Part 4. I Fall In Love - Chapter 67

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_ FOURTH PART. I FALL IN LOVE
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. _

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