How well you are looking! A little thin, perhaps, but such a colour!"
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!" I repeated, though I knew I was only blushing.
+
+"When did you arrive?"
+
+I told him, and he said:
+
+"_We_ came into port only yesterday. And to think that you and I should
+come to the same hotel and meet on the very first morning! It's like a
+fate, as our people in the island say. But it's stunning, perfectly
+stunning!"
+
+A warm tide of joy was coursing through me and taking away my breath,
+but I managed to say:
+
+"I've heard about your expedition. You had great hardships."
+
+"That was nothing! Just a little pleasure-trip down to the eighty-sixth
+latitude."
+
+"And great successes?"
+
+"That was nothing either. The chief was jolly good, and the boys were
+bricks."
+
+"I'm so glad, so glad!" I said again, for a kind of dumb joy had taken
+possession of me, and I went on saying the same thing over and over
+again, as people do when they are very happy.
+
+For two full minutes I felt happier than I had ever been in my life
+before; and then an icy chill came over me, for I remembered that I had
+been married since I saw Martin Conrad last and I did not know how I was
+to break the news to him.
+
+Just then my husband and Alma came down the lift, and seeing me with a
+stranger, as they crossed the hall to go into the breakfast-room, they
+came up and spoke.
+
+I had to introduce them and it was hard to do, for it was necessary to
+reveal everything in a word. I looked at Martin Conrad when I presented
+him to my husband and he did not move a muscle. Then I looked at my
+husband and under a very small bow his face grew dark.
+
+I could not help seeing the difference between the two men as they stood
+together--Martin with his sea-blue eyes and his look of splendid health,
+and my husband with his sallow cheeks and his appearance of wasted
+strength--and somehow from some unsearchable depths of my soul the
+contrast humbled me.
+
+When I introduced Alma she took Martin's hand and held it while she
+gazed searchingly into his eyes from under her eyebrows, as she always
+did when she was being presented to a man; but I saw that in this
+instance her glance fell with no more effect on its object than a
+lighted vesta on a running stream.
+
+After the usual banal phrases my husband inquired if Martin was staying
+in the house, and then asked if he would dine with us some day.
+
+"Certainly! Delighted! With all the pleasure in the world," said Martin.
+
+"Then," said my husband with rather frigid politeness, "you will see
+more of your friend Mary."
+
+"Yes," said Alma, in a way that meant much, "you will see more of your
+friend Mary."
+
+"Don't you worry about that, ma'am. You _bet_ I will," said Martin,
+looking straight into Alma's eyes; and though she laughed as she passed
+into the breakfast-room with my husband, I could see that for the first
+time in her life a man's face had frightened her.
+
+"Then you knew?" I said, when they were gone.
+
+"Yes; a friend of mine who met you abroad came down to see us into port
+and he . . ."
+
+"Dr. O'Sullivan?"
+
+"That's the man! Isn't he a boy? And, my gracious, the way he speaks of
+you! But now . . . now you must go to breakfast yourself, and I must be
+off about my business."
+
+"Don't go yet," I said.
+
+"I'll stay all day if you want me to; but I promised to meet the
+Lieutenant on the ship in half an hour, and . . ."
+
+"Then you must go."
+
+"Not yet. Sit down again. Five minutes will do no harm. And by the way,
+now that I look at you again, I'm not so sure that you . . . Italy,
+Egypt, there's enough sun down there, but you're pale . . . a little
+pale, aren't you?"
+
+I tried to make light of my pallor but Martin looked uneasy, and after a
+moment he asked:
+
+"How long are you staying in London?"
+
+I told him I did not know, whereupon he said:
+
+"Well, I'm to be here a month, making charts and tables and reports for
+the Royal Geographical Society, but if you want me for anything . . . do
+you want me now?"
+
+"No-o, no, not now," I answered.
+
+"Well, if you _do_ want me for anything--anything at all, mind, just
+pass the word and the charts and the tables and the reports and the
+Royal Geographical Society may go to the . . . Well, somewhere."
+
+I laughed and rose and told him he ought to go, though at the bottom of
+my heart I was wishing him to stay, and thinking how little and lonely I
+was, while here was a big brave man who could protect me from every
+danger.
+
+We walked together to the door, and there I took his hand and held it,
+feeling, like a child, that if I let him go he might be lost in the
+human ocean outside and I should see no more of him.
+
+At last, struggling hard with a lump that was gathering in my throat, I
+said:
+
+"Martin, I have been so happy to see you. I've never been so happy to
+see anybody in my life. You'll let me see you again, won't you?"
+
+"Won't I? Bet your life I will," he said, and then, as if seeing that my
+lip was trembling and my eyes were beginning to fill, he broke into a
+cheerful little burst of our native tongue, so as to give me a "heise"
+as we say in Ellan and to make me laugh at the last moment.
+
+"Look here--keep to-morrow for me, will ye? If them ones" (my husband
+and Alma) "is afther axing ye to do anything else just tell them there's
+an ould shipmate ashore, and he's wanting ye to go 'asploring.' See?
+So-long!"
+
+It had been like a dream, a beautiful dream, and as soon as I came to
+myself in the hall, with the visitors calling at the bureau and the
+page-boys shouting in the corridors, I found that my telegraph-form,
+crumpled and crushed, was still in the palm of my left hand.
+
+I tore it up and went in to breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH PART
+
+I FALL IN LOVE
+
+FIFTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+During our first day in London my husband had many visitors, including
+Mr. Eastcliff and Mr. Vivian, who had much to tell and arrange about.
+
+I dare say a great many events had happened during our six months'
+absence from England; but the only thing I heard of was that Mr.
+Eastcliff had married his dancing-girl, that she had retired from the
+stage, and that her public appearances were now confined to the box-seat
+of a four-in-hand coach, which he drove from London to Brighton.
+
+This expensive toy he proposed to bring round to the hotel the following
+day, which chanced to be Derby Day, when a party was to be made up for
+the races.
+
+In the preparations for the party, Alma, who, as usual, attracted
+universal admiration, was of course included, but I did not observe that
+any provision was made for me, though that circumstance did not distress
+me in the least, because I was waiting for Martin's message.
+
+It came early next morning in the person of Martin himself, who, running
+into our sitting-room like a breath of wind from the sea, said his
+fellow officers were separating that day, each going to his own home,
+and their commander had invited me to lunch with them on their ship,
+which was lying off Tilbury.
+
+It did not escape me that my husband looked relieved at this news, and
+that Alma's face brightened as she said in her most succulent tones:
+
+"I should go if I were you, Mary. The breeze on the river will do you a
+world of good, dear."
+
+I was nothing loath to take them at their word, so I let them go off in
+their four-in-hand coach, a big and bustling party, while with a
+fast-beating heart I made ready to spend the day with Martin, having, as
+I thought, so much and such serious things to say to him.
+
+A steam launch from the ship was waiting for us at the Westminster
+Pier, and from the moment I stepped into it I felt like another woman.
+It was a radiant day in May, when the climate of our much-maligned
+London is the brightest and best, and the biggest city in the world is
+also the most beautiful.
+
+How I loved it that day! The sunlight, the moving river, the soft air of
+early summer, the passing panorama of buildings, old and new--what a joy
+it was to me I sat on a side seat, dipping my hand over the gunwale into
+the cool water, while Martin, with a rush of racy words, was pointing
+out and naming everything.
+
+St. Paul's was soon past, with the sun glistening off the golden cross
+on its dome; then London Bridge; then the Tower, with its Traitors'
+Gate; then the new Thames Bridge; and then we were in the region of the
+barges and wharfs and warehouses, with their colliers and coasting
+traders, and with the scum of coal and refuse floating on the surface of
+the stream.
+
+After that came uglier things still, which we did not mind, and then the
+great docks with the hammering of rivets and the cranking noise of the
+lightermen's donkey engines, loading and unloading the big steamers and
+sailing ships; and then the broad reaches of the river where the great
+liners, looking so high as we steamed under them, lay at anchor to their
+rusty cable-chains, with their port-holes gleaming in the sun like rows
+of eyes, as Martin said, in the bodies of gigantic fish.
+
+At last we came out in a fresh breadth of water, with marshes on either
+side and a far view of the sea, and there, heaving a little to the
+flowing tide, and with a sea-gull floating over her mizzen mast, lay
+Martin's ship.
+
+She was a wooden schooner, once a Dundee whaler called the _Mary_ but
+now re-christened the _Scotia_, and it would be silly to say how my eyes
+filled at sight of her, just because she had taken Martin down into the
+deep Antarctic and brought him safely back again.
+
+"She's a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin.
+
+"Isn't she?" I answered, and in spite of all my troubles I felt entirely
+happy.
+
+We had steamed down against a strong tide, so we were half an hour late
+for luncheon, and the officers had gone down to the saloon, but it was
+worth being a little after time to see the way they all leapt up and
+received me like a queen--making me feel, as I never felt before, the
+difference between the politeness of the fashionable idlers and the
+manners of the men who do things.
+
+"Holloa!" they cried.
+
+"Excuse us, won't you? We thought something had happened and perhaps you
+were not coming," said the commander, and then he put me to sit between
+himself and Martin.
+
+The strange thing was that I was at home in that company in a moment,
+and if anybody imagines that I must have been embarrassed because I was
+the only member of my sex among so many men he does not know the heart
+of a woman.
+
+They were such big, bronzed manly fellows with the note of health and
+the sense of space about them--large space--as if they had come out of
+the heroic youth of the world, that they set my blood a-tingling to look
+at them.
+
+They were very nice to me too, though I knew that I only stood for the
+womankind that each had got at home and was soon to go back to, but none
+the less it was delightful to feel as if I were taking the first fruits
+of their love for them.
+
+So it came to pass that within a few minutes I, who had been called
+insipid and was supposed to have no conversation, was chattering away
+softly and happily, making remarks about the things around me and asking
+all sorts of questions.
+
+Of course I asked many foolish ones, which made the men laugh very much;
+but their laughter did not hurt me the least bit in the world, because
+everybody laughed on that ship, even the sailors who served the dishes,
+and especially one grizzly old salt, a cockney from Wapping, who for
+some unexplained reason was called Treacle.
+
+It made me happy to see how they all deferred to Martin, saying: "Isn't
+that so, Doctor?" or "Don't you agree, Doctor?" and though it was
+strange and new to hear Martin (my "Mart of Spitzbergen") called
+"Doctor," it was also very charming.
+
+After luncheon was over, and while coffee was being served, the
+commander sent Treacle to his cabin for a photograph of all hands which
+had been taken when they were at the foot of Mount Erebus; and when it
+came I was called upon to identify one by one, the shaggy, tousled,
+unkempt, bearded, middle-aged men in the picture with the smart,
+clean-shaven young officers who sat round me at the table.
+
+Naturally I made shockingly bad shots, and the worst of them was when I
+associated Treacle with the commander, which made the latter rock in
+his seat and the former shake and shout so much that he spilled the
+coffee.
+
+"But what about the fourth man in the front row from the left?" asked
+the commander.
+
+"Oh, I should recognise him if I were blindfolded," I answered.
+
+"By what?"
+
+"By his eyes," I said, and after this truly Irish and feminine answer
+the men shrieked with laughter.
+
+"She's got you there, doc," cried somebody.
+
+"She has sure," said Martin, who had said very little down to that
+moment, but was looking supremely happy.
+
+At length the time came for the men to go, and I went up on deck to see
+them off by the launch, and then nobody was left on the ship except
+Martin and myself, with the cook, the cabin-boy and a few of the crew,
+including Treacle.
+
+I knew that that was the right time to speak, but I was too greedy of
+every moment of happiness to break in on it with the story of my
+troubles, so when Martin proposed to show me over the ship, away I went
+with him to look at the theodolites and chronometers and sextants, and
+sledges and skis, and the aeronautic outfit and the captive balloon, and
+the double-barrelled guns, and the place where they kept the petroleum
+and the gun cotton for blasting the ice, and the hold forward for the
+men's provisions in hermetically-sealed tins, and the hold aft for the
+dried fish and biscuit that were the food for the Siberian dogs, and the
+empty cage for the dogs themselves, which had just been sent up to the
+Zoo to be taken care of.
+
+Last of all he showed me his own cabin, which interested me more than
+anything else, being such a snug little place (though I thought I should
+like to tidy it up a bit), with his medical outfit, his books, his bed
+like a shelf, and one pretty photograph of his mother's cottage with the
+roses growing over it, that I almost felt as if I would not mind going
+to the Antarctic myself if I could live in such comfortable quarters.
+
+Two hours passed in this way, though they had flown like five minutes,
+when the cabin-boy came to say that tea was served in the saloon, and
+then I skipped down to it as if the ship belonged to me. And no sooner
+had I screwed myself into the commander's chair, which was fixed to the
+floor at the head of the narrow table, and found the tea-tray almost on
+my lap, than a wave of memory from our childhood came sweeping back on
+me, and I could not help giving way to the coquetry which lies hidden in
+every girl's heart so as to find out how much Martin had been thinking
+of me.
+
+"I'll bet you anything," I said, (I had caught Martin's style) "you
+can't remember where you and I first saw each other."
+
+He could--it was in the little dimity-white room in his mother's house
+with its sweet-smelling "scraas" under the sloping thatch.
+
+"Well, you don't remember what you were doing when we held our first
+conversation?"
+
+He did--he was standing on his hands with his feet against the wall and
+his inverted head close to the carpet.
+
+"But you've forgotten what happened next?"
+
+He hadn't--I had invited William Rufus and himself into bed, and they
+had sat up on either side of me.
+
+Poor William Rufus! I heard at last what had become of him. He had died
+of distemper soon after I was sent to school. His master had buried him
+in the back-garden, and, thinking I should be as sorry as he was for the
+loss of our comrade, he had set up a stone with an inscription in our
+joint names--all of his own inditing. It ran--he spelled it out to me--
+
+     "HERE LICE WILYAM ROOFUS WRECKTED
+       BY IZ OLE FRENS MARTIN CONRAD
+         AND MARY O'NEILL."
+
+Two big blinding beads came into my eyes at that story, but they were
+soon dashed away by Martin who saw them coming and broke into the
+vernacular. I broke into it, too, (hardly knowing that the well of my
+native speech was still there until I began to tap it), and we talked of
+Tommy the Mate and his "starboard eye," called each other "bogh mulish,"
+said things were "middling," spoke of the "threes" (trees) and the
+"tunder" (thunder), and remembered that "our Big Woman was a wicked
+devil and we wouldn't trust but she'd burn in hell."
+
+How we laughed! We laughed at everything; we laughed at nothing; we
+laughed until we cried; but I have often thought since that this was
+partly because we knew in our secret hearts that we were always hovering
+on the edge of tragic things.
+
+Martin never once mentioned my husband or my marriage, or his letters to
+my father, the Bishop and Father Dan, which had turned out so terribly
+true; but we had our serious moments for all that, and one of them was
+when we were bending over a large chart which he had spread out on the
+table to show me the course of the ship through the Great Unknown,
+leaning shoulder to shoulder, so close that our heads almost touched,
+and I could see myself in his eyes as he turned to speak to me.
+
+"You were a little under the weather yesterday, shipmate--what was the
+cause of it?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, we . . . we can talk of that another time, can't we?" I answered,
+and then we both laughed again, goodness knows why, unless it was
+because we felt we were on the verge of unlocking the doors of each
+other's souls.
+
+Oh that joyful, wonderful, heart-swelling day! But no day ever passed so
+quickly. At half-past six Martin said we must be going back, or I should
+be late for dinner, and a few minutes afterwards we were in the launch,
+which had returned to fetch us.
+
+I had had such a happy time on the ship that as we were steaming off I
+kissed my hand to her, whereupon Treacle, who was standing at the top of
+the companion, taking the compliment to himself, returned the salute
+with affectionate interest, which sent Martin and me into our last wild
+shriek of laughter.
+
+The return trip was just as delightful as the coming out had been,
+everything looking different the other way round, for the sunset was
+like a great celestial fire which had been lighted in the western sky,
+and the big darkening city seemed to have turned its face to it.
+
+Martin talked all the way back about a scheme he had afoot for going
+down to the region of the Pole again in order to set up some machinery
+that was to save life and otherwise serve humanity, and while I sat
+close up to him, looking into his flashing eyes--they were still as blue
+as the bluest sea--I said, again and again: "How splendid! How glorious!
+What a great, great thing it will be for the world."
+
+"Won't it?" he said, and his eyes sparkled like a boy's.
+
+Thus the time passed without our being aware how it was going, and we
+were back at Westminster Pier before I bethought me that of the sad and
+serious subject I had intended to speak about I had said nothing at
+all.
+
+But all London seemed to have been taking holiday that day, for as we
+drove in a taxi up Parliament Street streams of vehicles full of happy
+people were returning from the Derby, including costers' donkey carts in
+which the girls were carrying huge boughs of May blossom, and the boys
+were wearing the girls' feathery hats, and at the top of their lusty
+lungs they were waking the echoes of the stately avenue with the
+"Honeysuckle and the Bee."
+
+     "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
+     Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips, yew see_."
+
+As we came near our hotel we saw a rather showy four-in-hand coach,
+called the "Phoebus," drawing up at the covered way in front of it, and
+a lady on top, in a motor veil, waving her hand to us.
+
+It was Alma, with my husband's and Mr. Eastcliff's party back from the
+races, and as soon as we met on the pavement she began to pay me high
+compliments on my improved appearance.
+
+"Didn't I say the river air would do you good, dearest?" she said, and
+then she added something else, which would have been very sweet if it
+had been meant sweetly, about there being no surer way to make a girl
+beautiful than to make her happy.
+
+There was some talk of our dining together that night, but I excused
+myself, and taking leave of Martin, who gave my hand a gentle pressure,
+I ran upstairs without waiting for the lift, being anxious to get to my
+own room that I might be alone and go over everything in my mind.
+
+I did so, ever so many times, recalling all that had been said and done
+by the commander and his comrades, and even by Treacle, but above all by
+Martin, and laughing softly to myself as I lived my day over again in a
+world of dream.
+
+My maid came in once or twice, with accounts of the gorgeous Derby
+dinner that was going on downstairs, but that did not matter to me in
+the least, and as soon as I had swallowed a little food I went to bed
+early--partly in order to get rid of Price that I might go over
+everything again and yet again.
+
+I must have done so far into the night, and even when the wings of my
+memory were weary of their fluttering and I was dropping off at last, I
+thought I heard Martin calling "shipmate," and I said "Yes," quite loud,
+as if he had been with me still in that vague and beautiful shadow-land
+which lies on the frontier of sleep.
+
+How mysterious, how magical, how wonderful!
+
+Looking back I cannot but think it strange that even down to that moment
+I did not really know what was happening to me, being only conscious of
+a great flood of joy. I cannot but think it strange that, though Nature
+had been whispering to me for months, I did not know what it had been
+saying. I cannot but think it strange that, though I had been looking
+for love so long without finding it, I did not recognise it immediately
+when it had come to me of itself.
+
+But when I awoke early in the morning, very early, while the sunrise was
+filling my bedroom with a rosy flush, and the thought of Martin was the
+first that was springing from the mists of sleep to my conscious mind,
+and I was asking myself how it happened that I was feeling so glad,
+while I had so many causes for grief, then suddenly--suddenly as the sun
+streams through the cloud-scud over the sea--I knew that what had long
+been predestined had happened, that the wondrous new birth, the great
+revelation, the joyous mystery which comes to every happy woman in the
+world had come at last to me.
+
+I was in love.
+
+I was in love with Martin Conrad.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+My joy was short-lived. No sooner had I become aware that I loved Martin
+Conrad, than my conscience told me I had no right to do so. I was
+married, and to love another than my husband was sin.
+
+It would be impossible to say with what terror this thought possessed
+me. It took all the sunlight out of my sky, which a moment before had
+seemed so bright. It came on me like a storm of thunder and lightning,
+sweeping my happiness into the abyss.
+
+All my religion, everything I had been taught about the sanctity of the
+sacrament of marriage seemed to rise up and accuse me. It was not that I
+was conscious of any sin against my husband. I was thinking only of my
+sin against God.
+
+The first effect was to make me realise that it was no longer possible
+for me to speak to Martin about my husband and Alma. To do this now
+that I knew I loved him would be deceitful, mean, almost treacherous.
+
+The next effect was to make me see that all thought of a separation must
+now be given up. How could I accuse my husband when I was myself in the
+same position? If he loved another woman, I loved another man.
+
+In my distress and fright I saw only one means of escape either from the
+filthy burden to which I was bound or the consciousness of a sinful
+heart, and that was to cure myself of my passion. I determined to do so.
+I determined to fight against my love for Martin Conrad, to conquer it
+and to crush it.
+
+My first attempt to do this was feeble enough. It was an effort to keep
+myself out of the reach of temptation by refusing to see Martin alone.
+
+For three or four days I did my best to carry out this purpose, making
+one poor excuse after another, when (as happened several times a day) he
+came down to see me--that I was just going out or had just come in, or
+was tired or unwell.
+
+It was tearing my heart out to deny myself so, but I think I could have
+borne the pain if I had not realised that I was causing pain to him
+also.
+
+My maid, whose head was always running on Martin, would come hack to my
+room, after delivering one of my lying excuses, and say:
+
+"You should have seen his face, when I told him you were ill. It was
+just as if I'd driven a knife into him."
+
+Everybody seemed to be in a conspiracy to push me into Martin's
+arms--Alma above all others. Being a woman she read my secret, and I
+could see from the first that she wished to justify her own conduct in
+relation to my husband by putting me into the same position with Martin.
+
+"Seen Mr. Conrad to-day?" she would ask.
+
+"Not to-day," I would answer.
+
+"Really? And you such old friends! And staying in the same hotel, too!"
+
+When she saw that I was struggling hard she reminded my husband of his
+intention of asking Martin to dinner, and thereupon a night was fixed
+and a party invited.
+
+Martin came, and I was only too happy to meet him in company, though the
+pain and humiliation of the contrast between him and my husband and his
+friends, and the difference of the atmosphere in which he lived from
+that to which I thought I was doomed for ever, was almost more than I
+could bear.
+
+I think they must have felt it themselves, for though their usual
+conversation was of horses and dogs and race-meetings, I noticed they
+were silent while Martin in his rugged, racy poetic way (for all
+explorers are poets) talked of the beauty of the great Polar night, the
+cloudless Polar day, the midnight calm and the moonlight on the
+glaciers, which was the loveliest, weirdest, most desolate, yet most
+entrancing light the world could show.
+
+"I wonder you don't think of going back to the Antarctic, if it's so
+fascinating," said Alma.
+
+"I do. Bet your life I do," said Martin, and then he told them what he
+had told me on the launch, but more fully and even more rapturously--the
+story of his great scheme for saving life and otherwise benefiting
+humanity.
+
+For hundreds of years man, prompted merely by the love of adventure, the
+praise of achievement, and the desire to know the globe he lived on, had
+been shouldering his way to the hitherto inviolable regions of the
+Poles; but now the time had come to turn his knowledge to account.
+
+"How?" said my husband.
+
+"By putting himself into such a position," said Martin, "that he will be
+able to predict, six, eight, ten days ahead, the weather of a vast part
+of the navigable and habitable world--by establishing installations of
+wireless telegraphy as near as possible to the long ice-barrier about
+the Pole from which ice-floes and icebergs and blizzards come, so that
+we can say in ten minutes from the side of Mount Erebus to half the
+southern hemisphere, 'Look out. It's coming down,' and thus save
+millions of lives from shipwreck, and hundreds of millions of money."
+
+"Splendid, by Jove!" said Mr. Eastcliff.
+
+"Yes, ripping, by jingo!" said Mr. Vivian.
+
+"A ridiculous dream!" muttered my husband, but not until Martin had
+gone, and then Alma, seeing that I was all aglow, said:
+
+"What a lovely man! I wonder you don't see more of him, Mary, my love.
+He'll be going to the ends of the earth soon, and then you'll be sorry
+you missed the chance."
+
+Her words hurt me like the sting of a wasp, but I could not resist them,
+and when some days later Martin called to take me to the Geographical
+Society, where his commander, Lieutenant ---- was to give an account of
+their expedition, I could not find it in my heart to refuse to go.
+
+Oh, the difference of this world from that in which I had been living
+for the past six months! All that was best in England seemed to be
+there, the men who were doing the work of the world, and the women who
+were their wives and partners.
+
+The theatre was like the inside of a dish, and I sat by Martin's side on
+the bottom row of seats, just in front of the platform and face to face
+with the commander.
+
+His lecture, which was illustrated by many photographic lantern slides
+of the exploring party, (including the one that had been shown to me on
+the ship) was very interesting, but terribly pathetic; and when he
+described the hardships they had gone through in a prolonged blizzard on
+a high plateau, with food and fuel running low, and no certainty that
+they would ever see home again, I found myself feeling for Martin's hand
+to make sure that he was there.
+
+Towards the end the commander spoke very modestly of himself, saying he
+could never have reached the 87th parallel if he had not had a crew of
+the finest comrades that ever sailed on a ship.
+
+"And though they're all splendid fellows," he said, "there's one I can
+specially mention without doing any wrong to the rest, and that's the
+young doctor of our expedition--Martin Conrad. Martin has a scheme of
+his own for going down to the Antarctic again to make a great experiment
+in the interests of humanity, and if and when he goes I say, 'Good luck
+to him and God bless him!'"
+
+At these generous words there was much applause, during which Martin sat
+blushing like a big boy when he is introduced to the girl friends of his
+sister.
+
+As for me I did not think any speech could have been so beautiful, and I
+felt as if I could have cried for joy.
+
+When I got back to the hotel I _did_ cry, but it was for another reason.
+I was thinking of my father and wondering why he did not wait.
+
+"Why, why, why?" I asked myself.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Next day, Martin came rushing down to my sitting-room with a sheaf of
+letters in his hand, saying:
+
+"That was jolly good of the boss, but look what he has let me in for?"
+
+They were requests from various newspapers for portraits and interviews,
+and particularly from one great London journal for a special article to
+contain an account of the nature and object of the proposed experiment.
+
+"What am I to do?" he said. "I'm all right for stringing gabble, but I
+couldn't _write_ anything to save my soul. Now, you could. I'm sure you
+could. You could write like Robinson Crusoe. Why shouldn't you write the
+article and I'll tell you what to put into it?"
+
+There was no resisting that. And down at the bottom of my secret heart I
+was glad of the excuse to my conscience that I could not any longer run
+away from Martin because I was necessary to help him.
+
+So we sat together all day long, and though it was like shooting the
+rapids to follow Martin's impetuous and imaginative speech, I did my
+best to translate his disconnected outbursts into more connected words,
+and when the article was written and read aloud to him he was delighted.
+
+"Stunning! Didn't I say you could write like Robinson Crusoe?"
+
+In due course it was published and made a deep impression, for wherever
+I went people were talking of it, and though some said "Fudge!" and
+others, like my husband, said "Dreams!" the practical result was that
+the great newspaper started a public subscription with the object of
+providing funds for the realisation of Martin's scheme.
+
+This brought him an immense correspondence, so that every morning he
+came down with an armful of letters and piteous appeals to me to help
+him to reply to them.
+
+I knew it would be dangerous to put myself in the way of so much
+temptation, but the end of it was that day after day we sat together in
+my sitting-room, answering the inquiries of the sceptical, the
+congratulations of the convinced, and the offers of assistance that came
+from people who wished to join in the expedition.
+
+What a joy it was! It was like the dawn of a new life to me. But the
+highest happiness of all was to protect Martin against himself, to save
+him from his over-generous impulses--in a word, to mother him.
+
+Many of the letters he received were mere mendicancy. He was not rich,
+yet he could not resist a pitiful appeal, especially if it came from a
+woman, and it was as much as I could do to restrain him from ruining
+himself.
+
+Sometimes I would see him smuggle a letter into his side pocket, with--
+
+"H'm! That will do later."
+
+"What is it?" I would ask.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he would answer.
+
+"Hand it out, sir," I would say, and then I would find a fierce delight
+in sending six freezing words of refusal to some impudent woman who was
+trying to play upon the tender side of my big-hearted boy.
+
+Oh, it was delightful! My whole being seemed to be renewed. If only the
+dear sweet hours could go on and on for ever!
+
+Sometimes my husband and Alma would look in upon us at our work, and
+then, while the colour mounted to my eyes, Martin would say:
+
+"I'm fishing with another man's floats, you see."
+
+"I see," my husband would reply, fixing his monocle and showing his
+front teeth in a painful grin.
+
+"Just what dear Mary loves, though," Alma would say. "I do believe she
+would rather he sitting in this sunless room, writing letters for Mr.
+Conrad, than wearing her coronet at a King's coronation."
+
+"Just so, ma'am; there _are_ women like that," Martin would answer,
+looking hard at her; and when she had gone, (laughing lightly but with
+the frightened look I had seen before) he would say, as if speaking to
+himself:
+
+"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put my
+foot on it."
+
+At length the climax came. One day Martin rushed downstairs almost
+beside himself in his boyish joy, to say that all the money he needed
+had been subscribed, and that in honour of the maturing of the scheme
+the proprietor of the newspaper was to give a public luncheon at one of
+the hotels, and though no women were to be present at the "feed" a few
+ladies were to occupy seats in a gallery, and I was to be one of them.
+
+I had played with my temptation too long by this time to shrink from the
+dangerous exaltation which I knew the occasion would cause, so when the
+day came I went to the hotel in a fever of pleasure and pride.
+
+The luncheon was nearly over, the speeches were about to begin, and the
+ladies' gallery was buzzing like a hive of bees, when I took my seat in
+it. Two bright young American women sitting next to me were almost as
+excited as myself, and looking down at the men through a pair of
+opera-glasses they were asking each other which was Martin, whereupon my
+vanity, not to speak of my sense of possession, was so lifted up that I
+pointed him out to them, and then borrowed their glasses to look at the
+chairman.
+
+He seemed to me to have that light of imagination in his eyes which was
+always blazing in Martin's, and when he began to speak I thought I
+caught the note of the same wild passion.
+
+He said they were that day opening a new chapter in the wonderful book
+of man's story, and though the dangers of the great deep might never be
+entirely overcome, and the wind would continue to blow as it listed, yet
+the perils of the one and the movements of the other were going to be
+known to, and therefore checked by, the human family.
+
+After that, and a beautiful tribute to Martin as a man, (that everybody
+who had met him had come to love him, and that there must be something
+in the great solitudes of the silent white world to make men simple and
+strong and great, as the sea made them staunch and true) he drank to the
+success of the expedition, and called on Martin to respond to the toast.
+
+There was a great deal of cheering when Martin rose, but I was so
+nervous that I hardly heard it. He was nervous too, as I could plainly
+see, for after a few words of thanks, he began to fumble the sheets of a
+speech which he and I had prepared together, trying to read it, but
+losing his place and even dropping his papers.
+
+Beads of perspiration were starting from my forehead and I knew I was
+making noises in my throat, when all at once Martin threw his papers on
+the table and said, in quite another voice:
+
+"Ship-mates, I mean gentlemen, I never could write a speech in my life,
+and you see I can't read one, but I know what I want to say and if
+you'll take it as it comes here goes."
+
+Then in the simple style of a sailor, not always even grammatical yet
+splendidly clear and bold and natural, blundering along as he used to do
+when he was a boy at school and could not learn his lessons, but with
+his blue eyes ablaze, he told of his aims and his expectations.
+
+And when he came to the end he said:
+
+"His lordship, the chairman, has said something about the good effects
+of the solitudes of Nature on a man's character. I can testify to that.
+And I tell you this--whatever you are when you're up here and have
+everything you want, it's wonderful strange the way you're asking the
+Lord to stretch out His hand and help you when you're down there, all
+alone and with an empty hungry stomach.
+
+"I don't know where you were last Christmas Day, shipmates . . . I mean
+gentlemen, but I know where I was. I was in the 85th latitude, longitude
+163, four miles south and thirty west of Mount Darwin. It was my own bit
+of an expedition that my commander has made too much of, and I believe
+in my heart my mates had had enough of it. When we got out of our
+sleeping bags that morning there was nothing in sight but miles and
+miles of rolling waves of snow, seven thousand feet up on a windy
+plateau, with glaciers full of crevasses shutting us off from the sea,
+and not a living thing in sight as far as the eye could reach.
+
+"We were six in company and none of us were too good for Paradise, and
+one--he was an old Wapping sailor, we called him Treacle--had the name
+of being a shocking old rip ashore. But we remembered what day it was,
+and we wanted to feel that we weren't cut off entirely from the world of
+Christian men--our brothers and sisters who would be going to church at
+home. So I dug out my little prayer-book that my mother put in my kit
+going away, and we all stood round bare-headed in the snow--a shaggy old
+lot I can tell you, with chins that hadn't seen a razor for a month--and
+I read the prayers for the day, the first and second Vespers, and
+Laudate Dominum and then the De Profundis.
+
+"I think we felt better doing that, but they say the comical and the
+tragical are always chasing each other, which can get in first, and it
+was so with us, for just as I had got to an end with the solemn words,
+'Out of the depths we cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord hear our cry,' in
+jumps old Treacle in his thickest cockney, 'And Gawd bless our pore ole
+wives and sweethearts fur a-wye.'"
+
+If Martin said any more nobody heard it. The men below were blowing
+their noses, and the women in the gallery were crying openly.
+
+"Well, the man who can talk like that may open all my letters and
+telegrams," said one of the young American women, who was wiping her
+eyes without shame.
+
+What I was doing, and what I was looking like, I did not know until the
+lady, who had lent me the opera-glasses leaned over to me and said:
+
+"Excuse me, but are you his wife, may I ask?"
+
+"Oh no, no," I said nervously and eagerly, but only God knows how the
+word went through and through me.
+
+I had taken the wrong course, and I knew it. My pride, my joy, my
+happiness were all accusing me, and when I went to bed that night I felt
+as if I had been a guilty woman.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I tried to take refuge in religion. Every day and all day I humbly
+besought the pardon of heaven for the sin of loving Martin Conrad.
+
+The little religious duties which I had neglected since my marriage
+(such as crossing myself at rising from the table) I began to observe
+afresh, and being reminded by Martin's story that I had promised my
+mother to say a De Profundis for her occasionally I now said one every
+day. I thought these exercises would bring me a certain relief, but they
+did not.
+
+I searched my Missal for words that applied to my sinful state, and
+every night on going to bed I prayed to God to take from me all unholy
+thoughts, all earthly affections. But what was the use of my prayers
+when in the first dream of the first sleep I was rushing into Martin's
+arms?
+
+It was true that my love for Martin was what the world would call a pure
+love; it had no alloy of any kind; but all the same I thought I was
+living in a condition of adultery--adultery of the heart.
+
+Early every morning I went to mass, but the sense I used to have of
+returning from the divine sacrifice to the ordinary occupations of life
+with a new spirit and a clean heart I could feel no longer.
+
+I went oftener to confession than I had done before--twice a week to
+begin with, then every other day, then every day. But the old joy, the
+sense of purity and cleansing, did not come. I thought at first the
+fault might be with my Confessor, for though I knew I was in the
+presence of God, the whispering voice behind the grating, which used to
+thrill me with a feeling of the supernatural, was that of a young man,
+and I asked myself what a young priest could know by experience of the
+deep temptations of human love.
+
+This was at the new Cathedral at Westminster, so I changed to a little
+Catholic church in a kind of mews in Mayfair, and there my Confessor was
+an older man whose quivering voice seemed to search the very depths of
+my being. He was deeply alarmed at my condition and counselled me to
+pray to God night and day to strengthen me against temptation.
+
+"The Evil One is besieging your soul, my child," he said. "Fight with
+him, my daughter."
+
+I tried to follow my ghostly father's direction, but how hard it was to
+do so! Martin had only to take my hand and look into my eyes and all my
+good resolutions were gone in a moment.
+
+As a result of the fierce struggle between my heart and my soul my
+health began to fail me. From necessity now, and not from design, I had
+to keep my room, but even there my love for Martin was always hanging
+like a threatening sword over my head.
+
+My maid Price was for ever singing his praises. He was so bright, so
+cheerful, so strong, so manly; in fact, he was perfect, and any woman in
+the world might be forgiven if she fell in love with him.
+
+Her words were like music in my ears, and sometimes I felt as if I
+wanted to throw my arms about her neck and kiss her. But at other
+moments I reproved her, telling her it was very wicked of her to think
+so much of the creature instead of fixing her mind on the Creator--a
+piece of counsel which made Price, who was all woman, open her sparkling
+black eyes in bewilderment.
+
+Nearly every morning she brought me a bunch of flowers, which Martin had
+bought at Covent Garden, all glittering from the sunshine and damp with
+the dew. I loved to have them near me, but, finding they tempted me to
+think more tenderly of him who sent them, I always contrived by one
+excuse or another to send them into the sitting-room that they might be
+out of my sight at all events.
+
+After a while Price, remembering my former artifice, began to believe
+that I was only pretending to be ill, in order to draw Martin on, and
+then taking a certain liberty with me, as with a child, she reproved me.
+
+"If I were a lady I couldn't have the heart," she said, "I really
+couldn't. It's all very well for us women, but men don't understand such
+ways. They're only children, men are, when you come to know them."
+
+I began to look upon poor Price as a honeyed fiend sent by Satan to
+seduce me, and to say the truth she sometimes acted up to the character.
+One day she said:
+
+"If I was tied to a man I didn't love, and who didn't love me, and
+somebody else, worth ten of him was ready and waiting, I would take the
+sweet with the bitter, I would. We women must follow our hearts, and why
+shouldn't we?"
+
+Then I scolded her dreadfully, asking if she had forgotten that she was
+speaking to her mistress, and a married woman; but all the while I knew
+that it was myself, not my maid, I was angry with, for she had only been
+giving voice to the thoughts that were secretly tormenting me.
+
+I had been in bed about a week when Price came with a letter in her hand
+and a look of triumph in her black eyes and said:
+
+"There, my lady! What did I tell you? You've had it all your own way and
+now you've driven him off. He has left the hotel and gone to live on his
+ship."
+
+This frightened me terribly, and partly for that reason I ordered her
+out of the room, telling her she must leave me altogether if she ever
+took such liberties again. But I'm sure she saw me, as she was going
+through the door, take up Martin's letter, which I had thrown on to the
+table, and press it to my lips.
+
+The letter was of no consequence, it was merely to tell me that he was
+going down to Tilbury for a few days, to take possession of his old ship
+in the name of his company, but it said in a postscript:
+
+"If there's anything I can do for you, pass me the word and I'll come up
+like quick-sticks."
+
+"What can I do? What can I do?" I thought. Everything my heart desired
+my soul condemned as sinful, and religion had done nothing to liberate
+me from the pains of my guilty passion.
+
+All this time my husband and Alma were busy with the gaieties of the
+London season, which was then in full swing, with the houses in Mayfair
+being ablaze every night, the blinds up and the windows open to cool the
+overheated rooms in which men and women could be seen dancing in
+closely-packed crowds.
+
+One night, after Alma and my husband had gone to a reception in
+Grosvenor Square, I had a sudden attack of heart-strain and had to be
+put to bed, whereupon Price, who had realised that I was really ill,
+told Hobson, my husband's valet, to go after his master and bring him
+back immediately.
+
+"It'll be all as one, but I'll go if you like," said Hobson.
+
+In half an hour he came back with my husband's answer. "Send for a
+doctor."
+
+This put Price into a fever of mingled anger and perplexity, and not
+knowing what else to do she telegraphed to Martin on his ship, telling
+him that I was ill and asking what doctor she ought to call in to see
+me.
+
+Inside an hour a reply came not from Tilbury but from Portsmouth saying:
+
+"Call Doctor ---- of Brook Street. Am coming up at once."
+
+All this I heard for the first time when Price, with another triumphant
+look, came into my bedroom flourishing Martin's telegram as something
+she had reason to be proud of.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you telegraphed to Mr. Conrad?" I said.
+
+"Why _not?_" said Price. "When a lady is ill and her husband pays no
+attention to her, and there's somebody else not far off who would give
+his two eyes to save her a pain in her little finger, what is a woman to
+do?"
+
+I told her what she was _not_ to do. She was not to call the doctor
+under any circumstances, and when Martin came she was to make it plain
+to him that she had acted on her own responsibility.
+
+Towards midnight he arrived, and Price brought him into my room in a
+long ulster covered with dust. I blushed and trembled at sight of him,
+for his face betrayed the strain and anxiety he had gone through on my
+account, and when he smiled at seeing that I was not as ill as he had
+thought, I was ashamed to the bottom of my heart.
+
+"You'll be sorry you've made such a long journey now that you see
+there's so little amiss with me," I said.
+
+"Sorry?" he said. "By the holy saints, I would take a longer one every
+night of my life to see you looking so well at the end of it."
+
+His blue eyes were shining like the sun from behind a cloud, and the
+cruellest looks could not have hurt me more.
+
+I tried to keep my face from expressing the emotion I desired to
+conceal, and asked if he had caught a train easily from Portsmouth,
+seeing he had arrived so early.
+
+"No. Oh no, there was no train up until eleven o'clock," he said.
+
+"Then how did you get here so soon?" I asked, and though he would not
+tell me at first I got it out of him at last--he had hired a motor-car
+and travelled the ninety miles to London in two hours and a half.
+
+That crushed me. I could not speak. I thought I should have choked.
+Lying there with Martin at arm's length of me, I was afraid of myself,
+and did not know what I might do next. But at last, with a great effort
+to control myself, I took his hand and kissed it, and then turned my
+face to the wall.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+That was the beginning of the end, and when, next day towards noon, my
+husband came with drowsy eyes to make a kind of ungracious apology,
+saying he supposed the doctor had been sent for, I said:
+
+"James, I want you to take me home."
+
+"Home? You mean . . . Castle Raa?"
+
+"Y-es."
+
+He hesitated, and I began to plead with him, earnestly and eagerly, not
+to deny me what I asked.
+
+"Take me home, I beg, I pray."
+
+At length, seeming to think I must be homesick, he said:
+
+"Well, you know my views about that God-forsaken place, but the season's
+nearly at an end, and I don't mind going back on one condition--that you
+raise no objection to my inviting a few friends to liven it up a bit?"
+
+"It is your house," I said. "You must do as you please in it."
+
+"Very good; that's settled," he said, getting up to go. "And I dare say
+it will do you no harm to be out of the way of all this church-going and
+confessing to priests, who are always depressing people even when
+they're not making mischief."
+
+Hardly had my husband left me when Alma came into my sitting-room in the
+most affectionate and insincere of her moods.
+
+"My poor, dear sweet child," she said. "If I'd had the least idea you
+were feeling so badly I shouldn't have allowed Jimmy to stay another
+minute at that tiresome reception. But how good it was of Mr. Conrad to
+come all that way to see you! That's what I call being a friend now!"
+
+Then came the real object of her visit--I saw it coming.
+
+"I hear you're to have a house-party at Castle Raa. Jimmy's in his room
+writing piles of invitations. He has asked me and I should love to go,
+but of course I cannot do so without _you_ wish it. Do you?"
+
+What could I say? What I _did_ say I scarcely know. I only know that at
+the next minute Alma's arms were round my neck, and she was saying:
+
+"You dear, sweet, unselfish little soul! Come let me kiss you."
+
+It was done. I had committed myself. After all what right had I to raise
+myself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter, anyway? I was
+flying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to save my husband
+from his.
+
+Price had been in the room during this interview and when it was over I
+was ashamed to look at her.
+
+"I can't understand you, my lady; I really can't," she said.
+
+Next day I wrote a little letter to Martin on the _Scotia_ telling him
+of our change of plans, but forbidding him to trouble to come up to say
+good-bye, yet half hoping he would disregard my injunction.
+
+He did. Before I left my bedroom next morning I heard his voice in the
+sitting-room talking to Price, who with considerable emphasis was giving
+her views of Alma.
+
+When I joined him I thought his face (which had grown to be very
+powerful) looked hard and strained; but his voice was as soft as ever
+while he said I was doing right in going home and that my native air
+must be good for me.
+
+"But what's this Price tells me--that Madame is going with you?"
+
+I tried to make light of that, but I broke down badly, for his eyes were
+on me, and I could see that he thought I was concealing the truth.
+
+For some minutes he looked perplexed, as if trying to understand how it
+came to pass that sickening, as he believed I was, at the sight of my
+husband's infidelities I was yet carrying the provocative cause of them
+away with me, and then he said again:
+
+"I hate that woman. She's like a snake. I feel as if I want to put my
+foot on it. I will, too, one of these days--bet your life I will."
+
+It hurt me to hide anything from him, but how could I tell him that it
+was not from Alma I was flying but from himself?
+
+When the day came for our departure I hoped I might get away without
+seeing Martin again. We did get out of the hotel and into the railway
+station, yet no sooner was I seated in the carriage than (in the cruel
+war that was going on within me) I felt dreadfully down that he was not
+there to see me off.
+
+But at the very last moment, just as Alma with her spaniel under her
+arm, and my husband with his terrier on a strap, were about to step into
+the train, up came Martin like a gust of mountain wind.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried. "I shall be seeing you soon. Everything's settled
+about the expedition. We're to sail the first week in September, so as
+to get the summer months in the Antarctic. But before that I must go
+over to the island to say good-bye to the old folks, and I'll see you at
+your father's I suppose."
+
+Then Alma gave my husband a significant glance and said:
+
+"But, Mary, my love, wouldn't it be better for Mr. Conrad to come to
+Castle Raa? You won't be able to go about very much. Remember your
+delicate condition, you know."
+
+"Of course, why of course," said my husband. "That's quite true, and if
+Mr. Conrad will do me the honour to accept my hospitality for a few
+days. . . ."
+
+It was what I wanted above everything on earth, and yet I said:
+
+"No, no! It wouldn't be fair. Martin will be too busy at the last
+moment."
+
+But Martin himself jumped in eagerly with:
+
+"Certainly! Delighted! Greatest pleasure in the world."
+
+And then, while Alma gave my husband a look of arch triumph to which he
+replied with a painful smile, Martin leaned over to me and whispered"
+
+"Hush! I want to! I must!" though what he meant by that I never knew.
+
+He continued to look at me with a tender expression until we said
+good-bye; but after the carriage door had been closed and the engine had
+throbbed, and the guard had whistled, I thought I had never seen his
+strong face so stern as when the train moved from the platform.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+We reached Ellan towards the close of the following day. It was the
+height of the holiday season, and the island seemed to be ablaze with
+lights.
+
+Two motor-cars were waiting for us at the pier, and in a little while we
+were driving out of Blackwater through congested masses of people who
+were rambling aimlessly through the principal streets.
+
+Our way was across a stone bridge that crossed the harbour at its inner
+end, and then up a hill that led to a headland overlooking the sea.
+Within half an hour we drew up at a pair of large gate posts which were
+much decayed and leaning heavily out of the perpendicular.
+
+The chauffeur of the first of our ears got down to open the gate, and
+after it had clashed to behind us, we began to ascend a very steep drive
+that was bordered by tall elm trees. It was now almost dark, and the
+rooks, which had not yet gone off to the mountains, were making their
+evening clamour.
+
+"Well, my dear, you're at home at last, and much good may it do you,"
+said my husband.
+
+I made no answer to this ungracious speech, but Alma was all excitement.
+
+"So this is Castle Raa! What a fascinating old place!" she said, and as
+we drove through the park she reached out of the car to catch a first
+glimpse of the broad terraces and winding ways to the sea which had been
+reflected in her memory since she was a child.
+
+I felt no such anxiety. Never did a young bride approach the home of her
+husband with less curiosity, but as our motor-car toiled up the drive I
+could not help seeing the neglected condition of the land, with boughs
+of trees lying where they had fallen in the storms, as well as broken
+gates half off their hinges and swinging to the wind.
+
+The house itself, when we came in sight of it, was a large castellated
+building with many lesser turrets and one lofty octagonal tower, covered
+entirely with ivy, which, being apparently unshorn for years, hung in
+long trailers down the walls, and gave the whole pile the appearance of
+a huge moss-covered rock of the sea planted on a promontory of the land.
+
+As our car went thundering up to the great hall door nearly the whole of
+the servants and some of the tenant farmers (under the direction of the
+tall, sallow man who had been my husband's guardian in former days, and
+was now his steward) were waiting to welcome us, as well as Lady
+Margaret Anselm, who was still reserved and haughty in her manner,
+though pleasant enough with me.
+
+My husband nodded to all, shook hands with some, presented Alma to his
+aunt as "one of Mary's old school friends," (a designation which, as I
+could see, had gone ahead of her) and then we passed into the house.
+
+I found the inside corresponded with the outside in its appearance of
+neglect and decay, the big square hall having rusty and disjointed
+armour on its wainscotted walls and the mark of water on the floor,
+which had come from a glass dome over the well of the stairs, for it had
+rained while we were on the sea.
+
+The drawing-room had faded curtains over the windows, faded velvet on
+the square sofa and stiff chairs, faded carpets, faded samplers, and
+faded embroidery on faded screens.
+
+The dining-room (the sedate original of my father's rather garish copy)
+was a panelled chamber, hung round with rubicund portraits of the male
+O'Neills from the early ones of the family who had been Lords of Ellan
+down to the "bad Lord Raa," who had sworn at my grandmother on the high
+road.
+
+I felt as if no woman could have made her home here for at least a
+hundred years, and I thought the general atmosphere of the house was
+that of the days when spendthrift noblemen, making the island a refuge
+from debt, spent their days in gambling and their nights in drinking
+bumpers from bowls of whiskey punch to the nameless beauties they had
+left "in town."
+
+They were all gone, all dead as the wood of the worm-eaten wainscotting,
+but the sound of their noisy merry-making seemed to cling to the rafters
+still, and as I went up to my rooms the broad oaken staircase seemed to
+be creaking under their drunken footsteps.
+
+My own apartments, to which Lady Margaret conducted me, were on the
+southern side of the house--a rather stuffy bedroom with walls covered
+by a kind of pleated chintz, and a boudoir with a stone balcony that had
+a flight of steps going down to a terrace of the garden, which
+overlooked a glen and had a far view of the sea.
+
+On the opposite side of the landing outside (which was not immediately
+off the great staircase though open to the view of it) there was a
+similar suite of rooms which I thought might be my husband's, but I was
+told they were kept for a guest.
+
+Being left alone I had taken off my outer things and was standing on my
+balcony, listening to the dull hum of the water in the glen, the rustle
+of the trees above it, the surge of the sea on the rocks below, the
+creaking of a rusty weathercock and the striking of a court-yard clock,
+when I also heard the toot and throb of another motor-car, and as soon
+as it came up I saw that it contained Aunt Bridget in the half-moon
+bonnet and Betsy Beauty, who was looking more than ever like a country
+belle.
+
+When I went down to the drawing-room Lady Margaret was pouring out tea
+for them, and at sight of me Aunt Bridget cried,
+
+"Sakes alive, here she is herself!"
+
+"But how pale and pinched and thin!" said Betsy Beauty.
+
+"Nonsense, girl, that's only natural," said my Aunt Bridget, with
+something like a wink; and then she went on to say that she had just
+been telling her ladyship that if I felt lonely and a little helpless on
+first coming home Betsy would be pleased to visit me.
+
+Before I could reply my husband came in, followed shortly by Alma, who
+was presented as before, as "Mary's old school-fellow"; and then, while
+Betsy talked to Alma and my husband to his kinswoman, Aunt Bridget, in
+an undertone, addressed herself to me.
+
+"You're that way, aren't you? . . . No? Goodness me, girl, your father
+_will_ be disappointed!"
+
+Just then a third motor-car came throbbing up to the house, and Betsy
+who was standing by the window cried:
+
+"It's Uncle Daniel with Mr. Curphy and Nessy."
+
+"Nessy, of course," said Aunt Bridget grumpily, and then she told me in
+a confidential whisper that she was a much-injured woman in regard to
+"that ungrateful step-daughter," who was making her understand the words
+of Scripture about the pang that was sharper than a serpent's tooth.
+
+As the new-comers entered I saw that Nessy had developed an old maid's
+idea of smartness, and that my father's lawyer was more than ever like
+an over-fatted fish; but my father himself (except that his hair was
+whiter) was the same man still, with the same heavy step, the same loud
+voice and the same tempestuous gaiety.
+
+"All here? Good! Glad to be home, I guess! Strong and well and hearty, I
+suppose? . . . Yes, sir, yes! I'm middling myself, sir. Middling, sir,
+middling!"
+
+During these rugged salutations I saw that Alma, with the bad manners of
+a certain type of society woman, looked on with a slightly impertinent
+air of amused superiority, until she encountered my father's masterful
+eyes, which nobody in the world could withstand.
+
+After a moment my father addressed himself to me.
+
+"Well, gel," he said, taking me by the shoulders, as he did in Rome,
+"you must have cut a dash in Egypt, I guess. Made the money fly, didn't
+you? No matter! My gold was as good as anybody else's, and I didn't
+grudge it. You'll clear me of that, anyway."
+
+Then there was some general talk about our travels, about affairs on the
+island (Mr. Curphy saying, with a laugh and a glance in my direction,
+that things were going so well with my father that if all his schemes
+matured he would have no need to wait for a descendant to become the
+"uncrowned King of Ellan"), and finally about Martin Conrad, whose great
+exploits had become known even in his native country.
+
+"Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" said my father. "I wouldn't have
+believed it of him. I wouldn't really. Just a neighbour lad without a
+penny at him. And now the world's trusting him with fifty thousand
+pounds, they're telling me!"
+
+"Well, many are called but few are chosen," said Mr. Curphy with another
+laugh.
+
+After that, and some broken conversation, Aunt Bridget expressed a
+desire to see the house, as the evening was closing in and they must
+soon be going back.
+
+Lady Margaret thereupon took her, followed by the rest of us, over the
+principal rooms of the Castle; and it was interesting to see the awe
+with which she looked upon everything--her voice dropping to a whisper
+in the dining-room. I remember, as if the scene of carousing of the old
+roysterers had been a sort of sanctuary.
+
+My father, less impressed, saw nothing but a house in bad repair, and
+turning to my husband, who had been obviously ill at ease, he said:
+
+"Go on like this much longer, son-in-law, and you'll be charging
+two-pence a head to look at your ruins. Guess I must send my architect
+over to see what he can do for you."
+
+Then taking me aside he made his loud voice as low as he could and said:
+
+"What's this your Aunt Bridget tells me? Nine months married and no
+sign yet? Tut, tut! That won't do, gel, that won't do."
+
+I tried to tell him not to spend money on the Castle if he intended to
+do so in expectation of an heir, but my heart was in my mouth and what I
+really said I do not know. I only know that my father looked at me for a
+moment as if perplexed, and then burst into laughter.
+
+"I see! I see!" he said. "It's a doctor you want. I must send Conrad to
+put a sight on you. It'll be all right, gel, it'll be all right! Your
+mother was like that when you were coming."
+
+As we returned to the hall Betsy Beauty whispered that she was surprised
+Mr. Eastcliff had married, but she heard from Madame that we were to
+have a house-party soon, and she hoped I would not forget her.
+
+Then Aunt Bridget, who had been eyeing Alma darkly, asked me who and
+what she was and where she came from, whereupon I (trying to put the
+best face on things) explained that she was the daughter of a rich New
+York banker. After that Aunt Bridget's countenance cleared perceptibly
+and she said:
+
+"Ah, yes, of course! I thought she had a quality toss with her."
+
+The two motor-cars had been drawn up to the door, and the two parties
+had taken their seats in them when my father, looking about him, said to
+my husband:
+
+"Your garden is as rough as a thornbush, son-in-law. I must send Tommy
+the Mate to smarten it up a bit. So long! So long!"
+
+At the next moment they were gone, and I was looking longingly after
+them. God knows my father's house had never been more than a
+stepmother's home to me, but at that moment I yearned to return to it
+and felt like a child who was being left behind at school.
+
+What had I gained, by running away from London? Nothing at all. Already
+I knew I had brought my hopeless passion with me.
+
+And now I was alone.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next day Lady Margaret came to my room to say good-bye, telling me she
+had only stayed at Castle Raa to keep house and make ready for me, and
+must now return to her own home, which was in London.
+
+I was sorry, for my heart had warmed to her, and when I stood at the
+door and saw her drive off with my husband to catch the afternoon
+steamer, I felt I had lost both sympathy and protection.
+
+Alma's feelings were less troubled, and as we turned back into the house
+I could see that she was saying to herself:
+
+"Thank goodness, _she's_ gone away."
+
+A day or two later Doctor Conrad came, according to my father's
+instructions, and I was glad to see his close-cropped iron-grey head
+coming up the stairs towards my room.
+
+Naturally our first conversation was about Martin, who had written to
+tell his parents of our meeting in London and to announce his intended
+visit. It was all very exciting, and now his mother was working morning
+and night at the old cottage, to prepare for the arrival of her son.
+Such scrubbing and scouring! Such taking up of carpets and laying them
+down again, as if the darling old thing were expecting a prince!
+
+"It ought to be Sunny Lodge indeed before she's done with it," said the
+Doctor.
+
+"I'm sure it will," I said. "It always was, and it always will be."
+
+"And how are we ourselves," said the doctor. "A little below par, eh?
+Any sickness? No? Nausea? No? Headache and a feeling of lassitude, then?
+No?"
+
+After other questions and tests, the old doctor was looking puzzled,
+when, not finding it in my heart to keep him in the dark any longer, I
+told him there was nothing amiss with my health, but I was unhappy and
+had been so since the time of my marriage.
+
+"I see," he said. "It's your mind and not your body that is sick?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll speak to Father Dan," he said. "Good-bye! God bless you!"
+
+Less than half an hour after he had gone, Alma came to me in her softest
+mode, saying the doctor had said I was suffering from extreme nervous
+exhaustion and ought to be kept from worries and anxieties of every
+kind.
+
+"So if there's anything I can do while I'm here, dearest, . . . such as
+looking after the house and the servants. . . . No, no, don't deny me;
+it will be a pleasure, I assure you. . . . So we'll say that's settled,
+shall we? . . . You dear, sweet darling creature!"
+
+I was too much out of heart to care what happened, but inside two days I
+realised that Alma had taken possession of the house, and was ordering
+and controlling everything.
+
+Apparently this pleased such of the servants as had anything to gain by
+it--the housekeeper in particular--for Alma was no skinflint and she was
+making my husband's money flow like water, but it was less agreeable to
+my maid, who said:
+
+"This is a nice place to be sure, where the mistress takes no interest
+in anything, and the guest walks over everybody. She'll walk over the
+mistress herself before long--mark my word but she will."
+
+It would be about a week after our arrival at Castle Raa that Price came
+to my room to say that a priest was asking for me, and he was such a
+strange-looking thing that she was puzzled to know if his face was that
+of a child, a woman or a dear old man.
+
+I knew in a moment it must be Father Dan, so I went flying downstairs
+and found him in the hall, wearing the same sack coat (or so it seemed)
+as when I was a child and made cupboards of its vertical pockets,
+carrying the same funny little bag which he had taken to Rome and used
+for his surplice at funerals, and mopping his forehead and flicking his
+boots with a red print handkerchief, for the day was hot and the roads
+were dusty.
+
+He was as glad to see me as I to see him, and when I asked if he would
+have tea, he said Yes, for he had walked all the way from the
+Presbytery, after fasting the day before; and when I asked if he would
+not stay overnight he said Yes to that, too, "if it would not be
+troublesome and inconvenient."
+
+So I took his bag and gave it to a maid, telling her to take it to the
+guest's room on my landing, and to bring tea to my boudoir immediately.
+
+But hardly had I taken him upstairs and we had got seated in my private
+room, when the maid knocked at the door to say that the housekeeper
+wished to speak with me, and on going out, and closing the door behind
+me, I found her on the landing, a prim little flinty person with quick
+eyes, thin lips and an upward lift of her head.
+
+"Sorry, my lady, but it won't be convenient for his reverence to stay in
+the house to-night," she said.
+
+"Why so?" I said.
+
+"Because Madame has ordered all the rooms to be got ready for the
+house-party, and this one," (pointing to the guest's room opposite) "is
+prepared for Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff, and we don't know how soon they may
+arrive."
+
+I felt myself flushing up to the eyes at the woman's impudence, and it
+added to my anger that Alma herself was standing at the head of the
+stairs, looking on and listening. So with a little spurt of injured
+pride I turned severely on the one while really speaking to the other,
+and said:
+
+"Be good enough to make this room ready for his reverence without one
+moment's delay, and please remember for the future, that I am mistress
+in this house, and your duty is to obey me and nobody else whatever."
+
+As I said this and turned back to my boudoir, I saw that Alma's deep
+eyes had a sullen look, and I felt that she meant to square accounts
+with me some day; but what she did was done at once, for going
+downstairs (as I afterwards heard from Price) she met my husband in the
+hall, where, woman-like, she opened her battery upon him at his weakest
+spot, saying:
+
+"Oh, I didn't know your wife was priest-ridden."
+
+"Priest-ridden?"
+
+"Precisely," and then followed an explanation of what had happened, with
+astonishing embellishments which made my husband pale with fury.
+
+Meantime I was alone with Father Dan in my room, and while I poured out
+his tea and served him with bread and butter, he talked first about
+Martin (as everybody seemed to do when speaking to me), saying:
+
+"He was always my golden-headed boy, and it's a mighty proud man I am
+entirely to hear the good news of him."
+
+More of the same kind there was, all music to my ears, and then Father
+Dan came to closer quarters, saying Doctor Conrad had dropped a hint
+that I was not very happy.
+
+"Tell your old priest everything, my child, and if there is anything he
+can do. . . ."
+
+Without waiting for more words I sank to my knees at his feet, and
+poured out all my troubles--telling him my marriage had been a failure;
+that the sanctifying grace which he had foretold as the result of the
+sacrament of holy wedlock had not come to pass; that not only did I not
+love my husband, but my husband loved another woman, who was living here
+with us in this very house.
+
+Father Dan was dreadfully distressed. More than once while I was
+speaking he crossed himself and said, "Lord and His Holy Mother love
+us;" and when I came to an end he began to reproach himself for
+everything, saying that he ought to have known that our lad (meaning
+Martin) did not write those terrible letters without being certain they
+were true, and that from the first day my husband came to our parish the
+sun had been darkened by his shadow.
+
+"But take care," he said. "I've told nobody about the compact we made
+with your husband--nobody but our Blessed Lady herself--and you mustn't
+think of that as a way out of your marriage. No, nor of any other way,
+no matter what, which the world, and the children of the world, may talk
+about."
+
+"But I can't bear it, I can't bear it," I cried.
+
+"Hush! Hush! Don't say that, my daughter. Think of it as one of the
+misfortunes of life which we all have to suffer. How many poor women
+have to bear the sickness and poverty, not to speak of the drunkenness
+and death, of their husbands! Do they think they have a right to run
+away from all that--to break the sacred vows of their marriage on
+account of it? No, my child, no, and neither must you. Some day it will
+all come right. You'll see it will. And meantime by the memory of your
+mother--that blessed saint whom the Lord has made one of his own. . . ."
+
+"Then what can I do?"
+
+"Pray, my child, pray for strength to bear your trials and to resist all
+temptation. Say a rosary for the Blessed Virgin every morning before
+breaking your fast. I'll say a rosary, too. You'll see yet this is only
+God's love for you, and you'll welcome His holy will."
+
+While my dear father and friend was counselling me so I heard my husband
+speaking in his loud, grating tones on the landing outside, and before I
+could rise from my knees he had burst open the door and entered the
+room.
+
+His face was deadly white and he was like a man out of his right mind.
+
+"Mary," he said, looking down at me where I knelt with my hands crossed
+on my bosom, "when did I give you permission to introduce a priest into
+my house? Isn't it enough for a man to have a wife who is a Catholic
+without having the church and its ministers shunted into his home
+without his permission?"
+
+I was so taken aback by this furious assault that at first I could not
+speak, but Father Dan interposed to defend me, saying with beautiful
+patience, that his visit had been quite unexpected on my part, and that
+I had asked him to stay overnight only because he was an old man, and
+had had a long walk from his parish.
+
+"I'm much obliged to your reverence," said my husband, who was quivering
+with fury, "but my wife is perfectly capable of answering for herself
+without your assistance, and as for your parish you would have done
+better to stay there instead of coming to meddle in this one."
+
+"Aren't you measuring me by your own yard, sir?" said Father Dan, and at
+that straight thrust my husband broke into ungovernable rage.
+
+"Everybody knows what a Popish priest is," he said. "A meddlesome
+busybody who pokes his nose into other men's secrets. But priest or no
+priest, I'll have no man coming to my house to make mischief between
+husband and wife."
+
+"Are you sure," said Father Dan, "that some woman isn't in your house
+already, making mischief between wife and husband?"
+
+That thrust too went home. My husband looked at me with flashing eyes
+and then said:
+
+"As I thought! You've been sent for to help my wife to make a great
+to-do of her imaginary grievances. You're to stay in the house too, and
+before long we'll have you setting up as master here and giving orders
+to my servants! But not if I know it! . . . Your reverence, if you have
+any respect for your penitent, you'll please be good enough to leave my
+wife to _my_ protection."
+
+I saw that Father Dan had to gulp down his gathering anger, but he only
+said:
+
+"Say no more, my lord. No true priest ever comes between a man and the
+wife whom God has given him. It's his business to unite people, not to
+put them apart. As for this dear child, I have loved her since she was
+an infant in arms, and never so much as at the present speaking, so I
+don't need to learn my duty from one who appears to care no more for her
+than for the rind of a lemon. I'll go, sir," said the old man, drawing
+himself up like a wounded lion, "but it's not to your protection I
+leave her--it's to that of God's blessed and holy love and will."
+
+My husband had gone before the last words were spoken, but I think they
+must have followed him as he went lunging down the stairs.
+
+During this humiliating scene a hot flush of shame had come to my cheeks
+and I wanted to tell Father Dan not to let it grieve him, but I could do
+nothing but stoop and kiss his hand.
+
+Meantime two or three of the servants had gathered on the landing at the
+sound of my husband's voice, and among them was the flinty housekeeper
+holding the Father's little bag, and she gave it back to him as he
+passed her.
+
+Then, all being over, the woman came into my room, with an expression of
+victorious mischief in her eyes and said:
+
+"Your ladyship had better have listened to them as knows, you see."
+
+I was too benumbed by that cruel stroke to reply, but Price said enough
+for both of us.
+
+"If them as knows," she said, "don't get out of this room inside two
+seconds they'll get their ugly faces slapped."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I thought I had reached the end of my power of endurance, and that
+night, before going to bed, while my maid was taking down my hair, and I
+was thinking of Martin and asking myself if I should put up with my
+husband's brutalities any longer, I heard her say:
+
+"If I were a lady married to the wrong man, I'd have the right one if I
+had to go through the divorce court for him."
+
+Now that was so exactly the thought that was running riot in my own
+tormented mind, that I flew at her like a wild cat, asking her how she
+dared to say anything so abominably wicked, and telling her to take her
+notice there and then.
+
+But hardly had she left the room, when my heart was in my mouth again,
+and I was trembling with fear lest she should take me at my word and
+then the last of my friends would be gone.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Within the next few days the house-party arrived. There would be twenty
+of them at least, not counting valets and ladies' maids, so that large
+as Castle Raa was the house was full.
+
+They were about equally divided as to sex and belonged chiefly to my
+husband's class, but they included Mr. Eastcliff's beautiful wife,
+Camilla, and Alma's mother, who, much to Alma's chagrin, had insisted
+upon being invited.
+
+My husband required me to receive them, and I did so, though I was only
+their nominal hostess, and they knew it and treated me accordingly.
+
+I should be ashamed to speak of the petty slights they put upon me, how
+they consulted Alma in my presence and otherwise wounded my pride as a
+woman by showing me that I had lost my own place in my husband's house.
+
+I know there are people of the same class who are kind and considerate,
+guileless and pure, the true nobility of their country--women who are
+devoted to their homes and children, and men who spend their wealth and
+strength for the public good--but my husband's friends were not of that
+kind.
+
+They were vain and proud, selfish, self-indulgent, thoroughly insincere,
+utterly ill-mannered, shockingly ill-informed, astonishingly
+ill-educated (capable of speaking several languages but incapable of
+saying a sensible word in any of them), living and flourishing in the
+world without religion, without morality, and (if it is not a cant
+phrase to use) without God.
+
+What their conduct was when out shooting, picnicking, driving, riding,
+motoring, and yachting (for Mr. Eastcliff had arrived in his yacht,
+which was lying at anchor in the port below the glen), I do not know,
+for "doctor's orders" were Alma's excuse for not asking me to accompany
+them.
+
+But at night they played bridge (their most innocent amusement), gambled
+and drank, banged the piano, danced "Grizzly Bears," sang duets from the
+latest musical comedies, and then ransacked the empty houses of their
+idle heads for other means of killing the one enemy of their
+existence--Time.
+
+Sometimes they would give entertainments in honour of their dogs, when
+all the animals of all the guests (there seemed to be a whole kennel of
+them) would be dressed up in coats of silk and satin with pockets and
+pocket-handkerchiefs, and then led downstairs to the drawing-room, where
+Alma's wheezy spaniel and my husband's peevish terrier were supposed to
+receive them.
+
+Sometimes they would give "freak dinners," when the guests themselves
+would be dressed up, the men in women's clothes, the women in men's, the
+male imitating the piping treble of the female voices, and the female
+the over-vowelled slang of the male, until, tiring of this foolishness,
+they would end up by flinging the food at the pictures on the walls, the
+usual pellet being softened bread and the favourite target the noses in
+the family portraits, which, hit and covered with a sprawling mess,
+looked so ridiculous as to provoke screams of laughter.
+
+The talk at table was generally of horses and dogs, but sometimes it was
+of love, courtship and marriage, including conjugal fidelity, which was
+a favourite subject of ridicule, with both the women and the men.
+
+Thus my husband would begin by saying (he often said it in my hearing)
+that once upon a time men took their wives as they took their horses, on
+trial for a year and a day, and "really with some women there was
+something to say for the old custom."
+
+Then Mr. Vivian would remark that it was "a jolly good idea, by Jove,"
+and if he "ever married, by the Lord that's just what he would do."
+
+Then Mr. Eastcliff would say that it was a ridiculous superstition that
+a woman should have her husband all to herself, "as if he were a kind of
+toothbrush which she could not share with anybody else," and somebody
+would add that she might as reasonably want her dentist or her
+hairdresser to be kept for her own use only.
+
+After that the ladies, not to be left behind, would join in the off-hand
+rattle, and one of them would give it as her opinion that a wife might
+have an incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be well off.
+
+"Ugh!" said Alma one night, shrugging her shoulders. "Think of a poor
+woman being tied for life to an entirely faithful husband!"
+
+"I adore the kind of man who goes to the deuce for a woman--Parnell, and
+Gambetta and Boulanger and that sort," said a "smart" girl of three or
+four-and-twenty, whereupon Camilla Eastcliff (she was a Russian) cried:
+
+"That's vhy the co-respondents in your divorce courts are so sharming.
+They're like the villayns in the plays--always so dee-lightfully
+vicked."
+
+Oh, the sickening horror of it all! Whether it was really moral
+corruption or only affectation and pose, it seemed equally shocking, and
+though I bore as much of it as I could with a cheerful face, I escaped
+as often as possible to the clean atmosphere of my own room.
+
+But even there I was not always allowed to be alone, for Alma's mother
+frequently followed me. She was a plump little person in a profuse
+ornamentation of diamond rings and brooches, with little or no
+education, and a reputation for saying risky things in blundering French
+whereof the principal humour lay in the uncertainty as to whether she
+knew their meaning or not.
+
+Nevertheless she was the only good-hearted woman in the house, and I
+really believe she thought she was doing a kind act in keeping me
+company. But oh, how I suffered from her long accounts of her former
+"visits" to my house, whereby I learned, without wishing to, what her
+origin had been (the daughter of a London postman); what position she
+had held in Castle Raa in her winsome and reckless youth (one that need
+not be defined); how she had met her husband in New York and he had
+married her to save the reputation of his child; and finally how the
+American ladies of society had refused to receive her, and she had vowed
+to be revenged on them by marrying Alma to the highest title in Europe
+that could be bought with money.
+
+"I was just like your father, my dear. I never did no manner of harm to
+those people. They used to think I thought myself better blood nor they
+were, but I never thought no such thing, I assure you. Only when they
+turned nasty after my marriage I made up my mind--just as your father
+did--as Alma should marry a bigger husband nor any of them, even if he
+wasn't worth a dime and 'adn't a 'air on 'is 'ead."
+
+But even these revelations about herself were less humiliating than her
+sympathy with me, which implied that I was not fitted to be mistress of
+a noble house--how could it be expected of me?--whereas Alma was just as
+if she had been born to it, and therefore it was lucky for me that I had
+her there to show me how to do things.
+
+"Alma's gotten such _ton!_ Such distangy manners!" she would say.
+
+The effect of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before,
+the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I looked
+into the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoble
+bondage, I told myself that nothing--no sacrament or contract, no law of
+church or state--could make me endure it.
+
+From day to day my maid came to me with insidious hints about Alma and
+my husband. I found myself listening to them. I also found myself
+refreshing my memory of the hideous scene in Paris, and wondering why I
+had condoned the offence by staying an hour longer under my husband's
+protection.
+
+And then there was always another force at work within me--my own secret
+passion. Though sometimes I felt myself to be a wretched sinner and
+thought the burden I had to bear was heaven's punishment for my guilty
+love, at other times my whole soul rose in revolt, and I cried out not
+merely for separation from my husband but for absolute sundering.
+
+Twice during the painful period of the house-party I heard from Martin.
+His first letter was full of accounts of the far-reaching work of his
+expedition--the engaging of engineers, electricians, geologists and
+masons, and the shipping of great stores of wireless apparatus--for his
+spirits seemed to be high, and life was full of good things for him.
+
+His second letter told me that everything was finished, and he was to
+visit the island the next week, going first to "the old folks" and
+coming to me for a few days immediately before setting sail.
+
+That brought matters to a head, and compelled me to take action.
+
+It may have been weak of me, but not wanting a repetition of the scene
+with Father Dan, (knowing well that Martin would not bear it with the
+same patience) I sent the second letter to Alma, asking if the
+arrangement would be agreeable. She returned it with the endorsement
+(scribbled in pencil across the face), "Certainly; anything to please
+_you_, dear."
+
+I submitted even to that. Perhaps I was a poor-spirited thing, wanting
+in proper pride, but I had a feeling that it was not worth while to
+waste myself in little squibs of temper, because an eruption was coming
+(I was sure of that) in which Martin would be concerned on my side, and
+then everybody and everything would be swept out of the path of my life
+for ever.
+
+Martin came. In due course I read in the insular newspapers of his
+arrival on the island--how the people had turned out in crowds to cheer
+him at the pier, and how, on reaching our own village the neighbours (I
+knew the names of all of them) had met him at the railway station and
+taken him to his mother's house, and then lighted fires on the mountains
+for his welcome home.
+
+It cut me to the heart's core to think of Martin amid thrilling scenes
+like those while I was here among degrading scenes like these. My love
+for Martin was now like a wound and I resolved that, come what might,
+before he reached Castle Raa I should liberate myself from the thraldom
+of my false position.
+
+Father Dan's counsels had faded away by this time. Though I had prayed
+for strength to bear my burden there had been no result, and one
+morning, standing before the figure of the Virgin in my bedroom, I felt
+an impulse to blow out her lamp and never to light it again.
+
+The end of it all was that I determined to see the Bishop and my
+father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, and perhaps my father himself, that I
+might know one way or the other where I was, and what was to become of
+me. But how to do this I could not see, having a houseful of people who
+were nominally my guests.
+
+Fortune--ill-fortune--favoured me. News came that my father had suddenly
+fallen ill of some ailment that puzzled the doctors, and making this my
+reason and excuse I spoke to my husband, asking if I might go home for
+two or three days.
+
+"Why not?" he said, in the tone of one who meant, "Who's keeping you?"
+
+Then in my weakness I spoke to Alma, who answered:
+
+"Certainly, my sweet girl. We shall miss you _dreadfully_, but it's your
+duty. And then you'll see that _dear_ Mr. . . . What d'ye callum?"
+
+Finally, feeling myself a poor, pitiful hypocrite, I apologised for my
+going away to the guests also, and they looked as if they might say:
+"We'll survive it, perhaps."
+
+The night before my departure my maid said:
+
+"Perhaps your ladyship has forgotten that my time's up, but I'll stay
+until you return if you want me to."
+
+I asked her if she would like to stay with me altogether and she said:
+
+"Indeed I should, my lady. Any woman would like to stay with a good
+mistress, if she _is_ a little quick sometimes. And if you don't want me
+to go to your father's I may be of some use to you here before you come
+back again."
+
+I saw that her mind was still running on divorce, but I did not reprove
+her now, for mine was turning in the same direction.
+
+Next morning most of the guests came to the hail door to see me off, and
+they gave me a shower of indulgent smiles as the motor-car moved away.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Before going to my father's house I went to the Bishop's. Bishop's Court
+is at the other side of the island, and it was noon before I drove under
+its tall elm trees, in which a vast concourse of crows seemed to be
+holding a sort of general congress.
+
+The Bishop was then at his luncheon, and after luncheon (so his liveried
+servant told me) he usually took a siesta. I have always thought it was
+unfortunate for my interview that it came between his food and his
+sleep.
+
+The little reception-room into which I was shown was luxuriously, not to
+say gorgeously, appointed, with easy chairs and sofas, a large portrait
+of the Pope, signed by the Holy Father himself, and a number of pictures
+of great people of all kinds--dukes, marquises, lords, counts--as well
+as photographs of fashionable ladies in low dress inscribed in several
+languages to "My dear Father in God the Lord Bishop of Ellan."
+
+The Bishop came to me after a few minutes, smiling and apparently at
+peace with all the world. Except that he wore a biretta he was
+dressed--as in Rome--in his long black soutane with its innumerable
+buttons, his silver-buckled shoes, his heavy gold chain and jewelled
+cross.
+
+He welcomed me in his smooth and suave manner, asking if he could offer
+me a little refreshment; but, too full of my mission to think of eating
+and drinking, I plunged immediately into the object of my visit.
+
+"Monsignor," I said, "I am in great trouble. It is about my marriage."
+
+The smile was smitten away from the Bishop's face by this announcement.
+
+"I am sorry," he said. "Nothing serious, I trust?"
+
+I told him it was very serious, and straightway I began on the spiritual
+part of my grievance--that my husband did not love me, that he loved
+another woman, that the sacred sacrament of my marriage. . . .
+
+"Wait," said the Bishop, and he rose to close the window, for the
+clamour of the crows was deafening--a trial must have been going on in
+the trees. Returning to his seat he said:
+
+"Dear lady, you must understand that there is one offence, and only one,
+which in all Christian countries and civilised communities is considered
+sufficient to constitute a real and tangible grievance. Have you any
+evidence of that?"
+
+I knew what he meant and I felt myself colouring to the roots of my
+hair. But gulping down my shame I recounted the story of the scene in
+Paris and gave a report of my maid's charges and surmises.
+
+"Humph!" said the Bishop, and I saw in a moment that he was going to
+belittle my proofs.
+
+"Little or no evidence of your own, apparently. Chiefly that of your
+maid. And ladies' maids are notorious mischief-makers."
+
+"But it's true," I said. "My husband will not deny it. He cannot."
+
+"So far as I am able to observe what passes in the world," said the
+Bishop, "men in such circumstances always can and do deny it."
+
+I felt my hands growing moist under my gloves. I thought the Bishop was
+trying to be blind to what he did not wish to see.
+
+"But I'm right, I'm sure I'm right," I said.
+
+"Well, assuming you _are_ right, what is it, dear lady, that you wish me
+to do?"
+
+For some minutes I felt like a fool, but I stammered out at length that
+I had come for his direction and to learn what relief the Church could
+give me.
+
+"H'm!" said the Bishop, and then crossing one leg over the other, and
+fumbling the silver buckle of his shoe, he said:
+
+"The Church, dear lady, does indeed provide alleviation in cases of dire
+necessity. It provides the relief of separation--always deploring the
+necessity and hoping for ultimate reconciliation. But to sanction the
+separation of a wife from her husband because--pardon me, I do not say
+this is your case--she finds that he does not please her, or
+because--again I do not say this is your case--she fancies that somebody
+else pleases her better. . . ."
+
+"Monsignor," I said, feeling hot and dizzy, "we need not discuss
+separation. I am thinking of something much more serious."
+
+Never shall I forget the expression of the Bishop's face. He looked
+aghast.
+
+"My good lady, surely you are not thinking of divorce?"
+
+I think my head must have dropped as in silent assent, for in a
+peremptory and condemnatory manner the Bishop took me to task, asking if
+I did not know that the Catholic Church did not recognise divorce under
+any circumstances, and if I had forgotten what the Holy Father himself
+(pointing up to the portrait) had said to me--that when I entered into
+the solemn contract of holy matrimony I was to do so in the full
+consciousness that it could not be broken but by death.
+
+"The love in which husband and wife contract to hold each other in holy
+wedlock is typified by the love of Christ for His Church, and as the one
+can never be broken, neither can the other."
+
+"But my husband does not love me," I said. "Neither do I love him, and
+therefore the contract between us is broken already."
+
+The Bishop was very severe with me for this, telling me that as a good
+child of the Church, I must never, never say that again, for though
+marriage was a contract it differed from all other contracts whatsoever.
+
+"When you married your husband, dear lady, you were bound to him not by
+your own act alone, but by a mysterious power from which neither of you
+can ever free yourself. The power that united you was God, and whom God
+has joined together no man may put asunder."
+
+I felt my head drooping. The Bishop was saying what I had always been
+taught, though in the torment of my trouble and the fierce fire of my
+temptation I had forgotten it.
+
+"The civil law _might_ divorce you," continued the Bishop. "I don't
+know--I can say nothing about that. But it would have _no right_ to do
+so because the law can have no right to undo what God Himself has done."
+
+Oh, it was cruel! I felt as if the future of my life were darkening
+before me--as if the iron bars of a prison were closing upon me, and
+fetters were being fixed on every limb.
+
+"But even if the civil law _could_ and _would_ divorce you," said the
+Bishop, "think of the injury you would be inflicting on the Church.
+Yours was what is called a mixed marriage, and the Church does not
+favour such marriages, but it consented in this case, and why? Because
+it hoped to bring back an erring family in a second generation to the
+fold of the faith. Yet what would you be doing? Without waiting for a
+second generation you would he defeating its purpose."
+
+A cold chill seemed to creep to my heart at these words. Was it the
+lost opportunity the Bishop was thinking of, instead of the suffering
+woman with her bruised and bleeding soul?
+
+I rose to go. The Bishop rose with me, and began to counsel forgiveness.
+
+"Even if you _have_ suffered injury, dear lady," he said--"I don't say
+you haven't--isn't it possible to forgive? Remember, forgiveness is a
+divine virtue, enjoined on us all, and especially on a woman towards the
+man she has married. Only think! How many women have to practise
+it--every day, all the world over!"
+
+"Ah, well!" I said, and walked to the door.
+
+The Bishop walked with me, urging me, as a good daughter of the Church,
+to live at peace with my husband, whatever his faults, and when my
+children came (as please God they would) to "instil into them the true
+faith with all a mother's art, a mother's tenderness," so that the
+object of my marriage might be fulfilled, and a good Catholic become the
+heir to Castle Raa.
+
+"So the Church can do nothing for me?" I said.
+
+"Nothing but pray, dear lady," said the Bishop.
+
+When I left him my heart was in fierce rebellion; and, since the Church
+could do nothing, I determined to see if the law could do anything, so I
+ordered my chauffeur to drive to the house of my father's advocate at
+Holmtown.
+
+The trial in the trees was over by this time, and a dead crow tumbled
+from one of the tall elms as we passed out of the grounds.
+
+Holmtown is a little city on the face of our bleak west coast, dominated
+by a broad stretch of sea, and having the sound of the waves always
+rumbling over it. Mr. Curphy's house faced the shore and his office was
+an upper room plainly furnished with a writing desk, a deal table, laden
+with law books and foolscap papers, a stiff arm-chair, covered with
+American leather, three or four coloured engravings of judges in red and
+ermine, a photograph of the lawyer himself in wig and gown, an
+illuminated certificate of his membership of a legal society, and a
+number of lacquered tin boxes, each inscribed with the name of a
+client--the largest box bearing the name of "Daniel O'Neill."
+
+My father's advocate received me with his usual bland smile, gave me his
+clammy fat hand, put me to sit in the arm-chair, hoped my unexpected
+visit did not presage worse news from the Big house, and finally asked
+me what he could do.
+
+I told my story over again, omitting my sentimental grievances and
+coming quickly, and with less delicacy, to the grosser facts of my
+husband's infidelity.
+
+The lawyer listened with his head aside, his eyes looking out on the sea
+and his white fingers combing his long brown beard, and before I had
+finished I could see that he too, like the Bishop, had determined to see
+nothing.
+
+"You may be right," he began. . . .
+
+"I _am_ right!" I answered.
+
+"But even if you _are_, I am bound to tell you that adultery is not
+enough of itself as a ground for divorce."
+
+"Not enough?"
+
+"If you were a man it would be, but being a woman you must establish
+cruelty as well."
+
+"Cruelty? Isn't it all cruelty?" I asked.
+
+"In the human sense, yes; in the legal sense, no," answered the lawyer.
+
+And then he proceeded to explain to me that in this country, unlike some
+others, before a woman could obtain a divorce from her husband she had
+to prove that he had not only been unfaithful to her, but that he had
+used violence to her, struck her in the face perhaps, threatened her or
+endangered her life or health.
+
+"Your husband hasn't done that, has he? No? I thought not. After all
+he's a gentleman. Therefore there is only one other ground on which you
+could establish a right to divorce, namely desertion, and your husband
+is not likely to run away. In fact, he couldn't. It isn't to his
+interest. We've seen to all that--_here_," and smiling again, the lawyer
+patted the top of the lacquered box that bore my father's name.
+
+I was dumbfounded. Even more degrading than the fetters whereby the
+Church bound me to my marriage were the terms on which the law would
+release me.
+
+"But assuming that you _could_ obtain a divorce," said the lawyer, "what
+good would it do you? You would have to relinquish your title."
+
+"I care nothing about my title," I replied.
+
+"And your position."
+
+"I care nothing about that either."
+
+"Come, come," said the lawyer, patting my arm as if I had been an angry
+child on the verge of tears. "Don't let a fit of pique or spleen break
+up a marriage that is so suitable from the points of property and
+position. And then think of your good father. Why did he spend all that
+money in setting a ruined house on its legs again? That he might carry
+on his name in a noble family, and through your children, and your
+children's children. . . ."
+
+"Then the law can do nothing for me?" I said, feeling sick and sore.
+
+"Sorry, very sorry, but under present conditions, as far as I can yet
+see, nothing," said the lawyer.
+
+"Good-day, sir," I said, and before he could have known what I was doing
+I had leapt up, left the room, and was hurrying downstairs.
+
+My heart was in still fiercer rebellion now. I would go home. I would
+appeal to my father. Hard as he had always been with me he was at least
+a man, not a cold abstraction, like the Church and the law, without
+bowels of compassion or sense of human suffering.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Although I had sent word that I was coming home, there was no one to
+welcome me when I arrived.
+
+Aunt Bridget was out shopping, and Betsy Beauty (in the sulks with me,
+as I afterwards heard, for not asking her to the house-party) had run
+upstairs on hearing our horn, so I went direct to my father's room.
+
+Nessy MacLeod answered my knock, but instead of opening the door to let
+me in, she slid out like a cat and closed it behind her. Never had her
+ungainly figure, her irregular features, and her red head seemed to me
+so repugnant. I saw at once that she was giving herself the airs of
+housekeeper, and I noticed that she was wearing the bunch of keys which
+used to dangle from Aunt Bridget's waist when I was a child.
+
+"Your father is ill," she said.
+
+I told her I knew that, and it was one of the reasons I was there.
+
+"Seriously ill," she said, standing with her back to the door. "The
+doctor says he is to be kept perfectly quiet."
+
+Indignant at the effrontery of the woman who was trying to keep me out
+of my father's room, I said:
+
+"Let me pass, please."
+
+"S'sh! He has a temperature, and I don't choose that anybody shall
+disturb him to-day."
+
+"Let me pass," I repeated, and I must have pitched my voice so high that
+my father heard it.
+
+"Is that Mary?" came from the other side of the door, whereupon Nessy
+beat a retreat, and at the next moment I was in my father's room.
+
+His massive and powerful head was propped up with pillows in the
+camp-bed which was all he ever slept on, and he was looking so ill and
+changed in so short a time that I was shocked, as well as ashamed at the
+selfishness of having thought only of myself all the morning.
+
+But he would listen to no sympathy, protesting there was little or
+nothing the matter with him, that "Conrad was croaking about cancer,"
+but the doctor was a fool.
+
+"What about yourself, though?" he said. "Great doings at the Castle,
+they're telling me."
+
+I thought this a favourable opportunity to speak about my own affairs,
+so I began on my story again, and though I found it harder to tell now
+that my listener was my father, I struggled on and on, as well as I
+could for the emotion that was choking me.
+
+I thought he would pity me. I expected him to be angry. Although he was
+showing me some of the contemptuous tenderness which he had always
+assumed towards my mother, yet I was his daughter, and I felt sure that
+he would want to leap out of bed that he might take my husband by the
+throat and shake him as a terrier shakes a rat. But what happened was
+something quite different.
+
+Hardly had I begun when he burst out laughing.
+
+"God bless my soul," he cried, "you're never going to lose your stomach
+over a thing like that?"
+
+I thought he had not understood me, so I tried to speak plainer.
+
+"I see," he said. "Sweethearting some other woman, is he? Well, what of
+it? He isn't the first husband who has done the like, and I guess he
+won't be the last."
+
+Still I thought I had not made myself clear, so I said my husband had
+been untrue to me, that his infidelities under my own roof had degraded
+me in my own eyes and everybody else's, that I could not bear to live
+such a life any longer and consequently. . . .
+
+"Consequently," said my father, "you come to me to fight your battles
+for you. No, no, fight them yourself, gel. No father-in-law ought to
+interfere."
+
+It was a man's point of view I suppose, but I was ready to cry with
+vexation and disappointment, and though I conquered the impulse to do
+that I could go no farther.
+
+"Who's the woman?" he asked.
+
+I told him it was one of our house-party.
+
+"Then cut her out. I guess you're clever enough to do it, whoever she
+is. You've got the looks too, and I don't grudge you the money. Cut her
+out--that's the best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're
+the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come
+whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's
+apron-strings at the first scratch she gets outside."
+
+He had been reaching forward, but he now fell back on his pillows,
+saying:
+
+"I see how it is, though. Women without children are always vapouring
+about their husbands, as if married life ought to be a garden of Eden.
+One woman, one man, and all the rest of the balderdash. I sot your Aunt
+Bridget on you before, gel, and I'll have to do it again I'm thinking.
+But go away now. If I'm to get better I must have rest. Nessy!"
+(calling) "I've a mort o' things to do and most everything is on my
+shoulders. Nessy! My medicine! Nessy! Nessy! Where in the world has that
+girl gone to?"
+
+"I'm here, Daniel," said Nessy MacLeod coming back to the room; and as I
+went out and passed down the corridor, with a crushed and broken spirit
+and the tears ready to gush from my eyes, I heard her coaxing him in her
+submissive and insincere tones, while he blamed and scolded her.
+
+Half an hour afterwards Aunt Bridget came to me in my mother's room.
+Never in my life before had I been pleased to see her. She, at least,
+would see my situation with a woman's eyes. But I was doomed to another
+disappointment.
+
+"Goodness me, girl," she cried, "what's this your father tells me? One
+of your own guests, is it? That one with the big eyes I'll go bail.
+Well, serve you right, I say, for bringing a woman like that into the
+house with your husband--so smart and such a quality toss with her. If
+you were lonely coming home why didn't you ask your aunt or your first
+cousin? There would have been no trouble with your husband then--not
+about me at all events. But what are you thinking of doing?"
+
+"Getting a divorce," I answered, firmly, for my heart was now aflame.
+
+If I had held a revolver in Aunt Bridget's face she could not have
+looked more shocked.
+
+"Mary O'Neill, are you mad?" she cried. "Divorce indeed! No woman of
+our family has ever disgraced herself like that. What will your father
+say? What's to happen to Betsy Beauty? What are people going to think
+about me?"
+
+I answered that I had not made my marriage, and those who had made it
+must take the consequences.
+
+"What does that matter now? Hundreds of thousands of women have married
+the wrong man of their own free will, but if every woman who has made a
+rue-bargain were to try to get out of it your way where would the world
+be, I wonder? Perhaps you think you could marry somebody else, but you
+couldn't. What decent man wants to marry a divorced woman even if she
+_is_ the injured party?"
+
+"Then you think I ought to submit--tamely submit to such infidelities?"
+I asked.
+
+"Sakes alive," said Aunt Bridget, "what else can you do? Men are
+polygamous animals, and we women have to make up our minds to it.
+Goodness knows I had to when the old colonel used to go hanging around
+those English barmaids at the 'Cock and Hen.' Be a little blind,
+girl--that's what nine wives out of ten have to be every day and every
+night and all the world over."
+
+"Will that make my husband any better?" I asked.
+
+"I don't say it will," said Aunt Bridget. "It will make _you_ better,
+though. What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve for. That's
+something, isn't it?"
+
+When I went to bed that night my whole soul was in revolt. The Church,
+the law, society, parental power, all the conventions and
+respectabilities seemed to be in a conspiracy to condone my husband's
+offence and to make me his scapegoat, doomed to a life of hypocrisy and
+therefore immorality and shame. I would die rather than endure it. Yes,
+I would die that very day rather than return to my husband's house and
+go through the same ordeal again.
+
+But next morning when I thought of Martin, as I always did on first
+awakening, I told myself that I would live and be a clean woman in my
+own eyes _whatever the World might think of me_.
+
+Martin was now my only refuge, so I would tell him everything. It would
+be hard to do that, but no matter, I would crush down my modesty and
+tell him everything. And then, whatever he told me to do I should do it.
+
+I knew quite well what my resolution meant, what it implied and
+involved, but still I thought, "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do
+it_."
+
+I remembered what the Countess in Rome had said about a life of
+"complete emancipation" as an escape from unhappy marriage, and even yet
+I thought "_Whatever he tells me to do I will do it_."
+
+After coming to that conclusion I felt more at ease and got up to dress.
+
+It was a beautiful morning, and I looked down into the orchard, where
+the apples were reddening under the sunshine and the gooseberries were
+ripening under their hanging boughs, when in the quiet summer air I
+heard a footstep approaching.
+
+An elderly woman in an old-fashioned quakerish bonnet was coming up the
+drive. She carried a little bunch of red and white roses, and her face,
+which was very sweet and simple, wore the pathetic expression of a child
+in trouble.
+
+It was Martin's mother. She was coming to see me, and at the first sight
+of her something told me that my brave resolution was about to be
+broken, and I was going to be shaken to the depths of my being.
+
+I heard the bell of the front door ringing. After a moment a maid came
+up and said:
+
+"Mrs. Doctor Conrad has called to see your ladyship."
+
+"Bring her here," I answered.
+
+My heart was in my mouth already.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+When Martin's mother came into the room she looked nervous and almost
+frightened, as if she had charged herself with a mission which she was
+afraid to fulfil. But I put her to sit in my mother's easy chair and sat
+on the arm of it myself, and then she seemed calmer and more
+comfortable.
+
+In spite of the silver threads in the smooth hair under her poke bonnet
+her dear face was still the face of a child, and never before had it
+seemed to me so helpless and child-like.
+
+After a moment we began to talk of Martin. I said it must be a great
+happiness to her to have him back after his long and perilous voyage;
+and she answered that it was, but his visit was so short, only four days
+altogether, although the doctor and she had looked forward to it so
+long.
+
+"That's not Martin's fault, though," she said. "He's such a good son. I
+really, really think no mother ever had such a good son. But when
+children grow up they can't always be thinking of the old people, can
+they? That's why I say to the doctor, 'Doctor,' I say, 'perhaps we were
+the same ourselves when we were young and first loved each other.'"
+
+Already I thought I saw vaguely what the dear soul had come to tell me,
+but I only said I supposed Martin was still with them.
+
+She told me no, he had gone to King George's. That was his old school,
+and being prize-giving day the masters had asked him to the sports and
+to the dinner that was to be given that night before the breaking-up for
+the holidays.
+
+"The boys will give him a cheer, I know they will," she said.
+
+I said of course he would be back to-morrow, but again she said no; he
+had gone for good, and they had said good-bye to him. When he left King
+George's he was to go on to Castle Raa. Didn't I know that? He had said
+he would telegraph to me. But being from home perhaps I had not yet
+received his message. Oh yes, he was going on to the Castle to-morrow
+night and would stay there until it was time to leave the island.
+
+"I'm so glad," I said, hardly knowing with what fervour I had said it,
+until I saw the same expression of fear come back to the sweet old face.
+
+"Martin will be glad, too," she said, "and that's why I've come
+to see you."
+
+"That?"
+
+"You won't be cross with me, will you? But Martin is so fond of
+you. . . . He always has been fond of you, ever since he was a
+boy . . . but this time. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This time I thought . . . I really, really thought he was too fond of
+you."
+
+I had to hold my breast to keep down the cry of joy that was rising to
+my throat, but the dear soul saw nothing.
+
+"Not that he said so--not to say said so, but it's a mother to see
+things, isn't it? And he was talking and talking so much about Mary
+O'Neill that I was frightened--really frightened."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+"He's so tender-hearted, you see. And then you . . . you're such a
+wonderful woman grown. Tommy the Mate says there hasn't been the like of
+you on this island since they laid your mother under the sod. It's truth
+enough, too--gospel truth. And Martin--Martin says there isn't your
+equal, no, not in London itself neither. So . . . so," she said,
+trembling and stammering, "I was thinking . . . I was thinking he was
+only flesh and blood like the rest of us, poor boy, and if he got to be
+_too_ fond of you . . . now that you're married and have a husband, you
+know. . . ."
+
+The trembling and stammering stopped her for a moment.
+
+"They're saying you are not very happy in your marriage neither. Times
+and times I've heard people saying he isn't kind to you, and they
+married you against your will. . . . So I was telling myself if that's
+so, and Martin and you came together now, and you encouraged him, and
+let him go on and anything came of it . . . any trouble or disgrace or
+the like of that . . . it would be such a terrible cruel shocking thing
+for the boy . . . just when everybody's talking about him and speaking
+so well too."
+
+It was out at last. Her poor broken-hearted story was told. Being a
+married woman, unhappily married, too, I was a danger to her beloved
+son, and she had come to me in her sweet, unmindful, motherly
+selfishness to ask me to protect him _against myself_.
+
+"Whiles and whiles I've been thinking of it," she said. "'What will I
+do?' I've been asking myself, and sometimes I've been thinking I would
+speak to Martin. I didn't dare do it, though. But when I heard last
+night that you had come home to see your father, I said: 'Doctor, I'll
+go over and speak to herself.' 'You'll never do that, Christian Ann,'
+said the doctor. 'Yes, I will,' I said. 'I'll speak to the young
+mistress herself. She may be a great lady now, but haven't I nursed her
+on my knee? She'll never do anything to harm my boy, if I ask her not
+to. No indeed she won't. Not Mary O'Neill. I'll never believe it of her.
+Never in this world.'"
+
+The sweet old face was beaming but it was wet with tears, too, and while
+trying to get out her pocket-handkerchief, she was fumbling with the
+flowers which she was still holding and passing from hand to hand.
+
+"Let me take the roses," I said as well as I could, for I could scarcely
+say anything.
+
+"I brought them for you," she said, and then she laughed, a little
+confusedly, at her own forgetfulness.
+
+"To be sure they're nothing to the green-house ones you'll have at the
+Castle, but I thought you'd like them for all that. They're from the
+tree outside the window of your own little room. We call it your room
+still--the one you slept in when you came in your little velvet frock
+and pinnie, singing carols to my door. 'Mary O'Neill's room,' Martin
+called it then, and it's been the same to us ever since."
+
+This touched me so deeply that, before I knew what I was doing, I was
+putting my arm about her waist and asking her to tell me what she wished
+me to do and I would do it.
+
+"Will you, though?" she said, and then one by one she propounded the
+artless little schemes she had concocted to cure Martin of what she
+conceived to be his love for me.
+
+Her first thought was that I might make excuse of my father's illness to
+remain where I was until the time came for Martin to leave the island;
+but she repented of this almost immediately, remembering that Martin was
+set on seeing me, ('I _must_ see her,' he had said) and if he did not
+see me he would be so downhearted.
+
+Then she thought I might praise up my husband to Martin, saying what a
+fine man he was to be sure, and how good he had been to me, and what a
+proud woman I was to be married to him; but she was ashamed of that
+almost as soon as she had said it, for it might not be true, and Martin
+might see I was pretending.
+
+Finally, she suggested that in order to create a coolness between Martin
+and myself I might try not to be so nice to him, speaking short to him
+sometimes, and even harsh and angry; but no, that would be too cruel,
+especially from me, after all these years, just when he was going so far
+away, too, and only the Lord and the blessed saints knew what was to
+become of him.
+
+It was Martin, Martin, always Martin. Still in her sweet motherly
+selfishness she could think of nobody else. Fondly as she loved me, it
+never occurred to her for a moment that if I did what she wished and
+sent Martin away from me, I too would suffer. But a harder heart than
+mine would have melted at the sight of her perplexity and distress, and
+when with a helpless look she said:
+
+"I don't know what you are to do--I really, really don't," I comforted
+her (needing comfort so much myself), and told her I would find a way of
+my own to do what she desired.
+
+"Will you, though?" she said.
+
+"Indeed I will."
+
+"And you won't send him away sore-hearted, either?"
+
+"Indeed I won't."
+
+"I knew you would say that. May the Lord and His holy Mother bless you!"
+
+She was weeping tender, copious, blessed tears by this time, but there
+were smiles behind them.
+
+"Not that there's another woman in the world I would rather give him to
+if things were as they used to be. But they're different now, are they
+not?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, they're different now," I answered.
+
+"But are you sure you're not cross with me for coming?"
+
+"Oh, no, no," I said, and it was all I _could_ say for my voice was
+failing me.
+
+She gave a sigh of inexpressible relief and then rose to go.
+
+"I must be going now. The doctor is digging in the garden and he hasn't
+had his breakfast. But I put the pot on the _slouree_ to boil and it
+will be ready for the porridge."
+
+She got as far as the door and then turned and said:
+
+"I wish I had a photo of you--a right one, just as you are at this very
+minute. I'd hang it in your own room, and times and times in the day I'd
+be running upstairs to look at it. But it's all as one. I've got a photo
+of you here," (touching her breast) "and sometimes I can see it as plain
+as plain."
+
+I could not speak after that, but I kissed her as she was going out, and
+she said:
+
+"That's nice, now! Good-bye, _my chree!_ You'll not be going home until
+to-morrow, it's like, so perhaps I'll be putting another sight on you.
+Good-bye!"
+
+I went to the window to watch her as she walked down the drive. She was
+wiping her eyes, but her head was up and I thought her step was light,
+and I was sure her face was shining.
+
+God bless her! The dear sweet woman! Such women as she is, and my mother
+was--so humble and loving, so guileless and pure, never saying an unkind
+word or thinking an unkind thought--are the flowers of the world that
+make the earth smell sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she was gone and I remembered the promise I had made to her I asked
+myself what was to become of me. If I could neither divorce my husband
+under any circumstances without breaking a sacrament of the Church, nor
+love Martin and be loved by him without breaking the heart of his
+mother, where was I?
+
+I intended to go home the following morning; I was to meet Martin the
+following night. What was I to say? What was I to do?
+
+All day long these questions haunted me and I could find no answers. But
+towards evening I took my troubles where I had often taken them--to
+Father Dan.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+The door of the Presbytery was opened by Father Dan's Irish housekeeper,
+a good old soul whose attitude to her master was that of a "moithered"
+mother to a wilful child.
+
+All the way up the narrow staircase to his room, she grumbled about his
+reverence. Unless he was sickening for the scarlet fever she didn't know
+in her seven sinses what was a-matter with him these days. He was as
+white as a ghost, and as thin as a shadder, and no wonder neither, for
+he didn't eat enough to keep body and soul together.
+
+Yesterday itself she had cooked him a chicken as good as I could get at
+the Big House; "done to a turn, too, with a nice bit of Irish bacon on
+top, and a bowl of praties biled in their jackets and a basin of
+beautiful new buttermilk;" but no, never a taste nor a sup did he take
+of it.
+
+"It's just timpting Providence his reverence is, and it'll be glory to
+God if you'll tell him so."
+
+"What's that you're saying about his reverence, Mrs. Cassidy?" cried
+Father Dan from the upper landing.
+
+"I'm saying you're destroying yourself with your fasting and praying and
+your midnight calls at mountain cabins, and never a ha'porth of anything
+in your stomach to do it on."
+
+"Whisht then, Mrs. Cassidy, it's tay-time, isn't it? So just step back
+to your kitchen and put on your kittle, and bring up two of your best
+china cups and saucers, and a nice piece of buttered toast, not
+forgetting a thimbleful of something neat, and then it's the mighty
+proud woman ye'll be entoirely to be waiting for once on the first lady
+in the island. . . . Come in, my daughter, come in."
+
+He was laughing as he let loose his Irish tongue, but I could see that
+his housekeeper had not been wrong and that he looked worn and troubled.
+
+As soon as he had taken me into his cosy study and put me to sit in the
+big chair before the peat and wood fire, I would have begun on my
+errand, but not a word would he hear until the tea had come up and I had
+taken a cup of it.
+
+Then stirring the peats for light as well as warmth, (for the room was
+dark with its lining of books, and the evening was closing in) he said:
+
+"Now what is it? Something serious--I can see that much."
+
+"It _is_ serious, Father Dan."
+
+"Tell me then," he said, and as well as I could I told him my story.
+
+I told him that since I had seen him last, during that violent scene at
+Castle Raa, my relations with my husband had become still more painful;
+I told him that, seeing I could not endure any longer the degradation of
+the life I was living, I had thought about divorce; I told him that
+going first to the Bishop and afterwards to my father's advocate I had
+learned that neither the Church nor the law, for their different
+reasons, could grant me the relief I required; and finally, in a faint
+voice (almost afraid to hear myself speak it), I told him my solemn and
+sacred secret--that whatever happened I could not continue to live where
+I was now living because I loved somebody else than my husband.
+
+While I was speaking Father Dan was shuffling his feet and plucking at
+his shabby cassock, and as soon as I had finished he flashed out on me
+with an anger I had never seen in his face or heard in his voice before.
+
+"I know who it is," he said. "It's Martin Conrad."
+
+I was so startled by this that I was beginning to ask how he knew, when
+he cried:
+
+"Never mind how I know. Perhaps you think an old priest has no eyes for
+anything but his breviary, eh? It's young Martin, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The wretch, the rascal, the scoundrel! If he ever dares to come to this
+house again, I'll slam the door in his face."
+
+I knew he loved Martin almost as much as I did, so I paid no heed to the
+names he was calling him, but I tried to say that I alone had been to
+blame, and that Martin had done nothing.
+
+"Don't tell me he has done nothing," cried Father Dan. "I know what he
+has done He has told you he loves you, hasn't he?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He has been colloguing with you, then, and getting you to say things?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Pitying and sympathising with you, anyway, in your relations with your
+husband?"
+
+"Not for one moment."
+
+"He had better not! Big man as he is in England now, I'll warm his
+jacket for him if he comes here making mischief with a child of mine.
+But thank the Lord and the holy saints he's going away soon, so you'll
+see no more of him."
+
+"But he is coming to Castle Raa," I said, "and I am to see him to-morrow
+night."
+
+"That too! The young scoundrel!"
+
+I explained that my husband had invited him, being prompted to do so by
+the other woman.
+
+"Worse and worse!" cried Father Dan. "Don't you see that they're laying
+a trap for you, and like two young fools you're walking directly into
+it. But no matter! You mustn't go."
+
+I told him that I should be compelled to do so, for Martin was coming on
+my account only, and I could neither tell him the truth nor make an
+excuse that would not be a falsehood.
+
+"Well, well, perhaps you're right there. It's not the best way to meet
+temptation to be always running away from it. That's Irish, but it's
+true enough, though. You must conquer this temptation, my child; you
+must fight it and overcome it."
+
+"But I've tried and tried and I cannot," I said.
+
+And then I told him the story of my struggle--how love had been no
+happiness to me but only a cruel warfare, how I had suffered and prayed
+and gone to mass and confession, yet all to no purpose, for my affection
+for Martin was like a blazing fire which nothing could put out.
+
+Father Dan's hands and lips were trembling while I spoke and I could see
+that he was shuddering with pity for me, so I went on to say that if God
+had put this pure and holy love into my heart could it be wrong--
+
+"Stop a minute," cried Father Dan. "Who says God put it there? And who
+informed you it was pure and holy? Let us see where we are. Come, now.
+You say the Bishop told you that you could never be divorced under any
+circumstances?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Yet you wish to leave your husband?"
+
+"How can I help it? The life I have been living is too horrible."
+
+"Never mind that now. You wish to leave your husband, don't you?"
+
+"I . . . I must."
+
+"And you want to go to this . . . this young . . . in short, you want to
+go to Martin Conrad? That's the plain truth, isn't it? Don't deny it.
+Very well, let us call things by their proper names. What is the fact?
+You are asking me--me, your spiritual Father--to allow you to live a
+life of open adultery. That's what it comes to. You know it is, and God
+and His holy Mother have mercy on your soul!"
+
+I was so startled and shocked by his fierce assault, and by the cruel
+climax it had come to, that I flung up my hands to my face and kept them
+there, for I felt as if my brain had been stunned and my heart was
+bursting.
+
+How long I sat like this, with my hidden face to the fire, I do not
+know; but after a long silence in which I heard nothing but my own
+heaving breath, I became aware that Father Dan had drawn one of my hands
+down to his knee and was smoothing it with his own.
+
+"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth," he
+said. "It's hard to bear; I know it's hard; but it's as hard for him as
+for you, my child. Think--only think what he is trying to save you from.
+If you do what you wish to do, you will put yourself out of communion.
+If you put yourself out of communion, you will cease to be a Catholic.
+What will become of you then, my daughter? What will be left to replace
+the consolations of the Church--in sorrow, in suffering, in the hour of
+death? Have you never thought of that?"
+
+I never had. It was thrilling through and through me.
+
+"You say you cannot live any longer with your husband because he has
+broken the vow he made to you at your marriage. But think how many many
+thousands of poor women all the world over are doing it every
+day--living with adulterous husbands for the sake of their homes and
+children. And not for the sake of their homes and children only, but for
+the sake of their souls and their religion. Blessed, blessed martyrs,
+though we know nothing about them, holding society and the Church and
+the human family together."
+
+I was trembling all over. I felt as if Father Dan were trying to take
+away from me the only sweet and precious thing in my life that was left.
+
+"Then you think you cannot live without the one you love, because all
+your heart is full of him. But think of the holy women, the holy saints,
+who have gone through the same temptation--fighting against it with all
+the strength of their souls until the very wounds of our blessed Lord
+have been marked on their bodies."
+
+He was creeping closer to my side. His voice was quivering at my ear. I
+was struggling hard, and still trembling all over.
+
+"Hold fast by the Church, my child. It is your only refuge. Remember
+that God made your marriage and you cannot break it without forsaking
+your faith. Can anything be good that is bought at such a price? Nothing
+in this world! When you meet to-morrow night--you two children--tell him
+that. Tell him I told you to say so. . . . I love you both. Don't break
+your old priest's heart. He's in trouble enough for you already. Don't
+let him think that he must lose you altogether. And then remember your
+mother, too--that saint in heaven who suffered so long and was patient
+. . . Everything will depend upon you, my child. In matters of this kind
+the woman is the stronger vessel. Be strong for him also. Renounce your
+guilty love, my daughter--"
+
+"But I cannot, I cannot," I said. "I love him, and I cannot give him
+up!"
+
+"Let us ask God to help you," said Father Dan, and still holding my hand
+he drew me down to my knees and knelt beside me. The room was dark by
+this time, and only the sullen glow from the peat fire was on our faces.
+
+Then in a low voice, so low that it was like his throbbing whisper
+before the altar, when he raised the Sacred host, Father Dan prayed for
+me (calling me his dear child whom God had committed to his care) that I
+might keep my marriage vow and be saved from the temptation to break it.
+
+His beautiful prayer or his throbbing voice, or both together, had a
+great effect upon me, and when I rose to my feet, I felt stronger.
+Although Martin was as dear to me as ever, I thought I saw my way at
+last. If he loved me as I loved him, I had to be brave for both of us. I
+had to oppose to the carnal instinct of love the spiritual impulse of
+renunciation. Yes, yes, that was what I had to do.
+
+Father Dan saw me to the door.
+
+"Give my love to my boy," he said, "and don't forget what I told you to
+tell him."
+
+"I'll tell him," I replied, for though I knew my heart was bleeding I
+felt calm and more courageous.
+
+It was milking time and the cows were lowing in the byre when I crossed
+the fields and the farm-yard on my way back to my father's house.
+
+Early next morning I left it for Castle Raa.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+Although it was mid-day before I reached the Castle, the gate to the
+park had not been opened, the drive was deserted and even the great door
+to the house itself was closed.
+
+And when, in answer to my ringing, one of the maids came after a certain
+delay, wearing neither apron nor cap, I found the hall empty and no sign
+of life in the house, except a shrill chorus of laughter which came from
+the servants' quarters.
+
+"What's the meaning of this?" I asked, but before the girl could reply,
+Price who had come down to take my wraps said:
+
+"I'll tell your ladyship presently."
+
+As we were going upstairs she told me that the entire house-party had
+that morning gone off on a cruise in Mr. Eastcliff's yacht, that they
+would be away several days, and that Madame had left a letter for me
+which was supposed to explain everything.
+
+I found it on the mantelpiece in my boudoir under an open telegram which
+had been stuck into the edge of the bevelled glass. The telegram, which
+was addressed to me, was from Martin.
+
+     _"Expect to arrive to-morrow evening. Staying until Wednesday
+     afternoon. If not convenient wire Principal's House, King George's
+     College."_
+
+"To-morrow'?"
+
+"That means to-day," said Price. "The telegram came yesterday. Madame
+opened it and she told me to say--"
+
+"Let me read her letter first," I said.
+
+The letter ran as follows:
+
+     _"My Dearest Mary,
+
+     "You will be astonished to find the house empty and all your
+     racketty guests gone. Let me explain, and if you are angry about
+     what has happened you must lay all the blame on me.
+
+     "Well, you see, my dear, it was arranged nearly a month ago that
+     before we left your delightful house we should make a little cruise
+     round your charming island. But we had not expected that this would
+     come off so soon, when suddenly and unexpectedly that silly Mr.
+     Eastcliff, who has no more brains than a spring chicken, remembered
+     that he had promised to visit a friend who has taken a shoot in
+     Skye. Result--we had to make the cruise immediately or not at all,
+     and yet behold! our hostess was away on an urgent call of sickness,
+     and what in the world were we to do without her?
+
+     "Everybody was in a quandary--that wise Mr. Vivian saying it would
+     be 'jolly bad form by Jove' to go without you, while Mr. Eastcliffs
+     'deelightfully vicked' little Camilla declared it would be
+     'vilaynous,' and your husband vowed that his Margaret Mary could
+     not possibly be left behind.
+
+     "It was then that a certain friend of yours took the liberty of
+     remembering that you did not like the sea, and that even if you had
+     been here and had consented to go with us it would have been only
+     out of the sweetness of your heart, which I've always known to be
+     the tenderest and most unselfish in the world.
+
+     "This seemed to satisfy the whole house and everybody was at ease,
+     when lo! down on us like a thunderbolt came the telegram from Mr.
+     Conrad. Thinking it might require to be repeated, I took the
+     liberty of opening it, and then we were in a plight, I assure you.
+
+     "What on earth was he to think of our leaving the house when he was
+     on the point of arriving? And, above all, how were we to support
+     the disappointment of missing him--some of us, the women
+     especially, and myself in particular, being just crazy to see him
+     again?
+
+     "This nearly broke down our plans altogether, but once more I came
+     to the rescue by remembering that Mr. Conrad was not coming to see
+     us but you, and that the very kindest thing we could do for a
+     serious person of his kind would be to take our racketty presence
+     out of the way.
+
+     "That contented everybody except my mother, who--would you believe
+     it?--had gotten some prudish notions into her head about the
+     impropriety of leaving you alone, and declared her intention of
+     staying behind to keep you in countenance! We soon laughed her out
+     of that, though, and now, to relieve you of her company, we are
+     carrying her away with us--which will be lots of fun, for she's as
+     fond of water as a cat and will fancy she is seasick all the time.
+
+     "Good-bye, dearest! We're just off. I envy you. You happy, happy
+     girl! I am sure you will have such a good time. What a man! As
+     natural as nature! I see, by the insular paper that your islanders
+     adore him.
+
+     "Hope you found your father better. Another wonderful man! Such an
+     original type, too! Good-bye, my dearest dear_, ALMA.
+
+     "_P.S. Have missed you so much, darling! Castle Raa wasn't the same
+     place without you--I assure you it wasn't_."
+
+While I was turning this letter over in my hand, wondering what the
+beautiful fiend had meant by it, my maid, who was standing by, was
+visibly burning with a desire to know its contents and give me the
+benefit of her own interpretation.
+
+I told her in general what Alma had said and she burst into little
+screams of indignation.
+
+"Well, the huzzy! The wicked huzzy! That's all she is, my lady, begging
+your pardon, and there's no other name for her. Arranged a month ago,
+indeed! It was never thought of until last night after Mr. Conrad's
+telegram came."
+
+"Then what does it mean?"
+
+"I can tell your ladyship what it means, if you'll promise not to fly
+out at me again. It means that Madame wants to stand in your shoes, and
+wouldn't mind going through the divorce court to do so. And seeing that
+you can't be tempted to divorce your husband because you are a Catholic,
+she thinks your husband, who isn't, might be tempted to divorce you. So
+she's setting a trap for you, and she expects you to fall into it while
+she's away, and if you do. . . ."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Oh, trust _me_, your ladyship. I haven't been keeping my ears closed
+while your ladyship has been away, and if that chatterbox of a maid of
+hers hadn't been such a fool I suppose she would have been left behind
+to watch. But there's somebody else in the house who thinks she has a
+grievance against you, and if listening at keyholes will do
+anything . . . Hush!"
+
+Price stopped suddenly with her finger to her lip, and then going on
+tiptoe to the door she opened it with a jerk, when the little
+housekeeper was to be seen rising to an upright position while
+pretending that she had slipped.
+
+"I only came to ask if her ladyship had lunched?" she said.
+
+I answered that I had not, and then told her (so as to give her no
+further excuse for hanging about me) that in future she was to take her
+orders from Price--an announcement which caused my maid to stand several
+inches taller in her shoes, and sent the housekeeper hopping downstairs
+with her beak in the air like an injured cockatoo.
+
+All the afternoon I was in a state of the utmost agitation, sometimes
+wondering what Martin would think of the bad manners of my husband, who
+after inviting him had gone away just as he was about to arrive;
+sometimes asking myself, with a quiver of shame, if he would imagine
+that this was a scheme of my own contriving; but oftenest remembering my
+resolution of renunciation and thinking of the much fiercer fight that
+was before me now that I had to receive and part with him alone.
+
+More than once I had half a mind to telegraph to Martin putting him off,
+and though I told myself that to do so would not be renunciation but
+merely flight from temptation, I always knew at the bottom of my heart
+that I really wanted him to come.
+
+Nevertheless I vowed to my very soul that I should be strong--strong in
+every word and look--and if Alma was daring me I should defy her, and
+she would see that I should neither yield nor run away.
+
+Thus I entrenched myself at last in a sort of bright strong faith in my
+power to resist temptation. But I must leave it to those who know better
+than I the way to read a woman's heart to say how it came to pass that
+towards five o'clock, when I heard the sound of wheels and going on to
+my balcony saw a jaunting-car at the front entrance, and then
+opening my door heard Martin's great voice in the hall, I flew
+downstairs--literally flew--in my eagerness to welcome him.
+
+There he was in his brown Harris tweeds and soft slouch hat with such an
+atmosphere of health and sweep of winds about him as almost took away my
+breath.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried, and I am sure his eyes brightened at the sight of me
+for they were like the sea when the sun shines on it.
+
+"You're better, aren't you?" he said. "No need to ask that, though--the
+colour in your face is wonderful."
+
+In spite of my resolution, and the attempt I made to show him only a
+kind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed. Also I could
+not help it if, while going upstairs and telling him what had happened
+to the house-party, I said he was doomed to the disappointment of having
+nobody except myself for company, and then, woman-like, waited eagerly
+for what he would say.
+
+"So they're all gone except yourself, are they?" he said.
+
+"I'm afraid they are," I answered.
+
+"Well, if it had been the other way about, and you had gone and they had
+stayed, by the stars of God, I _should_ have been disappointed. But
+things being as they are, we'll muddle through, shan't we?"
+
+Not all the vows in the world could prevent me from finding that answer
+delightful, and when, on entering my boudoir, he said:
+
+"Sorry to miss Madame though. I wanted a word with that lady before I
+went down to the Antarctic," I could not resist the mischievous impulse
+to show him Alma's letter.
+
+While he read it his bright face darkened (for all the world like a
+jeweller's window when the shutter comes down on it), and when he had
+finished it he said once more:
+
+"I hate that woman! She's like a snake. I'd like to put my foot on it."
+
+And then--
+
+"She may run away as much as she likes, but I _will_ yet, you go bail, I
+will."
+
+He was covered with dust and wanted to wash, so I rang for a maid, who
+told me that Mr. and Mrs. Eastcliff's rooms had been prepared for Mr.
+Conrad. This announcement (though I tried to seem unmoved) overwhelmed
+me with confusion, seeing that the rooms in question almost communicated
+with my own. But Martin only laughed and said:
+
+"Stunning! We'll live in this wing of the house and leave the rest of
+the old barracks to the cats, should we?"
+
+I was tingling with joy, but all the same I knew that a grim battle was
+before me.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+By the time he returned from his room I had tea served in my boudoir,
+and while we sat facing the open door to the balcony he told me about
+his visit to his old school; how at the dinner on the previous night
+the Principal had proposed his health, and after the lads had sung
+"Forty Years On" he had told them yarns about his late expedition until
+they made the long hiss of indrawn breath which is peculiar to boys when
+they are excited; how they had followed him to his bedroom as if he had
+been the Pied Piper of Hamelin and questioned him and clambered over him
+until driven off by the house-master; and how, finally, before he was
+out of bed this morning the smallest scholar in the junior house, a tiny
+little cherub with the face of his mother, had come knocking at his door
+to ask if he wanted a cabin boy.
+
+Martin laughed as if he had been a boy himself (which he always was and
+always will be) while telling me these stories, and I laughed too,
+though with a certain tremor, for I was constantly remembering my
+resolution and feeling afraid to be too happy.
+
+After tea we went out on to the balcony, and leaned side by
+side over the crumbling stone balustrade to look at the lovely
+landscape--loveliest when the sun is setting on it--with the
+flower-garden below and the headland beyond, covered with heather and
+gorse and with a winding white path lying over it like the lash of a
+whip until it dipped down to the sea.
+
+"It's a beautiful old world, though, isn't it?" said Martin.
+
+"Isn't it?" I answered, and we looked into each other's eyes and smiled.
+
+Then we heard the light _shsh_ of a garden hose, and looking down saw an
+old man watering the geraniums.
+
+"Sakes alive! It's Tommy the Mate," cried Martin, and leaving me on the
+balcony he went leaping down the stone stairway to greet his old
+comrade.
+
+"God bless me!" said Tommy. "Let me have a right look at ye. Yes, yes,
+it's himself, for sure."
+
+A little gale of tender memories floated up to me from my childhood at
+seeing those two together again, with Martin now standing head and
+shoulders above the old man's Glengarry cap.
+
+"You've been over the highways of the sea, farther than Franklin
+himself, they're telling me," said Tommy, and when Martin, laughing
+merrily, admitted that he had been farther south at all events, the old
+sailor said:
+
+"Well, well! Think of that now! But wasn't I always telling the
+omadhauns what you'd be doing some day?"
+
+Then with a "glime" of his "starboard eye" in my direction he said:
+
+"You haven't got a woman yet though? . . . No, I thought not. You're
+like myself, boy--there's not many of them sorts _in_ for you."
+
+After that, and a more undisguised look my way, the old man talked about
+me, still calling me the "lil misthress" and saying they were putting a
+power of gold on my fingers, but he would be burning candles to the
+miracles of God to see the colour of it in my cheeks too.
+
+"She's a plant that doesn't take kindly to a hot-house same as this,"
+(indicating the house) "and she'll not be thriving until somebody's
+bedding her out, I'm thinking."
+
+It was Saturday, and after dinner Martin proposed that we should walk to
+the head of the cliff to see Blackwater by night, which was a wonderful
+spectacle, people said, at the height of the season, so I put a silk
+wrap over my head and we set out together.
+
+There was no moon and few stars were visible, but it was one of those
+luminous nights in summer which never forget the day. Therefore we
+walked without difficulty along the white winding path with its nutty
+odour of the heather and gorse until we came near the edge of the cliff,
+and then suddenly the town burst upon our view, with its promenades,
+theatres, and dancing palaces ablaze with electric light, which was
+reflected with almost equal brilliance in the smooth water of the bay.
+
+We were five miles from Blackwater, but listening hard we thought we
+could hear, through the boom of the sea on the dark cliffs below us, the
+thin sounds of the bands that were playing in the open-air pavilions,
+and looking steadfastly we thought we could see, in the black patches
+under the white light, the movement of the thousands of persons who were
+promenading along "the front."
+
+This led Martin to talk of my father, saying as we walked back, with the
+dark outlines of the sleeping mountains confronting us, what a
+marvellous man he had been to transform in twenty years the little
+fishing and trading port into a great resort for hundreds of thousands
+of pleasure-seekers.
+
+"But is he any better or happier for the wealth it has brought him, and
+for the connections he has bought with it? Is anybody any better?" said
+Martin.
+
+"I know one who isn't," I answered.
+
+I had not meant to say that. It had slipped out unawares, and in my
+confusion at the self-revelation which it seemed to make, I tripped in
+the darkness and would have fallen if Martin had not caught me up.
+
+In doing this he had to put his arms about me and to hold me until I was
+steady on my feet, and having done so he took my hand and drew it
+through his arm and in this way we walked the rest of the way back.
+
+It would be impossible and perhaps foolish to say what that incident
+meant to me. I felt a thrill of joy, a quivering flood of delight which,
+with all the raptures of my spiritual love, had never come to me before.
+
+Every woman who loves her husband must know what it is, but to me it was
+a great revelation. It was just as if some new passion had sprung into
+life in me at a single moment. And it had--the mighty passion that lies
+at the root of our being, the overwhelming instinct of sex which, taking
+no account of religion and resolutions, sweeps everything before it like
+a flood.
+
+I think Martin must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to
+speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness
+that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but
+the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of
+the sea which we were leaving behind us--nothing but that and the quick
+beating in my own breast.
+
+When we came to the garden the frowning face of the old house was in
+front of us, and it was all in darkness, save for the light in my room
+which came out on to the balcony. Everything was quiet. The air was
+breathless. There was not a rustle in the trees.
+
+We took two or three turns on the lawn in front of my windows, saying
+nothing but feeling terribly, fearfully happy. After a few moments (or
+they seemed few) a cuckoo clock on my desk struck eleven, and we went up
+the stone stairway into my boudoir and parted for the night.
+
+Even then we did not speak, but Martin took my hand and lifted my
+fingers to his lips, and the quivering delight I had been feeling ever
+since I slipped on the headland rushed through me again.
+
+At the next moment I was in my room. I did not turn on the light. I
+undressed in the darkness and when my maid came I was in bed. She
+wanted to tell me about a scene with the housekeeper in the kitchen, but
+I said:
+
+"I don't want to talk to-night, Price."
+
+I did not know what was happening to me. I only knew, for the first time
+that night, that above everything else I was a woman, and that my
+renunciation, if it was ever to come to pass, would be a still more
+tragic thing than I had expected.
+
+My grim battle had begun.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke in the morning I took myself severely to task. Was this how
+I was fulfilling the promise I had made to Martin's mother, or preparing
+to carry out the counsel of Father Dan?
+
+"I must be more careful," I told myself. "I must keep a stronger hold of
+myself."
+
+The church bells began to ring, and I determined to go to mass. I wanted
+to go alone and much as I grudged every minute of Martin's company which
+I lost, I was almost glad when, on going into the boudoir with my missal
+in my hand, I found him at a table covered with papers and heard him
+say:
+
+"Helloa! See these letters and telegrams? Sunday as it is I've got to
+answer them."
+
+Our church was a little chapel-of-ease on the edge of my husband's
+estate, opened, after centuries of neglect, by the bad Lord Raa, in his
+regenerate days, for the benefit of the people of his own village. It
+was very sweet to see their homely faces as they reverently bowed and
+rose, and even to hear their creachy voices when they joined in the
+singing of the Gloria.
+
+Following the gospel there was a sermon on the words "Lead us not into
+temptation but deliver us from evil." The preacher was a young curate,
+the brother of my husband's coachman; and it occurred to me that he
+could know very little of temptation for himself, but the instruction he
+gave us was according to the doctrine of our Church, as I had received
+it from the Reverend Mother and the Cardinals who used to hold retreats
+at the convent.
+
+"Beware of the temptations of the flesh, my children," said the priest.
+"The Evil One is very subtle, and not only in our moments of pride and
+prosperity, but also in our hours of sorrow and affliction, he is for
+ever waiting and watching to betray us to our downfall and damnation."
+
+In the rustling that followed the sermon a poor woman who sat next to
+me, with a print handkerchief over her head, whispered in my ear that
+she was sorry she had not brought her husband, for he had given way to
+drink, poor fellow, since the island had had such good times and wages
+had been so high.
+
+But the message came closer home to me. Remembering the emotions of the
+night before, I prayed fervently to be strengthened against all
+temptation and preserved from all sin. And when the mass was resumed I
+recalled some of the good words with which I had been taught to assist
+at the Holy Sacrifice--praying at the _Credo_ that as I had become a
+child in the bosom of the Church I might live and die in it.
+
+When the service was over I felt more at ease and I emptied my purse, I
+remember, partly into the plate and partly to the poor people at the
+church door.
+
+It was in this spirit that I returned home in the broad sunshine of
+noonday. But half way up the drive I met Martin walking briskly down to
+meet me. He was bareheaded and in flannels; and I could not help it if
+he looked to me so good, so strong, and so well able to protect a woman
+against every danger, that the instructions I had received in church,
+and the resolutions I had formed there, seemed to run out of my heart as
+rapidly as the dry sand of the sea-shore runs through one's fingers.
+
+"Helloa!" he cried, as usual. "The way I've been wasting this wonderful
+morning over letters and telegrams! But not another minute will I give
+to anything under the stars of God but you."
+
+If there was any woman in the world who could have resisted that
+greeting I was not she, and though I was a little confused I was very
+happy.
+
+As we walked back to the house we talked of my father and his sudden
+illness, then of his mother and my glimpse of her, and finally of
+indifferent things, such as the weather, which had been a long drought
+and might end in a deluge.
+
+By a sort of mutual consent we never once spoke of the central subject
+of our thoughts--my marriage and its fatal consequences--but I noticed
+that Martin's voice was soft and caressing, that he was walking close to
+my side, and that as often as I looked up at him he was looking down at
+me and smiling.
+
+It was the same after luncheon when we went out into the garden and sat
+on a seat in the shrubbery almost immediately facing my windows, and he
+spread a chart on a rustic table and pointing to a red line on it said:
+
+"Look, this is the course of our new cruise, please God."
+
+He talked for a long time, about his captain and crew; the scientific
+experts who had volunteered to accompany him, his aeronautic outfit, his
+sledges and his skis; but whatever he talked about--if it was only his
+dogs and the food he had found for them--it was always in that soft,
+caressing voice which made me feel as if (though he never said one word
+of love) he were making love to me, and saying the sweetest things a man
+could say to a woman.
+
+After a time I found myself answering in the same tones, and even when
+speaking on the most matter-of-fact subjects I felt as if I were saying
+the sweetest things a woman could say to a man.
+
+We sat a long time so, and every moment we were together seemed to make
+our relation more perilous, until at length the sweet seductive twilight
+of the shortening autumn day began to frighten me, and making excuse of
+a headache I said I must go indoors.
+
+He walked with me up the stone-stairway and into my boudoir, until we
+got to the very door of my room, and then suddenly he took up both my
+hands and kissed them passionately.
+
+I felt the colour rushing to my cheeks and I had an almost irresistible
+impulse to do something in return. But conquering it with a great
+effort, I turned quickly into my bedroom, shut the door, pulled down the
+blinds and then sat and covered my face and asked myself, with many
+bitter pangs, if it could possibly be true (as I had been taught to
+believe) that our nature was evil and our senses were always tempting us
+to our destruction.
+
+Several hours passed while I sat in the darkness with this warfare going
+on between my love and my religion, and then Price came to dress me for
+dinner, and she was full of cheerful gossip.
+
+"Men are _such_ children," she said; "they can't help giving themselves
+away, can they?"
+
+It turned out that after I had left the lawn she had had some
+conversation with Martin, and I could see that she was eager to tell me
+what he had said about myself.
+
+"The talk began about your health and altered looks, my lady. 'Don't
+you think your mistress is looking ill?' said he. 'A little,' I said.
+'But her body is not so ill as her heart, if you ask me,' said I."
+
+"You never said that, Price?"
+
+"Well, I could not help saying it if I thought so, could I?"
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He didn't say anything then, my lady, but when I said, 'You see, sir,
+my lady is tied to a husband she doesn't love,' he said, 'How can she,
+poor thing? 'Worse than that,' I said, 'her husband loves another
+woman.' 'The fool! Where does he keep his eyes?' said he. 'Worse still,'
+said I, 'he flaunts his infidelities in her very face.' 'The brute!' he
+said, and his face looked so fierce that you would have thought he
+wanted to take his lordship by the throat and choke him. 'Why doesn't
+she leave the man?' said he. 'That's what I say, sir, but I think it's
+her religion,' I said. 'Then God help her, for there's no remedy for
+that,' said he. And then seeing him so down I said, 'But we women are
+always ruled by our hearts in the long run.' 'Do you think so?' said he.
+'I'm sure of it,' said I, 'only we must have somebody to help us,' I
+said. 'There's her father,' said he. 'A father is of no use in a case
+like this,' I said, 'especially such a one as my lady's is, according to
+all reports. No,' said I, 'it must be somebody else--somebody who cares
+enough for a woman to risk everything for her, and just take her and
+make her do what's best for herself whether she likes it or not. Now if
+somebody like that were to come to my lady, and get her out of her
+trouble,' I said. . . . 'Somebody will,' said he. 'Make your mind easy
+about that. Somebody will,' he said, and then he went on walking to and
+fro."
+
+Price told this story as if she thought she was bringing me the gladdest
+of glad tidings; but the idea that Martin had come back into my life to
+master me, to take possession of me, to claim me as his own (just as he
+did when I was a child) and thereby compel me to do what I had promised
+his mother and Father Dan not to do--this was terrifying.
+
+But there was a secret joy in it too, and every woman will know what I
+mean if I say that my heart was beating high with the fierce delight of
+belonging to somebody when I returned to the boudoir where Martin was
+waiting to sit down to dinner.
+
+Then came a great surprise.
+
+Martin was standing with his back to the fire-place, and I saw in a
+moment that the few hours which had intervened had changed him as much
+as they had changed me.
+
+"Helloa! Better, aren't we?" he cried, but he was now cold, almost
+distant, and even his hearty voice seemed to have sunk to a kind of
+nervous treble.
+
+I could not at first understand this, but after a while I began to see
+that we two had reached the point beyond which it was impossible to go
+without encountering the most tremendous fact of our lives--my marriage
+and all that was involved by it.
+
+During dinner we spoke very little. He seemed intentionally not to look
+at me. The warm glances of his sea-blue eyes, which all the afternoon
+had been making the colour mount to my cheeks, had gone, and it sent a
+cold chill to my heart to look across the table at his clouded face. But
+sometimes when he thought my own face was down I was conscious that his
+eyes were fixed on me with a questioning, almost an imploring gaze. His
+nervousness communicated itself to me. It was almost as if we had begun
+to be afraid of each other and were hovering on the brink of fatal
+revelations.
+
+When dinner was over, the table cleared and the servants gone, I could
+bear the strain no longer, so making excuse of a letter I had to write
+to the Reverend Mother I sat down at my desk, whereupon Martin lit a
+cigar and said he would stroll over the headland.
+
+I heard his footsteps going down the stone stairway from the balcony; I
+heard their soft thud on the grass of the lawn; I heard their sharper
+crackle on the gravel of the white path, and then they mingled with the
+surge and wash of the flowing tide and died away in the distance.
+
+I rose from the desk, and going over to the balcony door looked out into
+the darkness. It was a beautiful, pathetic, heart-breaking night. No
+moon, but a perfect canopy of stars in a deep blue sky. The fragrance of
+unseen flowers--sweetbriar and rose as well as ripening fruit--came up
+from the garden. There was no wind either, not even the rustle of a
+leaf, and the last bird of evening was silent. All the great orchestra
+of nature was still, save for the light churning of the water running in
+the glen and the deep organ song of the everlasting sea.
+
+"What can I do?" I asked myself.
+
+Now that Martin was gone I had begun to understand him. His silence had
+betrayed his heart to me even more than his speech could have done.
+Towering above him like a frowning mountain was the fact that I was a
+married woman and he was trying to stand erect in his honour as a man.
+
+"He must be suffering too," I told myself.
+
+That was a new thought to me and it cut me to the quick.
+
+When it came to me first I wanted to run after him and throw myself into
+his arms, and then I wanted to run away from him altogether.
+
+I felt as if I were on the brink of two madnesses--the madness of
+breaking my marriage vows and the madness of breaking the heart of the
+man who loved me.
+
+"Oh, what can I do?" I asked myself again.
+
+I wanted him to go; I wanted him to stay; I did not know what I wanted.
+At length I remembered that in ordinary course he would be going in two
+days more, and I said to myself:
+
+"Surely I can hold out that long."
+
+But when I put this thought to my breast, thinking it would comfort me,
+I found that it burnt like hot iron.
+
+Only two days, and then he would be gone, lost to me perhaps for ever.
+Did my renunciation require that? It was terrible!
+
+There was a piano in the room, and to strengthen and console myself in
+my trouble I sat down to it and played and sang. I sang "Ave Maria
+Stella."
+
+I was singing to myself, so I know I began softly--so softly that my
+voice must have been a whisper scarcely audible outside the room--
+
+     "_Hail thou star of ocean,
+     Portal of the sky_."
+
+But my heart was full and when I came to the verses which always moved
+me most--
+
+     "_Virgin of all virgins,
+     To thy shelter take us_"--
+
+my voice, without my knowing it, may have swelled out into the
+breathless night until it reached Martin, where he walked on the dark
+headland, and sounded to him like a cry that called him back.
+
+I cannot say. I only know that when with a thickening throat I had come
+to an end, and my forehead had fallen on to the key-board, and there was
+no other sound in the air but the far-off surging of the sea. I heard
+somebody calling me in a soft and tremulous whisper,
+
+"Mary!"
+
+It was he. I went out to the balcony and there he was on the lawn below.
+The light of the room was on him and never before had I seen his strong
+face so full of agitation.
+
+"Come down," he said. "I have something to say to you."
+
+I could not resist him. He was my master. I had to obey.
+
+When I reached the bottom of the stairway he took my hand, and I did not
+know whether it was his hand or mine that was trembling. He led me
+across the lawn to the seat in the shrubbery that almost faced my
+windows. In the soft and soundless night I could hear his footsteps on
+the turf and the rustle of my dress over the grass.
+
+We sat, and for a moment he did not speak. Then with a passionate rush
+of words he said:
+
+"Mary, I hadn't meant to say what I'm going to say now, but I can't do
+anything else. You are in trouble, and I can't stand by and see you so
+ill-used. I can't and I won't!"
+
+I tried to answer him, but my throat was fluttering and I could not
+speak.
+
+"It's only a few days before I ought to sail, but they may be enough in
+which to do something, and if they're not I'll postpone the expedition
+or put it off, or send somebody in my place, for go away I cannot and
+leave you like this."
+
+I tried to say that he should not do that whatever happened to me, but
+still I could not speak.
+
+"Mary. I want to help you. But I can only do so if you give me the
+_right_ to do it. Nobody must tell me I'm a meddler, butting in where I
+have no business. There are people enough about you who would be only
+too ready to do that--people related to you by blood and by law."
+
+I knew what he was coming to, for his voice was quivering in my ears
+like the string of a bow.
+
+"There is only one sort of right, Mary, that is above the right of
+blood, and you know what that is."
+
+My eyes were growing so dim that I could hardly see the face which was
+so close to mine.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I have always cared for you. Surely you know that. By
+the saints of God I swear there has never been any other girl for me,
+and now there never will he. Perhaps I ought to have told you this
+before, and I wanted to do so when I met you in Rome. But it didn't
+seem fair, and I couldn't bring myself to do it."
+
+His passionate voice was breaking; I thought my heart was breaking also.
+
+"All I could do I did, but it came to nothing; and now you are here and
+you are unhappy, and though it is so late I want to help you, to rescue
+you, to drag you out of this horrible situation before I go away. Let me
+do it. Give me the right of one you care enough for to allow him to
+speak on your behalf."
+
+I knew what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of
+a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of
+Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak I
+struggled to pray.
+
+"Don't say you can't. If you do I shall go away a sorrowful man. I shall
+go at once too--to-night or to-morrow morning at latest, for my heart
+bleeds to look at you and I can't stay here any longer to see you
+suffer. It is not torture to me--it's hell!"
+
+And then the irrepressible, overwhelming, inevitable moment came. Martin
+laid hold of my right hand and said in his tremulous voice:
+
+"Mary . . . Mary . . . I . . . I love you!"
+
+I could hear no more. I could not think or pray or resist any longer.
+The bitter struggle was at an end. Before I knew what I was doing I was
+dropping my head on to his breast and he with a cry of joy was gathering
+me in his arms.
+
+I was his. He had taken his own. Nothing counted in the presence of our
+love. To be only we two together--that was everything. The world and the
+world's laws, the Church and the Canons of the Church were blotted out,
+forgotten, lost.
+
+For some moments I hardly breathed. I was only conscious that over my
+head Martin was saying something that seemed to come to me with all the
+deep and wonderful whispers of his heart.
+
+"Then it's true! It's true that you love me! Yes, it's true! It's true!
+No one shall hurt you again. Never again! No, by the Lord God!"
+
+And then suddenly--as suddenly as the moment of intoxication had come to
+me--I awoke from my delirium. Some little thing awakened me. I hardly
+know what it was. Perhaps it was only the striking of the cuckoo clock
+in my room.
+
+"What are we doing?" I said.
+
+Everything had rolled back on me--my marriage, Father Dan's warning, my
+promise to Martin's mother.
+
+"Where are we?" I said.
+
+"Hush! Don't speak," said Martin. "Let us think of nothing
+to-night--nothing except our love."
+
+"Don't say that," I answered. "We are not free to love each other," and
+then, trying to liberate myself from his encircling arms I cried:
+
+"God help me! God forgive me!"
+
+"Wait!" said Martin, holding me a moment longer. "I know what you feel,
+and I'm not the man to want a girl to wrong her conscience. But there's
+one question I must ask you. If you _were_ free, could you love me
+then?"
+
+"Don't ask me that. I must not answer it."
+
+"You must and shall," said Martin. "Could you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's enough for me--enough for to-night anyway. Have no fear. All
+shall be well. Go to your room now."
+
+He raised me to my feet and led me back to the foot of the balcony, and
+there he kissed my hand and let me go.
+
+"Good night!" he said softly.
+
+"Good night!" I answered.
+
+"God bless you, my pure sweet girl!"
+
+At the next moment I was in my room, lying face down on my bed--seeing
+no hope on any side, and sobbing my heart out for what might have been
+but for the hard law of my religion and the cruel tangle of my fate.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next morning, Monday morning, while I was breakfasting in my bedroom,
+Price came with a message from Martin to say that he was going into the
+glen and wished to know if I would go with him.
+
+I knew perfectly what that meant. He wished to tell me what steps he
+intended to take towards my divorce, and my heart trembled with the
+thought of the answer I had to give him--that divorce for me, under any
+circumstances, was quite impossible.
+
+Sorry as I was for myself I was still more sorry for Martin. I felt
+like a judge who had to pronounce sentence upon him--dooming his dearest
+hopes to painful and instant death.
+
+I could hear him on the lawn with Tommy the Mate, laughing like a boy
+let loose from school, and when I went down to him he greeted me with a
+cry of joy that was almost heart-breaking.
+
+Our way to the glen was through a field of grass, where the dew was
+thick, and, my boots being thin, Martin in his high spirits wished to
+carry me across, and it was only with an effort that I prevented him
+from doing so.
+
+The glen itself when we reached it (it was called Glen Raa) was almost
+cruelly beautiful that day, and remembering what I had to do in it I
+thought I should never be able to get it out of my sight--with its
+slumberous gloom like that of a vast cathedral, its thick arch of
+overhanging boughs through which the morning sunlight was streaming
+slantwards like the light through the windows of a clerestory, its
+running water below, its rustling leaves above, and the chirping of its
+birds on every side, making a sound that was like the chanting of a
+choir in some far-off apse and the rumbling of their voices in the roof.
+
+Two or three times, as we walked down the glen towards a port (Port Raa)
+which lay at the seaward end of it. Martin rallied me on the settled
+gravity of my face and then I had to smile, though how I did so I do not
+know, for every other minute my heart was in my mouth, and never more so
+than when, to make me laugh, he rattled away in the language of his
+boyhood, saying:
+
+"Isn't this stunning? Splendiferous, eh?"
+
+When we came out at the mouth of the port, where a line of little
+stunted oaks leaned landward as with the memory of many a winter's
+storm, Martin said:
+
+"Let us sit down here."
+
+We sat on the sloping bank, with the insects ticking in the grass, the
+bees humming in the air, the sea fowl screaming in the sky, the broad
+sea in front, and the little bay below, where the tide, which was going
+out, had left behind it a sharp reef of black rocks covered with
+sea-weed.
+
+A pleasure-steamer passed at that moment with its flags flying, its
+awnings spread, its decks crowded with excursionists, and a brass hand
+playing one of Sousa's marches, and as soon as it had gone, Martin said:
+
+"I've been thinking about our affair, Mary, how to go to work and all
+that, and of course the first thing we've got to do is to get a
+divorce."
+
+I made no answer, and I tried not to look at him by fixing my eyes upon
+the sea.
+
+"You have evidence enough, you know, and if you haven't there's
+Price--she has plenty. So, since you've given me the right to speak for
+you, dear, I'm going to speak to your father first"
+
+I must have made some half-articulate response, for not understanding me
+he said:
+
+"Oh, I know he'll be a hard nut to crack. He won't want to hear what
+I've got to say, but he has got to hear it. And after all you're his
+daughter, and if he has any bowels of compassion . . ."
+
+Again I must have made some effort to speak, for he said:
+
+"Yes, he's ill, but he has only to set Curphy to work and the lawyer
+will do the rest."
+
+I could not allow him to go any further, so I blurted out somehow that I
+had seen my father already.
+
+"On this subject?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+I told him as well as I could what my father had said, being ashamed to
+repeat it.
+
+"That was only bluff, though," said Martin. "The real truth is that you
+would cease to be Lady Raa and that would be a blow to his pride. Then
+there would no longer be any possibility of establishing a family and
+that would disturb his plans. No matter! We can set Curphy to work
+ourselves."
+
+"But I have seen Mr. Curphy also," I said.
+
+"And what did _he_ say?"
+
+I told him what the lawyer had said and he was aghast.
+
+"Good heavens! What an iniquity! In England too! But never mind! There
+are other countries where this relic of the barbaric ages doesn't exist.
+We'll go there. We must get you a divorce somehow."
+
+My time had come. I could keep back the truth no longer.
+
+"But Martin," I said, "divorce is impossible for me--quite impossible."
+
+And then I told him that I had been to see the Bishop also, and he had
+said what I had known before, though in the pain of my temptation I had
+forgotten it, that the Catholic Church did not countenance divorce
+under any circumstances, because God made marriages and therefore no man
+could dissolve them.
+
+Martin listened intently, and in his eagerness to catch every word he
+raised himself to a kneeling position by my side, so that he was looking
+into my face.
+
+"But Mary, my dear Mary," he said, "you don't mean to say you will allow
+such considerations to influence you?"
+
+"I am a Catholic--what else can I do?" I said.
+
+"But think--my dear, dear girl, think how unreasonable, how untrue, how
+preposterous it all is in a case like yours? God made your marriage?
+Yours? God married you to that notorious profligate? Can you believe
+it?"
+
+His eyes were flaming. I dared not look at them.
+
+"Then think again. They say there's no divorce in the Catholic Church,
+do they? But what are they talking about? Morally speaking you are a
+divorced woman already. Anybody with an ounce of brains can see that.
+When you were married to this man he made a contract with you, and he
+has broken the terms of it, hasn't he? Then where's the contract now? It
+doesn't any longer exist. Your husband has destroyed it."
+
+"But isn't marriage different?" I asked.
+
+And then I tried to tell him what the Bishop had said of the contract of
+marriage being unlike any other contract because God Himself had become
+a party to it.
+
+"What?" he cried. "God become a party to a marriage like yours? My dear
+girl, only think! Think of what your marriage has been--the pride and
+vanity and self-seeking that conceived it, the compulsion that was put
+upon you to carry it through, and then the shame and the suffering and
+the wickedness and the sin of it! Was God a party to the making of a
+marriage like that?"
+
+In his agitation he rose, walked two or three paces in front and came
+back to me.
+
+"Then think what it means if your marriage may not be dissolved. It
+means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so
+degrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must let
+him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and his
+example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives in
+himself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is that what the Church
+asks of you?"
+
+I answered no, and tried to tell him what the Bishop had told me about
+separation, but he interrupted me with a shout.
+
+"Separation? Did he say that? If the Church has no right to divorce you
+what right has it to separate you? Oh, I see what it will say--hope of
+reconciliation. But if you were separated from your husband would you
+ever go back to him? Never in this world. Then what would your
+separation be? Only divorce under another name."
+
+I was utterly shaken. Perhaps I wanted to believe what Martin was
+saying; perhaps I did not know enough to answer him, but I could not
+help it if I thought Martin's clear mind was making dust and ashes of
+everything that Father Dan and the Bishop had said to me.
+
+"Then what can I do?" I asked.
+
+I thought his face quivered at that question. He got up again, and stood
+before me for a moment without speaking. Then he said, with an obvious
+effort--
+
+"If your Church will not allow you to divorce your husband, and if you
+and I cannot marry without that, then . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I didn't mean to propose it . . . God knows I didn't, but when a woman
+. . . when a woman has been forced into a loveless marriage, and it is
+crushing the very soul out of her, and the iron law of her Church will
+not permit her to escape from it, what crime does she commit if
+she . . ."
+
+"Well?" I asked, though I saw what he was going to say.
+
+"Mary," he said, breathing, hard and fast, "you must come to me."
+
+I made a sudden cry, though I tried not to.
+
+"Oh, I know," he said. "It's not what we could wish. But we'll be open
+about it. We'll face it out. Why shouldn't we? I shall anyway. And if
+your father and the Bishop say anything to me I'll tell them what I
+think of the abominable marriage they forced you into. As for you, dear,
+I know you'll have to bear something. All the conventional canting
+hypocrisies! Every man who has bought his wife, and every woman who has
+sold herself into concubinage--there are thousands and thousands of them
+all the world over, and they'll try . . . perhaps they'll try . . . but
+let them try. If they want to trample the life out of you they'll have
+to walk over me first--yes, by God they will!"
+
+"But Martin . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Do you mean that I . . . I am . . . to . . . to live with you without
+marriage?"
+
+"It's the only thing possible, isn't it?" he said. And then he tried to
+show me that love was everything, and if people loved each other nothing
+else mattered--religious ceremonies were nothing, the morality of
+society was nothing, the world and its back-biting was nothing.
+
+The great moment had come for me at last, and though I felt torn between
+love and pity I had to face it.
+
+"Martin, I . . . I can't do it," I said.
+
+He looked steadfastly into my face for a moment, but I dare not look
+back, for I knew he was suffering.
+
+"You think it would be wrong?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"A sin?"
+
+I tried to say "Yes" again, but my reply died in my throat.
+
+There was another moment of silence and then, in a faltering voice that
+nearly broke me down, he said:
+
+"In that case there is nothing more to say. . . . There isn't, is
+there?"
+
+I made an effort to speak, but my voice would not come.
+
+"I thought . . . as there was no other way of escape from this terrible
+marriage . . . but if you think . . ."
+
+He stopped, and then coming closer he said:
+
+"I suppose you know what this means for you, Mary--that after all the
+degradation you have gone through you are shutting the door to a
+worthier, purer life, and that . . ."
+
+I could bear no more. My heart was yearning for him, yet I was compelled
+to speak.
+
+"But would it be a purer life, Martin, if it began in sin? No, no, it
+wouldn't, it couldn't. Oh, you can't think how hard it is to deny myself
+the happiness you offer me. It's harder than all the miseries my husband
+has inflicted upon me. But it wouldn't be happiness, because our sin
+would stand between us. That would always be there, Martin--every day,
+every night, as long as ever we lived. . . . We should never know one
+really happy hour. I'm sure we should not. I should be unhappy myself
+and I should make you unhappy. Oh, I daren't! I daren't! Don't ask me, I
+beg--I beseech you."
+
+I burst into tears after this, and there was a long silence between us.
+Then Martin touched my arm and said with a gentleness that nearly broke
+my heart:
+
+"Don't cry, Mary. I give in. I find I have no will but yours, dear. If
+_you_ can bear the present condition of things, I ought to be able to.
+Let us go back to the house."
+
+He raised me to my feet and we turned our faces homeward. All the
+brightness of the day had gone for both of us by this time. The tide was
+now far out. Its moaning was only a distant murmur. The shore was a
+stretch of jagged black rocks covered with sea-weed.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Notwithstanding Martin's tenderness I had a vague fear that he had only
+pretended to submit to my will, and before the day was over I had proof
+of it.
+
+During dinner we spoke very little, and after it was over we went out to
+the balcony to sit on a big oak seat which stood there.
+
+It was another soft and soundless night, without stars, very dark, and
+with an empty echoing air, which seemed to say that thunder was not far
+off, for the churning of the nightjar vibrated from the glen, and the
+distant roar of the tide, now rising, was like the rumble of drums at a
+soldier's funeral.
+
+Just as we sat down the pleasure-steamer we had seen in the morning
+re-crossed our breadth of sea on its way back to Blackwater; and lit up
+on deck and in all its port-holes, it looked like a floating _cafe
+chantant_ full of happy people, for they were singing in chorus a rugged
+song which Martin and I had known all our lives--
+
+     _Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
+     Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be_.
+
+When the steamer had passed into darkness, Martin said:
+
+"I don't want to hurt you again, Mary, but before I go there's something
+I want to know. . . . If you cannot divorce your husband, and if . . .
+if you cannot come to me what . . . what is left to us?"
+
+I tried to tell him there was only one thing left to us, and (as much
+for myself as for him) I did my best to picture the spiritual heights
+and beauties of renunciation.
+
+"Does that mean that we are to . . . to part?" he said. "You going your
+way and I going mine . . . never to meet again?"
+
+That cut me to the quick, so I said--it was all I could trust myself to
+say--that the utmost that was expected of us was that we should govern
+our affections--control and conquer them.
+
+"Do you mean that we are to stamp them out altogether?" he said.
+
+That cut me to the quick too, and I felt like a torn bird that is
+struggling in the lime, but I contrived to say that if our love was
+guilty love it was our duty to destroy it.
+
+"Is that possible?" he said.
+
+"We must ask God to help us," I answered, and then, while his head was
+down and I was looking out into the darkness, I tried to say that though
+he was suffering now he would soon get over this disappointment.
+
+"Do you _wish_ me to get over it?" he asked.
+
+This confused me terribly, for in spite of all I was saying I knew at
+the bottom of my heart that in the sense he intended I did not and could
+not wish it.
+
+"We have known and cared for each other all our lives, Mary--isn't that
+so? It seems as if there never was a time when we didn't know and care
+for each other. Are we to pray to God, as you say, that a time may come
+when we shall feel as if we had never known and cared for each other at
+all?"
+
+My throat was fluttering--I could not answer him.
+
+"_I_ can't," he said. "I never shall--never as long as I live. No
+prayers will ever help me to forget you."
+
+I could not speak. I dared not look at him. After a moment he said in a
+thicker voice:
+
+"And you . . . will you be able to forget _me_? By praying to God will
+you be able to wipe me out of your mind?"
+
+I felt as if something were strangling me.
+
+"A woman lives in her heart, doesn't she?" he said. "Love is everything
+to her . . . everything except her religion. Will it be possible--this
+renunciation . . . will it be possible for you either?"
+
+I felt as if all the blood in my body were running away from me.
+
+"It will not. You know it will not. You will never be able to renounce
+your love. Neither of us will he able to renounce it. It isn't possible.
+It isn't human. . . . Well, what then? If we continue to love each
+other--you here and I down there--we shall be just as guilty in the eyes
+of the Church, shan't we?"
+
+I did not answer him, and after a moment he came closer to me on the
+seat and said almost in a whisper:
+
+"Then think again, Mary. Only give one glance to the horrible life that
+is before you when I am gone. You have been married a year . . . only a
+year . . . and you have suffered terribly. But there is worse to come.
+Your husband's coarse infidelity has been shocking, but there will be
+something more shocking than his infidelity--his affection. Have you
+never thought of _that_?"
+
+I started and shuddered, feeling as if somebody must have told him the
+most intimate secret of my life. Coming still closer he said:
+
+"Forgive me, dear. I'm bound to speak plainly now. If I didn't I should
+never forgive myself in the future . . . Listen! Your husband will get
+over his fancy for this . . . this woman. He'll throw her off, as he has
+thrown off women of the same kind before. What will happen then? He'll
+remember that you belong to him . . . that he has rights in you . . .
+that you are his wife and he is your husband . . . that the infernal law
+which denies you the position of an equal human being gives him a
+right--a legal right--to compel your obedience. Have you never thought
+of _that_?"
+
+For one moment we looked into each other's eyes; then he took hold of my
+hand and, speaking very rapidly, said:
+
+"That's the life that is before you when I am gone--to live with this
+man whom you loathe . . . year after year, as long as life lasts . . .
+occupying the same house, the same room, the same . . ."
+
+I uttered an involuntary cry and he stopped.
+
+"Martin," I said, "there is something you don't know."
+
+And then, I told him--it was forced out of me--my modesty went down in
+the fierce battle with a higher pain, and I do not know whether it was
+my pride or my shame or my love that compelled me to tell him, but I
+_did_ tell him--God knows how--that I could not run the risk he referred
+to because I was not in that sense my husband's wife and never had been.
+
+The light was behind me, and my face was in the darkness; but still I
+covered it with my hands while I stammered out the story of my marriage
+day and the day after, and of the compact I had entered into with my
+husband that only when and if I came to love him should he claim my
+submission as a wife.
+
+While I was speaking I knew that Martin's eyes were fixed on me, for I
+could feel his breath on the back of my hands, but before I had finished
+he leapt up and cried excitedly:
+
+"And that compact has been kept?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's all right! Don't be afraid. You shall be free. Come in and
+let me tell you how! Come in, come in!"
+
+He took me back into the boudoir. I had no power to resist him. His face
+was as pale as death, but his eyes were shining. He made me sit down and
+then sat on the table in front of me.
+
+"Listen!" he said. "When I bought my ship from the Lieutenant we signed
+a deed, a contract, as a witness before all men that he would give me
+his ship and I would give him some money. But if after all he hadn't
+given me his ship what would our deed have been? Only so much waste
+paper."
+
+It was the same with my marriage. If it had been an honest contract, the
+marriage service would have been a witness before God that we meant to
+live together as man and wife. But I never had, therefore what was the
+marriage service? Only an empty ceremony!
+
+"That's the plain sense of the matter, isn't it?" he cried. "I defy any
+priest in the world to prove the contrary."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, don't you see what it comes to? You are free--morally free at all
+events. You can come to me. You must, too. I daren't leave you in this
+house any longer. I shall take you to London and fix you up there, and
+then, when I tome back from the Antarctic . . ."
+
+He was glowing with joy, but a cold hand suddenly seized me, for I had
+remembered all the terrors of excommunication as Father Dan had
+described them.
+
+"But Martin," I said, "would the Church accept that?"
+
+"What matter whether it would or wouldn't? Our consciences would be
+clear. There would be no sin, and what you were saying this morning
+would not apply."
+
+"But if I left my husband I couldn't marry you, could I?"
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"Then the Church would say that I was a sinful woman living a sinful
+life, wouldn't it?"
+
+"But you wouldn't be."
+
+"All the same the Church would say so, and if it did I should be cut out
+of communion, and if I were cut out of communion I should be cast out of
+the Church, and if I were cast out of the Church . . . what would become
+of me then?"
+
+"But, my dear, dear girl," said Martin, "don't you see that this is not
+the same thing at all? It is only a case of a ceremony. And why should
+a mere ceremony--even if we cannot do away with it--darken a woman's
+life for ever?"
+
+My heart was yearning for love, but my soul was crying out for
+salvation; and not being able to answer him for myself, I told him what
+Father Dan had said I was to say.
+
+"Father Dan is a saint and I love him," he said. "But what can he
+know--what can any priest know of a situation like this? The law of man
+has tied you to this brute, but the law of God has given you to me. Why
+should a marriage service stand between us?"
+
+"But it does," I said. "And we can't alter it. No, no, I dare not break
+the law of the Church. I am a weak, wretched girl, but I cannot give up
+my religion."
+
+After that Martin did not speak for a moment. Then he said:
+
+"You mean that, Mary?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then my heart accused me so terribly of the crime of resisting him
+that I took his hand and held his fingers in a tight lock while I told
+him--what I had never meant to tell--how long and how deeply I had loved
+him, but nevertheless I dared not face the thought of living and dying
+without the consolations of the Church.
+
+"I dare not! I dare not!" I said. "I should be a broken-hearted woman if
+I did, and you don't want that, do you?"
+
+He listened in silence, though the irregular lines in his face showed
+the disordered state of his soul, and when I had finished a wild look
+came into his eyes and he said:
+
+"I am disappointed in you, Mary. I thought you were brave and fearless,
+and that when I showed you a way out of your miserable entanglement you
+would take it in spite of everything."
+
+His voice was growing thick again. I could scarcely bear to listen to
+it.
+
+"Do you suppose I wanted to take up the position I proposed to you? Not
+I. No decent man ever does. But I love you so dearly that I was willing
+to make that sacrifice and count it as nothing if only I could rescue
+you from the misery of your abominable marriage."
+
+Then he broke into a kind of fierce laughter, and said:
+
+"It seems I wasn't wanted, though. You say in effect that my love is
+sinful and criminal, and that it will imperil your soul. So I'm only
+making mischief here and the sooner I get away the better for
+everybody."
+
+He threw off my hand, stepped to the door to the balcony, and looking
+out into the darkness said, between choking laughter and sobs:
+
+"Ellan, you are no place for me. I can't bear the sight of you any
+longer. I used to think you were the dearest spot on earth, because you
+were the home of her who would follow me to the ends of the earth if I
+wanted her, but I was wrong. She loves me less than a wretched ceremony,
+and would sacrifice my happiness to a miserable bit of parchment."
+
+My heart was clamouring loud. Never had I loved him so much as now. I
+had to struggle with myself not to throw myself into his arms.
+
+"No matter!" he said. "I should be a poor-spirited fool to stay where
+I'm not wanted. I must get back to my work. The sooner the better, too.
+I thought I should be counting the days down there until I could come
+home again. But why should I? And why should I care what happens to me?
+It's all as one now."
+
+He stepped back from the balcony with a resolute expression on his
+gloomy face, and I thought for a moment (half hoping and half fearing
+it) that he was going to lay hold of me and tell me I must do what he
+wished because I belonged to him.
+
+But he only looked at me for a moment in silence, and then burst into a
+flood of tears, and turned and ran out of the house.
+
+Let who will say his tears were unmanly. To me they were the bitter cry
+of a great heart, and I wanted to follow him and say, "Take me. Do what
+you like with me. I am yours."
+
+I did not do so. I sat a long time where he had left me and then I went
+into my room and locked the door.
+
+I did not cry. Unjust and cruel as his reproaches had been, I began to
+have a strange wild joy in them. I knew that he would not have insulted
+me like that if he had not loved me to the very verge of madness itself.
+
+Hours passed. Price came tapping at my door to ask if she should lock up
+the house--meaning the balcony. I answered "No, go to bed."
+
+I heard the deadened thud of Martin's footsteps on the lawn passing to
+and fro. Sometimes they paused under my window and then I had a feeling,
+amounting to certainty, that he was listening to hear if I was sobbing,
+and that if I had been he would have broken down my bedroom door to get
+to me.
+
+At length I heard him come up the stone stairway, shut and bolt the
+balcony door, and walk heavily across the corridor to his own room.
+
+The day was then dawning. It was four o'clock.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical fever.
+Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in the cruel
+battle between her religion and her love seemed to flood body and
+soul--joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture--so that I determined (not
+without cause) to make excuse of a headache to stay in bed.
+
+Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged myself
+with the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly of losing
+the few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could not without
+danger meet him again.
+
+I was afraid of him, but I was still more afraid of myself.
+
+Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house, and
+knowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent another
+day in his company it would be impossible to say what might happen.
+
+As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all day in my
+room, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding him good-bye and
+good-luck. It would be a cold end to a long friendship and my heart was
+almost frozen at the thought of it, but it was all I dared do and I saw
+no help for it.
+
+But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate for me!
+
+First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she bombarded
+me with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard that I was ill
+he had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood had been taken out
+of him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but Price, who was artful,
+only laughed and said:
+
+"Men _are_ such funny things, bless them! To think of that fine young
+man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion,
+being scared to death because a little lady has a headache."
+
+All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, and
+towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, saying
+that Tommy the Mate had sent them.
+
+"Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly thing,
+who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I was
+forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, and
+that he had told her not to say so.
+
+"What's he doing now?" I asked.
+
+"Writing a letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it
+up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, I
+can tell you."
+
+I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon it
+came up to me.
+
+It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted
+me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a
+great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with
+all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and
+even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin--my boy
+who could never learn his lessons.
+
+_"Dear Mary,--I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I think
+it's all my fault I am ready to kick myself.
+
+"Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think what
+might happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinking
+it over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anything
+to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so
+when we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on the
+subject--that's a promice.
+
+"I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jaunting
+car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the
+expedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won't
+matter because it's something worse.
+
+"But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to
+the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a
+sand-boy.
+
+"Yours,
+
+"Mart."_
+
+To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate
+verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to
+dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account,
+seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in
+the hands of God.
+
+Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth,
+and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mate
+at the other end of the lawn.
+
+I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I did
+not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yet
+never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the soft
+white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over
+my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck.
+
+Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he had
+dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not know
+what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because it
+was Martin and that was all that mattered to me.
+
+I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was shod in
+white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering
+as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree
+with its little dark head against the sky.
+
+"It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, a truce," I answered, which meant that as this was to be our last
+evening together all painful subjects were to be put aside.
+
+Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look at
+the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with
+low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with
+visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and
+greedy darkness.
+
+During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the one
+subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at being
+children, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St. Mary's Rock.
+
+Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had thought
+so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I called
+him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at every racy word that
+came up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked with
+laughter.
+
+When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When he
+mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" And
+after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island in
+the name of the English crown, and raise the Union Jack on it, I said:
+"Do or die, we allus does that when we're out asploring."
+
+How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed because he
+was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as no
+woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all this
+make-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened me
+for a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as we
+could carry on the game.
+
+It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter had
+tears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting,
+because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, and
+we were compelled to realise what life had done for us.
+
+Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our boat,
+leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising tide
+threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my last
+despairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . and you'll have to give me up
+. . . and leave me here, and save yourself."
+
+It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth ready to
+break up under our feet.
+
+To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared not
+sing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sang
+some of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment I
+twisted round on the piano stool and said:
+
+"I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin's
+company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat with
+William Rufus on my lap."
+
+"I'll bet you anything I can," said Martin.
+
+"Oh, no, you can't," I said.
+
+"Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all," said Martin, and then
+I sang--
+
+     _"Oh, Sally's the gel for me,
+     Our Sally's the gel for me,
+     I'll marry the gel that I love best,
+     When I come back from sea."_
+
+But that arrow of memory had been sharpened on Time's grindstone and it
+seemed to pierce through us, so Martin proposed that we should try the
+rollicking chorus which the excursionists had sung on the
+pleasure-steamer the night before.
+
+He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a
+corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he banged
+away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sang
+together in a wild delightful discord--
+
+     _"Ramsey town, Ramsey town, smiling by the sea,
+     Here's a health to my true love, wheresoe'er she be."_
+
+We laughed again when that was over, but I knew I could not keep it up
+much longer, and every now and then I forgot that I was in my boudoir
+and seemed to see that lonesome plateau, twelve thousand feet above the
+icy barrier that guards the Pole, and Martin toiling through blizzards
+over rolling waves of snow.
+
+Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightning
+for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling along
+them like cannon-balls, and Martin said:
+
+"It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there."
+
+When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off early in
+the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do in
+Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort."
+
+In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself
+down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at
+last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the
+whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the
+beginning of the new.
+
+My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our
+eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and
+trembling.
+
+"So this is . . . the end," he said.
+
+"Yes . . . the end," I answered.
+
+"Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he said. "I
+shall always remember it."
+
+I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that
+would make him forget this one.
+
+"Never in this world!" he answered.
+
+I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return to
+fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said:
+
+"Aw, well, that's all as one now."
+
+I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that he
+and I had been such great, great friends.
+
+He looked at me again, and answered:
+
+"That's all as one also."
+
+I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myself
+in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of
+renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts
+and desires.
+
+"Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you anything."
+
+That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise I
+should always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken,
+the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned.
+
+"All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then my
+throat became so thick that I could not say any more.
+
+After a few moments he said:
+
+"It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don't
+know what is going to happen."
+
+"All that is in God's hands," I said.
+
+"Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now."
+
+It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hard
+with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair.
+
+"You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for
+you."
+
+And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the
+love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I
+actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot
+some day.
+
+"No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me.
+If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if you
+were dead."
+
+There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy
+in it too.
+
+He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In
+spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as
+if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety.
+Nevertheless I said:
+
+"We must say good-night and good-bye now."
+
+"And if it is for ever?"
+
+"Don't say that."
+
+"But if it is?"
+
+"Well, then . . . for ever."
+
+"At least give me something to take away with me," he said.
+
+"Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchief
+which I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up.
+
+I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were
+trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it
+had been the night before.
+
+There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but
+the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips,
+dropped it gently and walked over to the door.
+
+But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him,
+longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my
+heart could warm itself.
+
+Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all
+control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty
+surging river.
+
+Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and
+snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me
+tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a
+quivering, husky voice:
+
+"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because
+you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love
+each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you
+are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."
+
+My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a
+roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman,
+and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession
+of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I
+wanted to give myself up to it.
+
+But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room,
+clashing the door behind him.
+
+I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone
+out with him.
+
+The room seemed to become dark.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+For a moment I stood where Martin had left me, throbbing through and
+through like an open wound, telling myself that he had gone, that I
+should never see him again, and that I had driven him away from me.
+
+Those passionate kisses had deprived me of the power of consecutive
+thought. I could only feel. And the one thing I felt above everything
+else was that the remedy I had proposed to myself for my unhappy
+situation--renunciation--was impossible, because Martin was a part of my
+own being and without him I could not live.
+
+"Martin! Martin! My love! My love!" cried the voice of my heart.
+
+In fear lest I had spoken the words aloud, and in terror of what I might
+do under the power of them, I hurried into my bedroom and locked and
+bolted the door.
+
+But the heart knows nothing of locks and bolts, and a moment afterwards
+my spirit was following Martin to his room. I was seeing him as I had
+seen him last, with his face full of despair, and I was accusing myself
+of the pain I had caused him.
+
+I had conquered Martin, but I had conquered myself also. I had compelled
+him to submit, but his submission had vanquished me.
+
+Even if I had a right to impose renunciation on myself, what right had I
+to impose it upon him, who did not desire it, did not think it
+necessary, was not reconciled to it, and only accepted it out of
+obedience to my will?
+
+He loved me. No man ever loved a woman more dearly. He deserved to be
+loved in return. He had done nothing to forfeit love. He was bound by no
+ties. And yet I was driving him away from me. What right had I to do so?
+
+I began to see that I had acted throughout with the most abominable
+selfishness. In his great love he had said little or nothing about
+himself. But why had _I_ not thought of him? In the struggles of my
+religious conscience I had been thinking of myself alone, but Martin had
+been suffering too, and I had never once really thought of that? What
+_right_ had I to make him suffer?
+
+After a while I began to prepare for bed, but it took me long to
+undress, for I stopped every moment to think.
+
+I thought of the long years Martin had been waiting for me and while I
+was telling myself that he had kept pure for my sake, my heart was
+beating so fast that I could hardly bear the strain of it.
+
+It cut me still deeper to think that even as there had been no other
+woman for him in the past so there would be no other in the future.
+Never as long as he lived! I was as sure of that as of the breath I
+breathed, and when I remembered what he had said about wearing the
+willow for me as if I were dead I was almost distracted.
+
+His despairing words kept ringing mercilessly in my ears--"It's all as
+one now"; "How happy we might have been." I wanted to go to him and tell
+him that though I was sending him away still I loved him, and it was
+_because_ I loved him that I was sending him away.
+
+I had made one step towards the door before I remembered that it was too
+late to carry out my purpose. The opportunity had passed. Martin had
+gone to his room. He might even be in bed by this time.
+
+But there are spiritual influences which control our bodies
+independently of our will. I put on my dressing-gown (being partly
+undressed) and went back to the boudoir. I hardly knew what impulse
+impelled me to do so, and neither do I know why I went from the boudoir
+to the balcony unless it was in hope of the melancholy joy of standing
+once more where Martin and I had stood together a little while ago.
+
+I was alone now. The low thunder was still rolling along the cliffs, but
+I hardly heard it. The white sheet lightning was still pulsing in the
+sky and rising, as it seemed, out of the sea, but I hardly saw it.
+
+At one moment I caught a glimpse of a solitary fishing boat, under its
+brown lugger sails, heading towards Blackwater; at the next moment my
+eyes were dazzled as by a flashlight from some unseen battleship.
+
+Leaning over the balcony and gazing into the intermittent darkness I
+pictured to myself the barren desolation of Martin's life after he had
+left me. Loving me so much he might fall into some excess, perhaps some
+vice, and if that happened what would be the measure of my
+responsibility?
+
+Losing me he might lose his faith in God. I had read of men becoming
+spiritual castaways after they had lost their anchorage in some great
+love, and I asked myself what should I do if Martin became an infidel.
+
+And when I told myself that I could only save Martin's soul by
+sacrificing my own I was overwhelmed by a love so great that I thought I
+could do even that.
+
+"Martin! Martin! Forgive me, forgive me," I cried.
+
+I felt so hot that I opened my dressing-gown to cool my bare breast.
+After a while I began to shiver and then fearing I might take cold I
+went back to the boudoir, and sat down.
+
+I looked at my cuckoo clock. It was half-past twelve. Only half an hour
+since Martin had left me! It seemed like hours and hours. What of the
+years and years of my life that I had still to spend without him?
+
+The room was so terribly silent, yet it seemed to be full of our dead
+laughter. The ghost of our happiness seemed to haunt it. I was sure I
+could never live in it again.
+
+I wondered what Martin would be doing now. Would he be in bed and
+asleep, or sitting up like this, and thinking of me as I was thinking of
+him?
+
+At one moment I thought I heard his footsteps. I listened, but the sound
+stopped. At another moment, covering my face with my hands, I thought I
+saw him in his room, as plainly as if there were no walls dividing us.
+He was holding out his hands to me, and his face had the yearning,
+loving, despairing expression which it had worn when he looked back at
+me from the door.
+
+At yet another moment I thought I heard him calling me.
+
+"Mary!"
+
+I listened again, but again all was still, and when I told myself that
+if in actual fact he had spoken my name it was perhaps only to himself
+(as I was speaking his) my heart throbbed up to my throat.
+
+Once more I heard his voice.
+
+"Mary!"
+
+I could bear no more. Martin wanted me. I must go to him. Though body
+and soul were torn asunder I must go.
+
+Before I knew what I was doing I had opened the door and was walking
+across the corridor in the direction of Martin's room.
+
+The house was dark. Everybody had gone to bed. Light as my footsteps
+were, the landing was creaking under me. I knew that the floors of the
+grim old Castle sometimes made noises when nobody walked on them, but
+none the less I felt afraid.
+
+Half way to Martin's door I stopped. A ghostly hand seemed to be laid
+on my shoulder and a ghostly voice seemed to say in my ear:
+
+"Wait! Reflect! If you do what you are thinking of doing what will
+happen? You will become an outcast. The whole body of your own sex will
+turn against you. You will be a bad woman."
+
+I knew what it was. It was my conscience speaking to me in the voice of
+my Church--my Church, the mighty, irresistible power that was separating
+me from Martin. I was its child, born in its bosom, but if I broke its
+laws it would roll over me like a relentless Juggernaut.
+
+It was not at first that I could understand why the Church should set
+itself up against my Womanhood. My Womanhood was crying out for life and
+love and liberty. But the Church, in its inexorable, relentless voice,
+was saying, "Thou Shalt Not!"
+
+After a moment of impenetrable darkness, within and without, I thought I
+saw things more plainly. The Church was the soul of the world. It stood
+for purity, which alone could hold the human family together. If all
+women who had made unhappy marriages were to do as I was thinking of
+doing (no matter under what temptation) the world would fall to wreck
+and ruin.
+
+Feeling crushed and ashamed, and oh, so little and weak, I groped my way
+back to the boudoir and closed the door.
+
+Then a strange thing happened--one of those little accidents of life
+which seem to be thrown off by the mighty hand of Fate. A shaft of light
+from my bedroom, crossing the end of my writing-desk, showed me a copy
+of a little insular newspaper.
+
+The paper, which must have come by the evening post, had probably been
+opened by Martin, and for that reason only I took it up and glanced at
+it.
+
+The first thing that caught my eye was a short report headed "Charity
+Performance."
+
+It ran:
+
+_"The English ladies and gentlemen from Castle Raa who are cruising
+round the island in the handsome steam yacht, the_ Cleopatra, _gave a
+variety entertainment last night in aid of the Catholic Mission at the
+Palace, Ravenstown.
+
+"At the end of the performance the Lord Bishop, who was present in
+person and watched every item of the programme with obvious enjoyment,
+proposed a vote of thanks in his usual felicitous terms, thanking Lord
+Raa for this further proof of his great liberality of mind in helping a
+Catholic charity, and particularly mentioning the beautiful and
+accomplished Madame Lier, who had charmed all eyes and won all hearts by
+her serpentine dances, and to whom the Church in Ellan would always be
+indebted for the handsome sum which had been the result of her
+disinterested efforts in promoting the entertainment.
+
+"It is understood that the_ Cleopatra _will leave Ravenstown Harbour
+to-morrow morning on her way back to Port Raa."_
+
+That was the end of everything. It came upon me like a torrent and swept
+all my scruples away.
+
+Such was the purity of the Church--threatening _me_ with its censures
+for wishing to follow the purest dictates of my heart, yet taking money
+from a woman like Alma, who was bribing it to be blind to her misconduct
+and to cover her with its good-will!
+
+My husband too--his infidelities were flagrant and notorious, yet the
+Church, through its minister, was flattering his vanity and condoning
+his offences!
+
+He was coming back to me, too--this adulterous husband, and when he came
+the Church would require that I should keep "true faith" with him,
+whatever his conduct, and deny myself the pure love that was now awake
+within me.
+
+But no, no, no! Never again! It would be a living death. Accursed be the
+power that could doom a woman to a living death!
+
+Perhaps I was no longer sane--morally sane--and if so God and the Church
+will forgive me. But seeing that neither the Church nor the Law could
+liberate me from this bond which I did not make, that both were
+shielding the evil man and tolerating the bad woman, my whole soul rose
+in revolt.
+
+I told myself now that to leave my husband and go to Martin would be to
+escape from shame to honour.
+
+I saw Martin's despairing face again as I had seen it at the moment of
+our parting, and my brain rang with his passionate words. "You are my
+wife. I am your real husband. We love each other. We shall continue to
+love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you
+are mine and always will be."
+
+Something was crying out within me: "Love him! Tell him you love him.
+Now, now! He is going away. To-morrow will be too late. Go to him. This
+will be your true marriage. The other was only legalised and sanctified
+prostitution."
+
+I leapt up, and tearing the door open, I walked with strong steps across
+the corridor towards Martin's room.
+
+My hair was down, my arms were bare in the ample sleeves of my
+dressing-gown, and my breast was as open as it had been on the balcony,
+but I thought nothing of all that.
+
+I did not knock at Martin's door. I took hold of the handle as one who
+had a right. It turned of itself and the door opened.
+
+My mind was in a whirl, black rings were circling round my eyes, but I
+heard my trembling, quivering, throbbing voice, as if it had been the
+voice of somebody else, saying:
+
+"Martin, I am coming in."
+
+Then my heart which had been beating violently seemed to stop. My limbs
+gave way. I was about to fall.
+
+At the next moment strong arms were around me. I had no fear. But there
+was a roaring in my brain such as the ice makes when it is breaking up.
+
+     Oh, you good women, who are happy in the love that guards you,
+     shields you, shelters you, wraps you round and keeps you pure and
+     true, tread lightly over the prostrate soul of your sister in her
+     hour of trial and fierce temptation.
+
+     And you blessed and holy saints who kneel before the Mother of all
+     Mothers, take the transgression of her guilty child to Him
+     who--long ago in the house of the self-righteous Pharisee--said to
+     the woman who was a sinner and yet loved much--the woman who had
+     washed His feet with her tears and dried them with the hair of her
+     head--"Thy sins are forgiven thee."
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH PART
+
+I BECOME A MOTHER
+
+SEVENTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Next morning, at half-past eight, my Martin left me.
+
+We were standing together in the boudoir between the table and the fire,
+which was burning briskly, for the sultry weather had gone in the night,
+and the autumn air was keen, though the early sun was shining.
+
+At the last moment he was unwilling to go, and it was as much as I could
+do to persuade him. Perhaps it is one of the mysteries which God alone
+can read that our positions seemed to have been reversed since the day
+before.
+
+He was confused, agitated, and full of self reproaches, while I felt no
+fear and no remorse, but only an indescribable joy, as if a new and
+gracious life had suddenly dawned on me.
+
+"I don't feel that I can leave England now," he said.
+
+"You can and you must," I answered, and then I spoke of his expedition
+as a great work which it was impossible to put off.
+
+"Somebody else must do it, then," he said.
+
+"Nobody else can, or shall," I replied.
+
+"But our lives are for ever joined together now, and everything else
+must go by the board."
+
+"Nothing shall go by the board for my sake, Martin. I refuse and forbid
+it."
+
+Everything had been arranged, everything settled, great sums of money
+had been subscribed out of faith in him, and him only, and a large
+company was ready and waiting to sail under his command. He was the Man
+of Destiny, therefore nothing--nothing whatever--must keep him back.
+
+"Then if I must go, you must go too," he said. "I mean you must go with
+me to London and wait there until I return."
+
+"That is impossible," I answered.
+
+The eyes of the world were on him now, and the heart of the world was
+with him. If I did what he desired it would reflect dishonour on his
+name, and he should not suffer for my sake under any circumstances.
+
+"But think what may happen to you while I am away," he said.
+
+"Nothing will happen while you are away, Martin."
+
+"But how can you be so sure of the future when God alone knows what it
+is to be?"
+
+"Then God will provide for it," I said, and with that last answer he had
+to be satisfied.
+
+"You must take a letter from me at all events," said Martin, and sitting
+at my desk he began to write one.
+
+It is amazing to me now when I come to think of it that I could have
+been so confident of myself and so indifferent to consequences. But I
+was thinking of one thing only--that Martin must go on his great errand,
+finish his great work and win his great reward, without making any
+sacrifice for me.
+
+After a few minutes he rose from the desk and handed me his letter.
+
+"Here it is," he said. "If the worst comes to the worst you may find it
+of some use some day."
+
+I took it and doubled it and continued to hold it in my hand.
+
+"Aren't you going to look at it!" he said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not even to see whom it is written to?"
+
+"That is unnecessary."
+
+I thought I knew it was written to my husband or my father, and it did
+not matter to me which, for I had determined not to use it.
+
+"It is open--won't you see what it says?"
+
+"That is unnecessary also."
+
+I thought I knew that Martin had tried to take everything upon himself,
+and I was resolved that he should not do so.
+
+He looked at me with that worshipful expression which seen in the eyes
+of the man who loves her, makes a woman proud to be alive.
+
+"I feel as if I want to kiss the hem of your dress, Mary," he said, and
+after that there was a moment of heavenly silence.
+
+It was now half-past eight--the hour when the motor-car had been ordered
+round to take him to the town--and though I felt as if I could shed
+drops of my blood to keep back the finger of my cuckoo clock I pointed
+it out and said it was time for him to go.
+
+I think our parting was the most beautiful moment of all my life.
+
+We were standing a little apart, for though I wanted to throw my arms
+about his neck at that last instant I would not allow myself to do so,
+because I knew that that would make it the harder for him to go.
+
+I could see, too, that he was trying not to make it harder for me, so we
+stood in silence for a moment while my bosom heaved and his breath came
+quick.
+
+Then he took my right hand in both of his hands and said: "There is a
+bond between us now which can never be broken."
+
+"Never," I answered.
+
+"Whatever happens to either of us we belong to each other for ever."
+
+"For ever and ever," I replied.
+
+I felt his hands tighten at that, and after another moment of silence,
+he said:
+
+"I may be a long time away, Mary."
+
+"I can wait."
+
+"Down there a man has to meet many dangers."
+
+"You will come back. Providence will take care of you."
+
+"I think it will. I feel I shall. But if I don't. . . ."
+
+I knew what he was trying to say. A shadow seemed to pass between us. My
+throat grew thick, and for a moment I could not speak. But then I heard
+myself say:
+
+"Love is stronger than death; many waters cannot quench it."
+
+His hands quivered, his whole body trembled, and I thought he was going
+to clasp me to his breast as before, but he only drew down my forehead
+with his hot hand and kissed it.
+
+That was all, but a blinding mist seemed to pass before my eyes, and
+when it cleared the door of the room was open and my Martin was gone.
+
+I stood where he had left me and listened.
+
+I heard his strong step on the stone flags of the hall--he was going out
+at the porch.
+
+I heard the metallic clashing of the door of the automobile--he was
+already in the car.
+
+I heard the throb of the motor and ruckling of the gravel of the
+path--he was moving away.
+
+I heard the dying down of the engine and the soft roll of the rubber
+wheels--I was alone.
+
+For some moments after that the world seemed empty and void. But the
+feeling passed, and when I recovered my strength I found Martin's letter
+in my moist left hand.
+
+Then I knelt before the fire, and putting the letter into the flames I
+burnt it.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+Within, two hours of Martin's departure I had regained complete
+possession of myself and was feeling more happy than I had ever felt
+before.
+
+The tormenting compunctions of the past months were gone. It was just as
+if I had obeyed some higher law of my being and had become a freer and
+purer woman.
+
+My heart leapt within me and to give free rein to the riot of my joy I
+put on my hat and cloak to go into the glen.
+
+Crossing the garden I came upon Tommy the Mate, who told me there had
+been a terrific thunderstorm during the night, with torrential rain,
+which had torn up all the foreign plants in his flower-beds.
+
+"It will do good, though," said the old man. "Clane out some of their
+dirty ould drains, I'm thinkin'."
+
+Then he spoke of Martin, whom he had seen off, saying he would surely
+come back.
+
+"'Deed he will though. A boy like yander wasn't born to lave his bark in
+the ice and snow . . . Not if his anchor's at home, anyway"--with a
+"glime" in my direction.
+
+How the glen sang to me that morning! The great cathedral of nature
+seemed to ring with music--the rustling of the leaves overhead, the
+ticking of the insects underfoot, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing
+of the cattle, the light chanting of the stream, the deep organ-song of
+the sea, and then the swelling and soaring Gloria in my own bosom, which
+shot up out of my heart like a lark out of the grass in the morning.
+
+I wanted to run, I wanted to shout, and when I came to the paths where
+Martin and I had walked together I wanted--silly as it sounds to say
+so--to go down on my knees and kiss the very turf which his feet had
+trod.
+
+I took lunch in the boudoir as before, but I did not feel as if I were
+alone, for I had only to close my eyes and Martin, from the other side
+of the table, seemed to be looking across at me. And neither did I feel
+that the room was full of dead laughter, for our living voices seemed to
+be ringing in it still.
+
+After tea I read again my only love-letter, revelling in the dear
+delightful errors in spelling which made it Martin's and nobody else's,
+and then I observed for the first time what was said about "the boys of
+Blackwater," and their intention of "getting up a spree."
+
+This suggested that perhaps Martin had not yet left the island but was
+remaining for the evening steamer, in order to be present at some sort
+of celebrations to be given in his honour.
+
+So at seven o'clock--it was dark by that time--I was down at the Quay,
+sitting in our covered automobile, which had been drawn up in a
+sheltered and hidden part of the pier, almost opposite the outgoing
+steamer.
+
+Shall I ever forget the scene that followed?
+
+First, came a band of music playing one of our native songs, which was
+about a lamb that had been lost in the snow, and how the Big Man of the
+Farm went out in search of it, and found it and brought it home in his
+arms.
+
+Then came a double row of young men carrying flags and banners--fine,
+clean-limbed lads such as make a woman's heart leap to look at them.
+
+Then came Martin in a jaunting car with a cheering crowd alongside of
+him, trying to look cheerful but finding it fearfully hard to do so.
+
+And then--and this touched me most of all--a double line of girls in
+knitted woollen caps (such as men wear in frozen regions) over their
+heads and down the sides of their comely faces.
+
+I was crying like a child at the sight of it all, but none the less I
+was supremely happy.
+
+When the procession reached the gangway Martin disappeared into the
+steamer, and then the bandsmen ranged themselves in front of it, and
+struck up another song:
+
+     "_Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,
+     Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth_."
+
+In another moment every voice in the crowd seemed to take up the
+refrain.
+
+That brought Martin on to the captain's bridge, where he stood
+bareheaded, struggling to smile.
+
+By this time the last of the ship's bells had rung, the funnels were
+belching, and the captain's voice was calling on the piermen to clear
+away.
+
+At last the hawsers were thrown off and the steamer started, but, with
+Martin still standing bareheaded on the bridge, the people rushed to the
+end of the pier to see the last of him.
+
+There they sang again, louder than ever, the girls' clear voices above
+all the rest, as the ship sailed out into the dark sea.
+
+     _"Come back to Erin, mavourneen, mavourneen,
+     Come back, aroon, to the land of your birth."_
+
+As well as I could, for the mist in my eyes was blinding me, I watched
+the steamer until she slid behind the headland of the bay, round, the
+revolving light that stands on the point of it--stretching my neck
+through the window of the car, while the fresh wind from the sea smote
+my hot face and the salt air licked my parched lips. And then I fell
+back in my seat and cried for sheer joy of the love that was shown to
+Martin.
+
+The crowd was returning down the pier by this time, like a black river
+running in the darkness and rumbling over rugged stones, and I heard
+their voices as they passed the car.
+
+One voice--a female voice--said:
+
+"Well, what do you think of _our_ Martin Conrad?"
+
+And then another voice--a male voice--answered:
+
+"By God he's a Man!"
+
+Within a few minutes the pier was deserted, and the chauffeur was
+saying:
+
+"Home, my lady?"
+
+"Home," I answered.
+
+Seeing Martin off had been too much like watching the lifeboat on a dark
+and stormy night, when the lights dip behind a monstrous wave and for
+some breathless moments you fear they will never rise.
+
+But as we drove up the head I caught the lights of the steamer again now
+far out at sea, and well I knew that as surely as my Martin was there he
+was thinking of me and looking back towards the house in which he had
+left me behind him.
+
+When we reached the Castle I found to my surprise that every window was
+ablaze.
+
+The thrum of the automobile brought Price into the hall. She told me
+that the yachting party had come back, and were now in their bedrooms
+dressing for dinner.
+
+As I went upstairs to my own apartments I heard trills of laughter from
+behind several of the closed doors, mingled with the muffled humming of
+various music-hall ditties.
+
+And then suddenly a new spirit seemed to take possession of me, and I
+knew that I had become another woman.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My darling was right. For a long hour after leaving Blackwater I
+continued to stand on the captain's bridge, looking back at the lighted
+windows of the house above Port Raa, and asking myself the question
+which for sixteen months thereafter was to haunt me day and night--Why
+had I left her behind me?
+
+In spite of all her importunities, all her sweet unselfish thought of my
+own aims and interests, all her confidence in herself, all her brave
+determination to share responsibility for whatever the future might have
+in store for us--Why had I left her behind me?
+
+The woman God gave me was mine--why had I left her in the house of a man
+who, notwithstanding his infidelities and brutalities, had a right in
+the eyes of the law, the church, and the world to call her his wife and
+to treat her accordingly?
+
+Let me make no pretence of a penitence I did not feel. Never for one
+moment did I reproach myself for what had happened. Never for the shadow
+of a moment did I reproach her. She had given herself to me of her
+queenly right and sovereign grace as every good woman in the world must
+give herself to the man she loves if their union is to be pure and true.
+
+But why did I not see then, as I see now, that it is the law of
+Nature--the cruel and at the same time the glorious law of Nature--that
+the woman shall bear the burden, the woman shall pay the price?
+
+It is over now, and though many a time since my sweet girl has said out
+of her stainless heart that everything has worked out for the best, and
+suffering is God's salt for keeping our souls alive, when I think of
+what she went through for me, while I was out of all reach and sight, I
+know I shall never forgive myself for leaving her behind--never, never
+never.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+As this will be the last time I shall have to speak of my husband's
+guests, I wish to repeat that I am trying to describe them without
+malice exactly as they were--selfish, cruel, ill-mannered, and
+insincere.
+
+The dinner-bell rang while I was dressing, and on going downstairs a few
+minutes afterwards I found that there had been no attempt to wait for
+me.
+
+Already the whole party were assembled at the table, my husband being at
+the foot of it, and Alma (incredible as it may seem) in the place of the
+hostess at the head.
+
+This in my altered mood, was more than I could bear, so, while the
+company made some attempt to welcome me with rather crude salutations,
+and old Mrs. Lier cried, "Come along here, my pore dear, and tell me how
+you've gotten on while we've been away" (indicating an empty seat by her
+side), I walked boldly up to Alma, put my hand on the back of her chair
+and said, "If you please."
+
+Alma looked surprised. But after a moment she carried off the difficult
+situation by taking the seat which had been reserved for me beside her
+mother, by congratulating me on my improved appearance and herself on
+relief from the necessity of filling my place and discharging my
+responsible duties.
+
+My husband, with the rest of the company, had looked up at the awkward
+incident, and I thought I saw by his curious grimace that he supposed my
+father (of whom he was always in fear) had told me to assert myself. But
+Alma, with surer instinct, was clearly thinking of Martin, and almost
+immediately she began to speak of him.
+
+"So your great friend has just gone, dearest. The servants are crazy
+about him. We've missed him again, you see. Too bad! I hope you gave him
+our regrets and excuses--did you?"
+
+The evil one must have taken hold of me by this time, for I said:
+
+"I certainly did not, Alma."
+
+"Why not, my love?"
+
+"Because we have a saying in our island that it's only the ass that eats
+the cushag"--a bitter weed that grows in barren places.
+
+Alma joined in the general laughter which followed this rather
+intemperate reply, and then led off the conversation On the incidents of
+the cruise.
+
+I gathered that, encouraged by her success in capturing the Bishop by
+her entertainment, she had set herself to capture the "aristocracy" of
+our island by inviting them to a dance on the yacht, while it lay at
+anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledore
+and shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the same
+that had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my husband and his
+guests.
+
+"I say, Jimmy," cried Mr. Vivian in his shrill treble, "do you remember
+the old gal in the gauze who--etc . . . ?"
+
+"But do you remember," cried Mr. Eastcliff, "the High Bailiff or Bum
+Bailiff with the bottle-nose who--etc . . . ?"
+
+"Killing, wasn't it, Vivian?" said one of the ladies.
+
+"Perfectly killing," said everybody.
+
+This shocking exhibition of bad manners had not gone on very long before
+I became aware that it was being improvised for my benefit.
+
+After Alma had admitted that the Bishop was a "great flirt" of hers, and
+Mr. Vivian, amid shouts of laughter, had christened him her "crush," she
+turned to me and said, with her smiling face slightly drawn down on one
+side:
+
+"Mary, my love, you will certainly agree that your islanders who do not
+eat cushags, poor dears, are the funniest people alive as guests."
+
+"Not funnier," I answered, "than the people who laugh at them as hosts."
+
+It was not easy to laugh at that, so to cover Alma's confusion the men
+turned the talk to their usual topic, horses and dogs, and I heard a
+great deal about "laying on the hounds," which culminated in a rather
+vulgar story of how a beater who "wasn't nippy on his pins" had been
+"peppered from behind," whereupon he had "bellowed like a bull" until
+"soothed down by a sov."
+
+I cannot say how long the talk would have continued in this manner if
+old Mrs. Lier, addressing herself to me, had not struck a serious
+subject.
+
+It was about Alma's dog, which was dead. The poor wheezy, spaniel had
+died in the course of the cruise, though what the cause of its death was
+nobody knew, unless it had been fretting for its mistress during the
+period of quarantine which the absurd regulations of government had
+required on our return from abroad.
+
+The dog having died at sea, I presumed it had been buried there, but no,
+that seemed to shock the company as an unfeeling supposition. The ship's
+carpenter had made a coffin for it--a beautiful one of mahogany with a
+plate-glass inset at the head, and a gilt-lettered inscription below,
+giving the dog's name, Prue, and its age, three.
+
+In this condition it had been brought ashore, and was now lying in a
+kind of state in Alma's dressing-room. But to-morrow it was to be buried
+in the grounds, probably in the glen, to which the company, all dressed
+in black, were to follow in procession as at a human funeral.
+
+I was choking with anger and horror at the recital of these incredible
+arrangements, and at the close of it I said in a clear, emphatic voice:
+
+"I must ask you to be good enough not to do that, please."
+
+"Why not, my dear?" said Alma.
+
+"Because I do not wish and cannot permit it," I answered.
+
+There was an awkward pause after this unexpected pronouncement, and when
+the conversation was resumed my quick ears (which have not always added
+to my happiness) caught the half-smothered words:
+
+"Getting a bit sidey, isn't she?"
+
+Nevertheless, when I rose to leave the dining-room, Alma wound her arm
+round my waist, called me her "dear little nun," and carried me off to
+the hall.
+
+There we sat about the big open fire, and after a while the talk became
+as free, as it often is among fashionable ladies of a certain class.
+
+Mr. Eastcliff's Camilla told a slightly indelicate anecdote of a
+"dresser" she had had at the theatre, and then another young woman (the
+same who "adored the men who went to the deuce for a woman") repeated
+the terms of an advertisement she had seen in a Church newspaper: "A
+parlour-maid wants a situation in a family where a footman is kept."
+
+The laughter which followed this story was loud enough, but it was
+redoubled when Alma's mother, from the depths of an arm-chair, said,
+with her usual solemnity, that she "didn't see nothing to laugh at" in
+that, and "the pore girl hadn't no such thought as they had."
+
+Again I was choking with indignation, and in order to assert myself once
+for all I said:
+
+"Ladies, I will ask you to discontinue this kind of conversation. I
+don't like it."
+
+At last the climax came.
+
+About ten days after Martin left me I received a telegram, which had
+been put ashore at Southampton, saying, "Good-bye! God bless you!" and
+next day there came a newspaper containing an account of his last night
+at Tilbury.
+
+He had given a dinner to a number of his friends, including his old
+commander and his wife, several other explorers who happened to be in
+London, a Cabinet Minister, and the proprietor of the journal which had
+promoted his expedition.
+
+They had dined in the saloon of the "Scotia" (how vividly I remembered
+it!), finishing up the evening with a dance on deck in the moonlight;
+and when the time came to break up, Martin had made one of his
+sentimental little speeches (all heart and not too much grammar), in
+which he said that in starting out for another siege of the South Pole
+he "couldn't help thinking, with a bit of a pain under the third button
+of his double-breasted waistcoat, of the dear ones they were leaving
+behind, and of the unknown regions whither they were tending where
+dancing would be forgotten."
+
+I need not say how this moved me, being where I was, in that uncongenial
+company; but by some mischance I left the paper which contained it on
+the table in the drawing-room, and on going downstairs after breakfast
+next morning I found Alma stretched out in a rocking-chair before the
+fire in the hail, smoking a cigarette and reading the report aloud in a
+mock heroic tone to a number of the men, including my husband, whose fat
+body (he was growing corpulent) was shaking with laughter.
+
+It was as much as I could do to control an impulse to jump down and
+flare out at them, but, being lightly shod, I was standing quietly in
+their midst before they were aware of my presence.
+
+"Ah," said Alma, with the sweetest and most insincere of her smiles, "we
+were just enjoying the beautiful account of your friend's last night in
+England."
+
+"So I see," I said, and, boiling with anger underneath, I quietly took
+the paper out of her hand between the tips of my thumb and first finger
+(as if the contamination of her touch had made it unclean) and carried
+it to the fire and burnt it.
+
+This seemed to be the end of all things. The tall Mr. Eastcliff went
+over to the open door and said:
+
+"Deuced fine day for a motor drive, isn't it?"
+
+That gentleman had hitherto shown no alacrity in establishing the truth
+of Alma's excuse for the cruise on the ground of his visit to "his
+friend who had taken a shoot in Skye;" but now he found himself too
+deeply interested in the Inverness Meeting to remain longer, while the
+rest of the party became so absorbed in the Perth and Ayr races,
+salmon-fishing on the Tay, and stag-shooting in the deer-forests of
+Invercauld, that within a week thereafter I had said good-bye to all of
+them.
+
+All save Alma.
+
+I was returning from the hall after the departure of a group of my
+guests when Alma followed me to my room and said:
+
+"My dear, sweet girl, I want you to do me the greatest kindness."
+
+She had to take her mother to New York shortly; but as "that dear old
+dunce" was the worst of all possible sailors, it would be necessary to
+wait for the largest of all possible steamers, and as the largest
+steamers sailed from Liverpool, and Ellan was so near to that port,
+perhaps I would not mind . . . just for a week or two longer. . . .
+
+What _could_ I say? What I did say was what I had said before, with
+equal weakness and indiscretion, but less than equal danger. A word,
+half a word, and almost before it was spoken, Alma's arms were about my
+neck and she was calling me her "dearest, sweetest, kindest friend in
+the world."
+
+My maid Price was present at this interview, and hardly had Alma left
+the boudoir when she was twitching at my arm and whispering in my ear:
+
+"My lady, my lady, don't you see what the woman wants? She's watching
+you."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+My husband was the next to go.
+
+He made excuse of his Parliamentary duties. He might be three or four
+weeks away, but meantime Alma would be with me, and in any case I was
+not the sort of person to feel lonely.
+
+Never having heard before of any devotion to his duty as a peer, I
+asked if that was all that was taking him to London.
+
+"Perhaps not all," he answered, and then, with a twang of voice and a
+twitch of feature, he said:
+
+"I'm getting sick of this God-forsaken place, and then . . . to tell you
+the truth, your own behaviour is beginning to raw me."
+
+With my husband's departure my triumphal course seemed to come to a
+close. Left alone with Alma, I became as weak and irresolute as before
+and began to brood upon Price's warning.
+
+My maid had found a fierce delight in my efforts to assert myself as
+mistress in my husband's house, but now (taking her former advantage)
+she was for ever harping upon my foolishness in allowing Alma to remain
+in it.
+
+"She's deceiving you, my lady," said Price. "_Her_ waiting for a steamer
+indeed! Not a bit of her. If your ladyship will not fly out at me again
+and pack me off bag and baggage, I'll tell you what's she's waiting
+for."
+
+"What?"
+
+"She's waiting for . . . she thinks . . . she fancies . . . well, to
+tell you the honest truth, my lady, the bad-minded thing suspects that
+something is going to happen to your ladyship, and she's just waiting
+for the chance of telling his lordship."
+
+I began to feel ill. A dim, vague, uneasy presentiment of coming trouble
+took frequent possession of my mind.
+
+I tried to suppress it. I struggled to strangle it as an ugly monster
+created by the nervous strain I had been going through, and for a time I
+succeeded in doing so. I had told Martin that nothing would happen
+during his absence, and I compelled myself to believe that nothing would
+or could.
+
+Weeks passed; the weather changed; the golden hue of autumn gave place
+to a chilly greyness; the sky became sad with winterly clouds; the land
+became soggy with frequent rains; the trees showed their bare black
+boughs; the withered leaves drifted along the roads before blustering
+winds that came up from the sea; the evenings grew long and the mornings
+dreary; but still Alma, with her mother, remained at Castle Raa.
+
+I began to be afraid of her. Something of the half-hypnotic spell which
+she had exercised over me when I was a child asserted itself again, but
+now it seemed to me to be always evil and sometimes almost demoniacal.
+
+I had a feeling that she was watching me day and night. Occasionally,
+when she thought I was looking down, I caught the vivid gaze of her
+coal-black eyes looking across at me through her long sable-coloured
+eyelashes.
+
+Her conversation was as sweet and suave as ever, but I found myself
+creeping away from her and even shrinking from her touch.
+
+More than once I remembered what Martin in his blunt way had said of
+her: "I hate that woman; she's like a snake; I want to put my foot on
+it."
+
+The feeling that I was alone in this great gaunt house with a woman who
+was waiting and watching to do me a mischief, that she might step into
+my shoes, was preying upon my health and spirits.
+
+Sometimes I had sensations of faintness and exhaustion for which I could
+not account. Looking into my glass in the morning, I saw that my nose
+was becoming pinched, my cheeks thin, and my whole face not merely pale,
+but grey.
+
+Alma saw these changes in my appearance, and in the over-sweet tones of
+her succulent voice she constantly offered me her sympathy. I always
+declined it, protesting that I was perfectly well, but none the less I
+shrank within myself and became more and more unhappy.
+
+So fierce a strain could not last very long, and the climax came about
+three weeks after my husband had left for London.
+
+I was rising from breakfast with Alma and her mother when I was suddenly
+seized with giddiness, and, after staggering for a moment, I fainted
+right away.
+
+On recovering consciousness I found myself stretched out on the floor
+with Alma and her mother leaning over me.
+
+Never to the last hour of my life shall I forget the look in Alma's eyes
+as I opened my own. With her upper lip sucked in and her lower one
+slightly set forward she was giving her mother a quick side-glance of
+evil triumph.
+
+I was overwhelmed with confusion. I thought I might have been speaking
+as I was coming to, mentioning a name perhaps, out of that dim and
+sacred chamber of the unconscious soul into which God alone should see.
+I noticed, too, that my bodice had been unhooked at the back so as to
+leave it loose over my bosom.
+
+As soon as Alma saw that my eyes were open, she put her arm under my
+head and began to pour out a flood of honeyed words into my ears.
+
+"My dear, sweet darling," she said, "you scared us to death. We must
+send for a doctor immediately--your own doctor, you know."
+
+I tried to say there was no necessity, but she would not listen.
+
+"Such a seizure may be of no consequence, my love. I trust it isn't. But
+on the other hand, it may be a serious matter, and it is my duty,
+dearest, my duty to your husband, to discover the cause of it."
+
+I knew quite well what Alma was thinking of, yet I could not say more
+without strengthening her suspicions, so I asked for Price, who helped
+me up to my room, where I sat on the edge of the bed while she gave me
+brandy and other restoratives.
+
+That was the beginning of the end. I needed no doctor to say what had
+befallen me. It was something more stupendous for me than the removal of
+mountains or the stopping of the everlasting coming and going of the
+sea.
+
+The greatest of the mysteries of womanhood, the most sacred, the most
+divine, the mighty mystery of a new life had come to me as it comes to
+other women. Yet how had it come? Like a lowering thunderstorm.
+
+That golden hour of her sex, which ought to be the sweetest and most
+joyful in a woman's life--the hour when she goes with a proud and
+swelling heart to the one she loves, the one who loves her, and with her
+arms about his neck and her face hidden in his breast whispers her great
+new secret, and he clasps her more fondly than ever to his heart,
+because another and closer union has bound them together--that golden
+hour had come to me, and there was none to share it.
+
+O God! O God! How proudly I had been holding up my head! How I had been
+trampling on the conventions of morality, the canons of law, and even
+the sacraments of religion, thinking Nature, which had made our hearts
+what they are, did not mean a woman to be ashamed of her purest
+instincts!
+
+And now Nature herself had risen up to condemn me, and before long the
+whole world would be joining in her cry.
+
+If Martin had been there at that moment I do not think I should have
+cared what people might think or say of a woman in my condition. But he
+was separated from me by this time by thousands of miles of sea, and
+was going deeper and deeper every day into the dark Antarctic night.
+
+How weak I felt, how little, how helpless! Never for a moment did I
+blame Martin. But I was alone with my responsibility, I was still living
+in my husband's house, and--worst of all--another woman knew my secret.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Early next day Doctor Conrad came to see me. I thought it significant
+that he came in my father's big motor-car--a car of great speed and
+power.
+
+I was in my dressing-gown before the fire in the boudoir, and at the
+first glance of his cheerful face under his iron-grey head I knew what
+Alma had said in the letter which had summoned him.
+
+In his soft voice he asked me a few questions, and though I could have
+wished to conceal the truth I dared not. I noticed that his face
+brightened at each of my replies, and at the end of them he said:
+
+"There is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall be better than ever
+by-and-by."
+
+Then in his sweet and delicate way (as if he were saying something that
+would be very grateful) he told me what I knew already, and I listened
+with my head down and my face towards the fire.
+
+He must have been disappointed at the sad way I received his news, for
+he proceeded to talk of my general health; saying the great thing in
+such a case as mine was to be cheerful, to keep a good heart, and to
+look hopefully to the future.
+
+"You must have pleasant surroundings and the society of agreeable
+people--old friends, old schoolfellows, familiar and happy faces."
+
+I said "Yes" and "Yes," knowing only too well how impossible it all was;
+and then his talk turned on general topics--my father, whose condition
+made his face very grave, and then his wife, Christian Ann, whose name
+caused his gentle old eyes to gleam with sunshine.
+
+She had charged him with a message to me.
+
+"Tell her," she had said, "I shall never forget what she did for me in
+the autumn, and whiles and whiles I'm thanking God for her."
+
+That cut me to the quick, but I was nearly torn to pieces by what came
+next.
+
+"Christian Ann told me to say too that Sunny Lodge is longing for you.
+'She's a great lady now,' said she, 'but maybe great ladies have their
+troubles same as ourselves, poor things, and if she ever wants to rest
+her sweet head in a poor woman's bed, Mary O'Neill's little room is
+always waiting for her.'"
+
+"God bless her!" I said--it was all I _could_ say--and then, to my great
+relief, he talked on other subjects.
+
+The one thing I was afraid of was that he might speak of Martin. Heaven
+alone, which looks into the deep places of a woman's heart in her hour
+of sorest trial, knows why I was in such dread that he might do so, but
+sure I am that if he had mentioned Martin at that moment I should have
+screamed.
+
+When he rose to go he repeated his warnings.
+
+"You'll remember what I said about being bright and cheerful?"
+
+"I'll try."
+
+"And keeping happy and agreeable faces about you?"
+
+"Ye-s."
+
+Hardly had he left the room when Alma came sweeping into it, full of I
+her warmest and insincerest congratulations.
+
+"There!" she cried, with all the bitter honey of her tongue. "Wasn't I
+right in sending for the doctor? Such news, too! Oh, happy, happy you!
+But I must not keep you now, dearest. You'll be just crazy to write to
+your husband and tell him all about it."
+
+Alma's mother was the next to visit me. The comfortable old soul,
+redolent of perfume and glittering with diamonds, began by
+congratulating herself on her perspicacity.
+
+"I knew it," she said. "When I saw as how you were so and so, I said to
+Alma as I was sure you were that way. 'Impossible,' said Alma, but it's
+us married women to know, isn't it?"
+
+After that, and some homely counsel out of her own experience--to take
+my breakfast in bed in future, avoiding tea, &c.,--she told me how
+fortunate I was to have Alma in the house at such a moment.
+
+"The doctor says you're to be kept bright and cheerful, and she's such a
+happy heart, is Alma. So crazy about you too! You wouldn't believe it,
+but she's actually talking of staying with you until the December
+sailing, at all events."
+
+The prospect of having Alma two months longer, to probe my secret soul
+as with a red-hot iron, seemed enough to destroy me, but my martyrdom
+had only begun.
+
+Next day, Aunt Bridget came, and the bright glitter of the usually cold
+grey eyes behind her gold-rimmed spectacles told me at a glance that her
+visit was not an unselfish one.
+
+"There now," she said, "you've got to thank me for this. Didn't I give
+you good advice when I told you to be a little blind? It's the only way
+with husbands. When Conrad came home with the news I said, 'Betsy, I
+must get away to the poor girl straight.' To be sure I had enough on my
+hands already, but I couldn't leave you to strangers, could I?"
+
+Hearing no response to this question, Aunt Bridget went on to say that
+what was coming would be a bond between me and my husband.
+
+"It always is. It was in my case, anyway. The old colonel didn't behave
+very well after our marriage, and times and times I was telling myself I
+had made a rue bargain; but when Betsy came I thought, 'I might have
+done better, but I might have done worse, and he's the father of my
+offspring, anyway.'"
+
+Hearing no response to this either, Aunt Bridget went on to talk of Alma
+and her mother. Was not this the woman I suspected with my husband--the
+young one with the big eyes and "the quality toss with her?" Then why
+did I have a person like that about the house?
+
+"If you need bright and cheerful company, what's amiss with your aunt
+and your first cousin? Some people are selfish, but I thank the saints I
+don't know what selfishness is. I'm willing to do for you what I did for
+your poor mother, and _I_ can't say more than that, can I?"
+
+I must have made some kind of response, for Aunt Bridget went on to say
+it might be a sacrifice, but then she wouldn't be sorry to leave the Big
+House either.
+
+"I'm twenty years there, and now I'm to be a servant to my own
+stepchild. Dear heart knows if I can bear it much longer. The way that
+Nessy is carrying on with your father is something shocking. I do
+believe she'll marry the man some day."
+
+To escape from a painful topic I asked after my father's health.
+
+"Worse and worse, but Conrad's news was like laughing-gas to the man. He
+would have come with me to-day, but the doctor wouldn't hear of it.
+He'll come soon though, and meantime he's talking and talking about a
+great entertainment."
+
+"Entertainment?"
+
+"To celebrate the forthcoming event, of course, though nobody is to know
+that except ourselves, it seems. Just a house-warming in honour of your
+coming home after your marriage--that's all it's to be on the outside,
+anyway."
+
+I made some cry of pain, and Aunt Bridget said:
+
+"Oh, I know what you're going to say--why doesn't he wait? I'll tell you
+why if you'll promise not to whisper a word to any one. Your father is a
+sick man, my dear. Let him say what he likes when Conrad talks about
+cancer, he knows Death's hand is over him. And thinking it may fall
+before your time has come, he wants to take time by the forelock and see
+a sort of fulfilment of the hope of his life--and you know what that
+is."
+
+It was terrible. The position in which I stood towards my father was now
+so tragic that (wicked as it was) I prayed with all my heart that I
+might never look upon his face again.
+
+I was compelled to do so. Three days after Aunt Bridget's visit my
+father came to see me. The day was fine and I was walking on the lawn
+when his big car came rolling up the drive.
+
+I was shocked to see the change in him. His face was ghastly white, his
+lips were blue, his massive and powerful head seemed to have sunk into
+his shoulders, and his limbs were so thin that his clothes seemed to
+hang on them; but the stern mouth was there still, and so was the
+masterful lift of the eyebrows.
+
+Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said:
+
+"Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn't take rest without
+putting a sight on you."
+
+After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always was
+and will be (about it's being good for a woman to have children because
+it saved her from "losing her stomach" over imaginary grievances), he
+led me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to show
+to my mother, back to the house and into the drawing-room.
+
+Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the other
+knitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but he waved
+them back to their places.
+
+"Set down, ma'am. Take your seat, mother. I'm only here for a minute to
+talk to my gel about her great reception."
+
+"Reception?" said Alma.
+
+"Hasn't she told you about it?" he said, and being answered that I had
+not, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma, whose
+former attitude towards my father had changed to one of flattery and
+subservience, lifted her hands and cried:
+
+"How splendid! Such an inspiration! Only think, my love, you were to be
+kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for that purpose?"
+
+In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after another--it would
+be expensive, we could not afford it.
+
+"Who asks you to afford it? It's my affair, isn't it?" said my father.
+
+I was unwell, and therefore unable to undertake the hard work of such an
+entertainment--but that was the worst of excuses, for Alma jumped in
+with an offer of assistance.
+
+"My dearest child," she said, "you know how happy I shall be to help
+you. In fact, I'll do all the work and you shall have all the glory."
+
+"There you are, then," cried my father, slapping me on the shoulder, and
+then, turning to Alma, he told her to set to work without a day's delay.
+
+"Let everything be done correct even if it costs me a bit of money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"A rael big thing, ma'am, such as nobody has ever seen before."
+
+"Yes indeed, sir."
+
+"Ask all the big people on the island--Nessy MacLeod shall send you a
+list of them."
+
+"I will, sir."
+
+"That'll do for the present--I guess I must be going now, or old Conrad
+will be agate of me. So long, gel, so long."
+
+I was silenced, I was helpless, I was ashamed.
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that, besides the desire of
+celebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had another and
+still more secret object--that of throwing dust in the eyes of his
+advocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who (having expected him to
+make money for them by magic) were beginning to whisper that all was not
+well with his financial schemes.
+
+I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment
+the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in
+health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance
+equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under
+the very wing of Death.
+
+But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satan
+himself were torturing me.
+
+The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might return
+home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world
+of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would
+tumble about my head like a pack of cards.
+
+He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political duties
+would keep him in London a little longer, he said:
+
+"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception in
+honour of our home-coming. But why _now_, instead of three months ago?
+_Do you know the reason?_"
+
+As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up from my
+feet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The conviction
+was being forced upon me that I had no right in my husband's house.
+
+It made no difference that my husband's house was mine also, in the
+sense that it could not exist without me--I had no right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that my marriage had been no marriage--I had no
+right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly bad
+husband--I had no right to be there.
+
+It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife--I had no
+right to be there.
+
+Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, with
+the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture.
+Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her opinion of my
+attitude towards Alma, and one night she said:
+
+"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The nasty-minded
+thing is making mischief with his lordship. She's writing to him every
+day. . . . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my eyes and my ears open
+downstairs for nothing. You'll have no peace of your life, my lady,
+until you turn that woman out of the house."
+
+Then in a fit of despair, hardly knowing what I was doing, I covered my
+face with my hands and said:
+
+"I had better turn myself out instead, perhaps."
+
+The combing of my hair suddenly stopped, and at the next moment I heard
+Price saying in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off:
+
+"Goodness gracious me! Is it like that, my lady?"
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Alma was as good as her word.
+
+She did everything without consulting me--fixed the date of the
+reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent out
+invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which came
+from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting.
+
+These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issued
+reached the grand total of five hundred.
+
+As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so many
+guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed,
+and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up a
+vast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlands
+beyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together.
+
+While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. I
+heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. The
+reception was to surpass in grandeur any fete ever held in Ellan. Not
+knowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened by
+this extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from the
+sight of it.
+
+I could not escape.
+
+I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and that she
+was trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the easiest means to
+gain her own ends. For this reason, among others, the woman in me would
+not let me fly, so I remained and went through a purgatory of suffering.
+
+Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was always
+urging me to remain, saying:
+
+"Why should you go, my lady? You are your husband's wife, aren't you?
+Fight it out, I say. Ladies do so every day. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+Before long the whole island seemed to be astir about our reception.
+Every day the insular newspapers devoted columns to the event, giving
+elaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could accomplish for a
+single night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was much
+eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan," as well as praise
+of Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality," but little or no
+mention of myself.
+
+Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of the
+forthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our insular
+manners some of the visits I received were painfully embarrassing.
+
+One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, who
+smiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he thanked
+me for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to break up a
+marriage which was so suitable from points of property and position.
+
+"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his hopes," he
+said. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How good! How
+gratifying!"
+
+The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever,
+congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that the
+object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become the
+heir of Castle Raa.
+
+More delicate, but also more distressing, was a letter from Father Dan,
+saying he had been forbidden my husband's house and therefore could not
+visit me, but having heard an angel's whisper of the sweet joy that was
+coming to me, he prayed the Lord and His Holy Mother to carry me safely
+through.
+
+"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my dear
+child, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And now I know
+you have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage has fulfilled its
+mission, as I always knew it would. So God bless you, my daughter, and
+keep you pure and fit for eternal union with that blessed saint, your
+mother, whom the Lord has made His own."
+
+More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my
+husband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outraged
+vanity (as I say, the _woman_ in me), would not let me go.
+
+Three weeks passed.
+
+The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily painted
+bannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at sunset. A
+covered corridor connecting the theatre with the house was being lined
+with immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by lamps that resembled
+stars.
+
+A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been too
+much occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I confined
+myself, came up to give me my instructions.
+
+The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock. I was to be dressed as
+Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room. At the sound of
+a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of
+pages, and accompanied by my husband. After we had taken our places in a
+private box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall,
+was to give a performance lasting until midnight. Then there was to be a
+cotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the
+dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of
+butterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to be
+liberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through the
+sunlit space.
+
+I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and
+the object which I supposed it was intended to serve.
+
+The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the real
+cause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly be aware of
+what was being done in his name and with his money, and begging him to
+put an end to the entertainment altogether.
+
+The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod. I can see her
+still as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with red hair and
+irregular features.
+
+"Cousin Mary," she said, seating herself stiffly on the only
+stiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, "your letter has
+been received, but your father has not seen it, his health being such as
+makes it highly undesirable that he should be disturbed by unnecessary
+worries."
+
+I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, but
+urgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from my
+father I should deliver it myself.
+
+"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter is, having
+opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathy
+with what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has set
+his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that it
+shall be put off."
+
+I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken an
+unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her by
+what right did she, who had entered my father's house as a dependent,
+dare to keep his daughter's letter from him.
+
+"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were always
+self-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I am sorry to
+see that neither marriage nor education at a convent has chastened your
+ungovernable temper. But I have told you that I do not choose that you
+shall injure your father's health by disturbing his plans, and you shall
+certainly not do so."
+
+"Then take care," I answered, "that in protecting my father's health you
+do not destroy it altogether."
+
+In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my meaning,
+for after a moment of silence she said:
+
+"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in the
+future, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I shall not
+consider that I am in any way responsible for it."
+
+At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from various
+parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some of
+them advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list of
+steamers' sailings.
+
+Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torture
+can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myself
+if I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned.
+
+But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, saying
+she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards the
+end, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look of
+triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand.
+
+"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game in
+your own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing."
+
+The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized the
+arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law
+(not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessed
+that both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeper
+under the inspiration of her mistress.
+
+Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter
+and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with
+Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcoming
+entertainment.
+
+Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of my
+maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawer
+Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leaving
+London by the early train the following morning and would arrive at
+Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.
+
+"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him!
+But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . . No? Ah, I see,
+you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happy
+you!"
+
+It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There was
+no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me in
+the net of my sin, so that I could not fly away.
+
+At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed for
+the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband at
+Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwards
+I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to me
+directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When,
+after a while, I asked what had become of him, I was told that he was in
+the library with Alma, and that they were alone.
+
+Two hours passed.
+
+To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had behaved
+to me. I remembered that he had married me from the most mercenary
+motives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money that came
+through me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I had made to love
+him; that he had humiliated me by gross infidelities committed on my
+honeymoon. I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris, and the
+insults I had received under my own roof.
+
+It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault in
+breaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall be
+greater than that of the man I do not know. I only know that I was
+trembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being dressed for
+dinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard my husband's
+footsteps approach my door.
+
+I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held on to the
+mantelpiece as my husband came into the room.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality, which
+pierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I could see at a
+glance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from his slow
+grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which replaced it trembled.
+
+Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation he
+plunged immediately into the matter that was uppermost in his mind.
+
+"I am still at a loss to account for this affair of your father's," he
+said. "Of course I know what it is supposed to be--a reception in honour
+of our home-coming. That explanation may or may not be sufficient for
+these stupid islanders, but it's rather too thin for me. Can you tell me
+what your father means by it?"
+
+I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a sheep
+that walks up to a barking dog:
+
+"Hadn't you better ask that question of my father himself?"
+
+"Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn't, so I ask you. Your
+father is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things he will
+not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not spend five or
+ten thousand pounds for nothing. He isn't a fool exactly."
+
+"Thank you," I said. I could not help it. It was forced out of me.
+
+My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the bully in him, which
+always lay underneath, came uppermost.
+
+"Look here, Mary," he said. "I came for an explanation and I intend to
+have one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, but
+you must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so we
+might as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that the doctor has made
+certain statements about your own condition, and that your father is
+giving this entertainment because . . . well, because he is expecting an
+heir?"
+
+To my husband's astonishment I answered:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how that
+condition came about?"
+
+Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer.
+
+"Can't you speak?" he said.
+
+But still I remained silent.
+
+"You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I ask you
+again how does that condition come about?"
+
+I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came to
+me and I said:
+
+"Why do you ask? You seem to know already."
+
+"I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that's what you mean.
+But I'm your husband and have a right to know from _you_. How does your
+condition come about, I ask you?"
+
+I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was the
+desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping to
+my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had intercepted
+and threw it on the table.
+
+He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents were
+not news, and then asked how I came by it.
+
+"It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of posting
+it," I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of such letters
+which had been inspired, if not written, by your friend Alma."
+
+"My friend Alma!"
+
+"Yes, your friend Alma."
+
+His face assumed a frightful expression and he said:
+
+"So that's how it is to be, is it? In spite of the admission you have
+just made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the letter) "is a
+trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it. You're going to
+brazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your position
+as a married woman?"
+
+I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could not
+speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say:
+
+"But it doesn't matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the
+accusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of any
+consequence--is it true?"
+
+My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as if
+I were throwing myself over a precipice but I answered:
+
+"It is perfectly true."
+
+I think that was the last thing he expected. After a moment he said:
+
+"Then you have broken your marriage vows--is that it?"
+
+"Yes, if you call it so."
+
+"Call it so? Call it so? Good heavens, what do _you_ call it?"
+
+I did not reply, and after another moment he said:
+
+"But perhaps you wish me to understand that this man whom I was so
+foolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and betrayed my
+wife. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"No," I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better than you
+did, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself."
+
+I shall never forget the look with which my husband received this
+confession. He drew himself up with the air of an injured man and said:
+
+"What? You mean that you yourself . . . deliberately . . . Good God!"
+
+He stopped for a moment and then said with a rush:
+
+"I suppose you've not forgotten what happened at the time of our
+marriage . . . your resistance and the ridiculous compact I submitted
+to? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence, your
+convent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions of
+matrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . . after
+all my complacency . . . that you have deliberately. . . . In the name
+of God do you know what you are? There's only one name for a woman who
+does what you've done. Do you want me to tell you what that name is?"
+
+I was quivering with shame, but my mind, which was going at lightning
+speed, was thinking of London, of Cairo, of Rome, and of Paris.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" he cried, lifting his voice in his rage. "Don't
+you understand what a letter like this is calling you?"
+
+My heart choked. But the thought that came to me--that, bad as his own
+life had been, he considered he had a right to treat me in this way
+because he was a man and I was a woman--brought strength out of my
+weakness, so that when he went on to curse my Church and my religion,
+saying this was all that had come of "the mummery of my masses," I fired
+up for a moment and said:
+
+"You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong, it is
+I, and not my Church, that is to blame for it."
+
+"_If_ you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you lost all sense
+of a woman's duty to her husband? While you have been married to me and
+I have been fool enough not to claim you as a wife because I thought you
+were only fit company for the saints and angels, you have been
+prostituting yourself to this blusterer, this . . ."
+
+"That is a lie," I said, stepping up to him in the middle of the floor.
+"It's true that I am married to you, but _he_ is my real husband and you
+. . . you are nothing to me at all."
+
+My husband stood for a moment with his mouth agape. Then he began to
+laugh--loudly, derisively, mockingly.
+
+"Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though, and when
+your time comes you'll expect it to cover your disgrace."
+
+His face had become shockingly distorted. He was quivering with fury.
+
+"That's not the worst, either," he cried. "It's not enough that you
+should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, but
+you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what it
+all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that
+you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this
+man's . . . bastard?"
+
+And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted his
+arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek.
+
+The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-fold
+worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When my
+mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me so
+tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths of
+shame.
+
+I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next moment
+Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, as
+before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing outside the door.
+But even that did not serve to restrain him.
+
+"No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy
+to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you shall!
+And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your father."
+
+And with that he swung out of the room and went lunging down the stairs.
+
+I was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the blow from my
+husband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after clashing the door
+in the face of the housekeeper, said, with her black eyes ablaze:
+
+"Well, if ever I wanted to be a man before to-day!"
+
+News of the scene went like wildfire through the house, and Alma's
+mother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way she told me
+of a similar insult she had suffered at the hands of the "bad Lord Raa,"
+and how it had been the real reason of her going to America.
+
+"Us married ladies have much to put up with. But cheer up, dearie. I
+guess you'll have gotten over it by to-morrow morning."
+
+When she was gone I sat down before the fire. I did not cry. I felt as
+if I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand fathoms too
+deep for tears. I do not think I wept again for many months afterwards,
+and then it was a great joy, not a great grief, that brought me a burst
+of blessed tears.
+
+But I could hear my dear good Price crying behind me, and when I said:
+
+"Now you see for yourself that I cannot remain in this house any
+longer," she answered, in a low voice:
+
+"Yes, my lady."
+
+"I must go at once--to-night if possible."
+
+"You shall. Leave everything to me, my lady."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The bell rang, but of course I did not go down to dinner.
+
+As soon as Price had gone off to make the necessary arrangements I
+turned the key in the lock of my door, removed my evening gown, and
+began to dress for my flight.
+
+My brain was numb, but I did my best to confront the new situation that
+was before me.
+
+Hitherto I had been occupied with the problem of whether I should or
+should not leave my husband's house; now I had to settle the question of
+where I was to go to.
+
+I dared not think of home, for (Nessy MacLeod and Aunt Bridget apart)
+the house of my father was the last place I could fly to at a moment
+when I was making dust and ashes of his lifelong expectations.
+
+Neither dared I think of Sunny Lodge, although I remembered, with a tug
+of tenderness, Christian Ann's last message about Mary O'Neill's little
+room that was always waiting for me--for I thought of how I had broken
+my pledge to her.
+
+The only place I could think of was that which Martin had mentioned when
+he wished to carry me away--London. In the mighty world of London I
+might hide myself from observation and wait until Martin returned from
+his expedition.
+
+"Yes, yes, London," I told myself in my breathless excitement, little
+knowing what London meant.
+
+I began to select the clothes I was to carry with me and to wear on my
+journey. They must be plain, for I had to escape from a house in which
+unfriendly eyes would be watching me. They must be durable, for during
+my time of waiting I expected to be poor.
+
+I hunted out some of the quaker-like costumes which had been made for me
+before my marriage; and when I had put them on I saw that they made a
+certain deduction from my appearance, but that did not matter to me
+now--the only eyes I wished to look well in being down in the Antarctic
+seas.
+
+Then I tried to think of practical matters--how I was to live in London
+and how, in particular, I was to meet the situation that was before me.
+Surely never did a more helpless innocent confront such a serious
+problem. I was a woman, and for more than a year I had been a wife, but
+I had no more experience of the hard facts of material existence than a
+child.
+
+I thought first of the bank-book which my father had sent me with
+authority to draw on his account. But it was then nine o'clock, the
+banks were closed for the day, and I knew enough of the world to see
+that if I attempted to cash a cheque in the morning my whereabouts would
+he traced. That must never happen, I must hide myself from everybody;
+therefore my bank-book was useless.
+
+"Quite useless," I thought, throwing it aside like so much waste paper.
+
+I thought next of my jewels. But there I encountered a similar
+difficulty. The jewels which were really mine, having been bought by
+myself, had been gambled away by my husband at Monte Carlo. What
+remained were the family jewels which had come to me as Lady Raa; but
+that was a name I was never more to bear, a person I was never more to
+think about, so I could not permit myself to take anything that belonged
+to her.
+
+The only thing left to me was my money. I had always kept a good deal
+of it about me, although the only use I had had for it was to put it in
+the plate at church, and to scatter it with foolish prodigality to the
+boys who tossed somersaults behind the carriage in the road.
+
+Now I found it all over my room--in my purse, in various drawers, and on
+the toilet-tray under my dressing-glass. Gathered together it counted up
+to twenty-eight pounds. I owed four pounds to Price, and having set them
+aside, I saw that I had twenty-four pounds left in notes, gold, and
+silver.
+
+Being in the literal and unconventional sense utterly ignorant of the
+value of sixpence, I thought this a great sum, amply sufficient for all
+my needs, or at least until I secured employment--for I had from the
+first some vague idea of earning my own living.
+
+"Martin would like that," I told myself, lifting my head with a thrill
+of pride.
+
+Then I began to gather up the treasures which were inexpressibly more
+dear to me than all my other possessions.
+
+One of them was a little miniature of my mother which Father Dan had
+given me for a wedding-present when (as I know now) he would rather have
+parted with his heart's blood.
+
+Another was a pearl rosary which the Reverend Mother had dropped over my
+arm the last time she kissed me on the forehead; and the last was my
+Martin's misspelt love-letter, which was more precious to me than
+rubies.
+
+Not for worlds, I thought, would I leave these behind me, or ever part
+with them under any circumstances.
+
+Several times while I was busy with such preparations, growing more and
+more nervous every moment, Price came on tip-toe and tapped softly at my
+door.
+
+Once it was to bring me some food and to tell me, with many winks (for
+the good soul herself was trembling with excitement), that everything
+was "as right as ninepence." I should get away without difficulty in a
+couple of hours, and until to-morrow morning nobody would be a penny the
+wiser.
+
+Fortunately it was Thursday, when a combined passenger and cargo steamer
+sailed to Liverpool. Of course the motor-car would not be available to
+take me to the pier, but Tommy the Mate, who had a stiff cart in which
+he took his surplus products to market, would be waiting for me at
+eleven o'clock by the gate to the high road.
+
+The people downstairs, meaning my husband and Alma and her mother, were
+going off to the pavilion (where hundreds of decorators were to work
+late and the orchestra and ballet were to have a rehearsal), and they
+had been heard to say that they would not be back until "way round about
+midnight."
+
+"But the servants?" I asked.
+
+"They're going too, bless them," said Price. "So eat your dinner in
+peace, my lady, and don't worry about a thing until I come back to fetch
+you."
+
+Another hour passed. I was in a fever of apprehension. I felt like a
+prisoner who was about to escape from a dungeon.
+
+A shrill wind was coming up from the sea and whistling about the house.
+I could hear the hammering of the workmen in the pavilion as well as the
+music of the orchestra practising their scores.
+
+A few minutes before eleven Price returned, carrying one of the smaller
+of the travelling-trunks I had taken to Cairo. I noticed that it bore no
+name and no initials.
+
+"It's all right," she said. "They've gone off, every mother's son and
+daughter of them--all except the housekeeper, and I've caught her out,
+the cat!"
+
+That lynx-eyed person had begun to suspect. She had seen Tommy
+harnessing his horse and had not been satisfied with his
+explanation--that he was taking tomatoes to Blackwater to be sent off by
+the Liverpool steamer.
+
+So to watch events, without seeming to watch them, the housekeeper (when
+the other servants had gone off to the rehearsal) had stolen upstairs to
+her room in the West tower overlooking the back courtyard.
+
+But Price had been more than a match for her. Creeping up behind, she
+had locked the door of the top landing, and now the "little cat" might
+scream her head off through the window, and (over the noises of the wind
+and the workmen) it would be only like "tom" shrieking on the tiles.
+
+"We must be quick, though," said Price, tumbling into my
+travelling-trunk as many of my clothes as it would hold.
+
+When it was full and locked and corded she said:
+
+"Wait," and stepped out on the landing to listen.
+
+After a moment she returned saying:
+
+"Not a sound! Now for it, my lady."
+
+And then, tying her handkerchief over her head to keep down her hair in
+the wind, she picked up the trunk in her arms and crept out of the room
+on tiptoe.
+
+The moment had come to go, yet, eager as I had been all evening to
+escape from my husband's house, I could scarcely tear myself away, for
+I was feeling a little of that regret which comes to us all when we are
+doing something for the last time.
+
+Passing through the boudoir this feeling took complete possession of me.
+Only a few hours before it had been the scene of my deepest degradation,
+but many a time before it had been the place of my greatest happiness.
+
+_"You are my wife. I am your real husband. No matter where you are or
+what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."_
+
+Half-closing the door, I took a last look round--at the piano, the desk,
+the table, the fireplace, all the simple things associated with my
+dearest memories. So strong was the yearning of my own soul that I felt
+as if the soul of Martin were in the room with me at that moment.
+
+I believe it was.
+
+"Quick, my lady, or you'll lose your steamer," whispered Price, and then
+we crossed the landing (which was creaking again) and crept noiselessly
+down a back staircase. We were near the bottom when I was startled by a
+loud knocking, which seemed to come from a distant part of the house. My
+heart temporarily stopped its beating, but Price only laughed and
+whispered:
+
+"There she is! We've fairly caught her out, the cat."
+
+At the next moment Price opened an outer door, and after we had passed
+through she closed and locked it behind us.
+
+We were then in the courtyard behind the house, stumbling in the
+blinding darkness over cobble-stones.
+
+"Keep close to me, my lady," said Price.
+
+After a few moments we reached the drive. I think I was more nervous
+than I had ever been before. I heard the withered leaves behind me
+rustling along the ground before the wind from the sea, and thought they
+were the footsteps of people pursuing us. I heard the hammering of the
+workmen and the music of the orchestra, and thought they were voices
+screaming to us to come back.
+
+Price, who was forging ahead, carried the trunk in her arms as if it had
+been a child, but every few minutes she waited for me to come up to her,
+and encouraged me when I stumbled in the darkness.
+
+"Only a little further, my lady," she said, and I did my best to
+struggle on.
+
+We reached the gate to the high road at last. Tommy the Mate was there
+with his stiff cart, and Price, who was breathless after her great
+exertion, tumbled my trunk over the tail-board.
+
+The time had come to part from her, and, remembering how faithful and
+true she had been to me, I hardly knew what to say. I told her I had
+left her wages in an envelope on the dressing-table, and then I
+stammered something about being too poor to make her a present to
+remember me by.
+
+"It doesn't need a present to help me to remember a good mistress, my
+lady," she said.
+
+"God bless you for being so good to me," I answered, and then I kissed
+her.
+
+"I'll remember you by that, though," she said, and she began to cry.
+
+I climbed over the wheel of the stiff cart and seated myself on my
+trunk, and then Tommy, who had been sitting on the front-board with his
+feet on the outer shaft, whipped up his horse and we started away.
+
+During the next half-hour the springless cart bobbed along the dark road
+at its slow monotonous pace. Tommy never once looked round or spoke
+except to his horse, but I understood my old friend perfectly.
+
+I was in a fever of anxiety lest I should be overtaken and carried back.
+Again and again I looked behind. At one moment, when a big motor-car,
+with its two great white eyes, came rolling up after us, my stormy heart
+stood still. But it was not my husband's car, and in a little while its
+red tail-light disappeared in the darkness ahead.
+
+We reached Blackwater in time for the midnight steamer and drew up at
+the landward end of the pier. It was cold; the salt wind from the sea
+was very chill. Men who looked like commercial travellers were hurrying
+along with their coat-collars turned up, and porters with heavy trunks
+on their shoulders were striving to keep pace with them.
+
+I gave my own trunk to a porter who came up to the cart, and then turned
+to Tommy to say good-bye. The old man had got down from the shaft and
+was smoothing his smoking horse, and snuffling as if he had caught a
+cold.
+
+"Good-bye, Tommy," I said--and then something more which I do not wish
+to write down.
+
+"Good-bye, lil missie," he answered (that cut me deep), "I never
+believed ould Tom Dug would live to see ye laving home like this . . .
+But wait! Only wait till himself is after coming back, and I'll go bail
+it'll be the divil sit up for some of them."
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+It was very dark. No more than three or four lamps on the pier were
+burning, but nevertheless I was afraid that the pier-master would
+recognise me.
+
+I thought he did so as I approached the gangway to the saloon, for he
+said:
+
+"Private cabin on main deck aft."
+
+Nervous as I was, I had just enough presence of mind to say "Steerage,
+please," which threw him off the scent entirely, so that he cried, in
+quite a different voice:
+
+"Steerage passengers forward."
+
+I found my way to the steerage end of the steamer; and in order to
+escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to the
+steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with an
+open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swinging
+from a rafter overhead.
+
+The porter found me there, and in my foolish ignorance of the value of
+money I gave him half a crown for his trouble. He first looked at the
+coin, then tested it between his teeth, then spat on it, and finally
+went off chuckling.
+
+The first and second bells rang. I grudged every moment of delay before
+the steamer sailed, for I still felt like a prisoner who was running
+away and might even yet be brought back.
+
+Seating myself in the darkest corner of the cabin, I waited and watched.
+There were only two other steerage passengers and they were women.
+Judging by their conversation I concluded that they were cooks from
+lodging-houses on "the front," returning after a long season to their
+homes in Liverpool. Both were very tired, and they were spreading their
+blankets on the bare bunks so as to settle themselves for the night.
+
+At last the third bell rang. I heard the engine whistle, the funnel
+belch out its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the gangways being
+taken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I saw the grey pier
+gliding behind us.
+
+After a few moments, with a feeling of safety and a sense of danger
+passed, I went up on deck. But oh, how little I knew what bitter pain I
+was putting myself to!
+
+We were just then swinging round the lighthouse which stands on the
+south-east headland of the bay, and the flash of its revolving light in
+my face as I reached the top of the cabin stairs brought back the memory
+of the joyous and tumultuous scenes of Martin's last departure.
+
+That, coupled and contrasted with the circumstances of my own flight,
+stealthily, shamefully, and in the dead of night, gave me a pang that
+was almost more than I could bear.
+
+But my cup was not yet full. A few minutes afterwards we sailed in the
+dark past the two headlands of Port Raa, and, looking up, I saw the
+lights in the windows of my husband's house, and the glow over the glass
+roof of the pavilion.
+
+What would happen there to-morrow morning when it was discovered that I
+was gone? What would happen to-morrow night when my father arrived,
+ignorant of my flight, as I felt sure the malice of my husband would
+keep him?
+
+Little as I knew then of my father's real motives in giving that bizarre
+and rather vulgar entertainment, I thought I saw and heard everything
+that would occur.
+
+I saw the dazzling spectacle, I saw the five hundred guests, I saw Alma
+and my husband, and above all I saw my father, the old man stricken with
+mortal maladies, the wounded lion whom the shadow of death itself could
+not subdue, degraded to the dust in his hour of pride by the act of his
+own child.
+
+I heard his shouts of rage, his cries of fury, his imprecations on me as
+one who should never touch a farthing of his fortune. And then I heard
+the whispering of his "friends," who were telling the "true story" of my
+disappearance, the tale of my "treacheries" to my husband--just as if
+Satan had willed it that the only result of the foolish fete on which my
+father had wasted his wealth like water should be the publication of my
+shame.
+
+But the bitterest part of my experience was still to come. In a few
+minutes we sailed past the headlands of Port Raa, the lights of my
+husband's house shot out of view like meteors on a murky night, and the
+steamer turned her head to the open sea.
+
+I was standing by a rope which crossed the bow and holding on to it to
+save myself from falling, for, being alone with Nature at last, I was
+seeing my flight for the first time in full light.
+
+I was telling myself that as surely as my flight became known Martin's
+name would be linked with mine, and the honour that was dearer to me
+than, my own would be buried in disgrace.
+
+O God! O God! Why should Nature be so hard and cruel to a woman? Why
+should it be permitted that, having done no worse than obey the purest
+impulses of my heart, the iron law of my sex should rise up to condemn
+both me and the one who was dearer to my soul than life itself?
+
+I hardly know how long I stood there, holding on to that rope. There was
+no sound now except the tread of a sailor in his heavy boots, an
+inarticulate call from the bridge, an answering shout from the wheel,
+the rattling of the wind in the rigging, the throbbing of the engine in
+the bowels of the ship, and the monotonous wash of the waves against her
+side.
+
+Oh, how little I felt, how weak, how helpless!
+
+I looked up towards the sky, but there seemed to be no sky, no moon, and
+no stars, only a vaporous blackness that came down and closed about me.
+
+I looked out to the sea, but there seemed to be no sea, only a hissing
+splash of green spray where the steamer's forward light fell on the
+water which her bow was pitching up, and beyond that nothing but a
+threatening and thundering void.
+
+I did not weep, but I felt as other women had felt before me, as other
+women have felt since, as women must always feel after they have sinned
+against the world and the world's law, that there was nothing before me
+but the blackness of night.
+
+"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my cry."
+
+But all at once a blessed thought came to me. We were travelling
+eastward, and dark as the night was now, in a few hours the day would
+dawn, the sun would shine in our faces and the sky would smile over our
+heads!
+
+It would be like that with me. Martin would come back. I was only going
+to meet him. It was dark midnight with me now, but I was sailing into
+the sunrise!
+
+Perhaps I was like a child, but I think that comforted me.
+
+At all events I went down to the little triangular cabin with a cheerful
+heart, forgetting that I was a runaway, a homeless wanderer, an outcast,
+with nothing before me but the wilderness of London where I should be
+friendless and alone.
+
+The fire had gone out by this time, the oil-lamp was swinging to the
+motion of the ship, the timbers were creaking, and the Liverpool women
+were asleep.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At eight o'clock next morning I was in the train leaving Liverpool for
+London.
+
+I had selected a second-class compartment labelled "For Ladies," and my
+only travelling companion was a tall fair woman, in a seal-skin coat and
+a very large black hat. She had filled the carriage with the warm odour
+of eau-de-Cologne and the racks on both sides with her luggage, which
+chiefly consisted of ladies' hat boxes of various shapes and sizes.
+
+Hardly had we started when I realised that she was a very loquacious and
+expansive person.
+
+Was I going all the way? Yes? Did I live in Liverpool? No? In London
+perhaps? No? Probably I lived in the country? Yes? That was charming,
+the country being so lovely.
+
+I saw in a moment that if my flight was to be carried out to any purpose
+I should have to conceal my identity; but how to do so I did not know,
+my conscience never before having had to accuse me of deliberate
+untruth.
+
+Accident helped me. My companion asked me what was my husband's
+profession, and being now accustomed to think of Martin as my real
+husband, I answered that he was a commander.
+
+"You mean the commander of a ship?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah, yes, you've been staying in Liverpool to see him off on a voyage.
+How sweet! Just what I should do myself if my husband were a sailor."
+
+Then followed a further battery of perplexing questions.
+
+Had my husband gone on a long voyage? Yes? Where to? The South. Did I
+mean India, Australia, New Zealand? Yes, and still farther.
+
+"Ah, I see," she said again. "He's probably the captain of a tramp
+steamer, and will go from port to port as long as he can find a cargo."
+
+Hardly understanding what my companion meant by this, I half agreed to
+it, and then followed a volley of more personal inquiries.
+
+I was young to be married, wasn't I? Probably I hadn't been married
+very long, had I? And not having settled myself in a home perhaps I was
+going up to London to wait for my husband? Yes? How wise--town being so
+much more cheerful than the country.
+
+"Any friends there?"
+
+"No."
+
+"None whatever?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"But won't you be lonely by yourself in London?"
+
+"A little lonely perhaps."
+
+Being satisfied that she had found out everything about me, my
+travelling companion (probably from the mere love of talking) told me
+something about herself.
+
+She was a fashionable milliner and had a shop in the West End of London.
+Occasionally she made personal visits to the provinces to take orders
+from the leading shopkeepers, but during the season she found it more
+profitable to remain in town, where her connection was large, among
+people who could pay the highest prices.
+
+By this time we had reached Crewe, and as there was some delay in
+getting into the station, my travelling companion put her head out of
+the window to inquire the cause. She was told that a night train from
+Scotland was in front of us, and we should have to be coupled on to it
+before we could proceed to London.
+
+This threw her into the wildest state of excitement.
+
+"I see what it is," she said. "The shooting season is over and the
+society people are coming down from the moors. I know lots and lots of
+them. They are my best customers--the gentlemen at all events."
+
+"The gentlemen?"
+
+"Why, yes," she said with a little laugh.
+
+After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotch
+train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen in
+knickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the platform.
+
+My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names,
+generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones.
+
+Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised, passed
+close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself from
+observation behind the curtain of the window.
+
+"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He married
+Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I may tell you."
+
+I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hidden
+my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still more
+confidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers,
+and I caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind of
+fashionable Bohemia.
+
+More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the number of her
+clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subject
+of discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to close my eyes and be
+silent.
+
+My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, from
+Rugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the tickets were
+being collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion-glass and
+then interested herself afresh in my affairs.
+
+"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"
+
+I repeated that I had none.
+
+"Then you will go to an hotel, I suppose?"
+
+I answered that I should have to look for something less expensive.
+
+"In that case," she said, "I think I know something that will suit you
+exactly."
+
+It was a quiet boarding establishment in Bloomsbury--comfortable house,
+reasonable terms, and, above all, perfectly respectable. In fact, it was
+kept by her own sister, and if I liked she would take me along in her
+cab and drop me at the door. Should she?
+
+Looking back at that moment I cannot but wonder that after what I had
+heard I did not fear discovery. But during the silence of the last hour
+I had been feeling more than ever weak and helpless, so that when my
+companion offered me a shelter in that great, noisy, bewildering city in
+which I had intended to hide myself, but now feared I might be submerged
+and lost, with a willing if not a cheerful heart I accepted.
+
+Half an hour afterwards our cab drew up in a street off Russell Square
+at a rather grimy-looking house which stood at the corner of another and
+smaller square that was shut off by an iron railing.
+
+The door was opened by a young waiter of sixteen or seventeen years,
+who was wearing a greasy dress-suit and a soiled shirt front.
+
+My companion pushed into the hall, I followed her, and almost at the
+same moment a still larger and perhaps grosser woman than my friend,
+with the same features and complexion, came out of a room to the left
+with, a serviette in her hand.
+
+"Sophie!"
+
+"Jane!" cried my companion, and pointing to me she said:
+
+"I've brought you a new boarder."
+
+Then followed a rapid account of where she had met me, who and what I
+was, and why I had come up to London.
+
+"I've promised you'll take her in and not charge her too much, you
+know."
+
+"Why, no, certainly not," said the sister.
+
+At the next moment the boy waiter was bringing, my trunk into the house
+on his shoulder and my travelling companion was bidding me good-bye and
+saying she would look me up later.
+
+When the door was closed I found the house full of the smell of hot
+food, chiefly roast beef and green vegetables, and I could hear the
+clink of knives and forks and the clatter of dishes in the room the
+landlady had come from.
+
+"You'd like to go up to your bedroom at once, wouldn't you?" she said.
+
+We went up two flights of stairs covered with rather dirty druggeting,
+along a corridor that had a thin strip of linoleum, and finally up a
+third flight that was bare to the boards, until we came to a room which
+seemed to be at the top of the house and situated in its remotest
+corner.
+
+It was a very small apartment, hardly larger than the room over the hall
+at home in which Aunt Bridget had made me sleep when I was a child, and
+it was nearly as cold and cheerless.
+
+The wall-paper, which had once been a flowery pink, was now pale and
+patternless; the Venetian blind over the window (which looked out on the
+smaller square) had lost one of its cords and hung at an irregular
+angle; there was a mirror over the mantelpiece with the silvering much
+mottled, and a leather-covered easy chair whereof the spring was broken
+and the seat heavily indented.
+
+"I dare say this will do for the present," said my landlady, and though
+my heart was in my mouth I compelled myself to agree.
+
+"My terms, including meals and all extras, will be a pound a week," she
+added, and to that also, with a lump in my throat I assented, whereupon
+my landlady left me, saying luncheon was on and I could come downstairs
+when I was ready.
+
+A talkative cockney chambermaid, with a good little face, brought me a
+fat blue jug of hot water, and after I had washed and combed I found my
+way down to the dining-room.
+
+What I expected to find there I hardly know. What I did find was a large
+chamber, as dingy as the rest of the house, and as much in need of
+refreshing, with a long table down the middle, at which some twenty
+persons sat eating, with the landlady presiding at the top.
+
+The company, who were of both sexes and chiefly elderly, seemed to me at
+that first sight to be dressed in every variety of out-of-date clothes,
+many of them rather shabby and some almost grotesque.
+
+Raising their faces from their plates they looked at me as I entered,
+and I was so confused that I stood hesitating near the door until the
+landlady called to me.
+
+"Come up here," she said, and when I had done so, and taken the seat by
+her side, which had evidently been reserved for me, she whispered:
+
+"I don't think my sister mentioned your name, my dear. What is it?"
+
+I had no time to deliberate.
+
+"O'Neill," I whispered back, and thereupon my landlady, raising her
+voice, and addressing the company as if they had been members of her
+family, said:
+
+"Mrs. O'Neill, my dears."
+
+Then the ladies at the table inclined their heads at me and smiled,
+while the men (especially those who were the most strangely dressed)
+rose from their seats and bowed deeply.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+Of all houses in London this, I thought, was the least suitable to me.
+
+Looking down the table I told myself that it must be the very home of
+idle gossip and the hot-bed of tittle-tattle.
+
+I was wrong. Hardly had I been in the house a day when I realised that
+my fellow-guests were the most reserved and self-centred of all possible
+people.
+
+One old gentleman who wore a heavy moustache, and had been a colonel in
+the Indian army, was understood to be a student of Biblical prophecy,
+having collected some thousands of texts which established the identity
+of the British nation with the lost tribes of Israel.
+
+Another old gentleman, who wore a patriarchal beard and had taken orders
+without securing a living, was believed to be writing a history of the
+world and (after forty years of continuous labour) to have reached the
+century before Christ.
+
+An elderly lady with a benign expression was said to be a tragic actress
+who was studying in secret for a season at the National Theatre.
+
+Such, and of such kind, were my house-mates; and I have since been told
+that every great city has many such groups of people, the great
+prophets, the great historians, the great authors, the great actors whom
+the world does not know--the odds and ends of humanity, thrown aside by
+the rushing river of life into the gulley-ways that line its banks, the
+odd brothers, the odd sisters, the odd uncles, the odd aunts, for whom
+there is no place in the family, in society, or in the business of the
+world.
+
+It was all very curious and pathetic, yet I think I should have been
+safe, for a time at all events, in this little corner of London into
+which chance had so strangely thrown me, but for one unfortunate
+happening.
+
+That was the arrival of the daily newspaper.
+
+There was never more than a single copy. It came at eight in the morning
+and was laid on the dining-room mantelpiece, from which (by an unwritten
+law of the house) it was the duty as well as the honour of the person
+who had first finished breakfast to take it up and read the most
+startling part of the news to the rest of the company.
+
+Thus it occurred that on the third morning after my arrival I was
+startled by the voice of the old colonel, who, standing back to the
+fire, with the newspaper in his hand, cried:
+
+"Mysterious Disappearance of a Peeress."
+
+"Read it," said the old clergyman.
+
+The tea-cup which I was raising to my mouth trembled in my hand, and
+when I set it down it rattled against the saucer. I knew what was
+coming, and it came.
+
+The old colonel read:
+
+_"A telegram from Blackwater announces the mysterious disappearance of
+the young wife of Lord Raa, which appears to have taken place late on
+Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday morning.
+
+"It will be remembered that the missing lady was married a little more
+than a year ago, and her disappearance is the more unaccountable from
+the fact that during the past month she has been actively occupied in
+preparing for a fete in honour of her return home after a long and happy
+honeymoon.
+
+"The pavilion in which the fete was to have been held had been erected
+on a headland between Castle Raa and a precipitous declivity to the sea,
+and the only reasonable conjecture is that the unhappy lady, going out
+on Thursday night to superintend the final preparations, lost her way in
+the darkness and fell over the cliffs.
+
+"The fact that the hostess was missing was not generally known in Ellan
+until the guests had begun to arrive for the reception on Friday
+evening, when the large assembly broke up in great confusion.
+
+"Naturally much sympathy is felt for the grief-stricken husband."_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the colonel had finished reading I had an almost irresistible
+impulse to scream, feeling sure that the moment my house-mates looked
+into my face they must see that I was the person indicated.
+
+They did not look, and after a chorus of exclamations ("Most
+mysterious!" "What can have become of her?" "On the eve of her fete
+too!") they began to discuss disappearances in general, each
+illustrating his point by reference to the subject of his own study.
+
+"Perfectly extraordinary how people disappear nowadays," said one.
+
+"Extraordinary, sir?" said the old colonel, looking over his spectacles,
+"why should it be extraordinary that one person should disappear when
+whole nations--the ten tribes for example. . . ."
+
+"But that's a different thing altogether," said the old clergyman. "Now
+if you had quoted Biblical examples--Elisha or perhaps Jonah. . . ."
+
+After the discussion had gone on for several minutes in this way I rose
+from the table on my trembling limbs and slipped out of the room.
+
+It would take long to tell of the feverish days that followed--how
+newspaper correspondents were sent from London to Ellan to inquire into
+the circumstances of my disappearance; how the theory of accident gave
+place to the theory of suicide, and the theory of suicide to the theory
+of flight; how a porter on the pier at Blackwater said he had carried my
+trunk to the steamer that sailed on Thursday midnight, thinking I was a
+maid from the great house until I had given him half-a-crown (his proper
+fee being threepence); how two female passengers had declared that a
+person answering to my description had sailed with them to Liverpool;
+how these clues had been followed up and had led to nothing; and how,
+finally, the correspondents had concluded the whole incident of my
+disappearance could not be more mysterious if I had been dropped from
+mid-air into the middle of the Irish Sea.
+
+But then came another development.
+
+My father, who was reported to have received the news of my departure in
+a way that suggested he had lost control of his senses (raging and
+storming at my husband like a man demented), having come to the
+conclusion that I, being in a physical condition peculiar to women, had
+received a serious shock resulting in a loss of memory, offered five
+hundred pounds reward for information that would lead to my discovery,
+which was not only desirable to allay the distress of my heart-broken
+family but urgently necessary to settle important questions of title and
+inheritance.
+
+With this offer of a reward came a description of my personal
+appearance.
+
+_"Age 20, a little under medium height; slight; very black hair;
+lustrous dark eyes; regular features; pale face; grave expression;
+unusually sunny smile."_
+
+It would be impossible for me to say with what perturbation I heard
+these reports read out by the old colonel and the old clergyman. Even
+the nervous stirring of my spoon and the agitated clatter of my knife
+and fork made me wonder that my house-mates did not realise the truth,
+which must I thought, be plainly evident to all eyes.
+
+They never did, being so utterly immersed in their own theories. But all
+the same I sometimes felt as if my fellow guests in that dingy house in
+Bloomsbury were my judges and jury, and more than once, in my great
+agitation, when the reports came near to the truth, I wanted to cry.
+"Stop, stop, don't you see it is I?"
+
+That I never did so was due to the fact that, not knowing what legal
+powers my father might have to compel my return to Ellan, the terror
+that sat on me like a nightmare was that of being made the subject of a
+public quarrel between my father and my husband, concerning the
+legitimacy of my unborn child, with the shame and disgrace which that
+would bring not only upon me but upon Martin.
+
+I had some reason for this fear.
+
+After my father's offer of a reward there came various spiteful
+paragraphs (inspired, as I thought, by Alma and written by the clumsier
+hand of my husband) saying it was reported in Ellan that, if my
+disappearance was to be accounted for on the basis of flight, the only
+"shock" I could have experienced must be a shock of conscience, rumour
+having for some time associated my name with that of a person who was
+not unknown in connection with Antarctic exploration.
+
+It was terrible.
+
+Day by day the motive of my disappearance became the sole topic of
+conversation in our boarding-house. I think the landlady must have
+provided an evening as well as a morning paper, for at tea in the
+drawing-room upstairs the most recent reports were always being
+discussed.
+
+After a while I realised that not only my house-mates but all London was
+discussing my disappearance.
+
+It was a rule of our boarding-house that during certain hours of the day
+everybody should go out as if he had business to go to, and having
+nothing else to do I used to walk up and down the streets. In doing so I
+was compelled to pass certain newsvendors' stalls, and I saw for several
+days that nearly every placard had something about "the missing
+peeress."
+
+When this occurred I would walk quickly along the thoroughfare with a
+sense of being pursued and the feeling which a nervous woman has when
+she is going down a dark corridor at night--that noiseless footsteps are
+coming behind, and a hand may at any moment be laid on her shoulder.
+
+But nobody troubled me in the streets and the only person in our
+boarding-house who seemed to suspect me was our landlady. She said
+nothing, but when my lip was quivering while the old colonel read that
+cruel word about Martin I caught her little grey eyes looking aslant at
+me.
+
+One afternoon, her sister, the milliner, came to see me according to her
+promise, and though she, too, said nothing, I saw that, while the old
+colonel and the old clergyman were disputing on the hearthrug about
+some disappearance which occurred thousands of years ago, she was
+looking fixedly at the fingers with which, in my nervousness, I was
+ruckling up the discoloured chintz of my chair.
+
+Then in a moment--I don't know why--it flashed upon me that my
+travelling companion was in correspondence with my father.
+
+That idea became so insistent towards dinner-time that I made pretence
+of being ill (which was not very difficult) to retire to my room, where
+the cockney chambermaid wrung handkerchiefs out of vinegar and laid them
+on my forehead to relieve my headache--though she increased it, poor
+thing, by talking perpetually.
+
+Next morning the landlady came up to say that if, as she assumed from my
+name, I was Irish and a Catholic, I might like to receive a visit from a
+Sister of Mercy who called at the house at intervals to attend to the
+sick.
+
+I thought I saw in a moment that this was a subterfuge, but feeling that
+my identity was suspected I dared not give cause for further suspicion,
+so I compelled myself to agree.
+
+A few minutes later, having got up and dressed, I was standing with my
+back to the window, feeling like one who would soon have to face an
+attack, when a soft footstep came up my corridor and a gentle hand
+knocked at my door.
+
+"Come in," I cried, trembling like the last leaf at the end of a
+swinging bough.
+
+And then an astonishing thing happened.
+
+A young woman stepped quietly into the room and closed the door behind
+her. She was wearing the black and white habit of the Little Sisters of
+the Poor, but I knew her long, pale, plain-featured face in an instant.
+
+A flood of shame, and at the same time a flood of joy swept over me at
+the sight of her.
+
+It was Mildred Bankes.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+"Mary," said Mildred, "speak low and tell me everything."
+
+She sat in my chair, I knelt by her side, took one of her hands in both
+of mine, and told her.
+
+I told her that I had fled from my husband's house because I could not
+bear to remain there any longer.
+
+I told her that my father had married me against my will, in spite of
+my protests, when I was a child, and did not know that I had any right
+to resist him.
+
+I told her that my father--God forgive me if I did him a wrong--did not
+love me, that he had sacrificed my happiness to his lust of power, and
+that if he were searching for me now it was only because my absence
+disturbed his plans and hurt his pride.
+
+I told her that my husband did not love me either, and that he had
+married me from the basest motives, merely to pay his debts and secure
+an income.
+
+I told her, too, that not only did my husband not love me, but he loved
+somebody else, that he had been cruel and brutal to me, and therefore
+(for these and other reasons) I could not return to him under any
+circumstances.
+
+While I was speaking I felt Mildred's hand twitching between mine, and
+when I had finished she said:
+
+"But, my dear child, they told me your friends were broken-hearted about
+you; that you had lost your memory and perhaps your reason, and
+therefore it would be a good act to help them to send you home."
+
+"It's not true, it's not true," I said.
+
+And then in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard, she told me
+how she came to be there--that the woman who had travelled with me in
+the train from Liverpool, seeing my father's offer of a reward, had
+written to him to say that she knew where I was and only needed somebody
+to establish my identity; that my father wished to come to London for
+this purpose, but had been forbidden by his doctor; that our parish
+priest, Father Donovan, had volunteered to come instead, but had been
+prohibited by his Bishop; and finally that my father had written to his
+lawyers in London, and Father Dan to her, knowing that she and I had
+been together at the Sacred Heart in Rome, and that it was her work now
+to look after lost ones and send them safely back to their people.
+
+"And now the lawyer and the doctors are downstairs," she said in a
+whisper, "and they are only waiting for me to say who you are that they
+may apply for an order to send you home."
+
+This terrified me so much that I made a fervent appeal to Mildred to
+save me.
+
+"Oh, Mildred, save me, save me," I cried.
+
+"But how can I? how can I?" she asked.
+
+I saw what she meant, and thinking to touch her still more deeply I told
+her the rest of my story.
+
+I told her that if I had fled from my husband's house it was not merely
+because he had been cruel and brutal to me, but because I, too, loved
+somebody else--somebody who was far away but was coming back, and there
+was nothing I could not bear for him in the meantime, no pain or
+suffering or loneliness, and when he returned he would protect me from
+every danger, and we should love each other eternally.
+
+If I had not been so wildly agitated I should have known that this was
+the wrong way with Mildred, and it was not until I had said it all in a
+rush of whispered words that I saw her eyes fixed on me as if they were
+about to start from their sockets.
+
+"But, my dear, dear child," she said, "this is worse and worse. Your
+father and your husband may have done wrong, but you have done wrong
+too. Don't you see you have?"
+
+I did not tell her that I had thought of all that before, and did not
+believe any longer that God would punish me for breaking a bond I had
+been forced to make. But when she was about to rise, saying that after
+all it would be a good thing to send me home before I had time to join
+my life to his--whoever he was--who had led me to forget my duty as a
+wife, I held her trembling hands and whispered:
+
+"Wait, Mildred. There is something I have not told you even yet."
+
+"What is it?" she asked, but already I could see that she knew what I
+was going to say.
+
+"Mildred," I said, "if I ran away from my husband it was not merely
+because I loved somebody else, but because. . . ."
+
+I could not say it. Do what I would I could not. But holy women like
+Mildred, who spend their lives among the lost ones, have a way of
+reading a woman's heart when it is in trouble, and Mildred read mine.
+
+"Do you mean that . . . that there are consequences . . . going to be?"
+she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does your husband know?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+Mildred drew her hand away from me and crossed herself, saying beneath
+her breath:
+
+"Oh Mother of my God!"
+
+I felt more humbled than I had ever been before, but after a while I
+said:
+
+"Now you see why I can never go back. And you will save me, will you
+not?"
+
+There was silence for some moments. Mildred had drawn back in her chair
+as if an evil spirit had passed between us But at length she said:
+
+"It is not for me to judge you, Mary. But the gentlemen will come up
+soon to know if you are the Mary O'Neill whom I knew at the Sacred
+Heart, and what am I to say to them?"
+
+"Say no," I cried. "Why shouldn't you? They'll never know anything to
+the contrary. Nobody will know."
+
+"Nobody?"
+
+I knew what Mildred meant, and in my shame and confusion I tried to
+excuse myself by telling her who the other woman was.
+
+"It is Alma," I said.
+
+"Alma? Alma Lier?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then I told her how Alma had come back into my life, how she had
+tortured and tempted me, and was now trying to persuade my husband, who
+was a Protestant, to divorce me that she might take my place.
+
+And then I spoke of Martin again--I could not help it--saying that the
+shame which Alma would bring on him would be a greater grief to me than
+anything else that could befall me in this world.
+
+"If you only knew who he is," I said, "and the honour he is held in, you
+would know that I would rather die a thousand deaths than that any
+disgrace should fall on him through me."
+
+I could see that Mildred was deeply moved at this, and though I did not
+intend to play upon her feelings, yet in the selfishness of my great
+love I could not help doing so.
+
+"You were the first of my girl friends, Mildred--the very first. Don't
+you remember the morning after I arrived at school? They had torn me
+away from my mother, and I was so little and lonely, but you were so
+sweet and kind. You took me into church for my first visitation, and
+then into the garden for my first rosary--don't you remember it?"
+
+Mildred had closed her eyes. Her face was becoming very white.
+
+"And then don't you remember the day the news came that my mother was
+very ill, and I was to go home? You came to see me off at the station,
+and don't you remember what you said when we were sitting in the train?
+You said we might never meet again, because our circumstances would be
+so different. You didn't think we should meet like this, did you?"
+
+Mildred's face was growing deadly white.
+
+"My darling mother died. She was all I had in the world and I was all
+she had, and when she was gone there was no place for me in my father's
+house, so I was sent back to school. But the Reverend Mother was very
+kind to me, and the end of it was that I wished to become a nun. Yes
+indeed, and never so much as on the day you took your vows."
+
+Mildred's eyes were still closed, but her eyelids were fluttering and
+she was breathing audibly.
+
+"How well I remember it! The sweet summer morning and the snow-white
+sunshine, and the white flowers and the white chapel of the Little
+Sisters, and then you dressed as a bride in your white gown and long
+white veil. I cried all through the ceremony. And if my father had not
+come for me then, perhaps I should have been a nun like you now."
+
+Mildred's lips were moving. I was sure she was praying to our Lady for
+strength to resist my pleading, yet that only made me plead the harder.
+
+"But God knows best what our hearts are made for," I said. "He knows
+that mine was made for love. And though you may not think it I know God
+knows that he who is away is my real husband--not the one they married
+me to. You will not separate us, will you? All our happiness--his and
+mine--is in your hands. You will save us, will you not?"
+
+Some time passed before Mildred spoke. It may have been only a few
+moments, but to me it seemed like an eternity. I did not know then that
+Mildred was reluctant to extinguish the last spark of hope in me. At
+length she said:
+
+"Mary, you don't know what you are asking me to do. When I took my vows
+I promised to speak the truth under all circumstances, no matter what
+the consequences, as surely as I should answer to God at the great Day
+of Judgment. Yet you wish me to lie. How can I? How can I? Remember my
+vows, my duty."
+
+I think the next few minutes must have been the most evil of all my
+life. When I saw, or thought I saw, that, though one word would save me,
+one little word, Mildred intended to give me away to the men
+downstairs, I leapt to my feet and burst out on her with the bitterest
+reproaches.
+
+"You religious women are always talking about your duty," I cried. "You
+never think about love. Love is kind and merciful; but no, duty, always
+duty! Love indeed! What do you cold creatures out of the convent, with
+your crosses and rosaries, know about love--real love--the blazing fire
+in a woman's heart when she loves somebody so much that she would give
+her heart's blood for him--yes, and her soul itself if need be."
+
+What else I said I cannot remember, for I did not know what I was doing
+until I found myself looking out of the window and panting for breath.
+
+Then I became aware that Mildred was making no reply to my reproaches,
+and looking over my shoulder I saw that she was still sitting in my
+chair with both her hands covering her face and the tears trickling
+through her fingers on to the linen of her habit.
+
+That conquered me in a moment.
+
+I was seized with such remorse that I wished to throw my arms about her
+neck and kiss her. I dared not do that, now, but I knelt by her side
+again and asked her to forgive me.
+
+"Forgive me, sister," I said. "I see now that God has brought us to this
+pass and there is no way out of it. You must do what you think is right.
+I shall always know you couldn't have done otherwise. _He_ will know
+too. And if it must be that disgrace is to fall on him through me . . .
+and that when he comes home he will find. . . ."
+
+But I could not bear to speak about that, so I dropped my head on
+Mildred's lap.
+
+During the silence that followed we heard the sound of footsteps coming
+up the stairs.
+
+"Listen! They're here," said Mildred. "Get up. Say nothing. Leave
+everything to me."
+
+I rose quickly and returned to the window. Mildred dried her eyes, got
+up from the chair and stood with her back to the fire-place.
+
+There was a knock at my door. I do not know which of us answered it, but
+my landlady came into the room, followed by three men in tall silk hats.
+
+"Excuse us, my dear," she said, in an insincere voice. "These gentlemen
+are making an examination of the house, and they wish to see your room.
+May they?"
+
+I do not think I made any reply. I was holding my breath and watching
+intently. The men made a pretence of glancing round, but I could see
+they were looking at Mildred. Their looks seemed to say as plainly as
+words could speak:
+
+"Is it she?"
+
+Mildred hesitated for a moment, there was a dreadful silence and
+then--may the holy Virgin bless her!--she shook her head.
+
+I could bear no more. I turned back to the window. The men, who had
+looked at each other with expressions of surprise, tried to talk
+together in ordinary tones as if on common place subjects.
+
+"So there's nothing to do here, apparently."
+
+"Apparently not."
+
+"Let's go, then. Good day, Sister. Sorry to have troubled you."
+
+I heard the door close behind them. I heard their low voices as they
+passed along the corridor. I heard their slow footsteps as they went
+down the stairs. And then, feeling as if my heart would burst, I turned
+to throw myself at Sister Mildred's feet.
+
+But Sister Mildred was on her knees, with her face buried in my bed,
+praying fervently.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+I did not know then, and it seems unnecessary to say now, why my father
+gave up the search for me in London. He did so, and from the day the
+milliner's clue failed him I moved about freely.
+
+Then from the sense of being watched I passed into that of being lost.
+
+Sister Mildred was my only friend in London, but she was practically cut
+off from me. The Little Sisters had fixed her up (in the interests of
+her work among the lost ones) in a tiny flat at the top of a lofty
+building near Piccadilly, where her lighted window always reminded me of
+a lighthouse on the edge of a dangerous reef. But in giving me her
+address she warned me not to come to her except in case of urgent need
+partly because further intercourse might discredit her denial, and
+partly because it would not be good for me to be called "one of Sister
+Veronica's girls"--that being Mildred's name as a nun.
+
+Oh the awful loneliness of London!
+
+Others just as friendless have wandered in the streets of the big city.
+I knew I was not the first, and I am sure I have not been the last to
+find London the most solitary place in the world. But I really and truly
+think there was one day of the week when, from causes peculiar to my
+situation, my loneliness must have been deeper than that of the most
+friendless refugee.
+
+Nearly every boarder in our boarding-house used to receive once a week
+or once a month a letter containing a remittance from some unknown
+source, with which he paid his landlady and discharged his other
+obligations.
+
+I had no such letter to receive, so to keep up the character I had not
+made but allowed myself to maintain (of being a commander's wife) I used
+to go out once a week under pretence of calling at a shipping office to
+draw part of my husband's pay.
+
+In my childish ignorance of the habits of business people I selected
+Saturday afternoon for this purpose; and in my fear of encountering my
+husband, or my husband's friends in the West End streets, I chose the
+less conspicuous thoroughfares at the other side of the river.
+
+Oh, the wearisome walks I had on Saturday afternoons, wet or dry, down
+the Seven Dials, across Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall, round the
+eastern end of the Houses of Parliament, and past Westminster Pier (dear
+to me from one poignant memory), and so on and on into the monotonous
+and inconspicuous streets beyond.
+
+Towards nightfall I would return, generally by the footway across
+Hungerford Bridge, which is thereby associated with the most painful
+moments of my life, for nowhere else did I feel quite so helpless and so
+lonely.
+
+The trains out of Charing Cross shrieking past me, the dark river
+flowing beneath, the steamers whistling under the bridge, the
+automobiles tooting along the Embankment, the clanging of the electric
+cars, the arc lamps burning over the hotels and the open flares blazing
+over the theatres--all the never-resting life of London--and myself in
+the midst of the tumultuous solitude, a friendless and homeless girl.
+
+But God in His mercy saved me from all that--saved me too, in ways in
+which it was only possible to save a woman.
+
+The first way was through my vanity.
+
+Glancing at myself in my mottled mirror one morning I was shocked to see
+that what with my loneliness and my weary walks I was losing my looks,
+for my cheeks were hollow, my nose was pinched, my eyes were heavy with
+dark rings underneath them, and I was plainer than Martin had ever seen
+me.
+
+This frightened me.
+
+It would be ridiculous to tell all the foolish things I did after that
+to improve and preserve my appearance for Martin's sake, because every
+girl whose sweetheart is away knows quite well, and it is not important
+that anybody else should.
+
+There was a florist's shop in Southampton Row, and I went there every
+morning for a little flower which I wore in the breast of my bodice,
+making believe to myself that Martin had given it to me.
+
+There was a jeweller's shop there too, and I sold my wedding ring
+(having long felt as if it burnt my finger) and bought another wedding
+ring with an inscription on the inside "_From Martin to Mary_."
+
+As a result of all this caressing of myself I saw after a while, to my
+great joy, that my good looks were coming back; and it would be silly to
+say what a thrill of delight I had when, going into the drawing-room of
+our boarding-house one day, the old actress called me "Beauty" instead
+of the name I had hitherto been known by.
+
+The second way in which God saved me from my loneliness was through my
+condition.
+
+I did not yet know what angel was whispering to me out of the physical
+phase I was passing through, when suddenly I became possessed by a
+passion for children.
+
+It was just as if a whole new world of humanity sprang into life for me
+by magic. When I went out for my walks in the streets I ceased to be
+conscious of the faces of men and women, and it seemed as if London were
+peopled by children only.
+
+I saw no more of the crowds going their different ways like ants on an
+ant-hill, but I could not let a perambulator pass without peering under
+the lace of the hood at the little cherub face whose angel eyes looked
+up at me.
+
+There was an asylum for children suffering from incurable diseases in
+the smaller square beside our boarding-house, and every morning after
+breakfast, no matter how cold the day might be, I would open my window
+to hear the cheerful voices of the suffering darlings singing their
+hymn:
+
+     "_There's a Friend for little children,
+     Above the bright blue sky_."
+
+Thus six weeks passed, Christmas approached, and the sad old city began
+to look glad and young and gay.
+
+Since a certain night at Castle Raa I had had a vague feeling that I had
+thrown myself out of the pale of the Church, therefore I had never gone
+to service since I came to London, and had almost forgotten that
+confession and the mass used to be sweet to me.
+
+But going home one evening in the deepening London fog (for the weather
+had begun to be frosty) I saw, through the open doors of a Catholic
+church, a great many lights in a side chapel, and found they were from a
+little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in
+the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at
+it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a
+black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make them behave.
+
+This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But it also
+made me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the public dinner,
+about saying the prayers for the day with his comrades, that they might
+feel that they were not cut off from the company of Christian men.
+
+So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely plateau
+that guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the difference of
+time) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to be doing the same
+thing as Martin at the same moment.
+
+With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and found
+Christmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my way
+upstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly which
+the old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to her.
+
+They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight of me,
+whereupon the old actress cried:
+
+"Ah, here's Beauty!"
+
+Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal on
+Christmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime.
+
+"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and alleys round
+about, but perhaps you won't mind that," she said.
+
+I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the following
+afternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the dress-circle of the
+great theatre, from which I could see both the stage and the auditorium.
+
+The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor, and I
+could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put the
+girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled heads of
+the boys.
+
+How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the wicked
+sisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright when the
+glittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their little dangling
+feet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid went off to the ball
+behind six little ponies which pranced along under the magical moonlight
+in the falling snow!
+
+But the part of the performance which they liked best was their own part
+when, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs they sang in
+their lanes and alleys:
+
+     "_Yew aw the enny, Oi em ther bee,
+     Oi'd like ter sip ther enny from those red lips yew see_."
+
+That was so loaded with the memory of one of the happiest days of my
+life (the day I went with Martin to see the _Scotia_) that, in the
+yearning of the motherhood still unborn in me, I felt as if I should
+like to gather the whole screaming houseful of happy children to my
+breast.
+
+But oh why, why, why, does not Providence warn us when we are on the
+edge of tragic things?
+
+The pantomime rehearsal being over I was hurrying home (for the evening
+was cold, though I was so warm within) when I became aware of a number
+of newsmen who were flying up from the direction of the Strand, crying
+their papers at the top of their voice.
+
+I did not usually listen to such people, but I was compelled to do so
+now, for they were all around me.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+The cry fell on me like a thunderbolt. An indescribable terror seized
+me. I felt paralysed and stood dead still. People were buying copies of
+the papers, and at first I made a feeble effort to do the same. But my
+voice was faint; the newsman did not hear me and he went flying past.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--reported loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+After that I dared not ask for a paper. Literally I dared not. I dared
+not know the truth. I dared not see the dreadful fact in print.
+
+So I began to hurry home. But as I passed through the streets, stunned,
+stupefied, perspiring, feeling as if I were running away from some
+malignant curse, the newsmen seemed to be pursuing me, for they were
+darting out from every street.
+
+"_Paper--third e'shen--loss of the Sco-sha_."
+
+Faster and faster I hurried along. But the awful cry was always ringing
+in my ears, behind, before, and on either side.
+
+When I reached our boarding-house my limbs could scarcely support me. I
+had hardly strength enough to pull the bell. And before our young waiter
+had opened the door two news men, crossing the square, were crying:
+
+"_Paper--third edition--reported loss of the 'Scotia.'_"
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+As I passed through the hall the old colonel and the old clergyman were
+standing by the dining-room door. They were talking excitedly, and while
+I was going upstairs, panting hard and holding on by the handrail, I
+heard part of their conversation.
+
+"Scotia was the name of the South Pole ship, wasn't it?"
+
+"Certainly it was. We must send young John out for a paper."
+
+Reaching my room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed me
+that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain
+recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as
+a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar.
+
+After a while I heard some of our boarders talking on the floor below.
+Opening my door and listening eagerly I heard one of them say, in such a
+casual tone:
+
+"Rather sad--this South Pole business, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, if it's true."
+
+"Doesn't seem much doubt about that--unless there are two ships of the
+same name, you know."
+
+At that my heart leapt up. I had now two rafts to cling to. Just then
+the gong sounded, and my anxiety compelled me to go down to tea.
+
+As I entered the drawing-room the old colonel was unfolding a newspaper.
+
+"Here we are," he was saying. "Reported loss of the _Scotia_--Appalling
+Antarctic Calamity."
+
+I tried to slide into the seat nearest to the door, but the old actress
+made room for me on the sofa close to the tea-table.
+
+"You enjoyed the rehearsal? Yes?" she whispered.
+
+"Hush!" said our landlady, handing me a cup of tea, and then the old
+colonel, standing back to the fire, began to read.
+
+_"Telegrams from New Zealand report the picking up of large fragments of
+a ship which were floating from the Antarctic seas. Among them were the
+bulwarks, some portions of the deck cargo, and the stern of a boat,
+bearing the name 'Scotia.'
+
+"Grave fears are entertained that these fragments belong to the schooner
+of the South Pole expedition, which left Akaroa a few weeks ago, and the
+character of some of the remnants (being vital parts of a ship's
+structure) lead to the inference that the vessel herself must have
+foundered."_
+
+"Well, well," said the old clergyman, with his mouth full of buttered
+toast.
+
+The walls of the room seemed to be moving around me. I could scarcely
+see; I could scarcely hear.
+
+_"Naturally there can be no absolute certainty that the 'Scotia' may not
+be still afloat, or that the members of the expedition may not have
+reached a place of safety, but the presence of large pieces of ice
+attached to some of the fragments seem to the best authorities to favour
+the theory that the unfortunate vessel was struck by one of the huge
+icebergs which have lately been floating up from the direction of the
+Admiralty Mountains, and in that case her fate will probably remain one
+of the many insoluble mysteries of the ocean."_
+
+"Now that's what one might call the irony of fate," said the old
+clergyman, "seeing that the object of the expedition . . ."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+_"While the sympathy of the public will be extended to the families of
+all the explorers who have apparently perished in a brave effort to
+protect mankind from one of the worst dangers of the great deep, the
+entire world will mourn the loss (as we fear it may be) of the heroic
+young Commander, Doctor Martin Conrad, who certainly belonged to the
+ever-diminishing race of dauntless and intrepid souls who seem to be
+born will that sacred courage which leads men to render up their lives
+at the lure of the Unknown and the call of a great idea."_
+
+I felt as if I were drowning. At one moment there was the shrieking of
+waves about my face; at the next the rolling of billows over my head.
+
+_"Though it seems only too certain . . . this sacred courage quenched
+. . . let us not think such lives as his are wasted . . . only wasted
+lives . . . lives given up . . . inglorious ease . . . pursuit of idle
+amusements. . . . Therefore let loved ones left behind . . . take
+comfort . . . inspiring thought . . . if lost . . . not died in vain . . .
+Never pleasure but Death . . . the lure that draws true hearts. . . ."_
+
+I heard no more. The old colonel's voice, which had been beating on my
+brain like a hammer, seemed to die away in the distance.
+
+"How hard you are breathing. What is amiss?" said our landlady.
+
+I made no reply. Rising to my feet I became giddy and held on to the
+table cloth to prevent myself from falling.
+
+The landlady jumped up to protect her crockery and at the same moment
+the old actress led me from the room. I excused myself on the ground of
+faintness, and the heat of the house after my quick walk home from the
+theatre.
+
+Back in my bedroom my limbs gave way and I sank to the floor with my
+head on the chair. There was no uncertainty for me now. It was all over.
+The great love which had engrossed my life had gone.
+
+In the overwhelming shock of that moment I could not think of the
+world's loss. I could not even think of Martin's. I could only think of
+my own, and once more I felt as if something of myself had been torn out
+of my breast.
+
+"Why? Why?" I was crying in the depths of my heart--why, when I was so
+utterly alone, so helpless and so friendless, had the light by which I
+lived been quenched.
+
+After a while the gong sounded for dinner. I got up and lay on the bed.
+The young waiter brought up some dishes on a tray. I sent them down
+again. Then time passed and again I heard voices on the floor below.
+
+"Rough on that young peeress if Conrad has gone down, eh?"
+
+"What peeress?"
+
+"Don't you remember--the one who ran away from that reprobate Raa?"
+
+"Ah, yes, certainly. I remember now."
+
+"Of course, Conrad was the man pointed at, and perhaps if he had lived
+to come back he might have stood up for the poor thing, but now. . . ."
+
+"Ah, well, that's the way, you see."
+
+The long night passed.
+
+Sometimes it seemed to go with feet of lead, sometimes with galloping
+footsteps. I remember that the clocks outside seemed to strike every few
+minutes, and then not to strike at all. At one moment I heard the bells
+of a neighbouring church ringing merrily, and by that I knew it was
+Christmas morning.
+
+I did not sleep during the first hours of night, but somewhere in the
+blank reaches of that short space between night and day (like the
+slack-water between ebb and flow), which is the only time when London
+rests, I fell into a troubled doze.
+
+I wish I had not done so, for at the first moment of returning
+consciousness I had that sense, so familiar to bereaved ones, of memory
+rushing over me like a surging tide. I did not cry, but I felt as if my
+heart were bleeding.
+
+The morning dawned dark and foggy. In the thick air of my room the
+window looked at me like a human eye scaled with cataract. It was my
+first experience of a real London fog and I was glad of it. If there had
+been one ray of sunshine that morning I think my heart would have
+broken.
+
+The cockney chambermaid came with her jug of hot water and wished me "a
+merry Christmas." I did my best to answer her.
+
+The young waiter came with my breakfast. I told him to set it down, but
+I did not touch it.
+
+Then the cockney chambermaid came back to make up my room and, finding
+me still in bed, asked if I would like a fire. I answered "Yes," and
+while she was lighting a handful between the two bars of my little grate
+she talked of the news in the newspaper.
+
+"It don't do to speak no harm of the dead, but as to them men as 'ad a
+collusion with a iceberg in the Australier sea, serve 'em jolly well
+right I say. What was they a-doing down there, risking their lives for
+nothing, when they ought to have been a-thinking of their wives and
+children. My Tom wanted to go for a sailor, but I wouldn't let him! Not
+me! 'If you're married to a sailor,' says I, ''alf your time you never
+knows whether you 'as a 'usband or 'asn't.' 'Talk sense,' says Tom. 'I
+_am_ a-talking sense,' says I, 'and then think of the kiddies,' I says."
+
+After a while I got up and dressed and sat long hours before the fire. I
+tried to think of others beside myself who must be suffering from the
+same disaster--especially of Martin's mother and the good old doctor. I
+pictured the sweet kitchen-parlour in Sunny Lodge, with the bright
+silver bowls on the high mantelpiece. There was no fire under the
+_slouree_ now. The light of that house was out, and two old people were
+sitting on either side of a cold hearth.
+
+I passed in review my maidenhood, my marriage, and my love, and told
+myself that the darkest days of my loneliness in London had hitherto
+been relieved by one bright hope. I had only to live on and Martin would
+come back to me. But now I was utterly alone, I was in the presence of
+nothingness. The sanctuary within me where Martin had lived was only a
+cemetery of the soul.
+
+"Why? Why? Why?" I cried again, but there was no answer.
+
+Thus I passed my Christmas Day (for which I had formed such different
+plans), and I hardly knew if it was for punishment or warning that I was
+at last compelled to think of something besides my own loss.
+
+My unborn child!
+
+No man on earth can know anything about that tragic prospect, though
+millions of women must have had to face it. To have a child coming that
+is doomed before its birth to be fatherless--there is nothing in the
+world like that.
+
+I think the bitterest part of my grief was that nobody could ever know.
+If Martin had lived he would have leapt to acknowledge his offspring in
+spite of all the laws and conventions of life. But being dead he could
+not be charged with it. Therefore the name of the father of my unborn
+child must never, never, never be disclosed.
+
+The thickening of the fog told me that the day was passing.
+
+It passed. The houses on the opposite side of the square vanished in a
+vaporous, yellow haze, and their lighted windows were like rows of
+bloodshot eyes looking out of the blackness.
+
+Except the young waiter and the chambermaid nobody visited me until a
+little before dinner time. Then the old actress came up, rather
+fantastically dressed (with a kind of laurel crown on her head), to say
+that the boarders were going to have a dance and wished me to join
+them. I excused myself on the ground of headache, and she said:
+
+"Young women often suffer from it. It's a pity, though! Christmas night,
+too!"
+
+Not long after she had gone, I heard, through the frequent tooting of
+the taxis in the street, the sound of old-fashioned waltzes being played
+on the piano, and then a dull thudding noise on the floor below, mingled
+with laughter, which told me that the old boarders were dancing.
+
+I dare say my head was becoming light. I had eaten nothing for nearly
+forty hours, and perhaps the great shock which chance had given me had
+brought me near to the blank shadowland which is death.
+
+I remember that in some vague way there arose before me a desire to die.
+It was not to be suicide--my religion saved me from that--but death by
+exhaustion, by continuing to abstain from food, having no desire for it.
+
+Martin was gone--what was there to live for? Had I not better die before
+my child came to life? And if I could go where Martin was I should be
+with him eternally.
+
+Still I did not weep, but--whether audibly or only in the unconscious
+depths of my soul--more than once I cried to Martin by name.
+
+"Martin! Martin! I am coming to you!"
+
+I was in this mood (sitting in my chair as I had done all day and
+staring into the small slow fire which was slipping to the bottom of the
+grate) when I heard a soft step in the corridor outside. At the next
+moment my door was opened noiselessly, and somebody stepped into the
+room.
+
+It was Mildred, and she knelt by my side and said in a low voice:
+
+"You are in still deeper trouble, Mary--tell me."
+
+I tried to pour out my heart to her as to a mother, but I could not do
+so, and indeed there was no necessity. The thought that must have rushed
+into my eyes was instantly reflected in hers.
+
+"It is he, isn't it?" she whispered, and I could only bow my head.
+
+"I thought so from the first," she said. "And now you are thinking of
+. . . of what is to come?"
+
+Again I could only bow, but Mildred put her arms about me and said:
+
+"Don't lose heart, dear. Our Blessed Lady sent me to take care of you.
+And I will--I will."
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+Surely Chance must be the damnedest conspirator against human happiness,
+or my darling could never have been allowed to suffer so much from the
+report that my ship was lost.
+
+What actually happened is easily told.
+
+Two days after we left Akaroa, N.Z., which was the last we saw of the
+world before we set our faces towards the Unknown, we ran into a heavy
+lumpy sea and made bad weather of it for forty-eight hours.
+
+Going at good speed, however, we proceeded south on meridian 179 degrees
+E., latitude 68, when (just as we were sighting the Admiralty Mountains,
+our first glimpse of the regions of the Pole) we encountered a
+south-westerly gale, which, with our cumbersome deck cargo, made the
+handling of the ship difficult.
+
+Nevertheless the _Scotia_ rode bravely for several hours over the
+mountainous seas, though sometimes she rolled fifty degrees from side to
+side.
+
+Towards nightfall we shipped a good deal of water; the sea smashed in
+part of our starboard bulwarks, destroyed the upper deck, washed out the
+galley, carried off two of our life boats and sent other large fragments
+of the vessel floating away to leeward.
+
+At last the pumps became choked, and the water found its way to the
+engine-room. So to prevent further disaster we put out the fires, and
+then started, all hands, to bale out with buckets.
+
+It was a sight to see every man-jack at work on that job (scientific
+staff included), and you would not have thought our spirits were much
+damped, whatever our bodies may have been, if you had been there when I
+cried, "Are we downhearted, shipmates?" and heard the shout that came up
+from fifty men (some of them waist deep in the water):
+
+"No!"
+
+We had a stiff tussle until after midnight, but we stuck hard, and
+before we turned into our bunks, we had fought the sea and beaten it.
+
+Next morning broke fine and clear, with that fresh crisp air of the
+Antarctic which is the same to the explorer as the sniff of battle to
+the warhorse, and no sign of the storm except the sight of some
+lead-white icebergs which had been torn from the islands south-west of
+us.
+
+Everybody was in high spirits at breakfast, and when one of the company
+started "Sweethearts and Wives" all hands joined in the chorus, and
+(voice or no voice) I had a bit of a go at it myself.
+
+It is not the most solemn music ever slung together, but perhaps no
+anthem sung in a cathedral has ascended to heaven with a heartier spirit
+of thanksgiving.
+
+When I went up on deck again, though, I saw that enough of our "wooden
+walls" had gone overboard to give "scarey people" the impression (if
+things were ever picked up, as I knew they would be, for the set of the
+current was to the north-east) that we had foundered, and that made me
+think of my dear one.
+
+We had no wireless aboard, and the ship would not be going back to New
+Zealand until March, so I was helpless to correct the error; but I
+determined that the very first message from the very first station I set
+up on the Antarctic continent should be sent to her to say that I was
+safe and everything going splendid.
+
+What happened on Christmas day is a longer story.
+
+On the eighteenth of December, having landed some of my deck cargo and
+provisions, and sent up my ship to winter quarters, I was on my way,
+with ponies, dogs, and sledges and a large company of men, all in A1
+condition, to the lower summit of Mount Erebus, for I intended to set up
+my first electric-power-wave station there--that being high enough, we
+thought, to permit of a message reaching the plateau of the Polar zone
+and low enough (allowing for the curvature of the earth) to cover the
+maximum distance in a northerly direction.
+
+It was a long reach, but we chose the rocky ridges and moraines, trying
+to avoid the crevassed glaciers, and all went well until the twentieth,
+when just as we were reaching the steeper gradients a strong wind sprang
+up, blowing straight down the course before us.
+
+All day long we toiled against it, but the weather grew worse, with
+gusts of sleet and snow, until the wind reached the force of a hurricane
+and the temperature fell to 28 degrees below zero.
+
+There was nothing to do but to wait for the blizzard to blow itself out,
+so we plugged down our tents in the shelter of the rocky side of a
+ravine that had an immense snow-field behind it.
+
+The first night was bad enough, for the canvas of one tent flew into
+ribbons, and the poor chaps in it had to lie uncovered in their
+half-frozen sleeping-bags until morning.
+
+All through the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third the storm
+continued, sweeping with terrific force down the ravine, and whirling
+the snow in dense masses from the snow-field overhead.
+
+Christmas Eve was worse, with the temperature down to 38 degrees below
+zero and the wind up to eighty miles an hour in gusts, and during the
+greater part of Christmas Day we were all confined to our sleeping-bags
+and half buried in the snow that had drifted in on us.
+
+As a consequence we had no religious service, and if anybody said a De
+Profundis it was between his crackling lips under his frozen beard. We
+had no Christmas dinner either, except a few Plasmon biscuits and a nip
+of brandy and water, which were served out by good old O'Sullivan who
+had come with me as doctor to the expedition.
+
+On St. Stephen's Day I made a round of the camp and found the ponies
+suffering terribly and the dogs badly hit. The storm was telling on the
+men too, for some of them were down with dysentery, and the toes of one
+poor chap were black from frostbite.
+
+I was fit enough myself, thank God, but suffering from want of sleep or
+rather from a restless feeling which broken sleep brought with it.
+
+The real truth is that never since I sailed had I been able to shake off
+the backward thought that I ought not to have left my dear one behind
+me. In active work, like the gale, I could dismiss the idea of her
+danger; but now that I had nothing to do but to lie like a log in a
+sleeping-bag, I suffered terribly from my recollection of her
+self-sacrifice and my fear of the consequences that might come of it.
+
+This was not so bad in the daytime, for even in the midst of the
+whirling snow and roaring wind I had only to close my eyes, and I could
+see her as she came up the road in the sunshine that Sunday morning when
+she was returning from church in her drooping hat and fluttering veil,
+or as she looked at me with her great "seeing eyes" at the last moment
+of all when she compelled me to come away.
+
+But the night was the devil. No sooner did I drop off to sleep than I
+awoke with a start at the sound of her voice calling me by my name.
+
+"Martin! Martin!"
+
+It was always a voice of distress, and though I am no dreamer and I
+think no crank, I could not get away from the idea that she was crying
+to me to come back.
+
+That was about the one thing in the world that was impossible to me now,
+and yet I knew that getting assurance from somewhere that my dear one
+was being cared for was the only way to set my mind at rest for the job
+that was before me.
+
+It may seem ridiculous that I should have thought of that, but everybody
+who has ever been with Nature in her mighty solitudes, aloof from the
+tides of life, knows that the soul of man is susceptible down there to
+signs which would seem childish amid the noise and bustle of the world.
+
+It was like that with me.
+
+I shared my tent with O'Sullivan, the chief of our scientific staff, and
+Treacle, who thought it his duty to take care of me, though the work was
+generally the other way about.
+
+The old salt had been badly battered, and I had not liked the way he had
+been mumbling about "mother," which is not a good sign in a stalwart
+chap when his strength is getting low.
+
+So while buttoning up the tent on the night after Christmas Day I was a
+bit touched up to see old Treacle, who had lived the life of a rip,
+fumbling at his breast and hauling something out with an effort.
+
+It was a wooden image of the Virgin (about the length of my hand) daubed
+over with gilt and blue paint, and when he stuck it up in front of his
+face as he lay in his sleeping-bag, I knew that he expected to go out
+before morning, and wished _that_ to be the last thing his old eyes
+should rest on.
+
+I am not much of a man for saints myself (having found that we get out
+of tight places middling well without them), but perhaps what Treacle
+did got down into some secret place of my soul, for I felt calmer as I
+fell asleep, and when I awoke it was not from the sound of my darling's
+voice, but from a sort of deafening silence.
+
+The roaring of the wind had ceased; the blizzard was over; the lamp that
+hung from the staff of the tent had gone out; and there was a sheet of
+light coming in from an aperture in the canvas.
+
+It was the midnight sun of the Antarctic, and when I raised my head I
+saw that it fell full on the little gilded image of the Virgin. Anybody
+who has never been where I was then may laugh if he likes and welcome,
+but that was enough for me. It was all right! Somebody was looking after
+my dear one!
+
+I shouted to my shipmates to get up and make ready, and at dawn, when we
+started afresh on our journey, there may have been dark clouds over our
+heads but the sun was shining inside of us.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Sister Mildred was right. Our Blessed Lady must have interceded for me,
+because help came immediately.
+
+I awoke on St. Stephen's morning with that thrilling emotion which every
+mother knows to be the first real and certain consciousness of
+motherhood.
+
+It is not for me to describe the physical effects of that great change.
+But the spiritual effect is another matter. It was like that of a
+miracle. God in his great mercy, looking down on me in my sorrow, had
+sent one of His ministering angels to comfort me.
+
+It seemed to say:
+
+"Don't be afraid. He who went away is not lost to you. Something of
+himself is about to return."
+
+I felt no longer that I was to be left alone in my prison-house of
+London, because Martin's child was to bear me company--to be a link
+between us, an everlasting bond, so that he and I should be together to
+the end.
+
+I tremble to say what interpretation I put upon all this--how it seemed
+to be a justification of what I did on the night before Martin left
+Ellan, as if God, knowing he would not return, had prompted me, so that
+when my dark hour came I might have this great hope for my comforter.
+
+And oh how wonderful it was, how strange, how mysterious, how joyful!
+
+Every day and all day and always I was conscious of my unborn child, as
+a fluttering bird held captive in the hand. The mystery and the joy of
+the coming life soothed away my sorrow, and if I had shed any tears they
+would have dried them.
+
+And then the future!
+
+I seemed to know from the first that it was to be a girl, and already I
+could see her face and look into her sea-blue eyes. As she grew up I
+would talk to her of her father--the brave explorer, the man of destiny,
+who laid down his life in a great work for the world. We should always
+be talking of him--we two alone together, because he belonged to us and
+nobody else in the world besides. Everything I have written here I
+should tell her--at least the beautiful part of it, the part about our
+love, which nothing in life, and not even death itself, could quench.
+
+Oh the joy of those days! It may seem strange that I should have been so
+happy so soon after my bereavement, but I cannot help it if it was so,
+and it _was_ so.
+
+Perhaps it was a sort of hysteria, due to the great change in my
+physical condition. I do not know. I do not think I want to know. But
+one thing is sure--that hope and prayer and the desire of life awoke in
+me again, as by the touch of God's own hand, and I became another and a
+happier woman.
+
+Such was the condition in which Mildred found me when she returned a few
+days later. Then she brought me down plump to material matters. We had
+first to consider the questions of ways and means, in order to find out
+how to face the future.
+
+It was the beginning of January, my appointed time was in June, and I
+had only some sixteen pounds of my money left, so it was clear that I
+could not stay in the boarding-house much longer.
+
+Happily Mildred knew of homes where women could live inexpensively
+during their period of waiting. They were partly philanthropic and
+therefore subject to certain regulations, which my resolute
+determination (not to mention Martin's name, or permit it to be
+mentioned) might make it difficult for me to observe, but Mildred hoped
+to find one that would take me on her recommendation without asking
+further question.
+
+In this expectation we set out in search of a Maternity Home. What a day
+of trial we had! I shall never forget it.
+
+The first home we called at was a Catholic one in the neighbourhood of
+our boarding-house.
+
+It had the appearance of a convent, and that pleased me exceedingly.
+After we had passed the broad street door, with its large brass plate
+and small brass grille, we were shown into a little waiting-room with
+tiled floor, distempered walls, and coloured pictures of the saints.
+
+The porteress told us the Mother was at prayers with the inmates, but
+would come downstairs presently, and while we waited we heard the dull
+hum of voices, the playing of an organ, and the singing of the sweet
+music I knew so well.
+
+Closing my eyes I felt myself back in Rome, and began to pray that I
+might be permitted to remain there. But the desire was damped when the
+Mother entered the room.
+
+She was a stout woman, wearing heavy outdoor boots and carrying her arms
+interlaced before her, with the hands hidden in the ample sleeves of her
+habit, and her face was so white and expressionless, that it might have
+been cast in plaster of Paris.
+
+In a rather nervous voice Mildred explained our errand. "Mother," she
+said, "I cannot tell you anything about this young lady, and I have come
+to ask if you will take her on my recommendation."
+
+"My dear child," said the Mother, "that would be utterly against our
+rule. Not to know who the young lady is, where she comes from, why she
+is here, and whether she is married or single or a widow--it is quite
+impossible."
+
+Mildred, looking confused and ashamed, said:
+
+"She can afford to pay a little."
+
+"That makes no difference."
+
+"But I thought that in exceptional cases . . ."
+
+"There can be no exceptional cases, Sister. If the young lady is married
+and can say that her husband consents, or single and can give us
+assurance that her father or guardian agrees, or a widow and can offer
+satisfactory references . . ."
+
+Mildred looked across at me, but I shook my head.
+
+"In that case there seems to be nothing more to say," said the Mother,
+and rising without ceremony she walked with us to the door.
+
+Our next call was at the headquarters of a home which was neither
+Catholic nor Protestant, but belonged, Mildred said, to a kind of
+Universal Church, admitting inmates of all denominations.
+
+It was in a busy thoroughfare and had the appearance of a business
+office. After Mildred had written her name and the object of our visit
+on a slip of paper we were taken up in a lift to another office with an
+open safe, where a man in a kind of uniform (called a Commissioner) was
+signing letters and cheques.
+
+The Commissioner was at first very courteous, especially to me, and I
+had an uncomfortable feeling that he was mistaking me for something
+quite other than I was until Mildred explained our errand, and then his
+manner changed painfully.
+
+"What you ask is against all our regulations," he said. "Secrecy implies
+something to hide, and we neither hide anything nor permit anything to
+be hidden. In fact our system requires that we should not only help the
+woman, but punish the man by making him realise his legal, moral, and
+religious liability for his wrong-doing. Naturally we can only do this
+by help of the girl, and if she does not tell us at the outset who and
+what the partner of her sin has been and where he is to be found. . . ."
+
+I was choking with shame and indignation, and rising to my feet I said
+to Mildred:
+
+"Let us go, please."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know," said the Commissioner, with a superior smile, "I have
+seen all this before. The girl nearly always tries to shield the guilty
+man. But why should she? It may seem generous, but it is really wicked.
+It is a direct means of increasing immorality. The girl who protects the
+author of her downfall is really promoting the ruin of another woman,
+and if. . . ."
+
+Thinking of Martin I wanted to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and
+in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office,
+and into the street, leaving poor Mildred to follow me.
+
+Our last call was at the home of a private society in a little brick
+house that seemed to lean against the wall of a large lying-in hospital
+in the West End of London.
+
+At the moment of our arrival the Matron was presiding in the
+drawing-room over a meeting of a Missionary League for the Conversion of
+the Jews, so we were taken through a narrow lobby into a little
+back-parlour which overlooked, through a glass screen, a large
+apartment, wherein a number of young women, who had the appearance of
+dressmakers, ladies' maids, and governesses, were sewing tiny pieces of
+linen and flannel that were obviously baby-clothes.
+
+There were no carpets on the floors and the house had a slight smell of
+carbolic. The tick-tick of sewing machines on the other side of the
+screen mingled with the deadened sound of the clapping of hands in the
+room overhead.
+
+After a while there was rustle of dresses coming down the bare stairs,
+followed by the opening and closing of the front door, and then the
+Matron came into the parlour.
+
+She was a very tall, flat-bosomed woman in a plain black dress, and she
+seemed to take in our situation instantly. Without waiting for Mildred's
+explanation she began to ask my name, my age, and where I came from.
+
+Mildred fenced these questions as well as she could, and then, with even
+more nervousness than ever, made the same request as before.
+
+The Matron seemed aghast.
+
+"Most certainly not," she said. "My committee would never dream of such
+a thing. In the interests of the unfortunate girls who have fallen from
+the path of virtue, as well as their still more unfortunate offspring,
+we always make the most searching inquiries. In fact, we keep a record
+of every detail of every case. Listen to this," she added, and opening a
+large leather-bound hook like a ledger, she began to read one of its
+entries:
+
+_"H.J., aged eighteen years, born of very respectable parents, was led
+astray_ [that was not the word] _in a lonely road very late at night by
+a sailor who was never afterwards heard of. . . ."_
+
+But I could bear no more, and rising from my seat I fled from the room
+and the house into the noisy street outside.
+
+All day long my whole soul had been in revolt. It seemed to me that,
+while God in His gracious mercy was giving me my child to comfort and
+console me, to uplift and purify me, and make me a better woman than I
+had been before, man, with his false and cruel morality, with his
+machine-made philanthropy, was trying to use it as a whip to punish not
+only me but Martin.
+
+But that it should never do! Never as long as I lived! I would die in
+the streets first!
+
+Perhaps I was wrong, and did not understand myself, and certainly
+Mildred did not understand me. When she rejoined me in the street we
+turned our faces homeward and were half way back to the boarding-house
+before we spoke again.
+
+Then she said:
+
+"I am afraid the other institutions will be the same. They'll all want
+references."
+
+I answered that they should never get them.
+
+"But your money will be done soon, my child, and then what is to become
+of you?"
+
+"No matter!" I said, for I had already determined to face the world
+myself without help from anybody.
+
+There was a silence again until we reached the door of our
+boarding-house, and then Mildred said:
+
+"Mary, your father is a rich man, and however much you may have
+displeased him he cannot wish you to be left to the mercy of the
+world--especially when your time comes. Let me write to him. . . ."
+
+That terrified me, for I saw only one result--an open quarrel between my
+father and my husband about the legitimacy of my child, who would
+probably be taken away from me as soon as it was born.
+
+So taking Mildred by the arm, regardless of the observation of
+passers-by, I begged and prayed and implored of her not to write to my
+father.
+
+She promised not to do so, and we parted on good terms; but I was not
+satisfied, and the only result of our day's journeying was that I became
+possessed of the idea that the whole world was conspiring to rob me of
+my unborn child.
+
+A few days later Mildred called again, and then she said:
+
+"I had another letter from Father Donovan this morning, Mary. Your poor
+priest is broken-hearted about you. He is sure you are in London, and
+certain you are in distress, and says that with or without his Bishop's
+consent he is coming up to London to look for you, and will never go
+back until you are found."
+
+I began to suspect Mildred. In the fever of my dread of losing my child
+I convinced myself that with the best intentions in the world, merely
+out of love for me and pity for my position, she would give me
+up--perhaps in the very hour of my peril.
+
+To make this impossible I determined to cut myself off from her and
+everybody else, by leaving the boarding-house and taking another and
+cheaper lodging far enough away.
+
+I was encouraged in this course by the thought of my diminishing
+resources, and though heaven knows I had not too many comforts where I
+was. I reproached myself for spending so much on my own needs when I
+ought to be economising for the coming of my child.
+
+The end of it all was that one morning early I went down to the corner
+of Oxford Street where the motor-omnibuses seem to come and go from all
+parts of London.
+
+North, south, east, and west were all one to me, leading to labyrinths
+of confused and interminable streets, and I knew as little as a child
+which of them was best for my purpose. But chance seems to play the
+greatest part in our lives, and at that moment it was so with me.
+
+I was standing on the edge of the pavement when a motor-bus labelled
+"Bayswater Road" stopped immediately in front of me and I stepped into
+it, not knowing in the least why I did so.
+
+Late that evening, having found what I wanted, I returned in the mingled
+mist and darkness to the boarding-house to pack up my belongings. That
+was not difficult to do, and after settling my account and sending young
+John for a cab I was making for the door when the landlady came up to
+me.
+
+"Will you not leave your new address, my dear, lest anybody should
+call," she said.
+
+"Nobody will call," I answered.
+
+"But in case there should he letters?"
+
+"There will be no letters," I said, and whispering to the driver to
+drive up Oxford Street, I got into the cab.
+
+It was then quite dark. The streets and shops were alight, and I
+remembered that as I crossed the top of the Charing Cross Road I looked
+down in the direction of the lofty building in which Mildred's window
+would be shining like a lighthouse over Piccadilly.
+
+Poor dear ill-requited Mildred! She has long ago forgiven me. She knows
+now that when I ran away from the only friend I had in London it was
+because I could not help it.
+
+She knows, too, that I was not thinking of myself, and that in diving
+still deeper into the dungeon of the great city, in hiding and burying
+myself away in it, I was asking nothing of God but that He would let me
+live the rest of my life--no matter how poor and lonely--with the child
+that He was sending to be a living link between my lost one and me.
+
+In the light of what happened afterwards, that was all so strange, and
+oh, so wonderful and miraculous!
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My new quarters were in the poorer district which stands at the back of
+Bayswater.
+
+The street was a cul-de-sac (of some ten small houses on either side)
+which was blocked up at the further end by the high wall of a factory
+for the "humanization" of milk, and opened out of a busy thoroughfare of
+interior shops like a gully-way off a noisy coast.
+
+My home in this street was in number one, and I had been attracted to it
+by a printed card in the semi-circular fan-light over the front door,
+saying: "A ROOM TO LET FURNISHED."
+
+My room, which was of fair size, was on the first floor and had two
+windows to the street, with yellow holland blinds and white muslin
+curtains.
+
+The furniture consisted of a large bed, a horse-hair sofa, three
+cane-bottomed chairs, a chest of drawers (which stood between the
+windows), and a mirror over the mantelpiece, which had pink paper, cut
+into fanciful patterns, over the gilt frame, to keep off the flies.
+
+The floor was covered with linoleum, but there were two strips of
+carpet, one before the fire and the other by the bed: the walls were
+papered with a bright red paper representing peonies in bloom; and there
+were three pictures--a portrait of a great Welsh preacher with a bardic
+name ("Dyfed"), an engraving entitled "Feed my Sheep" (showing Jesus
+carrying a lamb), and a memorial card of some member of the family of
+the house, in the form of a tomb with a weeping angel on either side.
+
+I paid five shilling a week for my room, and, as this included the use
+of kettle, cooking utensils, and crockery, I found to my great delight
+at the end of the first week that providing for myself (tea, bread and
+butter, and eggs being my principal food) I had only spent ten shillings
+altogether, which, according to my present needs, left me enough for my
+time of waiting and several weeks beyond.
+
+Every morning I went out with a little hand-bag to buy my provisions in
+the front street; and every afternoon I took a walk in the better part
+of Bayswater and even into the Park (Hyde Park), which was not far off,
+but never near Piccadilly, or so far east as Bloomsbury, lest I should
+meet Sister Mildred or be recognized by the old boarders.
+
+I had no key to my lodgings, but when I returned home I knocked at the
+front door (which was at the top of a short flight of steps from the
+pavement) and then a string was pulled in the cellar-kitchen in which
+the family of my landlady lived, whereupon the bolt was shot back and
+the door opened of itself.
+
+Finding it necessary to account for myself here as at the
+boarding-house, I had adhered to my former name, but said I was the
+widow of a commander lately lost, at sea, which was as near to the truth
+as I dared venture.
+
+I had also made no disguise of the fact that I was expecting a child, a
+circumstance which secured me much sympathy from the kind-hearted souls
+who were now my neighbours.
+
+They were all womanly women, generally the wives of men working in the
+milk factory, and therefore the life of our street was very regular.
+
+At five in the morning you heard the halting step of the old "knocker
+up," who went up and down the street tapping at the bedroom windows with
+a long pole like a fishing-rod. A little before six you heard the
+clashing of many front doors and the echoing footsteps of the men going
+to their work. At half-past seven you heard the whoop of the milkman and
+the rattling of his cans. At half-past eight you heard the little feet
+of the children, like the pattering of rain, going off to the Board
+School round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you
+heard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons,
+the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune
+over a rope stretched from parapet to parapet.
+
+After that, our street hummed like a bee-hive, with the women, washed
+and combed, standing knitting at their open doors or exchanging
+confidences across the areas until darkness fell and each of the mothers
+called her children into bed, as an old hen in the farmyard clucks up
+her chickens.
+
+These good creatures were very kind to me. Having satisfied themselves
+from observation of my habits that I was "respectable," they called me
+"our lady"; and I could not help hearing that I was "a nice young
+thing," though it was a little against me that I did not go to church or
+chapel, and had confessed to being a Catholic--for several of our
+families (including that of my landlady) were members of the Welsh Zion
+Chapel not far away.
+
+Such was the life of the little human cage to which I had confined
+myself, but I had an inner life that was all my own and very sweet to
+me.
+
+During the long hours of every day in which I was alone I occupied
+myself in the making of clothes for my baby--buying linen and flannel
+and worsted, and borrowing patterns from my Welsh landlady.
+
+This stimulated my tenderness towards the child that was to come, for
+the heart of a young mother is almost infantile, and I hardly know
+whether to laugh or cry when I think of the childish things I did and
+thought and said to myself in those first days when I was alone in my
+room in that back street in Bayswater.
+
+Thus long before baby was born I had christened her. At first I wished
+to call her Mary, not because I cared for that name myself, but because
+Martin had said it was the most beautiful in the world. In the end,
+however, I called her Isabel Mary (because Isabel was my mother's name
+and she had been a far better woman than I was), and as I finished my
+baby's garments one by one I used to put them away in their drawer,
+saying to myself, "That's Isabel Mary's binder," or "Isabel Mary's
+christening-robe" as the case might be.
+
+I dare say it was all very foolish. There are tears in my eyes when I
+think of it now, but there were none then, for though there were moments
+when, remembering Martin, I felt as if life were for ever blank, I was
+almost happy in my poor surroundings, and if it was a cage I had fixed
+myself in there was always a bird singing inside of it--the bird that
+sang in my own bosom.
+
+"When Isabel Mary comes everything will he all right," I used to think.
+
+This went on for many weeks and perhaps it might have gone on until my
+time was full but for something which, occurring under my eyes, made me
+tremble with the fear that the life I was living and the hope I was
+cherishing were really very wrong and selfish.
+
+Of my landlady, Mrs. Williams, I saw little. She was a rather hard but
+no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children,
+besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in the
+room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy)
+whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night,
+when, after winding the tall clock on the landing, he went upstairs to
+bed in his stocking feet.
+
+But the outstanding member of the family for me was a shock-headed girl
+of fourteen called Emmerjane, which was a running version of Emma Jane.
+
+I understood that Emmerjane was the illegitimate daughter of Mrs.
+Williams's dead sister, and that she had been born in Carnarvon, which
+still shimmered in her memory in purple and gold.
+
+Emmerjane was the drudge of the family, and I first saw her in the
+street at dusk, mothering a brood of her little cousins, taking Hughie
+by one hand and Katie by the other and telling Gwennie to lay hold of
+Davie lest he should be run over by the milk vans.
+
+Afterwards she became my drudge also--washing my floor, bringing up my
+coals, and cleaning my grate, for sixpence a week, and giving me a great
+deal of information about my neighbours for nothing.
+
+Thus she told me, speaking broad cockney with a Welsh accent, that the
+people opposite were named Wagstaffe and that the creaking noise I heard
+was that of a mangle, which Mrs. Wagstaffe had to keep because her
+husband was a drunkard, who stole her money and came home "a-Saturday
+nights, when the public-houses turned out, and beat her somethink
+shockin'," though she always forgave him the next day and then the
+creaking went on as before.
+
+But the greatest interest of this weird little woman, who had a
+premature knowledge of things a child ought not to know, was in a house
+half-way down the street on the other side, where steam was always
+coming from the open door to the front kitchen.
+
+The people who lived there were named Jones. Mrs. Jones "washed" and had
+a bed-ridden old mother (with two shillings from the Guardians) and a
+daughter named Maggie.
+
+Maggie Jones, who was eighteen, and very pretty, used to work in the
+dairy, but the foreman had "tiken advantage of her" and she had just had
+a baby.
+
+This foreman was named Owen Owens and he lived at the last number on our
+side, where two unmarried sisters "kept house" for him and sat in the
+"singing seat" at Zion.
+
+Maggie thought it was the sisters' fault that Owen Owens did not marry
+her, so she conceived a great scheme for "besting" them, and this was
+the tragedy which, through Emmerjane's quick little eyes and her
+cockney-Welsh tongue, came to me in instalments day by day.
+
+When her baby was a month old Maggie dressed it up "fine" and took it to
+the photographers for its "card di visit." The photographs were a long
+time coming, but when they came they were "heavenly lovely" and Maggie
+"cried to look at them."
+
+Then she put one in an envelope and addressed it to Owen Owens, and
+though it had only to cross the street, she went out after dark to a
+pillar-box a long way off lest anybody should see her posting it.
+
+Next day she said, "He'll have it now, for he always comes home to
+dinner. He'll take it up to his bedroom, look you, and stand it on the
+washstand, and if either of those sisters touch it he'll give them
+what's what."
+
+After that she waited anxiously for an acknowledgment, and every time
+the postman passed down our street her pretty pale face would be at the
+door, saying, "Anything for me to-day?" or "Are you _sure_ there's
+nothing for me, postman?"
+
+At length a letter came, and Maggie Jones trembled so much that she
+dared not open it, but at last she tripped up to her room to be "all of
+herself," and then . . . then there was a "wild screech," and when
+Emmerjane ran upstairs Maggie was stretched out on the floor in a dead
+faint, clutching in her tight hand the photograph which Owen Owens had
+returned with the words, written in his heavy scrawl across the
+face--_Maggie Jones's bastard_.
+
+It would be impossible to say how this incident affected me. I felt as
+if a moral earthquake had opened under my feet.
+
+What had I been doing? In looking forward to the child that was to come
+to me I had been thinking only of my own comfort--my own consolation.
+
+But what about the child itself?
+
+If my identity ever became known--and it might at any moment, by the
+casual recognition of a person in the street--how should the position of
+my child differ from that of this poor girl?
+
+A being born out of the pale of the law, as my husband would say it must
+be, an outcast, a thing of shame, without a father to recognise it, and
+with its mother's sin to lash its back for ever!
+
+When I thought of that, much as I had longed for the child that was to
+be a living link between Martin and me, I asked myself if I had any
+right to wish for it.
+
+I felt I had no right, and that considering my helpless position the
+only true motherly love was to pray that my baby might be still-born.
+
+But that was too hard. It was too terrible. It was like a second
+bereavement. I could not and would not do it.
+
+"Never, never, never!" I told myself.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Thinking matters out in the light of Maggie Jones's story, I concluded
+that poverty was at the root of nearly everything. If I could stave off
+poverty no real harm could come to my child.
+
+I determined to do so. But there was only one way open to me at
+present--and that was to retrench my expenses.
+
+I did retrench them. Persuading myself that I had no real need of this
+and that, I reduced my weekly outlay.
+
+This gave me immense pleasure, and even when I saw, after a while, that
+I was growing thin and pale, I felt no self-pity of any sort,
+remembering that I had nobody to look well for now, and only the sweet
+and glorious duty before me of providing for my child.
+
+I convinced myself, too, that my altered appearance was natural to my
+condition, and that all I needed was fresh air and exercise, therefore I
+determined to walk every day in the Park.
+
+I did so once only.
+
+It was one of those lovely mornings in early spring, when the air and
+the sky of London, after the long fog and grime of winter, seem to be
+washed by showers of sunshine.
+
+I had entered by a gate to a broad avenue and was resting (for I was
+rather tired) on a seat under a chestnut tree whose glistening sheaths
+were swelling and breaking into leaf, when I saw a number of ladies and
+gentlemen on horseback coming in my direction.
+
+I recognised one of them instantly. It was Mr. Vivian, and a beautiful
+girl was riding beside him. My heart stood still, for I thought he would
+see me. But he was too much occupied with his companion to do so.
+
+"Yes, by Jove, it's killing, isn't it?" he said, in his shrill voice,
+and with his monocle in his mole-like eye, he rode past me, laughing.
+
+After that I took my walks in the poorer streets behind Bayswater, but
+there I was forced back on my old problem, for I seemed to be always
+seeing the sufferings of children.
+
+Thank God, children as a whole are happy. They seem to live in their
+hearts alone, and I really and truly believe that if all the doors of
+the rich houses of the West End of London were thrown open to the poor
+children of the East End they would stay in their slums and alleys.
+
+But some of them suffer there for all that, especially the unfortunate
+ones who enter the world without any legal right to be here, and I
+seemed to be coming upon that kind everywhere.
+
+One evening I saw a tiny boy of five sheltering from the rain under a
+dripping and draughty railway arch, and crying as if his little heart
+would break. I tried to comfort him and could not, but when a rather
+shame-faced young woman came along, as if returning from her work, he
+burst out on her and cried:
+
+"Oh, muvver, she's been a-beating of me awrful."
+
+"Never mind, Johnny," said the young woman, kneeling on the wet pavement
+to dry the child's eyes. "Don't cry, that's a good boy."
+
+It needed no second sight to look into the heart of that tragedy, and
+the effect of it upon me was to make me curtail my expenditure still
+further.
+
+Looking back on those days I cannot but wonder that I never tried to
+find employment. But there was one delicate impediment then--my
+condition, which was becoming visible, I thought, to people in the
+street, and causing some of them, especially women, to look round at me.
+When this became painful I discontinued my walks altogether, and sent
+Emmerjane on my few errands.
+
+Then my room became my world.
+
+I do not think I ever saw a newspaper. And knowing nothing of what was
+going on, beyond the surge and swell of the life of London as it came to
+me when I opened my window. I had now, more than ever, the sense of
+living in a dungeon on a rock in the middle of the sea.
+
+Having no exercise I ate less and less. But I found a certain joy in
+that, for I was becoming a miser for my child's sake, and the only pain
+I suffered was when I went to my drawer, as I did every day, and looked
+at my rapidly diminishing store.
+
+I knew that my Welsh landlady was beginning to call me _close_, meaning
+mean; but that did not trouble me in the least, because I told myself
+that every penny I saved out of my own expenses was for my child, to
+keep her from poverty and all the evils and injustices that followed in
+its train.
+
+As my appointed time drew near my sleep was much broken; and sometimes
+in the middle of the night, when I heard a solitary footstep going down
+the street I would get up, draw aside one of my blinds, and see a light
+burning in some bedroom window opposite, and afterwards hear the muffled
+cry of the small new being who had come as another immigrant into our
+chill little world.
+
+But I made no arrangements for myself until my Welsh landlady came up to
+my room one day and asked if I had settled with a doctor. When I
+answered no, she held up her hands and cried:
+
+"Good gracious! Just as I thought. Thee'st got to lose no time, though."
+
+Happily there was a doctor in our street nearly every day, and if I
+wished it she would call him up to me. I agreed and the doctor came next
+morning.
+
+He was a tall, elderly man with cold eyes, compressed lips, and a sour
+expression, and neither his manner nor his speech gave any hint of a
+consciousness (which I am sure every true doctor must have) that in
+coming to a woman in my condition he was entering one of the sacred
+chambers of human life.
+
+He asked me a few abrupt questions, told me when he would come again,
+and then spoke about his fee.
+
+"My fee is a guinea and I usually get it in advance," he said, whereupon
+I went to my drawer, and took out a sovereign and a shilling, not
+without a certain pang at seeing so much go in a moment after I had been
+saving so long.
+
+The doctor had dropped the money into his waistcoat pocket with oh! such
+a casual air, and was turning to go, when my Welsh landlady said:
+
+"Her's not doing herself justice in the matter, of food, doctor."
+
+"Why, what do you eat?" asked the doctor, and as well as I could, out of
+my dry and parched throat, I told him.
+
+"Tut! tut! This will never do," he said. "It's your duty to your child
+to have better food than that. Something light and nourishing every day,
+such as poultry, fish, chicken broth, beef-tea, and farinaceous foods
+generally."
+
+I gasped. 'What was the doctor thinking about?
+
+"Remember," he said, with his finger up, "the health of the child is
+intimately dependent on the health of the mother. When the mother is in
+a morbid state it affects the composition of the blood, and does great
+harm to the health of the offspring, both immediately and in after life.
+Don't forget now. Good day!"
+
+That was a terrible shock to me. In my great ignorance and great love I
+had been depriving myself for the sake of my child, and now I learned
+that I had all the time been doing it a grave and perhaps life-long
+injury!
+
+Trying to make amends I sent out for some of the expensive foods the
+doctor had ordered me, but when they were cooked I found to my dismay
+that I had lost the power of digesting them.
+
+My pain at this discovery was not lessened next day when my Welsh
+landlady brought up a nurse whom I had asked her to engage for me.
+
+The woman was a human dumpling with a discordant voice, and her first
+interest, like that of the doctor, seemed to centre in her fee.
+
+She told me that her usual terms were a guinea for the fortnight, but
+when she saw my face fall (for I could not help thinking how little I
+had left) she said:
+
+"Some ladies don't need a fortnight, though. Mrs. Wagstaffe, for
+instance, she never has no more than five days, and on the sixth she's
+back at her mangle. So if five will do, ma'am, perhaps ten and six won't
+hurt you."
+
+I agreed, and the nurse was rolling her ample person out of my room when
+my Welsh landlady said:
+
+"But her's not eating enough to keep a linnet, look you."
+
+And then my nurse, who was what the doctor calls a croaker, began on a
+long series of stories of ladies who, having "let themselves down" had
+died, either at childbirth or soon afterwards.
+
+"It's _after_ a lady feels it if she has to nurse her baby," said the
+nurse, "and I couldn't be responsible neither for you nor the child if
+you don't do yourself justice."
+
+This was a still more terrible possibility--the possibility that I might
+die and leave my child behind me. The thought haunted me all that day
+and the following night, but the climax came next morning, when
+Emmerjane, while black-leading my grate, gave me the last news of Maggie
+Jones.
+
+Maggie's mother had been "a-naggin' of her to get work," asking if she
+had not enough mouths to feed "without her bringin' another."
+
+Maggie had at first been afraid to look for employment, thinking
+everybody knew of her trouble. But after her mother had put the young
+minister from Zion on to her to tell her to be "obejent" she had gone
+out every day, whether the weather was good or bad or "mejum."
+
+This had gone on for three months (during which Maggie used to stay out
+late because she was afraid to meet her mother's face) until one wet
+night, less than a week ago, she had come home drenched to the skin,
+taken to her bed, "sickened for somethink" and died.
+
+Three days after Emmerjane told me this story a great solemnity fell on
+our street.
+
+It was Saturday, when the children do not go to school, but, playing no
+games, they gathered in whispering groups round the house with the drawn
+blinds, while their mothers stood bareheaded at the doors with their
+arms under their aprons and their hidden hands over their mouths.
+
+I tried not to know what was going on, but looking out at the last
+moment I saw Maggie Jones's mother, dressed in black, coming down her
+steps, with her eyes very red and her hard face (which was seamed with
+labour) all wet and broken up.
+
+The "young minister" followed (a beardless boy who could have known
+nothing of the tragedy of a woman's life), and stepping into the midst
+of the group of the congregation from Zion, who had gathered there with
+their warm Welsh hearts full of pity for the dead girl, he gave out a
+Welsh hymn, and they sang it in the London street, just as they had been
+used to do at the cottage doors in the midst of their native mountains:
+
+     "_Bydd myrdd o ryfeddodau
+     Ar doriad boreu wawr_."
+
+I could look no longer, so I turned back into my room, but at the next
+moment I heard the rumble of wheels and knew that Maggie Jones was on
+her way to her last mother of all--the Earth.
+
+During the rest of that day I could think of nothing but Maggie's child,
+and what was to become of it, and next morning when Emmerjane came up
+she told me that the "young minister" was "a-gettin' it into the 'ouse."
+
+I think that was the last straw of my burden, for my mind came back with
+a swift rebound from Maggie Jones's child to my own.
+
+The thought of leaving my baby behind now terrified and appalled me. It
+brought me no comfort to think that though I was poor my father was
+rich, for I knew that if he ever came to know of my child's existence he
+would hate it and cast it off, as the central cause of the downfall of
+his plans.
+
+Yet Martin's child alone, and at the mercy of the world! It could not
+and must not be!
+
+Then came a fearful thought. I fought against it. I said many "Hail
+Marys" to protect myself from it. But I could not put it away.
+
+Perhaps my physical condition was partly to blame. Others must judge of
+that. It is only for me to say, in all truth and sincerity, what I felt
+and thought when I stood (as every woman who is to be a mother must) at
+the door of that dark chamber which is Life's greatest mystery.
+
+I thought of how Martin had been taken from me, as Fate (perhaps for
+some good purpose still unrevealed) had led me to believe.
+
+I thought of how I had comforted myself with the hope of the child that
+was coming to be a link between us.
+
+I thought of the sweet hours I had spent in making my baby's clothes; in
+choosing her name; in whispering it to myself, yes, and to God, too,
+every night and every morning.
+
+I thought of how day by day I had trimmed the little lamp I kept burning
+in the sanctuary within my breast where my baby and I lived together.
+
+I thought of how this had taken the sting out of death and victory out
+of the grave. And after that I told myself that, however sweet and
+beautiful, _all this had been selfishness and I must put it away_.
+
+Then I thought of the child itself, who--conceived in sin as my Church
+would say, disinherited by the law, outlawed by society, inheriting my
+physical weaknesses, having lost one of its parents and being liable to
+lose the other--was now in danger of being left to the mercies of the
+world, banned from its birth, penniless and without a protector, to
+become a drudge and an outcast or even a thief, a gambler, or a harlot.
+
+This was what I thought and felt.
+
+And when at last I knew that I had come to the end of my appointed time
+I knelt down in my sad room, and if ever I prayed a fervent prayer, if
+ever my soul went up to God in passionate supplication, it was that the
+child I had longed for and looked forward to as a living link with my
+lost one _might be born dead_.
+
+"Oh God, whatever happens to me, let my baby be born dead--I pray, I
+beseech Thee."
+
+Perhaps it was a wicked prayer. God knows. He will be just.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+It was Saturday, the seventh of June. The summer had been a cold one
+thus far; the night was chill and heavy rain was beating against the
+window-pane.
+
+There was a warm fire in my room for the first time for several months;
+the single gas jet on the window side of the mantelpiece had been turned
+low, and the nurse, in list slippers, was taking my little flannel and
+linen garments out of the chest of drawers and laying them on the flat
+steel fender.
+
+I think I must have had intervals of insensibility, for the moments of
+consciousness came and went with me, like the diving and rising of a
+sea-bird in the midst of swelling waves.
+
+At one such moment I became aware that the doctor and my Welsh landlady,
+as well as my nurse, were in the room, and that they were waiting for
+the crisis and fearing for my life.
+
+I heard them talking in low voices which made a drumming noise in my
+ears, like that which the sea makes when it is rolling into a cave.
+
+"She's let herself down so low, pore thing, that I don't know in the
+world what's to happen to her."
+
+"As God is my witness, look you, I never saw anybody live on so little."
+
+"I'm not afraid of the mother. I'm more afraid of the child, if you ask
+me."
+
+Then the drumming noise would die out, and I would only hear something
+within myself saying:
+
+"Oh God, oh God, that my child may be born dead."
+
+At another moment I heard, above the rattle of the rain, the creaking of
+the mangle in the cellar-kitchen on the other side of the street.
+
+At still another moment I heard the sound of quarrelling in the house
+opposite. A woman was screaming, children were shrieking, and a man was
+swearing in a thick hoarse voice.
+
+I knew what had happened--it was midnight, the "public-houses had turned
+out," and Mr. Wagstaffe had came home drunk.
+
+The night passed heavily. I heard myself (as I had done before) calling
+on Martin in a voice of wild entreaty:
+
+"Martin! Martin!"
+
+Then remembering that he was gone I began again to pray. I heard myself
+praying to the Blessed Virgin:
+
+"Oh, Mother of my God, let my child . . ."
+
+But a voice which seemed to come from far away interrupted me.
+
+"Hush, bach, hush! It will make it harder for thee."
+
+At length peace came. It seemed to me that I was running out of a
+tempestuous sea, with its unlimited loneliness and cruel depth, into a
+quiet harbour.
+
+There was a heavenly calm, in which I could hear the doctor and the
+nurse and my Welsh landlady talking together in cheerful whispers.
+
+I knew that everything was over, and with the memory of the storm I had
+passed through still in my heart and brain. I said:
+
+"Is it dead?"
+
+"Dead?" cried the nurse in a voice several octaves higher than usual.
+"Dear heart no, but alive and well. A beautiful little girl!"
+
+"Yes, your baby is all right, ma'am," said the doctor, and then my Welsh
+landlady cried:
+
+"Why did'st think it would be dead, bach? As I am a Christian woman
+thee'st got the beautifullest baby that ever breathed."
+
+I could bear no more. The dark thoughts of the days before were over me
+still, and with a groan I turned to the wall. Then everything was wiped
+out as by an angel's wing, and I fell into a deep sleep.
+
+When I awoke my dark thoughts were vanishing away like a bad dream in
+the morning. The rain had ceased, the gas had been put out, and I could
+see by the glow on the peonies of the wall-paper that the sun was
+shining with a soft red light through the holland blinds of my windows.
+
+I heard the sparrows chirping on the sills outside; I heard the milkman
+rattling his cans; I heard the bells of a neighbouring church ringing
+for early communion.
+
+I closed my eyes and held my breath and listened to the sounds in my own
+room. I heard the kettle singing over the fire; I heard somebody humming
+softly, and beating a foot on the floor in time to the tune and then I
+heard a low voice (it was Emmerjane's) saying from somewhere near my
+bed:
+
+"I dunno but what she's awake. Her breathing ain't a-goin' now."
+
+Then I turned and saw the nurse sitting before the fire with something
+on her lap. I knew what it was. It was my child, and it was asleep. In
+spite of my dark thoughts my heart yearned for it.
+
+And then came the great miracle.
+
+My child awoke and began to cry. It was a faint cry, oh! so thin and
+weak, but it went thundering and thundering through me. There was a
+moment of awful struggle, and then a mighty torrent of love swept over
+me.
+
+It was Motherhood.
+
+My child! Mine! Flesh of my flesh! Oh God! Oh God!
+
+All my desire for my baby's death to save it from the pains of life was
+gone, and my heart, starved so long, throbbed with tenderness. I raised
+myself in bed, in spite of my nurse's protest, and cried to her to give
+me my baby.
+
+"Give her to me. Give her to me."
+
+"By-and-by, by-and-by," said the nurse.
+
+"Now, now! I can wait no longer."
+
+"But you must take some food first. Emmerjane, give her that glass of
+milk and water."
+
+I drank the milk just to satisfy them, and then held out my arms for my
+child.
+
+"Give her to me--quick, quick!"
+
+"Here she is then, the jewel!"
+
+Oh! the joy of that moment when I first took my baby in my arms, and
+looked into her face, and saw my own features and the sea-blue eyes of
+Martin! Oh the rapture of my first eager kiss!
+
+I suppose I must have been rough with my little cherub in the fervour of
+my love, for she began to cry again.
+
+"There! there!" said the nurse. "Be good now, or I must take baby away."
+
+But heaven had taught me another lesson, and instantly, instinctively, I
+put my baby to my breast. Instantly and instinctively, too, my baby
+turned to it with its little mouth open and its little fingers feeling
+for the place.
+
+"Oh God! My God! Oh Mother of my God!"
+
+And then in that happiness that is beyond all earthly bliss--the
+happiness of a mother when she first clasps her baby to her breast--I
+began to cry.
+
+I had not cried for months--not since that night in Ellan which I did
+not wish to remember any more--but now my tears gushed out and ran down
+my face like rain.
+
+I cried on Martin once more--I could not help it. And looking down at
+the closed eyes of my child my soul gushed out in gratitude to God, who
+had sent me this for all I had suffered.
+
+"Hush, hush! You will do yourself a mischief and it will be bad for the
+milk," said the nurse.
+
+After that I tried to control myself. But I found a fierce and feverish
+delight in suckling my child. It seemed as if every drop my baby drew
+gave me a spiritual as well as a physical joy--cooling my blood and my
+brain and wiping out all my troubles.
+
+Oh mystery of mysteries! Oh miracle of miracles!
+
+My baby was at my breast and my sufferings were at an end.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+That was a long, long day of happiness.
+
+It was both very long and very short, for it passed like a dream.
+
+What wonderful happenings were crowded into it!
+
+First the nurse, from the dizzy heights of her greater experience and
+superior knowledge, indulged my infantile anxieties by allowing me to
+look on while baby was being bathed, and rewarded me for "being good" by
+many praises of my baby's beauty.
+
+"I've nursed a-many in my time," she said, "but I don't mind saying as
+I've never had a bonnier babby on my knee. Look at her legs now, so
+white and plump and dimpled. Have you _ever_ seen anythink so putty?"
+
+I confessed that I never had, and when nurse showed me how to fix the
+binder, and put on the barrow-coat without disturbing baby while asleep,
+I thought her a wonderful woman.
+
+Emmerjane, who had with difficulty been kept out of the room last night
+and was now rushing breathlessly up and down stairs, wished to hold baby
+for a moment, and at length out of the magnificence of my generosity I
+allowed her to do so, only warning her, as she loved her life, to hold
+tight and not let baby fall.
+
+"How'd you mean?" said the premature little mother. "_Me_ let her fall?
+Not much!"
+
+Every hour, according to the doctor's orders, I gave baby the breast. I
+do not know which was my greatest joy--to feast my eyes on her while she
+sucked and to see her little head fall back with her little mouth open
+when she had had enough, or to watch her when she stretched herself and
+hiccoughed, and then grasped my thumb with her little tight fingers.
+
+Oh, the wild, inexpressible delight of it!
+
+Every hour had its surprise. Every few minutes had their cause of
+wonder.
+
+It rather hurt me when baby cried, and I dare say my own foolish lip
+would drop at such moments, but when I saw that there were no tears in
+her eyes, and she was only calling for her food, I pleaded with nurse to
+let me give her the breast again.
+
+The sun shone all day long, and though the holland window blinds were
+kept down to subdue the light, for my sake and perhaps for baby's, I
+thought my room looked perfectly beautiful. It might be poor and shabby,
+but flights of angels could not have made it more heavenly than it was
+in my eyes then.
+
+In the afternoon nurse told me I must take some sleep myself, but I
+would not sleep until baby slept, so she had to give me my cherub again,
+and I sat up and rocked her and for a while I sang--as softly as I
+could--a little lullaby.
+
+It was a lullaby I had learned at Nemi from the Italian women in
+embroidered outside stays, who so love their children; and though I knew
+quite well that it had been written for the Mother of all Mothers, who,
+after she had been turned away from every door, had been forced to take
+refuge in a stable in Bethlehem, I was in such an ecstasy of spiritual
+happiness that I thought it no irreverence to change it a little and to
+sing it in my London lodging to my human child.
+
+     "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
+     Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."
+
+I dare say my voice was sweet that day--a mother's voice is always
+sweet--for when Emmerjane, who had been out of the room, came back to it
+with a look of awed solemnity, she said:
+
+"Well, I never did! I thought as 'ow there was a' angel a-come into this
+room."
+
+"So there is, and here she is," I said, beaming down on my sleeping
+child.
+
+But the long, short, blissful day came to an end at last, and when night
+fell and I dropped asleep, there were two names of my dear ones on my
+lips, and if one of them was the name of him who (as I thought) was in
+heaven, the other was the name of her who was now lying in my arms.
+
+I may have been poor, but I felt like a queen with all the riches of
+life in my little room.
+
+I may have sinned against the world and the Church, but I felt as if God
+had justified me by His own triumphant law.
+
+The whole feminine soul in me seemed to swell and throb, and with my
+baby at my breast I wanted no more of earth or heaven.
+
+I was still bleeding from the bruises of Fate, but I felt healed of all
+my wounds, loaded with benefits, crowned with rewards.
+
+Four days passed like this, varied by visits from the doctor and my
+Welsh landlady. Then my nurse began to talk of leaving me.
+
+I did not care. In my ignorance of my condition, and the greed of my
+motherly love, I was not sorry she was going so soon. Indeed, I was
+beginning to be jealous of her, and was looking forward to having my
+baby all to myself.
+
+But nurse, as I remember, was a little ashamed and tried to excuse
+herself.
+
+"If I hadn't promised to nurse another lady, I wouldn't leave you, money
+or no money," she said. "But the girl" (meaning Emmerjane) "is always
+here, and if she isn't like a nurse she's 'andy."
+
+"Yes, yes, I shall be all right," I answered.
+
+On the fifth day my nurse left me, and shocking as that fact seems to me
+now, I thought little of it then.
+
+I was entirely happy. I had nothing in the world except my baby, and my
+baby had nothing in the world except me. I was still in the dungeon that
+had seemed so dreadful to me before--the great dungeon of London to one
+who is poor and friendless.
+
+But no matter! I was no longer alone, for there was one more inmate in
+my prison-house--my child.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH PART
+
+I AM LOST
+
+_"Is it nothing to you, ye that pass by . . . ?"_
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+
+I hate to butt in where I may not be wanted, but if the remainder of my
+darling's story is to be understood I must say what was happening in the
+meantime to me.
+
+God knows there was never a day on which I did not think of my dear one
+at home, wondering what was happening to her, and whether a certain dark
+fact which always lay at the back of my mind as a possibility was
+actually coming to pass.
+
+But she would be brave--I know that quite well--and I saw plainly that,
+if I had to get through the stiff job that was before me, I must put my
+shadowy fears away and think only of the dangers I was sure about.
+
+The first of these was that she might suppose our ship was lost, so as
+soon as we had set up on old Erebus the wooden lattice towers which
+contained our long-distance electric apparatus, I tried to send her that
+first message from the Antarctic which was to say we had not been
+shipwrecked.
+
+It was a thrilling moment. Exactly at the stroke of midnight on January
+21, while the midnight sun was shining with its dull sullen glow, the
+whole of our company having gathered round, the wireless man prepared to
+despatch my message.
+
+As we were not sure of our machinery I had drawn up the words to suit
+any place into which they might fall if they missed their intended
+destination:
+
+"South Pole Expedition safe. All well. Send greetings to dear ones at
+home."
+
+For some forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy signals into
+the crisp night air, and then the settled calm returned, and we stood in
+breathless silence like beings on the edge of a world waiting for the
+answer to come as from another planet.
+
+It came. After a few minutes we heard from our magnetic detector the
+faint sound of the S signals, and then we broke into a great cheer. It
+was not much, but it was enough; and while our scientific staff were
+congratulating themselves that electric-wave telegraphy was not
+inhibited by long distance, or by the earth's curvature over an arc of a
+great circle, I was thinking of my dear one--that one way or another my
+message would reach her and she would be relieved.
+
+Then in splendid health and spirits--dogs, ponies, and men all A1--we
+started on our journey, making a bee-line for the Pole.
+
+Owing to the heavy weights we had to transport our progress was slow,
+much slower than we had expected; and though the going was fair and we
+kept a steady pace, travelling a good deal by night, it was not until
+the end of March that we reached Mount Darwin, which I had fixed on for
+the second of our electric power stations.
+
+By this time winter was approaching, the nights were beginning to be
+dark and cold, and the altitude (8000 ft.) was telling on some of us.
+
+Nevertheless our second installation got finished about the last week in
+April, and again we gathered round (not quite such a hearty company as
+before) while the wireless man spoke to the operator we had left on
+Erebus.
+
+Again the electrical radiations went crackling into space, and again we
+gave a cheer when the answer came back--all well and instruments in
+perfect order.
+
+Then, late as it was, we began on the last stage of our journey, which
+we knew would be a hard one. Three hundred geographical miles in front;
+temperature down to minus 40 deg.; the sun several weeks gone, and nothing
+before us but thickening twilight, cold winds, snow, the rare aurora and
+the frequent moon.
+
+But the worst fact was that our spirits were low, and do what I would to
+keep a good heart and cheer up the splendid fellows who had come with
+me, I could not help feeling the deepening effect of that sunless gloom.
+
+In spite of this, I broke camp on April 25, and started straight as a
+die for the South.
+
+It was a stiff fight over the upper glacier in latitude 85, with its
+razor-shaped ice, full of snow-covered crevasses, and three days out two
+of our best men fell into one of the worst of them.
+
+I saw the accident from a dozen yards away, and running up I lay on my
+stomach and shouted down, but it was a black bottomless gulf and not a
+sound or a sign came back to me.
+
+This cast a still deeper gloom on our company, who could not be cheered
+up, though I kept telling them we should be on the great plateau soon,
+please God, and then we should have a clear road to the Pole.
+
+We were not much better on top though, for the surface was much broken
+up, and in that brewing place of the winds there seemed to be nothing
+but surging seas of cumulus cloud and rolling waves of snow.
+
+The Polar march was telling on us badly. We were doing no more than
+seven miles at a stretch. So to help my shipmates to keep up their
+spirits (and perhaps to give a bit of a "heise" to my own) I had to sing
+all day long--though my darling is right that I have no more voice than
+a corn-crake.
+
+Sometimes I sang "Ramsey Town," because it did not want much music, but
+generally "Sally's the gel for me," because it had a rattling chorus.
+The men all joined in (scientific experts included), and if the angels
+took any heed of us, I think it must have touched them up to look down
+on our little company of puny men singing away as we trudged through
+that snowy wilderness which makes a man feel so small.
+
+But man can only do his best, and as Father Dan (God bless his old
+heart!) used to say, the angels can do no more. We were making middling
+hard work of it in the 88th parallel, with a temperature as low as 50
+degrees of frost, when a shrieking, blinding blizzard came sweeping down
+on us from the south.
+
+I thought it might blow itself out, but it didn't, so we struck camp in
+a broad half-circle, building igloos (snow huts) with their backs (like
+rain-beaten cattle) to the storm.
+
+There we lay nine days--and it is not worth while now to say how much
+some of our men suffered from frozen fingers, and more from falling
+spirits.
+
+Sometimes I heard them saying (in voices that were intended to be loud
+enough for me to hear) it would have been better to have built winter
+quarters on the north of Darwin and settle there until the return of
+summer. And at other times I heard them counting the distance to the
+Pole--a hundred geographical miles, making twenty days' march at this
+season, with the heavy weights we had to carry, and the dwindling of our
+dogs and ponies, for we had killed a lot of them for food.
+
+But I would not give in, for I felt that to go back without finishing my
+job would break my heart; and one day when old Treacle said, "No use,
+guv'nor, let's give it best," I flew at him like a hunted tiger.
+
+All the same I was more than a bit down myself, for there were days when
+death was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a big
+strapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "I
+shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and the kiddies."
+
+God knows I had my own anchor at home, and sometimes it had a devil of a
+tug at me. I fought myself hard, though, and at last in my desire to go
+on and my yearning to go back to my dear one, I made an awful proposal,
+such as a man does not much like to think of after a crisis is over.
+
+"Shipmates," I said, "it isn't exactly my fault that we are here in the
+middle of winter, but here we are, and we must make the best of it. I am
+going forward, and those who want to go with me can go. But those who
+don't want to go can stay; and so that no one may have it on his
+conscience that he has kept his comrades back, whether by weakness or by
+will, I have told the doctor to serve out a dose of something to every
+man, that he may end it whenever he wants to."
+
+To my surprise that awful proposal was joyfully received; and never so
+long as I live shall I forget the sight o' O'Sullivan going round the
+broad circle of my shipmates in the blue gloom of that noonday twilight
+and handing something to every one of them, while nobody spoke, and
+Death seemed to look us in the face.
+
+And now I come to the incident for which I have told this story.
+
+I could not get a wink of sleep that night for thinking of the brave
+fellows I had doomed to death by their own hands (for that was what it
+came to), because their souls were starving and they were thinking of
+home.
+
+My soul was starving too, and whether it was the altitude (now 11,000
+ft.) that was getting into my head, and giving me that draught in the
+brain which only travellers in frozen regions know, or the Power higher
+than Nature which speaks to a man in great solitudes when life is low, I
+cannot say, but as God is my witness, I was hearing again the voices of
+my dear ones so far away.
+
+Sometimes they were the voices of my old people in Ellan, but more
+frequently, and most importunately, it was Mary's voice, calling me by
+my name, and crying to me for help as if she were in the shadow of some
+threatening danger.
+
+"Martin! Martin! Martin!"
+
+When this idea took clear possession of me--it was about three a.m. and
+the hurricane was yowling like a wounded dog--the answering thought came
+quick. I must go back. No matter at what cost or sacrifice--I must go
+back.
+
+It was in vain I reflected that the trouble which threatened my darling
+(whatever it was, and I thought I knew) might be all over before I
+reached her side--I must go back.
+
+And even when I reminded myself that I was within twenty days' march of
+that last point of my journey which was to be the crown and completion
+of it all, I also remembered that my dear one was calling me, and I had
+no choice but to obey.
+
+Next morning, in the first light of the dim Antarctic glow, I crept out
+of my snow hut to look south with powerful glasses in order to make sure
+that there was no reason why I should change my mind.
+
+There was none. Although the snow had ceased the blizzard was blowing a
+hundred miles an hour in cutting gusts, so with a bleeding heart (and
+yet a hot one) I told Treacle to call rip our company, and when they
+stood round me in the shelter of my hut I said:
+
+"Shipmates, I have been thinking things over during the night, and I see
+them differently now. Nature is stronger than man, and the nature that
+is inside of us sometimes hits us harder than that which is without. I
+think it is that way with us here, and I believe there isn't a man of
+you who wouldn't go forward with me if he had nobody to think of except
+himself. . . . Well, perhaps _I_ have somebody to think of, too, so
+we'll stick together, shipmates, and whatever regrets there may be, or
+disappointments, or heart-breakings, we'll . . . we'll go back home."
+
+I think it says something for the mettle my men were made of that there
+was never a cheer after I said that, for they could see what it cost me
+to say it. But by God, there was a shout when I added:
+
+"We've drawn a blank this time, boys, but we'll draw a winner yet, and I
+ask you to swear that you'll come back with me next year, please God, to
+finish the work we've begun."
+
+Then we gripped hands in that desolate place, and took our solemn oath,
+and God knows we meant to keep it.
+
+It did not take long to strike camp, I can tell you. The men were
+bustling about like boys and we had nothing to think of now but the
+packing of the food and the harnessing of the dogs and ponies, for we
+were leaving everything else behind us.
+
+At the last moment before we turned northward I planted the Union Jack
+on the highest hummock of snow, and when we were a hundred yards off I
+looked back through the gloom and saw it blowing stiffly in the wind.
+
+I don't think I need tell how deeply that sight cut me, but if life has
+another such moment coming for me all I have to say is that I hope I may
+die before I live to see it--which is Irish, but most damnably true.
+
+That was twelve o'clock noon on the eighth day of June and anybody may
+make what he likes of what I say, but as nearly as I can calculate the
+difference of time between London and where we were in the 88th latitude
+it was the very hour of my dear one's peril.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+Two weeks passed and if I suffered from getting up too soon I was never
+conscious of it.
+
+Once or twice, perhaps, in the early days I felt a certain dizziness and
+had to hold on for a moment to the iron rail of my bedstead, but I was
+too much occupied with the tender joys of motherhood to think much about
+myself.
+
+Bathing, dressing, undressing, and feeding my baby were a perpetual
+delight to me.
+
+What a joy it all was!
+
+There must he something almost animal, even voluptuous, in mothers'
+love, for there was nothing I liked so much as having baby naked on my
+knee and devouring its sweet body all over with kisses--putting its
+little fat hands and even its little fat feet into my mouth.
+
+There must be something almost infantile, too, for sometimes after I had
+talked to my darling with a flood of joyous chatter I would even find
+myself scolding her a little, and threatening what I would do if she did
+not "behave."
+
+Oh, mysterious laws of motherhood! Only God can fathom the depths of
+them.
+
+It was just as if sixteen years of my life had rolled back, and I was
+again a child in my mother's room playing with my dolls under the table.
+Only there was something so wonderful now in the sweet eyes that looked
+up at me, that at certain moments I would fall into a long reverie and
+my heart would be full of adoration.
+
+What lengths I went to!
+
+It was the height of the London season when baby came; and sometimes at
+night, looking through my window, I saw the tail-end of the long queue
+of carriages and electric broughams which stretched to the end of the
+street I lived in, from the great houses fronting the Park where balls
+and receptions were being held until the early hours of morning. But I
+never envied the society ladies they were waiting for. On the contrary I
+pitied them, remembering they were childless women for the most part and
+thinking their pleasures were hollow as death compared with mine.
+
+I pitied the rich mothers too--the mothers who banish their babies to
+nurseries to be cared for by servants, and I thought how much more
+blessed was the condition of poor mothers like myself who kept all that
+sweetness to themselves.
+
+How happy I was! No woman coming into a fortune was ever so happy. I
+sang all day long. Sometimes it was the sacred music of the convent in
+which each note, with its own glory of sound, wraps one's heart round as
+with a rainbow, but more frequently it was "Ramsey Town" or "Sally's the
+gel for me," which were only noisy nonsense but dear to me by such
+delicious memories.
+
+My neighbours would come to their doors to listen, and when I had
+stopped I would hear them say:
+
+"Our lady is a 'appy 'cart, isn't she?"
+
+I suppose it was because I was so happy that my looks returned to me,
+though I did not know it was so until one morning, after standing a
+moment at the window, I heard somebody say:
+
+"Our lady seems to be prettier than ever now her baby has come."
+
+I should not have been a woman if I could have resisted that, so I ran
+to the glass to see if it was true, and it was.
+
+The ugly lines that used to be in my cheeks had gone, my hair had
+regained its blue-black lustre, and my eyes had suddenly become bright
+like a darkened room when the shutters are opened and the sunshine
+streams into it.
+
+But the coming of baby did better for me than that. It brought me back
+to God, before whom I now felt so humble and so glad, because he had
+transformed the world for me.
+
+Every Catholic will know why I could not ask for the benediction of the
+Church after childbirth; but he will also know why I was in a fever of
+anxiety to have my baby baptized at the earliest possible moment. It was
+not that I feared her death (I never thought of that in those days), but
+because I lived in dread of the dangers which had darkened my thoughts
+before she was born.
+
+So when baby was nearly a fortnight old I wrote to the Rector of a
+neighbouring Catholic Church asking when I might bring her to be
+baptized, and he sent me a printed reply, giving the day and hour, and
+enclosing a card to be filled up with her name and all other
+particulars.
+
+What a day of joy and rapture was that of my baby's baptism! I was up
+with the sun on the morning appointed to take her to church and spent
+hours and hours in dressing her.
+
+How lovely she looked when I had finished! I thought she was the
+sweetest thing in the world, sweeter than a rosebud under its sparkling
+web of dew when the rising sun is glistening on it.
+
+After I had put on all the pretty clothes I had prepared for her before
+she was born--the christening robe and the pelisse and the knitted
+bonnet with its pink ribbons and the light woollen veil--I lifted her up
+to the glass to look at herself, being such a child myself and so
+wildly, foolishly happy.
+
+"That old Rector won't see anything equal to her _this_ summer morning
+anyway," I thought.
+
+And then the journey to church!
+
+I have heard that unmarried mothers, going out for the first time after
+their confinement, feel ashamed and confused, as if every passer-by must
+know their shameful secret. I was a kind of unmarried mother myself, God
+help me, but I had no such feeling. Indeed I felt proud and gay, and
+when I sailed out with my baby in my arms I thought all the people in
+our street were looking at me, and I am sure I wanted to say "Good
+morning" to everybody I met on my way.
+
+The church was not in a joyous quarter. It stood on the edge of a poor
+and very populous district, with a flaunting public-house immediately
+opposite. When I got to it I found a number of other mothers (all
+working women), with their babies and the godfathers and godmothers they
+had provided for them, waiting at the door.
+
+At this sight I felt very stupid, for I had been thinking so much about
+other things (some of them vain enough perhaps) that I had forgotten the
+necessity for sponsors; and I do not know what I should have done at
+that last moment if the sacristan had not come to my relief--finding me
+two old people who, for a fee of a shilling each, were willing to stand
+godmother and godfather to my darling.
+
+Then the priest came out of the church in his white surplice and stole,
+and we all gathered in the porch for the preliminary part of the
+sacrament.
+
+What an experience it was! Never since my marriage had I been in a state
+of such spiritual exaltation.
+
+The sacristan, showing me some preference, had put me in the middle of
+the row, immediately in front of the priest, so what happened to the
+other children I do not know, having eyes and ears for nothing but the
+baptism of my own baby.
+
+There were some mistakes, but they did not trouble me, although one was
+a little important.
+
+When the priest said, "What name give you this child?" I handed the
+Rector's card to the sacristan, and whispered "Isabel Mary" to the
+godmother, but the next thing I heard was:
+
+"Mary Isabel, what dost thou ask of the Church of God?"
+
+But what did it matter? Nothing mattered except one thing--that my
+darling should be saved by the power of the Holy Sacrament from the dark
+terrors which threatened her.
+
+Oh, it is a fearful and awful thing, the baptism of a child, if you
+really and truly believe in it. And I did--from the bottom of my heart
+and soul I believed in it and trusted it.
+
+In my sacred joy I must have cried nearly all the time, for I had taken
+baby's bonnet off, I remember, and holding it to my mouth I found after
+a while that I was wetting it with my tears.
+
+When the exorcisms were over, the priest laid the end of his stole over
+baby's shoulder and led her (as our prayer books say) into the church,
+and we all followed to the baptistery, where I knelt immediately in
+front of the font, with the old godmother before me, the other mothers
+on either side, and a group of whispering children behind.
+
+The church was empty, save for two charwomen who were sweeping the floor
+of the nave somewhere up by the dark and silent altar; and when the
+sacristan closed the outer door there was a solemn hush, which was
+broken only by the priest's voice and the godparents' muttered
+responses.
+
+"Mary Isabel, dost thou renounce Satan?"
+
+"I do renounce him."
+
+"And all his works?"
+
+"I do renounce them."
+
+"And all his pomps?"
+
+"I do renounce them."
+
+The actual baptism was like a prayer to me. I am sure my whole soul went
+out to it. And though I may have been a sinful woman unworthy to be
+churched, I know, and God knows, that no chaste and holy nun ever prayed
+with a purer heart than I did then, kneeling there with my baby's bonnet
+to my mouth.
+
+"Mary Isabel, I baptize thee in the name of the Father + and of the Son
++ and of the Holy Ghost.+"
+
+Except that baby cried a little when the water was poured on her head
+(as she had cried when the salt was put on her tongue), I knew no more
+after that until I saw the candle in the godfather's hand (which
+signified that my child had been made a Child of Light) and heard the
+priest say:
+
+"Go in peace and the Lord be with thee."
+
+Then I awoke as from a trance. There was a shuffling of feet. The priest
+was going away. The solemn rite was at an end.
+
+I rose from my knees, put a little money in the plate which the
+sacristan held out to me, gave a shilling to each of the two old
+sponsors, took baby back into my arms, and sat down in a pew to put on
+her bonnet and veil.
+
+The spiritual exaltation which had sustained me lasted until I reached
+the street where the other mothers and their friends were laughing and
+joking, in voices that had to be pitched high over the rattle of the
+traffic, about going to the house opposite to "wet the baby's head."
+
+But I think something of the celestial light of the sacrament must have
+been on my face still when I reached home, for I remember that as I
+knocked at the door, and waited for the rope from the kitchen to open
+it, I heard one of my neighbours say:
+
+"Our lady has taken a new lease of life, hasn't she?"
+
+I thought I had--a great new lease of physical and spiritual life.
+
+But how little did I know what Fate had in store for me!
+
+
+
+
+NINETIETH CHAPTER
+
+
+I was taking off baby's outdoor things when my Welsh landlady came up to
+ask how I had got on, and after I had told her she said:
+
+And now thee'st got to get the jewel registered."
+
+"Registered?"
+
+"Within three weeks. It's the law, look you."
+
+That was the first thing that frightened me. I had filled up truthfully
+enough the card which the Rector had sent me, because I knew that the
+register of my Church must be as sacred as its confessional.
+
+But a public declaration of my baby's birth and parentage seemed to be
+quite another matter--charged with all the dangers to me, to Martin, and
+above all to my child, which had overshadowed my life before she was
+born.
+
+More than once I felt tempted to lie, to make a false declaration, to
+say that Martin had been my husband and Isabel was my legitimate child.
+
+But at length I resolved to speak the truth, the plain truth, telling
+myself that God's law was above man's law, and I had no right to be
+ashamed.
+
+In this mood I set off for the Registry Office. It was a long way from
+where I lived, and carrying baby in my arms I was tired when I got
+there.
+
+I found it to be a kind of private house, with an open vestibule and a
+black-and-white enamelled plate on the door-post, saying "Registry of
+Births and Deaths."
+
+In the front parlour (which reminded me of Mr. Curphy's office in
+Holmtown) there was a counter by the door and a large table covered with
+papers in the space within.
+
+Two men sat at this table, an old one and a young one, and I remember
+that I thought the old one must have been reading aloud from a newspaper
+which he held open in his hand, for as I entered the young one was
+saying:
+
+"Extraordinary! Perfectly extraordinary! And everybody thought they were
+lost, too!"
+
+In the space between the door and the counter two women were waiting.
+Both were poor and obviously agitated. One had a baby in her arms, and
+when it whimpered for its food she unbuttoned her dress and fed it
+openly. The other woman, whose eyes were red as if she had been crying,
+wore a coloured straw hat over which, in a pitiful effort to assume
+black, she had stretched a pennyworth of cheap crepe.
+
+In his own good time the young man got up to attend to them. He was a
+very ordinary young clerk in a check suit, looking frankly bored by the
+dull routine of his daily labour, and palpably unconscious of the fact
+that every day and hour of his life he was standing on the verge of the
+stormiest places of the soul.
+
+Opening one of two registers which lay on the counter (the Register of
+Births) he turned first to the woman with the child. Her baby, a boy,
+was illegitimate, and in her nervousness she stumbled and stammered, and
+he corrected her sharply.
+
+Then opening the other register (the Register of Deaths) he attended to
+the woman in the crepe. She had lost her little girl, two years old, and
+produced a doctor's certificate. While she gave the particulars she held
+a soiled handkerchief to her mouth as if to suppress a sob, but the
+young clerk's composure remained undisturbed.
+
+I do not know if it was the agitation of the two poor women that made me
+nervous, but when they were gone and my turn had come, I was hot and
+trembling.
+
+The young clerk, however, who was now looking at me for the first time,
+had suddenly become respectful. With a bow and a smile he asked me if I
+wished to register my child, and when I answered yes he asked me to be
+good enough to step up to the counter.
+
+"And what is your baby's name, please?" he asked.
+
+I told him. He dipped his pen in his metal ink-pot, shook some drops
+back, made various imaginary flourishes over his book and wrote:
+
+"Mary Isabel."
+
+"And now," he said, with another smile, "the full name, profession, and
+place of residence of the father."
+
+I hesitated for a moment, and then, making a call on my resolution, I
+said:
+
+"Martin Conrad, seaman, deceased."
+
+The young clerk looked up quickly.
+
+"Did you say Martin Conrad, ma'am?" he asked, and as well as I could for
+a click in my throat I answered:
+
+"Yes."
+
+He paused as if thinking; then with the same flourish as before he wrote
+that name also, and after he had done so, he twisted his face about to
+the old man, who was sitting behind him, and said, in a voice that was
+not meant to reach me:
+
+"Extraordinary coincidence, isn't it?"
+
+"Extraordinary!" said the old man, who had lowered his newspaper and was
+looking across at me over the rims of his spectacles.
+
+"And now," said the young clerk, "your own name and your maiden name if
+you please."
+
+"Mary O'Neill."
+
+The young clerk looked up at me again. I was holding baby on my left arm
+and I could see that his eye caught my wedding ring.
+
+"Mary Conrad, maiden name O'Neill, I presume?" he said.
+
+I hesitated once more. The old temptation was surging back upon me. But
+making a great pull on my determination to tell the truth (or what I
+believed to be the truth) I answered:
+
+"No, Mary O'Neill simply."
+
+"Ah!" said the young clerk, and I thought his manner changed instantly.
+
+There was silence for some minutes while the young clerk filled up his
+form and made the copy I was to carry away.
+
+I heard the scratching of the young clerk's pen, the crinkling of the
+old man's newspaper, the hollow ticking of a round clock on the wall,
+the dull hum of the traffic in the streets, and the thud-thud-thudding
+in my own bosom.
+
+Then the entry was read out to me and I was asked to sign it.
+
+"Sign here, please," said the young clerk in quite a different tone,
+pointing to a vacant line at the bottom of the hook, and I signed with a
+trembling hand and a feeling of only partial consciousness.
+
+I hardly know what happened after that until I was standing in the open
+vestibule, settling baby on my arm afresh for my return journey, and
+telling myself that I had laid a stigma upon my child which would remain
+with her as long as she lived.
+
+It was a long, long way back, I remember, and when I reached home
+(having looked neither to the right nor left, nor at anything or
+anybody, though I felt as if everybody had been looking at me) I had a
+sense of dimness of sight and of aching in the eyeballs.
+
+I did not sing very much that day, and I thought baby was rather
+restless.
+
+Towards nightfall I had a startling experience.
+
+I was preparing Isabel for bed, when I saw a red flush, like a rash,
+down the left side of her face.
+
+At first I thought it would pass away, but when it did not I called my
+Welsh landlady upstairs to look at it.
+
+"Do you see something like a stain on baby's face?" I asked, and then
+waited breathlessly for her answer.
+
+"No . . . Yes . . . Well," she said, "now that thee'st saying so . . .
+perhaps it's a birthmark."
+
+"A birthmark?"
+
+"Did'st strike thy face against anything when baby was coming?"
+
+I made some kind of reply, I hardly know what, but the truth, or what I
+thought to be the truth, flashed on me in a moment.
+
+Remembering my last night at Castle Raa, and the violent scene which had
+occurred there, I told myself that the flush on baby's face was the mark
+of my husband's hand which, making no impression upon me, had been
+passed on to my child, and would remain with her to the end of her life,
+as the brand of her mother's shame and the sign of what had been called
+her bastardy.
+
+How I suffered at the sight of it! How time after time that night I
+leaned over my sleeping child to see if the mark had passed away! How
+again and again I knelt by her side to pray that if sin of mine had to
+be punished the punishment might fall on me and not on my innocent babe!
+
+At last I remembered baby's baptism and told myself that if it meant
+anything it meant that the sin in which my child had been born, the sin
+of those who had gone before her (if sin it was), had been cast out of
+her soul with the evil spirits which had inspired them.
+
+"_This sign of the Holy Cross + which we make upon her forehead do
+thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate_."
+
+God's law had washed my darling white! What could man's law--his proud
+but puny morality--do to injure her? It could do nothing!
+
+That comforted me. When I looked at baby again the flush had gone and I
+went to bed quite happy.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+I think it must have been the morning of the next day when the nurse who
+had attended me in my confinement came to see how I was going along.
+
+I told her of the dimness of my sight and the aching of my eyeballs,
+whereupon she held up her hands and cried:
+
+"There now! What did I tell you? Didn't I say it is _after_ a lady feels
+it?"
+
+The moral of her prediction was that, being in a delicate state of
+health, and having "let myself low" before baby was born, it was my duty
+to wean her immediately.
+
+I could not do it.
+
+Although the nurse's advice was supported by my Welsh landlady (with
+various prognostications of consumption and rickets), I could not at
+first deny myself the wild joy of nursing my baby.
+
+But a severer monitor soon came to say that I must. I found that my
+money was now reduced to little more than two pounds, and that I was
+confronted by the necessity (which I had so long put off) of looking for
+employment.
+
+I could not look for employment until I had found a nurse for my child,
+and I could not find a nurse until my baby could do without me, so when
+Isabel was three weeks old I began to wean her.
+
+At first I contented myself with the hours of night, keeping a
+feeding-bottle in bed, with the cow's milk warmed to the heat of my own
+body. But when baby cried for the breast during the day I could not find
+it in my heart to deny her.
+
+That made the time of weaning somewhat longer than it should have been,
+but I compromised with my conscience by reducing still further my meagre
+expenses.
+
+Must I tell how I did so?
+
+Although it was the month of July there was a snap of cold weather such
+as sometimes comes in the middle of our English summer, and yet I gave
+up having a fire in my room, and for the cooking of my food I bought a
+small spirit stove which cost me a shilling.
+
+This tempted me to conduct which has since had consequences, and I am
+half ashamed and half afraid to speak of it. My baby linen being little
+I had to wash it frequently, and having no fire I . . . dried it on my
+own body.
+
+Oh, I see now it was reckless foolishness, almost wilful madness, but I
+thought nothing of it then. I was poor and perhaps I was proud, and I
+could not afford a fire. And then a mother's love is as deep as the sea,
+and there was nothing in the wide world I would not have done to keep my
+darling a little longer beside me.
+
+Baby being weaned at last I had next to think of a nurse, and that was a
+still more painful ordeal. To give my child to another woman, who was to
+be the same as a second mother to her, was almost more than I could bear
+to think about.
+
+I _had_ to think of it. But I could only do so by telling myself that,
+when I put baby out to nurse, I might arrange to see her every morning
+and evening and as often as my employment permitted.
+
+This idea partly reconciled me to my sacrifice, and I was in the act of
+drawing up a newspaper advertisement in these terms when my landlady
+came to say that the nurse knew of somebody who would suit me exactly.
+
+Nurse called the same evening and told me a long story about her friend.
+
+She was a Mrs. Oliver, and she lived at Ilford, which was at the other
+end of London and quite on the edge of the country. The poor woman, who
+was not too happily married, had lost a child of her own lately, and was
+now very lonely, being devoted to children.
+
+This pleased me extremely, especially (God forgive me!), the fact that
+Mrs. Oliver was a bereaved mother and lived on the edge of the country.
+
+Already in my mind's eye I saw her sitting on sunny days under a tree
+(perhaps in an orchard) with Isabel in her arms, rocking her gently and
+singing to her softly, and almost forgetting that she was not her own
+baby whom she had lost . . . though that was a two-edged sword which cut
+me both ways, being a sort of wild joy with tears lurking behind it.
+
+So I took a note of Mrs. Oliver's address (10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's
+Green, Ilford) and wrote to her the same night, asking her terms and
+stating my own conditions.
+
+A reply came the following day. It was a badly-written and misspelt
+letter, which showed me that Mrs. Oliver must be a working woman
+(perhaps the wife of a gardener or farm-labourer, I thought), though
+that did not trouble me in the least, knowing by this time how poor
+people loved their children.
+
+     _"The terms is fore shillins a weke," she wrote, "but i am that
+     lonelie sins my own littel one lef me i wood tike your swete
+     darling for nothin if I cud afford it and you can cum to see her as
+     offen as you pleas_."
+
+In my ignorance and simplicity this captured me completely, so I replied
+at once saying I would take baby to Ilford the next day.
+
+I did all this in a rush, but when it came to the last moment I could
+scarcely part with my letter, and I remember that I passed three
+pillar-boxes in the front street before I could bring myself to post it.
+
+I suppose my eyes must have been red when I returned home, for my Welsh
+landlady (whom I had taken into my confidence about my means) took me to
+task for crying, telling me that I ought to thank God for what had
+happened, which was like a message from heaven, look you, and a
+dispensation of Providence.
+
+I tried to see things in that light, though it was difficult to do so,
+for the darker my prospects grew the more radiant shone the light of the
+little angel by whose life I lived, and the harder it seemed to live
+without her.
+
+"But it isn't like losing my child altogether, is it?" I said.
+
+"'Deed no, and 'twill he better for both of you," said my landlady.
+
+"Although Ilford is a long way off I can go there every day, can't I'!"
+
+"'Deed thee can, if thee'st not minding a journey of nine miles or
+more."
+
+"And if I can get a good situation and earn a little money I may be able
+to have baby back and hire somebody to nurse her, and so keep her all to
+myself."
+
+"And why shouldn't thee?" said my Welsh landlady. "Thee reading print
+like the young minister and writing letters like a copybook!"
+
+So in the fierce bravery of motherly love I dried my eyes and forced
+back my sobs, and began to pack up my baby's clothes, and to persuade
+myself that I was still quite happy.
+
+My purse was very low by this time. After paying my rent and some other
+expenses I had only one pound and a few shillings left.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+At half past seven next morning I was ready to start on my journey.
+
+I took a hasty glance at myself in the glass before going out, and I
+thought my eyes were too much like the sky at daybreak--all joyful beams
+with a veil of mist in front of them.
+
+But I made myself believe that never since baby was born had I been so
+happy. I was sure I was doing the best for her. I was also sure I was
+doing the best for myself, for what could be so sweet to a mother as
+providing for her child?
+
+My Welsh landlady had told me it was nine miles to Ilford, and I had
+gathered that I could ride all the way in successive omnibuses for less
+than a shilling. But shillings were scarce with me then, so I determined
+to walk all the way.
+
+Emmerjane, by her own urgent entreaty, carried baby as far as the corner
+of the Bayswater Road, and there the premature little woman left me,
+after nearly smothering baby with kisses.
+
+"Keep straight as a' arrow and you can't lose your wye," she said.
+
+It was one of those beautiful mornings in late July when the air is
+fresh and the sun is soft, and the summer, even in London, has not yet
+had time to grow tired and dusty.
+
+I felt as light as the air itself. I had put baby's feeding-bottle in my
+pocket and hung her surplus linen in a parcel about my wrist, so I had
+nothing to carry in my arms except baby herself, and at first I did not
+feel her weight.
+
+There were not many people in the West-End streets at that early hour,
+yet a few were riding in the Park, and when I came to the large houses
+in Lancaster Gate I saw that though the sun was shining on the windows
+most of the blinds were down.
+
+I must have been walking slowly, for it was half past eight when I
+reached the Marble Arch. There I encountered the first cross-tide of
+traffic, but somebody, seeing baby, took me by the arm and led me safely
+over.
+
+The great "Mediterranean of Oxford Street" was by this time running at
+full tide. People were pouring out of the Tube and Underground stations
+and clambering on to the motor-buses. But in the rush nobody hustled or
+jostled me. A woman with a child in her arms was like a queen--everybody
+made way for her.
+
+Once or twice I stopped to look at the shops. Some of the dressmakers'
+windows were full of beautiful costumes. I did not covet any of them. I
+remembered the costly ones I had bought in Cairo and how little
+happiness they had brought me. And then I felt as if the wealth of the
+world were in my arms.
+
+Nevertheless the whole feminine soul in me awoke when I came upon a shop
+for the sale of babies' clothes. Already I foresaw a time when baby,
+dressed in pretty things like these, would be running about Lennard's
+Green and plucking up the flowers in Mrs. Oliver's garden.
+
+The great street was very long and I thought it would never end. But I
+think I must have been still fresh and happy while we passed through the
+foreign quarter of Soho, for I remember that, when two young Italian
+waiters, standing at the door of their cafe, asked each other in their
+own language which of us (baby or I) was "the bambino," I turned to them
+and smiled.
+
+Before I came to Chancery Lane, however, baby began to cry for her food,
+and I was glad to slip down a narrow alley into Lincoln's Inn Fields and
+sit on a seat in the garden while I gave her the bottle. It was then ten
+o'clock, the sun was high and the day was becoming hot.
+
+The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the
+streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I
+resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before
+I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was beginning to gain on me.
+
+I saw that I must be approaching some great hospital, for hospital
+nurses were now passing me constantly, and one of them, who was going my
+way, stepped up and asked me to allow her to carry baby. She looked so
+sweet and motherly that I let her do so, and as we walked along we
+talked.
+
+She asked me if I was going far, and I said no, only to the other end of
+London, the edge of the country, to Ilford.
+
+"Ilford!" she cried. "Why, that's miles and miles away. You'll have to
+'bus it to Aldgate, then change for Bow, and then tram it through
+Stratford Market."
+
+I told her I preferred to walk, being such a good walker, and she gave
+me a searching look, but said no more on that subject.
+
+Then she asked me how old baby was and whether I was nursing her myself,
+and I answered that baby was six weeks and I had been forced to wean
+her, being supposed to be delicate, and besides . . .
+
+"Ah, perhaps you are putting her out to nurse," she said, and I answered
+yes, and that was the reason I was going to Ilford.
+
+"I see," she said, with another searching look, and then it flashed upon
+me that she had formed her own conclusions about what had befallen me.
+
+When we came to a great building in a side street on the left, with
+ambulance vans passing in and out of a wide gateway, she said she was
+sorry she could not carry baby any further, because she was due in the
+hospital, where the house-doctor would be waiting for her.
+
+"But I hope baby's nurse will be a good one. They're not always that,
+you know."
+
+I was not quite so happy when the hospital nurse left me. The parcel on
+my wrist was feeling heavier than before, and my feet were beginning to
+drag. But I tried to keep a good heart as I faced the crowded
+thoroughfares--Newgate with its cruel old prison, the edge of St.
+Paul's, and the corner of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and so on into
+Cheapside.
+
+Cheapside itself was almost impassable. Merchants, brokers, clerks, and
+city men generally in tall silk hats were hurrying and sometimes running
+along the pavement, making me think of the river by my father's house,
+whose myriad little waves seemed to my fancy as a child to be always
+struggling to find out which could get to Murphy's Mouth the first and
+so drown itself in the sea.
+
+People were still very kind to me, though, and if anybody brushed me in
+passing he raised his hat; and if any one pushed me accidentally he
+stopped to say he was sorry.
+
+Of course baby was the talisman that protected me from harm; and what I
+should have done without her when I got to the Mansion house I do not
+know, for that seemed to be the central heart of all the London traffic,
+with its motor-buses and taxi-cabs going in different directions and its
+tremendous tides of human life flowing every way.
+
+But just as I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle
+of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the
+edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription,
+"The Earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," a big policeman,
+seeing me with baby in my arms, held up his hand to the drivers and
+shouted to the pedestrians ("Stand a-one side, please"), and then led me
+safely across, as if the Red Sea had parted to let us pass.
+
+It was then twelve o'clock and baby was once more crying for her food,
+so I looked for a place in which I might rest while I gave her the
+bottle again.
+
+Suddenly I came upon what I wanted. It seemed to be a garden, but it was
+a graveyard--one of the graveyards of the old London churches, enclosed
+by high buildings now, and overlooked by office windows.
+
+Such a restful place, so green, so calm, so beautiful! Lying there in
+the midst of the tumultuous London traffic, it reminded me of one of the
+little islands in the middle of our Ellan glens, on which the fuchsia
+and wild rose grow while the river rolls and boils about it.
+
+I had just sat down on a seat that had been built about a gnarled and
+blackened old tree, and was giving baby her food, when I saw that a
+young girl was sitting beside me.
+
+She was about nineteen years of age, and was eating scones out of a
+confectioner's bag, while she read a paper-covered novel. Presently she
+looked at baby with her little eyes, which were like a pair of shiny
+boot buttons, and said:
+
+"That your child?"
+
+I answered her, and then she asked:
+
+"Do you like children?"
+
+I answered her again, and asked her if she did not like them also.
+
+"Can't say I'm particularly gone on them," she said, whereupon I replied
+that that was probably because she had not yet had much experience.
+
+"Oh, haven't I? Perhaps I haven't," she said, and then with a hard
+little laugh, she added "Mother's had nine though."
+
+I asked if she was a shop assistant, and with a toss of her head she
+told me she was a typist.
+
+"Better screw and your evenings off," she said, and then she returned to
+the subject of children.
+
+One of her chums in the office who used to go out with her every night
+to the music-halls got into trouble a year or two ago. As a consequence
+she had to marry. And what was the result? Never had her nose out of the
+wash-tub now!
+
+The story was crude enough, yet it touched me closely.
+
+"But couldn't she have put her baby out to nurse and get another
+situation somewhere?" I asked.
+
+"Matter o' luck," said the girl. "Some can. Some can't. That's their
+look out. Firms don't like it. If they find you've got a child they
+gen'r'lly chuck you."
+
+In spite of myself I was a little down when I started on my journey
+again. I thought the parcel was cutting my wrist and I felt my feet
+growing heavier at every step.
+
+Was Maggie Jones's story the universal one?
+
+If a child were born beyond the legal limits, was it a thing to hide
+away and be ashamed of?
+
+And could it be possible that man's law was stronger than God's law
+after all?
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I had walked so slowly and stopped so often that it was two o'clock in
+the afternoon when I passed through Aldgate.
+
+I was then faint for want of food, so I looked out for a tea-shop or
+restaurant.
+
+I passed several such places before I found the modest house I wanted.
+Then I stepped into it rather nervously and took the seat nearest the
+door.
+
+It was an oblong room with red plush seats along the walls behind a line
+of marble-topped tables. The customers were all men, chiefly clerks and
+warehousemen, I thought, and the attendants were girls in black frocks
+and white aprons.
+
+There seemed to be a constant fire of free-and-easy flirtation going on
+between them. At one table a man in a cloth cap was saying to the girl
+who had served him:
+
+"What's the damage, dearie?"
+
+"One roast, one veg, two breads--'levenpence, and no liberties, mister."
+
+"Sunday off, Em'ly?" said a youth in a red tie at another table, and
+being told it was, he said:
+
+"Then what do you say to 'oppin' up to 'Endon and 'aving a day in a
+boat?"
+
+I had to wait some time before anybody came to attend to me, but at
+length a girl from the other end of the room, who had taken no part in
+these amatory exchanges, stepped up and asked what I wanted.
+
+I ordered a glass of cold milk and a scone for myself and a pint of hot
+milk to replenish baby's bottle.
+
+The girl served me immediately, and after rinsing and refilling the
+feeding-bottle she stood near while the baby used it.
+
+She had quiet eyes and that indefinable expression of yearning
+tenderness which we sometimes see in the eyes of a dear old maid who has
+missed her motherhood.
+
+The shop had been clearing rapidly; and as soon as the men were gone,
+and while the other girls were sitting in corners to read penny
+novelettes, my waitress leaned over and asked me if I did not wish to go
+into the private room to attend to baby.
+
+A moment afterwards I followed her into a small apartment at the end of
+the shop, and there a curious thing occurred.
+
+She closed the door behind us and asked me in an eager whisper to allow
+her to see to baby.
+
+I tried to excuse myself, but she whispered:
+
+"Hush! I have a baby of my own, though they know nothing about it here,
+so you can safely trust me."
+
+I did so, and it was beautiful to see the joy she had in doing what was
+wanted, saying all sorts of sweet and gentle things to my baby (though I
+knew they were meant for her own), as if the starved mother-heart in her
+were stealing a moment of maternal tenderness.
+
+"There!" she said, "She'll be comfortable now, bless her!"
+
+I asked about her own child, and, coming close and speaking in a
+whisper, she told me all about it.
+
+It was a girl and it would be a year old at Christmas. At first she had
+put it out to nurse in town, where she could see it every evening, but
+the foster-mother had neglected it, and the inspector had complained, so
+she had been compelled to take it away. Now it was in a Home in the
+country, ten miles from Liverpool Street, and it was as bonny as a peach
+and as happy as the day is long.
+
+"See," she whispered, taking a card from her breast, after a furtive
+glance towards the door. "I sent two shillings to have her photograph
+taken and the Matron has just sent it."
+
+It was the picture of a beautiful baby girl, and I found it easy to
+praise her.
+
+"I suppose you see her constantly, don't you?" I said.
+
+The girl's face dropped.
+
+"Only on visiting days, once a month, and not always that," she
+answered.
+
+"But how can you live without seeing her oftener?" I asked.
+
+"Matter o' means," she said sadly. "I pay five shillings a week for her
+board, and the train is one-and-eight return, so I have to be careful,
+you see, and if I lost my place what would happen to baby?"
+
+I was very low and tired and down when I resumed my walk. But when I
+thought for a moment of taking omnibuses for the rest of my journey I
+remembered the waitress's story and told myself that the little I had
+belonged to my child, and so I struggled on.
+
+But what a weary march it was during the next two hours! I was in the
+East End now, and remembering the splendour of the West, I could
+scarcely believe I was still in London.
+
+Long, mean, monotonous streets, running off to right and left, miles on
+miles of them without form or feature, or any trace of nature except the
+blue strips of sky overhead.
+
+Such multitudes of people, often badly dressed and generally with set
+and anxious faces, hasting to and fro, hustling, elbowing, jostling each
+other along, as if driven by some invisible power that was swinging an
+unseen scourge.
+
+No gracious courtesy here! A woman with a child in her arms was no
+longer a queen. Children were cheap, and sometimes it was as much as I
+could do to save myself from being pushed off the pavement.
+
+The air seemed to smell of nothing but ale and coarse tobacco. And then
+the noise! The ceaseless clatter of carts, the clang of electric cars,
+the piercing shrieks of the Underground Railway coming at intervals out
+of the bowels of the earth like explosions out of a volcano, and, above
+all, the raucous, rasping, high-pitched voices of the people, often
+foul-mouthed, sometimes profane, too frequently obscene.
+
+A cold, grey, joyless, outcast city, cut off from the rest of London by
+an invisible barrier more formidable than a wall; a city in which the
+inhabitants seemed to live cold, grey, joyless lives, all the same that
+they joked and laughed; a city under perpetual siege, the siege of
+Poverty, in the constant throes of civil war, the War of Want, the daily
+and hourly fight for food.
+
+If there were other parts of the East End (and I am sure there must be)
+where people live simple, natural, human lives, I did not see them that
+day, for my course was down the principal thoroughfares only.
+
+Those thoroughfares, telescoping each other, one after another, seemed
+as if they would never come to an end.
+
+How tired I was! Even baby was no longer light, and the parcel on my
+wrist had become as heavy as lead.
+
+Towards four o'clock I came to a broad parapet which had strips of
+garden enclosed by railings and iron seats in front of them. Utterly
+exhausted, my arms aching and my legs limp, I sank into one of these
+seats, feeling that I could walk no farther.
+
+But after a while I felt better, and then I became aware that another
+woman was sitting beside me.
+
+When I looked at her first I thought I had never in my life seen
+anything so repulsive. She was asleep, and having that expressionless
+look which sleep gives, I found it impossible to know whether she was
+young or old. She was not merely coarse, she was gross. The womanhood in
+her seemed to be effaced, and I thought she was utterly brutalised and
+degraded.
+
+Presently baby, who had also been asleep, awoke and cried, and then the
+woman opened her eyes and looked at the child, while I hushed her to
+sleep again.
+
+There must be something in a baby's face that has a miraculous effect on
+every woman (as if these sweet angels, fresh from God, make us all young
+and all beautiful), and it was even so at that moment.
+
+Never shall I forget the transfiguration in the woman's face when she
+looked into the face of my baby. The expression of brutality and
+degradation disappeared, and through the bleared eyes and over the
+coarsened features there came the light of an almost celestial smile.
+
+After a while the woman spoke to me. She spoke in a husky voice which
+seemed to be compounded of the effects of rum and raw night air.
+
+"That your'n," she said.
+
+I answered her.
+
+"Boy or gel?"
+
+I told her.
+
+"'Ow old?"
+
+I told her that too.
+
+The woman was silent for a moment, and then, with a thickening of the
+husky voice, she said:
+
+"S'pose you'll say I'm a bleedin' liar, but I 'ad a kid as putty as that
+onct--puttier. It was a boy. The nobbiest little b---- as you ever come
+acrost. Your'n is putty, but it ain't in it with my Billie, not by a
+long chalk."
+
+I asked her what had become of her child.
+
+"Lawst 'im," she said. "Used to give sixpence a week to the woman what
+'ad 'alf the 'ouse with me to look after 'im while I was workin' at the
+fact'ry. But what did the bleedin' b---- do? Blimey, if she didn't let
+'im get run over by the dray from the brewery."
+
+"Killed?" I said, clutching at baby.
+
+The woman nodded without speaking.
+
+I asked her how old her child had been.
+
+"More'n four," she said. "Just old enough to run a arrand. It was crool.
+Hit me out, I can tell you. That kid was all I had. Apple o' my eye, in
+a manner of speakin'. When it was gone there wasn't much encouragement,
+was there? The Favver from the Mission came jawin' as 'ow Jesus 'ad
+taken 'im to 'Imself. Rot! When they put 'im down in old Bow I didn't
+care no more for nothin'. Monse and monse I walked about night and day,
+and the bleedin' coppers was allus on to me. They got their own way at
+last. I took the pneumonier and was laid up at the London. And when I
+got out I didn't go back to the fact'ry neither."
+
+"What did you do?" I asked.
+
+The woman laughed--bitterly, terribly.
+
+"Do? Don't you _know_?"
+
+I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the child.
+
+"Look here--are you a good gel?" she said.
+
+Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so
+
+"'Ope? Don't you know _that_ neither?"
+
+Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:
+
+"Yes."
+
+She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:
+
+"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how they done
+it, though."
+
+I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as if by
+broken lights from hell, of the life behind--the wrecked hope, the
+shattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last turned
+into one.
+
+Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again. The woman looked at her
+with the same look as before--not so much a smile as a sort of haggard
+radiance.
+
+Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath into baby's
+face, and stretching out a coarse fat finger she tickled her under the
+chin.
+
+Baby ceased to cry and began to smile. Seeing this the woman's eyes
+sparkled like sunshine.
+
+"See that," she cried. "S'elp me Jesus, I b'lieve I could 'ave been good
+meself if I'd on'y 'ad somethink like this to keer for."
+
+I am not ashamed to say that more than once there had been tears in my
+eyes while the woman spoke, though her blasphemies had corrupted the air
+like the gases that rise from a dust-heap. But when she touched my child
+I shuddered as if something out of the 'lowest depths had tainted her.
+
+Then a strange thing happened.
+
+I had risen to go, although my limbs could scarcely support me, and was
+folding my little angel closely in my arms, when the woman rose too and
+said:
+
+"You wouldn't let me carry your kiddie a bit, would you?"
+
+I tried to excuse myself, saying something, I know not what The woman
+looked at me again, and after a moment she said:
+
+"S'pose not. On'y I thought it might make me think as 'ow I was carryin'
+Billie."
+
+That swept down everything.
+
+The one remaining window of the woman's soul was open and I dared not
+close it.
+
+I looked down at my child--so pure, so sweet, so stainless; I looked up
+at the woman--so foul, so gross, so degraded.
+
+There was a moment of awful struggle and then . . . the woman and I were
+walking side by side.
+
+And the harlot was carrying my baby down the street.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+At five o'clock I was once more alone.
+
+I was then standing (with baby in my own arms now) under the statue
+which is at the back of Bow Church.
+
+I thought I could walk no farther, and although every penny I had in my
+pocket belonged to Isabel (being all that yet stood between her and
+want) I must borrow a little of it if she was to reach Mrs. Oliver's
+that night.
+
+I waited for the first tram that was going in my direction, and when it
+came up I signalled to it, but it did not stop--it was full.
+
+I waited for a second tram, but that was still more crowded.
+
+I reproached myself for having come so far. I told myself how
+ill-advised I had been in seeking for a nurse for my child at the
+farthest end of the city. I reminded myself that I could not hope to
+visit her every day if my employment was to be in the West, as I had
+always thought it would be. I asked myself if in all this vast London,
+with its myriads of homes, there had been no house nearer that could
+have sheltered my child.
+
+Against all this I had to set something, or I think my very heart would
+have died there and then. I set the thought of Ilford, on the edge of
+the country, with its green fields and its flowers. I set the thought of
+Mrs. Oliver, who would love my child as tenderly as if she were her own
+little lost one.
+
+I dare say it was all very weak and childish, but it is just when we are
+done and down, and do not know what we are doing, that Providence seems
+to be directing us, and it was so with me at that moment.
+
+The trams being full I had concluded that Fate had set itself against
+my spending any of Isabel's money, and had made up my mind to make a
+fierce fight over the last stage of my journey, when I saw that a little
+ahead of where I was standing the road divided into two branches at an
+acute angle, one branch going to the right and the other to the left.
+
+Not all Emmerjane's instructions about keeping "as straight as a' arrow"
+sufficed to show me which of the two roads to take and I looked about
+for somebody to tell me.
+
+It was then that I became aware of a shabby old four-wheeled cab which
+stood in the triangular space in front of the statue, and of the driver
+(an old man, in a long coachman's coat, much worn and discoloured, and a
+dilapidated tall hat, very shiny in patches) looking at me while he took
+the nose-bag off his horse--a bony old thing with its head hanging down.
+
+I stepped up to him and asked my way, and he pointed it out to me--to
+the right, over the bridge and through Stratford Market.
+
+I asked how far it was to Ilford.
+
+"Better nor two mile _I_ call it," he answered.
+
+After that, being so tired in brain as well as body, I asked a foolish
+question--how long it would take me to get there.
+
+The old driver looked at me again, and said:
+
+"'Bout a 'our and a 'alf I should say by the looks of you--and you
+carryin' the biby."
+
+I dare say my face dropped sadly as I turned away, feeling very tired,
+yet determined to struggle through. But hardly had I walked twenty paces
+when I heard the cab coming up behind and the old driver crying:
+
+"'Old on, missie."
+
+I stopped, and to my surprise he drew up by my side, got down from his
+box, opened the door of his cab and said:
+
+"Ger in."
+
+I told him I could not afford to ride.
+
+"Ger in," he said again more loudly, and as if angry with himself for
+having to say it.
+
+Again I made some demur, and then the old man said, speaking fiercely
+through his grizzly beard:
+
+"Look 'ere, missie. I 'ave a gel o' my own lost somewheres, and I
+wouldn't be ans'rable to my ole woman if I let you walk with a face like
+that."
+
+I don't know what I said to him. I only know that my tears gushed out
+and that at the next moment I was sitting in the cab.
+
+What happened then I do not remember, except that the dull rumble of the
+wheels told me we were passing over a bridge, and that I saw through the
+mist before my eyes a sluggish river, a muddy canal, and patches of
+marshy fields.
+
+I think my weariness and perhaps my emotion, added to the heavy
+monotonous trotting of the old horse, must have put me to sleep, for
+after a while I was conscious of a great deal of noise, and of the old
+driver twisting about and shouting in a cheerful voice through the open
+window at the back of his seat:
+
+"Stratford Market."
+
+After a while we came to a broad road, full of good houses, and then the
+old driver cried "Ilford," and asked what part of it I wished to go to.
+
+I reached forward and told him, "10 Lennard's Row, Lennard's Green," and
+then sat back with a lighter heart.
+
+But after another little while I saw a great many funeral cars passing
+us, with the hearses empty, as if returning from a cemetery. This made
+me think of the woman and her story, and I found myself unconsciously
+clasping my baby closer.
+
+The corteges became so numerous at last that to shut out painful sights
+I closed my eyes and tried to think of pleasanter things.
+
+I thought, above all, of Mrs. Oliver's house, as I had always seen it in
+my mind's eye--not a pretentious place at all, only a little humble
+cottage but very sweet and clean, covered with creepers and perhaps with
+roses.
+
+I was still occupied with these visions when I felt the cab turn sharply
+to the left. Then opening my eyes I saw that we were running down a kind
+of alley-way, with a row of very mean little two-storey houses on the
+one side, and on the other, a kind of waste ground strewn with broken
+bottles, broken iron pans, broken earthenware and other refuse,
+interspersed with tufts of long scraggy grass, which looked the more
+wretched because the sinking sun was glistening over it.
+
+Suddenly the cab slowed down and stopped. Then the old man jumped from
+his box and opening his cab door, said:
+
+"Here you are, missie. This is your destingnation."
+
+There must have been a moment of semi-consciousness in which I got out
+of the cab, for when I came to full possession of myself I was standing
+on a narrow pavement in front of a closed door which bore the number
+10.
+
+At first I was stunned. Then my heart was in my mouth and it was as much
+as I could do not to burst out crying. Finally I wanted to fly, and I
+turned back to the cab, but it had gone and was already passing round
+the corner.
+
+It was six o'clock. I was very tired. I was nine miles from Bayswater. I
+could not possibly carry baby back. What _could_ I do?
+
+Then, my brain being unable to think, a mystic feeling (born perhaps of
+my life in the convent) came over me--a feeling that all that had
+happened on my long journey, all I had seen and everything that had been
+said to me, had been intended to prepare me for (and perhaps to save me
+from) the dangers that were to come.
+
+I think that gave me a certain courage, for with what strength of body
+and spirit I had left (though my heart was in my mouth still) I stepped
+across the pavement and knocked at the door.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My great-hearted, heroic little woman!
+
+All this time I, in my vain belief that our expedition was of some
+consequence to the world, was trying to comfort myself with the thought
+that my darling must have heard of my safety.
+
+But how could I imagine that she had hidden herself away in a mass of
+humanity--which appears to be the most impenetrable depths into which a
+human being can disappear?
+
+How could I dream that, to the exclusion of all such interests as mine,
+she was occupied day and night, night and day, with the joys and
+sorrows, the raptures and fears of the mighty passion of Motherhood,
+which seems to be the only thing in life that is really great and
+eternal?
+
+Above all, how could I believe that in London itself, in the heart of
+the civilised and religious world, she was going through trials which
+make mine, in the grim darkness of the Polar night, seem trivial and
+easy?
+
+It is all over now, and though, thank God, I did not know at the time
+what was happening to my dear one at home, it is some comfort to me to
+remember that I was acting exactly as if I did.
+
+From the day we turned hack I heard my darling's voice no more. But I
+had a still more perplexing and tormenting experience, and that was a
+dream about her, in which she was walking on a crevassed glacier towards
+a precipice which she could not see because the brilliant rays of the
+aurora were in her eyes.
+
+Anybody may make what he likes of that on grounds of natural law, and
+certainly it was not surprising that my dreams should speak to me in
+pictures drawn from the perils of my daily life, but only one thing
+matters now--that these experiences of my sleeping hours increased my
+eagerness to get back to my dear one.
+
+My comrades were no impediment to that, I can tell you. With their faces
+turned homewards, and the wind at their backs, they were showing
+tremendous staying power, although we had thirty and forty below zero
+pretty constantly, with rough going all the time, for the snow had been
+ruckled up by the blizzard to almost impassable heaps and hummocks.
+
+On reaching our second installation at Mount Darwin I sent a message to
+the men at the foot of Mount Erebus, telling them to get into
+communication (through Macquarie Island) with the captain of our ship in
+New Zealand, asking him to return for us as soon as the ice conditions
+would permit; and this was the last of our jobs (except packing our
+instruments tight and warm) before we started down the "long white
+gateway" for our quarters at the Cape.
+
+With all the heart in the world, though, our going had to be slow. It
+was the middle of the Antarctic winter, when absolute night reigned for
+weeks and we had nothing to alleviate the darkness but the light of the
+scudding moon, and sometimes the glory of the aurora as it encircled the
+region of the unrisen sun.
+
+Nevertheless my comrades sang their way home through the sullen gloom.
+Sometimes I wakened the echoes of those desolate old hills myself with a
+stave of "Sally's the gel," although I was suffering a good deal from my
+darker thoughts of what the damnable hypocrisies of life might be doing
+with my darling, and my desire to take my share of her trouble whatever
+it might be.
+
+The sun returned the second week in August. Nobody can know what relief
+that brought us except those who have lived for months without it. To
+see the divine and wonderful thing rise up like a god over those lone
+white regions is to know what a puny thing man is in the scheme of the
+world.
+
+I think all of us felt like that at sight of the sun, though some
+(myself among the rest) were thinking more of it as a kind of message
+from friends at home. But old Treacle, I remember, who had stood looking
+at it in awed solemnity, said:
+
+"Well, I'm d----!"
+
+After that we got on famously until we reached Winter Quarters, where we
+found everybody well and everything in order, but received one piece of
+alarming intelligence--that the attempt to get into wireless
+communication with our ship had failed, with the result that we should
+have to wait for her until the time originally appointed for her return.
+
+That did not seem to matter much to my shipmates, who, being snugly
+housed from blinding blizzards, settled down to amuse themselves with
+sing-songs and story-tellings and readings.
+
+But, do what I would, to me the delay was dreadful, and every day, in
+the fever of my anxiety to get away as soon as the ice permitted, I
+climbed the slopes of old Erebus with O'Sullivan, to look through
+powerful glasses for what the good chap called the "open wather."
+
+Thank God, our wooden house was large enough to admit of my having a
+cabin to myself, for I should have been ashamed of my comrades hearing
+the cries that sometimes burst from me in the night.
+
+It is hard for civilised men at home, accustomed to hold themselves
+under control, to realise how a man's mind can run away from him when he
+is thousands of miles separated from his dear ones, and has a kind of
+spiritual certainty that evil is befalling them.
+
+I don't think I am a bigger fool than most men in that way, but I shiver
+even yet at the memory of all the torment I went through during those
+days of waiting, for my whole life seemed to revolve before me and I
+accused myself of a thousand offences which I had thought dead and
+buried and forgotten.
+
+Some of these were trivial in themselves, such as hot and intemperate
+words spoken in childhood to my good old people at home, disobedience or
+ingratitude shown to them, with all the usual actions of a naughty boy,
+who ought to have been spanked and never was.
+
+But the worst of them concerned my darling, and came with the thought of
+my responsibility for the situation in which I felt sure she found
+herself.
+
+A thousand times I took myself to task for that, thinking what I ought
+and ought not to have done, and then giving myself every bad name and my
+conduct every damning epithet.
+
+Up and down my cabin I would walk with hands buried in my pockets,
+revolving these thoughts and working myself up, against my will, to a
+fever of regret and self-accusation.
+
+Talk about Purgatory--the Purgatory of dear old Father Dan! That was to
+come after death--mine came before, and by the holy saints, I had enough
+of it.
+
+Two months passed like this; and when the water of the Sound was open
+and our ship did not appear, mine was not the only heart that was eating
+itself out, for the spirits of my shipmates had also begun to sink.
+
+In the early part of the Antarctic spring there had been a fearful
+hurricane lasting three days on the sea, with a shrieking, roaring
+chorus of fiends outside, and the conviction now forced itself on my men
+that our ship must have gone down in the storm.
+
+Of course I fought this notion hard, for my last hopes were based on not
+believing it. But when after the lapse of weeks I could hold out no
+longer, and we were confronted by the possibility of being held there
+another year (for how were our friends to know before the ice formed
+again that it was necessary to send relief?), I faced the situation
+firmly--measuring out our food and putting the men on shortened rations,
+twenty-eight ounces each and a thimbleful of brandy.
+
+By the Lord God it is a fearful thing to stand face to face with slow
+death. Some of my shipmates could scarcely bear it. The utter solitude,
+the sight of the same faces and the sound of the same voices, with the
+prospect of nothing else, seemed to drive most of them nearly mad.
+
+There was no sing-songing among them now, and what speaking I overheard
+was generally about the great dinners they had eaten, or about their
+dreams, which were usually of green fields and flower-beds and primroses
+and daisies--daisies, by heaven, in a world that was like a waste!
+
+As for me I did my best to play the game of never giving up. It was a
+middling hard game, God knows, and after weeks of waiting a sense of
+helplessness settled down on me such as I had never known before.
+
+I am not what is called a religious man, but when I thought of my
+darling's danger (for such I was sure it was) and how I was cut off from
+her by thousands of miles of impassable sea, there came an overwhelming
+longing to go with my troubles to somebody stronger than myself.
+
+I found it hard to do that at first, for a feeling of shame came over
+me, and I thought:
+
+"You coward, you forgot all about God when things were going well with
+you, but now that they are tumbling down, and death seems certain, you
+whine and want to go where you never dreamt of going in your days of
+ease and strength."
+
+I got over that, though--there's nothing except death a man doesn't get
+over down there--and a dark night came when (the ice breaking from the
+cliffs of the Cape with a sound that made me think of my last evening at
+Castle Raa) I found myself folding my hands and praying to the God of my
+childhood, not for myself but for my dear one, that He before whom the
+strongest of humanity were nothing at all, would take her into His
+Fatherly keeping.
+
+"Help her! Help her! _I_ can do no more."
+
+It was just when I was down to that extremity that it pleased Providence
+to come to my relief. The very next morning I was awakened out of my
+broken sleep by the sound of a gun, followed by such a yell from Treacle
+as was enough to make you think the sea-serpent had got hold of his old
+buttocks.
+
+"The ship! The ship! Commander! Commander! The ship! The ship!"
+
+And, looking out of my little window I saw him, with six or seven other
+members of our company, half naked, just as they had leapt out of their
+bunks, running like savages to the edge of the sea, where the "Scotia,"
+with all flags flying (God bless and preserve her!), was steaming slowly
+up through a grinding pack of broken ice.
+
+What a day that was! What shouting! What hand-shaking! For O'Sullivan it
+was Donnybrook Fair with the tail of his coat left out, and for Treacle
+it was Whitechapel Road with "What cheer, old cock?" and an unquenchable
+desire to stand treat all round.
+
+But what I chiefly remember is that the moment I awoke, and before the
+idea that we were saved and about to go home had been fully grasped by
+my hazy brain, the thought flashed to my mind:
+
+"Now you'll hear of _her!_"
+
+     M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The door of No. 10 was opened by a rather uncomely woman of perhaps
+thirty years of age, with a weak face and watery eyes.
+
+This was Mrs. Oliver, and it occurred to me even at that first sight
+that she had the frightened and evasive look of a wife who lives under
+the intimidation of a tyrannical husband.
+
+She welcomed me, however, with a warmth that partly dispelled my
+depression and I followed her into the kitchen.
+
+It was the only room on the ground floor of her house (except a
+scullery) and it seemed sweet and clean and comfortable, having a table
+in the middle of the floor, a sofa under the window, a rocking-chair on
+one side of the fireplace, a swinging baby's cot on the other side, and
+nothing about it that was not homelike and reassuring, except two large
+photographs over the mantelpiece of men stripped to the waist and
+sparring.
+
+"We've been looking for you all day, ma'am, and had nearly give you up,"
+she said.
+
+Then she took baby out of my arms, removed her bonnet and pelisse,
+lifted her barrow-coat to examine her limbs, asked her age, kissed her
+on the arms, the neck and the legs, and praised her without measure.
+
+"And what's her name, ma'am?"
+
+"Mary Isabel, but I wish her to be called Isabel."
+
+"Isabel! A beautiful name too! Fit for a angel, ma'am. And she _is_ a
+little angel, bless her! Such rosy cheeks! Such a ducky little mouth!
+Such blue eyes--blue as the bluebells in the cemet'ry. She's as pretty
+as a waxwork, she really is, and any woman in the world might be proud
+to nurse her."
+
+A young mother is such a weakling that praise of her child (however
+crude) acts like a charm on her, and in spite of myself I was beginning
+to feel more at ease, when Mrs. Oliver's husband came downstairs.
+
+He was a short, thick-set man of about thirty-five, with a square chin,
+a very thick neck and a close-cropped red bullet head, and he was in his
+stocking feet and shirt-sleeves as if he had been dressing to go out for
+the evening.
+
+I remember that it flashed upon me--I don't know why--that he had seen
+me from the window of the room upstairs, driving up in the old man's
+four-wheeler, and had drawn from that innocent circumstance certain
+deductions about my character and my capacity to pay.
+
+I must have been right, for as soon as our introduction was over and I
+had interrupted Mrs. Oliver's praises of my baby's beauty by speaking
+about material matters, saying the terms were to be four shillings, the
+man, who had seated himself on the sofa to put on his boots said, in a
+voice that was like a shot out of a blunderbus:
+
+"Five."
+
+"How'd you mean, Ted?" said Mrs. Oliver, timidly. "Didn't we say four?"
+
+"Five," said the man again, with a still louder volume of voice.
+
+I could see that the poor woman was trembling, but assuming the sweet
+air of persons who live in a constant state of fear, she said:
+
+"Oh yes. It _was_ five, now I remember."
+
+I reminded her that her letter had said four, but she insisted that I
+must be mistaken, and when I told her I had the letter with me and she
+could see it if she wished, she said:
+
+"Then it must have been a slip of the pen in a manner of speaking,
+ma'am. We allus talked of five. Didn't we, Ted?"
+
+"Certainly," said her husband, who was still busy with his boots.
+
+I saw what was going on, and I felt hot and angry, but there seemed to
+be nothing to do except submit.
+
+"Very well, we'll say five then," I said.
+
+"Paid in advance," said the man, and when I answered that that would
+suit me very well, he added:
+
+"A month in advance, you know."
+
+By this time I felt myself trembling with indignation, as well as
+quivering with fear, for while I looked upon all the money I possessed
+as belonging to baby, to part with almost the whole of it in one moment
+would reduce me to utter helplessness, so I said, turning to Mrs.
+Oliver:
+
+"Is that usual?"
+
+It did not escape me that the unhappy woman was constantly studying her
+husband's face, and when he glanced up at her with a meaning look she
+answered, hurriedly:
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am, quite usual. All the women in the Row has it. Number
+five, she has twins and gets a month in hand with both of them. But
+we'll take four weeks and I can't say no fairer than that, can I?"
+
+"But why?" I asked.
+
+"Well, you see, ma'am, you're . . . you're a stranger to us, and if baby
+was left on our hands . . . Not as we think you'd leave her chargeable
+as the saying is, but if you were ever ill, and got a bit back with your
+payments . . . we being only pore people. . . ."
+
+While the poor woman was floundering on in this way my blood was boiling
+and I was beginning to ask her if she supposed for one moment that I
+meant to desert my child, when the man, who had finished the lacing of
+his boots, rose to his feet, and said:
+
+"You don't want yer baiby to be give over to the Guardians for the sake
+of a week or two, do you?"
+
+That settled everything. I took out my purse and with a trembling hand
+laid my last precious sovereign on the table.
+
+A moment or two after this Mr. Oliver, who had put on his coat and a
+cloth cap, made for the door.
+
+"Evenin', ma'am," he said, and with what grace I could muster I bade him
+good-bye.
+
+"You aren't a-going to the 'Sun' to-night, are you, Ted?" asked Mrs.
+Oliver.
+
+"Club," said the man, and the door clashed behind him.
+
+I breathed more freely when he was gone, and his wife (from whose face
+the look of fear vanished instantly) was like another woman.
+
+"Goodness gracious," she cried, with a kind of haggard hilarity,
+"where's my head? Me never offering you a cup of tea, and you looking so
+white after your journey."
+
+I took baby back into my arms while she put on the kettle, set a black
+tea-pot on the hob to warm, laid a piece of tablecloth and a thick cup
+and saucer on the end of the table, and then knelt on the fender to
+toast a little bread, talking meantime (half apologetically and half
+proudly) about her husband.
+
+He was a bricklayer by trade, and sometimes worked at the cemetery which
+I could see at the other side of the road (behind the long railings and
+the tall trees), but was more generally engaged as a sort of fighting
+lieutenant to a Labour leader whose business it was to get up strikes.
+Before they were married he had been the "Light Weight Champion of
+Whitechapel," and those were photos of his fights which I could see over
+the mantelpiece, but "he never did no knocking of people about now,"
+being "quiet and matrimonual."
+
+In spite of myself my heart warmed to the woman. I wonder it did not
+occur to me there and then that, living in constant dread of her
+tyrannical husband, she would always be guilty of the dissimulation I
+had seen an example of already and that the effect of it would be
+reflected upon my child.
+
+It did not. I only told myself that she was clearly fond of children and
+would be a kind nurse to my baby. It even pleased me, in my foolish
+motherly selfishness, that she was a plain-featured person, whom baby
+could never come to love as she would, I was sure, love me.
+
+I felt better after I had taken tea, and as it was then seven o'clock,
+and the sun was setting horizontally through the cypresses of the
+cemetery, I knew it was time to go.
+
+I could not do that, though, without undressing baby and singing her to
+sleep. And even then I sat for a while with an aching heart, and Isabel
+on my knee, thinking of how I should have to go to bed that night, for
+the first time, without her.
+
+Mrs. Oliver, in the meantime, examining the surplus linen which I had
+brought in my parcel, was bursting into whispered cries of delight over
+it, and, being told I had made the clothes myself, was saying:
+
+"What a wonderful seamstress you might be if you liked, ma'am."
+
+At length the time came to leave baby, and no woman knows the pain of
+that experience who has not gone through it.
+
+Though I really believed my darling would be loved and cared for, and
+knew she would never miss me, or yet know that I was gone (there was a
+pang even in that thought, and in every other kind of comforting), I
+could not help it, that, as I was putting my cherub into her cot, my
+tears rained down on her little face and awakened her, so that I had to
+kneel by her side and rock her to sleep again.
+
+"You'll be good to my child, won't you, Mrs. Oliver?" I said.
+
+"'Deed I will, ma'am," the woman replied.
+
+"You'll bath her every day, will you not?"
+
+"Night and morning. I allus does, ma'am."
+
+"And rinse out her bottle and see that she has nice new milk fresh from
+the cow?"
+
+"Sure as sure, ma'am. But don't you fret no more about the child, ma'am.
+I've been a mother myself, ma'am, and I'll be as good to your little
+angel as if she was my own come back to me."
+
+"God bless you," I said in a burst of anguish, and after remaining a
+moment longer on my knees by the cot (speaking with all my heart and
+soul, though neither to nurse nor to baby) I rose to my feet, dashed the
+tears from my eyes, and ran out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I knew that my eyes were not fit to be seen in the streets, so I dropped
+my dark veil and hurried along, being conscious of nothing for some time
+except the clang of electric cars and the bustle of passers-by, to whom
+my poor little sorrow was nothing at all.
+
+But I had not gone far--I think I had not, though my senses were
+confused and vague--before I began to feel ashamed, to take myself to
+task, and to ask what I had to cry about.
+
+If I had parted from my baby it was for her own good, and if I had paid
+away my last sovereign I had provided for her for a month, I had nothing
+to think of now except myself and how to get work.
+
+I never doubted that I should get work, or that I should get it
+immediately, the only open question being what work and where.
+
+Hitherto I had thought that, being quick with my pen, I might perhaps
+become secretary to somebody; but now, remembering the typist's story
+("firms don't like it"), and wishing to run no risks in respect of my
+child, I put that expectation away and began to soar to higher things.
+
+How vain they were! Remembering some kind words the Reverend Mother had
+said about me at the convent (where I had taken more prizes than Alma,
+though I had never mentioned it before) I told myself that I, too, was
+an educated woman. I knew Italian, French and German, and having heard
+that some women could make a living by translating books for publishers
+I thought I might do the same.
+
+Nay, I could even write books myself. I was sure I could--one book at
+all events, about friendless girls who have to face the world for
+themselves, and all good women would read it (some good men also),
+because they would see that it must be true.
+
+Oh, how vain were my thoughts! Yet in another sense they were not all
+vanity, for I was not thinking of fame, or what people would say about
+what I should write, but only what I should get for it.
+
+I should get money, not a great deal perhaps, yet enough for baby and
+me, that we might have that cottage in the country, covered with
+creepers and roses, where Isabel would run about the grass by and by,
+and pluck the flowers in the garden.
+
+"So what have _you_ got to cry about, you ridiculous thing," I thought
+while I hurried along, with a high step now, as if my soul had been in
+my feet.
+
+But a mother's visions of the future are like a mirage (always gleaming
+with the fairy palaces which her child is to inhabit some day), and I am
+not the first to find her shadows fade away.
+
+I must have been walking for some time, feeling no weariness at all,
+when I came to the bridge by Bow Church. There I had intended to take a
+tram, but not being tired I went on farther, thinking every stage I
+could walk would be so much money to the good.
+
+I was deep in the Mile End Road, when a chilling thought came to me. It
+was the thought of the distance that would divide me from my child,
+making my visits to her difficult, and putting it out of my power to
+reach her quickly (perhaps even to know in time) if, as happened to
+children, she became suddenly and dangerously ill.
+
+I remembered the long line of telescoping thoroughfares I had passed
+through earlier in the day (with their big hospitals, their big
+breweries, their big tabernacles, their workmen's lodging-houses, their
+Cinema picture palaces, their Jewish theatres, and their numberless
+public houses); and then the barrier of squalid space which would divide
+me from baby, if I obtained employment in the West End, seemed to be
+immeasurably greater and more frightening than the space that had
+divided me from Martin when he was at the other end of the world.
+
+Not all the allurements of my dream were sufficient to reconcile me to
+such a dangerous separation.
+
+"It's impossible," I thought. "Quite impossible."
+
+Insensibly my rapid footsteps slackened. When I reached that part of the
+Mile End Road in which the Jewish tailors live, and found myself
+listening to a foreign language which I afterwards knew to be Yiddish,
+and looking at men with curls at each side of their sallow faces,
+slithering along as if they were wearing eastern slippers without heels,
+I stopped, without knowing why, at the corner of a street where an
+Italian organ-man was playing while a number of bright-eyed Jewish
+children danced.
+
+I was still looking on, hardly thinking of what I saw, when my eyes fell
+on an advertisement, pasted on the window of a sausage-and-ham shop at
+the corner. In large written characters it ran:
+
+     _Seamstress Wanted. Good Wages.
+     Apply No. ---- Washington Street_.
+
+How little are the things on which our destiny seems to hang! In a
+moment I was remembering what Mrs. Oliver had said about my being a good
+seamstress; and, almost before I knew what I was about, I was hurrying
+up the side street and knocking with my knuckles at an open door.
+
+A rather fat and elderly Jewess, covered with rings and gold chains, and
+wearing a manifest black wig, came from a room at one side of the lobby.
+I explained my errand, and after she had looked me over in a sort of
+surprise, as if I had not been the kind of person she expected, she
+said, in a nasal and guttural voice:
+
+"Vait! My daughter, she speaks very vell Ainglish."
+
+Then turning her head over her shoulder, she pitched her voice several
+octaves higher and cried, "Miriam," whereupon there came tripping
+downstairs a Jewish girl of about eighteen, with large black eyes, thick
+black hair, and such a dear good face.
+
+I repeated my application, and after the girl had interpreted my request
+to her mother, I was asked into the lobby, and put through a kind of
+catechism.
+
+Was I a seamstress? No, but I wished to become one. Had I aiver vorked
+on vaistcoats? I hadn't, but I could do anything with my needle.
+
+Perhaps the urgency of my appeal, and more probably the pressure of her
+own need, weighed with the Jewess, for after reflection, and an eager
+whisper from her daughter (who was looking at me with kindling eyes),
+she said,
+
+"Very vell, ve'll see what she can do."
+
+I was then taken into a close and stuffy room where a number of girls
+(all Jewish as I could see) were working on sections of waistcoats
+which, lying about on every side, looked like patterns for legs of
+mutton. One girl was basting, another was pressing, and a third was
+sewing button-holes with a fine silk twist round bars of gimp.
+
+This last was the work which was required of me, and I was told to look
+and see if I could do it. I watched the girl for a moment and then said:
+
+"Let me try."
+
+Needle and twist and one of the half vests were then given to me, and
+after ten minutes I had worked my first button-hole and handed it back.
+
+The daughter praised it warmly, but the mother said:
+
+"Very fair, but a leedle slow."
+
+"Let me try again," I said, and my trembling fingers were so eager to
+please that my next button-hole was not only better but more quickly
+made.
+
+"Beautiful!" said the daughter. "And mamma, only think, she's quicker
+than Leah, already. I timed them."
+
+"I muz call your vader, dough," said the Jewess, and she disappeared
+through the doorway.
+
+While I stood talking to the younger Jewess, who had, I could see,
+formed as quick an attachment for me as I for her, I heard another nasal
+and guttural voice (a man's) coming towards us from the hall.
+
+"Is she von of our people?"
+
+"Nein! She's a Skihoah"--meaning, as I afterwards learned, a non-Jewish
+girl.
+
+Then a tall, thin Jew entered the room behind the elderly Jewess. I had
+never before and have never since seen such a patriarchal figure. With
+his long grey beard and solemn face he might have stood for Moses in one
+of the pictures that used to hang on the walls of the convent--except
+for his velvet skull-cap and the black alpaca apron, which was speckled
+over with fluffy bits of thread and scraps of cloth and silk.
+
+He looked at me for a moment with his keen eyes, and after his wife had
+shown him my work, and he had taken a pinch of snuff and blown his nose
+on a coloured handkerchief with the sound of a trumpet, he put me
+through another catechism.
+
+I was trembling lest he should make intimate inquiries, but beyond
+asking my name, and whether I was a Christian, he did not concern
+himself with personal questions.
+
+"Vat vages do you vant?" he asked.
+
+I told him I should be pleased to take whatever was paid to other girls
+doing work of the same kind.
+
+"Ach no! Dese girls are full-timers. You are only a greener [meaning a
+beginner] so you vill not expect anything like so much."
+
+At that his daughter repeated her assurance that I was quicker than the
+girl she had called Leah; but the Jew, with an air of parental majesty,
+told her to be silent, and then said that as I was an "improver" he
+could only take me "on piece," naming the price (a very small one) per
+half-dozen buttons and buttonholes, with the condition that I found my
+own twist and did the work in my own home.
+
+Seeing that I should be no match for the Jew at a bargain, and being so
+eager to get to work at any price, I closed with his offer, and then he
+left the room, after telling me to come back the next day.
+
+"And vhere do you lif, my dear?" said the Jewess.
+
+I told her Bayswater, making some excuse for being in the East End, and
+getting as near to the truth as I dare venture, but feeling
+instinctively, after my sight of the master of the house, that I dared
+say nothing about my child.
+
+She told me I must live nearer to my work, and I said that was exactly
+what I wished to do--asking if she knew where I could find a room.
+
+Fortunately the Jewess herself had two rooms vacant at that moment, and
+we went upstairs to look at them.
+
+Both were at the top of the house, and one of them I could have for two
+shillings a week, but it was dark and cheerless, being at the back and
+looking into the space over the yards in which the tenants dried their
+washing on lines stretched from pulleys.
+
+The other, which would cost a shilling a week more, was a lean slit of a
+room, very sparsely furnished, but it was to the front, and looked down
+into the varied life of the street, so I took it instantly and asked
+when I could move in.
+
+"Ven you like," said the Jewess. "Everyding is ready."
+
+So, early next morning I bade farewell to my good Welsh landlady (who
+looked grave when I told her what I was going to do) and to Emmerjane
+(who cried when I kissed her smudgy face) and, taking possession of my
+new home, began work immediately in my first and only employment.
+
+Perhaps it was a deep decline after the splendours of my dreams, but I
+did not allow myself to think about that. I was near to Ilford and I
+could go to see Isabel every day.
+
+Isabel! Isabel! Isabel! Everything was Isabel, for now that Martin was
+gone my hopes and my fears, my love and my life, revolved on one axis
+only--my child.
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My employer was a Polish Jew, named Israel Abramovitch.
+
+He had come to England at the time of the religious persecution in the
+Holy Cities of Russia, set himself up in his trade as a tailor in a
+garret in Whitechapel, hired a "Singer," worked with "green" labour for
+"slop" warehouses, and become in less than twenty years the richest
+foreign Jew in the East End of London, doing some of the "best bespoke"
+work for the large shops in the West and having the reputation (as I
+afterwards found) of being the greatest of Jewish "sweaters."
+
+In spite of this, however, he was in his own way a deeply religious man.
+Strict, severe, almost superstitious in obeying the Levitical laws and
+in practising the sad and rather gloomy symbolism of his faith. A famous
+Talmudist, a pillar of the synagogue, one of the two wardens of the
+Chevra in Brick Lane, and consequently a great upholder of moral
+rectitude.
+
+His house seemed to be a solid mass of human beings, chiefly Jewish
+girls, who worked all day, and sometimes (when regulations could be
+evaded or double gangs engaged) all night, for the Jew drove everybody
+at high speed, not excepting his wife, who cooked the food and pressed
+the clothes at the same time.
+
+In this hive of industry I needed no spur to make me work.
+
+Every morning Mrs. Abramovitch brought up a thick pile of vests to my
+room, and every evening she took them down again, after counting my
+earnings with almost preternatural rapidity and paying me, day by day,
+with unfailing promptitude.
+
+At the end of my first week I found I had made ten shillings. I was
+delighted, but after I had paid for my room and my food there was not
+enough for baby's board, so the second week I worked later in the
+evenings, and earned fourteen shillings. This was still insufficient,
+therefore I determined to take something from the other end of the day.
+
+"Morning will be better," I thought, remembering the painful noises at
+night, especially about midnight, when people were being thrown out of a
+public-house higher up the street, where there was a placard in the
+window saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to "make anybody
+drunk for fourpence."
+
+Unfortunately (being a little weak) I was always heavy in the mornings,
+but by great luck my room faced the east, so I conceived the idea of
+moving my bed up to the window and drawing my blinds to the top so that
+the earliest light might fall on my face and waken me.
+
+This device succeeded splendidly, and for many weeks of the late summer
+and early autumn I was up before the sun, as soon as the dawn had
+broadened and while the leaden London daylight was filtering through the
+smoke of yesterday.
+
+By this means I increased my earnings to sixteen shillings, and, as my
+fingers learned to fly over their work, to seventeen and even eighteen.
+
+That was my maximum, and though it left a narrow margin for other needs
+it enabled me at the end of a month to pay another pound for baby's
+board and to put away a little towards her "shortening," which Mrs.
+Oliver was always saying must be soon.
+
+I had to stick close to maintain this average, and I grudged even the
+time occupied in buying and eating my food, though that was not a long
+process in the Mile End Road, which is full of shops where things can be
+bought ready cooked. After the first week I did not even need to go out
+for them, for they were brought round to my room every morning, thus
+enabling me to live without leaving my work.
+
+It was a stiff life, perhaps, but let nobody think I looked upon myself
+as a slave. Though I worked so hard I felt no self-pity. The thought
+that I was working for my child sweetened all my labours. It was such a
+joy to think that baby depended upon me for everything she wanted.
+
+Being so happy in those days I sang a great deal, though naturally not
+in the middle of the day, when our house was going like a mill-wheel,
+but in the early mornings before the electric trams began to clang, or
+the hawkers with their barrows to shout, and when there was no sound
+even in the East End except that ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp in the
+front street which always made me think of the children of Israel in
+Egypt drawing burdens for Pharaoh.
+
+Throwing open my window I sang all sorts of things, but, being such a
+child myself and so fond of make-believe, I loved best to sing my
+lullaby, and so pretend that baby was with me in my room, lying asleep
+behind me in my bed.
+
+     "_Sleep, little baby, I love thee, I love thee,
+     Sleep, little Queen, I am bending above thee_."
+
+I never knew that I had any other audience than a lark in a cage on the
+other side of the street (perhaps I was in a cage myself, though I did
+not think of that then) which always started singing when I sang, except
+the washerwomen from a Women's Shelter going off at four to their work
+at the West End, and two old widows opposite who sewed Bibles and
+stitched cassocks, which being (so Miriam told me) the worst-paid of all
+sweated labour compelled them to be up as early as myself.
+
+It was not a very hopeful environment, yet for some time, in my little
+top room, I was really happy.
+
+I saw baby every day. Between six and nine every night, I broke off work
+to go to Ilford, saying nothing about my errand to anybody, and leaving
+the family of the Jew to think it was my time for recreation.
+
+Generally I "trammed" it from Bow Church, because I was so eager to get
+to my journey's end, but usually I returned on foot, for though the
+distance was great I thought I slept better for the walk.
+
+What joyful evenings those were!
+
+Perhaps I was not altogether satisfied about the Olivers, but that did
+not matter very much. On closer acquaintance I found my baby's nurse to
+be a "heedless" and "feckless" woman; and though I told myself that all
+allowances must be made for her in having a bad husband, I knew in my
+secret heart that I was deceiving myself, and that I ought to listen to
+the voices that were saying "Your child is being neglected."
+
+Sometimes it seemed to me that baby had not been bathed--but that only
+gave me an excuse for bathing her myself.
+
+Sometimes I thought her clothes were not as clean as they might be--but
+that only gave me the joy of washing them.
+
+Sometimes I was sure that her feeding-bottle had not been rinsed and her
+milk was not quite fresh--but that only gave me the pleasure of scalding
+the one and boiling the other.
+
+More than once it flashed upon me that I was paying Mrs. Oliver to do
+all this--but then what a deep delight it was to be mothering my own
+baby!
+
+Thus weeks and months passed--it is only now I know how many, for in
+those days Time itself had nothing in it for me except my child--and
+every new day brought the new joy of watching my baby's development.
+
+Oh, how wonderful it all was! To see her little mind and soul coming out
+of the Unknown! Out of the silence and darkness of the womb into the
+world of light and sound!
+
+First her sense of sight, with her never-ending interest in her dear
+little toes! Then her senses of touch and hearing, and the gift of
+speech, beginning with a sort of crow, and ending in the "ma-ma-ma"
+which the first time I heard it went prancing through and through me and
+was more heavenly to my ears than the music of the spheres!
+
+What evenings of joy I had with her!
+
+The best of them (God forgive me!) were the nights when the bricklayer
+had got into some trouble by "knocking people about" at the "Rising Sun"
+and his wife had to go off to rescue him from the police.
+
+Then, baby being "shortened," I would prop her up in her cot while I
+sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip
+continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and
+waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the
+fire and the bricklayer's kitchen buzzed softly like a hive of bees.
+
+Oh dear! Oh dear! I may have been down in the depths, yet there is no
+place so dark that it may not be brightened by a sunbeam, and my sunbeam
+was my child.
+
+And then Martin--baby was constantly making me think of him. Devouring
+her with my eyes, I caught resemblances every day--in her eyes, her
+voice, her smile, and, above all, in that gurgling laugh that was like
+water bubbling out of a bottle.
+
+I used to talk to her about him, pouring all my sentimental secrets into
+her ears, just as if she understood, telling her what a great man her
+father had been and how he loved both of us--_would_ have done if he had
+lived longer.
+
+I dare say it was very foolish. Yet I cannot think it was all
+foolishness. Many and many a time since I have wondered if the holy
+saints, who knew what had really happened to Martin, were whispering all
+this in my ear as a means of keeping my love for him as much alive as if
+he had been constantly by my side.
+
+The climax came when Isabel was about five months old, for then the
+feeling about baby and Martin reached another and higher phase.
+
+I hardly dare to speak of it, lest it should seem silly when it was
+really so sacred and so exalted.
+
+The idea I had had before baby was born, that she was being sent to
+console me (to be a link between my lost one and me), developed into the
+startling and rapturous thought that the very soul of Martin had passed
+into my child.
+
+"So Martin is not dead at all," I thought, "not really dead, because he
+lives in baby."
+
+It is impossible to say how this thought stirred me; how it filled my
+heart with thankfulness; how I prayed that the little body in which the
+soul of my Martin had come to dwell might grow beautiful and strong and
+worthy of him; how I felt charged with another and still greater
+responsibility to guard and protect her with my life itself if need be.
+
+"Yes, yes, my very life itself," I thought.
+
+Perhaps this was a sort of delirium, born of my great love, my hard
+work, and my failing strength. I did not know, I did not care.
+
+All that mattered to me then was one thing only--that whereas hitherto I
+had thought Martin was so far gone from me that not Time but only
+Eternity would bring us together, now I felt that he was coming back and
+back to me--nearer and nearer and nearer every day.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My dear, noble little woman was right in more ways than she knew.
+
+At that very time I was in literal truth hurrying home to her as fast as
+the fastest available vessel could carry me.
+
+As soon as we had boarded the _Scotia_ at the Cape and greeted our old
+shipmates, we shouted for our letters.
+
+There were some for all of us and heaps for me, so I scuttled down to my
+cabin, where I sorted the envelopes like a pack of cards, looking for
+the small delicate hand that used to write my letters and speeches.
+
+To my dismay it was not there, and realizing that fact I bundled the
+letters into a locker and never looked at them again until we were two
+days out--when I found they were chiefly congratulations from my
+committee, the proprietor of my newspaper, and the Royal Geographical
+Society, all welcome enough in their way, but Dead Sea fruit to a man
+with an empty, heaving heart.
+
+Going up on deck I found every face about me shining like the aurora,
+for the men had had good news all round, one having come into a fortune
+and another into the fatherhood of twins, and both being in a state of
+joy and excitement.
+
+But all the good fellows were like boys. Some of them (with laughter
+seasoned by a few tears) read me funny bits out of their wives'
+letters--bits too that were not funny, about having "a pretty fit of
+hysterics" at reading bad news of us and "wanting to kiss the newsboy"
+when he brought the paper contradicting it.
+
+I did my best to play the game of rejoicing, pretending I had had good
+news also, and everything was going splendid. But I found it hard enough
+to keep it going, especially while we were sailing back to the world, as
+we called it, and hearing from the crew the news of what had happened
+while we had been away.
+
+First, there was the reason for the delay in the arrival of the ship,
+which had been due not to failure of the wireless at our end, but to a
+breakdown on Macquarie Island.
+
+And then there was the account of the report of the loss of the _Scotia_
+in the gale going out, which had been believed on insufficient evidence
+(as I thought), but recorded in generous words of regret that sent the
+blood boiling to a man's face and made him wish to heaven they could be
+true.
+
+We were only five or six days sailing to New Zealand, but the strain to
+me was terrible, for the thought was always uppermost:
+
+"Why didn't she write a word of welcome to reach me on my return to
+civilisation?"
+
+When I was not talking to somebody that question was constantly haunting
+me. To escape from it I joined the sports of my shipmates, who with
+joyful news in their hearts and fresh food in their stomachs were
+feeling as good as new in spite of all they had suffered.
+
+But the morning we smelt land, the morning the cloud banks above the
+eastern horizon came out hard and fast and sure (no dreamland this
+time), I stood at the ship's bow, saying nothing to anybody, only
+straining my eyes for the yet distant world we were coming back to out
+of that desolate white waste, and thinking:
+
+"Surely I'll have news from her before nightfall."
+
+There was a big warm-hearted crowd on the pier at Port Lyttelton.
+Treacle said, "Gawd. I didn't know there was so many people in the
+world, Guv'nor;" and O'Sullivan, catching sight of a pretty figure under
+a sunshade, tugged at my arm and cried (in the voice of an astronomer
+who has discovered a planet), "Commanther! Commanther! A _girl!_"
+
+Almost before we had been brought to, a company of scientific visitors
+came aboard; but I was more concerned about the telegrams that had come
+at the same moment, so hurrying down to my cabin I tore them open like a
+vulture riving its prey--always looking at the signatures first and
+never touching an envelope without thinking:
+
+"Oh God, what will be inside of it?"
+
+There was nothing from my dear one! Invitations to dine, to lecture, to
+write books, to do this and that and Heaven knows what, but never a word
+from her who was more to me than all the world besides.
+
+This made me more than ever sure of the "voices" that had called me back
+from the 88th latitude, so I decided instantly to leave our ship in New
+Zealand, in readiness for our next effort, and getting across to Sydney
+to take the first fast steamer home.
+
+The good people at Port Lyttelton were loath to let us go. But after I
+had made my excuses, ("crazy to get back to wives and sweethearts, you
+know") they sent a school of boys (stunning little chaps in Eton suits)
+to sing us off with "Forty Years On"--which brought more of my mother
+into my eyes than I knew to be left there.
+
+At Sydney we had the same experience--the same hearty crowds, the same
+welcome, the same invitations, to which we made the same replies, and
+then got away by a fast liner which happened to be ready to sail.
+
+On the way "back to the world" I had slung together a sort of a despatch
+for the newspaper which had promoted our expedition (a lame, limping
+thing for want of my darling's help to make it go), saying something
+about the little we had been able to do but more about what we meant,
+please God, to do some day.
+
+"She'll see that, anyway, and know we're coming back," I thought.
+
+But to make doubly sure I sent two personal telegrams, one to my dear
+one at Castle Raa and the other to my old people at home, asking for
+answers to Port Said.
+
+Out on the sea again I was tormented by the old dream of the crevassed
+glacier; and if anybody wonders why a hulking chap who had not been
+afraid of a ninety-mile blizzard in the region of the Pole allowed
+himself to be kept awake at night by a buzzing in the brain, all I can
+say is that it was so, and I know nothing more about it.
+
+Perhaps my recent experience with the "wireless" persuaded me that if
+two sticks stuck in the earth could be made to communicate with each
+other over hundreds of miles, two hearts that loved each other knew no
+limitations of time or space.
+
+In any case I was now so sure that my dear one had called me home from
+the Antarctic that by the time we reached Port Said, and telegrams were
+pouring in on me, I had worked myself up to such a fear that I dared not
+open them.
+
+From sheer dread of the joy or sorrow that might be enclosed in the
+yellow covers, I got O'Sullivan down in my cabin to read my telegrams,
+while I scanned his face and nearly choked with my own tobacco smoke.
+
+There was nothing from my dear one! Nothing from my people at home
+either!
+
+O'Sullivan got it into his head that I was worrying about my parents,
+and tried to comfort me by saying that old folks never dreamt of
+telegraphing, but by the holy immaculate Mother he'd go bail there would
+be a letter for me before long.
+
+There was.
+
+We stayed two eternal days at Port Said while the vessel was taking coal
+for the rest of the voyage, and almost at the moment of sailing a letter
+arrived from Ellan, which, falling into O'Sullivan's hands first, sent
+him flying through the steamer and shouting at the top of his voice:
+
+"Commanther! Commanther!"
+
+The passengers gave room for him, and told me afterwards of his beaming
+face. And when he burst into my cabin I too felt sure he had brought me
+good news, which he had, though it was not all that I wanted.
+
+"The way I was sure there would be a letter for you soon, and by the
+holy St. Patrick and St. Thomas, here it is," he cried.
+
+The letter was from my father, and I had to brace myself before I could
+read it.
+
+It was full of fatherly love, motherly love, too, and the extravagant
+pride my dear good old people had of me ("everybody's talking of you, my
+boy, and there's nothing else in the newspapers"); but not a word about
+my Mary--or only one, and that seemed worse than none at all.
+
+"You must have heard of the trouble at Castle Raa. Very sad, but this
+happy hour is not the time to say anything about it."
+
+Nothing more! Only reams and reams of sweet parental chatter which (God
+forgive me!) I would have gladly given over and over again for one plain
+sentence about my darling.
+
+Being now more than ever sure that some kind of catastrophe had
+overtaken my poor little woman, I telegraphed to her again, this time
+(without knowing what mischief I was making) at the house of Daniel
+O'Neill--telling myself that, though the man was a brute who had
+sacrificed his daughter to his lust of rank and power and all the rest
+of his rotten aspirations, he was her father, and, if her reprobate of a
+husband had turned her out, he must surely have taken her in.
+
+"Cable reply to Malta. Altogether too bad not hearing from you," I said.
+
+A blind, hasty, cruel telegram, but thank God she never received it!
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Day by day it became more and more difficult for me to throw dust in my
+own eyes about the Olivers.
+
+One evening on reaching their house a little after six, as usual, I
+found the front door open, the kitchen empty save for baby, who, sitting
+up in her cot, was holding quiet converse with her toes, and the two
+Olivers talking loudly (probably by pre-arrangement) in the room
+upstairs.
+
+The talk was about baby, which was "a noosance," interfering with a
+man's sleep by night and driving him out of his home by day. And how
+much did they get for it? Nothing, in a manner of speaking. What did the
+woman (meaning me) think the "bleedin' place" was--"a philanthropic
+institooshun" or a "charity orginisation gime"?
+
+After this I heard the bricklayer thunder downstairs in his heavy boots
+and go out of the house without coming into the kitchen, leaving his
+wife (moral coward that he was) to settle his account with me.
+
+Then Mrs. Oliver came down, with many sighs, expressed surprise at
+seeing me and fear that I might have overheard what had been said in the
+room above.
+
+"Sorry to say I've been having a few words with Ted, ma'am, and tell you
+the truth it was about you."
+
+Ted had always been against her nursing, and she must admit it wasn't
+wise of a woman to let her man go to the public-house to get out of the
+way of a crying child; but though she was a-running herself off her feet
+to attend to the pore dear, and milk was up a penny, she had growd that
+fond of my baby since she lost her own that she couldn't abear to part
+with the jewel, and perhaps if I could pay a little more--Ted said
+seven, but she said six, and a shilling a week wouldn't hurt me--she
+could over-persuade him to let the dear precious stay.
+
+I was trembling with indignation while I listened to the woman's whining
+(knowing well I was being imposed upon), but I was helpless and so I
+agreed.
+
+My complacency had a bad effect on the Olivers, who continued to make
+fresh extortions, until their demands almost drove me to despair.
+
+I thought a climax had been reached when one night a neighbour came to
+the door and, calling Mrs. Oliver into the lobby, communicated some news
+in a whisper which brought her back with a frightened face for her cloak
+and hat, saying "something was a matter with Ted" and she must "run away
+quick to him."
+
+When she returned an hour or two later she was crying, and with sobs
+between her words she told me that Ted (having taken a drop too much)
+had "knocked somebody about" at the "Sun." As a consequence he had
+fallen into the hands of the police, and would be brought before the
+magistrate the following morning, when, being unable to pay the fine, he
+would have to "do time"--just as a strike was a-coming on, too, and he
+was expecting good pay from the Strike Committee.
+
+"And what is to happen to me and the baby while my 'usband is in
+prison?" she said.
+
+I knew it was an act of weakness, but, thinking of my child and the
+danger of its being homeless, I asked what the amount of the fine would
+probably be, and being told ten-and-six, I gave the money, though it was
+nearly all I had in the world.
+
+I paid for my weakness, though, and have reason to remember it.
+
+The extortions of the Olivers had brought me to so narrow a margin
+between my earnings and expenses that I lay awake nearly all that night
+thinking what I could do to increase the one or reduce the other. The
+only thing I found possible was to change to cheaper quarters. So next
+morning, with a rather heavy heart, I asked Mrs. Abramovitch if the room
+at the back of the house was still empty, and hearing that it was I
+moved into it the same day.
+
+That was a small and not a very wise economy.
+
+My new room was cheerless as well as dark, with no sights but the
+clothes that were drying from the pulley-lines and no sounds but the
+whoops of the boys of the neighbourhood playing at "Red Indians" on the
+top of the yard walls.
+
+But it was about the same as the other in size and furniture, and after
+I had decorated it with my few treasures--the Reverend Mother's rosary,
+which I hung on the head of the bed, and my darling mother's miniature,
+which I pinned up over the fire--I thought it looked bright and
+homelike.
+
+All this time, too, I was between the nether and the upper mill-stone.
+
+My employer, the Jew (though he must have seen that I was sweating
+myself much more than the law would have allowed him to sweat me), could
+not forgive himself when he found that I was earning more by "piece"
+than he would have had to pay me by the day, or resist the temptation to
+square accounts with me at the earliest possible opportunity.
+
+Unfortunately, his opportunity came only too quickly, and it led
+(however indirectly) to the most startling fact that has ever, perhaps,
+entered into a woman's life.
+
+I had not been more than three months at the Jew's house when the Jewish
+festivals came round--New Year's Day, the Day of Atonement, and the
+Feast of Tabernacles--which, falling near together and occupying many
+days, disturbed his own habits of work entirely.
+
+One of the tasks he reserved for himself was that of taking the best
+paid of his "best-bespoke" back to the large shops in the West End, and
+waiting for the return orders. But finding that the festivals interfered
+with these journeys, he decided that they should be made by me, who was
+supposed to know the West End (having lived in it) and to present a
+respectable appearance.
+
+I was reluctant to undertake the new duty, for though the Jew was to pay
+me a few shillings a week for it, I saw I could earn more in the time
+with my needle. But when he laid his long, hairy forefinger on the side
+of his nose and said with a significant smile:
+
+"You vill be gradeful, and convenience your employer, mine child," I
+agreed.
+
+Thus it came to pass that not only during the Jewish festivals, but for
+months after they were over, I carried a rather large black bag by tram
+or rail to the district that lies at the back of Piccadilly and along
+Oxford Street as far west as the Marble Arch.
+
+I had to go whenever called upon and to wait as long as wanted, so that
+in the height of the tailoring season I was out in the West End at all
+irregular hours of night, and even returned to my lodgings on one or two
+occasions in the raw sunshine of the early mornings.
+
+The one terror of my West End journeys was that I might meet Sister
+Mildred. I never did. In the multitude of faces which passed through the
+streets, flashing and disappearing like waves under the moon at sea, I
+never once caught a glimpse of a face I knew.
+
+But what sights I saw for all that! What piercing, piteous proofs that
+between the rich and the poor there is a great gulf fixed!
+
+The splendid carriages driving in and out of the Park; the sumptuously
+dressed ladies strolling through Bond Street; the fashionable church
+paraders; the white plumes and diamond stars which sometimes gleamed
+behind the glow of the electric broughams gliding down the Mall.
+
+"I used to be a-toffed up like that onct," I heard an old woman who was
+selling matches say as a lady in an ermine coat stepped out of a theatre
+into an automobile and was wrapped round in a tiger-skin rug.
+
+Sometimes it happened that, returning to the East End after the motor
+'buses had ceased to ply, I had to slip through the silent Leicester
+Square and the empty Strand to the Underground Railway on the
+Embankment.
+
+Then I would see the wretched men and women who were huddled together in
+the darkness on the steps to the river (whose ever-flowing waters must
+have witnessed so many generations of human wreckage), and, glancing up
+at the big hotels and palatial mansions full of ladies newly returned
+from theatres and restaurants in their satin slippers and silk
+stockings, I would wonder how they could lie in their white beds at
+night in rooms whose windows looked down on such scenes.
+
+But the sight that stirred me most (though it did not awaken my charity,
+which shows what a lean-souled thing I was myself) was that of the
+"public women," the street-walkers, as I used to call them, whom I saw
+in Piccadilly with their fine clothes and painted faces, sauntering in
+front of the clubs or tripping along with a light step and trying to
+attract the attention of the men.
+
+I found no pathos in the position of such women. On the contrary, I had
+an unspeakable horror and hatred and loathing of them, feeling that no
+temptation, no poverty, no pressure that could ever be brought to bear
+upon a woman in life or in death excused her for committing so great a
+wrong on the sanctity of her sex as to give up her womanhood at any call
+but that of love.
+
+"Nothing could make me do it," I used to think, "nothing in this world."
+
+But O God! how little I knew then what is in a woman's heart to do when
+she has a child to live for, and is helpless and alone!
+
+I cannot expect anybody to forgive me for what I did (or attempted to
+do), and now that the time has come to tell of it my hand trembles, and
+body and soul seem to be quivering like a flame.
+
+May God (who has brought everything to such a glorious end) have mercy
+on me and forgive me, and help me to be true!
+
+
+
+
+NINETY-NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+The worst consequence of my West End journeys was that my nightly visits
+to Ilford were fewer than before, and that the constant narrowing of the
+margin between my income and my expenses made it impossible for me to go
+there during the day.
+
+As a result my baby received less and less attention, and I could not be
+blind to the fact that she was growing paler and thinner.
+
+At length she developed a cough which troubled me a great deal. Mrs.
+Oliver made light of it, saying a few pennyworths of paregoric would
+drive it away, so I hurried off to a chemist, who recommended a soothing
+syrup of his own, saying it was safer and more effectual for a child.
+
+The syrup seemed to stop the cough but to disturb the digestion, for I
+saw the stain of curdled milk on baby's bib and was conscious of her
+increasing weakness.
+
+This alarmed me very much, and little as I knew of children's ailments,
+I became convinced that she stood in need of more fresh air, so I
+entreated Mrs. Oliver to take her for a walk every day.
+
+I doubt if she ever did so, for as often as I would say:
+
+"Has baby been out to-day, nurse?" Mrs. Oliver would make some lame
+excuse and pass quickly to another subject.
+
+At last, being unable to bear the strain any longer, I burst out on the
+woman with bitter reproaches, and then she broke down into tears and
+explained everything. She was behind with her rent, the landlord was
+threatening, and she dared not leave the house for a moment lest he
+should lock her out altogether.
+
+"I don't mind telling you, it's all along of Ted, ma'am. He's on strike
+wages but he spends it at the 'Sun.' He has never been the man to
+me--never once since I married him. I could work and keep the house
+comfortable without him, but he wouldn't let me a-be, because he knows I
+love, him dear. Yes, I do, I love him dear," she continued, breaking
+into hysterical sobs, "and if he came home and killed me I could kiss
+him with my last breath."
+
+This touched me more than I can say. A sense of something tragic in the
+position of the poor woman, who knew the character of the man she loved
+as well as the weakness which compelled her to love him, made me
+sympathise with her for the first time, and think (with a shuddering
+memory of my own marriage) how many millions of women there must be in
+the world who were in a worse position than myself.
+
+On returning to my room that night I began to look about to see if I had
+anything I could sell in order to help Mrs. Oliver, and so put an end to
+the condition that kept my baby a prisoner in her house.
+
+I had nothing, or next to nothing. Except the Reverend Mother's rosary
+(worth no more than three or four shillings) I had only my mother's
+miniature, which was framed in gold and set in pearls, but that was the
+most precious of all my earthly possessions except my child.
+
+Again and again when I looked at it in my darkest hours I had found new
+strength and courage. It had been like a shrine to me--what the image of
+the Virgin was in happier days--and thinking of all that my darling
+mother had done and suffered and sacrificed for my sake when I was
+myself a child, I felt that I could never part with her picture under
+the pressure of any necessity whatever.
+
+"Never," I thought, "never under any circumstances."
+
+It must have been about a week after this that I went to Ilford on one
+of those chill, clammy nights which seem peculiar to the East End of
+London, where the atmosphere, compounded of smoke and fog and thin
+drizzling rain; penetrates to the bone and hangs on one's shoulders like
+a shroud.
+
+Thinking of this, as I thought of everything, in relation to baby, I
+bought, as I was passing a hosier's shop, a pair of nice warm stockings
+and a little woollen jacket.
+
+When I reached the Olivers' I found, to my surprise, two strange men
+stretched out at large in the kitchen, one on the sofa and the other in
+the rocking-chair, both smoking strong tobacco and baby coughing
+constantly.
+
+Before I realised what had happened Mrs. Oliver called me into the
+scullery, and, after closing the door on us, she explained the position,
+in whispers broken by sobs.
+
+It was the rent. These were the bailiff's men put into possession by the
+landlord, and unless she could find two pounds ten by nine o'clock
+to-morrow morning, she and her husband would be sold up and turned into
+the street.
+
+"The home as I've been scraping and pinching to keep together!" she
+cried. "For the sake of two pound ten! . . . You couldn't lend us that
+much, could you?"
+
+I told her I could not, but she renewed her entreaties, asking me to
+think if I had not something I could pawn for them, and saying that Ted
+and she would consider it "a sacred dooty" to repay.
+
+Again I told her I had nothing--I was trying not to think of the
+miniature--but just at that moment she caught sight of the child's
+jacket which I was still holding in my hand, and she fell on me with
+bitter reproaches.
+
+"You've money enough to spend on baby, though. It's crool. Her living in
+lukshry and getting new milk night and day, and fine clothes being
+bought for her constant, and my pore Ted without a roof to cover him in
+weather same as this. It breaks my heart. It do indeed. Take your child
+away, ma'am. Take her to-night, afore we're turned out of house and home
+to-morrow morning."
+
+Before the hysterical cries with which Mrs. Oliver said this had come
+to an end I was on my way back to my room at the Jew's. But it was baby
+I was thinking of in relation to that cold, clammy night--that it would
+be impossible to take her out in it (even if I had somewhere to take her
+to, which I had not) without risk to her health and perhaps her life.
+
+With trembling fingers and an awful pain at my heart I took my mother's
+miniature from the wall and wrapped it up in tissue paper.
+
+A few minutes afterwards I was back in the damp streets, walking fast
+and eagerly, cutting over the lines of the electric trams without
+looking for the crossings.
+
+I knew where I was going to--I was going to a pawnbroker's in the Mile
+End Waste which I had seen on my West End journeys. When I got there I
+stole in at a side door, half-closing my eyes as I did so, by that
+strange impulse which causes us to see nothing when we do not wish to be
+seen.
+
+I shall never forget the scene inside. I think it must have left a scar
+on my brain, for I see it now in every detail--the little dark
+compartment; the high counter; the shelves at the back full of parcels,
+like those of a left-luggage room at a railway station; the heavy,
+baggy, big-faced man in shirt-sleeves with a long cigar held between his
+teeth at the corner of his frothy mouth; and then my own hurried
+breathing; my thin fingers opening the tissue paper and holding out the
+miniature; the man's coarse hands fumbling it; his casual air as he
+looked at it and cheapened it, as if it had been a common thing scarcely
+worthy of consideration.
+
+"What's this 'ere old-fashion'd thing? Portrait of your
+great-grandmother? Hum! Not 'arf bad-looking fice, neither."
+
+I think my eyes must have been blazing like hot coals. I am sure I bit
+my lips (I felt them damp and knew they were bleeding) to prevent myself
+from flinging out at the man in spite of my necessity. But I did my best
+to control my trembling mouth, and when he asked me how much I wanted on
+the miniature I answered, with a gulp in my throat:
+
+"Two pounds ten, if you please, sir."
+
+"Couldn't do it," said the pawnbroker.
+
+I stood speechless for a moment, not knowing what to say next, and then
+the pawnbroker, with apparent indifference, said:
+
+"I'll give you two ten for it out and out."
+
+"You mean I am to _sell_ . . ."
+
+"Yus, take it or leave it, my dear."
+
+It is no use saying what I suffered at that moment. I think I became ten
+years older during the few minutes I stood at that counter.
+
+But they came to an end somehow, and the next thing I knew was that I
+was on my way back to Ilford; that the damp air had deepened into rain;
+that miserable and perhaps homeless beings, ill-clad and ill-fed, were
+creeping along in the searching cold with that shuffling sound which bad
+boots make on a wet pavement; and that I was telling myself with a
+fluttering heart that the sheltering wings of my beautiful mother in
+heaven had come to cover my child.
+
+On reaching the Olivers', hot and breathless, I put three gold coins,
+two sovereigns and a half-sovereign, on to the table to pay off the
+broker's men.
+
+They had been settling themselves for the night, and looked surprised
+and I thought chagrined, but took up the money and went away.
+
+As they were going off one of them called me to the door, and in the
+little space at the foot of the stairs he said, tipping his fingers
+towards the cot:
+
+"If that's your kiddie, miss, I recommend you to get it out o' this 'ere
+place quick--see?"
+
+I stayed an hour or two longer because I was troubled about baby's
+cough; and before I left, being still uneasy, I did what I had never
+done before--wrote my address at the Jew's house, so that I could be
+sent for if I was ever wanted.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDREDTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning the last word of the broker's man seemed to be
+ringing in my ears.
+
+I knew it was true; I knew I ought to remove baby from the house of the
+Olivers without another day's delay, but I was at a loss to know what to
+do with her.
+
+To bring her to my own room at the Jew's was obviously impossible, and
+to advertise for a nurse for my child was to run the risk of falling
+into the toils of somebody who might do worse than neglect her.
+
+In my great perplexity I recalled the waitress at the restaurant whose
+child had been moved to a Home in the country, and for some moments I
+thought how much better it would be that baby should be "bonny and well"
+instead of pale and thin as she was now. But when I reflected that if I
+took her to a public institution I should see her only once a month, I
+told myself that I could not and would not do so.
+
+"I'll work my fingers to the bone first," I thought.
+
+Yet life makes a fearful tug at a woman when it has once got hold of
+her, and, strangely enough, it was in the Jew's house that I first came
+to see that for the child's own sake I must part with her.
+
+Somewhere about the time of my moving into the back room my employer
+made a kind of bower of branches and evergreens over the lead-flat roof
+of an outhouse in his back-yard--a Succah, as Miriam called it, built in
+honour of the Feast of Tabernacles, as a symbol of the time when the
+Israelites in the Wilderness dwelt in booths.
+
+In this Succah the Jew's family ate all their meals during the seven or
+eight days of the Jewish feast, and one morning, as I sat at work by my
+open window, I heard Miriam after breakfast reading something from the
+Books of Moses.
+
+It was the beautiful story of Jacob parting with Benjamin in the days of
+the famine, when there was corn in Egypt only--how the poor old father
+in his great love could not bring himself to give up his beloved son,
+although death threatened him; how Judah pleaded with Jacob to send the
+boy with him into the far country lest they should all die, "both we and
+thou and also our little ones;" and how at last Jacob said, "If it must
+be so, do this," but "if I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved."
+
+It would be hard to say how deeply this story moved me while I listened
+from my room above. And now that I thought of it again, I saw that I was
+only sacrificing my child to my selfish love of her, and therefore the
+duty of a true mother was to put her into a Home.
+
+It would not be for long. The work I was doing was not the only kind I
+was capable of. After I had liberated myself from the daily extortions
+of the Olivers I should be free to look about for more congenial and
+profitable employment; and then by and by baby and I might live together
+in that sweet cottage in the country (I always pictured it as a kind of
+Sunny Lodge, with roses looking in at the window of "Mary O'Neill's
+little room") which still shone through my dreams.
+
+I spent some sleepless nights in reconciling myself to all this, and
+perhaps wept a little, too, at the thought that after years of
+separation I might be a stranger to my own darling. But at length I put
+my faith in "the call of the blood" to tell her she was mine, and then
+nothing remained except to select the institution to which my only love
+and treasure was to be assigned.
+
+Accident helped me in this as in other things. One day on my westward
+journey a woman who sat beside me in the tram, and was constantly wiping
+her eyes (though I could see a sort of sunshine through her tears),
+could not help telling me, out of the overflowing of her poor heart,
+what had just been happening to her.
+
+She was a widow, and had been leaving her little girl, three years old,
+at an orphanage, and though it had been hard to part with her, and the
+little darling had looked so pitiful when she came away, it would be the
+best for both of them in the long run.
+
+I asked which orphanage it was, and she mentioned the name of it,
+telling me something about the founder--a good doctor who had been a
+father to the fatherless of thousands of poor women like herself.
+
+That brought me to a quick decision, and the very next morning, putting
+on my hat and coat, I set off for the Home, which I knew where to find,
+having walked round it on my way back from the West End and heard the
+merry voices of happy children who were playing behind a high wall.
+
+I hardly know whether to laugh or cry when I think of the mood in which
+I entered the orphanage. In spite of all that life had done to me, I
+really and truly felt as if I were about to confer an immense favour
+upon the doctor by allowing him to take care of my little woman.
+
+Oh, how well I remember that little point of time!
+
+My first disappointment was to learn that the good doctor was dead, and
+when I was shown into the office of his successor (everything bore such
+a businesslike air) I found an elderly man with a long "three-decker"
+neck and a glacial smile, who, pushing his spectacles up on to his
+forehead, said in a freezing voice:
+
+"Well, ma'am, what is _your_ pleasure?"
+
+After a moment of giddiness I began to tell him my story--how I had a
+child and her nurse was not taking proper care of her; how I was in
+uncongenial employment myself, but hoped soon to get better; how I loved
+my little one and expected to be able to provide for her presently; and
+how, therefore, if he would receive her for a while, only a little
+while, on the understanding, the clear and definite understanding, that
+I could take her away as soon as I wished to. . . .
+
+Oh dear! Oh dear:
+
+I do not know what there was in my appearance or speech which betrayed
+me, but I had got no further than this when the old gentleman said
+sharply:
+
+"Can you provide a copy of the register of your child's birth to show
+that it is legitimate?"
+
+What answer I made I cannot recollect, except that I told the truth in a
+voice with a tremor in it, for a memory of the registry office was
+rolling back on me and I could feel my blushes flushing into my face.
+
+The result was instantaneous. The old gentleman touched a bell, drew his
+spectacles down on to his nose, and said in his icy tones:
+
+"Don't take illegitimate children if we can help it."
+
+It was several days before I recovered from the deep humiliation of this
+experience. Then (the exactions of the Olivers quickening my memory and
+at the same time deadening my pride) I remembered something which I had
+heard the old actress say during my time at the boarding-house about a
+hospital in Bloomsbury for unfortunate children--how the good man who
+founded it had been so firm in his determination that no poor mother in
+her sorrow should be put to further shame about her innocent child that
+he had hung out a basket at the gate at night in which she could lay her
+little one, if she liked, and then ring a bell and hide herself away.
+
+It wasn't easy to reconcile oneself to such philanthropy, but after a
+sleepless night, and with rather a sickening pang of mingled hope and
+fear, I set off for this hospital.
+
+It was a fine Sunday morning. The working-men in the East End were
+sitting at their doors smoking their pipes and reading their Sunday
+papers; but when I reached the West all the church bells were ringing,
+and people wearing black clothes and shiny black gloves were walking
+with measured steps through the wide courtyard that led to the chapel.
+
+I will not say that I did not feel some qualms at entering a Protestant
+church, yet as soon as I had taken my seat and looked up at the gallery
+of the organ, where the children sat tier on tier, so quaint and
+sweet--the boys like robins in their bright red waistcoats, and the
+girls like rabbits in their mob-caps with fluted frills--and the service
+began, and the fresh young voices rose in hymns of praise to the good
+Father of us all, I thought Of nothing except the joy of seeing Isabel
+there some day and hearing her singing in the choir.
+
+When the service was over I asked for the secretary and was shown into
+his room.
+
+I dare say he was a good man, but oh! why will so many good people wear
+such wintry weather in their faces that merely to look at them pierces a
+poor woman to the soul?
+
+Apologising for the day, I told my story again (my head a little down),
+saying I understood that it was no barrier to a child in that orphanage
+that she had been born outside the pale of the law.
+
+"On the contrary," said the secretary, "that is precisely the kind of
+child this house is intended for."
+
+But when I went on to say that I assumed they still observed the wish of
+the founder that no questions of any kind should be asked about a
+child's birth or parentage, he said no, they had altered all that. Then
+he proceeded to explain that before a child could be received the mother
+must now go before a committee of gentlemen to satisfy them of her
+previous good character, and that the father of her baby had deserted
+both of them.
+
+More than that, he told me that on being received the child was
+immediately re-registered and given a new name, in order that it might
+be cut off from the sin of its parents and the contamination of their
+shame.
+
+It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which I
+listened to the secretary while he said all this, with the cast-metal
+face of a man who was utterly unconscious of the enormity of the crime
+he was describing.
+
+"Before a committee of gentlemen?" I asked.
+
+"That is so."
+
+"Who are to ask her all those questions?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And then they are to change her baby's name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is she told what the new name is to be?"
+
+"No, but she is given a piece of parchment containing a number which
+corresponds with the name in our books."
+
+I rose to my feet, flushing up to the eyes I think, trembling from head
+to foot I know, and, forgetting who and what I was and why I was
+there--a poor, helpless, penniless being seeking shelter for her
+child--I burst out on the man in all the mad wrath of outraged
+motherhood.
+
+"And you call this a Christian institution!" I said. "You take a poor
+woman in her hour of trouble and torture her with an inquisition into
+the most secret facts of her life, in public, and before a committee of
+men. And then you take her child, and so far as she is concerned you
+bury it, and give her a ticket to its grave. A hospital? This is no
+hospital. It is a cemetery. And yet you dare to write over your gates
+the words of our Lord--our holy and loving and blessed Lord--who said,
+'Suffer little children. . . .'"
+
+But what is the use of repeating what I said then (perhaps unjustly) or
+afterwards in the silence of my own room and the helpless intoxication
+of my rage?
+
+It was soon stamped out of me.
+
+By the end of another week I was driven to such despair by the continued
+extortions of the Olivers that, seeing an advertisement in the
+Underground Railway of a Home for children in the country (asking for
+subscriptions and showing a group of happy little people playing under a
+chestnut-tree in bloom), I decided to make one more effort.
+
+"They can't all be machines," I thought, "with the founders' hearts
+crushed out of them."
+
+The day was Friday, when work was apt to heap up at the Jew's, and Mrs.
+Abramovitch had brought vests enough to my room to cover my bed, but
+nevertheless I put on my hat and coat and set out for the orphanage.
+
+It was fifteen miles on the north side of London, so it cost me
+something to get there. But I was encouraged by the homelike appearance
+of the place when I reached it, and still more by finding that it was
+conducted by women, for at last, I thought, the woman-soul would speak
+to me.
+
+But hardly had I told my story to the matron, repeating my request (very
+timidly this time and with such a humble, humble heart) that I might be
+allowed to recover my child as soon as I found myself able to provide
+for her, than she stopped me and said:
+
+"My dear young person, we could have half the orphan children in London
+on your terms. Before we accept such a child as yours we expect the
+parent to give us a legal undertaking that she relinquishes all rights
+in it until it is sixteen years of age."
+
+"Sixteen? Isn't that rather severe on a mother?" I said.
+
+"Justly severe," said the matron. "Such women should be made to maintain
+their children, and thus realise that the way of transgressors is hard."
+
+How I got back to London, whether by rail or tram or on foot, or what
+happened on the way (except that darkness was settling down on me,
+within and without), I do not know. I only know that very late that
+night, as late as eleven o'clock, I was turning out of Park Lane into
+Piccadilly, where the poor "public women" with their painted faces,
+dangling their little hand-bags from their wrists, were promenading in
+front of the gentlemen's clubs and smiling up at the windows.
+
+These were the scenes which had formerly appalled me; but now I was
+suddenly surprised by a different feeling, and found myself thinking
+that among the women who sinned against their womanhood there might be
+some who sold themselves for bread to keep those they loved and who
+loved them.
+
+This thought was passing through my mind when I heard a hollow ringing
+laugh from a woman who was standing at the foot of a flight of steps
+talking to a group of three gentlemen whose white shirt fronts beneath
+their overcoats showed that they were in evening dress.
+
+Her laughter was not natural. It had no joy in it, yet she laughed and
+laughed, and feeling as if I _knew_ (because life had that day trampled
+on me also), I said to myself:
+
+"That woman's heart is dead."
+
+This caused me to glance at her as I passed, when, catching a side
+glimpse of her face, I was startled by a memory I could not fix.
+
+"Where and when have I seen that woman's face before?" I thought.
+
+It seemed impossible that I could have seen it anywhere. But the woman's
+resemblance to somebody I had known, coupled with her joyless laughter,
+compelled me to stop at the next corner and look back.
+
+By this time the gentlemen, who had been treating her lightly (O God,
+how men treat such women!), had left her and, coming arm-in-arm in my
+direction, with their silk hats tilted a little back, were saying:
+
+"Poor old Aggie! She's off!" "Completely off!" "Is it drink, I wonder?"
+
+And then, seeing me, they said:
+
+"Gad, here's a nice little gal, though!" "No rouge, neither!" "By Jove,
+no! Her face is as white as a waterlily!"
+
+Seeing that they were wheeling round, and fearing they were going to
+speak to me, I moved back and so came face to face with the woman, who
+was standing where they had left her, silent now, and looking after the
+men with fierce eyes under the fair hair that curled over her forehead.
+
+Then in a moment a memory from the far past swept over me, and I cried,
+almost as if the name had been forced out of me:
+
+"Sister Angela!"
+
+The woman started, and it seemed for a moment as if she were going to
+run away. Then she laid hold of me by the arm and, looking searchingly
+into my face, said:
+
+"Who are you? . . . I know. You are Mary O'Neill, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I knew you were. I read about your marriage to that . . . that man. And
+now you are wondering why I am here. Well, come home with me and see."
+
+It was not until afterwards that I knew by what mistake about my
+presence in that place Angela thought she must justify herself in my
+eyes (mine!); but taking me by the hand, just as she used to do when I
+was a child, she led, almost pulled, me down Piccadilly, and my will was
+so broken that I did not attempt to resist her.
+
+We crossed Piccadilly Circus, with its white sheet of electric light,
+and, turning into the darker thoroughfares on the northern side of it,
+walked on until, in a narrow street of the Italian quarter of Soho, we
+stopped at a private door by the side of a cafe that had an Italian name
+on the window.
+
+"This is where we live. Come in," said Angela, and I followed her
+through a long empty lobby and up three flights of bare stairs.
+
+While we ascended, there was the deadened sound, as from the cafe, of
+men singing (in throbbing voices to mandolines and guitars) one of the
+Italian songs which I remembered to have heard from the piazza outside
+the convent on that night when Sister Angela left me in bed while she
+went off to visit the chaplain:
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
+     Onde sorridere volle il creato._"
+
+"The Italian Club," said Angela. "Only one flight more. Come!"
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+At length Angela opened, with a key from her satchel, a door on the top
+landing, and we entered a darkened room which was partly in the roof.
+
+As we stepped in I heard rapid breathing, which told me that we were in
+a sick chamber, and then a man's voice, very husky and weak, saying:
+
+"Is that you, Agnes?"
+
+"It's only me, dear," said Angela..
+
+After a moment she turned up the solitary gas-jet, which had been
+burning low, and I saw the shadowy form of a man lying in a bed that
+stood in a corner. He was wasted with consumption, his long bony hands
+were lying on the counterpane, his dark hair was matted over his
+forehead as from sweat, but I could not mistake the large, lively grey
+eyes that looked out of his long thin face. It was Father Giovanni.
+
+Angela went up to him and kissed him, and I could see that his eyes
+lighted with a smile as he saw her coming into the room.
+
+"There's somebody with you, isn't there?" he said.
+
+"Yes. Who do you think it is?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Don't you remember little Margaret Mary at the Sacred Heart?"
+
+"Is this she?"
+
+"Yes," said Angela, and then in a hoarse, angry voice the man said:
+
+"What has she come here for?"
+
+Angela told him that I had seen her on Piccadilly, and being a great
+lady now, I (Oh heaven!) was one of the people who came out into the
+streets at midnight to rescue lost ones.
+
+"She looked as if she wondered what had brought me down to that life, so
+I've fetched her home to see."
+
+I was shocked at Angela's mistake, but before I could gather strength or
+courage to correct her Giovanni was raising himself in bed and saying,
+with a defiant air, his eyes blazing like watch-fires:
+
+"She does it for me, if you want to know. I've been eleven months
+ill--she does it all for me, I tell you."
+
+And then, in one of those outbursts of animation which come to the
+victims of that fell disease, he gave me a rapid account of what had
+happened to them since they ran away from Rome--how at first he had
+earned their living as a teacher of languages; how it became known that
+he was an unfrocked and excommunicated priest who had broken his vows,
+and then his pupils had left him; how they had struggled on for some
+years longer, though pursued by this character as by a malignant curse;
+and how at length his health had quite broken down, and he would have
+starved but for Agnes (Angela being her nun's name), who had stuck to
+him through everything.
+
+While the sick man said this in his husky voice, Angela was sitting on
+the bed by his side with her arm about his waist, listening to him with
+a sort of pride and looking at me with a kind of triumph.
+
+"I dare say you wonder why I didn't try to get work," she said. "I
+_could_ have got it if I had wanted to. I could have got it at the
+Italian laundry. But what was two shillings a day to a man who was
+ordered new milk and fresh eggs five times every twenty-four hours, not
+to speak of the house rent?"
+
+"She ought to have let me die first," said Giovanni, and then, looking
+at me again with his large, glittering, fierce eyes, he said:
+
+"_You_ think she ought to have let me die, don't you?"
+
+"No, no, no," I said--it was all I _could_ say, for their mistake about
+myself was choking me.
+
+Perhaps my emotion appeased both of them, for after a moment Angela beat
+out Giovanni's pillow and straightened his counterpane, and then told
+him to lie down and be quiet, while she brought a chair for me and took
+off her things in her own bedroom.
+
+But hardly had she gone into an adjoining chamber when the sick man
+raised himself again and, reaching over in my direction, told me in a
+hoarse whisper the story of the first night of her present way of
+life--how the doctor had said he must be removed to the hospital; how
+Agnes would not part with him; how the landlord had threatened to turn
+them out; and how at last, after sitting with her head in her hands the
+whole evening, Aggie had got up and gone out and, coming back at
+midnight, had thrown two sovereigns on the table and said, "There you
+are, Giovanni--that's our rent and your eggs and milk for one week,
+anyway."
+
+By this time Angela had returned to the room (her paint and rouge washed
+off, and her gay clothes replaced by a simple woollen jacket over a
+plain underskirt), and she began to beat up an egg, to boil some milk,
+to pour out a dose of medicine, and to do, with all a good woman's tact,
+a good woman's tenderness, the little services of which an invalid
+stands in need.
+
+Oh heavens, how beautiful it was--fearfully, awfully tragically
+beautiful!
+
+I was deeply moved as I sat in silence watching her; and when at length
+Giovanni, who had been holding her hand in his own long, bony ones and
+sometimes putting it to his lips, dropped off to sleep (tired out,
+perhaps, by talking to me), and she, drawing up to where I sat by the
+end of the bed, resumed her self-defence, saying in a whisper that
+ladies like me could not possibly understand what a woman would do, in
+spite of herself, when the life of one she loved was threatened, I could
+bear her mistake no longer, but told her of my real condition--that I
+was no longer a lady, that I had run away from my husband, that I had a
+child, and was living as a poor seamstress in the East End of London.
+
+Angela listened to my story in astonishment; and when I had come to an
+end she was holding my hand and looking into my eyes with just that look
+which she had when she put me to bed for the first time at school, and,
+making her voice very low, told me to be a good child of the Infant
+Jesus.
+
+"It's nearly one o'clock. You can't go back to the East End to-night,"
+she whispered.
+
+"Oh, I must, I must," I said, getting up and making for the door. But
+before I had reached it my limbs gave way, whether from the strain of
+emotion or physical weakness, and if it had not been for Angela I should
+have dropped to the floor.
+
+After that she would hear of no excuses. I must stay until morning. I
+could sleep in her own bed in the other room, and she could lay a
+mattress for herself on the floor by the side of Giovanni's. There
+would be no great sacrifice in that. It was going to be one of
+Giovanni's bad nights, and she was likely to be up and down all the time
+anyway.
+
+Half an hour later I was in bed in a little room that was separated by a
+thin papered partition from the room of the poor consumptive, and
+Angela, who had brought me a cup of hot milk, was saying in a whisper:
+
+"He's very bad. The doctor says he can't last longer than a week. Sister
+Veronica (you remember her, she's Mildred Bankes that used to be) tried
+to get him into a home for the dying. It was all arranged, too, but at
+the last moment he wouldn't go. He told them that, if they wanted to
+separate him from Agnes, they had better bring his coffin because he
+would be dead before they got him to the door."
+
+When she had gone I lay a long time in the dark, listening to the sounds
+on the other side of the partition.
+
+Giovanni awoke with an alarming fit of coughing, and in the querulous,
+plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids have, he
+grumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a burden he was
+to her, while she, moving about the room in her bare feet, coaxed and
+caressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk or his medicine.
+
+Through all this I would hear at intervals the drumming noises of the
+singing downstairs, which sounded in my ears (as the singers were
+becoming more and more intoxicated) like the swirling and screeching of
+an ironical requiem for the dying man before he was dead:
+
+     "_Oh bella Napoli, Oh suol beato
+     Onde sorridere volle il creato_."
+
+But somewhere in those dead hours in which London sleeps everything
+became still, and my mind, which had been questioning the grim darkness
+on the worst of the world's tragedies (what a woman will do for those
+she loves), fell back on myself and I thought of the Christian
+institutions which had turned me from their doors, and then of this
+"street-walker" who had given up her own bed to me and was now lying in
+the next room on a mattress on the floor.
+
+I could not help it if I felt a startling reverence for Angela, as a
+ministering angel faithful unto death, and I remembered that as I fell
+asleep I was telling myself that we all needed God's mercy, God's
+pardon, and that, God would forgive her because she had loved much.
+
+But sleep was more tolerant still I dreamt that Angela died, and on
+reaching the gates of heaven all the saints of God met her, and after
+they had clothed her in a spotless white robe, one of them--it was the
+blessed Mary Magdalene--took her hand and said:
+
+"Here is another of the holy martyrs."
+
+I awoke from that dream with beads of perspiration on my forehead. But I
+dare not say what confused and terrible thoughts came next, except that
+they were about baby--what I might do myself if driven to the last
+extremity. When I slept and dreamt again, it was I who was dead, and it
+was my darling mother who met me and took me to the feet of the Blessed
+Virgin and said:
+
+"Mother of all Mothers, who knows all that is in a mother's heart, this
+is my little daughter. She did not intend to do wrong. It was all for
+the sake of her child."
+
+When I awoke in the morning, with the darkness shivering off through the
+gloom, this last dream was sitting upon me like a nightmare. It
+terrified me. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice
+and some awful forces were trying to push me over it.
+
+The London sparrows were chirping on the skylight over my head, and I
+could faintly hear the Italian criers in the front street:
+
+"Latte!" "Spazzina!" "Erbaggi freschi!"
+
+In spite of myself (hating myself for it after all the tenderness that
+had been shown me), I could not overcome a feeling of shame at finding
+myself lying where I was, and I got up to run away that I might cleanse
+my soul of the evil thoughts which had come to me while there.
+
+As I dressed I listened for a sound from the adjoining room. All was
+quiet now. The poor restless ones were at last getting a little rest.
+
+A few minutes afterwards I passed on tiptoe through their room without
+looking towards the bed, and reaching the door to the staircase I opened
+it as noiselessly as I could.
+
+Then I closed it softly after me, on so much suffering and so much love.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear, clean,
+frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the worst places,
+seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and drink of the night
+before.
+
+I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I had
+gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I was
+struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of loving
+Martin.
+
+Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous
+landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at the
+bottom of them.
+
+The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in long
+furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in her
+arms, and a nurse.
+
+I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come to
+confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quiet
+and be good and she would not keep her long.
+
+"Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber," said the
+child.
+
+The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud and
+happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church,
+while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and bowed
+deeply.
+
+I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the
+carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the
+baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church.
+
+Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were rising
+from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a few
+communicants were still on their knees, and others with light yet
+echoing footsteps were making for the door.
+
+The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional
+boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest,
+I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers
+(once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession:
+
+"_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may
+bewail my sins and rightly confess them_."
+
+But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the
+daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could
+not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the
+coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses.
+
+She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed
+eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up
+everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury.
+
+God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I
+had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw
+myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition
+and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl.
+
+Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced
+child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I
+had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by
+her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very
+soul.
+
+I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that
+because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of
+my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer.
+
+Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I
+had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception.
+
+All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer,
+which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my
+Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me.
+
+"_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the
+priest, thy Vicar_."
+
+It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had
+intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was
+vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked
+boldly up at the altar.
+
+Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession,
+went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at
+the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it,
+and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a
+cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved
+across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating.
+
+"Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I
+came here to make my confession, but something has come over me since I
+entered this church, and now I cannot."
+
+"What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest.
+
+"I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a
+kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the
+sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God
+does not care_."
+
+The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence
+he said in a quivering voice:
+
+"My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil
+tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at
+this moment."
+
+I shuddered, and the priest added:
+
+"I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love are
+suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Look
+round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Think
+of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death,
+at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lama
+sabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'"
+
+I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands were
+clasped together.
+
+"You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you because
+He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have you
+every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for your
+soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Have
+you lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Then
+take courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for His
+own."
+
+I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, coming
+through the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of the
+supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must have
+been a great as well as a good man.
+
+I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into the
+streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soul
+a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine.
+
+Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter how
+mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all day
+and all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child into
+an orphanage, it was clearly intended that I should keep her with me,
+for my own charge and care and joy.
+
+This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the Jew.
+
+It was Saturday morning, and though the broader thoroughfares of the
+East End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life, the Jew's
+house was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath.
+
+As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was dressing
+for the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: _Lerho daudee likras
+kollo_--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let us
+receive the Sabbath with joy!"
+
+Then came a shock.
+
+When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests
+which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed;
+and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs.
+Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the
+stair, and knew that her husband was coming up to me.
+
+A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed in his
+Sabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of his homely
+calling, the patriarchal appearance which had first struck me was even
+more marked than before. His face was pale, his expression was severe,
+and if his tongue betrayed the broken English of the Polish Jew, I, in
+my confusion and fear, did not notice it then.
+
+My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for neglecting my
+work, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my absence. But at a
+second glance I saw that something had happened, something had become
+known, and that he was there to condemn and denounce me.
+
+"You have been out all night," he said. "Can you tell me where you have
+been?"
+
+I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I had
+slept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my friend
+was, and what, I should be speechless.
+
+The Jew waited for my reply and then said:
+
+"You have given us a name--can you say it is your true and right one?"
+
+Again I made no answer, and after another moment the Jew said:
+
+"Can you deny that you have a child whom you have hidden from our
+knowledge?"
+
+I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak.
+
+"Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your Christian
+marriage?"
+
+I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent; and
+after a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew was
+summing me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he said:
+
+"Then it is true? . . . Very well, you will understand that from this
+day you cease to be in my service."
+
+All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody else had
+come into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to plead for me.
+
+"Father . . ." she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew cried
+passionately:
+
+"Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to speak for
+such a woman."
+
+I heard the girl going slowly down the stairs, and then the Jew,
+stepping up to me and speaking more loudly than before, said:
+
+"Woman, leave my house at once, before you corrupt the conscience of my
+child."
+
+Again I became aware that some one had come into the room. It was Mrs.
+Abramovitch, and she, too, was pleading for me.
+
+"Israel! Calm thyself! Do not give way to injustice and anger. On
+Shobbos morning, too!"
+
+"Hannah," said the Jew, "thou speakest with thy mouth, not thy heart.
+The Christian doth not deny that she hath given thee a false name, and
+is the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she were a Jewish
+woman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and in better days our
+law of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she, because she is a
+Christian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The hand of the Lord would
+go out against me."
+
+"But she is homeless, and she hath been a good servant to thee, Israel.
+Give her time to find another shelter."
+
+There was a moment of silence after that, and then the Jew said:
+
+"Very well! It shall not be said that Israel Abramovitch knows not to
+temper justice with mercy."
+
+And then, my face being still down, I heard him saying over my head:
+
+"You may stay here another week. After that I wash my hands of thee."
+
+With these hard words he turned away, and I heard him going heavily down
+the stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying something in a kind
+voice, which I did not comprehend, and then she followed him.
+
+I do not think I had spoken a word. I continued to stand where the Jew
+had left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking the door of
+his own apartment, and knew that he was going off to his synagogue in
+Brick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back of his head like a
+skull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind him, carrying his
+leather-bound prayer-book.
+
+I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like a dead
+body on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In its place
+there was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life were rolling
+over me.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling!
+
+It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness, in the
+name of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of God, were
+persecuting my poor little woman.
+
+But why speak of myself at all, or interrupt my darling's narrative,
+except to say what was happening in my efforts to reach her?
+
+While we were swinging along in our big liner over the heaving bosom of
+the Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger never left me day
+or night.
+
+That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to haunt my
+sleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora glistening in my
+dear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind her.
+
+The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where I
+expected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port Said to
+the house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at the thought
+of the joy or sorrow ahead of me.
+
+Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was one
+from the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to Marseilles to
+meet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way home with us.
+
+Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of the
+letter I had written for my dear one on the day I left Castle Raa.
+Sixteen months had passed since then, serious things had happened in the
+interval, and I had never thought of that letter before.
+
+It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to her
+husband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my darling
+sending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her during my
+absence.
+
+If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would be that
+my dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits as to
+require help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he must have
+done what I wished, and therefore everything would be well.
+
+There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in all
+this, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was on deck
+searching for my chairman among the people waiting for us on the pier.
+
+I saw him immediately, waving his travelling cap with a flourish of joy,
+and I snatched a little comfort from that.
+
+As soon as the steamer was brought to, he was the first to come aboard,
+and I scanned his face as he hurried up the gangway. It was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," I thought; "a man could not look as happy as that if
+he were bringing me bad news."
+
+A moment afterwards he was shaking my hand, clapping me on the shoulder,
+and saying:
+
+"Splendid! Magnificent! Glorious achievement! Proved your point up to
+the hilt, my boy!"
+
+And when I said something about not having gone all the way he cried:
+
+"Never mind! You'll do it next time," which made some of my shipmates
+who were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye, sir," and then
+one of them (it was good old O'Sullivan) shouted:
+
+"By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's after
+saying that the Commanther was turned back this time by anything less
+than the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you may say there's
+forty-eight of us here to tell him he lies."
+
+"I believe it," said the chairman, and then there were further
+congratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but never a
+word from my dear one.
+
+Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private matter until
+we were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But he had nothing to
+say there, either, except about articles to be written, reports to be
+compiled, and invitations to be accepted.
+
+Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my longing
+to know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not ask from
+fear of a bad answer.
+
+Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a roundabout
+way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been my
+parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebody
+else whom he had seen and spoken to.
+
+"Do you mean Mal . . . I should say Lady . . ."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"By the holy saints, the way I was thinking that when I brought you the
+letter at Port Said, and saw the clouds of heaven still hanging on you."
+
+I found that the good fellow had a similar trouble of his own (not yet
+having heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my plan, which
+was that of cross-questioning the chairman about my dear one, and I
+about his, and then meeting secretly and imparting what we had learned.
+
+Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering fellows
+afraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but it grips me
+by the throat to this day to see myself taking our chairman into a quiet
+corner of the smoke-room and saying:
+
+"Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet. She was
+sick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to go with
+anybody except myself. You haven't heard of her, have you?"
+
+And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with:
+
+"The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a good
+heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of a
+great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl . . . a lady, I mane.
+You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir . . . eh?"
+
+Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at last) I
+asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he
+answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did
+not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that
+she was the last person in the world to use it, being (God bless her!)
+of the mettle that makes a woman want to fight her own battles without
+asking help of any one.
+
+This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no reply
+to my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that she
+was where no word could come from her--she was dead!
+
+Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to
+walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and
+condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and jury.
+
+"She is dead. I have killed her," I thought.
+
+Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I ever saw on
+earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of it
+now but for the glorious confidence it brought me.
+
+It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes
+to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as
+certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar
+(where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was
+splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal.
+
+It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my
+shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan
+with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy
+cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of
+courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark,
+when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me,
+as plainly as words could speak:
+
+"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say
+that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried
+home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the
+end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman is
+alive! She may be in danger, and beset by all the powers of the devil,
+but that's just why you have been brought home to save her, and you
+_will_ save her, as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow morning."
+
+There are thoughts which, like great notes in music, grip you by the
+soul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong to. This
+was one of them.
+
+Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my own man
+once more; and though I continued to walk the deck while our good ship
+sped along in the night, it was only because there was a kind of wild
+harmony between the mighty voice of the rolling billows of the Bay and
+the unheard anthem of boundless hope that was singing in my breast.
+
+I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me. It was
+the same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of that
+perpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under the shelter
+of our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking above us:
+
+     "_Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
+               Lead Thou me on_."
+
+But the light was within me now, and I knew as certainly as that the
+good ship was under my feet that I was being carried home at the call of
+the Spirit to rescue my stricken darling.
+
+God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England! Less than a
+week and I should be there!
+
+That was early hours on Saturday morning--the very Saturday when my poor
+little woman, after she had been turned away by those prating
+philanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute.
+
+Let him explain it who can. I cannot.
+
+M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of my
+bed--stunned, stupefied, unable to think--when Miriam, back from the
+synagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a messenger had come for
+me about six o'clock the night before.
+
+"He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how he came
+to know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to come
+immediately,' he said."
+
+I was hardly conscious of what happened next--hardly aware of passing
+through the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses flying by as they
+seem to do from an express train; of my knees trembling; of my throat
+tightening; and of my whole soul crying out to God to save the life of
+my child until I could get to her.
+
+When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears were
+relieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on her lap.
+
+At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay,
+and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; but
+caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby from her
+without more words.
+
+My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to rouse
+her I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had lasted
+twenty-four hours, during which she had taken no nourishment, with the
+result that she was now very thin.
+
+I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct must have
+come to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby, and she awoke,
+and then took a little food.
+
+But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs. Oliver,
+who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look at her.
+
+Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs. Oliver, not
+me, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody," and I found a
+certain consolation in that.
+
+Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened beyond the
+narrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard the squirling of
+a brass band that was going up the street, with the shuffling of an
+irregular procession.
+
+"It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There's
+Ted, carrying a banner."
+
+A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, which
+was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond,
+with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckle
+your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys." Still later I
+heard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that was
+like driving wind and pelting rain:
+
+     "_The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land,
+     Gawd gave the land to the people_."
+
+But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon (the idea
+that she was really ill having taken complete possession of me) I asked
+where I could find the nearest doctor, and being told, I went off in
+search of him.
+
+The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicating
+baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately.
+
+On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals--easily
+recognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers"
+worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled
+with cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. These
+sights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby
+down the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses.
+
+I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands and
+dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in his
+gig, pulled up at the door.
+
+He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment.
+I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes.
+
+Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I went
+through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we are
+waiting for the doctor's first word.
+
+"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and then
+something about finding out the cause of it.
+
+But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap than
+there came a faintly discoloured vomit.
+
+"What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs. Oliver.
+
+Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her milk,
+but the doctor said sharply:
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her."
+
+Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought down a
+bottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I had myself
+bought for baby's cough.
+
+"As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and opening it,
+he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite, saying as he did
+so:
+
+"If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing syrup
+I'll see what the Inspector has to say."
+
+After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and intimate
+questions--if I had had a great grief or shock or worry while baby was
+coming, and whether and how long I had nursed her.
+
+I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of his
+inquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me next.
+
+He said nothing then, however, except to make his recommendations. And
+remembering my loss of work, my heart sank as he enumerated baby's
+needs--fresh cow's milk diluted with lime water, small quantities of
+meat juice, and twenty to thirty drops of the best brandy three or four
+times a day.
+
+When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but he
+cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the
+kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a
+change in the symptoms.
+
+Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling
+in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor
+to the door.
+
+"Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?"
+
+He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes."
+
+"Dangerously ill?"
+
+Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip
+trembling) he said:
+
+"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses
+of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous
+people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comes
+of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and
+above all fresh air and sunshine."
+
+"Will she get better?"
+
+"If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly."
+
+"And if . . . if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips,
+"will she . . . _die_?"
+
+The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keep
+it firm), and said:
+
+"She _may_."
+
+When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face with
+another of the great mysteries of a woman's life--Death--the death of my
+child, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to.
+
+Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, was
+excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave.
+She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if it
+hadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep after
+walking in percession. . . .
+
+Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last of
+my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor. While she was
+away, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap,
+praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's sea-blue eyes, the
+bricklayer came lunging into the house.
+
+"Where's Lizer?" he said.
+
+I told him and he cried:
+
+"The baiby again! Allus the baiby!"
+
+With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut and
+rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and lit
+it--filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark and
+cough without rousing her.
+
+I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke.
+
+"Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called and
+what he had said about fresh air.
+
+"So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of something I
+want to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o' speaking.
+Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on a
+sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baiby
+they ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacred
+dooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'."
+
+Choking with anger, I said:
+
+"Put out your pipe, please."
+
+"Ma'am to _you_!"
+
+"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody to
+make you."
+
+The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to the
+two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:
+
+"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as is
+interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I've
+forgot 'ow to use 'em."
+
+I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into the
+cot I turned on the man and cried:
+
+"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of my
+baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of a
+drug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'll
+go straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning my
+child."
+
+The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment.
+
+"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the East
+End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped out
+in the 'eat of the moment--see?"
+
+"Out you go! Go! Go!" I cried, and, incredible as it may seem, the man
+went flying before my face as if I had been a fury.
+
+It would be a long tale to tell of what happened the day following, the
+next and the next and the next--how baby became less drowsy, but more
+restless; how being unable to retain her food she grew thinner and
+thinner; how I wished to send for the doctor, but dared not do so from
+fear of his fee; how the little money I had left was barely sufficient
+to buy the food and stimulants which were necessary to baby's cure: how
+I sat for long hours with my little lamb on my lap straining my dry eyes
+into her face; and how I cried to God for the life of my child, which
+was everything I had or wanted.
+
+All this time I was still lodging at the Jew's, returning to it late
+every night, and leaving it early in the morning, but nothing happened
+there that seemed to me of the smallest consequence. One day Miriam,
+looking at me with her big black eyes, said:
+
+"You must take more rest, dear, or you will make yourself ill."
+
+"No, no, I am not ill," I answered, and then remembering how necessary
+my life was to the life of my child, I said, "I must not be ill."
+
+At last on the Saturday morning--I know now it must have been Saturday,
+but time did not count with me then--I overheard Mrs. Abramovitch
+pleading for me with her husband, saying they knew I was in trouble and
+therefore I ought to have more time to find lodging, another week--three
+days at all events. But the stern-natured man with his rigid religion
+was inexorable. It was God's will that I should be punished, and who was
+he to step in between the All-high and his just retribution?
+
+"The woman is displeasing to God," he said, and then he declared that,
+the day being Sabbath (the two tall candlesticks and the Sabbath loaves
+must have been under his eyes at the moment), he would give me until
+nine o'clock that night, and if I had not moved out by that time he
+would put my belongings into the street.
+
+I remember that the Jew's threat made no impression upon my mind. It
+mattered very little to me where I was to lodge next week or what roof
+was to cover me.
+
+When I reached the Olivers' that morning I found baby distinctly worse.
+Even the brandy would not stay on her stomach and hence her strength was
+plainly diminishing. I sat for some time looking steadfastly into my
+child's face, and then I asked myself, as millions of mothers must have
+done before me, why my baby should suffer so. Why? Why? Why?
+
+There seemed to be no answer to that question except one. Baby was
+suffering because I was poor. If I had not been poor I could have taken
+her into the country for fresh air and sunshine, where she would have
+recovered as the doctor had so confidently assured me.
+
+And why was I poor? I was poor because I had refused to be enslaved by
+my father's authority when it was vain and wrong, or my husband's when
+it, was gross and cruel, and because I had obeyed the highest that was
+in me--the call of love.
+
+And now God looked down on the sufferings of my baby, who was being
+killed for my conduct--killed by my poverty!
+
+I tremble to say what wild impulses came at that thought. I felt that if
+my baby died and I ever stood before God to be judged I should judge Him
+in return. I should ask Him why, if He were Almighty, He permitted the
+evil in the world to triumph over the good, and if He were our heavenly
+Father why He allowed innocent children to suffer? Was there any _human_
+father who could be so callous, so neglectful, so cruel, as that?
+
+I dare say it was a terrible thing to bring God to the bar of judgment,
+to be judged by His poor weak ignorant creature; but it was also
+terrible to sit with a dying baby on my lap (I thought mine was dying),
+and to feel that there was nothing--not one thing--I could do to relieve
+its sufferings.
+
+My faith went down like a flood during the heavy hours of that day--all
+that I had been taught to believe about God's goodness and the
+marvellous efficacy of the Sacraments of His Church.
+
+I thought of the Sacrament of my marriage, which the Pope told me had
+been sanctioned by my Redeemer under a natural law that those who
+entered into it might live together in peace and love--and then of my
+husband and his brutal infidelities.
+
+I thought of the Sacrament of my baby's baptism, which was to exorcise
+all the devils out of my child--and then of the worst devil in the
+world, poverty, which was taking her very life.
+
+After that a dark shadow crossed my soul, and I told myself that since
+God was doing nothing, since He was allowing my only treasure to be torn
+away from me, I would fight for my child's life as any animal fights for
+her young.
+
+By this time a new kind of despair had taken hold of me. It was no
+longer the paralysing despair but the despair that has a driving force
+in it.
+
+"My child shall not die," I thought. "At least poverty shall not kill
+her!"
+
+Many times during the day I had heard Mrs. Oliver trying to comfort me
+with various forms of sloppy sentiment. Children were a great trial,
+they were allus makin' and keepin' people pore, and it was sometimes
+better for the dears themselves to be in their 'eavenly Father's boosim.
+
+I hardly listened. It was the same as if somebody were talking to me in
+my sleep. But towards nightfall my deaf ear caught something about
+myself--that "it" (I knew what that meant) might be better for me, also,
+for then I should be free of encumbrances and could marry again.
+
+"Of course you could--you so young and good-lookin'. Only the other day
+the person at number five could tell me as you were the prettiest woman
+as comes up the Row, and the Vicar's wife couldn't hold a candle to you.
+'Fine feathers makes fine birds,' says she: 'Give your young lady a nice
+frock and a bit o' colour in her checks, and there ain't many as could
+best her in the West End neither.'"
+
+As the woman talked dark thoughts took possession of me. I began to
+think of Angela. I tried not to, but I could not help it.
+
+And then came the moment of _my_ fiercest trial. With a sense of Death
+hanging over my child I told myself that the only way to drive it off
+was to make _some great sacrifice_.
+
+Hitherto I had thought of everything I possessed as belonging to baby,
+but now I felt that _I myself_ belonged to her. I had brought her into
+the world, and it was my duty to see that she did not suffer.
+
+All this time the inherited instinct of my religion was fighting hard
+with me, and I was saying many Hail Marys to prevent myself from doing
+what I meant to do.
+
+"_Hail, Mary, full of grace: the Lord is with thee_ . . ."
+
+I felt as if I were losing my reason. But it was of no use struggling
+against the awful impulse of self-sacrifice (for such I thought it)
+which had taken hold of my mind, and at last it conquered me.
+
+"I must get money," I thought. "Unless I get money my child will die.
+I--must--get--money."
+
+Towards seven o'clock I got up, gave baby to Mrs. Oliver, put on my coat
+and fixed with nervous fingers my hat and hatpins.
+
+"Where are you going to, pore thing?" asked Mrs. Oliver.
+
+"I am going out. I'll be back in the morning," I answered.
+
+And then, after kneeling and kissing my baby again--my sweet child, my
+Isabel--I tore the street door open, and pulled it noisily behind me.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+On reaching the front street, I may have taken the penny tram, for
+though I had a sense of growing blind and deaf I have vague memories of
+lights flashing past me and of the clanging of electric cars.
+
+At Bow Church I must have got out (probably to save a further fare)
+because I recollect walking along the Bow Road between the lights in the
+shops and the coarse flares from the stalls on the edge of the pavement,
+where women with baskets on their arms were doing their Saturday night's
+shopping.
+
+My heart was still strong (sharpened indeed into, poignancy) and I know
+I was not crying, for at one moment as I passed the mirror in a
+chemist's window I caught sight of my face and it was fierce as flame.
+
+At another moment, while I was hurrying along, I collided with a drunken
+woman who was coming out of a public-house with her arm about the neck
+of a drunken sailor.
+
+"Gawd! Here's the Verging Mary agine!" she cried.
+
+It was the woman who had carried baby, and when I tried to hurry past
+her she said:
+
+"You think I'm drunk, don't you, dear? So'am. Don't you never get drunk?
+No? What a bleedin' fool you are! Want to get out o' this 'ere 'ole?
+Tike my tip then--gettin' drunk's on'y way out of it."
+
+Farther on I had to steer my way through jostling companies of young
+people of both sexes who were going (I thought) the same way as the
+woman--girls out of the factories with their free walk, and their
+boisterous "fellers" from the breweries.
+
+It was a cold and savage night. As I approached the side street in which
+I lived I saw by the light of the arc lamps a small group of people, a
+shivering straggle of audience, with the hunched-up shoulders of beings
+thinly clad and badly fed, standing in stupid silence at the corner
+while two persons wearing blue uniforms (a man in a peaked cap and a
+young woman in a poke bonnet) sang a Salvation hymn of which the refrain
+was "It is well, it is well with my soul."
+
+The door of the Jew's house was shut (for the first time in my
+experience), so I had to knock and wait, and while I waited I could not
+help but hear the young woman in the poke bonnet pray.
+
+Her prayer was about "raising the standard of Calvary," and making the
+drunkards and harlots of the East End into "seekers" and "soul yielders"
+and "prisoners of the King of Kings."
+
+Before the last words of the prayer were finished the man in the peaked
+cap tossed up his voice in another hymn, and the young woman joined him
+with an accordion:
+
+     "_Shall we gather at the river,
+     Where bright angel feet have trod_. . . ."
+
+The door was opened by the Jew himself, who, assuming a severe manner,
+said something to me in his guttural voice which I did not hear or heed,
+for I pushed past him and walked firmly upstairs.
+
+When I had reached my room and lit the gas, I closed and locked the
+door, as if I were preparing to commit a crime--and perhaps I was.
+
+I did not allow myself to think of what I intended to do that night, but
+I knew quite well, and when at one moment my conscience pressed me hard
+something cried out in my heart:
+
+"Who can blame me since my child's life is in danger?"
+
+I opened my trunk and took out my clothes--all that remained of the
+dresses I had brought from Ellan. They were few, and more than a little
+out of fashion, but one of them, though far from gay, was bright and
+stylish--a light blue frock with a high collar and some white lace over
+the bosom.
+
+I remember wondering why I had not thought of pawning it during the
+week, when I had had so much need of money, and then being glad that I
+had not done so.
+
+It was thin and light, being the dress I had worn on the day I first
+came to the East End, carrying my baby to Ilford, when the weather was
+warm which now was cold; but I paid no heed to that, thinking only that
+it was my best and most attractive.
+
+After I had put it on and glanced at myself in my little swinging
+looking-glass I was pleased, but I saw at the same time that my face was
+deadly pale, and that made me think of some bottles and cardboard boxes
+which lay in the pockets of my trunk.
+
+I knew what they contained--the remains of the cosmetics which I had
+bought in Cairo in the foolish days when I was trying to make my husband
+love me. Never since then had I looked at them, but now I took them out
+(with a hare's foot and some pads and brushes) and began to paint my
+pale face--reddening my cracked and colourless lips and powdering out
+the dark rings under my eyes.
+
+While I was doing this I heard (though I was trying not to) the deadened
+sound of the singing in the front street, with the young woman's treble
+voice above the man's bass and the wheezing of the accordion:
+
+     "_Yes, we'll gather, at the river,
+       Where bright angel feet have trod,
+     With its, crystal tide for ever
+       Flowing by the throne of God_."
+
+The Dark Spirit must have taken possession of me by this time, poor
+vessel of conflicting passions as I was, for I remember that while I
+listened I laughed--thinking what mockery was to sing of "angel feet"
+and "crystal tides" to those shivering wretches at the corner of the
+London street in the smoky night air.
+
+"What a farce!" I thought. "What a heartless farce!"
+
+Then I put on my hat, which was also not very gay, and taking out of my
+trunk a pair of long light gloves which I had never worn since I left
+Ellan, I began to pull them on.
+
+I was standing before the looking-glass in the act of doing this, and
+trying (God pity me!) to smile at myself, when I was suddenly smitten by
+a new thought.
+
+I was about to commit suicide--the worst kind of suicide, not the
+suicide which is followed by oblivion, but by a life on earth after
+death!
+
+After that night Mary O'Neill would no longer exist! I should never he
+able to think of her again! I should have killed her and buried her and
+stamped the earth down on her and she would be gone from me for ever!
+
+That made a grip at my heart--awakening memories of happy days in my
+childhood, bringing back the wild bliss of the short period of my great
+love, and even making me think of my life in Rome, with its confessions,
+its masses, and the sweetness of its church bells.
+
+I was saying farewell to Mary O'Neill! And parting with oneself seemed
+so terrible that when I thought of it my heart seemed ready to burst.
+
+"But who can blame me when my child's life is in danger?" I asked myself
+again, still tugging at my long gloves.
+
+By the time I had finished dressing the Salvationists were going off to
+their barracks with their followers behind them. Under the singing I
+could faintly hear the shuffling of bad shoes, which made a sound like
+the wash of an ebbing tide over the teeth of a rocky beach--up our side
+street, past the Women's Night Shelter (where the beds never had time to
+become cool), and beyond the public-house with the placard in the window
+saying the ale sold there could be guaranteed to make anybody drunk for
+fourpence.
+
+     "_We'll stand the storm, it won't be long,
+       And we'll anchor in the sweet by-and-by_."
+
+I listened and tried to laugh again, but I could not do so now. There
+was one last spasm of my cruelly palpitating heart, in which I covered
+my face with both hands, and cried:
+
+"For baby's sake! For my baby's sake!"
+
+And then I opened my bedroom door, walked boldly downstairs and went out
+into the streets.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I don't call it Chance that this was the very day of my return to
+England.
+
+If I had to believe that, I should have to disbelieve half of what is
+best in the human story, and the whole of what we are taught about a
+guiding Providence and the spiritual influences which we cannot reason
+about and prove.
+
+We were two days late arriving, having made dirty weather of it in the
+Bay of Biscay, which injured our propeller and compelled us to lie to,
+so I will not say that the sense of certainty which came to me off
+Finisterre did not suffer a certain shock.
+
+In fact the pangs of uncertainty grew so strongly upon me as we neared
+home that in the middle of the last night of our voyage I went to
+O'Sullivan's cabin, and sat on the side of his bunk for hours, talking
+of the chances of my darling being lost and of the possibility of
+finding her.
+
+O'Sullivan, God bless him, was "certain sure" that everything would be
+right, and he tried to take things gaily.
+
+"The way I'm knowing she'll be at Southampton in a new hat and feather!
+So mind yer oi, Commanther."
+
+We passed the Channel Islands in the spring of morning, and at
+breakfast-time we picked up the pilot, who had brought out a group of
+reporters. I did my best for the good chaps (though it is mighty hard to
+talk about exploring when you are thinking of another subject), and then
+handed them over to my shipmates.
+
+Towards seven o'clock at night we heaved up to the grey stone pier at
+the head of Southampton Water. It was then dark, so being unable to see
+more than the black forms and waving hands of the crowd waiting for us
+with the lights behind them, I arranged with O'Sullivan that he should
+slip ashore as soon as we got alongside, and see if he could find my
+dear one.
+
+"Will you remember her face?" I asked.
+
+"And why wouldn't I? By the stars of God, there's only one of it in the
+world," he answered.
+
+The welcome we got when we were brought to was enough to make a vain man
+proud, and a modest one ashamed, and perhaps I should have had a little
+of both feelings if the right woman had been there to share them.
+
+My state-room was on the promenade deck, and I stood at the door of it
+as long as I dared, raising my cap at the call of my name, but feeling
+as if I were the loneliest man in the world, God help me!
+
+O'Sullivan had not returned when Treacle came to say that everything was
+ready, and it was time to go ashore.
+
+I will not say that I was not happy to be home; I will not pretend that
+the warm-hearted welcome did not touch me; but God knows there was a
+moment when, for want of a face I did not see, I could have turned about
+and gone back to the South Pole there and then, without an instant's
+hesitation.
+
+When I got ashore I had as much as I could do to stand four-square to
+the storm of hand-shaking that fell on me. And perhaps if I had been in
+better trim I should have found lots of fun in the boyish delight of my
+shipmates in being back, with old Treacle shaking hands with everybody
+from the Mayor of the town to the messenger-boys (crying "What cheer,
+matey?"), while the scientific staff were bringing up their wives to be
+introduced to me, just as the lower-form fellows used to do with their
+big sisters at school.
+
+At last O'Sullivan came back with a long face to say he could see
+nothing of my dear one, and then I braced myself and said:
+
+"Never mind! She'll be waiting for us in London perhaps."
+
+It took a shocking time to pass through the Customs, but we got off at
+last in a special train commissioned by our chairman--half of our
+company with their wives and a good many reporters having crammed
+themselves into the big saloon carriage reserved for me.
+
+At the last moment somebody threw a sheaf of evening papers through my
+window, and as soon as we were well away I took up one of them and tried
+to read it, but column after column fell blank on my eyes, for my mind
+was full of other matters.
+
+The talk in the carriage, too, did not interest me in the least. It was
+about the big, hustling, resonant world, general elections, the fall of
+ministries, Acts of Parliament, and the Lord knows what--things that had
+looked important when we were in the dumb solitude of Winter Quarters,
+but seemed to be of no account now when I was hungering for something
+else.
+
+At last I got a quiet pressman in a corner and questioned him about
+Ellan.
+
+"That's my native island, you know--anything going on there?"
+
+The reporter said yes, there was some commotion about the failure of
+banks, with the whole island under a cloud, and its biggest financial
+man gone smash.
+
+"Is his name O'Neill?" I asked.
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Anything else happened there while I've been away?"
+
+"No . . . yes . . . well, now that I think of it, there was a big scare
+a year or so ago about a young peeress who disappeared mysteriously."
+
+"Was . . . was it Lady Raa?"
+
+"Yes," said the reporter, and then (controlling myself as well as I
+could) I listened to a rapid version of what had become known about my
+dear one down to the moment when she "vanished as utterly as if she had
+been dropped into the middle of the Irish Sea."
+
+It is of no use saying what I felt after that, except that flying in an
+express train to London, I was as impatient of space and time as if I
+had been in a ship down south stuck fast in the rigid besetment of the
+ice.
+
+I could not talk, and I dared not think, so I shouted for a sing-song,
+and my shipmates (who had been a little low at seeing me so silent)
+jumped at the proposal like schoolboys let loose from school.
+
+Of course O'Sullivan gave us "The Minsthrel Boy"; and Treacle sang "Yew
+are the enny"; and then I, yes I (Oh, God!), sang "Sally's the gel," and
+every man of my company joined in the ridiculous chorus.
+
+Towards ten o'clock we changed lines on the loop at Waterloo and ran
+into Charing Cross, where we found another and still bigger crowd of
+hearty people behind a barrier, with a group of my committee, my fellow
+explorers, and geographers in general, waiting on the platform.
+
+I could not help it if I made a poor return to their warm-hearted
+congratulations, for my eyes were once more searching for a face I
+could not see, so that I was glad and relieved when I heard the
+superintendent say that the motor-car that was to take me to the hotel
+was ready and waiting.
+
+But just then O'Sullivan came up and whispered that a priest and a nun
+were asking to speak to me, and he believed they had news of Mary.
+
+The priest proved to be dear old Father Dan, and the nun to be Sister
+Veronica, whom my dear one calls Mildred. At the first sight of their
+sad-joyful faces something gripped me by the throat, for I knew what
+they had come to say before they said it--that my darling was lost, and
+Father Dan (after some priestly qualms) had concluded that I was the
+first man who ought to be told of it.
+
+Although this was exactly what I had expected, it fell on me like a
+thunderbolt, and in spite of the warmth of my welcome home, I believe in
+my soul I was the most downhearted man alive.
+
+Nevertheless I bundled Father Dan and the Sister and O'Sullivan into the
+automobile, and jumping in after them, told the chauffeur to drive like
+the deuce to the hotel.
+
+He could not do that, though, for the crowd in the station-yard
+surrounded the car and shouted for a speech. I gave them one, saying
+heaven knows what, except that their welcome made me ashamed of not
+having got down to the Pole, but please God I should get there next time
+or leave my bones on the way.
+
+We got to the hotel at last (the same that my poor stricken darling had
+stayed at after her honeymoon), and as soon as we reached my room I
+locked the door and said:
+
+"Now out with it. And please tell me everything."
+
+Father Dan was the first to speak, but his pulpit style was too slow for
+me in my present stress of thoughts and feelings. He had hardly got
+further than his difference with his Bishop, and the oath he had sworn
+by him who died for us to come to London and never go back until he had
+found my darling, when I shook his old hand and looked towards the
+Sister.
+
+She was quicker by a good deal, and in a few minutes I knew something of
+my dear one's story--how she had fled from home on my account, and for
+my sake had become poor; how she had lodged for a while in Bloomsbury;
+how hard she had been hit by the report of the loss of my ship; and how
+(Oh my poor, suffering, heroic, little woman!) she had disappeared on
+the approach of another event of still more serious consequence.
+
+It was no time for modesty, not from me at all events, so while the
+Father's head was down, I asked plainly if there was a child, and was
+told there was, and the fear of having it taken from her (I could
+understand that) was perhaps the reason my poor darling had hidden
+herself away.
+
+"And now, when, where, and by whom was she seen last?" I asked.
+
+"Last week, and again to-day, to-night, here in the West End--by a
+fallen woman," answered the Sister.
+
+"And what conclusion do you draw from that?"
+
+The Sister hesitated for a moment and then said:
+
+"That her child is dead; that she does not know you are alive; and that
+she is throwing herself away, thinking there is nothing left to live
+for."
+
+"What?" I cried. "You believe that? Because she left that brute of a
+husband . . . and because she came to me . . . you believe that she
+could. . . . Never! Not Mary O'Neill! She would beg her bread, or die in
+the streets first."
+
+I dare say my thickening voice was betraying me; but when I looked at
+Mildred and saw the tears rolling down her cheeks and heard her excuses
+(it was "what hundreds of poor women were driven to every day"), I was
+ashamed and said so, and she put her kind hand in my hand in token of
+her forgiveness.
+
+"But what's to be done now?" she asked.
+
+O'Sullivan was for sending for the police, but I would not hear of that.
+I was beginning to feel as I used to do when I lost a comrade in a
+blizzard down south, and (without a fact or a clue to guide me) sent a
+score of men in a broad circle from the camp (like spokes in a wheel) to
+find him or follow back on their tracks.
+
+There were only four of us, but I mapped out our courses, where we were
+to go, when we were to return, and what we were to do if any of us found
+my lost one--take her to Sister's flat, which she gave the address of.
+
+It was half-past eleven when we started on our search, and I dare say
+our good old Father Dan, after his fruitless journeys, thought it a
+hopeless quest. But I had found myself at last. My spirits which had
+been down to zero had gone up with a bound. I had no ghost of an idea
+that I had been called home from the 88th latitude for nothing. And I
+had no fear that I had come too late.
+
+Call it frenzy if you like--I don't much mind what people call it. But I
+was as sure as I have ever been of anything in this life, or ever expect
+to be, that the sufferings of my poor martyred darling were at an end,
+and that within an hour I should be holding her in my arms.
+
+     M.C.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+There must be a physical power in fierce emotion to deprive us of the
+use of our senses of hearing and even of sight, for my memory of what
+happened after I left the Jew's has blank places in it.
+
+Trying to recall the incidents of that night is like travelling on a
+moorland road under a flying moon, with sometimes the whitest light in
+which everything is clearly seen, and then the blackest darkness.
+
+I remember taking the electric car going west, and seeing the
+Whitechapel Road shooting by me, with its surging crowds of pedestrians,
+its public-houses, its Cinema shows, and its Jewish theatres.
+
+I remember getting down at Aldgate Pump, and walking through that dead
+belt of the City, which, lying between east and west, is alive like a
+beehive by day and silent and deserted by night.
+
+I remember seeing an old man, with a face like a rat's, picking up
+cigar-ends from the gutters before the dark Banks, and then a flock of
+sheep bleating before a barking dog as they were driven through the
+echoing streets from the river-side towards the slaughter-houses near
+Smithfield Market.
+
+I remember that when I came to St. Paul's the precincts of the cathedral
+were very quiet and the big clock was striking nine. But on Ludgate Hill
+the traffic was thick, and when I reached Fleet Street crowds of people
+were standing in front of the newspaper offices, reading large placards
+in written characters which were pasted on the windows.
+
+I remember that I did not look at these placards, thinking their news
+was nothing to me, who had not seen a newspaper for months and for whom
+the world was now eclipsed, but that as I stepped round one of the
+crowds, which extended to the middle of the street, somebody said:
+
+"He has landed at Southampton, it seems."
+
+I remember that when I reached Charing Cross I found myself on the
+fringe of another and much larger crowd, and that the people, who seemed
+to be waiting for somebody and were chatting with a noise like the
+crackling of thorns under a pot, were saying:
+
+"His train is fifty minutes late, so we've half an hour to wait yet."
+
+Then I remember that walking at random round St Martin's Church into
+Leicester Square I came upon three "public women" who were swinging
+along with a high step and laughing loudly, and that one of them was
+Angela, and that she stopped on seeing me and cried:
+
+"Hello! Here I am again, you see! _Giovanni's dead, and I don't care a
+damn!_"
+
+I remember that she said something else--it was about Sister Mildred,
+but my mind did not take it in--and at the next moment she left me, and
+I heard her laughter once more as she swept round the corner.
+
+I hardly know what happened next, for here comes one of the blank places
+in my memory, with nothing to light it except vague thoughts of Martin
+(and that soulless night in Bloomsbury when the newspapers announced
+that he was lost), until, wandering aimlessly through streets and
+streets of people--such multitudes of people, no end of people--I found
+myself back at Charing Cross.
+
+The waiting crowd was now larger and more excited than before, and the
+traffic at both sides of the station was stopped.
+
+"He's coming! He's coming! Here he is!" the people cried, and then there
+were deafening shouts and cheers.
+
+I recall the sight of a line of policemen pushing people back (I was
+myself pushed back); I recall the sight of a big motor-car containing
+three men and a woman, ploughing its way through; I recall the sight of
+one of the men raising his cap; of the crowd rushing to shake hands with
+him; then of the car swinging away, and of the people running after it
+with a noise like that of the racing of a noisy river.
+
+It is the literal truth that never once did I ask myself what this
+tumult was about, and that for some time after it was over--a full hour
+at least--I had a sense of walking in my sleep, as if my body were
+passing through the streets of the West End of London while my soul was
+somewhere else altogether.
+
+Thus at one moment, as I was going by the National Gallery and thought I
+caught the sound of Martin's name, I felt as if I were back in Glen Raa,
+and it was I myself who had been calling it.
+
+At another moment, when I was standing at the edge of the pavement in
+Piccadilly Circus, which was ablaze with electric light and thronged
+with people (for the theatres and music-halls were emptying, men in
+uniform were running about with whistles, policemen were directing the
+traffic, and streams of carriages were flowing by), I felt as if I were
+back in my native island, where I was alone on the dark shore while the
+sea was smiting me.
+
+Again, after a brusque voice had said, "Move on, please," I followed the
+current of pedestrians down Piccadilly--it must have been
+Piccadilly--and saw lines of "public women," chiefly French and Belgian,
+sauntering along, and heard men throwing light words to them as they
+went by, I was thinking of the bleating sheep and the barking dog.
+
+And again, when I was passing a men's club and the place where I had met
+Angela, my dazed mind was harking back to Ilford (with a frightened
+sense of the length of time since I had been there--"Good heavens, it
+must be five hours at least!"), and wondering if Mrs. Oliver was giving
+baby her drops of brandy and her spoonfuls of diluted milk.
+
+But somewhere about midnight my soul seemed to take full possession of
+my body, and I saw things clearly and sharply as I turned out of Oxford
+Street into Regent Street.
+
+The traffic was then rapidly dying down, the streets were darker, the
+cafes were closing, men and women were coming Pout of supper rooms,
+smoking cigarettes, getting into taxis and driving away; and another
+London day was passing into another night.
+
+People spoke to me. I made no answer. At one moment an elderly woman
+said something to which I replied, "No, no," and hurried on. At another
+moment, a foreign-looking man addressed me, and I pushed past without
+replying. Then a string of noisy young fellows, stretching across the
+broad pavement arm-in-arm, encircled me and cried:
+
+"Here we are, my dear. Let's have a kissing-bee."
+
+But with angry words and gestures I compelled them to let me go,
+whereupon one of the foreign women who were sauntering by said
+derisively:
+
+"What does she think she's out for, I wonder?"
+
+At length I found myself standing under a kind of loggia at the corner
+of Piccadilly Circus, which was now half-dark, the theatres and
+music-halls being closed, and only one group of arc lamps burning on an
+island about a statue.
+
+There were few people now where there had been so dense a crowd awhile
+ago; policemen were tramping leisurely along; horse-cabs were going at
+walking pace, and taxis were moving slowly; but a few gentlemen (walking
+home from their clubs apparently) were passing at intervals, often
+looking at me, and sometimes speaking as they went by.
+
+Then plainly and pitilessly the taunt of the foreign woman came back to
+me--what was I there for?
+
+I knew quite well, and yet I saw that not only was I not doing what I
+came out to do, but every time an opportunity had offered I had resisted
+it. It was just as if an inherited instinct of repulsion had restrained
+me, or some strong unseen arm had always snatched me away.
+
+This led me--was it some angel leading me?--to think again of Martin and
+to remember our beautiful and sacred parting at Castle Raa.
+
+"Whatever happens to either of us, we belong to each other for ever," he
+had said, and I had answered, "For ever and ever."
+
+It was a fearful shock to think of this now. I saw that if I did what I
+had come out to do, not only would Mary O'Neill be dead to me after
+to-night, but Martin Conrad would be dead also.
+
+When I thought of that I realised that, although I had accepted, without
+question, the newspaper reports of Martin's death, he had never hitherto
+been dead to me at all. He had lived with me every moment of my life
+since, supporting me, sustaining me and inspiring me, so that nothing I
+had ever done--not one single thing--would have been different if I had
+believed him to be alive and been sure that he was coming back.
+
+But now I was about to kill Martin Conrad as well as Mary O'Neill, by
+breaking the pledge (sacred as any sacrament) which they had made for
+life and for eternity.
+
+Could I do that? In this hideous way too? Never! Never! Never! I should
+die in the streets first.
+
+I remember that I was making a movement to go back to Ilford (God knows
+how), when, on the top of all my brave thinking, came the pitiful
+thought of my child. My poor helpless little baby, who had made no
+promise and was party to no pledge. She needed nourishment and fresh air
+and sunshine, and if she could not get them--if I went back to her
+penniless--she would die!
+
+My sweet darling! My Isabel, my only treasure! Martin's child and mine!
+
+That put a quick end to all my qualms. Again I bit my lip until it bled,
+and told myself that I should speak to the Very next man who came along.
+
+"Yes, the very next man who comes along," I thought.
+
+I was standing at that moment in the shadow of one of the pilasters of
+the loggia, almost leaning against it, and in the silence of the street
+I heard distinctly the sharp firm step of somebody coming my way.
+
+It was a man. As he came near me he slowed down, and stopped. He was
+then immediately behind me. I heard his quick breathing. I felt that his
+eyes were fixed on me. One sidelong glance told me that he was wearing a
+long ulster and a cap, that he was young, tall, powerfully built, had a
+strong, firm, clean-shaven face, and an indescribable sense of the open
+air about him.
+
+"Now, now!" I thought, and (to prevent myself from running away) I
+turned quickly round to him and tried to speak.
+
+But I said nothing. I did not know what women say to men under such
+circumstances. I found myself trembling violently, and before I was
+aware of what was happening I had burst into tears.
+
+Then came another blinding moment and a tempest of conflicting feelings.
+
+I felt that the man had laid hold of me, that his strong hands were
+grasping my arms, and that he was looking into my face. I heard his
+voice. It seemed to belong to no waking moment but to come out of the
+hours of sleep.
+
+"Mary! Mary!"
+
+I looked up at him, but before my eyes could carry the news to my brain
+I knew who it was--I knew, I knew, I knew!
+
+"Don't be afraid! It's I!"
+
+Then something--God knows what--made me struggle to escape, and I cried:
+
+"Let me go!"
+
+But even while I was struggling--trying to fly away from my greatest
+happiness--I was praying with all my might that the strong arms would
+hold me, conquer me, master me.
+
+They did. And then something seemed to give way within my head, and
+through a roaring that came into my brain I heard the voice again, and
+it was saying:
+
+"Quick, Sister, call a cab. Open the door, O'Sullivan. No, leave her to
+me. I've got her, thank God!"
+
+And then blinding darkness fell over me and everything was blotted out.
+
+But only a moment afterwards (or what seemed to be a moment) memory came
+back in a great swelling wave of joy. Though I did not open my eyes I
+knew that I was safe and baby was safe, and all was well. Somebody--it
+was the same beloved voice again--was saying:
+
+"Mally! My Mally! My poor, long-suffering darling! My own again, God
+bless her!"
+
+It was he, it was Martin, my Martin. And, oh Mother of my Lord, he was
+carrying me upstairs in his arms.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH PART
+
+I AM FOUND
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+My return to consciousness was a painful, yet joyful experience. It was
+almost like being flung in a frail boat out of a tempestuous sea into a
+quiet harbour.
+
+I seemed to hear myself saying, "My child shall not die. Poverty shall
+not kill her. I am going to take her into the country . . . she will
+recover. . . . No, no, it is not Martin. Martin is dead. . . . But his
+eyes . . . don't you see his eyes. . . . Let me go."
+
+Then all the confused sense of nightmare seemed to be carried away as by
+some mighty torrent, and there came a great calm, a kind of morning
+sweetness, with the sun shining through my closed eyelids, and not a
+sound in my ears but the thin carolling of a bird.
+
+When I opened my eyes I was in bed in a room that was strange to me. It
+was a little like the Reverend Mother's room in Rome, having pictures of
+the Saints on the walls, and a large figure of the Sacred Heart over the
+mantelpiece; but there was a small gas fire, and a canary singing in a
+gilded cage that hung in front of the window.
+
+I was trying to collect my senses in order to realize where I was when
+Sister Mildred's kind face, in her white wimple and gorget, leaned over
+me, and she said, with a tender smile, "You are awake now, my child?"
+
+Then memory came rushing back, and though the immediate past was still
+like a stormy dream I seemed to remember everything.
+
+"Is it true that I saw. . . ."
+
+"Yes," said Mildred.
+
+"Then he was not shipwrecked?"
+
+"That was a false report. Within a month or two the newspapers had
+contradicted it."
+
+"Where is he?" I asked, rising from my pillow.
+
+"Hush! Lie quiet. You are not to excite yourself. I must call the
+doctor."
+
+Mildred was about to leave the room, but I could not let her go.
+
+"Wait! I must ask you something more."
+
+"Not now, my child. Lie down."
+
+"But I must. Dear Sister, I must. There is somebody else."
+
+"You mean the baby," said Mildred, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She has been found, and taken to the country, and is getting better
+rapidly. So lie down, and be quiet," said Mildred, and with a long
+breath of happiness I obeyed.
+
+A moment afterwards I heard her speaking to somebody over the telephone
+(saying I had recovered consciousness and was almost myself again), and
+then some indistinct words came hack in the thick telephone voice like
+that of a dumb man shouting down a tunnel, followed by sepulchral peals
+of merry laughter.
+
+"The doctor will be here presently," said Mildred, returning to me with
+a shining face.
+
+"And . . . he?"
+
+"Yes, perhaps he will be permitted to come, too."
+
+She was telling me how baby had been discovered--by means of Mrs.
+Oliver's letter which had been found in my pocket--when there was the
+whirr of an electric bell in the corridor outside, followed (as soon as
+Mildred could reach the door) by the rich roll of an Irish voice.
+
+It was Dr. O'Sullivan, and in a moment he was standing by my bed, his
+face ablaze with smiles.
+
+"By the Saints of heaven, this is good, though," he said. "It's worth a
+hundred dozen she is already of the woman we brought here first."
+
+"That was last night, wasn't it?" I asked.
+
+"Well, not last night exactly," he answered. And then I gathered that I
+had been ill, seriously ill, being two days unconscious, and that Martin
+had been in a state of the greatest anxiety.
+
+"He's coming, isn't he?" I said. "Will he be here soon? How does he
+look? Is he well? Did he finish his work?"
+
+"Now, now, now," said the doctor, with uplifted hands. "If it's exciting
+yourself like this you're going to be, it isn't myself that will he
+taking the risk of letting him come at all."
+
+But after I had pleaded and prayed and promised to be good he consented
+to allow Martin to see me, and then it was as much as I could do not to
+throw my arms about his neck and kiss him.
+
+I had not noticed what Mildred was doing during this time, and almost
+before I was aware of it somebody else had entered the room.
+
+It was dear old Father Dan.
+
+"Glory be to God!" he cried at sight of me, and then he said:
+
+"Don't worry, my daughter, now don't worry,"--with that nervous emphasis
+which I knew by long experience to be the surest sign of my dear
+Father's own perturbation.
+
+I did not know then, or indeed until long afterwards, that for six
+months past he had been tramping the streets of London in search of me
+(day after day, and in the dark of the night and the cold of the
+morning); but something in his tender old face, which was seamed and
+worn, so touched me with the memory of the last scene in my mother's
+room that my eyes began to overflow, and seeing this he began to laugh
+and let loose his Irish tongue on us.
+
+"My blissing on you, doctor! It's the mighty proud man ye'll be
+entoirely to be saving the life of the swatest woman in the world. And
+whisha, Sister, if ye have a nip of something neat anywhere handy, faith
+it isn't my cloth will prevent me from drinking the health of
+everybody."
+
+If this was intended to cheer me up it failed completely, for the next
+thing I knew was that the doctor was bustling the dear old Father out of
+the room, and that Mildred was going out after him.
+
+She left the door open, though, and as soon as I had calmed down a
+little I listened intently for every sound outside.
+
+It was then that I heard the whirr of the electric bell again, but more
+softly this time, and followed by breathless whispered words in the
+corridor (as of some one who had been running) and once more . . . I
+knew, I knew, I knew!
+
+After a moment Mildred came to ask me in a whisper if I was quite sure
+that I could control myself, and though my heart was thumping against my
+breast, I answered Yes.
+
+Then I called for a hand-glass and made my hair a shade neater, and
+after that I closed my eyes (God knows why) and waited.
+
+There was a moment of silence, dead silence, and then--then I opened my
+eyes and saw him standing in the open doorway.
+
+His big, strong, bronzed face--stronger than ever now, and marked with a
+certain change from the struggles he had gone through--was utterly
+broken up. For some moments he did not speak, but I could see that he
+saw the change that life had made in me also. Then in a low voice, so
+low that it was like the breath of his soul, he said:
+
+"Forgive me! Forgive me!"
+
+And stepping forward he dropped to his knees by the side of my bed, and
+kissed the arms and hands I was stretching out to him.
+
+That was more than I could bear, and the next thing I heard was my
+darling's great voice crying:
+
+"Sister! Sister! Some brandy! Quick! She has fainted."
+
+But my poor little fit of hysterics was soon at an end, and though
+Martin was not permitted to stay more than a moment longer, a mighty
+wave of happiness flowed over me, such as I had never known before and
+may never know again.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+I had such a beautiful convalescence. For the major operations of the
+Great Surgeon an anaesthetic has not yet been found, but within a week I
+was sitting up again, mutilated, perhaps, but gloriously alive and
+without the whisper of a cry.
+
+By this time Father Dan had gone back to Ellan (parting from me with a
+solemn face as he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in
+peace"), and Sister Mildred had obtained permission to give up one of
+her rooms to me as long as I should need it.
+
+Martin came to see me every day, first for five minutes, then ten, and
+finally for a quarter and even half an hour. He brought such an
+atmosphere of health with him, that merely to hold his hand seemed to
+give me new strength--being so pale and bloodless now that I thought the
+sun might have shone through me as through a sea-gull.
+
+I could scarcely believe it was not a dream that he was sitting by my
+side, and sometimes I felt as if I had to touch him to make sure he was
+there.
+
+How he talked to keep up my spirits! It was nearly always about his
+expedition (never about me or my experiences, for that seemed a dark
+scene from which he would not draw the curtain), and I was all
+a-tremble as I listened to the story of his hair-breadth escapes, though
+he laughed and made so light of them.
+
+It nearly broke my heart that he had not got down to the Pole; and when
+he told me that it was the sense of my voice calling to him which had
+brought him back from the 88th latitude, I felt as if I had been a
+coward, unworthy of the man who loved me.
+
+Sometimes he talked about baby--he called her "Girlie"--telling a funny
+story of how he had carried her off from Ilford, where the bricklayer
+had suddenly conceived such a surprising affection for my child ("what
+he might go so far as to call a fatherly feeling") that he had been
+unwilling to part with her until soothed down by a few sovereigns--not
+to say frightened by a grasp of Martin's iron hand which had nearly
+broken his wrist.
+
+"She's as right as a trivet now, though," said Martin, "and I'll run
+down to Chevening every other day to see how she's getting on."
+
+My darling was in great demand from the first, but when he could not be
+with me in the flesh he was with me in the spirit, by means of the
+newspapers which Mildred brought up in armfuls.
+
+I liked the illustrated ones best, with their pictures of scenes in the
+Expedition, particularly the portraits of Martin himself in his
+Antarctic outfit, with his broad throat, determined lips, clear eyes,
+and that general resemblance to the people we all know which makes us
+feel that the great men of every age are brothers of one family.
+
+But what literary tributes there were, too! What interviews, what
+articles! A member of the scientific staff had said that "down there,"
+with Nature in her wrath, where science was nothing and even physical
+strength was not all, only one thing really counted, and that was the
+heroic soul, and because Martin had it, he had always been the born
+leader of them all.
+
+And then, summing up the tangible gains of the Expedition, the _Times_
+said its real value was moral and spiritual, because it showed that in
+an age when one half of the world seemed to be thinking of nothing but
+the acquisition of wealth (that made me think of my father) and the
+other half of nothing but the pursuit of pleasure (that reminded me of
+my husband and Alma), there could be found men like Martin Conrad and
+his dauntless comrades who had faced death for the sake of an ideal and
+were ready to do so again.
+
+Oh dear! what showers of tears I shed over those newspapers! But the
+personal honours that were bestowed on Martin touched me most of all.
+
+First, the Royal Geographical Society held a meeting at the Albert Hall,
+where the Gold Medal was presented to him. I was in a fever of anxiety
+on the night of that function, I remember, until Dr. O'Sullivan (heaven
+bless, him!) came flying upstairs, to tell me that it had been a
+"splendid success," and Martin's speech (he hadn't prepared a word of
+it) "a perfect triumph."
+
+Then some of the Universities conferred degrees on my darling, which was
+a source of inexpressible amusement to him, especially when (after
+coming back from Edinburgh) he marched up and down my room in his
+Doctor's cap and gown, and I asked him to spell "promise" and he
+couldn't.
+
+Oh, the joy of it all! It was so great a joy that at length it became a
+pain.
+
+The climax came when the Home Secretary wrote to say that the King had
+been graciously pleased to confer a Knighthood upon Martin, in
+recognition of his splendid courage and the substantial contribution he
+had already made to the material welfare of the world.
+
+That frightened me terribly, though only a woman would know why. It was
+one thing to share the honours of the man I loved (however secretly and
+as it were by stealth), but quite another thing to feel that they were
+carrying him away from me, drawing him off, lifting him up, and leaving
+me far below.
+
+When the sense of this became acute I used to sit at night, when Mildred
+was out at her work, by the lofty window of her room, looking down on
+the precincts of Piccadilly, and wondering how much my darling really
+knew about the impulse that took me there, and how nearly (but for the
+grace of God) its awful vortex had swallowed me up.
+
+It was then that I began to write these notes (having persuaded Mildred
+to buy me this big book with its silver clasp and key), not intending at
+first to tell the whole story of my life, but only to explain to him for
+whom everything has been written (what I could not bring myself to say
+face to face), how it came to pass that I was tempted to that sin which
+is the most awful crime against her sex that a woman can commit.
+
+Three months had gone by this time, the spring was coming and I was
+beginning to feel that Martin (who had not yet been home) was being kept
+in London on my account, when Dr. O'Sullivan announced that I was well
+enough to be moved, and that a little of my native air would do me good.
+
+Oh, the thrill that came with that prospect! I suppose there is a sort
+of call to one's heart from the soil that gave one birth, but in my case
+it was coupled with a chilling thought of the poor welcome I should
+receive there, my father's house being closed to me and my husband's
+abandoned for ever.
+
+The very next morning, however, there came a letter from Father Dan,
+giving me all the news of Ellan: some of it sad enough, God knows (about
+the downfall of my father's financial schemes); some of it deliciously
+wicked, such as it would have required an angel not to rejoice in (about
+the bad odour in which Alma and my husband were now held, making the
+pendulum of popular feeling swing back in my direction); and some of it
+utterly heart-breaking in its assurances of the love still felt for me
+in my native place.
+
+Of course the sweetest part of that came from Christian Ann, who, after
+a stiff fight with her moral principles, had said that whatever I had
+done I was as "pure as the mountain turf," and, who then charged Father
+Dan with the message that "Mary O'Neill's little room" was waiting for
+her still.
+
+This settled everything--everything except one thing, and that was the
+greatest thing of all. But when Martin came later the same day, having
+received the same message, and declared his intention of taking me home,
+there seemed to be nothing left to wish for in earth or heaven.
+
+Nevertheless I shouldn't have been a woman If I had not coquetted with
+my great happiness, so when Martin had finished I said:
+
+"But dare you?"
+
+"Dare I--what?" said Martin.
+
+"Dare you go home . . . with _me_?"
+
+I knew what I wanted him to say, and he said it like a darling.
+
+"Look here, Mary, I'm just spoiling for a sight of the little island,
+and the old people are destroyed at not seeing me; but if I can't go
+back with you, by the Lord God! I'll never go back at all."
+
+I wanted to see baby before going away, but that was forbidden me.
+
+"Wait until you're well enough, and we'll send her after you," said Dr.
+O'Sullivan.
+
+So the end of it all was that inside a week I was on my way to Ellan,
+not only with Martin, but also with Mildred, who, being a little out of
+health herself, had been permitted to take me home.
+
+Shall I ever forget our arrival at Blackwater! The steamer we sailed in
+was streaming with flags from stem to stern, and as she slid up the
+harbour the dense crowds that packed the pier from end to end seemed
+frantic with excitement. Such shouting and cheering! Such waving of hats
+and handkerchiefs!
+
+There was a sensible pause, I thought, a sort of hush, when the gangway
+being run down, Martin was seen to give his arm to me, and I was
+recognised as the lost and dishonoured one.
+
+But even that only lasted for a moment, it was almost as if the people
+felt that this act of Martin's was of a piece with the sacred courage
+that had carried him down near to the Pole, for hardly had he brought me
+ashore, and put me into the automobile waiting to take us away, when the
+cheering broke out into almost delirious tumult.
+
+I knew it was all for Martin, but not even the humility of my position,
+and the sense of my being an added cause of my darling's glory, could
+make me otherwise than proud and happy.
+
+We drove home, with the sunset in our faces, over the mountain road
+which I had crossed with my husband on the day of my marriage; and when
+we came to our own village I could not help seeing that a little--just a
+little--of the welcome waiting for us was meant for me.
+
+Father Dan was there. He got into the car and sat by my side; and then
+some of the village women, who had smartened themselves up in their
+Sunday clothes, reached over and shook hands with me, speaking about
+things I had said and done as a child and had long forgotten.
+
+We had to go at a walking pace the rest of the way, and while Martin
+saluted old friends (he remembered everybody by name) Father Dan talked
+in my ear about the "domestic earthquake" that had been going on at
+Sunny Lodge, everything topsy-turvy until to-day, the little room being
+made ready for me, and the best bedroom (the doctor's and Christian
+Ann's) for Martin, and the "loft" over the dairy for the old people
+themselves--as if their beloved son had been good in not forgetting
+them, and had condescended in coming home.
+
+"Is it true?" they had asked each other. "Is he really, really coming?"
+"What does he like to eat, mother?" "What does he drink?" "What does he
+smoke?"
+
+I had to close my eyes as I came near the gate of my father's house,
+and, except for the rumbling of the river under the bridge and the
+cawing of the rooks in the elms, I should not have known when we were
+there.
+
+The old doctor (his face overflowing with happiness, and his
+close-cropped white head bare, as if he had torn out of the house at the
+toot of our horn) met us as we turned into the lane, and for the little
+that was left of our journey he walked blithely as a boy by the car, at
+the side on which Martin sat.
+
+I reached forward to catch the first sight of Sunny Lodge, and there it
+was behind its fuchsia hedge, which was just breaking into bloom.
+
+There was Christian Ann, too, at the gate in her sunbonnet; and before
+the automobile had come to a stand Martin was out of it and had her in
+his arms.
+
+I knew what that meant to the dear sweet woman, and for a moment my
+spirits failed me, because it flashed upon my mind that perhaps her
+heart had only warmed to me for the sake of her son.
+
+But just as I was stepping out of the car, feeling physically weak and
+slipping a little, though Father Dan and Sister Mildred were helping me
+to alight, my Martin's mother rushed at me and gathered me in her arms,
+crying:
+
+"Goodness gracious me, doctor--if it isn't little Mary O'Neill, God
+bless her!"--just as she did in the old, old days when I came as a child
+"singing carvals to her door."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+When I awoke next morning in "Mary O'Neill's little room," with its
+odour of clean white linen and sweet-smelling scraas, the sun was
+shining in at the half-open window, birds were singing, cattle were
+lowing, young lambs were bleating, a crow was cawing its way across the
+sky, and under the sounds of the land there was a far-off murmur of the
+sea.
+
+Through the floor (unceiled beneath) I could hear the Doctor and
+Christian Ann chortling away in low tones like two cheerful old
+love-birds; and when I got up and looked out I saw the pink and white
+blossom of the apple and plum trees, and smelt the smoke of burning peat
+from the chimney, as well as the salt of the sea-weed from the shore.
+
+Sister Mildred came to help me to dress, and when I went downstairs to
+the sweet kitchen-parlour, feeling so strong and fresh, Christian Ann,
+who was tossing an oat-cake she was baking on the griddle, cried to me,
+as to a child:
+
+"Come your ways, _villish_; you know the house."
+
+And when I stepped over the rag-work hearthrug and sat in the
+"elbow-chair" in the _chiollagh_, under the silver bowls that stood on
+the high mantelpiece, she cried again, as if addressing the universe in
+general, for there was nobody else in the room:
+
+"Look at that now! She's been out in the big world, and seen great
+wonders, and a power of people I'll go bail, but there she is, as nice
+and comfortable as if she had never been away!"
+
+Sister Mildred came down next; and then the old doctor, who had been
+watching the road for Martin (he had refused to occupy the old people's
+bedroom after all and had put up at the "Plough"), came in, saying:
+
+"The boy's late, mother--what's doing on him, I wonder?"
+
+We waited awhile longer, and then sat down to breakfast. Oh, the homely
+beauty of that morning meal, with its porridge, its milk, its honey and
+cakes, its butter like gold, and its eggs like cream!
+
+In spite of Sister Mildred's protests Christian Ann stood and served,
+and I will not say that for me there was not a startling delight in
+being waited upon once more, being asked what I would like, and getting
+it, giving orders and being obeyed--me, me, me!
+
+At length in the exercise of my authority I insisted on Christian Ann
+sitting down too, which she did, though she didn't eat, but went on
+talking in her dear, simple, delicious way.
+
+It was always about Martin, and the best of it was about her beautiful
+faith that he was still alive when the report came that he had been lost
+at sea.
+
+What? Her son dying like that, and she old and the sun going down on
+her? Never! Newspapers? Chut, who cared what people put in the papers?
+If Martin had really been lost, wouldn't _she_ have known it--having
+borne him on her bosom ("a middling hard birth, too"), and being the
+first to hear his living voice in the world?
+
+So while people thought she was growing "weak in her intellects," she
+had clung to the belief that her beloved son would come back to her. And
+behold! one dark night in winter, when she was sitting in the
+_chiollagh_ alone, and the wind was loud in the trees, and the doctor
+upstairs was calling on her to come to bed ("you're wearing yourself
+away, woman"), she heard a sneck of the garden gate and a step on the
+gravel path, and it was old Tommy the Mate, who without waiting for her
+to open the door let a great yell out of him through the window that a
+"talegraf" had come to say her boy was safe.
+
+Father Dan looked in after mass, in his biretta and faded cassock (the
+same, I do declare, that he had worn when I was a child), and then
+Martin himself came swinging up, with his big voice, like a shout from
+the quarter-deck.
+
+"Helloa! Stunning morning, isn't it?"
+
+It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though
+there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love
+than license.
+
+When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and
+said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to
+settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to
+London presently, she cried:
+
+"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's
+witched they are--longing and longing to go back again. What's there in
+London that's wanting him?"
+
+Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of
+his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:
+
+"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman."
+
+"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own,
+they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"
+
+"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do you
+want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might
+give her away."
+
+"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal!
+He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn't
+come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."
+
+How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing
+most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life
+before.
+
+Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister
+Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her
+knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home--sad news,
+most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for
+"galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure and
+fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and
+certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.
+
+My father himself had escaped prosecution; but he was supposed to be a
+ruined man, dying of cancer, and had gone to live in his mother's old
+cottage on the curragh, with only Nessy MacLeod to care for him--having
+left the Big House to Aunt Bridget and cousin Betsy, who declared (so I
+gathered or guessed) that I had disgraced their name and should never
+look on their faces again.
+
+"But dear heart alive, that won't cut much ice, will it?" said Christian
+Ann, catching a word of Martin's.
+
+Later in the day, being alone with the old doctor. I heard something of
+my husband also--that he had applied (according to the laws of Ellan)
+for an Act of Divorce, and that our insular legislature was likely to
+grant it.
+
+Still later, having walked out into the garden, where the bluebells were
+in bloom, I, too, heard the sneck of the gate, and it was old Tommy
+again, who (having been up to the "Plough" to "put a sight on himself")
+had come round to welcome me as well--a little older, a little feebler,
+"tacking a bit," as he said, with "romps in his fetlock joints," but
+feeling "well tremenjus."
+
+He had brought the "full of his coat-pockets" of lobsters and crabs for
+me ("wonderful good for invalids, missie") and the "full of his mouth"
+of the doings at Castle Raa, which he had left immediately after
+myself--Price also, neither of them being willing to stay with a master
+who had "the rough word" for everybody, and a "misthress" who had "the
+black curse on her" that would "carry her naked sowl to hell."
+
+"I wouldn't be gardener there, after the lil missie had gone . . . no,
+not for the Bank of Ellan and it full of goold."
+
+What a happy, happy day that was! There was many another day like it,
+too, during the sweet time following, when spring was smiling once more
+upon earth and man, and body and soul in myself were undergoing a
+resurrection no less marvellous.
+
+After three or four weeks I had so far recovered as to be able to take
+walks with Martin--through the leafy lanes with the golden gorse on the
+high turf hedges and its nutty odour in the air, as far, sometimes, as
+to the shore, where we talked about "asploring" or perhaps (without
+speaking at all) looked into each other's eyes and laughed.
+
+There was really only one limitation to my happiness, separation from my
+child, and though I was conscious of something anomalous in my own
+position which the presence of my baby would make acute (setting all the
+evil tongues awag), I could not help it if, as I grew stronger, I
+yearned for my little treasure.
+
+The end of it was that, after many timid efforts, I took courage and
+asked Martin if I might have my precious darling back.
+
+"Girlie?" he cried. "Certainly you may. You are well enough now, so why
+shouldn't you? I'm going to London on Exploration business soon, and
+I'll bring her home with me."
+
+But when he was gone (Mildred went with him) I was still confronted by
+one cause of anxiety--Christian Ann. I could not even be sure she knew
+of the existence of my child, still less that Martin intended to fetch
+her.
+
+So once more I took my heart in both hands, and while we sat together in
+the garden, with the sunlight pouring through the trees, Christian Ann
+knitting and I pretending to read, I told her all.
+
+She knew everything already, the dear old thing, and had only been
+waiting for me to speak. After dropping a good many stitches she said:
+
+"The world will talk, and dear heart knows what Father Dan himself will
+say. But blood's thicker than water even if it's holy water, and she's
+my own child's child, God bless her!"
+
+After that we had such delicious times together, preparing for the
+little stranger who was to come--cutting up blankets and sheets, and
+smuggling down from the "loft" to "Mary O'Neill's room" the wooden
+cradle which had once been Martin's, and covering it with bows and
+ribbons.
+
+We kept the old doctor in the dark (pretended we did) and when he
+wondered "what all the fuss was about," and if "the island expected a
+visit from the Queen," we told him (Christian Ann did) to "ask us no
+questions and we'd tell no lies."
+
+What children we were, we two mothers, the old one and the young one! I
+used to hint, with an air of great mystery, that my baby had "somebody's
+eyes," and then the dear simple old thing would say:
+
+"Somebody's eyes, has she? Well, well! Think of that, now!"
+
+But Christian Ann, from the lofty eminence of the motherhood of one
+child twenty-five years before, was my general guide and counsellor,
+answering all my foolish questions when I counted up baby's age (eleven
+months now) and wondered if she could walk and talk by this time, how
+many of her little teeth should have come and whether she could remember
+me.
+
+As the time approached for Martin's return our childishness increased,
+and on the last day of all we carried on such a game together as must
+have made the very Saints themselves look down on us and laugh.
+
+Before I opened my eyes in the morning I was saying to myself, "Now
+they're on their way to Euston," and every time I heard the clock strike
+I was thinking, "Now they're in the train," or "Now they're at
+Liverpool," or "Now they're on the steamer"; but all the while I sang
+"Sally" and other nonsense, and pretended to be as happy as the day was
+long.
+
+Christian Ann was even more excited than myself; and though she was
+always reproving me for my nervousness and telling me to be composed, I
+saw her put the kettle instead of the tea-pot on to the tablecloth, and
+the porridge-stick into the fire in place of the tongs.
+
+Towards evening, when Martin was due, I had reduced myself to such a
+state of weakness that Christian Ann wanted to put me to bed; but
+sitting down in the _chiollagh_, and watching the road from the
+imprisonment of the "elbow-chair," I saw at last the two big white eyes
+of the automobile wheeling round in the dusk by the gate of my father's
+house.
+
+A few minutes afterwards Martin came sweeping into the kitchen with a
+nice-looking nurse behind him, carrying my darling at her breast.
+
+She was asleep, but the light of the fire soon wakened her, and then a
+strange thing happened.
+
+I had risen from my seat, and Christian Ann had come hurrying up, and we
+two women were standing about baby, both ready to clutch at her, when
+she blinked her blue eyes and looked at us, and then held out her arms
+to her grandmother!
+
+That nearly broke my heart for a moment (though now I thank the Lord for
+it), but it raised Christian Ann into the seventh heaven of rapture.
+
+"Did you see that now?" she cried, clasping my baby to her bosom--her
+eyes glistening as with sunshine, though her cheeks were slushed as with
+rain.
+
+I got my treasure to myself at last (Christian Ann having to show the
+nurse up to her bedroom), and then, being alone with Martin, I did not
+care, in the intoxication of my happiness, how silly I was in my praise
+of her.
+
+"Isn't she a little fairy, a little angel, a little cherub?" I cried.
+"And that nasty, nasty birthmark quite, quite gone."
+
+The ugly word had slipped out unawares, but Martin had caught it, and
+though I tried to make light of it, he gave me no peace until I had told
+him what it meant--with all the humiliating story of my last night at
+Castle Raa and the blow my husband had struck me.
+
+"But that's all over now," I said.
+
+"Is it? By the Lord God I swear it isn't, though!" said Martin, and his
+face was so fierce that it made me afraid.
+
+But just at that moment Christian Ann came downstairs, and the old
+doctor returned from his rounds, and then Tommy the Mate looked in on
+his way to the "Plough," and hinting at my going to church again some
+day, gave it as his opinion that if I put the "boght mulish" under my
+"perricut" (our old island custom for legitimising children) "the Bishop
+himself couldn't say nothin' against it"-at which Martin laughed so much
+that I thought he had forgotten his vow about my husband.
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+I hadn't, though.
+
+The brute! The bully! When my darling told me that story (I had to drag
+it out of her) I felt that if I had been within a hundred miles at the
+time, and had had to crawl home to the man on my hands and knees, there
+wouldn't have been enough of him left now to throw on the dust-heap.
+
+Nearly two years had passed since the debt was incurred, but I thought a
+Christian world could not go on a day longer until I had paid it
+back--with interest.
+
+So fearing that my tender-hearted little woman, if she got wind of my
+purpose, might make me promise to put away my vow of vengeance, I got up
+early next morning and ordered the motor-car to be made ready for a
+visit to Castle Raa.
+
+Old Tommy happened to be in the yard of the inn while I was speaking to
+the chauffeur, and he asked if he might be allowed to go with me. I
+agreed, and when I came out to start he was sitting in a corner of the
+car, with his Glengarry pulled down over his shaggy eyebrows, and his
+knotty hands leaning on a thick blackthorn that had a head as big as a
+turnip.
+
+We did not talk too much on the way--I had to save up my strength for
+better business--and it was a long spin, but we got to our journey's end
+towards the middle of the morning.
+
+As we went up the drive (sacred to me by one poignant memory) an open
+carriage was coming down. The only occupant was a rather vulgar-looking
+elderly woman (in large feathers and flowing furbelows) whom I took to
+be the mother of Alma.
+
+Three powdered footmen came to the door of the Castle as our car drove
+up. Their master was out riding. They did not know when he would be
+back.
+
+"I'll wait for him," I said, and pushed into the hall, old Tommy
+following me.
+
+I think the footmen had a mind to intercept us, but I suppose there was
+something in my face which told them it would be better not to try, so I
+walked into the first room with the door open.
+
+It turned out to be the dining-room, with portraits of the owner's
+ancestors all round the walls--a solid square of evil-looking rascals,
+every mother's son of them.
+
+Tommy, still resting his knotty hands on his big blackthorn, was sitting
+on the first chair by the door, and I on the end of the table, neither
+saying a word to the other, when there came the sound of horses' hoofs
+on the path outside. A little later there were voices in the hall, both
+low and loud ones--the footmen evidently announcing my arrival and their
+master abusing them for letting me into the house.
+
+At the next moment the man came sweeping into the dining-room. He was
+carrying a heavy hunting-crop and his flabby face was livid. Behind him
+came Alma. She was in riding costume and was bending a lithe whip in her
+gloved hands.
+
+I saw that my noble lord was furious, but that mood suited me as well as
+another, so I continued to sit on the end of the table.
+
+"So I hear, sir," he said, striding up to me, "I hear that you have
+taken possession of my place without so much as 'by your leave'?"
+
+"That's so," I answered.
+
+"Haven't you done enough mischief here, without coming to insult me by
+your presence?"
+
+"Not quite. I've a little more to do before I've finished."
+
+"Jim," said the woman (in such a weary voice), "don't put yourself about
+over such a person. Better ring the bell for the servants and have him
+turned out of doors."
+
+I looked round at her. She tried an insolent smile, but it broke down
+badly, and then his lordship strode up to me with quivering lips.
+
+"Look here, sir," he said. "Aren't you ashamed to show your face in my
+house?"
+
+"I'm not," I replied. "But before I leave it, I believe _you'll_ be
+ashamed to show your face anywhere."
+
+"Damn it, sir! Will you do me the honour to tell me why you are here?"
+said his lordship, with fury in his looks.
+
+"Certainly. That's exactly what I've come for," I said, and then I
+stated my business without more ado.
+
+I told him what he had done to the woman who was ten thousand times too
+good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with
+his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and
+finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur.
+
+"Liar!" he cried, fairly gasping in his rage. "You're a liar and your
+informant is a liar, too."
+
+"Tommy," I said, "will you step outside for a moment?"
+
+Tommy went out of the room at once, and the woman, who was now looking
+frightened, tried to follow him.
+
+I stopped her. Rising from the table, I stepped over to the door and
+locked it.
+
+"No, madam," I said. "I want you to see what takes place between his
+lordship and me."
+
+The wretched woman fell back, but the man, grinding his teeth, came
+marching up to me.
+
+"So you've come to fight me in my own house, have you?" he cried.
+
+"Not at all," I answered. "A man fights his equal. I've come to _thrash
+you_."
+
+That was enough for him, he lifted his hunting-crop to strike, but it
+didn't take long to get that from his hand or to paralyse the arm with
+which he was lunging out at me.
+
+And then, seizing him by the white stock at his throat, I thrashed him.
+I thrashed him as I should have thrashed vicious ape. I thrashed him
+while he fumed and foamed, and cursed and swore. I thrashed him while he
+cried for help, and then yelled with pain and whined for mercy. I
+thrashed him under the eyes of his ancestors, the mad, bad race he came
+from, and, him the biggest blackguard of them all. And then I flung him
+to the ground, bruised in every bone, and his hunting-crop after him.
+
+"I hear you're going to court for an Act of Divorce," I said. "Pity you
+can't take something to back you, so take that, and say I gave it you."
+
+I was turning towards the door when I heard a low, whining cry, like
+that of a captured she-bear. It was from the woman. The wretched
+creature was on her knees at the farthest corner of the room, apparently
+mumbling prayers, as if in terror that her own turn might be coming
+next.
+
+In her sobbing fear I thought she looked more than ever like a poisonous
+snake, and I will not say that the old impulse to put my foot on it did
+not come back for a moment. But I only said as I passed, pointing to the
+writhing worm on the floor:
+
+"Look at him, madame. I wish you joy of your nobleman, and him of you."
+
+Then I opened the door, and notwithstanding the grim business I had been
+going through, I could have laughed at the scene outside.
+
+There was old Tommy with his back to the dining-room door, his Glengarry
+awry on his tousled head, and his bandy legs stretched firmly apart,
+flourishing his big-headed blackthorn before the faces of the three
+powdered footmen, and inviting them to "come on."
+
+"Come on, now, you bleating ould billy-goats, come on, come on!"
+
+I was in no hurry to get away, but lit a cigar in front of the house
+while the chauffeur was starting the motor and Tommy was wiping his
+steaming forehead on the sleeve of his coat.
+
+All the way home the old man talked without ceasing, sometimes to me,
+and sometimes to the world in general.
+
+"You gave him a piece of your mind, didn't you?" he asked, with a wink
+of his "starboard eye."
+
+"I believe I did," I answered.
+
+"I allus said you would. 'Wait till himself is after coming home, and
+it'll be the devil sit up for some of them,' says I."
+
+There was only one limitation to Tommy's satisfaction over our day's
+expedition--that he had not cracked the powdered skulls of "some o' them
+riddiclus dunkeys."
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phase
+of my too changeful story.
+
+Every week Martin had been coming and going between Ellan and London,
+occupied when he was away with the business of his next Expedition (for
+which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home with
+reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he was
+writing about his last one.
+
+As for myself, I had been (or tried to think I had been) entirely happy.
+With fresh air, new milk, a sweet bedroom, and above all, good and
+tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), my
+health had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness
+which goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so.
+
+Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sun
+was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spite
+of the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I was
+never entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about my
+position.
+
+I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not to
+speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, for
+sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to my
+thoughts, and it was just as if we were all silently waiting, waiting,
+waiting for some event that was to justify and rehabilitate me.
+
+It came at last--for me with a startling suddenness.
+
+One morning, nurse being out on an errand and Christian Ann patting her
+butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrug
+when our village newsman came to the threshold of the open door.
+
+"Take a _Times_," he said. "You might as well be out of the world,
+ma'am, as not know what's going on in it."
+
+I took one of his island newspapers, and after he had gone I casually
+glanced at it.
+
+But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my face
+was--
+
+     "INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED."
+
+It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellan
+legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiastical
+members) had granted my husband's petition.
+
+Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps I
+should have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God that
+the miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forced
+upon me was at last at an end.
+
+But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my
+fingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matter
+about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had,
+through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through the
+dust.
+
+I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my
+darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he always
+did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left to
+me was to hide myself and die.
+
+But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heard
+the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what else
+was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush of
+wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and my
+hands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live at
+his mother's home.
+
+"Such news! Such news!" he cried. "We are free, free, free!"
+
+Then, seeing the newspaper at my feet on the floor, he said:
+
+"Ah, I see you know already. I told them to keep everything away from
+you--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Of
+course it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm,
+after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he has
+done. But what matter about that either? He has done just what we
+wanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, your
+conscience forbidding you. The barrier that has divided us is down . . .
+now we can be married at any time."
+
+I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to believe
+fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me
+at last, that for some time I could not speak. And when I did speak,
+though my heart was clamouring loud, I only said:
+
+"But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband and
+wife?"
+
+"Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do
+think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor
+girl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and you
+are never to look back again."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but what
+about you?"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"I looked forward to being a help--at least not a trouble to you,
+Martin."
+
+"And so you will be. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+"Martin," I said (I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help doing
+it), "wouldn't it injure you to marry me . . . being what I am now . . .
+in the eyes of the world, I mean?"
+
+He looked at me for a moment as if trying to catch my meaning, and then
+snatched me still closer to his breast.
+
+"Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable
+insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don't
+care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swear
+that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms."
+
+That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying with
+all my soul that my objections would be overcome.
+
+In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissed
+and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years of
+fiery struggle that in the eyes of God and man I had a _right_ to do so.
+
+And oh dear, oh dear! When Martin had gone back to his work, what
+foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture!
+
+I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then took
+her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must have
+overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that her
+voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher.
+
+Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, and
+after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of her
+sweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my own
+hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been the
+unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--was
+flowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me and
+I saw myself as a bride, in my bridal veil and blossoms.
+
+How happy I was going to be! But indeed I felt just then as if I had
+always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holy
+water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days in
+London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentioned
+Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of the
+maternity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed.
+
+Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and I
+noticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spoke
+about the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but I
+could not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and on
+the top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over our
+household had suddenly slid away.
+
+After luncheon, nurse being back with baby, I went out for a walk alone,
+feeling wonderfully well and light, and having two hours to wait for
+Martin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough."
+
+How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! How
+joyous the air--so sweet and so full of song-birds!
+
+I remember that I thought life had been so good to me that I ought to be
+good to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemed
+wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever he
+had done to her.
+
+So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage on
+the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I only
+slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of Nessy
+MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps impossible) it might be to reach him.
+
+Even then I faced about for a moment to the Big House with some vain
+idea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping upstairs to my
+mother's room--having such a sense of joyous purity that I wished to
+breathe the sacred air my blessed saint had lived in.
+
+But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of the
+Presbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself, with a
+little access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only right and
+proper that I should bring my happiness where I had so often brought my
+sorrow--to the dear priest who had been my friend since the day of my
+birth and my darling mother's friend before.
+
+Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him!
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+A few minutes afterwards I was tripping upstairs (love and hope work
+wonderful miracles!) behind the Father's Irish housekeeper, Mrs.
+Cassidy, who was telling me how well I was looking ("smart and well
+extraordinary"), asking if it "was on my two feet I had walked all the
+way," and denouncing the "omathauns" who had been "after telling her
+there wasn't the width of a wall itself betune me and the churchyard."
+
+I found Father Dan in his cosy study lined with books; and being so much
+wrapped up in my own impetuous happiness I did not see at first that he
+was confused and nervous, or remember until next day that, though (at
+the sound of my voice from the landing) he cried "Come in, my child,
+come in," he was standing with his back to the door as I
+entered--hiding something (it must have been a newspaper) under the
+loose seat of his easy-chair.
+
+"Father," I said, "have you heard the news?"
+
+"The news. . . ."
+
+"I mean the news in the newspaper."
+
+"Ah, the news in the newspaper."
+
+"Isn't it glorious? That terrible marriage is over at last! Without my
+doing anything, either! Do you remember what you said the last time I
+came here?"
+
+"The last time. . . ."
+
+"You said that I, being a Catholic, could not break my marriage without
+breaking my faith. But my husband, being a Protestant, had no
+compunction. So it has come to the same thing in the end, you see. And
+now I'm free."
+
+"You're free . . . free, are you?"
+
+"It seems they have been keeping it all away from me--making no defence,
+I suppose--and it was only this morning I heard the news."
+
+"Only this morning, was it?"
+
+"I first saw it in a newspaper, but afterwards Martin himself came to
+tell me."
+
+"Martin came, did he?"
+
+"He doesn't care in the least; in fact, he is glad, and says we can be
+married at any time."
+
+"Married at any time--he says that, does he?"
+
+"Of course nothing is arranged yet, dear Father, but I couldn't help
+coming to see you about it. I want everything to be simple and quiet--no
+display of any kind."
+
+"Simple and quiet, do you?"
+
+"Early in the morning--immediately after mass, perhaps."
+
+"Immediately after mass. . . ."
+
+"Only a few wild flowers on the altar, and the dear homely souls who
+love me gathered around."
+
+"The dear, homely souls. . . ."
+
+"It will be a great, great thing for me, but I don't want to force
+myself upon anybody, or to triumph over any one--least of all over my
+poor father, now that he is so sick and down."
+
+"No, no . . . now that he is so sick and down."
+
+"I shall want you to marry us, Daddy Dan--not the Bishop or anybody else
+of that kind, you know."
+
+"You'll want me to marry you--not the Bishop or anybody else of that
+kind."
+
+"But Father Dan," I cried, laughing a little uneasily (for I had begun
+to realise that he was only repeating my own words), "why don't you say
+something for yourself?"
+
+And then the cheery sunshine of the cosy room began to fade away.
+
+Father Dan fumbled the silver cross which hung over his cassock (a sure
+sign of his nervousness), and said with a grave face and in a voice all
+a-tremble with emotion:
+
+"My child. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You believe that I wouldn't pain or distress or shock you if I could
+avoid it?"
+
+"Indeed I do."
+
+"Yet I am going to pain and distress and shock you now. I . . . I cannot
+marry you to Martin Conrad. I daren't. The Church thinks that you are
+married already--that you are still the wife of your husband."
+
+Though my dear priest had dealt me my death-blow, I had not yet begun to
+feel it, so I smiled up into his troubled old face and said:
+
+"But how can the Church think that, dear Father? My husband has no
+rights over me now, and no duties or responsibilities with respect to
+me. He can marry again if he likes. And he will, I am sure he will, and
+nobody can prevent him. How, then, can the Church say that I am still
+his wife?"
+
+"Because marriage, according to the law of the Church, can only be
+dissolved by death," said Father Dan. "Haven't I told you that before,
+my daughter? Didn't we go over it again and again when you were here the
+last time?"
+
+"Yes, yes, but I thought if somebody else sought the divorce--somebody
+who had never believed in the indissolubility of marriage and wasn't
+bound by the law of the Church . . . we've heard of cases of that kind,
+haven't we?"
+
+Father Dan shook his head.
+
+"My poor child, no. The Church thinks marriage is a sacred covenant
+which no difference of belief, no sin on either side, can ever break."
+
+"But, Father," I cried, "don't you see that the law has already broken
+it?"
+
+"Only the civil law, my daughter. Remember the words of our blessed and
+holy Redeemer: '_Every one that putteth away his wife and marrieth
+another committeth adultery; and he that marrieth one that is put away
+committeth adultery.'_ . . . My poor child, my heart bleeds for you, but
+isn't that the Divine Commandment?"
+
+"Then you think," I said (the room was becoming dark and I could feel my
+lip trembling), "you think that because I went through that marriage
+ceremony two years ago . . . and though the civil law has dissolved it
+. . . you think I am still bound by it, and will continue to be so . . .
+to the end of my life?"
+
+Father Dan plucked at his cassock, fumbled his print handkerchief, and
+replied:
+
+"I am sorry, my child, very, very sorry."
+
+"Father Dan," I said sharply, for by this time my heart was beginning to
+blaze, "have you thought about Martin? Aren't you afraid that if our
+Church refuses to marry us he may ask some other church to do so?"
+
+"Christ's words must be the final law for all true Christians, my
+daughter. And besides. . . ."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Besides that. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"It blisters my tongue to say it, my child, knowing your sufferings and
+great temptations, but. . . ."
+
+"But what, dear Father?"
+
+"You are in the position of the guilty party, and therefore no good
+clergyman of any Christian Church in the world, following the
+Commandment of his Master, would dare to marry you."
+
+What happened after that I cannot exactly say. I remember that, feeling
+the colour flying to my face, I flung up my hands to cover it, and that
+when I came to full possession of my senses again Father Dan (himself in
+a state of great agitation) was smoothing my arms and comforting me.
+
+"Don't be angry with your old priest for telling you the truth--the
+bitter truth, my daughter."
+
+He had always seen this dark hour coming to him, and again and again he
+had prayed to be delivered from it--in the long nights of his fruitless
+wanderings when I was lost in London, and again since I had been found
+and had come home and he had looked on, with many a pang, at our silent
+hopes and expectations--Martin's and mine, we two children.
+
+"And when you came into my little den to-day, my daughter, with a face
+as bright as stars and diamonds, God knows I would have given half of
+what is left of my life that mine should not be the hand to dash the cup
+of your happiness away."
+
+As soon as I was sufficiently composed, within and without, Father Dan
+led me downstairs (praying God and His Holy Mother to strengthen me on
+my solitary way), and then stood at the door in his cassock to watch me
+while I walked up the road.
+
+It was hardly more than half an hour since I had passed over the ground
+before, yet in that short time the world seemed to have become pale and
+grey--the sun gone out, the earth grown dark, the still air joyless,
+nothing left but the everlasting heavens and the heavy song of the sea.
+
+As I approached the doctor's house Martin came swinging down the road to
+meet me, with his strong free step and that suggestion of the wind from
+the mountain-tops which seemed to be always about him.
+
+"Hello!" he cried. "Thought you were lost and been hunting all over the
+place for you."
+
+But as he came nearer and saw how white and wan my face was, though I
+was doing my best to smile, he stopped and said:
+
+"My poor little woman, where have you been, and what have they been
+doing to you?"
+
+And then, as well as I could, I told him.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+"It's all my fault," he said.
+
+He had led me to the garden-house, which stood among the bluebells at
+the end of the orchard, and was striding to and fro in front of it.
+
+"I knew perfectly what the attitude of the Church would be, and I ought
+to have warned you."
+
+I had never before seen him so excited. There was a wild look in his
+eyes and his voice was quivering like the string of a bow.
+
+"Poor old Father Dan! He's an old angel, with as good a heart as ever
+beat under a cassock. But what a slave a man may be to the fetish of his
+faith! Only think what he says, my darling! The guilty party! I'll never
+believe you are the guilty party, but consider! The guilty party may
+never marry! No good clergyman of any Christian Church in the world dare
+marry her! What an infamy! Ask yourself what the churches are here for.
+Aren't they here to bring salvation to the worst of sinners? Yet they
+cast out the woman who has sinned against her marriage vow--denying her
+access to the altar and turning her out of doors--though she may have
+repented a thousand times, with bitter, bitter tears!"
+
+He walked two or three paces in front of the garden-house and then came
+back to me with flaming eyes.
+
+"But that's not your case, anyway," he said. "Father Dan knows perfectly
+that your marriage was no marriage at all--only a sordid bit of
+commercial bargaining, in which your husband gave you his bad name for
+your father's unclean money. It was no marriage in any other sense
+either, and might have been annulled if there had been any common
+honesty in annulment. And now that it has tumbled to wreck and ruin, as
+anybody might have seen it would do, you are told that you are bound to
+it to the last day and hour of your life! After all you have gone
+through--all you have suffered--never to know another hour of happiness
+as long as you live! While your husband, notwithstanding his brutalities
+and infidelities, is free to do what he likes, to marry whom he pleases!
+How stupid! How disgusting! how damnable!"
+
+His passionate voice was breaking, he could scarcely control it.
+
+"Oh, I know what they'll say. It will be the old, old song, 'Whom God
+hath joined together.' That's what this old Church of ours has been
+saying for centuries to poor women with broken hearts. Has the Church
+itself got a heart to break? No--nothing but its cast-iron laws which
+have been broken a thousand times and nobody a penny the worse."
+
+"But I wonder," he continued, "I wonder why these churchmen, who would
+talk about the impossibility of putting asunder those whom God has
+joined together, don't begin by asking themselves how and when and where
+God joins them. Is it in church, when they stand before the altar and
+are asked a few questions, and give a few answers? If so, then God is
+responsible for some of the most shocking transactions that ever
+disgraced humanity--all the pride and vanity and deliberate concubinage
+that have covered themselves in every age, and are covering themselves
+still, with the cloak of marriage."
+
+"But no," said Martin, "it's not in churches that God marries people.
+They've got to be married before they go there, or they are never
+married at all--never! They've got to be married in their _hearts_, for
+that's where God joins people together, not in churches and before
+priests and altars."
+
+I sat listening to him with a rising and throbbing heart, and after
+another moment he stepped into the garden-house, and sat beside me.
+
+"Mary," he said, in his passionate voice, "that's our case, isn't it?
+God married us from the very first. There has never been any other woman
+for me, and there never has been any other man for you--isn't that so,
+my darling? . . . Then what are they talking about--these churches and
+churchmen? It's _they_ who are the real divorcers--trying to put those
+asunder whom God Himself has joined together. That's the plain sense of
+the matter, isn't it?"
+
+I was trembling with fear and expectation. Perhaps it was the same with
+me as it had been before; perhaps I wanted (now more than ever) to
+believe what Martin was saying; perhaps I did not know enough to be able
+to answer him; perhaps my overpowering love and the position I stood in
+compelled me to agree. But I could not help it if it seemed to me that
+his clear mind--clear as a mountain river and as swift and strong--was
+sweeping away all the worn-out sophistries.
+
+"Then what . . . what are we to do?" I asked him.
+
+"Do? Our duty to ourselves, my darling, that's what we have to do. If we
+cannot be married according to the law of the Church, we must be married
+according to the law of the land. Isn't that enough? This is our own
+affair, dearest, ours and nobody else's. It's only a witness we want
+anyway--a witness before God and man that we intend to be man and wife
+in future."
+
+"But Father Dan?"
+
+"Leave him to me," said Martin. "I'll tell him everything. But come into
+the house now. You are catching a cold. Unless we take care they'll kill
+you before they've done."
+
+Next day he leaned over the back of my chair as I sat in the _chiollagh_
+with baby in my lap, and said, in a low tone:
+
+"I've seen Father Dan."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The old angel took it badly. 'God forbid that you should do that same,
+my boy,' he said, 'putting both yourself and that sweet child of mine
+out of the Church for ever.' 'It's the Church that's putting us out,' I
+told him. 'But God's holy law condemns it, my son,' he said. 'God's law
+is love; and He has no other law,' I answered."
+
+I was relieved and yet nervous, glad and yet afraid.
+
+A week passed, and then the time came for Martin to go to Windsor for
+his investiture. There had been great excitement in Sunny Lodge in
+preparation for this event, but being a little unwell I had been out of
+the range of it.
+
+At the moment of Martin's departure I was in bed, and he had come
+upstairs to say good-bye to me.
+
+What had been happening in the meantime I hardly knew, but I had
+gathered that he thought pressure would be brought to bear on me.
+
+"Our good old Church is like a limpet on the shore," he said. "Once it
+gets its suckers down it doesn't let go in a hurry. But sit tight,
+little woman. Don't yield an inch while I'm away," he whispered.
+
+When he left me I reached up to see him going down the road to the
+railway station. His old father was walking proudly by his side,
+bare-headed as usual and still as blithe as a boy.
+
+Next day I was startled by an unexpected telegram. It came from a
+convent in Lancashire and was addressed to "Mary O'Neill, care of Doctor
+Conrad." It ran:
+
+"_Am making a round of visits to the houses of our Society and would
+like to see you on my way to Ireland. May I cross to-morrow? Mother
+Magdalene_."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND TWELFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+She arrived the following afternoon--my dear Reverend Mother with the
+pale spiritual face and saint-like eyes.
+
+Except that her habit was now blue and white instead of black, she
+seemed hardly changed in any respect since our days at the Sacred Heart.
+
+Finding that I was in bed, she put up at the "Plough" and came every day
+to nurse me.
+
+I was naturally agitated at seeing her again after so many years and
+such various experiences, being uncertain how much she knew of them.
+
+Remembering Martin's warning, I was also fairly certain that she had
+been sent for, but my uneasiness on both heads soon wore off.
+
+Her noiseless step, her soft voice, and her sweet smile soothed and
+comforted me. I began to feel afresh the influence she had exercised
+over me when I was a child, and to wonder why, during my dark time in
+London, I had never thought of writing to her.
+
+During the first days of her visit she said nothing about painful
+things--never mentioning my marriage, or what had happened since she saw
+me last.
+
+Her talk was generally about our old school and my old schoolfellows,
+many of whom came to the convent for her "retreats," which were under
+the spiritual direction of one of the Pope's domestic prelates.
+
+Sometimes she would laugh about our Mother of the Novices who had
+"become old and naggledy"; sometimes about the little fat Maestro of the
+Pope's choir who had cried when I first sang the hymn to the Virgin,
+("Go on, little angel,"); and sometimes about the two old lay sisters
+(now quite toothless) who still said I might have been a "wonderful
+washerwoman" if I had "put my mind to it."
+
+I hate to think that my dear Reverend Mother was doing this consciously
+in order to break down my defences, but the effect was the same. Little
+by little, during the few days she was with me, she bridged the space
+back to my happy girlhood, for insensibly I found myself stirred by the
+emotions of the convent, and breathing again the air of my beloved Rome.
+
+On the afternoon of the fourth day of her visit I was sitting up by her
+side in front of my window, which was wide open. It was just such a
+peaceful evening as our last one at Nemi. Not a leaf was stirring; not a
+breath of wind in the air; the only sounds we heard were the lowing of
+the cattle waiting to be milked, the soft murmur of the sea, and the
+jolting of a springless cart that was coming up from the shore, laden
+with sea wrack.
+
+As the sun began to sink it lit blazing fires in the windows of the
+village in front--especially in the window of my mother's room, which
+was just visible over the tops of the apple trees in the orchard.
+
+The Reverend Mother talked of Benediction. If she were in Rome she would
+be in church singing the _Ora pro nobis_.
+
+"Let us sing it now. Shall we?" she said.
+
+At the next moment her deep majestic contralto, accompanied by my own
+thin and quavering soprano, were sending out into the silent air the
+holy notes which to me are like the reverberations of eternity:
+
+     "Mater purissima
+       Ora pro nobis.
+     Mater castissima
+       Ora pro nobis."
+
+When we had finished I found my hand lying in her lap. Patting it gently
+she said:
+
+"Mary, I am leaving you to-morrow."
+
+"So soon?"
+
+"Yes, but I can't go without telling you why I came"--and then her
+mission was revealed to me.
+
+She had heard about my marriage and the ruin it had fallen to; my
+disappearance from home and the circumstances of my recovery; my
+husband's petition for divorce and the disclosures that had followed it.
+
+But sad and serious and even tragic as all this might be, it was as
+nothing (in the eyes of the Church and of God) compared with the awful
+gravity of the step I now contemplated--a second marriage while my
+husband was still alive.
+
+She had nothing to say against Martin. Except the facts that concerned
+myself she had never heard a word to his discredit. She could even
+understand those facts, though she could not condone them. Perhaps he
+had seen my position (married to a cruel and unfaithful husband) and his
+pity had developed into love--she had heard of such happenings.
+
+"But only think, my child, what an abyss he is driving you to! He asks
+you to break your marriage vows! . . . Oh, yes, yes, I can see what he
+will say--that pressure was put upon you and you were too young to know
+what you were doing. That may be true, but it isn't everything. I
+thought it wrong, cruelly wrong, that your father should choose a
+husband for you without regard to your wish and will. But it was you,
+not your father, who made your marriage vows, and you can never get away
+from that--never!"
+
+Those marriage vows were sacred; our blessed Saviour had said they
+could never be broken, and our holy Church had taken His Commandment for
+law.
+
+"Think, my child, only think what would happen to the world if every
+woman who has made an unhappy marriage were to do as you think of doing.
+What a chaos! What an uprooting of all the sacred ties of home and
+family! And how women would suffer--women and children above all. Don't
+you see that, my daughter?"
+
+The security of society lay in the sanctity of marriage; the sanctity of
+marriage lay in its indissolubility; and its indissolubility centred in
+the fact that God was a party to it.
+
+"Perhaps you are told that your marriage will be your own concern only
+and that God and the Church have nothing to do with it. But if women had
+believed that in all ages, how different the world would be to-day! Oh,
+believe me, your marriage vow is sacred, and you cannot break it without
+sin--mortal sin, my daughter."
+
+The moral of all this was that I must renounce Martin Conrad, wash my
+heart clean of my love of him, shun the temptation of seeing him again,
+and if possible forget him altogether.
+
+"It will be hard. I know it will he hard, but. . . ."
+
+"It will be quite impossible," I said as well as I could, for my very
+lips were trembling.
+
+I had been shaken to the depths of my soul by what the Reverend Mother
+said, but remembering Martin's warning I now struggled to resist her.
+
+"Two years ago, while I was living with my husband I tried to do that
+and I couldn't," I said. "And if I couldn't do it then, when the legal
+barrier stood between us, how can I do it now when the barrier is gone?"
+
+After that I told her of all I had passed through since as a result of
+my love for Martin--how I had parted from him when he went down to the
+Antarctic; how I had waited for him in London; how I had sacrificed
+family and friends and home, and taken up poverty and loneliness and
+hard work for him; how I had fallen into fathomless depths of despair
+when I thought I had lost him; and how joy and happiness had returned
+only when God, in His gracious goodness, had given him back.
+
+"No, no, no", I cried. "My love for Martin can never be overcome or
+forgotten--never as long as I live in the world!"
+
+"Then," said the Reverend Mother (she had been listening intently with
+her great eyes fixed on my hot and tingling face), "then," she said, in
+her grave and solemn voice, "If that is the case, my child, there is
+only one thing for you to do--to leave it."
+
+"Leave it?"
+
+"Leave the world, I mean. Return with me to Rome and enter the convent."
+
+It would be impossible to say how this affected me--how it shook me to
+the heart's core--how, in spite of my efforts to act on my darling's
+warning, it seemed to penetrate to the inmost part of my being and to
+waken some slumbering instinct in my soul.
+
+For a long time I sat without speaking again, only listening with a
+fluttering heart to what the Reverend Mother was saying--that it was one
+of the objects of the religious life to offer refuge to the tortured
+soul that could not trust itself to resist temptation; and that taking
+my vows as a nun to God would be the only way (known to and acknowledged
+by the Church) of cancelling my vows as a wife to my husband.
+
+"You will be a bride still, my child, but a bride of Christ. And isn't
+that better--far better? You used to wish to be a nun, you know, and if
+your father had not come for you on that most unhappy errand you might
+have been one of ourselves already. Think of it, my child. The Mothers
+of our convent will be glad to welcome you, if you can come as a willing
+and contented Sister. And how can I leave you here, at the peril of your
+soul, my daughter?"
+
+I was deeply moved, but I made one more effort.
+
+I told the Reverend Mother that, since the days when I had wished to be
+a nun, a great change had come over me. I had become a woman, with all a
+woman's passions--the hunger and thirst for love, human love, the love
+of the good man who loved me with all his soul and strength. Therefore I
+could never be a willing and contented Sister. I should only break the
+peace and harmony of their house. And though she were to put me down in
+the lowest cell of her convent, my love would follow me there; it would
+interrupt my offices, it would clamour through my prayers, and I should
+always be unhappy--miserably unhappy.
+
+"Not so unhappy there as you will be if you remain in the world and
+carry out your intention," said the Reverend Mother. "Oh believe me, my
+child, I know you better than you know yourself. If you marry again, you
+will never be able to forget that you have broken your vow. Other women
+may forget it--frivolous women--women living in society and devoting
+their lives to selfish pleasures. Such women may divorce their husbands,
+or be divorced by them, and then marry again, without remembering that
+they are living in a state of sin, whatever the civil law may say--open
+and wicked and shameless sin. But you will remember it, and it will make
+you more unhappy than you have ever been in your life before."
+
+"Worse than that," she continued, after a moment, "it will make your
+husband unhappy also. He will see your remorse, and share it, because he
+will know he has been the cause. If he is a good man the mere sight of
+your grief will torture him. The better man he is the more will he
+suffer. If you were a runaway nun he would wish to take you back to your
+convent, for though it might tear his heart out to part with you, he
+would want to restore your soul. But being a wife who has broken her
+marriage vows he will never be able to do anything. An immense and awful
+shadow will stand between you and darken every hour of your lives that
+is left."
+
+When the Reverend Mother had done I sat motionless and speechless, with
+an aching and suffocating heart, staring down on the garden over which
+the night was falling.
+
+After a while she patted my cold hand and got up to go, saying she would
+call early in the morning to bid me good-bye. Her visit to Ireland would
+not last longer than three weeks, and after that she might come back for
+me, if I felt on reflection (she was sure I should) that I ought to
+return with her to Rome.
+
+I did not reply. Perhaps it was partly because I was physically weak
+that my darling's warning was so nearly overcome. But the moment the
+door closed on the Reverend Mother a conviction of the truth of what she
+had said rushed upon me like the waves of an overflowing sea.
+
+Yet how cruel! After all our waiting, all our longing, all our gorgeous
+day-dreams of future happiness! When I was going to be a bride, a happy
+bride, with my lost and stolen girlhood coming back to me!
+
+For the second time a dark and frowning mountain had risen between
+Martin and me. Formerly it had been my marriage--now it was my God.
+
+But if God forbade my marriage with Martin what was I to do? What was
+left in life for me? Was there anything left?
+
+I was sitting with both hands over my face, asking myself these
+questions and struggling with a rising tempest of tears, when I heard
+baby crying in the room below, and Christian Ann hushing and comforting
+her.
+
+"What's doing on the _boght_, I wonder?"
+
+A few minutes later they came upstairs, Isabel on her grandmother's arm,
+in her nightdress, ready for bed.
+
+"If it isn't the wind I don't know in the world what's doing on the
+_millish_," said the old lady.
+
+And then baby smiled through the big round beads that stood in her
+sea-blue eyes and held out her arms to me.
+
+Oh God! Oh God! Was not _this_ my answer?
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same conclusion.
+Long before the thought came to me she had conceived the idea that
+Father Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to carry me off, and
+in her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak of higher and nobler
+instincts) she had resented this intensely.
+
+For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to baby in
+half-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We're no women for these
+nun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we, _villish_?"), but
+on the fifth day it burst into the fiercest flame and the gentle old
+thing flung out at everybody.
+
+That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother, who, after
+saying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned to the
+parlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to the railway
+station.
+
+What provoked Christian Ann's outburst I never rightly knew, for though
+the door to the staircase was open, and I could generally catch anything
+that was said in the room below (through the open timbers of the
+unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me,
+and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels only rumbled up like the sound
+of a drum.
+
+But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of a
+breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering with
+emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.
+
+"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're saying to the
+Father about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome is she? To the
+convent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will! Not if I know her,
+ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am. . . . Temptation, you
+say? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call it overcoming
+temptation--going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . . Yes,
+I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, but
+asking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not thinking too much of your convents,
+or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfish
+lives either, ma'am."
+
+Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then--
+
+"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nun
+myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's all
+as one--I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . .
+Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too,
+or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for Mary
+O'Neill, _she_ has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After
+doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the _boght millish_, maybe we all
+are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never
+heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And
+if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as
+well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're
+saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."
+
+Another interruption and then--"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keeps
+the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two years
+for Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn,
+and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat,
+or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's
+sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of
+the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching little
+Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the
+measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of
+your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel
+before the tabernacle."
+
+There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father
+Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clear
+notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.
+
+"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holy
+state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though some
+ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . A
+mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock or
+no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing it
+up well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes the
+Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born
+on. . . .
+
+"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about her
+saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am.
+God gave her the _boght villish_, and is she to run away from it? It's a
+fine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm
+surprised at you--such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as
+you're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that--I really
+did. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no
+mothers at all and never will be--tempting a poor woman in her trouble
+to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . ."
+
+Still another rumble of soft voices and then--
+
+"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's only too
+eager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is on the
+hearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill, it's there
+she'll be for the rest of _my_ life, and it's sorry I am for the
+darling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . . .
+
+"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into any
+convent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she did. I'm
+a mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You might put the
+black hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful powerful thing, and
+she'd never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinking
+of her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be asking herself. 'What's
+happening to my motherless child?' she'd be saying. And as the years
+went on she'd be thinking, 'Is she well, and has she taken her first
+communion, and is she growing up a good woman, and what's the world
+doing on her?' . . .
+
+"No, ma'am, no! Mary O'Neill will go into no convent while her child is
+here to be cared for! 'Deed she won't! Not Mary O'Neill! I'll never
+believe it of her! Never in this world!"
+
+I heard nothing more for a long time after that--nothing but a noise in
+my own head which drowned all other noises. And when I recovered my
+composure the Reverend Mother and Father Dan must have gone, for there
+was no sound in the room below except that of the rocking-chair (which
+was going rapidly) and Christian Ann's voice, fierce but broken as if
+baby had cried and she was comforting her.
+
+Then a great new spirit came to me. It was Motherhood again! The mighty
+passion of motherhood--which another mighty passion had temporarily
+overlaid--sweeping down on me once more out of the big, simple,
+child-like heart of my Martin's mother.
+
+In the fever of body and brain at that moment it seemed to solve all the
+problems of life for me.
+
+If the Commandment of God forbade me to marry again because I had
+already taken vows before the altar (no matter how innocently or under
+what constraint), and if I had committed a sin, a great sin, and baby
+was the living sign of it, there was only one thing left me to do--to
+remain as I was and consecrate the rest of my life to my child.
+
+That would be the real expiation, not burying myself in a convent. To
+live for my child! Alone with her! Here, where my sin had been, to work
+out my atonement!
+
+This pleased and stirred and uplifted me very much when I first thought
+of it. And even when I remembered Martin, and thought how hard it would
+be to tear myself away from the love which waited with open arms for me
+(So near, so sweet, so precious), there seemed to be something majestic,
+almost sublime, in the sacrifice I was about to make--the sacrifice of
+everything in the world (except one thing) that was dearer to me than
+life itself.
+
+A sort of spiritual pride came with the thought of this sacrifice. I saw
+myself as a woman who, having pledged herself to God in her marriage and
+sinned against the law in breaking her marriage vows, was now going to
+accept her fate and to humble herself before the bar of Eternal Justice.
+
+But oh, what a weak, vain thing I was, just when I thought I was so
+strong and noble!
+
+After a long day in which I had been fighting back the pains of my poor
+torn heart and almost persuading myself that I had won a victory, a
+letter came by the evening post which turned all my great plans to dust
+and ashes.
+
+The letter was from Martin. Only four little pages, written in my
+darling's rugged hand, half serious and half playful, yet they made the
+earth rock and reel beneath me.
+
+     "MY DEAR LITTLE WOMAN,--_Just back from Windsor. Stunning 'do.'
+     Tell you all about it when I get back home. Meantime up to my eyes
+     in work. Arrangements for next Expedition going ahead splendidly.
+     Had a meeting of the committee yesterday and settled to sail by the
+     'Orient' third week in August, so as to get down to Winter Quarters
+     in time to start south in October.
+
+     "Our own little affair has got to come off first, though, so I'll
+     see the High Bailiff as soon as I return.
+
+     "And what do you think, my 'chree'? The boys of the 'Scotia' are
+     all coming over to Ellan for the great event. 'Deed, yes, though,
+     every man-jack of them! Scientific staff included, not to speak of
+     O'Sullivan and old Treacle--who swears you blew a kiss to him. They
+     remember you coming down to Tilbury. Aw, God bless me soul, gel,
+     the way they're talking of you! There's no holding them at all at
+     all!
+
+     "Seriously, darling, you have no time to lose in making your
+     preparations. My plan is to take you to New Zealand and leave you
+     at Wellington (good little town, good people, too) while I make my
+     bit of a trip to the Pole.
+
+     "We'll arrange about Girlie when I reach home, which will be next
+     week, I hope--or rather fear--for every day is like a month when
+     I'm away from you.
+
+     "But never mind, little woman! Once I get this big Expedition over
+     we are not going to be separated any more. Not for a single day as
+     long as we live, dearest! No, by the Lord God--life's too short for
+     it._
+
+     "MART."
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+After I had read this letter I saw that my great battle, which I had
+supposed to be over, was hardly begun.
+
+Martin was coming home with his big heart full of love for me, and my
+own heart ran out to meet him.
+
+He intended to sail for New Zealand the second week in August, and he
+expected to take me with him.
+
+In spite of all my religious fears and misgivings, I asked myself why I
+should not go? What was to prevent me? What sin had I really committed?
+What was there for reparation? Was it anything more than the letter of
+the Divine law that I had defied and broken?
+
+My love was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever. He was
+going out on a great errand in the service of humanity. Couldn't I go to
+be his partner and helpmate? And if there _had_ been sin, if the law of
+God _had_ been broken, wouldn't that, too, be a great atonement?
+
+Thus my heart fought with my soul, or with my instincts as a child of
+the Church, or whatever else it was that brought me back and back, again
+and again, in spite of all the struggles of my love, to the firm
+Commandment of our Lord.
+
+Father Dan had been right--I could not get away from that. The Reverend
+Mother had been right, too--other women might forget that they had
+broken the Divine law but I never should. If I married Martin and went
+away with him, I should always be thinking of the falseness of my
+position, and that would make me unhappy. It would also make Martin
+unhappy to witness my unhappiness, and that would be the worst
+bitterness life could bring.
+
+Then what was left to me? If it was impossible that I should bury myself
+in a convent it was equally impossible that I should live alone, and
+Martin in the same world with me.
+
+Not all the spiritual pride I could conjure up in the majesty and
+solemnity of my self-sacrifice could conquer the yearning of my heart as
+a woman. Not all my religious fervour could keep me away from Martin. In
+spite of my conscience, sooner or later I should go to him--I knew quite
+well I should. And my child, instead of being a barrier dividing us,
+would be a natural bond calling on us and compelling us to come
+together.
+
+Then what was left to a woman in my position who believed in the Divine
+Commandment--who could not get away from it? Were all the doors of life
+locked to her? Turn which way she would, was there no way out?
+
+Darker and darker every day became this question, but light came at
+last, a kind of light or the promise of light. It was terrible, and yet
+it brought me, oh, such immense relief!
+
+I am almost afraid to speak of it, so weak and feeble must any words be
+in which I attempt to describe that unforgetable change. Already I had
+met some of the mysteries of a woman's life--now I was to meet the last,
+the greatest, the most tragic, and yet the kindest of them all.
+
+I suppose the strain of emotion I had been going through had been too
+much for my physical strength, for three days after the arrival of
+Martin's letter I seemed to be really ill.
+
+I am ashamed to dwell on my symptoms, but for a moment I am forced to do
+so. My eyes were bright, my cheeks were coloured, and there was no
+outward indication of any serious malady. But towards evening I always
+had a temperature, and in the middle of the night (I was sleeping badly)
+it rose very high, with a rapid pulse and anxious breathing, and in the
+morning there was great exhaustion.
+
+Old Doctor Conrad, who had been coming to me twice a day, began to look
+very grave. At last, after a short examination, he said, rather
+nervously:
+
+"I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me. Will you
+receive him?"
+
+I said "Yes" on one condition--that if the new doctor had anything
+serious to say he should report it first to me.
+
+A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and the
+consulting physician was sent for. He came early the next day--a
+beautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the sea bringing the
+smell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying between.
+
+He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow cross his
+clean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me. They were those
+tender but searching eyes which are so often seen in doctors, who are
+always walking through the Valley of the Shadow and seem to focus their
+gaze accordingly.
+
+Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the hand I
+held out to him, he said:
+
+"I trust we'll not frighten you, my lady."
+
+I liked that (though I cared nothing about my lost title, I thought it
+was nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I should not be too
+restless.
+
+While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such beautiful soft
+hands) he told me that he had had a daughter of my own age once.
+
+"Once? Where is she now?" I asked him.
+
+"In the Kingdom. She died like a Saint," he answered.
+
+Then he made a long examination (returning repeatedly to the same
+place), and when it was over and he raised his face I thought it looked
+still more serious.
+
+"My child," he said (I liked that too), "you've never spared yourself,
+have you?"
+
+I admitted that I had not.
+
+"When you've had anything to do you've done it, whatever it might cost
+you."
+
+I admitted that also. He looked round to see if there was anybody else
+in the room (there was only the old doctor, who was leaning over the end
+of the bed, watching the face of his colleague) and then said, in a low
+voice:
+
+"Has it ever happened that you have suffered from privation and hard
+work and loss of sleep and bad lodgings and . . . and exposure?"
+
+His great searching eyes seemed to be looking straight into my soul, and
+I could not have lied to him if I had wished, so I told him a little
+(just a little) about my life in London--at Bayswater, in the East End
+and Ilford.
+
+"And did you get wet sometimes, very wet, through all your clothes?" he
+asked me.
+
+I told him No, but suddenly remembering that during the cold days after
+baby came (when I could not afford a fire) I had dried her napkins on my
+body, I felt that I could not keep that fact from him.
+
+"You dried baby's napkins on your own body?" he asked.
+
+"Sometimes I did. Just for a while," I answered, feeling a little
+ashamed, and my tears rising.
+
+"Ah!" he said, and then turning to the old doctor, "What a mother will
+do for her child, Conrad!"
+
+The eyes of Doctor Conrad (which seemed to have become swollen) were
+still fixed on the face of his colleague, and, speaking as if he had
+forgotten that I was present with them in the room, he said:
+
+"You think she's very ill, don't you?"
+
+"We'll talk of that in your consulting-room," said the strange doctor.
+
+Then, telling me to lie quiet and they would come back presently, he
+went downstairs and Martin's father followed him.
+
+Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of me
+during the last few days), and I asked her who were in the
+parlour-kitchen.
+
+"Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad--and baby," she told me.
+
+Then the doctors came back--the consultant first, trying to look
+cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his head down,
+as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to receive sentence.
+
+"My lady," said the strange doctor, "you are a brave woman if ever there
+was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about your condition."
+
+And then he told me.
+
+I was not afraid. I will not say that I was not sorry. I could have
+wished to live a little longer--especially now when (but for the
+Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp.
+
+But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, something
+supernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the
+bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led me
+out of it.
+
+Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to anybody except
+a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no need of them.
+
+All fear had vanished from my thoughts. I had no fear for myself, I
+remembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was for Martin--he
+loved me so; there had never been any other woman in the world for him.
+
+After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given them too
+much trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and said
+nothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying there
+would be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probably
+make no outward manifestation.
+
+Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked him
+if it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared, although
+everything was in God's hands and nobody could say certainly.
+
+I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a sound
+of crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her. I knew
+what was happening--the good souls were listening at the bottom of the
+stairs.
+
+My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry. Then I
+had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that what
+I was going through was nothing. But finally I bethought me of Martin,
+and asked that they might both be brought up, for I had something to
+say to them.
+
+After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple pure
+dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking very
+sorrowful, the sweet old children.
+
+Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) I
+told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were to
+tell nobody else--nobody whatever, especially Martin.
+
+"Leave _me_ to tell _him_," I said. "Do you faithfully promise me?"
+
+I could see how difficult it was for them to keep back their tears, but
+they gave me their word and that was all I wanted.
+
+"My boy! My poor boy _veen!_ He's thinking there isn't another woman in
+the world like her," said Christian Ann.
+
+And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting the same
+promise concerning myself, when I was a child at school.
+
+After that the Blackwater doctor stepped up to say good-bye.
+
+"I leave you in good hands, but you must let me come to see you again
+some day," he said, and then with a playful smile he added:
+
+"They've got lots of angels up in heaven--we must try to keep some of
+them on earth, you know."
+
+That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our national
+day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in the
+village.
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+JULY 6. I feel so much better to-day. I hardly know what reaction of my
+whole being, physical and spiritual, has set in since yesterday, but my
+heart is lighter than for a long time, and sleep, which I had come to
+look upon as a lost blessing, came to me last night for four solid
+hours--beautiful and untroubled as a child's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 8. Martin writes that he expects to be here on the 12th. Letter
+full of joyous spirits. "Lots to tell you when I reach home, dearest."
+Strange! No mortal can imagine how anxious I am to get him back, yet I
+almost dread his coming. When he was away before, Time could not go fast
+enough for me. Now it is going too fast. I know what that means--the
+story I have to tell. How am I to tell it?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 10. Only two days more and Martin will be here. Of course I must be
+up when he arrives. Nurse says No, but I say Yes. To be in bed when he
+comes would be too much a shock for him.
+
+"Servants are such domineering tyrants," says Christian Ann, who never
+had but one, and "the strange woman" was such a phantom in the house
+that the poor mistress was grateful to God when Hollantide came round
+and the ghost walked away of itself. My nurse is a dear, though. How
+glad I am now that I persuaded Christian Ann to let her stay.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 12. Martin comes to-day, and the old doctor (with such a proud and
+stately step) has gone off to Blackwater to meet him. I am terribly weak
+(no pain whatever), but perfectly resolute on dressing and going
+downstairs towards tea-time. I shall wear a white tea-gown, which Sister
+Mildred gave me in London. Martin likes me best in white.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+LATER. My Martin has come! We had counted it up that travelling across
+the island by motor-car he would arrive at five, so I was dressed and
+downstairs by four, sitting in the _chiollagh_ and watching the road
+through the window opposite. But he was half an hour late, and Christian
+Ann and I were in such a fever that anybody would have believed it to be
+half a century and that the world had stood still.
+
+We might have known what would happen. At Blackwater "the boys" (the
+same that "got up the spree" when Martin went away) had insisted on a
+demonstration. Then, on reaching our village, Martin had got down and
+shaken hands with everybody--the joiner and the grocer and the
+blacksmith and the widow who keeps the corner shop--so that it had taken
+him a quarter of an hour to get through, amid a general chorus of "The
+boy he is, though!" and "No pride at all at all!"
+
+After that he drove home at top speed, and my quick ears caught the
+musical hum of the motor as it crossed the bridge. Good gracious, what
+excitement!
+
+"Quick nurse, help me to the gate."
+
+I got there just in time to hear a shout, and to see a precipitate bound
+out of the car and then . . . what an embrace!
+
+It is such a good thing my Martin is a big, brawny person, for I don't
+know how I should have got back to the house, being so weak and
+breathless just then, if his strong arm had not been round my waist.
+
+Dr. O'Sullivan had come too, looking as gay as a humming-bird, and after
+I had finished with Martin I kissed him also (having such a largesse of
+affection to distribute generally), whereupon he blushed like a boy,
+bless him, and stammered out something about St. Patrick and St. Thomas,
+and how he wouldn't have believed anybody who had said there was
+anything so sweet, etc.
+
+Martin said I was looking so well, and he, too, declared he wouldn't
+have believed any man who had sworn I could have looked so much better
+in the time.
+
+My nervous thermometer must have gone up by leaps and bounds during the
+next hour, for immediately after tea the old doctor ordered me back to
+bed, though I refused to go until he had faithfully promised that the
+door to the staircase should be kept open, so that I could hear what was
+said downstairs.
+
+What lots of fun they had there! Half the parish must have come in "to
+put a sight" on Martin after his investiture, including old Tommy the
+Mate, who told everybody over and over again that he had "known the lad
+since he was a lump" and "him and me are same as brothers."
+
+The old doctor's stately pride must have been something to see. It was
+"Sir Martin" here and "Sir Martin" there, until I could have cried to
+hear him. I felt just as foolish myself, too, for though I cannot
+remember that my pulse gave one extra beat when they made me "your
+ladyship," now that Martin has become. . . . But that's what we women
+are, you see!
+
+At length Martin's big voice came up clear above the rest, and then the
+talk was about the visit to Windsor. Christian Ann wanted to know if he
+wasn't "freckened" to be there, "not being used of Kings," whereupon he
+cried:
+
+"What! Frightened of another man--and a stunning good one, too!"
+
+And then came a story of how the King had asked if he hadn't been in
+fear of icebergs, and how he had answered No, you could strike more of
+them in a day in London (meaning icy-hearted people) than in a life-time
+in the Antarctic.
+
+I suppose I must have laughed at that, for the next I heard was:
+
+"Hush! Isn't that Mary!"
+
+"Aw, yes, the poor _veg veen_," said a sad voice. It was Christian
+Ann's. At the bottom of her heart I shall always be the child who "sang
+carvals to her door."
+
+What a wonderful day! I shall not sleep a wink to-night, though.
+To-morrow I must tell him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 13. I intended to tell Martin this morning, but I really couldn't.
+
+I was going downstairs to breakfast, holding on to the bannisters at one
+side and using nurse's shoulder as my other crutch, when I saw the
+brightest picture I have ever beheld. Baby and Martin were on hands and
+knees on the rag-work hearthrug, face to face--Martin calling her to
+come, Isabel lifting up her little head to him, like a fledgling in a
+nest, and both laughing with that gurgling sound as of water bubbling
+out of a bottle.
+
+This sight broke all the breath out of me at the very first moment. And
+when Martin, after putting me into my place in the _chiollagh_, plunged
+immediately into a rapturous account of his preparations for our
+departure--how we were to be married by special license at the High
+Bailiff's on the tenth (if that date would do), how I was to rest a day
+and then travel up to London on the twelfth, and then rest other four
+days (during which warm clothes could be bought for me), and sail by the
+_Orient_ on the sixteenth--I could not find it in my heart to tell him
+then of the inexorable fate that confronted us.
+
+It was cowardice, I knew, and sooner or later I should have to pay for
+it. But when he went on to talk about baby, and appealed to his mother
+to say if she wouldn't look after Girlie when I was gone, and Christian
+Ann (in such a different tone) said Yes, she would look after Girlie
+when I was gone, I decided that I dared not tell him at all--I would die
+rather than do so.
+
+The end of it all is that I have arranged with Christian Ann, the old
+doctor, and Father Dan that Time and Martin's own observation are to
+tell him what is going to happen, and none of us are to say anything
+about it.
+
+What a deceiver I am, though! I put it all down to my unselfish love for
+Martin. It would be such a blow to him--disturbing his plans, upsetting
+everything, perhaps causing him to postpone his Expedition, or even to
+abandon it altogether. "Let the truth fall soft on him. He'll see it
+soon enough. Don't let us be cruel."
+
+The dear sweet, unsuspecting old darlings have taken it all in--all my
+vain and cowardly selfishness. I am to play the part of pretending to
+fall in with Martin's plans, and they are to stand by and say nothing.
+
+Can I do it? I wonder, I wonder!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 15. I am becoming quite a great actress! It's astonishing to see
+how I develop my deceptions under all sorts of veils and disguises.
+
+Martin told me to-day that he had given up the idea of leaving me at
+Wellington and had determined to take me on to Winter Quarters, having
+met, on the way to Windsor, some great specialist in my kind of malady
+(I wonder how much he knows of it), who declared that the climate of the
+Antarctic would act on me like magic.
+
+Such glorious sunshine in summer! Such crisp, dry, stimulating air! New
+life with every breath! Such a stunning little house, too, so cosy and
+comfortable! And then the men whom he would leave behind while he
+slipped down South--they would worship me!
+
+"How splendid! How glorious!" I cried. "How delightful to be mistress
+over a houseful of big, hungry, healthy boys, who come in out of the
+snow and want to eat up everything!"
+
+Sometimes I feel myself being carried away by my own acting, and then I
+see the others (Christian Ann and the old doctor and Father Dan)
+dropping their heads or stealing out of the room.
+
+I wish I were not so weak. I feel no pain whatever. Only this
+temperature during the nights and the ever-deepening exhaustion in the
+mornings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 16. I am keeping it up! To-day I was alone with Martin for a long
+hour in the garden-house. Weather soft and beautiful, the heavens blue,
+and gleams of sunshine coming through the trellis-work.
+
+Merely to sit beside my darling with his odour of health is to feel a
+flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forget
+that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff of
+wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to the
+highest reaches of the soul.
+
+I always say there is a dumb poet in every explorer; but the poet wasn't
+dumb to-day when Martin talked about the cyclone or anticyclone, or
+whatever it is which covers the region of the South Pole like a cap, and
+determines the weather of a great part of the habitable globe.
+
+"We are going to take from God his word and pass it on to the world," he
+said.
+
+After that he made reference (for the first time since his return) to
+the difficulties of our position, saying what a glorious thing it would
+be to escape to that great free region from the world of civilisation,
+with its effete laws and worn-out creeds which enslave humanity.
+
+"Only a month to-day until we start, and you'll be well enough to travel
+then, dearest."
+
+"Yes, yes, only a month to-day, and I shall be well enough then,
+dearest."
+
+Oh, Mary O'Neill! How much longer will you be able to keep it up, dear?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 17. Martin brought the proofs of his new book from London, and
+to-day in the summer-house (bluebells paling out and hanging their
+heads, but the air full of the odour of fruit trees) he and Dr.
+O'Sullivan and I have been correcting "galleys"--the doctor reading
+aloud, Martin smoking his briar-root pipe, and I (in a crater of
+cushions) supposed to be sitting as judge and jury.
+
+Such simple, straight, natural writing! There may have been a thousand
+errors but my ears heard none of them. The breathless bits about the
+moments when death was near; the humorous bits about patching the tent
+with the tails of their shirts when an overturned lamp burnt a hole in
+the canvas--this was all I was conscious of until I was startled by the
+sound of a sepulchral voice, groaning out "Oh Lord a-massy me!" and by
+the sight of a Glengarry cap over the top of the fuchsia hedge. Old
+Tommy was listening from the road.
+
+We sat late over our proofs and then, the dew having begun to fall,
+Martin said he must carry me indoors lest my feet should get wet--which
+he did, with the result that, remembering what had happened on our first
+evening at Castle Raa, I had a pretty fit of hysterics as soon as we
+reached the house.
+
+"Let's skip, Commanther," was the next thing I heard, and then I was
+helped upstairs to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 18. What a flirt I am becoming! Having conceived the idea that Dr.
+O'Sullivan is a little wee bit in love with me too, I have been playing
+him off against Martin.
+
+It was so delicious (after all I have gone through) to have two
+magnificent men, out of the heroic youth of the world, waiting hand and
+foot on one little woman, that the feminine soul in me to-day couldn't
+resist the temptation to an innocent effort at coquetry.
+
+So before we began business on the proofs I told Martin that, if he was
+determined to leave me behind at winter quarters while he went away to
+the Pole, he must allow Dr. O'Sullivan to remain behind to take care of
+me.
+
+Of course the doctor rose to my bait like a dear, crying:
+
+"He will too--by St. Patrick and St. Thomas he will, and a mighty proud
+man he'll be entirely. . . ."
+
+But good gracious! A momentary shadow passed over Martin's face, then
+came one of his big broad smiles, then out shot his clinched fist, and
+. . . the poor doctor and his garden seat were rolling over each other on
+the grass.
+
+However, we got through without bloodshed, and did good day's work on
+the book.
+
+I must not write any more. I have always written in my own book at
+night, when I haven't been able to get any kind of Christian sleep; but
+I'm weaker now, so must stop, lest I shouldn't have strength enough for
+Martin's.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 20. Oh dear! I am dragging all these other poor dears into my
+deceptions. Christian Ann does not mind what lies, or half-lies, she has
+to tell in order to save pain to her beloved son. But the old doctor!
+And Father Dan!
+
+To-day itself, as Martin's mother would say, I had to make my poor old
+priest into a shocking story-teller.
+
+I developed a cough a few weeks ago, and though it is not really of much
+account I have been struggling to smother it while Martin has been
+about, knowing he is a doctor himself, and fearing his ear might detect
+the note.
+
+But this afternoon (whether a little damp, with a soft patter of sweet
+rain on the trees and the bushes) I had a rather bad bout, at which
+Martin's face looked grave, until I laughed and said:
+
+"It's nothing! I've had this sort of cough every summer since I was
+born--haven't I, Father Dan?"
+
+"Ye-es."
+
+I shall have to remember that in my next confession, but what Father Dan
+is to do I really don't know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 21. I have been rather down to-day about a newspaper that came to
+me anonymously from Paris, with a report marked for my special
+delectation.
+
+"FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE OF AN ENGLISH PEER AND AN AMERICAN HEIRESS."
+
+My husband's and Alma's! It took place at the American Embassy, and was
+attended by great numbers of smart people. There was a long account of
+the grandeur of the bride's dress and of the splendour of the
+bridegroom's presents. They have taken an apartment on the Champs
+Elysees and will spend most of the year in Paris.
+
+Ah well, why should I trouble about a matter that so little concerns me?
+Alma is still beautiful; she will be surrounded by admirers; her salon
+will be frequented by the fashionable parasites of Europe and America.
+
+As for my husband, the straw-fire of his wife's passion for him will
+soon burn out, especially now that she has gained what she wanted--his
+name, his title.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Martin carried me upstairs to bed to-night. I was really feeling weaker
+than usual, but we made a great game of it. Nurse went first, behind a
+mountain of pillows; Martin and I came next, with his arms about my body
+and mine around his neck; and Dr. O'Sullivan last, carrying two tall
+brass candlesticks.
+
+How we laughed! We all laughed together, as if trying to see which of us
+could laugh the loudest. Only Christian Ann looked serious, standing at
+the bottom of the stairs, nursing baby in her nightdress.
+
+It is three o'clock in the morning as I write, and I can hear our
+laughter still--only it sounds like sobbing now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 22. Have heard something to-day that has taken all the warmth of
+life out of me. It is about my father, whom the old doctor still
+attends. Having been told of my husband's marriage he has announced his
+intention of claiming my child if anything happens to me!
+
+What his object may be I do not know. He cannot be thinking of
+establishing a claim to my husband's title--Isabel being a girl.
+Remembering something his lawyer said about the marriage settlement when
+I consulted him on the subject of divorce, I can only assume that (now
+he is poor) he is trying to recover the inheritance he settled on my
+husband.
+
+It frightens me--raising my old nightmare of a lawsuit about the
+legitimacy of my child. I want to speak to Martin about it. Yet how can
+I do so without telling him the truth which I have been struggling so
+hard to conceal?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 23. Oh, Mary O'Neill, what are you coming to?
+
+I told Martin about father's threat, only I gave it another colour. He
+had heard of the Reverend Mother's visit, so I said the rumour had
+reached my father that I intended to enter a convent, and he had
+declared that, if I did so, he would claim my child from Christian Ann,
+being its nearest blood relation.
+
+"Can he do so--when I am . . . when we are gone?" I asked.
+
+I thought Martin's strong face looked sterner than I had ever seen it.
+He made a vague reply and left me soon afterwards on some sort of
+excuse.
+
+About an hour later he came back to carry me upstairs, and just as he
+was setting me down, and Christian Ann was coming in with the candles,
+he whispered:
+
+"Don't worry about Girlie. I've settled that matter, I'm thinking."
+
+What has he done, I wonder?
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+What I had done is easily told. I had gone straight to Daniel O'Neill
+himself, intending to know the truth of the story and to act
+accordingly.
+
+Already I knew enough to scent mischief. I could not be so stupefied
+into blindness of what was going on under my eyes as not to see that the
+dirty question of money, and perhaps the dirtier question of the aims
+and expectations of the woman MacLeod, were at the root of the matter
+that was distressing my darling.
+
+Daniel O'Neill had left the Big House and gone to live in his mother's
+old cottage for two reasons--first, to delude the law into the idea that
+he was himself utterly ruined by the bankruptcy to which he had brought
+the whole island; and next, to gratify the greed of his mistress, who
+wanted to get him to herself at the end, so that he might be persuaded
+to marry her (if it were only on his death-bed) and so establish,
+against any claim of his daughter's, her widow's rights in what a
+husband leaves behind him--which is half of everything in Ellan.
+
+What connection this had with the man's desire to get hold of the child
+I had yet to learn; but I meant to learn it without another hour's
+delay, so I set off for the cottage on the curragh.
+
+It was growing dark, and not being sure of my way through the
+ever-changing bypaths of the bog land, I called on Father Dan to guide
+me. The old priest seemed to know my errand (the matter my darling had
+communicated as a secret being common knowledge), and at first he looked
+afraid.
+
+"Well . . . yes, yes . . . why shouldn't I?" he said, and then, "Yes, I
+will, I will"--with the air of a man who had made up his mind to a
+daring enterprise.
+
+Our curragh is a stretch of wild marsh lying over against the sea,
+undrained, only partly cultivated, half covered with sedge and sallow
+bushes, and consequently liable to heavy mists. There was a mist over it
+that night, and hence it was not easy even for Father Dan (accustomed to
+midnight visits to curragh cottages) to find the house which had once
+been the home of "Neale the Lord."
+
+We rooted it out at last by help of the parish constable, who was
+standing at the corner of a by-road talking to the coachman of a
+gorgeous carriage waiting there, with its two splendid horses smoking in
+the thick night air.
+
+When, over the shingle of what we call "the street," we reached the low
+straggling crofter-cottage under its thick trammon tree (supposed to
+keep off the evil spirits), I rapped with my knuckles at the door, and
+it was opened by a tall scraggy woman with a candle in her hand.
+
+This was Nessy MacLeod, harder and uglier than ever, with her red hair
+combed up, giving her the appearance of a bunch of carrots over two
+stalks of rhubarb.
+
+Almost before I had time to say that we had come to see Mr. O'Neill, and
+to step into the house while saying so, a hoarse, husky, querulous man's
+voice cried from within:
+
+"Who is it, Nessy?"
+
+It's Father Dan, and Martin . . . I mean Sir. . . ."
+
+"That'll do," I said, and the next moment we were in the living-room--a
+bare, bleak, comfortless Curraghman's kitchen.
+
+A more incongruous sight than we saw there human eyes never beheld.
+
+Daniel O'Neill, a shadow of the big brute creature he once was, a
+shrivelled old man, with his bony hands scored and contracted like an
+autumn leaf, his shrunken legs scarcely showing through his baggy
+trousers, his square face whiter than the wall behind it, and a piece of
+red flannel hanging over his head like a cowl, sat in the elbow-chair at
+the side of the hearth-fire, while at a deal table, which was covered
+with papers that looked like law deeds and share certificates (being
+stamped and sealed), sat the Bishop of the island, and its leading
+lawyer, Mr. Curphy.
+
+On hearing my name and seeing me enter the house, Daniel O'Neill lost
+all control of himself. He struggled to his feet by help of a stick, and
+as I walked up to him he laid hold of me.
+
+"You devil!" he cried. "You infernal villain! You. . . ."
+
+But it is of no use to repeat what else he said in the fuming of his
+rage, laying hold of me by the collar of my coat, and tugging at it as
+if he would drag me to his feet.
+
+I was half sorry for the man, badly as I thought of him, so I only
+opened his hand (easy enough to do, for the grip was gone from it) and
+said:
+
+"You're an old man, sir, and you're a sick man--don't tempt me to forget
+that you are the father of Mary O'Neill. Sit down."
+
+He sat down, breathless and broken, without another word. But the
+Bishop, with a large air of outraged dignity, faced about to poor Father
+Dan (who was standing near the door, turning his round hat in his
+trembling hands) and said:
+
+"Father Donovan, did you know that Mr. O'Neill was very ill?"
+
+"I did, Monsignor," said Father Dan.
+
+"And that a surgeon is coming from London to perform an operation upon
+him--did you know that?"
+
+"I did, Monsignor."
+
+"Did you know also that I was here to-night to attend with Mr. Curphy to
+important affairs and perhaps discharge some sacred duties?"
+
+"I knew that too, Monsignor."
+
+"Then," said the Bishop, pointing at me, "how dare you bring this man
+here--this man of all others, who has been the chief instrument in
+bringing shame and disgrace upon our poor sick friend and his deeply
+injured family?"
+
+"So that's how you look at it, is it, Monsignor?"
+
+"Yes, sir, that is how I look at it, and I am sorry for a priest of my
+Church who has so weakened his conscience by sympathy with notorious
+sinners as to see things in any other light."
+
+"Sinners, Bishop?"
+
+"Didn't you hear me, Father Donovan? Or do you desire me to use a harder
+name for them--for one of them in particular, on whom you have wasted so
+much weak sentimentality, to the injury of your spiritual influence and
+the demoralisation of your parish. I have warned you already. Do you
+wish me to go further, to remove you from your Presbytery, or perhaps
+report your conduct to those who have power to take the frock off your
+back? What standard of sanctity for the sacrament of Holy Matrimony do
+you expect to maintain while you degrade it by openly associating with a
+woman who has broken her marriage vows and become little better . . . I
+grieve to say it [with a deep inclination of the head towards the poor
+wreck in the elbow-chair] little better than a common. . . ."
+
+I saw the word that was coming, and I was out in an instant. But there
+was somebody before me. It was Father Dan. The timid old priest seemed
+to break in one moment the bonds of a life-long tyranny.
+
+"What's that you say, Monsignor?" he cried in a shrill voice. "_I_
+degrade the sacrament of Holy Matrimony? Never in this world! But if
+there's anybody in the island of Ellan who has done that same every day
+of his life, it's yourself, and never more cruelly and shamefully than
+in the case we're talking of at this present speaking."
+
+"I'm not used to this kind of language from my clergy, Father Donovan,"
+began the Bishop, but before he could say more Father Dan caught him up
+by crying:
+
+"Perhaps not, Monsignor. But you've got to hear for once, and that's
+now. When this man [pointing to Daniel O'Neill] for his own purposes
+wanted to marry his daughter (who was a child and had no choice in the
+matter) to one of another faith, a man who didn't believe in the
+sacrament of marriage as we know it, who was it that paved the way for
+him?"
+
+"You actually mean that _I_. . . ."
+
+"I mean that without your help, Monsignor, a good girl could never have
+been married to a bad man. You didn't act in ignorance, either. When
+somebody told you--somebody who is here now--that the man to whom you
+were going to marry that innocent girl was a notorious loose liver, a
+profligate, a reprobate, a betrayer of women, and a damned
+scoundrel. . . ."
+
+"Go on, Father Dan; that's God's own name for him," I said, when the old
+priest caught his breath for a moment, terrified by the word that had
+burst from his lips.
+
+"Let's have an end of this," said the Bishop mightily.
+
+"Wait a bit, sir," I said, and then Father Dan went on to say how he had
+been told there was nothing to my story, and how he had been forbidden
+to inquire into it.
+
+"That's how you made _me_ a party to this wicked marriage, God and his
+Holy Mother pardon me! And now that it has come to the end you might
+have expected, and the poor helpless child who was bought and sold like
+a slave is in the position of the sinner, you want me to cut her off, to
+turn the hearts of all good people against her, to cast her out of
+communion, to make her a thing to point the finger at--me, her spiritual
+father who baptized her, taking her out of the arms of the angel who
+bore her and giving her to Christ--or if I won't you'll deprive me of my
+living, you'll report me to Rome, you'll unfrock me. . . ."
+
+"Do it, Monsignor," cried Father Dan, taking a step nearer to the Bishop
+and lifting a trembling hand over his head. "Do it, if our holy Church
+will permit you, and I'll put a wallet on my old shoulders and go round
+the houses of my parish in my old age, begging a bite of bread and a
+basin of meal, and sleeping under a thorn bush, rather than lay my head
+on my pillow and know that that poor victim of your wicked scheming is
+in the road."
+
+The throbbing and breaking of the old priest's voice had compelled me to
+drop my head, and it was not until I heard the sneck of the lock of the
+outer door that I realised that, overcome by his emotion, he had fled
+from the house.
+
+"And now I guess you can follow your friend," said Daniel O'Neill.
+
+"Not yet, sir," I answered; "I have something to say first."
+
+"Well, well, what is it, please?" said the lawyer sharply and
+insolently, looking to where I was standing with folded arms at one side
+of the hearth-place.
+
+"You'll hear soon enough, Master Curphy," I answered.
+
+Then, turning back to Daniel O'Neill, I told him what rumour had reached
+my dear one of his intentions with regard to her child, and asked him to
+say whether there was any truth in it.
+
+"Answer the man, Curphy," said Daniel O'Neill, and thereupon the lawyer,
+with almost equal insolence, turned to me and said:
+
+"What is it you wish to know, sir?"
+
+"Whether, if Mary O'Neill is unable from any cause to keep control of
+her child (which God forbid!), her father intends to take possession of
+it."
+
+"Why shouldn't he? If the mother dies, for instance, her father will be
+the child's legal guardian."
+
+"But if by that time the father is dead too--what then?"
+
+"Then the control of the child will--with the consent of the
+court--devolve upon his heir and representative."
+
+"Meaning this lady?" I asked, pointing to the woman MacLeod, who was now
+standing at the back of Daniel O'Neill's chair.
+
+"Possibly."
+
+"And what will she do with it?"
+
+"Do with it?"
+
+The lawyer was running his fingers through his long beard and trying to
+look perplexed.
+
+"Mr. Curphy, I'll ask you not to pretend to be unable to understand me.
+If and when this lady gets possession of Mary O'Neill's child, what is
+she going to do with it?"
+
+"Very well," said the advocate, seeing I meant business, "since my
+client permits me to speak, I'll tell you plainly. Whatever the child's
+actual parentage . . . perhaps you know best. . . ."
+
+"Go on, sir."
+
+"Whatever the child's parentage, it was born in wedlock. Even the
+recent divorce proceedings have not disturbed that. Therefore we hold
+that the child has a right to the inheritance which in due time should
+come to Mary O'Neill's offspring by the terms of the settlement upon her
+husband."
+
+It was just as I expected, and every drop of my blood boiled at the
+thought of my darling's child in the hands of that frozen-hearted woman.
+
+"So that is the law, is it?"
+
+"That is the law in Ellan."
+
+"In the event of Mary O'Neill's death, and her father's death, her child
+and all its interests will come into the hands of. . . ."
+
+"Of her father's heir and representative."
+
+"Meaning, again, this lady?"
+
+"Probably."
+
+The woman at the back of the chair began to look restless.
+
+"I don't know, sir," she said, "if your repeated references to me are
+intended to reflect upon my character, or my ability to bring up the
+child well and look after its interests properly."
+
+"They are, madam--they most certainly and assuredly are," I answered.
+
+"Daniel!" she cried.
+
+"Be quiet, gel," said Daniel O'Neill. "Let the man speak. We'll see what
+he has come for presently. Go on, sir."
+
+I took him at his word, and was proceeding to say that as I understood
+things it was intended to appeal to the courts in order to recover
+(nominally for the child) succession to the money which had been settled
+on Mary O'Neill's husband at the time of their marriage, when the old
+man cried, struggling again to his feet:
+
+"There you are! The money! It's the money the man's after! He took my
+daughter, and now he's for taking my fortune--what's left of it, anyway.
+He shan't, though! No, by God he shan't! . . . Go back to your woman,
+sir. Do you hear me?--your woman, and tell her that neither you nor she
+shall touch one farthing of my fortune. I'm seeing to that now. It's
+what we're here for to-night--before that damnable operation to-morrow,
+for nobody knows what will come of it. She has defied me and ruined me,
+and made me the byword of the island, God's curse on her. . . ."
+
+"Daniel! Daniel!" cried the MacLeod woman, trying to pacify the
+infuriated madman and to draw him back to his seat.
+
+I would have given all I had in the world if Daniel O'Neill could have
+been a strong man at that moment, instead of a poor wisp of a thing with
+one foot in the grave. But I controlled myself as well as I could and
+said:
+
+"Mr. O'Neill, your daughter doesn't want your fortune, and as for
+myself, you and your money are no more to me than an old hen sitting on
+a nest of addled eggs. Give it to the lady at the back of your
+chair--she has earned it, apparently."
+
+"Really," said the Bishop, who had at length recovered from Father Dan's
+onslaught. "Really, Sir What-ever-your-name is, this is too
+outrageous--that you should come to this lonely house at this time of
+night, interrupting most urgent business, not to speak of serious
+offices, and make injurious insinuations against the character of a
+respectable person--you, sir, who had the audacity to return openly to
+the island with the partner of your sin, and to lodge her in the house
+of your own mother--your own mother, sir, though Heaven knows what kind
+of mother it can be who harbours her son's sin-laden mistress, his
+woman, as our sick friend says. . . ."
+
+Lord! how my hands itched! But controlling myself again, with a mighty
+effort I said:
+
+"Monsignor, I don't think I should advise you to say that again."
+
+"Why not, sir?"
+
+"Because I have a deep respect for your cloth and should be sorry to see
+it soiled."
+
+"Violence!" cried the Bishop, rising to his feet. "You threaten me with
+violence? . . . Is there no policeman in this parish, Mr. Curphy?"
+
+"There's one at the corner of the road, Bishop," I said. "I brought him
+along with me. I should have brought the High Bailiff too, if there had
+been time. You would perhaps be no worse for a few witnesses to the
+business that seems to be going on here."
+
+Saying this, as I pointed to the papers on the table, I had hit harder
+than I knew, for both the Bishop and the lawyer (who had also risen)
+dropped back into their seats and looked at each other with expressions
+of surprise.
+
+Then, stepping up to the table, so as to face the four of them, I said,
+as calmly and deliberately as I could:
+
+"Now listen to me. I am leaving this island in about three weeks time,
+and expect to be two years--perhaps three years--away. Mary O'Neill is
+going with me--as my wife. She intends to leave her child in the care of
+my mother, and I intend to promise her that she may set her mind at ease
+that it shall never under any circumstances be taken away. You seem to
+have made up your minds that she is going to die. Please God she may
+disappoint your expectations and come back strong and well. But if she
+does not, and I have to return alone, and if I find that her child has
+been removed from the protection in which she left it, do you know what
+I shall do?"
+
+"Go to the courts, I presume," said the lawyer.
+
+"Oh dear, no! I'll go to no courts, Mr. Curphy. I'll go to the people
+who have set the courts in motion--which means that I'll go to _you_ and
+_you_ and _you_ and _you_. Heaven knows how many of us may be living
+when that day comes; but as surely as I am, if I find that the promise I
+made to Mary O'Neill has been a vain one, and that her child is under
+this woman's control and the subject of a lawsuit about this man's
+money, and she in her grave, as surely as the Lord God is above us there
+isn't one soul of you here present who will be alive the following
+morning."
+
+That seemed to be enough for all of them. Even old Daniel O'Neill (the
+only man in the house who had an ounce of fight in him) dropped his head
+back in his chair, with his mouth wide open and his broken teeth showing
+behind his discoloured lips.
+
+I thought Father Dan would have been waiting for me under the trammon on
+"the street," but he had gone back to the Presbytery and sent Tommy the
+Mate to lead me through the mist and the by-lanes to the main road.
+
+The old salt seemed to have a "skute" into the bad business which had
+brought out the Bishop and the lawyer at that late hour, and on parting
+from me at the gate of Sunny Lodge he said:
+
+"Lord-a-massy me, what for hasn't ould Tom Dug a fortune coming to him?"
+
+And when I asked him what he would do with a fortune if he had one he
+answered:
+
+"Do? Have a tunderin' [thundering] good law-shoot and sattle some o'
+them big fellas."
+
+Going to bed in the "Plough" that night, I had an ugly vision of the
+scene being enacted in the cottage on the curragh (a scene not without
+precedent in the history of the world, though the priesthood as a whole
+is so pure and noble)--the midnight marriage of a man dying in unnatural
+hatred of his own daughter (and she the sweetest woman in the world)
+while the priest and the prostitute divided the spoils.
+
+[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]
+
+
+
+
+ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+JULY 25. The old doctor brought me such sad and startling news to-day.
+My poor father is dead--died yesterday, after an operation which he had
+deferred too long, refusing to believe it necessary.
+
+The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me but
+from everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from the
+failure of banks, &c., which has brought the whole island to the verge
+of bankruptcy.
+
+He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's--very early, almost before
+daybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who wished to catch the
+first steamer _en route_ for Rome.
+
+As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy that has
+surrounded my father's life of late, people are saying that he is not
+dead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he has escaped from the
+island (going off with the Bishop in a sort of disguise), and that the
+coffin put into the grave this morning did not contain a human body.
+
+"But that's all wrong," said the old doctor. "Your father is really dead
+and buried, and the strange man who went away with the Bishop was the
+London surgeon who performed the operation."
+
+I can hardly realise it--that the strong, stalwart being, the stern old
+lion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor mother's room, used to
+make the very house shake, is gone.
+
+He died as he had lived, it seems. To the last self-centred, inflexible,
+domineering--a peasant yet a great man (if greatness is to be measured
+by power), ranking, I think, in his own little scene of life with the
+tragic figures of history.
+
+I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child there has
+been a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like a beetling
+mountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether he wished to see
+me at the end. Perhaps he did, and was over-persuaded by the cold and
+savourless nature of Nessy MacLeod, who is giving it out, I hear, that
+grief and shame for me killed him.
+
+People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a snob--heaven
+knows what. All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has to
+go back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman of
+the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore that
+when he was a man she should have a carriage of her own, and then
+"nobody should never lash her."
+
+He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more willing than
+Tell to bend the knee to it.
+
+My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, for
+either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with
+him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I
+send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, my
+forgiveness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when I
+told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if I
+failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything depended
+upon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to the
+Expedition if he thought I could not sail with him on the sixteenth.
+
+Martin is not one of the men who weep for their wives as if the sun had
+suffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves are green.
+So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I am getting
+better every day, and shall be "ready to go, never fear," I have to keep
+it up.
+
+I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful actress after
+all. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him looking at me
+uneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort. At such moments I
+have to avoid his eyes lest anything should happen, for my great love
+seems to be always lying in wait to break down my make-believe.
+
+To-day (though I had resolved not to give way to tears) when he was
+talking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and how the
+invigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman of me," I
+cried:
+
+"How splendid! How glorious!"
+
+"Then why are you crying?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, good gracious, that's nothing--for _me_," I answered.
+
+But if I am throwing dust in Martin's eyes I am deceiving nobody else,
+it seems. To-night after he and Dr. O'Sullivan had gone back to the
+"Plough," Father Dan came in to ask Christian Ann how she found me, and
+being answered rather sadly, I heard him say:
+
+"_Ugh cha nee!_ [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a vapour which
+appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth away."
+
+And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some lobsters
+(he still declares they are the only food for invalids) and to ask
+"how's the lil woman now?" I heard him moaning, as he was going out:
+
+"There'll be no shelter for her this voyage, the _vogh!_ She'll carry
+the sea in with her to the Head, I'm thinking."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 27. I _must_ keep it up--I must, I must! To allow Martin's hopes
+and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough to kill me outright.
+
+I don't want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the impression that
+their highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they have
+done something all they've got to do next is to stay at home and talk
+about it. Martin is not like that. Exploration is a passion with him.
+The "lure of the little voices" and the "call of the Unknown" have been
+with him from the beginning, and they will be with him to the end.
+
+I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid to rest
+in the green peace of English earth--dear and sweet as that is to tamer
+natures, mine for instance. I can only think of that wild heroic soul
+going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and
+leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a
+requiem over his grave.
+
+Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart
+make it impossible? Never, never, never!
+
+Moral--I'm going to get up every day--whatever my nurse may say.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 28. I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when Christian Ann,
+who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel between Aunt Bridget
+and Nessy MacLeod.
+
+It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediately
+before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, and
+as the estate includes the Big House she is "putting the law on" Aunt
+Bridget to obtain possession.
+
+Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for Betsy
+Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all her
+treatment of me--to be turned out of doors by her own step-daughter!
+
+When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said:
+
+"Chut! Sarves her right, I say! It's the black life the Big Woman lived
+before, and it's the black life she'll be living now, and her growing
+old, and the Death looking in on her."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan has gone
+back with them. I thought he looked rather _wae_ when he came to say
+good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice was
+husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about "returning
+for the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle."
+
+Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But I'm
+sure he loves me all the same--many, many people love me. I don't know
+what I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a great deal of love
+in my life now that I come to think of it.
+
+We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was tired at
+the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there was
+less laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set me
+down by the bed.
+
+I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), but
+towards midnight the truth flashed upon me--I am becoming thinner and
+therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to notice it.
+
+Moral--I must try to walk upstairs in future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 30. Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race between me
+and the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I am
+afraid I am going to be the loser!
+
+Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I am
+expected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, what
+a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look straight before you,
+dear, and don't be afraid.
+
+I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is crossing
+from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose
+Father Dan must have sent for her.
+
+I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A struggle
+between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after
+daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should
+come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater!
+
+He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had
+taken me at my word.
+
+I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was
+utterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and said
+he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a
+broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one.
+
+I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the
+room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_"
+
+He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which
+no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which
+made me happy, or at least content.
+
+Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far more
+sorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is
+amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after
+its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought my
+darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said, and then
+covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and she
+said she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we mothers
+come to--so many of us--but heaven is over all," she whispered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a matter for
+much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what the
+strange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day, not only in
+my tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace which nurse lent me
+to wrap about my throat.
+
+I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs leaning
+on nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and though he did
+not speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into his blue eyes was
+the same as on that last night at Castle Raa when he said something
+about a silvery fir-tree with its dark head against the sky.
+
+Oh, my own darling, I could wish to live for you, such as I am, if I
+could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help,
+if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already
+answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great;
+unalterable, irrevocable No!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last night, has
+been with me all day. I think she _knows_, for she has said nothing more
+about the convent--only (with her eyes so soft and tender) that she
+intends to remain with me a little while, having need of rest herself.
+
+To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously. This
+evening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she meant by
+that), she is willing to believe that he is a true man, and,
+notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a Christian
+gentleman.
+
+Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in the
+garden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn chattering in the
+field opposite), when I felt a tugging at my skirts, and who should it
+be but Isabel, who had been crawling along the dry grass plucking
+daisies, and now, dragging herself up to my side, emptied them into my
+lap.
+
+No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet it
+rather "touches me up," as Martin says, to see how one's vainest dreams
+seem to come to pass.
+
+I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he rattled
+away about Girlie having two other mothers now--Grandma, who would keep
+her while we were down South, and the Reverend Mother, who would take
+her to school when she was old enough.
+
+So there's nothing more to fear about baby.
+
+But what about Martin himself? Am I dealing fairly in allowing him to go
+on with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not to tell him the
+truth?
+
+This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some real sleep
+perhaps I could solve it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but
+exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than
+ever like my mother--that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own."
+I know what he means--like her as she was at the last.
+
+My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child--a
+woman can see through and through him.
+
+Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby
+when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed.
+What children we all are at the end--just children!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It
+seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of
+censure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, I
+suppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure,
+having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and
+forbidden to return to his diocese.
+
+And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan,
+to be distributed by Father Dan!
+
+I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear
+Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general
+thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's
+and then Rosary and Benediction.
+
+It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day
+in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure.
+
+How God governs everything!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on. This
+morning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage,
+and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, first
+cabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew
+that I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me out
+first on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, the
+Everlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity!
+
+I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ be
+brave.
+
+I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can I
+look into his face and say. . . .
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say things
+so much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affects
+me--swelling and falling when I am moved, like a billow on the ocean.
+
+I find my writing cannot any longer be done in a sitting position in
+bed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write lying down.
+
+
+
+
+MARY O'NEILL'S LETTER TO MARTIN CONRAD
+
+_August 9th_, 6 A.M.
+
+MY OWN DARLING,--Strengthen yourself for what I am going to say. It will
+be very hard for you--I know that, dear.
+
+To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week we
+were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to have
+reached Winter Quarters.
+
+But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you to
+Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywhere
+from here. It is impossible, quite impossible.
+
+I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out for me.
+My great love--love for my mother, for my darling baby, and above all
+for you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer.
+
+Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by saying
+that I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. I
+used to think it was cowardice which kept me from telling you the truth,
+but I see now that it was love, too.
+
+I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this house
+of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You will
+try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keeping
+you in the dark down to the very last moment.
+
+This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart to save
+you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think you
+would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time to
+come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is no
+other woman in the world for him." I should not be a woman if I did not
+feel like that--should I?
+
+But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong and
+had years and years still to live, what a life would have been before
+me--before both of us.
+
+We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I should
+never have been able to shake off the thought that the world, which
+would always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would be
+so, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgives
+a woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had too
+many wounds, darling, to stand by your side and be any help to you.
+
+Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love
+of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and
+ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the
+world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should
+always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of
+the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing
+behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing
+I could not bear.
+
+Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this
+world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man
+and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there?
+
+Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin
+to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is
+must know that I am doing no wrong.
+
+And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer
+to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know
+that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control
+my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be
+mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul.
+
+_You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any
+way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that
+from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us
+with the wings of His loving mercy.
+
+Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened
+afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a
+punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from
+the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was
+not for my sin but my salvation.
+
+Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if
+I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would
+have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so
+many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading
+husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying,
+whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet
+and pure and noble love that has kept it alive.
+
+All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my
+vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under
+whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven.
+
+It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that stern
+Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--you
+say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you, even if I wished to,
+which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw all such mistakes, and all
+the hardships that would come to many poor women (perhaps some men,
+too), as well as the wreck the world might fall to for want of this
+unyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law that
+never under any circumstances should marriage be broken.
+
+Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchable
+wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn.
+
+Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon us!
+Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the Church
+which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. The
+instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. If
+I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be cold
+comfort, but I am not.
+
+Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and I
+cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite us!
+Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of death is
+passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! So
+Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter! Don't you see that,
+dearest? One moment of parting--hardly a moment, perhaps--and then we
+shall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How
+triumphant!
+
+Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in
+the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven.
+More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall
+live with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willing
+to go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shall
+be standing by your side.
+
+So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here for
+tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember--love is immortal.
+
+I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little longer--if
+things had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to see
+your book published and your work finished (I know it will be some day),
+and baby grow up to be a good girl and a beautiful one too (for that's
+something, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer for
+another reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be told
+that I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it
+said and is never tired of hearing it.
+
+But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful to
+regret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness.
+
+And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, I
+mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory of
+her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and love--only the cold,
+blank, unfilled by a face, which must be all that remains to most of
+those whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am not
+afraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our little
+girl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw and
+remember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I ever
+was, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees me
+through her father's eyes.
+
+Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thought
+that Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and that
+in the time to come she may startle you with undescribable resemblances,
+in her voice or smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some
+day, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may
+touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it will
+seem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. Oh
+Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?
+
+Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any cold
+feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say to
+yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot
+quench it."
+
+Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last few
+days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his last
+volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his last
+poem I thought of you, dear:
+
+     "_No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
+         Greet the unseen with a cheer!
+       Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
+       'Strive and thrive!' Cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever
+           There as here!'_"
+
+I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that is
+just a little important--to give you this manuscript book, in which I
+have been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me in
+London.)
+
+You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on
+that subject.
+
+I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself;
+but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one
+does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls
+there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well.
+
+I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and
+foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what
+a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the
+right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children.
+
+There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the
+slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly,
+and perhaps not even in Girlie's.
+
+And yet, why not?
+
+Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled
+me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the
+Antarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and
+therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all
+the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current
+underneath.
+
+Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So
+perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for
+me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of
+everything, it has been glorious to be a woman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little
+while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you
+to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me.
+
+I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have never loved
+anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving you
+to the last.
+
+I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me in
+return--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, my
+dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have brought
+into my life--every single day of it, joyful days and sorrowful ones,
+bright days and dark, but all shining with the glory of your love.
+
+Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy one.
+Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had happiness. And
+when I have not had happiness I have had something far higher and
+better--blessedness.
+
+I have had _such_ joy in my life, dear--joy in the beauty of the world,
+in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the flowers and the songs
+of the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy to
+speak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of my
+dear mother and my sweet child, and above all--above all in _you_.
+
+I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to me, and
+if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in the
+next.
+
+So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one,
+Good-bye!
+
+MARY O'NEILL.
+
+
+
+
+MARY O'NEILL'S LAST NOTE WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAVES OF HER MISSAL
+
+AUGUST 9-10.
+
+
+It is all over. I have given him my book. My secret is out. He knows
+now. I almost think he has known all along.
+
+I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish lace
+about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in my
+mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kind
+crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody said
+how much better I was looking.
+
+Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little late
+in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air and
+quiet sunshine--one of those evenings when Nature is like a nun
+"breathless with adoration."
+
+Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time together we
+talked on the usual subjects--the High Bailiff, the special license,
+"the boys" of the _Scotia_ who were coming over for my wedding, and how
+some of them would have to start out early in the morning.
+
+But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we felt, and
+I felt entirely happy--sitting there in my cushions, with my white hand
+in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up to
+the broad blue of the sky.
+
+The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary's
+Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop their
+heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the dew.
+
+Then we went back to the house--I walking firmly, by Martin's side,
+though I held his arm so close.
+
+The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room, and we
+could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling white
+cot--she sleeps with grandma now.
+
+The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which I
+had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pages
+first.
+
+Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know all
+about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought I
+had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing a
+game of make-believe with me, and had known everything from the first.
+There was a certain relief in that, yet there was a certain sting in it,
+too. What strange creatures we are, we women!
+
+For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs, holding
+each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break down
+as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swelling
+feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes into a woman's life,
+perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to strengthen the strong.
+
+It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms
+about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, _silently_ but oh, so
+eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!"
+
+Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top he
+was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, then
+walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then . . . down, all
+my strength gone in a moment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like a
+dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make too
+much of it--to say that it was a vision or any supernatural
+manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps it
+was only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts and
+desires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, and
+God, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behind
+the veil.
+
+I thought it was to-morrow--my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan's
+thanksgiving celebration--and I was sitting by my French window (which
+was wide open) to look at the procession.
+
+I seemed to see everything--Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in
+their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the
+Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured
+badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers
+with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge.
+
+I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to the
+church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel on
+the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which lean
+towards each other, their foundations having given way.
+
+Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sang
+also. I heard myself singing:
+
+     "_Mater purissima,
+       Ora pro nobis_."
+
+Down to this moment I thought I had been alone, but now the Reverend
+Mother entered my room, and she joined me. I heard her deep rich voice
+under mine:
+
+     "_Mater castissima
+       Ora pro nobis_."
+
+Then I thought the _Ora_ ended, and in the silence that followed it I
+heard Christian Arm talking to baby on the gravel path below. I had
+closed my eyes, yet I seemed to see them, for I felt as if I were under
+some strange sweet anaesthetic which had taken away all pain but not all
+consciousness.
+
+Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up
+to me, and say something about her.
+
+I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was
+darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and
+Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died:
+
+"Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after
+all her suffering."
+
+After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away,
+and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous,
+celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the
+aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin
+was walking by my side.
+
+How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding.
+Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for
+his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about
+him he will control himself and be strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary's
+Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face of
+the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like the
+humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallows
+are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over the
+meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and the
+sky.
+
+How beautiful the world is!
+
+Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun will
+come again and . . . there will be no more night.
+
+[END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]
+
+
+MEMORANDUM OF MARTIN CONRAD
+
+My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hoping
+against hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of the
+Antarctic cure her.
+
+Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me with
+her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot all
+my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expected
+it.
+
+With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to my
+room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the next
+day--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in her
+small delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure.
+
+No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had never
+known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could never
+repay her for now!
+
+How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dear
+one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweet
+resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly
+(before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, true
+marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not then
+that I thought anything about that.
+
+I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of
+civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been
+crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merely
+because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of her
+soul."
+
+What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divine
+truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that was
+to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, or
+the sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the whole
+girlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poor
+martyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not give
+her up--not now, after all she had gone through.
+
+Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny
+Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My
+mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear
+one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel.
+Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she had
+ever been seen to sleep before!
+
+After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where we
+had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored on the beach.
+The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of the Rock, which
+stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy.
+
+Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into the quiet
+smoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull torpor by the
+hearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old man did not say a
+word to me. He put some turf on the fire and then sat on a three-legged
+stool at the other side of the hearth-place.
+
+Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peats
+and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the rising
+sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to the
+door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said:
+
+"She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye
+this--_she's fetching the harbour all right at last_."
+
+Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and saw a
+procession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's celebration of
+thanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel O'Neill's ill-gotten
+wealth sent back from Rome for the poor.
+
+Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod hedge and
+crossed a field until I came to a back gate to our garden, near to
+"William Rufus's" burial place--stone overgrown with moss, inscription
+almost obliterated.
+
+On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by her
+side.
+
+"How is she now?" I asked.
+
+She was awake--had been awake these two hours, but in a strange kind of
+wakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining like stars as if
+smiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and her lips moving as if
+speaking some words which nobody else could hear.
+
+"What art thou saying, _boght millish_?" my mother had asked, and after
+a moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture, my darling had
+answered:
+
+"Hush! I am speaking to mamma--telling her I am leaving Isabel with
+Christian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad."
+
+We walked round to the front of the house until we came close under the
+window of "Mary O'Neill's little room," which was wide open.
+
+The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation singing in
+the church and on the path in front of it.
+
+Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was my
+darling--in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never heard the
+like of in this world and never shall again.
+
+After a moment another voice joined hers--a deep voice, the Reverend
+Mother's.
+
+All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush had
+fallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my precious
+darling's last breath. The sun was going down, very red in its setting,
+and the sky was full of glory.
+
+When the singing came to an end baby was babbling in my mother's
+arms--"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma." I took her and held her up to the open
+window, crying:
+
+"Look, darling! Here's Girlie!"
+
+There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend Mother came
+to the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual, and her lips
+trembled. She did not speak, but she made the sign of the Cross.
+
+And by that . . . I knew.
+
+"Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my cry."
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR TO THE READER
+
+
+I saw him off at Tilbury when he left England on his last Expedition.
+Already he was his own man once more. After the blinding, stunning
+effect of the great event there had been a quick recuperation. His
+spirit had risen to a wonderful strength and even a certain
+cheerfulness.
+
+I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was not
+merely that Time, the great assuager, had begun to do its work with him,
+but that he had brought himself to accept without qualm or question Mary
+O'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief) in the immortality of
+personal love, and was firmly convinced that, freed from the
+imprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every day and hour, and that
+as long as he lived she always would be.
+
+There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish, nothing
+unmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a steady soul
+and a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it braced a strong
+man for life to face Death in that way.
+
+As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I thought
+he was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic, in
+expectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening region.
+
+As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear down the
+Thames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the South Pole, and
+finish his task there, than that the sun would rise the following
+morning.
+
+Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward."
+
+
+
+
+MARTIN CONRAD TO THE AUTHOR
+
+WIRELESS--ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (_via_ MACQUARIE ISLAND AND RADIO HOBART
+16).
+
+Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a breath
+of wind. Sun never going down. Constellations revolving without dipping.
+Feel as if we can see the movement of the world. Start south to-morrow.
+Calmer than I have ever been since She was taken from me. But She was
+right. She is here. "Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot
+quench it."
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman Thou Gavest Me, by Hall Caine
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