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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 3. My Honeymoon - Chapter 39 |
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_ THIRD PART. MY HONEYMOON 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. _ |
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