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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 68 |
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_ FOURTH PART. I FALL IN LOVE SIXTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER I awoke on Wednesday morning in a kind of spiritual and physical fever. Every conflicting emotion which a woman can experience in the cruel battle between her religion and her love seemed to flood body and soul--joy, pain, pride, shame, fear, rapture--so that I determined (not without cause) to make excuse of a headache to stay in bed. Although it was the last day of Martin's visit, and I charged myself with the discourtesy of neglecting him, as well as the folly of losing the few remaining hours of his company, I thought I could not without danger meet him again. I was afraid of him, but I was still more afraid of myself. Recalling my last sight of his face as he ran out of the house, and knowing well the desire of my own heart, I felt that if I spent another day in his company it would be impossible to say what might happen. As a result of this riot of emotions I resolved to remain all day in my room, and towards evening to send out a letter bidding him good-bye and good-luck. It would be a cold end to a long friendship and my heart was almost frozen at the thought of it, but it was all I dared do and I saw no help for it. But how little did I know what was written in the Book of Fate for me! First came Price on pretence of bathing my forehead, and she bombarded me with accounts of Martin's anxiety. When he had heard that I was ill he had turned as white as if sixteen ounces of blood had been taken out of him. It nearly broke me up to hear that, but Price, who was artful, only laughed and said: "Men _are_ such funny things, bless them! To think of that fine young man, who is big enough to fell an ox and brave enough to face a lion, being scared to death because a little lady has a headache." All morning she was in and out of my room with similar stories, and towards noon she brought me a bunch of roses wet with the dew, saying that Tommy the Mate had sent them. "Are you sure it was Tommy the Mate?" I asked, whereupon the sly thing, who was only waiting to tell the truth, though she pretended that I was forcing it out of her, admitted that the flowers were from Martin, and that he had told her not to say so. "What's he doing now?" I asked. "Writing a letter," said Price, "and judging by the times he has torn it up and started again and wiped his forehead, it must be a tough job, I can tell you." I thought I knew whom the letter was meant for, and before luncheon it came up to me. It was the first love letter I had ever had from Martin, and it melted me like wax over a candle. I have it still, and though Martin is such a great man now, I am tempted to copy it out just as it was written with all its appearance of irreverence (none, I am sure, was intended), and even its bad spelling, for without that it would not be Martin--my boy who could never learn his lessons. _"Dear Mary,--I am destroyed to here how ill you are, and when I think it's all my fault I am ready to kick myself. "Don't worry about what I was saying last night. I was mad to think what might happen to you while I should be down there, but I've been thinking it over since and I've come to the conclusion that if their is anything to God He can be trusted to look after you without any help from me, so when we meet again before I go away we'll never say another word on the subject--that's a promice. "I can't go until your better though, so I'm just sending the jaunting car into town with a telegram to London telling them to postpone the expedision on account of illness, and if they think it's mine it won't matter because it's something worse. "But if you are realy a bit better, as your maid says, you might come to the window and wave your hand to me, and I shall be as happy as a sand-boy. "Yours, "Mart."_ To this letter (forgetting my former fears) I returned an immediate verbal reply, saying I was getting better rapidly and hoped to be up to dinner, so he must not send that telegram to London on any account, seeing that nobody knew what was going to happen and everything was in the hands of God. Price took my message with a knowing smile at the corner of her mouth, and a few minutes afterwards I heard Martin laughing with Tommy the Mate at the other end of the lawn. I don't know why I took so much pains with my dress that night. I did not expect to see Martin again. I was sending him away from me. Yet never before had I dressed myself with so much care. I put on the soft white satin gown which was made for me in Cairo, a string of pearls over my hair, and another (a tight one) about my neck. Martin was waiting for me in the boudoir, and to my surprise he had dressed too, but, except that he wore a soft silk shirt, I did not know what he was wearing, or whether he looked handsome or not, because it was Martin and that was all that mattered to me. I am sure my footstep was light as I entered the room, for I was shod in white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree with its little dark head against the sky. "It's to be a truce, isn't it?" he asked. "Yes, a truce," I answered, which meant that as this was to be our last evening together all painful subjects were to be put aside. Before we sat down to eat he took me out on to the balcony to look at the sea, for though there was no rain flashes of sheet lightning with low rumbling of distant thunder lit up the water for a moment with visions of heavenly beauty, and then were devoured by the grim and greedy darkness. During dinner we kept faith with each other. In order to avoid the one subject that was uppermost in both our minds, we played at being children, and pretended it was the day we sailed to St. Mary's Rock. Thinking back to that time, and all the incidents which he had thought so heroic and I so tragic, we dropped into the vernacular, and I called him "boy" and he called me "bogh millish," and at every racy word that came up from the forgotten cells of our brains we shrieked with laughter. When Martin spoke of his skipper I asked "Is he a stunner?" When he mentioned one of his scientific experts I inquired "Is he any good?" And after he had told me that he hoped to take possession of some island in the name of the English crown, and raise the Union Jack on it, I said: "Do or die, we allus does that when we're out asploring." How we laughed! He laughed because I laughed, and I laughed because he was laughing. I had some delicious moments of femininity too (such as no woman can resist), until it struck me suddenly that in all this make-believe we were making love to each other again. That frightened me for a time, but I told myself that everything was safe as long as we could carry on the game. It was not always easy to do so, though, for some of our laughter had tears behind it, and some of our memories had an unexpected sting, because things had a meaning for us now which they never had before, and we were compelled to realise what life had done for us. Thus I found my throat throbbing when I recalled the loss of our boat, leaving us alone together on that cruel rock with the rising tide threatening to submerge us, and I nearly choked when I repeated my last despairing cry: "I'm not a stunner! . . . and you'll have to give me up . . . and leave me here, and save yourself." It was like walking over a solfataro with the thin hot earth ready to break up under our feet. To escape from it I sat down at the piano and began to sing. I dared not sing the music I loved best--the solemn music of the convent--so I sang some of the nonsense songs I had heard in the streets. At one moment I twisted round on the piano stool and said: "I'll bet you anything"--(I always caught Martin's tone in Martin's company), "you can't remember the song I sang sitting in the boat with William Rufus on my lap." "I'll bet you anything I can," said Martin. "Oh, no, you can't," I said. "Have it as you like, bogh, but sing it for all," said Martin, and then I sang--
He did not know a note of music and he had no more voice than a corn-crake, but crushing up on to the music-stool by my side, he banged away with his left hand while I played with my right, and we sang together in a wild delightful discord--
Towards midnight we went out on to the balcony to look at the lightning for the last time. The thunder was shaking the cliffs and rolling along them like cannon-balls, and Martin said: "It sounds like the breaking of the ice down there." When we returned to the room he told me he would have to be off early in the morning, before I was out of bed, having something to do in Blackwater, where "the boys were getting up a spree of some sort." In this way he rattled on for some minutes, obviously talking himself down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. My cuckoo clock struck twelve. Martin looked at me. I looked at him. Our eyes fell. He took my hand. It was cold and moist. His own was hot and trembling. "So this is . . . the end," he said. "Yes . . . the end," I answered. "Well, we've had a jolly evening to finish up with, anyway," he said. "I shall always remember it." I tried to say he would soon have other evenings to think about that would make him forget this one. "Never in this world!" he answered. I tried to wish him good luck, and great success, and a happy return to fame and fortune. He looked at me with his great liquid eyes and said: "Aw, well, that's all as one now." I tried to tell him it would always be a joy to me to remember that he and I had been such great, great friends. He looked at me again, and answered: "That's all as one also." I reproached myself for the pain I was causing him, and to keep myself in countenance I began to talk of the beauty and nobility of renunciation--each sacrificing for the other's sake all sinful thoughts and desires. "Yes, I'm doing what you wish," he said. "I can't deny you anything." That cut me deep, so I went on to say that if I had acted otherwise I should always have had behind me the memory of the vows I had broken, the sacrament I had violated, and the faith I had abandoned. "All the same we might have been very happy," he said, and then my throat became so thick that I could not say any more. After a few moments he said: "It breaks my heart to leave you. But I suppose I must, though I don't know what is going to happen." "All that is in God's hands," I said. "Yes," said Martin, "it's up to Him now." It made my heart ache to look at his desolate face, so, struggling hard with my voice, I tried to tell him he must not despair. "You are so young," I said. "Surely the future holds much happiness for you." And then, though I knew that the bare idea of another woman taking the love I was turning away would have made the world a blank for me, I actually said something about the purest joys of love falling to his lot some day. "No, by the Lord God," said Martin. "There'll be no other woman for me. If I'm not to have you I'll wear the willow for you the same as if you were dead." There was a certain pain in that, but there was a thrill of secret joy in it too. He was still holding my hand. We held each other's hands a long time. In spite of my affected resignation I could not let his hand go. I felt as if I were a drowning woman and his hand were my only safety. Nevertheless I said: "We must say good-night and good-bye now." "And if it is for ever?" "Don't say that." "But if it is?" "Well, then . . . for ever." "At least give me something to take away with me," he said. "Better not," I answered, but even as I spoke I dropped the handkerchief which I had been holding in my other hand and he picked it up. I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it had been the night before. There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips, dropped it gently and walked over to the door. But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him, longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my heart could warm itself. Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty surging river. Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a quivering, husky voice: "You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be." My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman, and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I wanted to give myself up to it. But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room, clashing the door behind him. I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone out with him. The room seemed to become dark. _ |
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