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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 7. I Am Found - Chapter 109 |
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_ SEVENTH PART. I AM FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND NINTH CHAPTER Another month passed, and then began the last and most important phase of my too changeful story. Every week Martin had been coming and going between Ellan and London, occupied when he was away with the business of his next Expedition (for which Parliament had voted a large sum), and when he was at home with reports, diaries, charts, maps, and photographs toward a book he was writing about his last one. As for myself, I had been (or tried to think I had been) entirely happy. With fresh air, new milk, a sweet bedroom, and above all, good and tender nursing (God bless Christian Ann for all she did for me!), my health had improved every day--or perhaps, by that heavenly hopefulness which goes with certain maladies, it had seemed to me to do so. Yet mine was a sort of twilight happiness, nevertheless. Though the sun was always shining in my sky, it was frequently under eclipse. In spite of the sheltered life I lived in that home of charity and love, I was never entirely free from a certain indefinable uneasiness about my position. I was always conscious, too, that Martin's mother and father, not to speak of Father Dan, were suffering from a similar feeling, for sometimes when we talked about the future their looks would answer to my thoughts, and it was just as if we were all silently waiting, waiting, waiting for some event that was to justify and rehabilitate me. It came at last--for me with a startling suddenness. One morning, nurse being out on an errand and Christian Ann patting her butter in the dairy, I was playing with baby on the rag-work hearthrug when our village newsman came to the threshold of the open door. "Take a _Times_," he said. "You might as well be out of the world, ma'am, as not know what's going on in it." I took one of his island newspapers, and after he had gone I casually glanced at it. But what a shock it gave me! The first heading that flew in my face was-- "INSULAR DIVORCE BILL PASSED." It was a report of the proceedings of the Supreme Court of our Ellan legislature, which (notwithstanding the opposition of its ecclesiastical members) had granted my husband's petition. Perhaps I ought to have had a sense of immense relief. Or perhaps I should have gone down on my knees there and then, and thanked God that the miserable entanglement of the horrible marriage that had been forced upon me was at last at an end. But no, I had only one feeling as the newspaper fell from my fingers--shame and humiliation, not for myself (for what did it matter about me, anyway?), but for Martin, whose name, now so famous, I had, through my husband's malice, been the means of dragging through the dust. I remember that I thought I should never be able to look into my darling's face again, that when he came in the afternoon (as he always did) I should have to run away from him, and that all that was left to me was to hide myself and die. But just as these wild thoughts were galloping through my brain I heard the sneck of the garden gate, and almost before I was aware of what else was happening Martin had come sweeping into the house like a rush of wind, thrown his arms around me, and covered my face, my neck, and my hands with kisses--never having done so before since I came to live at his mother's home. "Such news! Such news!" he cried. "We are free, free, free!" Then, seeing the newspaper at my feet on the floor, he said: "Ah, I see you know already. I told them to keep everything away from you--all the miserable legal business. But no matter! It's over now. Of course it's shocking--perfectly shocking--that that squirming worm, after his gross infidelities, should have been able to do what he has done. But what matter about that either? He has done just what we wanted--what you couldn't do for yourself before I went away, your conscience forbidding you. The barrier that has divided us is down . . . now we can be married at any time." I was so overcome by Martin's splendid courage, so afraid to believe fully that the boundless relief I had looked for so long had come to me at last, that for some time I could not speak. And when I did speak, though my heart was clamouring loud, I only said: "But do you really think that . . . that we can now be husband and wife?" "Think it?" he cried, with a peal of laughter. "I should think I do think it. What's to prevent us? Nothing! You've suffered enough, my poor girl. But all that you have gone through has to be forgotten, and you are never to look back again." "Yes, yes, I know I should be happy, very happy," I said, "but what about you?" "Me?" "I looked forward to being a help--at least not a trouble to you, Martin." "And so you will be. Why shouldn't you?" "Martin," I said (I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't help doing it), "wouldn't it injure you to marry me . . . being what I am now . . . in the eyes of the world, I mean?" He looked at me for a moment as if trying to catch my meaning, and then snatched me still closer to his breast. "Mary," he cried, "don't ask me to consider what the damnable insincerities of society may say to a case like ours. If _you_ don't care, then neither do I. And as for the world, by the Lord God I swear that all I ask of it I am now holding in my arms." That conquered me--poor trembling hypocrite that I was, praying with all my soul that my objections would be overcome. In another moment I had thrown my arms about my Martin's neck and kissed and kissed him, feeling for the first time after my months and years of fiery struggle that in the eyes of God and man I had a _right_ to do so. And oh dear, oh dear! When Martin had gone back to his work, what foolish rein I gave to my new-born rapture! I picked baby up from the hearthrug and kissed her also, and then took her into the dairy to be kissed by her grandmother, who must have overheard what had passed between Martin and me, for I noticed that her voice had suddenly become livelier and at least an octave higher. Then, baby being sleepy, I took her upstairs for her morning nap, and after leaning over her cradle, in the soft, damp, milk-like odour of her sweet body and breath, I stood up before the glass and looked at my own hot, tingling, blushing cheeks and sparkling eyes. Oh, what gorgeous dreams of happiness came to me! I may have been the unmarried mother of a child, but my girlhood--my lost girlhood--was flowing back upon me. A vision of my marriage-day rose up before me and I saw myself as a bride, in my bridal veil and blossoms. How happy I was going to be! But indeed I felt just then as if I had always been happy. It was almost as though some blessed stream of holy water had washed my memory clean of all the soilure of my recent days in London, for sure I am that if anybody had at that moment mentioned Ilford and the East End, the bricklayer and the Jew, or spoken of the maternity homes and the orphanages, I should have screamed. Towards noon the old doctor came back from his morning rounds, and I noticed that _his_ voice was pitched higher too. We never once spoke about the great news, the great event, while we sat at table; but I could not help noticing that we were all talking loud and fast and on the top of each other, as if some dark cloud which had hovered over our household had suddenly slid away. After luncheon, nurse being back with baby, I went out for a walk alone, feeling wonderfully well and light, and having two hours to wait for Martin, who must be still pondering over his papers at the "Plough." How beautiful was the day! How blue the sky! How bright the earth! How joyous the air--so sweet and so full of song-birds! I remember that I thought life had been so good to me that I ought to be good to everybody else--especially to my father, from whom it seemed wrong for a daughter to be estranged, whatever he was and whatever he had done to her. So I turned my face towards my poor grandmother's restored cottage on the curragh, fully determined to be reconciled to my father; and I only slackened my steps and gave up my purpose when I began to think of Nessy MacLeod and how difficult (perhaps impossible) it might be to reach him. Even then I faced about for a moment to the Big House with some vain idea of making peace with Aunt Bridget and then slipping upstairs to my mother's room--having such a sense of joyous purity that I wished to breathe the sacred air my blessed saint had lived in. But the end of it all was that I found myself on the steps of the Presbytery, feeling breathlessly happy, and telling myself, with a little access of pride in my own gratitude, that it was only right and proper that I should bring my happiness where I had so often brought my sorrow--to the dear priest who had been my friend since the day of my birth and my darling mother's friend before. Poor old Father Dan! How good I was going to be to him! _ |
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