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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 50 |
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_ THIRD PART. MY HONEYMOON 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--
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. _ |
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