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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 6. I Am Lost - Chapter 102 |
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_ SIXTH PART. I AM LOST ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND CHAPTER The sun was shining in the street. It was one of those clear, clean, frosty mornings when the very air of London, even in the worst places, seems to be washed by the sunlight from the sin and drink of the night before. I was on my way to that church among the mews of Mayfair to which I had gone so frequently during the early days of my marriage when I was struggling against the mortal sin (as I thought it was) of loving Martin. Just as I reached the church and was ascending the steps, a gorgeous landau with high-stepping horses and a powdered footman drew up at the bottom of them. The carriage, which bore a coronet on the door, contained a lady in long furs, a rosy-faced baby-girl in squirrel skins with a large doll in her arms, and a nurse. I could see that, like myself, the lady (a young mother) had come to confess, for as she rose from her seat she told the child to sit quiet and be good and she would not keep her long. "Tum out soon, mummy, and dolly will lub you eber and eber," said the child. The lady stooped and kissed the little one, and then, with a proud and happy look, stepped out of the carriage and passed into the church, while the door-keeper opened the vestibule door for her and bowed deeply. I stood at the top of the steps for a moment looking back at the carriage, the horses, the footman, the nurse, and, above all, the baby-girl with her doll, and then followed the lady into the church. Apparently mass was just over. Little spirelets of smoke were rising from the candles on the altar which the sacristan was putting out, a few communicants were still on their knees, and others with light yet echoing footsteps were making for the door. The lady in furs had already taken her place at one of the confessional boxes, and as there seemed to be no other that was occupied by a priest, I knelt on a chair in the nave and tried to fix my mind on the prayers (once so familiar) for the examination of conscience before confession: "_Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, dispel the darkness of my heart, that I may bewail my sins and rightly confess them_." But the labouring of my spirit was like the flight of a bat in the daylight. Though I tried hard to keep my mind from wandering, I could not do so. Again and again it went back to the lady in furs with the coroneted carriage and the high-stepping horses. She was about my own age, and she began to rise before my tightly closed eyes as a vision of what I might have been myself if I had not given up everything for love--wealth, rank, title, luxury. God is my witness that down to that moment I had never once thought I had made any sacrifice, but now, as by a flash of cruel lightning, I saw myself as I was--a peeress who had run away from her natural condition and was living in the slums, working like any other work-girl. Even this did not hurt me much, but when I thought of the rosy-faced child in the carriage, and then of my own darling at Mrs. Oliver's as I had seen her last, so thin and pale, and with her little bib stained by her curdled milk, a feeling I had never had before pierced to my very soul. I asked myself if this was what God looked down upon and permitted--that because I had obeyed what I still believed to be the purest impulse of my nature, love, my child must be made to suffer. Then something hard began to form in my heart. I told myself that what I had been taught to believe about God was falsehood and deception. All this time I was trying to hush down my mind by saying my prayer, which called on the gracious Virgin Mary to intercede for me with my Redeemer, and the holy Saints of God to assist me. "_Assist me by thy grace, that I may be able to declare my sins to the priest, thy Vicar_." It was of no use. Every moment my heart was hardening, and what I had intended to confess about my wicked thoughts of the night before was vanishing away. At last I rose to my feet and, lifting my head, looked boldly up at the altar. Just at that moment the young peeress, having finished her confession, went off with a light step and a cheerful face. Her kneeling-place at the confessional box was now vacant, yet I did not attempt to take it, and some minutes passed in which I stood biting my lips to prevent a cry. Then the priest parted his curtains and beckoned to me, and I moved across and stood stubbornly by the perforated brass grating. "Father," I said, as firmly as I could, for my throat was fluttering, "I came here to make my confession, but something has come over me since I entered this church, and now I cannot." "What has come over you, my child?" asked the priest. "I feel that what is said about God in a place like this, that He is a kind and beneficent Father, who is just and merciful and pities the sufferings of His children, is untrue. It is all wrong and false. _God does not care_." The priest did not answer me immediately, but after a moment of silence he said in a quivering voice: "My child, I feel just like that myself sometimes. It is the devil tempting you. He is standing by your side and whispering in your ear, at this moment." I shuddered, and the priest added: "I see how it is, my daughter. You are suffering, and those you love are suffering too. But must you surrender your faith on that account? Look round at the pictures on these walls [the Stations of the Cross]. Think of the Great Sufferer, the Great Martyr, who in the hour of His death, at the malicious power of the world, cried, '_Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani_: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'" I had dropped to my knees by now, my head was down, and my hands were clasped together. "You are wrong, my child, if you think God does not care for you because He allows you to suffer. Are you rich? Are you prosperous? Have you every earthly blessing? Then beware, for Satan is watching for your soul. But are you poor? Are you going through unmerited trouble? Have you lost some one who was dearer to you than your heart of hearts? Then take courage, for our holy and blessed Saviour has marked you for His own." I know nothing of that priest except his whispering voice, which, coming through the grating of the confessional, produced the effect of the supernatural, but I thought then, and I think now, that he must have been a great as well as a good man. I perfectly recollect that, when I left the church and passed into the streets, it seemed as if his spirit went with me and built up in my soul a resolution that was bright with heavenly tears and sunshine. Work! Work! Work! I should work still harder than before. No matter how mean, ill-paid, and uncongenial my work might be, I should work all day and all night if necessary. And since I had failed to get my child into an orphanage, it was clearly intended that I should keep her with me, for my own charge and care and joy. This was the mood in which I returned to the house of the Jew. It was Saturday morning, and though the broader thoroughfares of the East End were crowded and the narrower streets full of life, the Jew's house was silent, for it was the Jewish Sabbath. As I went hurriedly upstairs I heard the Jew himself, who was dressing for the synagogue, singing his Sabbath hymn: _Lerho daudee likras kollo_--"Come, O friend, let us go forth to meet the Bride, let us receive the Sabbath with joy!" Then came a shock. When I reached my room I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed; and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs. Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the stair, and knew that her husband was coming up to me. A moment afterwards the Jew stood in my doorway. He was dressed in his Sabbath suit and, free from the incongruous indications of his homely calling, the patriarchal appearance which had first struck me was even more marked than before. His face was pale, his expression was severe, and if his tongue betrayed the broken English of the Polish Jew, I, in my confusion and fear, did not notice it then. My first thought was that he had come to reprove me for neglecting my work, and I was prepared to promise to make up for my absence. But at a second glance I saw that something had happened, something had become known, and that he was there to condemn and denounce me. "You have been out all night," he said. "Can you tell me where you have been?" I knew I could not, and though it flashed upon me to say that I had slept at the house of a friend, I saw that, if he asked who my friend was, and what, I should be speechless. The Jew waited for my reply and then said: "You have given us a name--can you say it is your true and right one?" Again I made no answer, and after another moment the Jew said: "Can you deny that you have a child whom you have hidden from our knowledge?" I felt myself gasping, but still I did not speak. "Can you say that it was lawfully born according to your Christian marriage?" I felt the colour flushing into my face but I was still silent; and after a moment in which, as I could see, the stern-natured Jew was summing me up as a woman of double life and evil character, he said: "Then it is true? . . . Very well, you will understand that from this day you cease to be in my service." All this time my eyes were down, but I was aware that somebody else had come into the room. It was Miriam, and she was trying to plead for me. "Father . . ." she began, but, turning hotly upon her, the Jew cried passionately: "Go away! A true daughter of Israel should know better than to speak for such a woman." I heard the girl going slowly down the stairs, and then the Jew, stepping up to me and speaking more loudly than before, said: "Woman, leave my house at once, before you corrupt the conscience of my child." Again I became aware that some one had come into the room. It was Mrs. Abramovitch, and she, too, was pleading for me. "Israel! Calm thyself! Do not give way to injustice and anger. On Shobbos morning, too!" "Hannah," said the Jew, "thou speakest with thy mouth, not thy heart. The Christian doth not deny that she hath given thee a false name, and is the adulterous mother of a misbegotten child. If she were a Jewish woman she would be summoned before the Beth Din, and in better days our law of Moses would have stoned her. Shall she, because she is a Christian, dishonour a good Jewish house? No! The hand of the Lord would go out against me." "But she is homeless, and she hath been a good servant to thee, Israel. Give her time to find another shelter." There was a moment of silence after that, and then the Jew said: "Very well! It shall not be said that Israel Abramovitch knows not to temper justice with mercy." And then, my face being still down, I heard him saying over my head: "You may stay here another week. After that I wash my hands of thee." With these hard words he turned away, and I heard him going heavily down the stairs. His wife stayed a little longer, saying something in a kind voice, which I did not comprehend, and then she followed him. I do not think I had spoken a word. I continued to stand where the Jew had left me. After a while I heard him closing and locking the door of his own apartment, and knew that he was going off to his synagogue in Brick Lane in his tall silk hat worn on the back of his head like a skull-cap, and with his wife and daughter behind him, carrying his leather-bound prayer-book. I hardly knew what else was happening. My heart was heaving like a dead body on a billow. All that the priest had said was gone. In its place there was a paralysing despair as if the wheels of life were rolling over me.
My dear, long-suffering, martyred darling! It makes my blood boil to see how the very powers of darkness, in the name of religion, morality, philanthropy and the judgment of God, were persecuting my poor little woman. But why speak of myself at all, or interrupt my darling's narrative, except to say what was happening in my efforts to reach her? While we were swinging along in our big liner over the heaving bosom of the Mediterranean the indefinable sense of her danger never left me day or night. That old dream of the glacier and the precipice continued to haunt my sleep, with the difference that, instead of the aurora glistening in my dear one's eyes, there was now a blizzard behind her. The miserable thing so tortured me as we approached Malta (where I expected to receive a reply to the cable I had sent from Port Said to the house of Daniel O'Neill) that I felt physically weak at the thought of the joy or sorrow ahead of me. Though there was no telegram from my darling at Malta, there was one from the chairman of my committee, saying he was coming to Marseilles to meet our steamer and would sail the rest of the way home with us. Indirectly this brought me a certain comfort. It reminded me of the letter I had written for my dear one on the day I left Castle Raa. Sixteen months had passed since then, serious things had happened in the interval, and I had never thought of that letter before. It was not to her father, as she supposed, and certainly not to her husband. It was to my chairman, asking him, in the event of my darling sending it on, to do whatever was necessary to protect her during my absence. If my chairman had not received that letter, my conclusion would be that my dear little woman had never been reduced to such straits as to require help from any one. If he had in fact received it, he must have done what I wished, and therefore everything would be well. There was a certain suspense as well as a certain consolation in all this, and before our big ship slowed down at Marseilles I was on deck searching for my chairman among the people waiting for us on the pier. I saw him immediately, waving his travelling cap with a flourish of joy, and I snatched a little comfort from that. As soon as the steamer was brought to, he was the first to come aboard, and I scanned his face as he hurried up the gangway. It was beaming. "It's all right," I thought; "a man could not look as happy as that if he were bringing me bad news." A moment afterwards he was shaking my hand, clapping me on the shoulder, and saying: "Splendid! Magnificent! Glorious achievement! Proved your point up to the hilt, my boy!" And when I said something about not having gone all the way he cried: "Never mind! You'll do it next time," which made some of my shipmates who were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye, sir," and then one of them (it was good old O'Sullivan) shouted: "By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's after saying that the Commanther was turned back this time by anything less than the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you may say there's forty-eight of us here to tell him he lies." "I believe it," said the chairman, and then there were further congratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but never a word from my dear one. Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private matter until we were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But he had nothing to say there, either, except about articles to be written, reports to be compiled, and invitations to be accepted. Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my longing to know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not ask from fear of a bad answer. Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a roundabout way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been my parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebody else whom he had seen and spoken to. "Do you mean Mal . . . I should say Lady . . ." "Yes." "By the holy saints, the way I was thinking that when I brought you the letter at Port Said, and saw the clouds of heaven still hanging on you." I found that the good fellow had a similar trouble of his own (not yet having heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my plan, which was that of cross-questioning the chairman about my dear one, and I about his, and then meeting secretly and imparting what we had learned. Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering fellows afraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but it grips me by the throat to this day to see myself taking our chairman into a quiet corner of the smoke-room and saying: "Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet. She was sick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to go with anybody except myself. You haven't heard of her, have you?" And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with: "The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a good heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of a great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl . . . a lady, I mane. You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir . . . eh?" Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at last) I asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that she was the last person in the world to use it, being (God bless her!) of the mettle that makes a woman want to fight her own battles without asking help of any one. This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no reply to my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that she was where no word could come from her--she was dead! Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and jury. "She is dead. I have killed her," I thought. Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I ever saw on earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of it now but for the glorious confidence it brought me. It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar (where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal. It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark, when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me, as plainly as words could speak: "What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman is alive! She may be in danger, and beset by all the powers of the devil, but that's just why you have been brought home to save her, and you _will_ save her, as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow morning." There are thoughts which, like great notes in music, grip you by the soul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong to. This was one of them. Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my own man once more; and though I continued to walk the deck while our good ship sped along in the night, it was only because there was a kind of wild harmony between the mighty voice of the rolling billows of the Bay and the unheard anthem of boundless hope that was singing in my breast. I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me. It was the same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of that perpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under the shelter of our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking above us:
God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England! Less than a week and I should be there! That was early hours on Saturday morning--the very Saturday when my poor little woman, after she had been turned away by those prating philanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute. Let him explain it who can. I cannot. M.C. [END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM] _ |
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