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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 116 |
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_ SEVENTH PART. I AM FOUND ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH CHAPTER JULY 25. The old doctor brought me such sad and startling news to-day. My poor father is dead--died yesterday, after an operation which he had deferred too long, refusing to believe it necessary. The dreadful fact has hitherto been kept secret not only from me but from everybody, out of fear of legal proceedings arising from the failure of banks, &c.;, which has brought the whole island to the verge of bankruptcy. He was buried this morning at old St. Mary's--very early, almost before daybreak, to suit the convenience of the Bishop, who wished to catch the first steamer _en route_ for Rome. As a consequence of these strange arrangements, and the secrecy that has surrounded my father's life of late, people are saying that he is not dead at all, that in order to avoid prosecution he has escaped from the island (going off with the Bishop in a sort of disguise), and that the coffin put into the grave this morning did not contain a human body. "But that's all wrong," said the old doctor. "Your father is really dead and buried, and the strange man who went away with the Bishop was the London surgeon who performed the operation." I can hardly realise it--that the strong, stalwart being, the stern old lion whose heavy foot, tramping through my poor mother's room, used to make the very house shake, is gone. He died as he had lived, it seems. To the last self-centred, inflexible, domineering--a peasant yet a great man (if greatness is to be measured by power), ranking, I think, in his own little scene of life with the tragic figures of history. I have spent the day in bitter grief. Ever since I was a child there has been a dark shadow between my father and me. He was like a beetling mountain, always hanging over my head. I wonder whether he wished to see me at the end. Perhaps he did, and was over-persuaded by the cold and savourless nature of Nessy MacLeod, who is giving it out, I hear, that grief and shame for me killed him. People will say he was a vulgar parvenu, a sycophant, a snob--heaven knows what. All wrong! For the true reading of his character one has to go back to the day when he was a ragged boy and the liveried coachman of the "bad Lord Raa" lashed at his mother on the road, and he swore that when he was a man she should have a carriage of her own, and then "nobody should never lash her." He found Gessler's cap in the market-place and was no more willing than Tell to bend the knee to it. My poor father! He did wrong to use another life, another soul, for either his pride or his revenge. But God knows best how it will be with him, and if he was the first cause of making my life what it has been, I send after him (I almost tremble to say it) if not my love, my forgiveness. * * * * * JULY 26. I begin to realise that after all I was not romancing when I told the old dears that Martin and his schemes would collapse if I failed him. Poor boy, he is always talking as it everything depended upon me. It is utterly frightening to think what would happen to the Expedition if he thought I could not sail with him on the sixteenth. Martin is not one of the men who weep for their wives as if the sun had suffered eclipse, and then marry again before their graves are green. So, having begun on my great scheme of pretending that I am getting better every day, and shall be "ready to go, never fear," I have to keep it up. I begin to suspect, though, that I am not such a wonderful actress after all. Sometimes in the midst of my raptures I see him looking at me uneasily as if he were conscious of a certain effort. At such moments I have to avoid his eyes lest anything should happen, for my great love seems to be always lying in wait to break down my make-believe. To-day (though I had resolved not to give way to tears) when he was talking about the voyage out, and how it would "set me up" and how the invigorating air of the Antarctic would "make another woman of me," I cried: "How splendid! How glorious!" "Then why are you crying?" he asked. "Oh, good gracious, that's nothing--for _me_," I answered. But if I am throwing dust in Martin's eyes I am deceiving nobody else, it seems. To-night after he and Dr. O'Sullivan had gone back to the "Plough," Father Dan came in to ask Christian Ann how she found me, and being answered rather sadly, I heard him say: "_Ugh cha nee!_ [Woe is me!] What is life? It is even a vapour which appeareth for a little while and then vanisheth away." And half an hour later, when old Tommy came to bring me some lobsters (he still declares they are the only food for invalids) and to ask "how's the lil woman now?" I heard him moaning, as he was going out: "There'll be no shelter for her this voyage, the _vogh!_ She'll carry the sea in with her to the Head, I'm thinking." * * * * * JULY 27. I _must_ keep it up--I must, I must! To allow Martin's hopes and dreams to be broken in upon now would be enough to kill me outright. I don't want to be unkind, but some explorers leave the impression that their highest impulse is the praise of achievement, and once they have done something all they've got to do next is to stay at home and talk about it. Martin is not like that. Exploration is a passion with him. The "lure of the little voices" and the "call of the Unknown" have been with him from the beginning, and they will be with him to the end. I cannot possibly think of Martin dying in bed, and being laid to rest in the green peace of English earth--dear and sweet as that is to tamer natures, mine for instance. I can only think of that wild heroic soul going up to God from the broad white wilderness of the stormy South, and leaving his body under heaving hummocks of snow with blizzards blowing a requiem over his grave. Far off may that glorious ending be, but shall my poor failing heart make it impossible? Never, never, never! Moral--I'm going to get up every day--whatever my nurse may say. * * * * * JULY 28. I was rocking baby to sleep this afternoon when Christian Ann, who was spinning by the fire, told me of a quarrel between Aunt Bridget and Nessy MacLeod. It seems that Nessy (who says she was married to my father immediately before the operation) claims to be the heiress of all that is left, and as the estate includes the Big House she is "putting the law on" Aunt Bridget to obtain possession. Poor Aunt Bridget! What a pitiful end to all her scheming for Betsy Beauty, all her cruelties to my long-suffering mother, all her treatment of me--to be turned out of doors by her own step-daughter! When old Tommy heard of the lawsuit, he said: "Chut! Sarves her right, I say! It's the black life the Big Woman lived before, and it's the black life she'll be living now, and her growing old, and the Death looking in on her." * * * * * JULY 29. We have finished the proofs to-day and Dr. O'Sullivan has gone back with them. I thought he looked rather _wae_ when he came to say good-bye to me, and though he made a great deal of noise his voice was husky when (swearing by his favourite Saints) he talked about "returning for the tenth with all the boys, including Treacle." Of course that was nonsense about his being in love with me. But I'm sure he loves me all the same--many, many people love me. I don't know what I've done to deserve all this love. I have had a great deal of love in my life now that I come to think of it. We worked hard over the last of the proofs, and I suppose I was tired at the end of them, for when Martin carried me upstairs to-night there was less laughter than usual, and I thought he looked serious as he set me down by the bed. I bantered him about that ("A penny for your thoughts, mister"), but towards midnight the truth flashed upon me--I am becoming thinner and therefore lighter every day, and he is beginning to notice it. Moral--I must try to walk upstairs in future. * * * * * JULY 30. Ah, me! it looks as if it were going to be a race between me and the Expedition--which shall come off first--and sometimes I am afraid I am going to be the loser! Martin ought to sail on the sixteenth--only seventeen days! I am expected to be married on the tenth--only eleven! Oh, Mary O'Neill, what a strange contradictory war you are waging! Look straight before you, dear, and don't be afraid. I had a letter from the Reverend Mother this evening. She is crossing from Ireland to-morrow, which is earlier than she intended, so I suppose Father Dan must have sent for her. I do hope Martin and she will get on comfortably together. A struggle between my religion and my love would he more than I could bear now. * * * * * JULY 31. When I awoke this morning very late (I had slept after daybreak) I was thinking of the Reverend Mother, but lo! who should come into the room but the doctor from Blackwater! He was very nice; said I had promised to let him see me again, so he had taken me at my word. I watched him closely while he examined me, and I could see that he was utterly astonished--couldn't understand how I came to be alive--and said he would never again deny the truth of the old saying about dying of a broken heart, because I was clearly living by virtue of a whole one. I made pretence of wanting something in order to get nurse out of the room, and then reached lip to the strange doctor and whispered "_When?_" He wasn't for telling me, talked about the miraculous power of God which no science could reckon with, but at last I got a word out of him which made me happy, or at least content. Perhaps it's sad, but many things look brighter that are far more sorrowful--dying of a broken heart, for example, and (whatever else is amiss with me) mine is not broken, but healed, gloriously healed, after its bruises, so thank God for that, anyway! * * * * * Just had some heavenly sleep and such a sweet dream! I thought my darling mother came to me. "You're cold, my child," she said, and then covered me up in the bedclothes. I talked about leaving my baby, and she said she had had to do the same--leaving me. "That's what we mothers come to--so many of us--but heaven is over all," she whispered. * * * * * AUGUST 1. I really cannot understand myself, so it isn't a matter for much surprise if nobody else understands me. In spite of what the strange doctor said yesterday I dressed up grandly to-day, not only in my tea-gown, but some beautiful old white Irish lace which nurse lent me to wrap about my throat. I think the effect was rather good, and when I went downstairs leaning on nurse's shoulder, there was Martin waiting for me, and though he did not speak (couldn't perhaps), the look that came into his blue eyes was the same as on that last night at Castle Raa when he said something about a silvery fir-tree with its dark head against the sky. Oh, my own darling, I could wish to live for you, such as I am, if I could be of any use, if I would not be a hindrance rather than a help, if our union were right, if, in short, God Himself had not already answered to all such questionings and beseechings, His great; unalterable, irrevocable No! * * * * * AUGUST 2. The Reverend Mother, who arrived in the island last night, has been with me all day. I think she _knows_, for she has said nothing more about the convent--only (with her eyes so soft and tender) that she intends to remain with me a little while, having need of rest herself. To my surprise and joy, Martin and she have got on famously. This evening she told me that, in spite of all (I know what she meant by that), she is willing to believe that he is a true man, and, notwithstanding his unhappy opinions about the Church, a Christian gentleman. Such a touching thing happened to-day. We were all sitting in the garden, (sun warm, light breeze off the sea, ripe corn chattering in the field opposite), when I felt a tugging at my skirts, and who should it be but Isabel, who had been crawling along the dry grass plucking daisies, and now, dragging herself up to my side, emptied them into my lap. No, I will not give way to tears any more as long as I live, yet it rather "touches me up," as Martin says, to see how one's vainest dreams seem to come to pass. I don't know if Martin thought I was going to break down, but he rattled away about Girlie having two other mothers now--Grandma, who would keep her while we were down South, and the Reverend Mother, who would take her to school when she was old enough. So there's nothing more to fear about baby. But what about Martin himself? Am I dealing fairly in allowing him to go on with his preparations? isn't it a kind of cruelty not to tell him the truth? This problem is preying on my mind. If I could only get some real sleep perhaps I could solve it. * * * * * AUGUST 3. I am growing weaker every day. No pain; no cough; nothing but exhaustion. Father Dan told me this morning that I was growing more than ever like my mother--that "sweet saint whom the Lord has made his own." I know what he means--like her as she was at the last. My poor old priest is such a child! A good old man is always a child--a woman can see through and through him. Ah, me! I am cared for now as I never was before, yet I feel like baby when she is tired after walking round the chairs and comes to be nursed. What children we all are at the end--just children! * * * * * AUGUST 4. Father Dan came across, in breathless excitement to-day. It seems the poor soul has been living in daily dread of some sort of censure from Rome through his Bishop--about his toleration of me, I suppose--but behold! it's the Bishop himself who has suffered censure, having been sent into quarantine at one of the Roman Colleges and forbidden to return to his diocese. And now, lo! a large sum of money comes from Rome for the poor of Ellan, to be distributed by Father Dan! I think I know whose money it is that has been returned; but the dear Father suspects nothing, and is full of a great scheme for a general thanksgiving, with a procession of our village people to old St. Mary's and then Rosary and Benediction. It is to come off on the afternoon of the tenth, it seems, my last day in Ellan, after my marriage, but before my departure. How God governs everything! * * * * * AUGUST 6. It is really wrong of me to allow Martin to go on. This morning he told me he had bought the special license for our marriage, and this evening he showed me our tickets for Sydney--two berths, first cabin, steadiest part of the ship. Oh, my dear heart, if you only knew that I have had my ticket these many days, and that it is to take me out first on the Great Expedition--to the still bigger Unknown, the Everlasting Sea, the Immeasurable Eternity! I must be brave. Although I am a little cowardly sometimes, I _can_ be brave. I have definitely decided to-night that I will tell him. But how can I look into his face and say. . . . * * * * * AUGUST 7. I have made up my mind to write to Martin. One can say things so much easier in a letter--I can, anyway. Even my voice affects me--swelling and falling when I am moved, like a billow on the ocean. I find my writing cannot any longer be done in a sitting position in bed, but I can prop my book on my breast and write lying down.
_August 9th_, 6 A.M. MY OWN DARLING,--Strengthen yourself for what I am going to say. It will be very hard for you--I know that, dear. To-morrow we were to have gone to the High Bailiff; this day week we were to have sailed for Sydney, and two months hence we were to have reached Winter Quarters. But I cannot go with you to the High Bailiff's; I cannot go with you to Sydney; I cannot go with you to Winter Quarters; I cannot go anywhere from here. It is impossible, quite impossible. I have loved too much, dear, so the power of life is burnt out for me. My great love--love for my mother, for my darling baby, and above all for you--has consumed me and I cannot live much longer. Forgive me for not telling you this before--for deceiving you by saying that I was getting better and growing stronger when I knew I was not. I used to think it was cowardice which kept me from telling you the truth, but I see now that it was love, too. I was so greedy of the happiness I have had since I came to this house of love that I could not reconcile myself to the loss of it. You will try to understand that (won't you, dear?), and so forgive me for keeping you in the dark down to the very last moment. This will be a great grief to you. I would die with a glad heart to save you a moment's pain, yet I could not die at ease if I did not think you would miss me and grieve for me. I like to think that in the time to come people will say, "Once he loved Mary O'Neill, and now there is no other woman in the world for him." I should not be a woman if I did not feel like that--should I? But don't grieve too much, dearest. Only think! If I had been strong and had years and years still to live, what a life would have been before me--before both of us. We couldn't have lived apart, could we? And if we had married I should never have been able to shake off the thought that the world, which would always be opening its arms to you, did not want me. That would be so, wouldn't it--after all I have gone through? The world never forgives a woman for the injuries it inflicts on her itself, and I have had too many wounds, darling, to stand by your side and be any help to you. Oh, I know what you would say, dearest. "She gave up everything for love of me, choosing poverty, obscurity, and pain above wealth and rank and ease, and therefore I will choose her before everything else in the world." But I know what would come to us in the end, dear, and I should always feel that your love for me had dragged you down, closed many of the doors of life to you. I should know that you were always hearing behind you the echoing footsteps of my fate, and that is the only thing I could not bear. Besides, my darling, there is something else between us in this world--the Divine Commandment! Our blessed Lord says we can never be man and wife, and there is no getting beyond that, is there? Oh, don't think I reproach myself with loving you--that I think it a sin to do so. I do not now, and never shall. He who made my heart what it is must know that I am doing no wrong. And don't think I regret that night at Castle Raa. If I have to answer to God for that I will do so without fear, because I know He will know that, when the cruelty and self-seeking of others were trying to control my most sacred impulses, I was only claiming the right He gave me to be mistress of myself and sovereign of my soul. _You_ must not regret it either, dearest, or reproach yourself in any way, for when we stand together before God's footstool He will see that from the beginning I was yours and you were mine, and He will cover us with the wings of His loving mercy. Then don't think, dear, that I have ever looked upon what happened afterwards--first in Ellan and then in London--as, in any sense, a punishment. I have never done that at any time, and now I believe from the bottom of my heart that, if I suffered while you were away, it was not for my sin but my salvation. Think, dear! If you and I had never met again after my marriage, and if I had gone on living with the man they had married me to, my soul would have shrivelled up and died. That is what happens to the souls of so many poor women who are fettered for life to coarse and degrading husbands. But my soul has not died, dearest, and it is not dying, whatever my poor body may do, so I thank my gracious God for the sweet and pure and noble love that has kept it alive. All the same, my darling, to marry again is another matter. I took my vow before the altar, dear, and however ignorantly I took it, or under whatever persuasion or constraint, it is registered in heaven. It cannot be for nothing, dear, that our blessed Lord made that stern Commandment. The Church may have given a wrong interpretation to it--you say it has, and I am too ignorant to answer you, even if I wished to, which I don't. But I am sure my Lord foresaw all such mistakes, and all the hardships that would come to many poor women (perhaps some men, too), as well as the wreck the world might fall to for want of this unyielding stay, when He issued his divine and irrevocable law that never under any circumstances should marriage be broken. Oh, I am sure of it, dear, quite sure, and before His unsearchable wisdom I bow my head, although my heart is torn. Yet think, darling, how light is the burden that is laid upon us! Marriage vows are for this world only. The marriage law of the Church which lasts as long as life does not go on one moment longer. The instant death sets my body free, my soul may fly to where it belongs. If I were going to live ten, twenty, thirty years, this might be cold comfort, but I am not. Then why should we be sorry? You cannot be mine in this life and I cannot be yours, so Death comes in its mercy and majesty to unite us! Our love will go far beyond life, and the moment the barrier of death is passed our union will begin! And once it begins it will never end! So Death is not really a separator, but a great uniter! Don't you see that, dearest? One moment of parting--hardly a moment, perhaps--and then we shall be together through all Eternity! How wonderful! How glorious! How triumphant! Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven. More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall live with my dear ones who are still on earth. That is why I am willing to go--because I am sure that the moment I draw my last breath I shall be standing by your side. So don't let there be any weeping for me, dear. "Nothing is here for tears; nothing but well and fair." Always remember--love is immortal. I will not say that I could not have wished to live a little longer--if things had been otherwise with both of us. I should like to live to see your book published and your work finished (I know it will be some day), and baby grow up to be a good girl and a beautiful one too (for that's something, isn't it?); and I should like to live a little longer for another reason, a woman's reason--simply to be loved, and to be told that I am loved, for though a woman may know that, she likes to hear it said and is never tired of hearing it. But things have gone against us, and it is almost sinfully ungrateful to regret anything when we have so many reasons for thankfulness. And then about Girlie--I used to think it would be terrible (for me, I mean) to die before she could be old enough to have any clear memory of her mother (such as I have of mine) to cherish and love--only the cold, blank, unfilled by a face, which must be all that remains to most of those whose parents passed away while they were children. But I am not afraid of that now, because I know that in the future, when our little girl asks about her mother, you will describe me to her as _you_ saw and remember me--and that will be _so_ much sweeter and lovelier than I ever was, and it will be _such_ a joy to think that my daughter sees me through her father's eyes. Besides, dearest, there is something still more thrilling--the thought that Girlie may grow to be like me (like what you _think_ me), and that in the time to come she may startle you with undescribable resemblances, in her voice or smile, or laugh, to her mother in heaven, so that some day, perhaps, years and years hence, when she is quite grown up, she may touch your arm and you may turn quickly to look at her, and lo! it will seem to you as if Mary herself (_your_ Mary) were by your side. Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? Go on with your great work, dearest. Don't let it flag from any cold feeling that I am lost to you. Whenever you think of me, say to yourself, "Mary is here; Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot quench it." Did you ever read Browning? I have been doing so during the last few days, nurse (she is quite a thoughtful woman) having lent me his last volume. When I read the last lines of what is said to have been his last poem I thought of you, dear:
You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on that subject. I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well. I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children. There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly, and perhaps not even in Girlie's. And yet, why not? Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the Antarctic Ocean--five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current underneath. Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of everything, it has been glorious to be a woman. * * * * * And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me. I want to tell you again that I love you dearly, that I have never loved anybody but you, and that no marriage vows will keep me from loving you to the last. I want to thank you for the great, great love you have given me in return--all the way back from the time when I was a child. Oh, my dearest, may God for ever bless you for the sunshine you have brought into my life--every single day of it, joyful days and sorrowful ones, bright days and dark, but all shining with the glory of your love. Never allow yourself to think that my life has not been a happy one. Looking back on it now I feel as if I have always had happiness. And when I have not had happiness I have had something far higher and better--blessedness. I have had _such_ joy in my life, dear--joy in the beauty of the world, in the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the flowers and the songs of the birds, and then (apart from the divine love that is too holy to speak about) in my religion, in my beloved Church, in the love of my dear mother and my sweet child, and above all--above all in _you_. I feel a sense of sacred thankfulness to God for giving you to me, and if it has not been for long in this life, it will be for ever in the next. So good-bye, my dearest me--_just for a little moment_! My dearest one, Good-bye! MARY O'NEILL.
AUGUST 9-10.
I had dressed even more carefully than usual, with nurse's Irish lace about my neck as a collar, and my black hair brushed smooth in my mother's manner, and when I went downstairs by help of my usual kind crutch (it is wonderful how strong I have been to-day) everybody said how much better I was looking. Martin was there, and he took me into the garden. It was a little late in the afternoon, but such a sweet and holy time, with its clear air and quiet sunshine--one of those evenings when Nature is like a nun "breathless with adoration." Although I had a feeling that it was to be our last time together we talked on the usual subjects--the High Bailiff, the special license, "the boys" of the _Scotia_ who were coming over for my wedding, and how some of them would have to start out early in the morning. But it didn't matter what we talked about. It was only what we felt, and I felt entirely happy--sitting there in my cushions, with my white hand in his brown one, looking into his clear eyes and ruddy face or up to the broad blue of the sky. The red sun had begun to sink down behind the dark bar of St. Mary's Rock, and the daisies in the garden to close their eyes and drop their heads in sleep, when Martin became afraid of the dew. Then we went back to the house--I walking firmly, by Martin's side, though I held his arm so close. The old doctor was in his consulting room, nurse was in my room, and we could hear Christian Ann upstairs putting baby into her darling white cot--she sleeps with grandma now. The time came for me to go up also, and then I gave him my book, which I had been carrying under my arm, telling him to read the last pages first. Although we had never spoken of my book before he seemed to know all about it; and it flashed upon me at that moment that, while I thought I had been playing a game of make-believe with him, he had been playing a game of make-believe with me, and had known everything from the first. There was a certain relief in that, yet there was a certain sting in it, too. What strange creatures we are, we women! For some moments we stood together at the bottom of the stairs, holding each other's hands. I was dreadfully afraid he was going to break down as he did at Castle Raa, and once again I had that thrilling, swelling feeling (the most heavenly emotion that comes into a woman's life, perhaps) that I, the weak one, had to strengthen the strong. It was only for a moment, though, and then he put his great gentle arms about me, and kissed me on the lips, and said, _silently_ but oh, so eloquently, "Good-bye darling, and God bless you!" Then I walked upstairs alone, quite alone, and when I reached the top he was still at the bottom looking up at me. I smiled down to him, then walked firmly into my room and up to my bed, and then . . . down, all my strength gone in a moment. * * * * * I have had such a wonderful experience during the night. It was like a dream, and yet something more than a dream. I don't want to make too much of it--to say that it was a vision or any supernatural manifestation such as the blessed Margaret Mary speaks about. Perhaps it was only the result of memory operating on my past life, my thoughts and desires. But perhaps it was something higher and more spiritual, and God, for my comforting, has permitted me to look for one moment behind the veil. I thought it was to-morrow--my wedding day, and the day of Father Dan's thanksgiving celebration--and I was sitting by my French window (which was wide open) to look at the procession. I seemed to see everything--Father Dan in his surplice, the fishermen in their clean "ganzies," the village people in their Sunday clothes, the Rechabites, the Foresters, and the Odd-fellows with their coloured badges and banners coming round the corner of the road, and the mothers with babies too young to be left looking on from the bridge. I thought the procession passed under my window and went on to the church, which was soon crowded, leaving numbers of people to kneel on the path in front, as far down as the crumbling gate piers which lean towards each other, their foundations having given way. Then I thought Benediction began, and when the congregation sang I sang also. I heard myself singing:
Then I thought I saw Martin come close under my window and lift baby up to me, and say something about her. I tried to answer him and could not, but I smiled, and then there was darkness, in which I heard voices about me, with somebody sobbing and Father Dan saying, as he did on the morning my mother died: "Don't call her back. She's on her way to God's beautiful paradise after all her suffering." After that the darkness became still deeper, and the voices faded away, and then gradually a great light came, a beautiful, marvellous, celestial light, such as Martin describes when he speaks about the aurora, and then . . . I was on a broad white snowy plateau, and Martin was walking by my side. How wonderful! How joyful! How eternally glorious! * * * * * It is 4 A.M. Some of "the boys" will be on their way to my wedding. Though I have been often ashamed of letting them come I am glad now for his sake that I didn't try to keep them back. With his comrades about him he will control himself and be strong. * * * * * Such a peaceful morning! There is just light enough to see St. Mary's Rock. It is like a wavering ghost moving in the vapour on the face of the deep. I can hear the far-off murmur of the sea. It is like the humming in a big shell. A bird is singing in the garden and the swallows are twittering in a nest under the thatch. A mist is lying over the meadows, and the tree tops seem to be floating between the earth and the sky. How beautiful the world is! Very soon the mist will rise, and the day will break and the sun will come again and . . . there will be no more night. [END OF THE NARRATIVE OF MARY O'NEILL]
My darling was right. I had known all along, but I had been hoping against hope--that the voyage would set her up, and the air of the Antarctic cure her. Then her cheerfulness never failed her, and when she looked at me with her joyous eyes, and when her soft hand slipped into mine I forgot all my fears, so the blow fell on me as suddenly as if I had never expected it. With a faint pathetic smile she gave me her book and I went back to my room at the inn and read it. I read all night and far into the next day--all her dear story, straight from her heart, written out in her small delicate, beautiful characters, with scarcely an erasure. No use saying what I thought or went through. So many things I had never known before! Such love as I had never even dreamt of, and could never repay her for now! How my whole soul rebelled against the fate that had befallen my dear one! If I have since come to share, however reluctantly, her sweet resignation, to bow my head stubbornly where she bowed hers so meekly (before the Divine Commandment), and to see that marriage, true marriage, is the rock on which God builds His world, it was not then that I thought anything about that. I only thought with bitter hatred of the accursed hypocrisies of civilised society which, in the names of Law and Religion, had been crushing the life out of the sweetest and purest woman on earth, merely because she wished to be "mistress of herself and sovereign of her soul." What did I care about the future of the world? Or the movement of divine truths? Or the new relations of man and woman in the good time that was to come? Or the tremendous problems of lost and straying womanhood, or the sufferings of neglected children, or the tragedies of the whole girlhood of the world? What did I care about anything but my poor martyred darling? The woman God gave me was mine and I could not give her up--not now, after all she had gone through. Sometime in the afternoon (heaven knows when) I went back to Sunny Lodge. The house was very quiet. Baby was babbling on the hearth-rug. My mother was silent and trying not to let me see her swollen eyes. My dear one was sleeping, had been sleeping all day long, the sleep of an angel. Strange and frightening fact, nobody being able to remember that she had ever been seen to sleep before! After a while, sick and cold at heart, I went down to the shore where we had played as children. The boat we sailed in was moored on the beach. The tide was far out, making a noise on the teeth of the Rock, which stood out against the reddening sky, stern, grand, gloomy. Old Tommy the Mate came to the door of his cabin. I went into the quiet smoky place with its earthen floor and sat in a dull torpor by the hearth, under the sooty "laff" and rafters. The old man did not say a word to me. He put some turf on the fire and then sat on a three-legged stool at the other side of the hearth-place. Once he got up and gave me a basin of buttermilk, then stirred the peats and sat down again without speaking. Towards evening, when the rising sea was growing louder, I got up to go. The old man followed me to the door, and there, laying his hand on my arm he said: "She's been beating to windward all her life, boy. But mind ye this--_she's fetching the harbour all right at last_." Going up the road I heard a band of music in the distance, and saw a procession of people coming down. It was Father Dan's celebration of thanksgiving to God for what was left of Daniel O'Neill's ill-gotten wealth sent back from Rome for the poor. Being in no humour to thank God for anything, I got over a sod hedge and crossed a field until I came to a back gate to our garden, near to "William Rufus's" burial place--stone overgrown with moss, inscription almost obliterated. On the path I met my mother, with baby, toddling and tumbling by her side. "How is she now?" I asked. She was awake--had been awake these two hours, but in a strange kind of wakefulness, her big angel eyes open and shining like stars as if smiling at someone whom nobody else could see, and her lips moving as if speaking some words which nobody else could hear. "What art thou saying, _boght millish_?" my mother had asked, and after a moment in which she seemed to listen in rapture, my darling had answered: "Hush! I am speaking to mamma--telling her I am leaving Isabel with Christian Ann. And she is saying she is very glad." We walked round to the front of the house until we came close under the window of "Mary O'Neill's little room," which was wide open. The evening was so still that we could hear the congregation singing in the church and on the path in front of it. Presently somebody began to sing in the room above. It was my darling--in her clear sweet silvery voice which I have never heard the like of in this world and never shall again. After a moment another voice joined hers--a deep voice, the Reverend Mother's. All else was quiet. Not a sound on earth or in the air. A hush had fallen on the sea itself, which seemed to be listening for my precious darling's last breath. The sun was going down, very red in its setting, and the sky was full of glory. When the singing came to an end baby was babbling in my mother's arms--"Bo-loo-la-la-ma-ma." I took her and held her up to the open window, crying: "Look, darling! Here's Girlie!" There was no answer, but after another moment the Reverend Mother came to the window. Her pale face was even paler than usual, and her lips trembled. She did not speak, but she made the sign of the Cross. And by that . . . I knew. "Out of the depths I cry unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my cry."
I did not find it hard to read the secret of this change. It was not merely that Time, the great assuager, had begun to do its work with him, but that he had brought himself to accept without qualm or question Mary O'Neill's beautiful belief (the old, old belief) in the immortality of personal love, and was firmly convinced that, freed from the imprisonment of the flesh, she was with him every day and hour, and that as long as he lived she always would be. There was nothing vague, nothing fantastic, nothing mawkish, nothing unmanly about this belief, but only the simple faith of a steady soul and a perfectly clear brain. It was good to see how it braced a strong man for life to face Death in that way. As for his work I found him quite hopeful. His mission apart, I thought he was looking forward to his third trip to the Antarctic, in expectation of the silence and solitude of that strengthening region. As I watched the big liner that was taking him away disappear down the Thames I had no more doubt that he would get down to the South Pole, and finish his task there, than that the sun would rise the following morning. Whatever happens this time he will "march breast forward."
WIRELESS--ANTARCTIC CONTINENT (_via_ MACQUARIE ISLAND AND RADIO HOBART 16). Arrived safe. All well. Weather excellent. Blue sky. Warm. Not a breath of wind. Sun never going down. Constellations revolving without dipping. Feel as if we can see the movement of the world. Start south to-morrow. Calmer than I have ever been since She was taken from me. But She was right. She is here. "Love is stronger than death, many waters cannot quench it." [THE END] _ |
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