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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 4. I Fall In Love - Chapter 59 |
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_ FOURTH PART. I FALL IN LOVE 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. _ |
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