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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 114 |
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_ SEVENTH PART. I AM FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH CHAPTER After I had read this letter I saw that my great battle, which I had supposed to be over, was hardly begun. Martin was coming home with his big heart full of love for me, and my own heart ran out to meet him. He intended to sail for New Zealand the second week in August, and he expected to take me with him. In spite of all my religious fears and misgivings, I asked myself why I should not go? What was to prevent me? What sin had I really committed? What was there for reparation? Was it anything more than the letter of the Divine law that I had defied and broken? My love was mine and I was his, and I belonged to him for ever. He was going out on a great errand in the service of humanity. Couldn't I go to be his partner and helpmate? And if there _had_ been sin, if the law of God _had_ been broken, wouldn't that, too, be a great atonement? Thus my heart fought with my soul, or with my instincts as a child of the Church, or whatever else it was that brought me back and back, again and again, in spite of all the struggles of my love, to the firm Commandment of our Lord. Father Dan had been right--I could not get away from that. The Reverend Mother had been right, too--other women might forget that they had broken the Divine law but I never should. If I married Martin and went away with him, I should always be thinking of the falseness of my position, and that would make me unhappy. It would also make Martin unhappy to witness my unhappiness, and that would be the worst bitterness life could bring. Then what was left to me? If it was impossible that I should bury myself in a convent it was equally impossible that I should live alone, and Martin in the same world with me. Not all the spiritual pride I could conjure up in the majesty and solemnity of my self-sacrifice could conquer the yearning of my heart as a woman. Not all my religious fervour could keep me away from Martin. In spite of my conscience, sooner or later I should go to him--I knew quite well I should. And my child, instead of being a barrier dividing us, would be a natural bond calling on us and compelling us to come together. Then what was left to a woman in my position who believed in the Divine Commandment--who could not get away from it? Were all the doors of life locked to her? Turn which way she would, was there no way out? Darker and darker every day became this question, but light came at last, a kind of light or the promise of light. It was terrible, and yet it brought me, oh, such immense relief! I am almost afraid to speak of it, so weak and feeble must any words be in which I attempt to describe that unforgetable change. Already I had met some of the mysteries of a woman's life--now I was to meet the last, the greatest, the most tragic, and yet the kindest of them all. I suppose the strain of emotion I had been going through had been too much for my physical strength, for three days after the arrival of Martin's letter I seemed to be really ill. I am ashamed to dwell on my symptoms, but for a moment I am forced to do so. My eyes were bright, my cheeks were coloured, and there was no outward indication of any serious malady. But towards evening I always had a temperature, and in the middle of the night (I was sleeping badly) it rose very high, with a rapid pulse and anxious breathing, and in the morning there was great exhaustion. Old Doctor Conrad, who had been coming to me twice a day, began to look very grave. At last, after a short examination, he said, rather nervously: "I should like a colleague from Blackwater to consult with me. Will you receive him?" I said "Yes" on one condition--that if the new doctor had anything serious to say he should report it first to me. A little reluctantly Martin's father agreed to my terms and the consulting physician was sent for. He came early the next day--a beautiful Ellan morning with a light breeze from the sea bringing the smell of new-mown hay from the meadows lying between. He was an elderly man, and I could not help seeing a shadow cross his clean-shaven face the moment his eyes first fell on me. They were those tender but searching eyes which are so often seen in doctors, who are always walking through the Valley of the Shadow and seem to focus their gaze accordingly. Controlling his expression, he came up to my bed and, taking the hand I held out to him, he said: "I trust we'll not frighten you, my lady." I liked that (though I cared nothing about my lost title, I thought it was nice of him to remember it), and said I hoped I should not be too restless. While he took out and fixed his stethoscope (he had such beautiful soft hands) he told me that he had had a daughter of my own age once. "Once? Where is she now?" I asked him. "In the Kingdom. She died like a Saint," he answered. Then he made a long examination (returning repeatedly to the same place), and when it was over and he raised his face I thought it looked still more serious. "My child," he said (I liked that too), "you've never spared yourself, have you?" I admitted that I had not. "When you've had anything to do you've done it, whatever it might cost you." I admitted that also. He looked round to see if there was anybody else in the room (there was only the old doctor, who was leaning over the end of the bed, watching the face of his colleague) and then said, in a low voice: "Has it ever happened that you have suffered from privation and hard work and loss of sleep and bad lodgings and . . . and exposure?" His great searching eyes seemed to be looking straight into my soul, and I could not have lied to him if I had wished, so I told him a little (just a little) about my life in London--at Bayswater, in the East End and Ilford. "And did you get wet sometimes, very wet, through all your clothes?" he asked me. I told him No, but suddenly remembering that during the cold days after baby came (when I could not afford a fire) I had dried her napkins on my body, I felt that I could not keep that fact from him. "You dried baby's napkins on your own body?" he asked. "Sometimes I did. Just for a while," I answered, feeling a little ashamed, and my tears rising. "Ah!" he said, and then turning to the old doctor, "What a mother will do for her child, Conrad!" The eyes of Doctor Conrad (which seemed to have become swollen) were still fixed on the face of his colleague, and, speaking as if he had forgotten that I was present with them in the room, he said: "You think she's very ill, don't you?" "We'll talk of that in your consulting-room," said the strange doctor. Then, telling me to lie quiet and they would come back presently, he went downstairs and Martin's father followed him. Nurse came up while they were away (she had taken possession of me during the last few days), and I asked her who were in the parlour-kitchen. "Only Father Donovan and Mrs. Conrad--and baby," she told me. Then the doctors came back--the consultant first, trying to look cheerful, and the old doctor last, with a slow step and his head down, as if he had been a prisoner coming back to court to receive sentence. "My lady," said the strange doctor, "you are a brave woman if ever there was one, so we have decided to tell you the truth about your condition." And then he told me. I was not afraid. I will not say that I was not sorry. I could have wished to live a little longer--especially now when (but for the Commandment of God) love and happiness seemed to be within my grasp. But oh, the relief! There was something sacred in it, something supernatural. It was as if God Himself had come down to me in the bewildering maze that was haunted by the footsteps of my fate and led me out of it. Yet why these poor weak words? They can mean so little to anybody except a woman who has been what I was, and she can have no need of them. All fear had vanished from my thoughts. I had no fear for myself, I remembered, and none for baby. The only regret I felt was for Martin--he loved me so; there had never been any other woman in the world for him. After a moment I thanked the doctors and hoped I had not given them too much trouble. Doctor Conrad seemed crushed into stupefaction and said nothing; but the strange doctor tried to comfort me by saying there would be no pain, and that my malady was of a kind that would probably make no outward manifestation. Being a woman to the end I was very glad of that, and then I asked him if it would last long. He said No, not long, he feared, although everything was in God's hands and nobody could say certainly. I was saying I was glad of that too, when my quick ears caught a sound of crying. It was Christian Ann, and Father Dan was hushing her. I knew what was happening--the good souls were listening at the bottom of the stairs. My first impulse was to send nurse to say they were not to cry. Then I had half a mind to laugh, so that they might hear me and know that what I was going through was nothing. But finally I bethought me of Martin, and asked that they might both be brought up, for I had something to say to them. After a moment they came into the room, Christian Ann in her simple pure dress, and Father Dan in his shabby sack coat, both looking very sorrowful, the sweet old children. Then (my two dear friends standing together at the foot of the bed) I told them what the doctor had said, and warned them that they were to tell nobody else--nobody whatever, especially Martin. "Leave _me_ to tell _him_," I said. "Do you faithfully promise me?" I could see how difficult it was for them to keep back their tears, but they gave me their word and that was all I wanted. "My boy! My poor boy _veen!_ He's thinking there isn't another woman in the world like her," said Christian Ann. And then Father Dan said something about my mother extracting the same promise concerning myself, when I was a child at school. After that the Blackwater doctor stepped up to say good-bye. "I leave you in good hands, but you must let me come to see you again some day," he said, and then with a playful smile he added: "They've got lots of angels up in heaven--we must try to keep some of them on earth, you know." That was on the fifth of July, old Midsummer Day, which is our national day in Ellan, and flags were flying over many of the houses in the village. _ |
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