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The Woman Thou Gavest Me: Being the Story of Mary O'Neill, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 2. My Marriage - Chapter 31 |
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_ SECOND PART. MY MARRIAGE 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.
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. _ |
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