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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 5. I Become A Mother - Chapter 76 |
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_ FIFTH PART. I BECOME A MOTHER SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality, which pierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I could see at a glance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from his slow grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which replaced it trembled. Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation he plunged immediately into the matter that was uppermost in his mind. "I am still at a loss to account for this affair of your father's," he said. "Of course I know what it is supposed to be--a reception in honour of our home-coming. That explanation may or may not be sufficient for these stupid islanders, but it's rather too thin for me. Can you tell me what your father means by it?" I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a sheep that walks up to a barking dog: "Hadn't you better ask that question of my father himself?" "Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn't, so I ask you. Your father is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things he will not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not spend five or ten thousand pounds for nothing. He isn't a fool exactly." "Thank you," I said. I could not help it. It was forced out of me. My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the bully in him, which always lay underneath, came uppermost. "Look here, Mary," he said. "I came for an explanation and I intend to have one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, but you must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so we might as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that the doctor has made certain statements about your own condition, and that your father is giving this entertainment because . . . well, because he is expecting an heir?" To my husband's astonishment I answered: "Yes." "So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how that condition came about?" Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer. "Can't you speak?" he said. But still I remained silent. "You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I ask you again how does that condition come about?" I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came to me and I said: "Why do you ask? You seem to know already." "I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that's what you mean. But I'm your husband and have a right to know from _you_. How does your condition come about, I ask you?" I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was the desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping to my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had intercepted and threw it on the table. He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents were not news, and then asked how I came by it. "It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of posting it," I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of such letters which had been inspired, if not written, by your friend Alma." "My friend Alma!" "Yes, your friend Alma." His face assumed a frightful expression and he said: "So that's how it is to be, is it? In spite of the admission you have just made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the letter) "is a trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it. You're going to brazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your position as a married woman?" I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could not speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say: "But it doesn't matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the accusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of any consequence--is it true?" My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as if I were throwing myself over a precipice but I answered: "It is perfectly true." I think that was the last thing he expected. After a moment he said: "Then you have broken your marriage vows--is that it?" "Yes, if you call it so." "Call it so? Call it so? Good heavens, what do _you_ call it?" I did not reply, and after another moment he said: "But perhaps you wish me to understand that this man whom I was so foolish as to invite to my house abused my hospitality and betrayed my wife. Is that what you mean?" "No," I said. "He observed the laws of hospitality much better than you did, and if I am betrayed I betrayed myself." I shall never forget the look with which my husband received this confession. He drew himself up with the air of an injured man and said: "What? You mean that you yourself . . . deliberately . . . Good God!" He stopped for a moment and then said with a rush: "I suppose you've not forgotten what happened at the time of our marriage . . . your resistance and the ridiculous compact I submitted to? Why did I submit? Because I thought your innocence, your convent-bred ideas, and your ignorance of the first conditions of matrimony. . . . But I've been fooled, for you now tell me . . . after all my complacency . . . that you have deliberately. . . . In the name of God do you know what you are? There's only one name for a woman who does what you've done. Do you want me to tell you what that name is?" I was quivering with shame, but my mind, which was going at lightning speed, was thinking of London, of Cairo, of Rome, and of Paris. "Why don't you speak?" he cried, lifting his voice in his rage. "Don't you understand what a letter like this is calling you?" My heart choked. But the thought that came to me--that, bad as his own life had been, he considered he had a right to treat me in this way because he was a man and I was a woman--brought strength out of my weakness, so that when he went on to curse my Church and my religion, saying this was all that had come of "the mummery of my masses," I fired up for a moment and said: "You can spare yourself these blasphemies. If I have done wrong, it is I, and not my Church, that is to blame for it." "_If_ you have done wrong!" he cried. "Damn it, have you lost all sense of a woman's duty to her husband? While you have been married to me and I have been fool enough not to claim you as a wife because I thought you were only fit company for the saints and angels, you have been prostituting yourself to this blusterer, this . . ." "That is a lie," I said, stepping up to him in the middle of the floor. "It's true that I am married to you, but _he_ is my real husband and you . . . you are nothing to me at all." My husband stood for a moment with his mouth agape. Then he began to laugh--loudly, derisively, mockingly. "Nothing to you, am I? You don't mind bearing my name, though, and when your time comes you'll expect it to cover your disgrace." His face had become shockingly distorted. He was quivering with fury. "That's not the worst, either," he cried. "It's not enough that you should tell me to my face that somebody else is your real husband, but you must shunt your spurious offspring into my house. Isn't that what it all comes to . . . all this damnable fuss of your father's . . . that you are going to palm off on me and my name and family your own and this man's . . . bastard?" And with the last word, in the drunkenness of his rage, he lifted his arm and struck me with the back of his hand across the cheek. The physical shock was fearful, but the moral infamy was a hundred-fold worse. I can truly say that not alone for myself did I suffer. When my mind, still going at lightning speed, thought of Martin, who loved me so tenderly, I felt crushed by my husband's blow to the lowest depths of shame. I must have screamed, though I did not know it, for at the next moment Price was in the room and I saw that the housekeeper (drawn perhaps, as before, by my husband's loud voice) was on the landing outside the door. But even that did not serve to restrain him. "No matter," he said. "After what has passed you may not enjoy to-morrow's ceremony. But you shall go through it! By heaven, you shall! And when it is over, I shall have something to say to your father." And with that he swung out of the room and went lunging down the stairs. I was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the blow from my husband's hand tingling on my cheek, when Price, after clashing the door in the face of the housekeeper, said, with her black eyes ablaze: "Well, if ever I wanted to be a man before to-day!" News of the scene went like wildfire through the house, and Alma's mother came to comfort me. In her crude and blundering way she told me of a similar insult she had suffered at the hands of the "bad Lord Raa," and how it had been the real reason of her going to America. "Us married ladies have much to put up with. But cheer up, dearie. I guess you'll have gotten over it by to-morrow morning." When she was gone I sat down before the fire. I did not cry. I felt as if I had reached a depth of suffering that was a thousand fathoms too deep for tears. I do not think I wept again for many months afterwards, and then it was a great joy, not a great grief, that brought me a burst of blessed tears. But I could hear my dear good Price crying behind me, and when I said: "Now you see for yourself that I cannot remain in this house any longer," she answered, in a low voice: "Yes, my lady." "I must go at once--to-night if possible." "You shall. Leave everything to me, my lady." _ |
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